eToro Puts $12.5M Into Perpetuals Engine Extended, Links Zengo Wallet

eToro wrote a $12.5 million check to Extended, an on-chain perpetual futures exchange built by former Revolut crypto team members. The investment, announced July 2, also brought Jump Crypto and Alber Blanc into Extended's cap table.

The cash is paired with a deeper product tie. eToro is integrating Extended's futures engine with Zengo, the self-custodial wallet it acquired for roughly $70 million in April. Zengo serves over 2 million users. Its technology is multi-party computation, or MPC. Traditional wallets use a single private key. MPC splits that key into shares distributed across multiple parties, so no single point of failure can wipe out a user's funds.

By connecting Extended's engine to Zengo, eToro lets users trade leveraged derivatives from a self-custodial wallet. Users keep their keys in Zengo and trade directly on Extended. The loop is closed within eToro's ecosystem.

Extended launched on the Starknet mainnet in August 2025. It now offers trading across more than 50 markets with leverage up to 100x. The platform uses a hybrid central limit order book model, combining the matching efficiency of traditional exchanges with blockchain settlement.

eToro listed on the Nasdaq in May 2025. With 40 million registered users, it has distribution most DeFi protocols would trade for. Robinhood has been building its own crypto and DeFi features, representing competitive pressure in retail brokerage. For a comparison of retail crypto platforms, see our guide to the best crypto brokers.

The risk story is regulatory. The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority banned crypto derivatives sales to retail consumers in 2021 after widespread losses. The European Securities and Markets Authority has flagged 100x leverage as a retail investor protection concern. If eToro restricts leverage below 10x for retail users, the regulatory heat drops. If a large retail loss emerges from a 100x trade on Extended, enforcement attention becomes more likely.

A regulator labeling on-chain perpetual futures as unregistered securities would force a model rework. Starknet's own fee volatility and scalability could also limit user growth.

For eToro shareholders, the $12.5 million stake is small relative to the $70 million Zengo deal. Perpetual futures are the largest product category in crypto by volume. The integration is a bet that self-custodial derivatives can draw retail users without attracting the enforcement that has hit centralized platforms.