January 21, 2026 – New York City, United States
Cork, the protocol building tokenized risk infrastructure for onchain finance, today announced it has closed a $5.5 million seed round led by Road Capital and a16z CSX with participation from 432 Ventures, BitGo Ventures, Cooley, DEPO Ventures, Funfair Ventures, G20 Group, Gate Labs, Hyperithm Gate, IDEO Ventures, PEER VC, Stake Capital and WAGMI Ventures.
The raise marks a foundational milestone in the emergence of tokenized risk as a new onchain infrastructure category, bringing market-driven risk pricing, hedging and liquidity management to stablecoins, vaults and RWAs (real-world assets).
Among the growing institutional demand for onchain yield, stablecoin supply has more than doubled since 2024, surpassing $250 billion in circulation, while onchain RWAs have grown by more than 20 times as tokenized treasuries, private credit and structured products move onchain.
Simultaneously, traditional asset managers overseeing tens of trillions of dollars in AUM (assets under management) are actively exploring tokenization strategies.
Yet despite this growth, DeFi’s underlying risk infrastructure has not kept pace.
As recent stablecoin depegs and liquidity stress events have exposed underlying fragilities, institutional-grade risk infrastructure is emerging as an essential foundational pillar for onchain finance.
Cork introduces a new primitive for tokenized risk, serving as a programmable risk layer for onchain assets such as vault tokens, yield-bearing stablecoins and RWAs.
Cork’s core primitive enables asset managers and issuers to spin up custom swap markets that enhance redemption liquidity, risk transparency and market confidence for their onchain assets.
Additionally, Cork unlocks a new set of capabilities for onchain assets.
- Standardized risk pricing for stablecoins, vault tokens and RWAs, allowing risk to be measured, compared and priced consistently across protocols.
- Market-driven hedging for duration and liquidity risk and depeg, giving issuers and allocators tools to actively manage stress scenarios rather than react to them.
- Redemption liquidity backstops that unlock instant, atomic liquidity for RWAs and other onchain yield assets, bridging offchain settlement constraints and reducing the risk of cascading liquidity failures.
- Composable risk primitives that integrate directly with ERC-4626 vaults and other yield-bearing ERC-20 assets, RWAs and onchain credit structures, enabling risk management to become a native, programmable component of onchain yield infrastructure.
Phil Fogel, co-founder of Cork, said,
“Tokenized risk is a conversation the industry has largely not been having over the past few years, and that is now changing with the onboarding of major institutions and maturation of the industry.
“We are building the foundational risk infrastructure layer that the next wave of users, both institutional and retail, will look to leverage.”
Founded by serial entrepreneurs with deep expertise in traditional finance and cutting-edge blockchain technology, Cork is designed to make previously implicit risks transparent and tradable onchain.
The protocol builds on existing financial systems, bringing risk markets fully onchain for the first time.
William Scheinman, partner at Road Capital, said,
“The onchain economy is poised for secular growth via tokenization, but few quality teams are thinking about second-order effects.
“Assets will be associated with tokens, which can diverge from their reference due to liquidity mismatches, information asymmetries, solvency crises and other factors.
“Past solutions never got the timing, incentives nor protocol components right to solve the problem.
“We are excited for the Cork team to provide the workable one. Cork is among the most unique DeFi experiments in core primitives out there.”
Julien Bouteloup, CEO and founder of Stake Capital Group, said,
“The path to institutional onchain finance runs through better risk infrastructure.
Cork is enabling cleaner capital markets through transparent, market driven risk pricing. We’re backing the team and the vision.”
Jake O., managing director and head of ecosystem at BitGo, said,
“Cork is building the missing risk layer for on-chain finance, and BitGo is excited to help bring that market structure to life.
“By turning implicit risks in stablecoins, vaults and RWAs into explicit, tradable primitives, Cork gives institutional allocators the tools they need to underwrite, hedge and scale real capital onchain.”
Dr. Nagendra Bharatula, founder and CEO of G-20 Group, said,
“Led by experienced crypto founder Phil Fogel, Cork is building what we believe is a missing risk layer for onchain market structure.
“By making risk explicit and tradable, Cork enables cleaner leverage, better pricing and more efficient capital markets.
“Phil’s deep expertise in vault tokens, yield-bearing stablecoins and RWAs combined with the team’s experience is why we at G-20 are excited to back Cork as a core primitive for the maturation of crypto and DeFi.”
Over the coming months, Cork plans to bring its first risk markets into production, expand integrations with vault and asset issuers and support regulated product pathways as institutional adoption accelerates.
For more information and to follow along with Cork’s journey, users can visit the website or follow Cork on X.
About Cork
Cork introduces a new primitive for tokenized risk, serving as a programmable risk layer for onchain assets such as vault tokens, yield-bearing stablecoins, liquid (re)staking tokens and RWAs.
Cork’s core primitive enables asset managers and issuers to spin up custom swap markets that enhance redemption liquidity, risk transparency and market confidence for their onchain assets.
Backed by Road Capital, a16z CSX, BitGo Ventures and Steakhouse Financial, Cork is building the risk infrastructure needed to bring institutional capital into onchain credit markets.
Contact
Lauren Bukoskey, senior public relations manager for Serotonin
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