Ithaca Protocol
Co-building institutional-grade options infrastructure on-chain
Table of Contents
Dimitrios Kavvathas had been thinking about options on-chain for a while before he founded Ithaca Protocol in August 2023. He spent twelve years at Goldman Sachs, made partner in 2008, and ran APAC Securities Division Distribution from Hong Kong until he retired in 2013. From there he ran Global Markets APAC for VTB Capital, co-led financial services at Noble Group, founded the regulated digital-asset derivatives business Nomisma, served as Chief Strategy Officer at Amber Group, and advised Hex Trust. The thesis sharpened over each of those seats. Options are the most under-built primitive in crypto, and bringing them on-chain properly takes someone who has watched institutional desks trade them at scale.
Holdex came in at the founding. Ithaca launched on Arbitrum, passed Hashlock and Hacken audits, and became one of the leading decentralised options venues tracked by DefiLlama.
Co-building the protocol and its funnel
Holdex's role at Ithaca, in the founder's own words:
Holdex played a key role in building our Telegram mini-app and in developing and executing a revamped user acquisition strategy. Ithaca Protocol has benefited tremendously from their invaluable venture-building expertise!
Two halves of one product. The protocol itself runs periodic batch auctions every ten minutes, with vanillas, digitals, strategies, forwards, and structured products, plus cross-chain settlement via Axelar. That's institutional infrastructure for a notoriously hard-to-build asset class. The user funnel that fills it has to reach traders where they are, which in 2025 increasingly means Telegram. Holdex worked on both.
The story so far
Ithaca opened as a company in August 2023 and as a live venue in May 2024. The eighteen months around launch were spent building. Pre-seed of $2.5M closed in January 2024, co-led by Cumberland and Wintermute Ventures, with Room40 Ventures and GHAF Capital Partners alongside, and angels including Andrew Keys (DARMA), Stan Miroshnik (TenSquared), and Georgios Vlachos (Axelar). The April 2024 Medium post "Introducing Ithaca Protocol: It is Time for Options" laid out the design publicly: periodic batch auctions every ten minutes, off-chain pre-match, on-chain settlement on Arbitrum, cross-chain bridging via Axelar.
Live beta launched on Arbitrum on 29 May 2024, with over 250 executable prices across strikes and expiries from day one. Hashlock and Hacken audits both closed clean in October 2024. The ITHACA token TGE happened on 19 December 2024 across KuCoin, Gate.io, and MEXC, after launchpad sale programs on Decubate, ChainGPT Pad, and Gate.io, with ChainGPT listing a $300K sale allocation at $0.035.
The next chapter was acquisition, which is where Holdex's contribution showed up most concretely. Odyssey of Fate, a Telegram-native mini-game built end-to-end by Holdex, launched on 28 January 2025. It pulled the brand into a channel where derivatives traders already spend their attention, and connected back into the protocol's user-acquisition funnel. A Telegram mini-game is not where most options venues spend engineering hours, which is part of why Ithaca scaled past 50,000 active users and into the leading options venues tracked by DefiLlama.
Products
Ithaca Protocol
Ithaca Protocol is a non-custodial options venue with a depth of product surface most decentralised competitors don't offer. Vanilla calls and puts, digitals, multi-leg strategies, forwards, and structured products all clear through the same matching engine, with off-chain pre-match and on-chain settlement on Arbitrum. Cross-chain liquidity bridges in via Axelar. Live beta opened on 29 May 2024, audits by Hashlock and Hacken landed in October 2024, and the ITHACA token TGE happened on 19 December 2024 across KuCoin, Gate.io, and MEXC.
Holdex contributed across product co-building, engineering, and design as an embedded squad shipping the application layer alongside Ithaca's core team.
Odyssey of Fate
Odyssey of Fate is a Telegram-native mini-game that pulls Ithaca's brand into a channel where derivatives traders already spend their attention. Players navigate the seas of fate, redeem points to $ITHACA tokens, and feed back into the protocol's user-acquisition funnel. It launched on 28 January 2025.
Holdex built the mini-app end-to-end and led the user-acquisition strategy that surrounds it. The founder testimonial above attributes both pieces to Holdex directly.
Traction
The work shows the shape of Holdex's venture-building model: protocol product, application layer, and acquisition funnel all moving together instead of being treated as separate workstreams.
Links
- Site: ithacaprotocol.io
- Odyssey of Fate (Telegram mini-game): t.me/OdysseyOfFateBot
- Docs: docs.ithacaprotocol.io
- X/Twitter: @IthacaProtocol