Turtle, a protocol focused on optimizing liquidity movement within decentralized finance (DeFi), has completed a $5.5 million funding round, pushing its total capital raised to $11.7 million. The injection of new funds aims to accelerate the development of Turtle’s yield-earning infrastructure, expand its engineering team, and strengthen its cross-chain integrations.
The latest financing round attracted participation from prominent institutional investors such as GSR, FalconX, and Anchorage VC. In addition, key figures from influential crypto projects including Polygon, 1inch, and Gnosis joined the round as angel investors.
Turtle functions as an on-chain liquidity distribution hub, connecting capital providers with DeFi protocols through a unique “coordination layer.” This mechanism matches liquidity with optimal earning opportunities while transparently monitoring wallet and vault activity on the blockchain.
Essi Lagevardi, CEO of Turtle, emphasized the importance of liquidity infrastructure: “Liquidity is the foundation that everything else operates on. Historically, liquidity has been fragmented, opaque, and costly. Our goal is to make liquidity programmable—transparent, efficient, and coordinated—so protocols can sustainably attract capital and investors can deploy funds with confidence.”
According to Turtle’s data, the protocol’s total value locked (TVL) across various earning vaults has surpassed $726 million, underscoring its growing adoption. While this figure could not be independently verified, the platform claims over 360,000 connected wallets and more than $5.5 billion routed through its system to date.
The highest-yielding opportunity currently available on Turtle originates from the Yearn AUSD vault on the Katana blockchain, which offers returns exceeding 45% annual percentage rate (APR) through a combination of KAT tokens and AUSD assets.
In a strategic partnership formed in mid-April, Turtle teamed up with the Layer 1 blockchain TAC to facilitate the transfer of $150 million in Ethereum-based liquidity to the TON blockchain. This collaboration is designed to incentivize decentralized applications (DApps) to build on TAC, enabling Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible DApps to access the TON ecosystem seamlessly.
Since launching in 2024, Turtle has broadened its reach by partnering with blockchain networks like Avalanche and Linea, offering liquidity providers access to passive income through innovative vault solutions. Over the past 18 months, the company reports generating more than $6 million in revenue.
This latest funding milestone reinforces Turtle’s position as a key infrastructure player in the DeFi landscape, focusing on enhancing transparency and efficiency across multiple blockchain environments.
