Gold Mining Manual: Why Top VC Benchmark's Vision is Focused on FOMO?

Written by: KarenZ, Foresight News

In the past few years, the cryptocurrency industry has made tremendous progress at the infrastructure level. However, consumer-level crypto applications that truly cater to the general public have yet to break into the mainstream. Issues such as fragmented blockchain ecosystems, complex wallet operations, and Gas fees continue to pose challenges for ordinary users, becoming the last major barrier to widespread adoption.

The emerging social crypto trading app fomo in 2025 is attempting to rewrite the rules of the game by “breaking the technical barriers of crypto trading” with an extremely simple experience. It has attracted more than 140 top angel investors in the industry and has also secured $17 million in Series A funding led by the top VC Benchmark, which has traditionally been cautious about the crypto space, making it one of the most关注的 dark horse applications in the annual crypto track.

Team Background: The “Dimensional Reduction Attack” by Crypto Veterans

The core positioning of fomo is “a social crypto trading mobile application designed for everyone”. Its product design revolves around two main cores: “eliminating technical friction” and “enhancing user connection”, attempting to break the current situation of poor user experience in the cryptocurrency industry.

The co-founders of fomo, Paul Erlanger and Se Yong Park, previously worked together at the crypto derivatives trading platform dYdX. The team members come from companies such as dYdX, Uniswap, OpenSea, Square, and Two Sigma, covering multiple fields like DeFi, NFT ecosystems, and traditional fintech. This “cross-domain + strong collaboration” team gene has become the key to fomo's rapid breakthrough.

Financing Path

The financing path of fomo is not conventional, yet it precisely hits the core of capital and resources. fomo did not follow the traditional rhythm of “seed round → Series A”, but instead first built the most luxurious early supporter network in the crypto industry through the “angel investor list” strategy, and then attracted a “rare bet” from the top institution Benchmark.

In February 2025, fomo completed a $2 million angel Pre-Seed round of financing, supported by more than 140 angel investors, covering three core groups of the crypto ecosystem: builders, operators, and traders. This includes Solana co-founder Raj Gokal, Polygon CEO Marc Boiron, Balaji Srinivasan, LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino, Berachain CEO Smokey Bera, Sei co-founder Jeffrey Feng, Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy, Privy CEO Henri Stern, Kaito CEO Yu Hu, Pantera managing partner Paul Veradittakit, Dragonfly general partner Rob Hadick, and others.

Among the list of angel investors these days, there are core forces in the multi-chain ecosystem that provide key support for FOMO's cross-chain technology integration; there are also top traders who are not only early users of the product but also help FOMO optimize the design of trading experience and social functions.

The founder of fomo revealed to TechCrunch that the team initially listed a “dream investor list” of 200 people, and through networking referrals and direct communication, only a very small number of them declined — behind this “high conversion rate” is the investors' recognition of the direction of “simplifying cryptocurrency trading.”

In November 2025, fomo once again secured $17 million in Series A funding led by Benchmark. Benchmark is a venture capital firm with a legendary background, with a portfolio that includes world-changing consumer products such as Uber, Snapchat, Instagram, and X. Benchmark has always been cautious in its investments in consumer crypto applications—since 2018, the company has made very few investments in crypto startups, having only invested in a handful of projects in Web3, including Chainalysis, Toncoin, and the Web3 social protocol Towns.

Benchmark general partner Chetan Puttagunta stated in an interview with TechCrunch that he was attracted to fomo by its “clear vision” and “truly outstanding growth.” He noted that three people actively referred fomo to him. After learning about fomo's growth and clear vision, Chetan Puttagunta also joined the board of fomo.

In this Series A round, in addition to Benchmark, other angel investors include Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz, Moonpay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright, Zora CEO Jacob Horne, among others.

Product Highlights: “Cross-chain + Social” Crypto Super App

The FOMO operation process is designed to be extremely simple, allowing cross-chain use of the same balance, one-click purchase of any asset, no need for a new wallet, no cross-chain, no Gas fees, so even users with no cryptocurrency experience can quickly complete transactions.

• Multi-chain asset coverage: Currently supports mainstream blockchains such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Base, and BNB Chain, providing millions of asset trades from mainstream coins (like BTC, ETH) to meme coins and altcoins; the founder promises to achieve “coverage of almost all blockchain assets” within the next 6 months, allowing users to avoid switching between multiple wallets and exchanges;
• Supports buying coins directly with Apple Pay: After users download the app, they can complete registration using Google or Apple ID, without the need to create complex mnemonic phrases. Recharge supports direct cryptocurrency transfers, Apple Pay, or Debit Card.

• No Gas: User side 0 Gas fee.
• Transaction Fee: The transaction fee is uniformly set at 0.50%, with a minimum fee of $0.95 only for the Solana network, while low-cost chains like Base and BNB Chain have no minimum fee.
• Social Discovery: Fomo also comes with built-in social features, allowing users to follow KOLs, traders, or friends to view their trading records in real-time (such as buying/selling certain assets, changes in positions). Users can also explore “hot assets,” “trend trading,” and “top trader rankings” to quickly seize market opportunities.

The ultimate goal of fomo is not limited to cryptocurrency. fomo founder Paul Erlanger stated to TechCrunch that in the future, it will gradually expand asset classes, covering traditional securities such as prediction markets and bonds.

How is the fomo data performing?

Since the beta version was launched in May 2025, fomo's user and transaction data has shown “exponential growth,” validating the viability of its product model:

Source: Dune

Transaction volume: According to Dune data, as of the time of writing, fomo has accumulated a trading volume close to 850 million dollars, generating a total fee of 2.47 million dollars.

User Scale: Fomo stated during the disclosure of its Series A financing that its user base continues to grow by nearly 10% each week. Fomo has attracted over 120,000 users and 35,000 traders, among which nearly 15,000 users are first-time participants in cryptocurrency (depositing through Apple Pay). Dune data shows that the number of users who have traded more than once on the Fomo platform exceeds 30,000.

From an industry comparison perspective, in the Solana Bot track, the trading volume market share of fomo reached 5.5% in the past 2 months, ranking sixth.

Source: Dune

What are the interaction methods?

The core of the fomo interaction strategy is trading. It is unclear whether invitations will be counted in the rankings, but inviting others can earn a 25% fee reward from the recommended person's earnings.

Currently, Fomo has launched a leaderboard feature within its mobile app. After attempting to trade 2 small assets, my ranking has entered over 12,000.

Summary

When the crypto infrastructure is mature enough, whoever can lower the user threshold will be able to seize the next wave of growth.

The core value of fomo is to solve the “last mile” problem in the cryptocurrency industry—focusing on optimizing user experience, which precisely aligns with the core demand for the widespread adoption of consumer-level crypto applications.

At the same time, the addition of hundreds of angel investors and Benchmark signifies that the industry consensus and institutional capital are beginning to re-evaluate the long-term value of consumer-grade crypto applications.

From a product perspective, fomo is redefining the standards of a “good trading app”: not about piling up features, but achieving extreme simplicity; not an isolated trading tool, but a socialized financial network.

According to the official plan, fomo aims to support almost all mainstream blockchain assets within six months, and eventually expand to prediction markets and traditional securities. Whether fomo has the potential to become a bridge connecting the crypto world with traditional finance is worth continuous observation.