DELV, formerly Element Finance, was a research-driven DeFi company that called itself 'the factory for DeFi.' Founded in 2020 by Will Villanueva and Jonny Rhea, it built open-source infrastructure for fixed- and variable-rate yield - most notably the Element Protocol, the Hyperdrive AMM, and the Council on-chain governance framework. Backed by a16z, Placeholder, and Polychain Capital with about $36.4M raised, the team pursued the idea that reliable fixed rates were essential to mainstream DeFi adoption. After a March 2025 Hyperdrive vulnerability and a conclusion that the product had not found market fit, DELV wound down operations in June 2025 with no reported loss of user funds.
Futureswap is a decentralized, non-custodial protocol for leveraged perpetual trading, letting users take long or short positions on crypto assets with leverage while liquidity providers earn fees and token incentives. Built by a small San Francisco team led by founder Derek Alia, it launched on Ethereum in 2020, later moved to Arbitrum and Avalanche for lower-cost transactions, and pioneered an AMM-based design that plugs into pools like Uniswap and Trader Joe. Backed by roughly $13.5M from investors including Ribbit Capital, Framework Ventures, True Ventures and Placeholder, it was governed by the community via its FST token.