TVL Capital AG, a Swiss financial infrastructure startup, has closed a $5M seed round to build what it calls Chain-Traded Products, or CTPs. Framework Ventures led the raise, with Flow Traders and other strategic investors joining.

Think of CTPs as the blockchain-native cousin of exchange-traded products. Instead of being issued and managed through the traditional plumbing of custodians, clearinghouses, and legacy settlement rails, these structured derivatives live entirely onchain. The pitch: programmability, transparency, and efficiency that legacy systems simply cannot match.

The team behind it

Andrew Peel previously served as Head of Digital Asset Markets at Morgan Stanley. Penny Tunbridge was Global COO of UBS Group Integration Office. Lars Hoffmann held the title of Senior Research Director at The Block. Between them, they’ve touched some of the largest financial institutions on the planet and one of the most influential crypto media companies.

The board appointments tell a similar story. Ben Floyd, a Venture Partner at Framework Ventures and formerly of Coinbase, is joining. So is Thomas Raab, a former board member of the SIX Digital Exchange, which is the digital asset arm of Switzerland’s main stock exchange infrastructure.

What are CTPs, exactly?

CTPs aim to replicate structured payoff profiles but issue and manage them entirely on a blockchain. That means the terms are encoded in smart contracts, settlement happens automatically, and the positions are transparent to anyone with a block explorer.

TVL Capital isn’t building retail DeFi products. These are designed to meet the regulatory and operational standards that pension funds, asset managers, and family offices require before they’ll allocate capital.

The Obex connection and what it signals

Beyond the seed round, TVL Capital has been accepted into the inaugural cohort of Obex, a program backed by Sky (formerly MakerDAO). Obex carries a $1 billion capital deployment mandate aimed at projects generating real-world yields on the blockchain.

The participation of Flow Traders in the seed round adds another dimension. Flow Traders is one of Europe’s largest proprietary trading firms and has been steadily expanding into digital assets. Their involvement suggests that the people who would actually trade and provide liquidity for these products see enough promise to invest at the earliest stage.

Switzerland’s regulatory environment gives TVL Capital a home-court advantage. The country’s FINMA framework has been among the most progressive globally for digital asset businesses, and being based in Zug, the heart of Crypto Valley, provides access to a deep network of blockchain-focused legal, compliance, and technical talent.