Legion Raises $5m to Reinvent ICOs as Wall Street Moves Onchain, Led by VanEck and Brevan Howard

$1.25M+ reserved community allocation expands the raise to $6M+, which will give retail investors access on the same terms as institutions

New York, NY – August 14, 2025 – Legion, the merit-based crypto fundraising platform redefining public offerings for the digital age, today announced a $5 million seed round co-led by VanEck and Brevan Howard Digital. Participants include Kraken, Coinbase Ventures, GSR, Crypto.com Capital, cyber•Fund, Bitscale Capital, Blockchain Builders Fund, and Systemic. Built to make capital formation more transparent, inclusive, and aligned, Legion is creating the foundation for the next generation of onchain capital markets.

The round brings together leaders from both traditional finance and crypto-native institutions, signaling a shared vision for compliant, transparent, onchain capital markets. Legion has reserved at least $1 million of the round for its community at the same terms, increasing the total raise to $6 million.

“Over the past 15 years, crypto rails have proven to be the most powerful capital formation tool we have,” said Fabrizio Giabardo, Co-Founder of Legion. “With VanEck, Brevan Howard, and leading crypto institutions on the same cap table, we’re building for a compliant, natively onchain future.”

Capital markets have long been gated by opaque processes that favor institutional insiders and limit retail participation. Legion merges the trust and regulatory rigor of traditional finance with the openness and composability of blockchain. Compliance is embedded directly into smart contracts, disclosures are automated across the token lifecycle, and offerings are designed to meet emerging regulatory frameworks like the SEC’s Project Crypto and Europe’s MiCA. This foundation gives founders a credible way to raise capital globally while enabling everyday investors to participate alongside venture funds on equal terms.

“Today’s crypto market is marked by persistent opacity and limited disclosures, creating significant information asymmetries that have alienated retail investors,” said Wyatt Lonergan, General Partner at VanEck Ventures. “Legion is solving for this by fundamentally reimagining the system through a merit-based, onchain fundraising platform which allows both retail and VCs to invest alongside each other at the same terms.”

Founded in 2023, Legion was built to fuse the best elements of IPOs and ICOs, embedding compliance directly into smart contracts and automating disclosures to create a trusted framework for tokenized offerings. The platform enables startups to raise capital through hybrid equity/token rounds, tokenize real-world assets, and connect founders with investors through transparent, data-driven reputation systems.

The funding will accelerate product development, including:

• Hybrid equity/token round support with automated disclosures across the token lifecycle
• Integration of tokenized real-world assets to expand private market access
• CEX integrations for scaled token distribution with opt-in transparency
• Founder–investor matching through onchain and offchain behavior-based reputation
• Enabling new asset composability for use as collateral or in DeFi applications

About Legion

Legion is a merit-based crypto fundraising platform that bridges traditional finance and blockchain technology. Focused on regulatory compliance, investor accountability, and transparency, Legion enables startups to raise capital through compliant token offerings and equity sales, while providing retail investors better access to onchain fundraising and redefining public offerings for the digital age. Projects using Legion can customize allocation, whitelist, discounts, and more using onchain and off-chain criteria about each investor to handpick an organic community of die-hard supporters.

For more information, please visit legion.cc or follow @legiondotcc on X.

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