TL;DR
- Firelight Protocol raised $8M in a round led by Gumi Cryptos Capital to develop an onchain DeFi protection layer.
- The protocol plans to extend its coverage to Bitcoin and Stellar’s XLM. The launch is scheduled for September.
- Firelight’s coverage system promises to resolve claims in under 10 days, compared to the months a traditional insurance policy can take.
Firelight Protocol raised $8 million in a funding round led by Gumi Cryptos Capital, with participation from Maven 11, Metalayer, Joint Effects, and Tribe Capital. The capital will be allocated to the development of the protocol, the expansion of its coverage, and the onboarding of new partners from the ecosystem.
The project was incubated by Sentora, a DeFi infrastructure firm with $2.4 billion in assets under custody, and aims to build an onchain protection layer that operates under a logic similar to what Lido popularized in staking: facilitating access to onchain yields without requiring the user to assume full risk exposure.
Firelight raises $8M in a seed round led by @GumiCryptos, with participation from @Maven11Capital, @metalayervc, @tribecap & Joint Effects.
The round supports our work closing DeFi's protection gap. ~$80B in TVL sits across DeFi today, and only a fraction is protected.…
— Firelight (@Firelightfi) September 1, 2026
Fintech Money Onchain: the Market Firelight Wants to Protect
Firelight’s proposal is primarily aimed at fintechs, neobanks, and payment companies looking to integrate onchain yield products into their applications. According to CEO Anthony DeMartino, the most common obstacle is not the technology but the possibility of an exploit draining client funds.
To address this, the protocol designed a claims process that aims to settle eligible losses in under 10 days. “This is not built for degens. It is built to bring the next wave of capital,” DeMartino said in statements to CoinDesk.
Firelight’s model works with covered positions represented as NFTs. In the event of an exploit, the holder can present it to a consortium of risk-specialized firms — including GFX Labs, Hypernative, Credora, Native, and Cyfrin — to determine whether the incident qualifies under the coverage terms. The goal is for the entire process, from claim to payment, to be completed in under a week and a half.
The Search for Assets without Native Yield
Firelight plans to expand the assets it accepts as collateral beyond XRP to include Bitcoin and Stellar‘s XLM, with openness to other liquid assets that, unlike what occurs with Lido on Ethereum, do not generate native yield on their own. “Any solid asset, with good liquidity, that does not provide its own natural yield, will eventually be eligible as collateral,” DeMartino explained.
According to DefiLlama data, more than $9 billion has been stolen through DeFi protocol exploits over the years, while only a fraction of 1% of the approximately $80 billion locked in DeFi has any form of onchain coverage. The protocol launch and its first integrations are scheduled for September.
