Prime brokerage used to mean a phone call and a black box. August is rebuilding it as software - one on-chain account to borrow, lend, trade and settle across DeFi and CeFi, with risk you can actually see.
In the winter of 2022, a run of centralized-crypto failures taught the market an expensive lesson: "trust me" is not a risk framework. Balances that existed on a dashboard did not always exist on a ledger. Collateral that was promised was, in several cases, already gone.
August Digital - the New York company legally organized as Fractal Network - was built as an answer to that specific problem. Its founders, co-CEOs Aya Kantorovich and Alexandre Elkrief, set out to move the machinery of prime brokerage on-chain: the custody, the collateral, the pricing, the risk engine, and the settlement. Not so institutions would have to believe a counterparty, but so they would not have to.
The pitch is deliberately unglamorous. August sells infrastructure - the plumbing beneath trading desks, funds, protocols and treasuries. Clients open secure smart-contract accounts, then borrow, lend, trade and clear across DeFi and CeFi using any liquid collateral, while a real-time engine watches exposure and manages collateral programmatically.
"Trust is built into the infrastructure itself, not assumed."Alexandre Elkrief · Co-Founder & Co-CEO
By the time August raised its $10M Series A in March 2025 - led by Dragonfly Ventures, with SCB Limited, 6th Man Ventures, Foresight Ventures, FinTech Collective, Robot Ventures and Maven11 also participating - it had quietly processed roughly $45B in cumulative volume and was running close to $7B a month. The headline on its own funding release said the quiet part out loud: institutions never left crypto.
Provides on-chain prime brokerage: secure smart-contract accounts plus pricing and risk engines that let institutions borrow, lend, trade and settle spot, derivatives and DeFi positions - all from a single account with on-chain auditability.
Trading desks, funds, protocols and DAO/treasuries - 150+ institutional clients across 1,000+ integrations. Named partners include Ethena, SwissBorg, Agora, Monarq, TAC, K3 and Senatora.
Opaque counterparty risk and trapped capital. August replaces "take our word for it" with real-time risk measurement, programmatic collateral management and automated liquidations - so defaults are visible and contained, not discovered too late.
Borrow, lend, trade and settle across DeFi and CeFi with any liquid collateral, using institutional execution and on-chain settlement.
Non-custodial multi-signature accounts that hold assets and route execution across protocols while control stays with the client.
Use staked and yield-bearing positions as collateral for structured products, OTC derivatives and credit, cross-margined in one place.
Real-time counterparty exposure monitoring, programmatic collateral management and automated liquidations to contain default risk.
Software to originate and manage loans on-chain end to end - $400M+ originated over the trailing year.
Opens institutional-grade DeFi yield strategies to a broader set of users; roughly $300M in TVL.
August sits in the institutional crypto prime-brokerage layer - the same territory as FalconX, Hidden Road and on-chain credit platforms like Maple. Its differentiator is where the risk lives: on-chain and verifiable, rather than inside a broker's books.
The result is a hybrid few offer: CeFi-style risk management applied to DeFi portfolios, inside one on-chain account, with proof of reserves and reporting shipped by default rather than promised.
Platform reach across the on-chain landscape:
August is a B2B infrastructure business. It provides prime-brokerage and execution software to institutions - monetized through platform and usage fees, execution, and interest and fees on lending and structured products. The Upshift vault product extends a yield offering to a broader user base.
Co-CEO Alexandre Elkrief previously led DeFi at LedgerPrime, a multi-strategy digital-asset investment firm, and earlier co-founded Knowhere, a machine-learning startup. Co-CEO Aya Kantorovich rounds out a leadership team steeped in institutional trading and on-chain markets.
"Transparency and risk management are non-negotiable."Aya Kantorovich · Co-Founder & Co-CEO
Aya Kantorovich and Alexandre Elkrief launch an on-chain prime brokerage in New York (legal entity Fractal Network).
The platform expands across chains and protocols; Upshift vaults reach roughly $300M TVL and loans originated pass $400M.
Dragonfly leads a $10M round in March; August discloses ~$7B monthly and $45B cumulative volume.
"August provides real-time risk measurement and default transparency."Rob Hadick · Partner, Dragonfly Ventures
SERIES A INVESTORS · DRAGONFLY · SCB LIMITED · 6TH MAN VENTURES · FORESIGHT · FINTECH COLLECTIVE · ROBOT VENTURES · MAVEN11
It builds on-chain prime brokerage infrastructure that lets institutions borrow, lend, trade and settle across DeFi and CeFi using any liquid collateral, with real-time risk management and on-chain auditability.
Co-founded by Aya Kantorovich and Alexandre Elkrief (both Co-CEOs), headquartered in New York City. The legal entity is Fractal Network.
A $10M Series A led by Dragonfly Ventures in March 2025, with roughly $16M in total funding to date.
Upshift is August's vault product that packages institutional-grade DeFi yield strategies for a broader set of users, reaching around $300M in TVL.
The company reports ~$45B cumulative volume, ~$7B monthly volume, 150+ institutional clients, 1,000+ integrations, and support for 12+ blockchains, 250+ tokens and 265+ protocols.
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