Ripple Secures $500M Round at $40B Valuation

Balancer Blames Rounding Error for Exploit | Fomo Raises $17M Led by Benchmark

AuthorAuthor

Marco Manoppo & Karon Pangestu
November 07, 2025

📢Sponsor | 💡Telegram | 📰Past Editions

Good Morning.

Ripple raised $500M at a $40B valuation in a round led by Fortress and Citadel, expanding its reach beyond payments into custody, stablecoins, and treasury services. With RLUSD topping $1B and Ripple Prime’s volumes tripling, the firm is fast becoming a bridge between Wall Street and onchain finance.

In Today's Email:

  • What Matters: Ripple Secures $500M Round at $40B Valuation 🤑 

  • Founders Highlight: Jake Antifaev of Thrust 👨 

  • Deal Flows: Fomo Raises $17M Led by Benchmark 💰️ 

You read and share. We listen and improve. Send us feedback at [email protected].

Narratives: Institutional Onchain Expansion

For daily market updates and airdrop alphas, check out our telegram!

TOGETHER WITH

Neutrl Officially Launch to Public on Monday, November 10

Get ready: the long-awaited moment is finally here. Neutrl officially opens its platform to everyone on Monday, November 10th.

Neturl recent pre-deposit phase saw overwhelming demand, filling up completely in just over an hour with a total of $75M deposited.

For this public launch, Neutrl is introducing Neutrl Points, which can be earned through several key activities:

  • Holding NUSD

  • Staking NUSD to receive sNUSD

  • Committing NUSD or sNUSD for fixed lock durations

  • Providing liquidity on Curve

  • Supplying NUSD/sNUSD as collateral across approved DeFi venues

The system includes a base multiplier with optional boosts for longer lock periods. The longer you commit your assets, the higher your boost and the more Neutrl Points you earn.

Note: Participants in the pre-deposit vault have already been accruing points since the day they made their initial deposit.

The public launch has arrived for everyone who missed the initial pre-deposit. Follow Neutrl now for the next steps and future opportunities!

WHAT MATTERS

Ripple Secures $500M Round at $40B Valuation

State of play: Ripple has raised $500M at a $40B valuation in a funding round led by Fortress Investment Group and Citadel Securities, with participation from Galaxy Digital, Pantera, Brevan Howard, and Marshall Wace.

  • The raise follows Ripple’s $1B tender offer and $4B in acquisitions over the past two years, marking its most successful year to date.

  • The firm continues to expand beyond payments into custody, stablecoins, and institutional finance.

  • Ripple’s RLUSD has surpassed a $1B mcap, while its prime brokerage arm, Ripple Prime, has seen tx volume triple since acquiring Hidden Road.

  • The company’s $1B purchase of GTreasury further connects Ripple to traditional corporate clients exploring onchain liquidity.

  • Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse described the funding as “the cherry on top” of a strong year.

Why it matters: With Fortress and Citadel backing it, Ripple is becoming a serious bridge between Wall Street and onchain finance, expanding far beyond payments into custody, stablecoins, and prime services.

Our take: With RLUSD, Ripple Prime, and GTreasury, it’s building crypto’s version of a digital bank.

For builders and investors: We can see this as a strong signal: institutions want compliant, stablecoin-based liquidity, and Ripple is positioning itself right at that intersection.

BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT

Jake Antifaev of Thrust

Intro: Jake Antifaev is the Co-Founder and CEO of Thrust, a new Solana-based token launchpad designed for the creator economy.

Previous background: Before Thrust, Jake Co-Founded Mood, an online source for a federally legal cannabis in the US.

The big idea: Jake through Thrust aim to bring legitimacy to the erratic market built around memes and notoriety.

Take a peek at our referral reward at the bottom of this issue. Share this newsletter and receive our list of 500 crypto VC individuals 👇

INSIGHTS

Balancer Blames Rounding Error for $128M Multi-Chain Exploit

Balancer has identified a rounding error in its swap logic as the cause of the Nov. 3 exploit that drained more than $128M from its Composable Stable Pools across multiple networks, including Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Avalanche, and others.

  • The vulnerability occurred in the upscale function for EXACT_OUT swaps within the v2 vault’s batchSwap feature.

  • Attackers exploited non-integer scaling factors that caused rounding discrepancies, allowing them to manipulate pool balances and extract funds.

  • The issue mainly affected Composable Stable v5 pools, while newer v6 pools were automatically paused by Hypernative’s emergency automation.

  • Several partners, including StakeWise, Berachain, and Sonic Labs, took rapid action to contain the fallout, recovering or freezing a portion of stolen assets.

  • StakeWise DAO recovered $19M in osETH and $1.7M in osGNO, while Berachain validators implemented an emergency hard fork.

Balancer has since disabled its CSPv6 factory, halted liquidity gauges for affected pools, and enabled safe withdrawals. A final verified report with confirmed recovery data will be published after on-chain reconciliation concludes.

DEAL FLOWS

Fomo Raises $17M Led by Benchmark

Deal flows soared this week - we saw $690M+ in deals đź’Ľ 

Cross-chain trading app Fomo has raised $17M in a Series A round led by Benchmark, bringing its total funding to $19M.

  • Fomo enables users to trade across multiple blockchains using a single balance and without bridges or gas fees.

  • Fomo has already processed nearly $700M in trading volume and onboarded over 120,000 users during its six-month beta.

  • Fomo charges a 0.5% trading fee, with a $0.95 minimum on Solana and no minimum on low-cost networks like Base and BNB Chain.

  • The startup aims to simplify the fragmented crypto experience by unifying liquidity and user access across chains.

  • Angel investors in the round include Pudgy Penguins CEO Lucas Netz and MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright.

Deal flows in the past week:

QUICK BITES

  • Synthetic stablecoin USDX depegs below $0.60.

  • Robinhood's Q3 trading revenue jumps 129% YoY.

  • CMT Digital raises $136M for fourth crypto VC fund.

  • Balancer identifies rounding error as root cause of exploit.

  • Google to roll out prediction markets data in search results.

  • Jack Dorsey’s Block sees nearly $2B in bitcoin revenue in Q3.

  • Japan's regulator backs joint stablecoin project by three major banks.

  • Samourai's Keonne Rodriguez sentenced to maximum five-year term.

  • US spot bitcoin ETFs see $240M in inflows, ending six-day outflow streak.

  • Central Bank of Ireland fines Coinbase $25M for breaching AML obligations.

  • Mastercard, Ripple and Gemini explore settling card transactions using XRPL.

NOTEWORTHY READS & MEME

  • Sana’s read on Q4 Farming

  • Monk’s read on Rejecting Crypto Pessimism

  • Stablewatch’s thread on Yield Bearing Stablecoin Ecosystem Map.

If you enjoy reading this issue, please consider subscribing. It takes 1 minute of your time, but it would mean the world to us 🙇

Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.