Based Raises $11.5M Series A to Build Web3 SuperApp

The core thesis driving Based, as articulated by co-founder and CEO Edison, is that current crypto products are largely built for traders or developers, not for everyday users seeking a complete financial ecosystem on-chain. The platform directly addresses the friction of moving crypto investments back into daily life by integrating perpetuals trading, prediction markets, and a live crypto card into one consumer-grade application. “One app to invest globally and spend locally. That’s what gets us up every morning,” Edison stated, highlighting the company’s mission to eliminate the need for users to toggle between disparate tools like decentralized exchanges (DEXs), separate card providers, and portfolio trackers.

This integrated approach appears to be resonating in the market. The platform has rapidly scaled to more than 100,000 registered users and 30,000 monthly active users across five regions, generating approximately $40 billion in cumulative trading volume since its launch. This traction signals a tangible shift in user behavior, favoring curated, all-in-one experiences over the fragmented toolkit model that has characterized much of the crypto space.

The $11.5 million Series A round was led by Pantera, a heavyweight in the crypto investment landscape, with strategic participation from Coinbase Ventures, Wintermute Ventures, and Karatage. This consortium of backers provides not just capital but also significant industry validation and potential network access. Jay Yu, Junior Partner at Pantera, framed the investment in ecosystem terms, drawing a direct link between Based and Hyperliquid, the high-performance layer-1 blockchain it is built upon. “If Hyperliquid is building a house for all of finance, Based is already the front door to that house,” Yu said, endorsing Based as the leading gateway to the Hyperliquid ecosystem.

Being built natively on Hyperliquid is a critical technical differentiator for Based. It allows the platform to leverage what it describes as institutional-grade execution speed and liquidity, but delivered through a simplified consumer interface. This foundation is central to Based’s value proposition of combining performance with usability. Pantera’s Yu further praised founders Edison and Zac for embodying the “young, hungry, and scrappy” spirit of the Hyperliquid ecosystem, highlighting their execution capabilities as key to competing in a crowded market.

While the consumer-facing SuperApp is the most visible product, Based is also developing a deeper infrastructure layer with its “composable” architecture. The company has begun extending its core technology stack to power third-party trading venues, demonstrating the modularity and reusability of its underlying systems. A prime example is HyENA, a Hyperliquid-native perpetuals venue that has processed over $1.5 billion in trading volume within months of launch. This B2B component validates the robustness of Based’s technology and opens an additional revenue and scaling vector beyond direct-to-consumer growth.

The new capital will be deployed to accelerate Based’s expansion into new global markets and to further develop this on-chain financial infrastructure. The ultimate goal, as stated in the announcement, is to scale the platform into “the default financial app for on-chain users worldwide.” By deepening its infrastructure offerings and broadening its geographic reach, Based is betting that the future of crypto adoption lies not in specialized tools, but in integrated platforms that make digital assets tradable and spendable in everyday life.