Stablecoin startup Agora announced the completion of a $50 million Series A financing, led by Paradigm, with Dragonfly participating. The funds will be used to promote the global expansion and compliance layout of its core product, AUSD.

This is not the first time Agora has attracted capital. As early as April 2024, the company completed a $12 million seed round financing led by Dragonfly. The two rounds of financing totaled $62 million, making Agora one of the few platform projects in the current stablecoin track to receive continuous bets from top institutions.

Who is Agora? What is its background?

Agora is a stablecoin startup founded in 2023 by co-founders Nick van Eck, Drake Evans, and Joe McGrady, dedicated to creating a brand new platform-based stablecoin architecture, also known as 'white-label stablecoin'.

Nick van Eck comes from a traditional finance background and is the son of Jan van Eck, founder of the well-known asset management company VanEck. Co-founder Drake Evans served as a core engineer at MakerDAO, while Joe McGrady has engineering and operational experience in Bridgewater-style institutions.

Agora has completed two rounds of financing to date. In April 2024, Agora completed a $12 million seed round financing led by Dragonfly Capital to develop its core product AUSD and build a white-label issuance platform. In July 2025, Agora announced the completion of a $50 million Series A financing, led by Paradigm, with Dragonfly participating. The funds will be used to accelerate global expansion and compliance layout. As of now, Agora's total financing amount has reached $62 million, making it one of the few platform projects in the stablecoin track to receive continuous bets from top venture capital.

White-label stablecoin AUSD, new story or old packaging?

Tether and Circle have long dominated the stablecoin market, one relying on scale to dominate exchanges, and the other focusing on compliance to connect with traditional finance. However, Agora does not intend to become 'another USDT or USDC'.

But beneath the surface, this pattern is being disrupted by a startup called Agora.

Agora was founded by Nick van Eck, son of the founder of the traditional investment firm VanEck, along with two engineers from the crypto industry, positioning itself differently from Tether and Circle. It did not attempt to create a 'more compliant USDT' or a 'more decentralized USDC', but chose a new platform-based path: to be an infrastructure that everyone can use to issue their stablecoins.

The AUSD it launched is a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, supported by an asset pool managed by State Street Bank and VanEck. Unlike the single-coin distribution of Tether and Circle, Agora uses AUSD as a unified underlying settlement asset and offers white-label issuance services on this basis—any enterprise, whether a Web3 project or an overseas payment company, can quickly issue its own branded stablecoin, such as 'GameUSD' or 'ABC Pay Dollar', all of which share AUSD's on-chain liquidity and interchangeability.

This thinking is somewhat similar to the model when Paxos cooperated with PayPal to issue PYUSD in its early days. However, the difference is that Paxos built an independent stablecoin system for its partners, while Agora's partners must build directly on top of AUSD. This unified underlying design makes the entire system easier to aggregate liquidity and run network effects.

This platform-based issuance logic not only lowers the threshold for enterprises to issue stablecoins but also establishes stronger ecological stickiness and a moat for Agora.

From the perspective of compliance and technical construction, Agora is not a startup. It maintains a high degree of binding with traditional finance: asset custody is entrusted to State Street, asset management is handled by VanEck, and custody technology has also introduced Copper's MPC solution. At the same time, Agora is obtaining money transfer licenses (MTL) in various U.S. states to prepare for future entry into the U.S. market.

In terms of ecological cooperation, Agora has partnered with Polygon Labs to promote customized stablecoin issuance projects based on AUSD and has completed its first OTC transaction with crypto asset management firm Galaxy. AUSD is currently online on LBank with USDT trading pairs and has also received support from projects like Injective, Flowdesk, Conduit, and Plume Network. On-chain, AUSD has achieved multi-chain deployment on Ethereum, Sui, Avalanche, etc., through Wormhole; Agora has also collaborated with Polygon's cross-chain aggregation protocol Agglayer in an attempt to make AUSD its native stablecoin.

