Decentralized Finance (Defi) -Company Intotheblock and Trident Digital are merged to form Sentora, where they join forces to bring institutional investors at chain.
The new company, aided by Anthony Demartino, co -founder of Trident and former head of risk strategies at Coinbase (Coin), is also on the way to closing a $ 25 million foundation with new form capital leading the investment. Ripple, Tribe Capital, Udhc, Joint Effects also participated in the Fundraising Round with further support from strategic ecosystem investors, including curved ventures, Flare and Bankai Ventures. While most investors have already closed investments, two companies are closing the process by June, the company told Coindesk.
The merger comes at a time when defi matures from its “wild west” beginning to a blockchain -based financial economy with offers that are increasingly taken into account sophisticated investors.
It also emphasizes the ongoing trend of consolidation in the crypto industry. There were 88 mergers and acquisitions in the first four months of 2025, according to architect partners who put this year on track to surpass the record years 2022 and 2024.
Sentora combines Intotheblocks Track Record in Defi Analytics – spans over $ 3 billion in institutional implementations – with Trident’s experience of structuring liquidity programs and financial products.
The platform aims to deliver a one-stop shop for institutional investors offering yield strategies, compliance, risk management and access to structured products all under a hood.
“The vision is to build all the key primitives needed for any institution, whether it is a crypto institution, the DAO Foundation, traditional funding investor or individual family office, to interact with defi in a way that feels intelligent that feels safe, who feels safe,” said Jesus Rodriguez, co -founder of Intotheblock and now CTO of Sentora, Interview with Coindesk.
An important roadblock that has hindered asset managers entering Defi on scale is that space is becoming increasingly complicated and fragmented across new chains and protocols, Demartino explained.
“It shouldn’t be that difficult,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to learn about a new chain and learn about a whole lot of different protocols and understand brodity formation and different wallets every time you want to go to a new chain.”
What can help bridge this gap and attract even traditional financing companies on chain, according to DeMartino, is to abstract away from interacting with individual protocols with a single platform that handles all risk management and liquidity while keeping transparency around the underlying plumbing.
“Defi Rails is the future of funding, but it’s still a very small market,” he said. Defillama data shows that there are less than $ 130 billion assets on defi protocols, dwarfed by the several trillions of assets under management, like Blackrock and Fidelity Investments.
“We build the rails for the next 130 trillion assets that come onchain,” he said.
Read more: In addition to incentives: How to build durable DEFI
