Avantis Universal Leverage Layer: An Overview of the DeFi Protocol on Base Blockchain

Launched in 2024 on the Base blockchain, Avantis is a Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocol that enables users to trade perpetual contracts on cryptocurrencies and real-world assets, including forex pairs, metals, commodities, and indices. Traders handle these transactions directly from their wallets, maintaining self-custody of their collateral, and apply leverage of up to 500 times across more than 90 markets.

With its focus on providing zero-fee perpetual trading and loss rebates, it has obtained funding from investors such as Pantera Capital and Founders Fund. Since February 2024, Avantis has handled over $27 billion in cumulative trading volume and shows a run-rate revenue above $26 million.

How Did Avantis Start?

Avantis began development in 2023, founded by a team with experience in blockchain engineering, quantitative finance, investment banking, and DeFi protocol creation. The Avantis Foundation, an independent entity that contracts service providers, oversees the project. The team consists of 14 individuals with a combined 20 years in areas such as engineering, venture capital, private equity, incentive design, and product development for frontend and backend systems.

From the outset, Avantis positioned itself to bridge traditional finance and decentralized finance by enabling onchain trading of assets typically found in centralized markets. The protocol’s design emphasizes self-custody, where users retain control over their funds without relying on intermediaries.

Early focus areas included building a leverage layer for global assets, starting with cryptocurrencies and extending to foreign exchange, such as the Japanese Yen, metals like gold (XAU), and other commodities. This approach addressed gaps in DeFi, where leverage trading often involves high fees or limited asset variety.

Funding and Investors

Avantis has completed multiple funding rounds to support its operations. The seed round in 2023 raised $4 million, followed by the Series A in 2025 for $8 million, totaling $12 million. Key investors include Pantera Capital, which led both rounds, as well as Founders Fund, Galaxy Digital, Base Ecosystem Fund, Modular Capital, Salt Fund, Symbolic Capital, and Flowdesk.

These backers provide financial resources and strategic support, with notable examples including Pantera Capital and Galaxy Digital, which are recognized for their involvement in blockchain investments.

The funding has enabled Avantis to scale as an oracle-based synthetic derivatives protocol, with a focus on cross-asset leverage trading.

Core Features of Avantis

Avantis includes several technical components that support its trading operations:

High Leverage Trading: Avantis supports positions with leverage up to 500 times the collateral across 90 markets. These markets include cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), as well as forex pairs, metals like gold, commodities, and indices.

Avantis Interface

For example, gold has shown returns of 23.33% over six months and 29.17% over one year, in contrast to Bitcoin’s returns during those periods. This setup enables users to blend global macroeconomic perspectives with onchain tactics, such as maintaining long gold positions amid cryptocurrency market declines, to achieve diversification.

Zero-Fee Perpetual Trading: In this mode, fees are charged solely on profits. For fixed-fee perpetuals, every dollar in trading volume can earn up to one experience point (XP), with safeguards against wash trading and sybil attacks.

Traders get up to 20% rebates on losses when their positions counter the platform’s open interest skew by going against the dominant trade direction. Additionally, positive slippage delivers entry prices superior to the market rate for trades that help rebalance the skew.

Liquidity Provision Mechanisms: Avantis employs vaults featuring dynamic risk tranching, split into junior and senior tranches. Providers deposit USDC and choose risk exposure based on prevailing market conditions, including time-lock options and customizable parameters.

To date, liquidity providers have collected over $1 million in USDC fees, with yields in select vaults approaching 50% annualized yield, supplemented by XP rewards. Boosts to XP for liquidity are tied exclusively to staked $AVNT tokens, bypassing any additional locking requirements.

Software Development Kit (SDK): The Avantis SDK enables the seamless integration of real-time price feeds, trade execution, and position management into external platforms. Current partnerships include Keyrock for market-making services, Bankr for AI-based text-to-trade functionality on X, and Nitrate for Telegram bots, with forthcoming links to MT5 forex terminals.

XP System and Rewards: This system allocates experience points for activities such as trading, liquidity provision, and referrals, which contribute to leaderboards and determine user roles. During Season 3, staking yields multipliers reaching up to three times for XP buildup.

Integrated Strategy Execution: Collectively, these components form a unified interface that accommodates user strategies from passive liquidity involvement to active market-making.

Utilities of the Avantis Protocol

Avantis offers targeted functions for various participants in the decentralized finance ecosystem, including traders, liquidity providers, and builders or partners.

