Meanwhile, the crypto index-focused platform closed an $11 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the company exclusively reveals to TechCrunch.
"At a high level, we're building what I would call Vanguard Chain 10," Austin Diamond, Alongside's CEO and co-founder, told TechCrunch. "The goal is a low-cost index product designed to provide full exposure to the cryptocurrency market."
Investors included Coinbase Ventures, Franklin Templeton Investments, Village Global, and Not Boring Capital, as well as angel investors. The startup was co-founded by Diamond and his CTO Jun Ho Hong; Gauthier Le Meur, director of operations; and its CTO Rai Sur.
"In many ways, we want to be a bridge for new people to enter this space," Diamond said. “Historically, a lot of people have built products for other people with cryptocurrency and that hasn't necessarily reached a wider audience, and our limit chart reflects that.”
The name "Alongside" comes from the game of mutual funds, where "everyone invests together," Diamond says. This platform aims to create a product that allows investors to diversify through passive indices.
Last month, the startup launched its first product, the Total Crypto Market Index ($AMKT), which gives people a comprehensive view of the entire cryptocurrency market through a single token.
Diamond says the tokens are "fully backed by the top 25 crypto assets" and measured by market capitalization. However, the top 25 does not include stablecoins and crypto assets with "questionable security status," Diamond added. "Some assets in the space are subject to regulatory control. We couldn't record it because we want to stay true to it."
All assets are backed 1:1 by the underlying index constituents and are “securely backed by Coinbase,” Diamond said. He added that the index is above 25 due to liquidity. "Going forward, there is no depth of liquidity for the asset, but the top 25 are highly liquid."
The token is available on many global exchanges, crypto wallets, reserves, on-ramps, and Ethereum scaling solutions, including Polygon, Uniswap, SushiSwap, Gate.io, Rainbow, and BitGo.
Diamond points out that the biggest difference between this index product and traditional stock indices is the exposure to crypto assets. “Traditional stock indices or ETFs are products of indexed stocks. But in our case, we want to directly identify the crypto asset as a whole; That's one of the biggest differences."
In the future, Alongside will consider launching different products around DeFi as a category or Layer 2 blockchain as a category, Diamond said. "At first we wanted to keep it very simple."
In 10 years, the whole concept of the cryptocurrency market will look very different, Diamond said. "It won't be like now."
"As the market matures and other asset classes live on-chain, we will be able to create products that look different than what we have now."
Index Platform Crypto Concurrent Raises $11 Million Led by a16z Originally Posted by Jacqueline Melinek on TechCrunch