Birdai Labs Secures $4 Million to Enhance Onchain Trading Infrastructure for Creators

In a significant move for the blockchain industry, Birdai Labs announced on July 28, 2026, that it has raised $4 million in a seed funding round. The round was led by Castle Island Ventures, with participation from Metalayer Ventures and The Venture Dept. The primary goal of this funding is to further develop the company’s infrastructure that aims to improve the execution quality of trades on high-performance blockchains, ultimately restoring value to the traders that generate it.

Birdai Labs operates in a space where the gap between an order and its fill often results in lost value for traders due to the lack of measurable standards. To address this, the company focuses on building a transparent infrastructure that fosters better execution practices for traders and market participants. This move comes at a time when the industry's top blockchain platforms are shifting towards multi-proposer architectures, complicating transaction ordering and making execution quality a new competitive battleground.

The founders of Birdai Labs, Kevin Farrelly and Greg Scanlon, have a strong background in traditional finance and blockchain ventures. Farrelly, who previously founded Random Forest Capital, has extensive experience in building blockchain venture programs at Franklin Templeton. Scanlon, a former senior quantitative trader at Citadel, has also been instrumental in developing the company’s core technology. Their expertise in the field allows them to understand what drives successful protocols and the importance of data-driven decision-making. This background has influenced Birdai Labs' mission to provide measurable execution quality, which is crucial for attracting institutional investment.

Recently, the team expanded with the addition of James McClain, a quantitative researcher with a PhD from Princeton. McClain’s expertise, combined with Scanlon’s, strengthens the company’s focus on quantitative research and execution algorithms. Traditional financial markets have established frameworks that enforce measurable execution standards, like Regulation NMS, which are still being developed for the digital asset sector. Birdai Labs aims to fulfill these emerging requirements by ensuring fairness, transparency, and better execution, which are essential for successful institutional participation.

As Birdai Labs develops its infrastructure, it leverages the unique characteristics of blockchain technology. The company's approach primarily uses transaction data to influence market standards rather than merely reporting on market performance. By maintaining its own infrastructure, Birdai Labs is capable of obtaining an accurate understanding of execution processes, which fosters improvements that can be verified by referencing the blockchain itself. This internal perspective grants Birdai Labs the ability to act decisively where execution outcomes are determined, allowing them to reallocate value back to the traders creating order flows instead of extracting it.

“Closing the gap in execution quality is critical for drawing institutional capital into DeFi. Currently, the costs of liquidity in decentralized finance do not match those of traditional finance,” said Kevin Farrelly, co-founder and CEO. He emphasized the necessity for excellence across execution layers to resolve the value leakage currently present in onchain markets.

Matt Walsh, a founding partner at Castle Island Ventures, noted, “Birdai Labs is constructing vital infrastructure that will enhance trust in this market as stablecoin and real-world asset tokenization emerge as dominant applications on public blockchains.” He highlighted the founders' adept combination of market structure knowledge and technical development as pivotal to their success.

Birdai Labs, based in San Francisco, was established in 2025 and has quickly positioned itself as a significant player in the effort to optimize onchain trading practices. The funding will enable continuous enhancements to their processes, ultimately benefiting traders and contributing to a healthier blockchain economy. By focusing on trust and transparency, Birdai Labs aims to be at the forefront of the evolving digital asset landscape. For more information about their initiatives and advancements, visit birdai.xyz.