Data source: rwa.xyz

Of course, the total market capitalization of AUSD is still less than $200 million, far from the $159.1 billion of USDT and $62 billion of USDC. However, from the perspective of top institutions like Paradigm and Dragonfly, Agora's platform logic may signify a structural reconstruction of the stablecoin market: stablecoins are no longer just products but can become platforms, allowing every institution to have its on-chain dollar.

If the past logic of stablecoins was 'I issue one for you to use', Agora's logic is 'I build one for you to issue'. Tether and Circle are the 'products' of stablecoins, while Agora is more like the 'AWS' of stablecoin issuance.

Data source: coingecko.com

What does seizing the U.S. market and obtaining multi-state money transfer licenses (MTL) mean?

Applying for multi-state money transfer licenses (MTL) is not only a 'pass' for stablecoin issuers to operate in compliance but also a key to unlock the vast U.S. market. MTL not only grants enterprises the qualification to legally conduct money transfers and issue stablecoins in multiple states but also greatly enhances the trust of banks, exchanges, and institutional investors, becoming the foundational guarantee for cooperation. Meanwhile, MTL requires enterprises to strictly comply with multiple obligations such as anti-money laundering (AML), customer identity verification (KYC), and regulatory reporting, ensuring the transparency and security of operations, and laying a solid foundation for the launch of innovative products and services in the future. For this reason, MTL is not only a solid barrier against legal and regulatory risks but also a strategic capital for stablecoin enterprises to establish themselves and continue developing in the U.S. market.

Currently, mainstream stablecoin issuers such as Circle, Paxos, Gemini, and TrustToken have obtained money transfer licenses in multiple states.

Circle, as the issuer of USDC, has extensive MTL coverage, which provides a solid guarantee for its recognition by mainstream financial institutions and banks.

Paxos is also actively laying out compliance, holding multiple state MTLs, and promoting stablecoin issuance through partnerships with PayPal, Binance, and others.

Gemini's GUSD is one of the first stablecoins to obtain a license from the New York Department of Financial Services, and its issuing company also holds multi-state money transfer licenses.

TrustToken has also obtained MTL in multiple states to support the legal issuance and circulation of its various asset-backed stablecoins.

In addition to these stablecoin issuers, some digital asset custodians and trading platforms like Anchorage Digital, BitPay, and Kraken have also applied for and received multi-state MTLs. Typically, licensed institutions will prioritize covering states with strict regulations and active crypto businesses, such as New York, California, Texas, and Florida. Obtaining MTL requires meeting strict capital adequacy, anti-money laundering (AML), customer identity verification (KYC), and compliance reporting requirements. Overall, holding multi-state MTL has become a key compliance threshold for stablecoin products to gain market recognition and institutional cooperation. Agora is applying for multi-state MTL, aiming to enter this compliance camp and unlock the U.S. market.

As a rising star, Agora is actively applying for multi-state MTLs, which is an important step for its legal and compliant operations, integration into the U.S. mainstream financial system, and market expansion. Through this initiative, Agora not only demonstrates a high emphasis on compliance but also sends a strong signal: it aims to become an emerging force in the stablecoin field that cannot be overlooked, gaining market and institutional recognition and opening a new chapter in global expansion.

Betting on Agora, Paradigm is not following the trend.

Paradigm's investment logic has never been about following the trend, but rather betting on projects that can reconstruct foundational infrastructure logic. Agora just happens to align with several directions Paradigm is focused on:

The integration path of traditional finance and blockchain: Agora leverages State Street and VanEck to embed compliance trust into on-chain products, building an issuance network friendly to institutions.

The distribution logic of stablecoins is being reshaped: from 'I issue coins for you to use' to 'I build a system for you to issue', no longer just making a stablecoin but providing the capability to issue stablecoins, enhancing network effects and capital efficiency.

Product design adapting to regulatory trends: Actively applying for MTL and integrating into the financial regulatory framework allows Agora to have a first-mover advantage in the upcoming U.S. regulatory cycle.

Paradigm partner Charlie Noyes stated in an interview: "Agora's product is a stablecoin system with an 'in-built battery' that allows companies to immediately launch stablecoin operations without hiring ten engineers."