Anzen Finance, the issuer of the digital dollar USDz, has successfully raised $4 million in seed funding. The funding round saw participation from a diverse group of investors, including Mechanism Capital, Circle Ventures, Frax, Arca, Infinity Ventures, Cherubic Ventures, Palm Drive Ventures, M31 Capital, and Kraynos Capital, according to a release shared with The Block.

This seed funding represents the total funding raised by Anzen Finance to date. Despite this significant capital infusion, the composition of Anzen's board of directors will remain unchanged, as confirmed by the firm's founder, Ben Shyong.

Anzen Finance's platform allows users to mint USDz, a stablecoin backed by a diversified portfolio of private credit assets. These real-world assets (RWAs) provide the collateral for USDz, enabling users to stake the token across various decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. The USDz token is currently live on both Layer 1 Ethereum and the Layer 2 network Base.

The newly acquired funds will be used to expand support for USDz across additional blockchains and protocols, thus broadening the opportunities for users to earn rewards with the token. "We'll focus on adoption and new use cases for USDz across partner protocols and multiple chains," Shyong stated. "This means that Anzen users will have plenty of opportunities with many dApps to earn rewards as a USDz holder. For example, on Base, there's a USDz-USDC liquidity pair on Aerodrome where USDz holders can earn Aero incentives."

Aerodrome, noted as the top decentralized exchange on the Base network and the sixth highest-ranking DEX by total value locked (TVL), boasts nearly $726 million in TVL, as reported by DeFiLlama.

The market capitalization for RWA-aligned tokens reached $9.05 billion as of May 27, a significant increase from the $5.54 billion recorded on March 21, according to CoinGecko. Ethereum leads the way in RWA tokenization, holding $43.26 billion in assets as of May 24, followed by Tron with $483.4 million, as per The Block's Data Dashboard.

Anzen Finance's strategic move to expand the utility and reach of USDz aims to further integrate real-world assets into the DeFi ecosystem, providing users with diverse and rewarding financial opportunities.