Glider is making new attempts in the on-chain asset management field.
(Previous context: The on-chain asset management protocol Symmetry launched an AI fund manager, with a market cap of $7.7 million for $SYMMETRA in just two days. Is it still a good time to get in?)
(Background supplement: Overview of the four major tracks of the new DeFAI era: AI abstraction, automated investment management, market prediction, and infrastructure.)
Onchain trading platform Glider is quietly rising.
Recently, Glider completed a $4 million financing round led by a16z CSX, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Uniswap Ventures, and GSR. This strong financing lineup has attracted the attention of the crypto community, sparking widespread interest in the on-chain asset management track, as Glider’s popularity continues to soar.
Pain points of on-chain asset management
In traditional financial asset management institutions, firms like Bitwise and Grayscale typically use a custodial model, where user assets are managed centrally by the institution. Glider believes that while traditional asset management firms provide professional management services to some extent, they sacrifice users’ autonomy over their assets.
Glider co-founder Brian Huang has stated that Glider is unique in that it will not custody user assets like traditional finance, and this will be achieved through blockchain technology.
However, even on-chain, portfolio management faces numerous challenges:
- High technical complexity threshold: In a multi-chain ecosystem, the heterogeneity of gas tokens, the latency risks of cross-chain bridging, and the immediacy required for rebalancing strategies make manual operations difficult in responding to market fluctuations.
- Severe infrastructure fragmentation: There is a lack of standardized interfaces between DeFi protocols, requiring users to frequently switch between AMM, lending protocols, and options platforms.
- Asymmetry of returns and risks: Retail investors often fall into the dilemma of “strategy failure upon public disclosure” during the strategy replication process, while professional institutions build advantages through quantitative models, leading to a situation where a few hold most of the on-chain profits.
In response to these issues, Glider proposes a new idea based on balancing automated execution layers with user control.
Intent-driven modular system
Glider co-founder John Johnson expressed that the creation of Glider stemmed from frustration with the fragmented infrastructure that has long plagued cryptocurrency portfolios. The birth of Glider aims to eliminate such friction and achieve precise, automated execution across networks.
Its core concept is to build an “intermediary software” for on-chain asset management, decoupling strategy formulation, execution, and risk control into programmable modules. Users can autonomously configure parameters according to their needs or choose from smart templates provided by the platform.
Glider’s product core features an intent-driven modular architecture. Users only need to set investment goals and strategy intentions; the underlying blockchain abstraction technology will automatically complete cross-chain operations, asset adjustments, and trade executions, reducing the burden of manual operations.
Glider’s tech stack adopts a modular design, with specific features as follows:
- Portfolio Construction: Users can utilize intuitive asset allocation tools or selected templates to customize investment strategies.
- Automated Execution: Glider searches for liquidity across different chains and manages rebalancing to trigger trades, automatically executing preset strategies when market conditions change.
- Non-Custodial Integration: Users can connect any existing wallet (such as MetaMask, Rainbow, Safe, WalletConnect, etc.) without needing new seed phrases.
- Lending Integration: Glider automatically borrows through trusted DeFi lending protocols like AAVE, optimizing returns. Users can leverage assets for lending operations without transferring ownership, creating additional earning opportunities.
- Collaborative Investment: Users can share strategies and customize them, continuously optimizing their portfolios.
- Backtesting Integration: Users can test strategies using historical data on the Glider interface and compare performance against benchmarks like BTC and ETH, gaining insights into strategy performance through backtesting features.
Team Background
From the currently disclosed information about the founding team, the main members are Brian Huang and John Johnson. As co-founders, both have impressive resumes, having worked at renowned institutions such as Anchorage Digital, XTX Markets, 0x, and Matcha. Other team members also hail from industry-leading companies like Coinbase, MetaMask, 0x, Cega, and PoolTogether.
Brian Huang holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT and previously served as the Chief Architect at Anchorage Digital, where he led the development of a cross-chain custodial system supporting over 20 public chains.
John Johnson, as an early core developer of the 0x protocol, led the restructuring project of the Matcha aggregation trading engine, which once set an industry record with a single-day trading volume of $1.2 billion.
Conclusion
Currently, Glider is still in the technical testing phase, with plans to launch the product in the coming months. According to their official website, the product is currently invitation-only, and the waitlist is open.
Additionally, according to Glider builder @marcos_0x, more functionality is currently in development. At present, Glider can display the current value of users’ portfolios as well as net flow, which is a key visualization clue to understand investment performance.
Moreover, according to official disclosures, there are plans to profit in the future by charging users a management fee based on a certain percentage of the assets under management.
As the cryptocurrency industry evolves from “financial experimentation” to “value networks,” true decentralization should not come at the expense of user experience but should achieve the internalization of complexity through technological innovation.
Co-founder John Johnson has stated, “Everyone should be able to precisely adjust their portfolios according to their wishes, achieve automation, and invest freely within their risk tolerance and preferences.”
Perhaps only when on-chain asset management becomes as simple and user-friendly as traditional financial ETFs can DeFi hope to transform from a geek’s toy into mainstream financial infrastructure.
Glider is making new attempts in the on-chain asset management field.
