This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe . The vibes may be off over on CT, but they’re not off for wrapped asset startup Universal, which exclusively told Empire about a $9 million round it raised led by a16z. Universal Protocol was deployed roughly six months ago. According to Universal’s Austin Diamond — who’s also behind Alongside — the team’s been “really excited about the growth it’s seen since then.” Which is understandable, given the metrics readily available via Dune. Since the launch, users have traded well over $800 million in uAsset volume. Source: Dune But let me back up quickly: The idea of Universal is kind of baked into the name, which is to make all kinds of tokens “tradable on crypto rails.” “The goal with Universal is to make everything that we consider to be a crypto asset tradable with very deep liquidity on crypto rails, such that not only can end users just access any asset that they might be able to access on a centralized exchange but that any developer can use those,” Diamond explained. So, Universal wraps the assets for users to trade. Taking it outside of crypto, Diamond likened it to bringing analog newspapers online. “Historically speaking, none of those newspapers talk to each other. And now it’s like everything lives on a shared internet,” which is why Universal wants to make assets usable and tradable onchain. Source: Universal’s docs Diamond explained that this most recent funding round was a chance to once again work with partners — like a16z — and they pursued the round after Universal gained traction. “We really reached kind of an inflection point on our growth, it felt like it was the right time to be in a position to pour gas on it, and so we view that money as fuel to be able to expand on what we’re doing. To date, we’ve launched largely through distributing new assets through other dapps. We want to continue to do that, but also want to drive more people to our front-end experience. And I think it felt like a good time for us” to raise now, Diamond explained. For the team, it’s “champagne problems” of having to scale up. It hasn’t been an easy road, Diamond noted…well, until they got “sufficient traction.” “It was a very long and windy path to get there. I think once we’ve reached escape velocity and … We were lucky to have a long-standing relationship with a lot of our investors, and they trusted us. We were very upfront about the trials and tribulations over the course of the last couple of years. We came to them with [the] growth. There are real numbers here, here’s [what] our plans look like over the course of the next three, six months to six years,” he said. Diamond’s dream is to make Universal’s offerings as “ubiquitous as wrapped bitcoin” which he admitted is not a simple task. But the goal is to break folks out of some of the “tribalism” and “divided factions” in crypto. Perhaps that’s the next big narrative. Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter . Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter . Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more. The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.