For Traders:

• Self-custodial positions with isolation to manage individual trade risks.
• Low fees, combined with rebates that provide up to 20% on losses for positions that balance open interest skew.
• Support for directional trades, arbitrage opportunities, and hedging strategies, such as trading gold perpetual contracts amid cryptocurrency market fluctuations.
• Referral program that awards 10% of the XP earned by referred users.

For Liquidity Providers:

• Passive USDC deposits earn one Liquidity XP per dollar per day.
• Yields ranging from 47% to 51% annualized in specific tranches, with over $1 million in USDC fees distributed to date.
• Options for active providers to modify risk levels for increased returns.
• Utilization of the security module, where staked $AVNT covers losses during periods of high volatility; stakers encounter potential slashing but receive rewards.

For Builders and Partners:

• Access to the SDK for integrating price feeds, trade execution, and position management into custom applications.
• Extension of the leverage engine to sectors like prediction markets and sports betting.
• Enhancement of capital efficiency via synthetic leverage and stablecoin liquidity provision.

The $AVNT Token

The $AVNT token serves as the utility and governance token for Avantis. It has a total supply of 1 billion tokens. More than 50% of the allocation is dedicated to the community, comprising traders, liquidity providers, referrers, builders, and airdrop. The remaining portion includes vested allocations for the team and investors over a 30-month period.

Avantis Token Allocation and Unlock Schedule | Website

Utilities

$AVNT provides holders with access to staking functions where stakers secure liquidity providers during periods of volatility. In return, stakers receive AVNT rewards, experience points (XP) boosts, and trading fee discounts. The token also incentivizes participation across the ecosystem, including rewards for active traders, referrers, liquidity providers, builders, and influencers.

Governance

Token holders can participate in governance by voting on protocol matters. This includes decisions on key protocol changes, expansion to new blockchain chains, enhancements to the leverage trading automated market maker (such as adjustments to fees and the addition of new assets), and the development of new product lines, for example, a native money market. Governance features are scheduled to become active soon. Overall, $AVNT grants the community ownership and decision-making authority within the protocol.

Tokenomics

Token Details: The $AVNT token has a total supply of 1,000,000,000 tokens. The token generation event (TGE) took place on April 23, 2025, and trading commenced on September 9, 2025.

Allocations: More than 50% of the total supply is allocated to the community, which includes active traders, referrers, liquidity providers, builders, and influencers. A portion is reserved for an airdrop dedicated to protocol activity, starting from February 2024, covering Seasons 1 and 2, as well as contributions from community members.

Unlock and Vesting Schedule: The airdrop allocation is fully unlocked and claimable on the first day of the TGE. Specific details on vesting for other allocations are not provided.

Economic Model: The model focuses on aligning incentives through staking, where holders secure liquidity providers during volatility and earn $AVNT rewards, experience point boosts, and trading fee discounts. It also emphasizes community ownership and participation.

Key Partnerships and Integrations

Avantis has integrated with LI.FI to enable cross-chain asset swaps, allowing users to convert assets from over 15 chains directly into USDC on Base for trading or liquidity provision. This utilizes bridges such as Across, Allbridge, Circle CCTP, Connext, Hop, and Stargate, along with 36 DEXs and aggregators, to achieve optimal rates.

Other integrations include market-making with Keyrock and AI tools with Bankr. The protocol collaborates with Base projects, such as Aerodrome and Pear, to achieve synergies. These connections enhance accessibility and composability in the ecosystem.

Kickstarting The Equities Roadmap

Avantis initiated its equities market expansion on September 11, 2025, by listing perpetual contracts for $COIN, the stock of Coinbase Global Inc., with leverage up to 25 times and support for overnight positions. This move marked the beginning of the protocol’s onchain equities roadmap, following the listing of $AVNT on Coinbase Markets two days earlier.

On 9/9, @CoinbaseMarkets listed $AVNT.

Today, we’re excited to kickstart our onchain equities roadmap, by listing $COIN perpetuals.

Trade with up to 25x leverage and deep liquidity, with the ability to hold positions overnight🧵. pic.twitter.com/l6ZC6osKoh

— Avantis (@avantisfi) September 11, 2025

The integration relies on Pyth Network for oracle-based pricing feeds to ensure accurate real-time data for equity perpetuals. The $8 million Series A funding raised in June 2025 supports this growth, enabling the addition of more asset classes. Avantis aims to include over 100 real-world assets by the end of 2025, with plans for stock indices and major equities later in the year.

