Anzen Finance, the issuer of the digital dollar USDz, has secured $4 million in seed funding. Investors include Mechanism Capital, Circle Ventures, Frax, Arca, Infinity Ventures, Cherubic Ventures, Palm Drive Ventures, M31 Capital, Kraynos Capital, among others, as reported by The Block.

This seed round represents Anzen's total funding to date, and the company's board of directors will remain unchanged, according to founder Ben Shyong.

Anzen enables users to mint USDz, backed by a diversified portfolio of private credit assets. These real-world assets (RWAs) provide collateral for USDz, which can be staked across various DeFi protocols. The platform operates on both Ethereum and the Layer 2 network Base.

The new funding will be used to expand USDz support across multiple blockchains and protocols, enhancing the ways users can earn rewards with the token. Shyong highlighted plans to increase adoption and develop new use cases for USDz across partner protocols and multiple chains, giving users numerous opportunities to earn rewards. For instance, on Base, there's a USDz-USDC liquidity pair on Aerodrome where USDz holders can earn Aero incentives.

Aerodrome, the leading decentralized exchange on Base, ranks sixth by total value locked with nearly $726 million, according to DeFiLlama.

The rise of RWAs

As of May 27, the market capitalization for RWA-aligned tokens reached $9.05 billion, growing 64% from $5.54 billion on March 21, as reported by CoinGecko. Ethereum leads in RWA tokenization with $43.26 billion as of May 24, followed by Tron with $483.4 million, according to The Block's Data Dashboard.