EToro Bets $12.5M on Onchain Perps as Broker War Shifts

eToro led a $12.5 million investment in Extended, an onchain perpetual futures exchange built by former Revolut employees. Jump Crypto and Alber Blanc also joined the round.

Extended had processed more than $245 billion in trading volume as of June, supporting over 100 perpetual markets. The exchange was founded by Ruslan Fakhrutdinov, Revolut’s ex-crypto head. “The first phase was building for DeFi natives,” Fakhrutdinov said in a statement. “The next is expanding the infrastructure and partnerships needed to support the next stage of onchain derivatives.”

The deal follows eToro’s $70 million purchase of self-custody wallet Zengo in April. The company plans to plug Extended’s perpetual futures engine directly into the Zengo wallet. Users would get access to onchain derivatives while keeping custody of their assets. Over time, eToro plans to bring broader DeFi products into its core platform, Elad Lavi, eToro’s executive vice president of corporate development and strategy, told CoinDesk.

Competition among online brokers is shifting toward blockchain-based trading infrastructure. On the same day, Robinhood rolled out its own blockchain and said it would expand perpetual futures beyond crypto into commodities like gold and oil. Robinhood also added tokenized stocks to its offering.

Coinbase, which holds an Alpha Score of 27/100 (Weak label) in our system, has already expanded into crypto perpetuals and tokenized assets. Prediction market operator Kalshi recently launched its own perpetual futures business. The boundaries between crypto exchanges, stock brokers, and prediction markets are dissolving.

What would confirm the thesis that onchain perps are the next battleground? Continued institutional investment in the infrastructure. Extended’s volume growth and a steady pipeline of new perpetual listings would signal demand is real. A clear regulatory framework from a major jurisdiction like the UK or EU would accelerate broker participation.

What could break the setup? A large-scale exploit on a perp exchange, or a regulatory crackdown targeting retail-facing onchain derivatives. If user adoption remains limited to crypto-native traders and fails to reach eToro’s core retail base, the integration will struggle to justify the deal price.

Extended plans to expand into spot trading, tokenized real-world assets, and multi-asset collateral. The firm said the current round will go toward licensing and compliance. Lavi said eToro aims to make the onchain trading experience seamless for users who are not DeFi natives.

“Capital markets are increasingly converging with digital asset infrastructure,” Ouriel Ohayon, Zengo’s managing director, said in a statement. “eToro’s investment in Extended reflects a mutual conviction that the future of trading will be digital, accessible and can operate 24/7.”