Why We Invested in Torram

Last month, Torram announced their Pre-Seed fundraise, and we are excited to have participated!

Torram is building institutional-grade data infrastructure on Bitcoin and is primed to be a central player in the nascent Bitcoin DeFi space.

Draper Associates, Boost VC, Blockchain Founders Fund, and other prominent crypto funds participated in the round.

Here is why we are so excited to join Torram as they pursue their goal of unlocking trillions in value for the Bitcoin ecosystem.

The Bitcoin ecosystem is booming but still lacks critical infrastructure

For many years, Bitcoin has primarily been used as a store of value. But with the advent of Ordinals in late 2022 / early 2023, there has been a flurry of activity in building on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. This has transformed the ecosystem from largely dormant to one of the most active and innovative in crypto.

There are scores of Bitcoin L2s, and each are building their ecosystem of decentralized finance (DeFi) primitives such as decentralized exchanges (DEXs), lending protocols, stablecoins, and more. HODLers are excited to be able to earn yield on their Bitcoin. Venture capitalists are pouring money into the space.

Everything that has been built on smart contract chains like Ethereum and Solana is now being developed on Bitcoin.

According to Electric Capital’s Developer Report, there are more than 1200 developers building on Bitcoin each month.

Yet there is a lack of critical infrastructure that these developers need to build successful dapps.

DeFi on Bitcoin is limited without secure, decentralized data feeds. L2 ecosystems can’t grow without native oracles and indexing tools. Runes-based dapps lack sufficient tooling for data indexing and fast queries.

Enter Torram

Torram is building this crucial infrastructure needed for the Bitcoin development ecosystem to hit escape velocity.

Torram is a Bitcoin meta-protocol that brings crypto-native and real-world data onchain with decentralized oracles and indexers for Bitcoin developers.

Their tools will be built directly on the Bitcoin L1, maximizing the security, trustlessness, and decentralization of the OG blockchain. Decentralized APIs will be available for dapps built on Bitcoin L2s to leverage Torram’s tools.

Their first product will be a Bitcoin-native decentralized oracle network, which will bring primary data from accredited sources onchain.

On the roadmap are onchain indexers, verifiable random functions, and AI-enhanced features for optimal data indexing and retrieval.

Torram is building Bitcoin-native, mission-critical infrastructure for dapp developers to build great DeFi products that will unlock trillions in value.

The oracle market is fragmented

Decentralized oracles garner a combined market cap of over $14B as of February 6, 2025. Most of this value is represented via Chainlink at a market cap of $12B. Other oracle protocols include Pyth, API3, Band Protocol, and many others.

None of these oracles work on Bitcoin.

There are only 1 or 2 other oracles in the Bitcoin space, but they have their drawbacks, such as only working with EVM-compatible Bitcoin L2s and not being native to the Bitcoin L1.

The opportunity for Torram to be the leader in the Bitcoin oracle space is massive.

The team is super strong

The Torram team has deep experience in building core technology and developing strong partnerships (which is the core competency needed for an oracle protocol) in the crypto space.

Co-Founder and CEO Keesan Mahalingam has been operating in crypto for over six years in various capacities. He was formerly the Global Head of BD and Partnerships at Concordium, a Layer-1 blockchain that enables verifiable self-sovereign data ownership, where he secured over 20 partnerships, ran global hackathons, and built their grant program. He was also Head of Argo Labs, where he launched a VC and DeFi function and deployed $10M into startups for the Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin mining company Argo Blockchain. Keesan is a 3x founder and has been around the block (pun intended).

Co-Founder and CTO Lee Raj has been building in various crypto ecosystems including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Filecoin since 2017. Lee contributed to early research on ERC-725 (the standard for execution and data store, with the creator of ERC-20 Fabian Vogelstellar), was the core author of EIP-1973 (the standard for mintable reward tokens), and led development, testing, and advocacy of decentralized oracles. He also worked on the development of Filecoin infrastructure while at ChainSafe Systems.

And they’ve onboarded advisors previously from Chainlink, AWS, and Blockdaemon, who will assist in technical design and institutional traction.

The team recently went through the BitcoinFi Accelerator and the Bitcoin Startup Lab pre-accelerator prior to that, so they’ve been mentored by some of the best minds in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Conclusion

We are excited to back Torram as they build the critical infrastructure needed for the Bitcoin ecosystem to flourish.

Congrats to Keesan, Lee, and the rest of the Torram team on their fundraise!