A DeFi labelling and tax reconciliation tool called Octav raised $2.65 million in seed funding to serve as the “Quickbooks of crypto” and identify the DeFi ecosystem.
Mathieu Baril, Co-Founder & CEO of Octav, said: “There hasn’t been a systematic way where the DeFi community can decipher all their transactions from block explorers and get their data in one convenient dashboard. So it became clear to us that data labelling is missing in DeFi”.
Mathieu Baril and Luc Blackburn, the co-founders of Octav, formerly held positions at businesses including Zapper, Accedian Network, and Otodata. Nascent, Polymorphic Capital, Parallel Studio, Spaceship DAO, Investmeows, Possible Ventures, Speedinvest, ACET capital, Paul Desmarais, CEO of Sagard Holdings, and Mark Zeller from AAVE are just a few of Octav’s illustrious investors.
We are building the platform that deciphers all DeFi transactions,” Mathieu said. “Today, there are a lot of companies building DeFi dashboards but I don’t think anyone is going deep to provide the end user with all the data in an easy way to understand, and we think the right company will need to have a complete defined database of all DeFi transactions, not just a piece of it.”
“A lot of DeFi native tools like Etherscan and Dune Analytics give a lot of raw data, which is great if you have the technical knowledge but not great for most DeFi enthusiasts”, Mathieu noted.
The DeFi labelling database, portfolio dashboard, and data analytics for cost basis, profit and loss, and fees paid are all parts of Octav’s technology for DeFi labelling and tax reconciliation. Anyone utilizing the platform can also contribute to the DeFi machine learning system known as “The Brain” by identifying ambiguous transactions not yet included in the database. All Octav users who interacted with the same smart contract receive the update automatically after user contributions have been algorithmically confirmed.
“Octav is currently in beta with thousands of users, seven integrated chains, and over 100 million transactions indexed to date”, Mathieu said. “While the first customers are DeFi power users, Octav’s client base is “anyone who has ever interacted with a DeFi protocol”, Mathieu added.
“The capital will be used to integrate more chains to capture the entire DeFi ecosystem. New chains are launched throughout the year and new protocols launch weekly so we always have to be ahead to capture the latest protocols the DeFi community is interacting with.” Luc said. “We both worked at startups before and understand the importance of delivering ambitious goals with a lean team.”
The co-founders want to integrate Octav’s database with existing crypto tax platforms in the long run so that users can reconcile their transactions before using tax software. This will enable Octav to serve as a pre-tax facilitator.