In brief
- Glider is an automated, non-custodial crypto portfolio management platform.
- The project is the winner of the Start the Block competition at Paris Blockchain Week, judged by high-frequency trading firm Auros.
- Co-Founder Brian Huang told Decrypt that the goal is to lower the barrier to entry for crypto to the point where mainstream users can access sophisticated DeFi portfolios.
Managing a crypto portfolio is a complicated business—unnecessarily so, according to Glider Co-Founder Brian Huang.
“We need to get to a point where we can say, ‘Hey, Mom, do you want to participate in this?’” he told Decrypt. “We spend a lot of time on this at Glider: how can we make the barrier to entry so low that anybody could do it?”
Glider is designed to enable users to “come to the platform with any trading idea,” Huang said, “and what we do is we automate that whole process for you. So you come in, you say what you want to do—you could even type it into our natural language text box—and we convert that into a portfolio that’s fully non-custodial.”
That last point is important, Huang said. “We are not building a tokenized ETF issuer, or anything like that. Crypto is all about owning your assets, so when you use Glider, you actually create these portfolios.” Users have full control over their assets, meaning they can use them “in any way that you would typically use your assets in crypto,” including lending, staking and governance. “I think this is truly the new paradigm of how people should interact with their assets on-chain,” Huang added.
The platform is focused on abstracting away the complexities of crypto, the founder told Decrypt. “Things like gas or signing or bridging,” said Huang, are “things that the vast majority of the world should never, ever have to think about when it comes to crypto portfolios or managing their assets. When you think about your traditional finance structure, you’re not thinking about the custodian that is holding your stock certificates.”
Glider won the Start in Block competition at Paris Blockchain Week, presided over by a grand jury including high frequency trading firm Auros. “We awarded the highest number of points that we could to Glider,” Jason Atkins, Chief Commercial Officer at Auros, told Decrypt. He explained that, “what they’ve built and what they’re designing is very close to our hearts,” as a firm focused on algorithmic trading, portfolio structure and optimizing returns. “As a judge on that panel, that sung out to me.”
Auros was won over by Glider’s platform, which functions as an “access point” for retail to deploy “similar sorts of strategies that we would implement ourselves.” Its product-market fit and “product first” approach also impressed, said Atkins. “I think that’s something that really needs to be reiterated again and again in our space: product first, before token.”
Auros sees Glider as part of the next wave of DeFi innovation, emphasizing the importance of reducing onboarding friction to attract new users, Atkins said—a perspective shaped by the firm’s extensive involvement in the crypto ecosystem. “Our ventures team has already spoken to Brian,” he noted, adding that Auros is “standing by ready to help with advice and act as a sounding board where possible as well.”
As well as receiving advice and mentorship from Auros as it builds out that product, Glider has also completed a $4 million funding round led by a16z CSX, with participation from Coinbase, Uniswap, GSR, and others.
That will go towards scaling the startup’s team and “trying to find natural, organic growth,” said Huang, as it builds on its mission to “democratize access to sophisticated crypto portfolio management for everyone.”
Decentralized finance is “really only built for the true crypto natives at this point in time,” Huang said. “Crypto should really be for everyone, and we’re building what we think is the platform for programmable finance.”
Learn more and join the waitlist at glider.fi, and follow Glider on X at @glider_fi.
To explore Auros’ work in DeFi and algorithmic trading, visit auros.global or follow them on X at @AurosGlobal.
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