Brix raises $5.5 million to tokenize emerging market assets, plans debut on MegaETH

Brix has raised $5.5 million to tokenize high-yielding emerging market assets, betting that some of the world’s most lucrative trades can find a new onchain home on the Ethereum scaling network MegaETH.

The round includes participation from Yapi Kredi’s venture arm, FRWRD, and Is Bank’s asset management subsidiary, Is Asset Management, alongside crypto-native investors such as Circle Ventures, ConsenSys, and Borderless Capital, according to details shared exclusively with The Block.

The team said it plans to go live to the public on April 20, launching its first product — iTRY, a digital asset backed by Turkish lira money market funds — through MegaETH’s “World Markets” platform.

The Brix pitch

Brix’s pitch is straightforward: take trades typically reserved for global banks and make them accessible to a broader base of investors using MegaETH’s onchain network. That includes strategies like the Turkish lira carry trade, which has drawn renewed institutional attention amid high domestic interest rates.

Turkey’s central bank rate has hovered near 40%, creating a pool of yield that has historically been difficult for retail investors to tap. Brix is packaging that exposure into a token that can be traded, posted as collateral, and integrated into DeFi applications.

“Our unlock is working with large financial enterprises on the ground and combining that with our years of building new markets on DeFi,” said Alp Ergin, co-founder and CEO of Brix.

Ergin and his team’s structure relies on partnerships with local financial institutions, which originate and manage the underlying assets, while Brix handles distribution and composability onchain.

The startup said it is building out similar products tied to equities, funds, and bonds across markets, including the UAE, Egypt, Mexico, Brazil, and South Korea.

“As rates have compressed elsewhere, emerging markets offer a different set of opportunities to investors,” said investor Will Price. “Brix is doing the hard but necessary work to match central banks and foreign institutions with new sources of demand. Democratizing the carry trade is one such example.”

MegaETH thesis

The launch also serves as an early test for MegaETH’s broader thesis.

The network, which markets itself as a “real-time” Ethereum scaling solution capable of high throughput and low latency, has been positioning for applications that require continuous pricing and rapid settlement — conditions more typical of traditional markets than crypto trading venues.

Recent moves have pointed in the same direction.

The MegaETH Foundation has outlined plans to use stablecoin revenue to support token buybacks, while tying token distribution schedules to performance metrics. Its mainnet debut earlier this year emphasized speed, with claims of tens of thousands of transactions per second and sub-second block times.

Against that backdrop, Brix’s rollout adds a different layer: real-world yield. MegaETH Chief Strategy Officer Namik Muduroglu said the shift reflects a broader evolution in crypto’s value proposition.

“The entire value proposition of our industry has been to break down financial barriers,” Muduroglu told The Block. “Initial PMF was emerging markets’ flight to American quality. Brix represents the next frontier, offering retail investors access to emerging market yield opportunities that have historically been out of reach.”

For Brix, the bet is that demand is already there — on both sides.

According to the team, emerging markets account for roughly 38% of the global economy and 60% of growth, yet access to their most profitable trades has remained tightly controlled.

At the same time, onchain capital has spent much of the past cycle searching for sustainable yield beyond crypto-native strategies. Brix is positioning itself between those two forces, using tokenization to bridge them.

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