This development reflects the ongoing 2025 trends in asset tokenization within DeFi. For instance, Robinhood EU has listed over 200 stocks and ETF tokens on Arbitrum since June 2025, while Ondo Finance launched tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs in September 2025, targeting over 1,000 assets. Regulatory shifts, such as the SEC’s “Project Crypto,” initiated in August 2025 to revise rules for digital asset securities, facilitate these integrations. Industry reports, including a BCG-Ripple analysis, project the tokenized asset market to grow to $18.9 trillion by 2033. Events like Token2049 in October 2025 underscored real-world assets as a central theme in blockchain infrastructure.

What Key Updates Did Avantis Record Since Its Inception?

Since its launch in 2024, Avantis has seen several developments. It became Base’s largest derivatives exchange for real-world assets and cryptocurrencies. The total value locked surged, with USDC vaults yielding around 50% annualized returns. The protocol reached an all-time high in volumes for three consecutive days and ranked in Base’s top three for trading volume.

$AVNT perpetuals listed on OKX. Season 3 launched on October 2, 2025, with $40 million in $AVNT rewards worth $80 million over five months, from September 3 to February 28, 2026. This includes real-time dashboards for XP and ranks, with multipliers tied to staking.

Core contributor Sehaj (@0xSehaj) appeared on podcasts discussing perpetual contracts for real-world assets and global leverage. Events in Korea highlighted collaborations with other Base projects.

Long-Term Plans for The Remainder of 2025 and Beyond

Avantis’ documentation outlined its priorities for the second half of 2025 and into future periods, emphasizing developments that align with its goal of establishing a primary leverage platform in DeFi for real-world assets and events.

The protocol acknowledges the fast-paced nature of blockchain advancements, which makes detailed long-term roadmaps less practical, and instead concentrates on deliverables that enhance its core offerings.

• Key initiatives include composable integrations for liquidity providers with platforms such as Spectra, Pendle, and money markets, designed to enhance the efficiency of USDC capital.
• Additionally, Avantis plans to introduce a decentralized market-making vault tailored for real-world assets and cryptocurrencies, which will enable more automated and distributed liquidity management.
• Further plans involve expanding access to over 100 real-world assets onchain, with a particular emphasis on equities to broaden trading options.
• The protocol aims to launch Avantis v2, featuring a dedicated layer-2 solution that supports cross-margin trading across real-world and cryptocurrency assets, aiming for capital efficiency improvements that exceed current levels by ten times.
• Beyond financial instruments, Avantis seeks to incorporate leverage trading for real-world events, including sports outcomes, prediction markets, and similar categories, extending the platform’s utility to non-traditional DeFi sectors.

These efforts build on existing features, such as perpetual contracts and staking mechanisms, to foster greater integration between decentralized and traditional finance.

Conclusion

Avantis operates as a DeFi protocol on the Base blockchain, facilitating perpetual contract trading in cryptocurrencies and real-world assets, including forex, metals, commodities, and indices, with leverage of up to 500 times across 90 markets, and self-custody of collateral.

The protocol positions itself for expansion by targeting over 100 real-world assets by the end of 2025, including stock indices and major equities. Additionally, its planned governance activation will enable token holders to vote on chain expansions and new products, such as a native money market, potentially increasing its role in asset tokenization amid projections that the market will reach $18.9 trillion by 2033, according to a BCG-Ripple analysis. These steps align with 2025 trends observed on platforms like Robinhood EU and Ondo Finance, which have tokenized hundreds of stocks and ETFs, indicating that Avantis could contribute to broader DeFi adoption if it executes its roadmap as outlined.

Sources:

• Founders Fund Defillama: https://defillama.com/raises/founders-fund
• Avantis $8M Series A Funding: https://thedefiant.io/news/defi/avantis-raises-8-million-series-led-founders-fund-pantera-capital-to-expand-7-5b-de533de8
• Ondo Finance Tokenized US Stocks: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/09/03/ondo-finance-rolls-out-tokenized-u-s-stocks-etfs-as-equity-tokenization-ramps-up
• Avantis Metrics: https://defillama.com/protocol/avantis
• Avantis Website: https://www.avantisfi.com/
• Avantis Documentation: https://docs.avantisfi.com/

Source