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ORO Labs has raised $1.5 million in a pre-seed funding round, the Solana-based tokenized gold protocol announced. With the raised funds, ORO Labs aims to transform gold into a liquid, composable, and income-generating asset.
Backed by 468 Capital, and with participation from Fasset and angel investors Phantom, Jupiter, Helium, Squads, Sanctum, Anza Labs, Perena, Bonk, and Forma, the $1.5 million pre-seed funding will look to further redefine gold markets.
“Gold shouldn’t just sit idle—it should generate wealth”
The idea behind ORO Labs is to end the traditional practice of gold ownership in which the capital is locked up with no way to generate yield, borrow against holdings, or use it beyond static investment.
Instead, ORO aims to make gold a dynamic, income-generating asset by allowing users to earn a real yield on their gold holdings, borrow against their gold to unlock liquidity, and trade gold-backed assets with instant settlement.
ORO Labs is based in the UAE, a global leader in gold trade, facilitating over $100 billion in gold transactions annually. The firm signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) at ADGM last month in the presence of HE Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Trade, and HE Dr. Jörg Kukies, Germany’s Minister of Finance. The MOU outlines ORO’s commitment to expanding tokenized gold adoption across the UAE and beyond, reinforcing its strategic partnerships and regulatory compliance.
ORO is also expanding tokenized gold adoption across the UAE, Malaysia, Bahrain, Indonesia, and Turkey. Fasset will be its partner, helping drive retail and institutional access through its regulated financial infrastructure. ORO will also launch on Own (Fasset’s Layer 2 network) later this year.
Usman Saleem, Co-Founder & CEO of ORO, said: “Gold shouldn’t just sit idle—it should generate wealth. With ORO, gold isn’t just something you hold; it’s something you can earn with, borrow against, and use seamlessly across markets. This is gold, but better.”
Guilherme Steinbruch, Partner at 468 Capital, said: “We see ORO as a crucial bridge between legacy commodities markets and the next generation of financial infrastructure. By creating a gold-backed financial asset with real utility, ORO is unlocking new opportunities for both crypto users and traditional gold investors.”
Digital Asset Tokenized Gold With Euroclear
A few months ago, Euroclear, together with The World Gold Council, and global law firm Clifford Chance, were able to tokenize gilts, Eurobonds, and gold. The tokenization of gold has seen increased demand as the growth and use of gold as a traded asset show no signs of abatement, with the average daily trading volume in 2023 reaching $162 billion worldwide.
Sovereign Gilts and Eurobonds offer a deep pool of high-quality liquid assets. As of mid-2023, the total market of Gilts in the UK amounted to nearly GBP 2.4 trillion, with over EUR 12.97 trillion of outstanding Eurobond issuance. The broad group of pilot participants, which included investors, banks, CCPs, custodians, and a central securities depository, aimed at exploring how tokenized assets on a blockchain can enhance collateral mobility, improve liquidity, and increase transactional efficiency.
Providing the necessary infrastructure, applications, and connectivity for market participants to test complex business scenarios was Digital Asset, which recently helped develop Canton Network Pilot. The Canton Network Pilor established the foundation for composable applications across a global economic network. In this new pilot, a series of independent Canton blockchains used the Global Synchronizer to interoperate and execute atomic transactions. Participants remained in complete control of their permissions, exposures, and interactions.
The program, which took place over June and July, involved 27 market participants and used 14 Canton nodes. Five types of cross-application transactions were connected using 11 distributed applications, including six registry apps and five margin apps, with 500 transactions completed. The collaboration demonstrated the ability to create a digital twin of these previously immobile real-world assets (RWAs) and use those tokenized assets as collateral in atomic, real-time transactions.
