eToro is making a serious bet on DeFi perpetual futures, leading a $12.5 million investment round in Extended — an onchain derivatives exchange founded by Ruslan Fakhrutdinov, the former head of crypto at Revolut. The move isn’t just a financial play. It’s a declaration of strategic intent at a moment when the lines between retail brokerages, crypto exchanges, and decentralized finance are collapsing faster than most industry observers predicted.
Summary
Key takeaways
- eToro led a $12.5 million funding round in Extended, an onchain perpetual futures platform built on StarkWare’s StarkEx technology, with participation from Jump Crypto and Alber Blanc.
- Extended has processed over $245 billion in trades and operates more than 100 perpetual contract markets as of June.
- eToro plans to embed Extended’s perpetual futures infrastructure inside its Zengo wallet, which it acquired for $70 million in April, enabling onchain derivatives trading with full user custody.
- eToro’s crypto-related profits fell from $46 million in Q1 2025 to $13 million in Q1 2026, even as the company expands its DeFi ambitions.
- Robinhood and Coinbase are also racing into perpetual futures and tokenized assets, signaling a broad industry pivot toward unified onchain trading platforms.
eToro Leads $12.5 Million Investment in Extended
Extended launched in the final months of 2024, built on StarkWare’s StarkEx scaling technology — a layer-2 blockchain infrastructure designed for high-throughput, low-cost trading. The choice of foundation matters: StarkEx powers some of the most transaction-intensive DeFi applications in existence, and for a perpetual futures venue, throughput and settlement speed are everything.
Founding and Technology Background
Fakhrutdinov didn’t build Extended alone. He brought along former Revolut colleagues, drawing on fintech experience at one of Europe’s most aggressive digital finance companies. The result is a platform that straddles the world of institutional-grade derivatives infrastructure and the DeFi ethos of non-custodial trading.
Jump Crypto and Alber Blanc also participated in the round, lending further credibility to Extended’s ambitions. Jump Crypto’s involvement in particular signals that the platform is attracting serious trading-infrastructure capital, not just narrative-driven venture money.
Trading Volume and Market Reach
The scale Extended has reached in a short time is striking. By June, the platform had facilitated more than $245 billion in cumulative trading volume and offered access to over 100 perpetual contract markets. For a platform barely six months old at that point, those numbers suggest genuine organic demand — not just speculative onboarding.
That volume also provides important context for eToro’s investment thesis. This isn’t a bet on a concept. It’s a bet on a platform that has already demonstrated it can move serious capital.
Integration Plans with Zengo and eToro’s DeFi Expansion
Acquisition of Zengo Wallet
The Extended investment follows eToro’s $70 million acquisition of Zengo, a self-custody crypto wallet that uses multi-party computation protocols — eliminating the traditional seed phrase backup that remains one of the biggest points of user failure in crypto custody. Zengo’s managing director, Ouriel Ohayon, has framed the convergence of traditional capital markets and digital asset technology as an inevitable move toward around-the-clock trading ecosystems.
Together, the two deals sketch out a clear architecture: Zengo as the user-facing custody layer, Extended as the derivatives engine running underneath it.
Future Perpetual Futures Integration
eToro’s roadmap calls for incorporating Extended’s perpetual futures infrastructure directly within the Zengo wallet interface, allowing users to trade onchain derivatives while retaining full custody of their assets. That combination — non-custodial ownership plus access to sophisticated derivative products — has historically been one of DeFi’s most compelling but difficult-to-deliver promises.
Elad Lavi, eToro’s executive vice president for corporate development and strategy, characterized both the Zengo acquisition and the Extended investment as fundamental pillars of the company’s broader DeFi direction. The company also has plans to eventually bring DeFi products into its core brokerage platform, extending these capabilities beyond the Zengo wallet user base.
Why does this integration matter? Because it signals that eToro isn’t treating DeFi as an add-on feature — it’s building an infrastructure stack that could let retail investors access derivatives with the custody standards that institutional players have long demanded.
Market Performance and Competitive Landscape
eToro’s Crypto Profit Metrics
The financial backdrop adds a layer of complexity to eToro’s DeFi push. In Q1 2026, the company generated $13 million in cryptocurrency-related profits — roughly 5% of its overall net trading profit of $258 million. That’s a sharp decline from the $46 million in crypto profits recorded in Q1 2025, a drop that raises genuine questions about the near-term commercial return on eToro’s expanding blockchain ambitions.
The profit compression doesn’t necessarily invalidate the strategy. Building infrastructure takes time to monetize. But it does mean eToro is investing heavily in onchain derivatives at a moment when its existing crypto revenue is under pressure — a bet that the long-term architecture will outlast the short-term earnings headwind.
Rival Brokerage Moves
The competitive context makes eToro’s urgency easier to understand. Robinhood has launched its own proprietary blockchain network, expanded tokenized equity products, and announced plans to introduce perpetual futures contracts for commodities including gold and crude oil. Coinbase has made similar moves into the perpetual futures space. Even Kalshi, primarily known as a prediction market platform, has entered the segment.
What was once a niche instrument native to crypto-native traders is rapidly becoming a mainstream financial product. Perpetual futures contracts are now being deployed across equities, commodities, and tokenized real-world assets by venues that serve tens of millions of retail users.
Industry Trends and Future Developments in Onchain Derivatives
Extended’s Roadmap and New Features
Extended itself isn’t standing still. The platform has outlined a next development phase that includes spot trading services, tokenized real-world assets, and multi-asset collateral support. That roadmap positions Extended not just as a perpetual futures venue but as a broader onchain financial marketplace — one that eToro’s user base could eventually access through the Zengo interface.
Broader Market Evolution
The simultaneous moves by eToro, Robinhood, and Coinbase aren’t coincidental. They reflect a structural shift in how financial platforms are being built. Traditional capital markets infrastructure and digital asset technology are converging, and the platforms that control the custody layer — where users actually hold their assets — are positioning themselves as the primary distribution channels for the next generation of financial products.
The real question isn’t whether DeFi perpetual futures become a mainstream category. Given the volume numbers and the capital flowing in, that outcome looks increasingly probable. The question is which platform owns the user relationship when they get there — and eToro, through Zengo and Extended, is placing a clear wager on its own answer.
FAQ
What is the significance of eToro’s investment in Extended?
eToro’s $12.5 million investment in Extended supports its strategic push into DeFi onchain perpetual futures trading, expanding its crypto offerings and positioning the company to compete with Robinhood and Coinbase as the industry moves toward unified onchain trading platforms.
How will eToro integrate Extended’s technology into its services?
eToro plans to incorporate Extended’s perpetual futures infrastructure directly within the Zengo wallet interface, enabling users to execute onchain derivative trades while maintaining full self-custody of their digital assets through Zengo’s multi-party computation protocols.
How does eToro’s profit from crypto trading in Q1 2026 compare to the previous year?
eToro’s cryptocurrency-related profits dropped significantly, falling from $46 million in Q1 2025 to $13 million in Q1 2026, representing approximately 5% of the company’s overall net trading profit of $258 million for the quarter.
What are the broader market trends in onchain perpetual futures trading?
Industry competitors including Robinhood and Coinbase are actively expanding into perpetual futures and tokenized assets, while traditional capital markets continue to merge with digital asset technology. The trend points toward 24/7 trading ecosystems where conventional financial instruments and crypto products coexist on unified platforms.
Article produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editorial team.
