PANews reported on January 21 that, according to The Block, startup Cork announced the completion of a $5.5 million seed funding round, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), CSX, and Road Capital, with participation from 432 Ventures, BitGo Ventures, Cooley, DEPO Ventures, Funfair Ventures, G20 Group, Gate Labs, Hyperithm Gate, IDEO Ventures, PEER VC, Stake Capital, and WAGMI Ventures.

Cork aims to build a "programmable risk layer" that makes the risks inherent in real-world assets transparent and tradable through tokenization. Its infrastructure allows asset managers, issuers, and others to create customized swap markets to improve on-chain asset redemption liquidity, risk transparency, and market confidence. This tool can also be used to assess the risks of crypto-native products such as stablecoins and staking tokens. The team plans to launch the first production-grade risk markets in the coming months and expand its partnerships with vaults and asset issuers.