Treehouse Finance today announced that it has raised $18 million in seed funding to serve decentralized finance investors with its analytics platform by giving them meaningful insights into blockchain data.

The company said the round was led by a large undisclosed financial technology investor with involvement from a multitude of tech investors, including Lightspeed, Wintermute, GSR, Jump Capital, Binance, Global Founders Capital, Mirana Ventures, Moonvault Capital and executives from Softbank Vision Fund.

DeFi refers to peer-to-peer financial services built on distributed ledger blockchain technology that use cryptocurrencies and token economies for transactions. DeFi eschews the concept of middlemen and uses software to automate contracts between parties. Such a system removes the control of banks and institutions on money and financial services.

Treehouse was founded 11 months ago with the objective of building the infrastructure necessary to support everyday investors in understanding the DeFi market. Using its platform, Treehouse is seeking to make investing in DeFi more accessible to everyone by making market information easier to understand.

The DeFi economy has seen exponential growth in the past few years. As of February 2020, the DeFi market’s total locked-in value was $1 billion, one year later it reached $14 billion, and today it has reached $246 billion, according to DeFi Llama.

With this amount of growth, investors and institutions have been flocking to DeFi and Treehouse has been building its products and tools to provide superior insights into the market so that they can best plan where to put their tokens, when to trade and how to invest.

“With the rising number of investors hopping onto the DeFi bandwagon, this is the perfect time for Treehouse to bring out its state-of-the-art analytics platform to the public,” said Melvin Hade, a partner at Global Founders Capital APAC. “As one of the earliest backers of Treehouse, we are fully committed to their progress.”

The company’s flagship product, Harvest, ingests data from multiple blockchains and reads users’ DeFi historical positions in order to provide profit/loss and risk metrics on an easy-to-read dashboard. The idea is to deliver the most inclusive possible investment analytics engine for DeFi users with accessibility and inclusivity in mind.

To begin, Harvest will phase in coverage for hundreds of protocols beginning with five major blockchains including BNB Chain, Ethereum, Avalanche, Fantom and Terra. The platform will also act as a hub for information on all of these blockchains and assets, including technical commentaries by experts on both cryptocurrencies and traditional asset classes.

“Treehouse’s approach of building an in-house system-of-record for every DeFi user will become critically valuable and a great differentiator,” said Lightspeed partners Hemant Mohapatra and Marsha Sugana. “On top of the technical accuracy is a beautiful, simplified dashboard experience optimized for desktop and mobile to cater to both advanced and retail investors.”

Treehouse said that it will use the funding to expand Harvest’s blockchain and protocol coverage and build more products and features for both retail and institutional users. On the immediate roadmap, it also plans to scale up its infrastructure for a low-latency platform to make the user experience seamless when poring over data. The company also said it intends to build a community of experts and a knowledge base of curated in-house research.

Images: Treehouse Finance