YO Labs Raises $10 Million to Expand Cross-Chain Crypto Yield Optimization Protocol
YO Labs has secured $10 million in a Series A funding round to scale its YO Protocol across multiple blockchains. This latest funding round brings the company's total capital raised to $24 million, including a prior seed round led by Paradigm.
The round was led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Scribble Ventures, and Launchpad Capital. The funds will be used to expand cross-chain yield optimization capabilities and enhance infrastructure, positioning the YO Protocol as core infrastructure for fintech companies, wallets, and developers.
The YO Protocol automates yield generation by rebalancing capital across decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols while taking risk into account. It offers yield products denominated in USD, EUR, BTC, and gold through vaults named yoETH, yoUSD, yoBTC, yoEUR, and yoGOLD. These vaults operate across blockchains via an architecture of native-asset vaults called embassies, designed to minimize bridge risk.
The embassy approach avoids ongoing cross-chain bridging by maintaining native assets on each chain, such as handling USDC across blockchains without using a bridge. Risk is continuously monitored through a DeFi Graph, which can signal automated withdrawals in worst-case "Armageddon" scenarios where a pool is exposed to a failing asset.
The core innovation of the protocol is its Risk Adjusted Yield, a metric derived from thousands of risk vectors and scores provided by Exponential.fi. Mehdi Lebbar, co-founder and CIO of YO Labs, explains this concept as integral to their approach.
