# City Protocol

> City Protocol is an on-chain structured-products infrastructure protocol providing tokenization, ERC-4626 vaults, issuance and operation tooling, and developer APIs for RWA and strategy providers.

- Canonical URL: https://iq.wiki/wiki/city-protocol
- Categories: Projects & Protocols
- Tags: Ethereum, DeFi, Solana, Infrastructure, RWA
- Created: 2026-09-23T17:10:22.826Z
- Last updated: 2026-09-23T17:39:31.459Z
- Source: IQ.wiki — the world's largest blockchain and crypto encyclopedia (https://iq.wiki)

---

**City Protocol** is an on-chain structured products infrastructure that provides [tokenization](https://iq.wiki/wiki/tokenization), vault, and issuance-and-operations tooling for bringing yield-generating financial products onto public [blockchains](https://iq.wiki/wiki/blockchain). The project describes itself as an open infrastructure layer for "neofinance," turning yield sources and [real-world assets](https://iq.wiki/wiki/real-world-assets-rwas) (RWAs) into programmable, verifiable, and distributable on-chain products that partners can package and sell under their own brands.[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx)​[\[2\]](#cite-id-cf2uz8uuxz) Established in 2025, it was formerly known as Cooking City in the [Solana](https://iq.wiki/wiki/solana) ecosystem and is referenced with the ticker CP.[\[3\]](#cite-id-u4hrx17bq6)​[\[4\]](#cite-id-zily2iep4e) Its flagship consumer-facing product is Venzo, a strategy-vault front end.[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx)​

## Overview

City Protocol positions itself as a full-stack infrastructure provider that lets teams with asset-management capabilities issue and operate tokenized financial products without rebuilding bespoke vault and operations systems for each strategy.[\[6\]](#cite-id-ta6ab7p1vi)​[\[4\]](#cite-id-zily2iep4e) The company's stated vision is "to make high-quality yield products programmable, verifiable, operable, and distributable onchain."[\[2\]](#cite-id-cf2uz8uuxz)​

The protocol chose structured products as its initial focus because such products require a defined mandate, approved components, product-level net asset value (NAV), subscription and redemption logic, eligibility controls, reporting, disclosures, rebalancing rules, and lifecycle operations — a set of requirements City Protocol says it converts into shared infrastructure.[\[2\]](#cite-id-cf2uz8uuxz) Example product types the infrastructure is built for include stable-yield exchange-traded products (ETPs), tokenized Treasuries and cash-management products, [RWA](https://iq.wiki/wiki/real-world-assets-rwas) baskets, market-neutral vaults built on basis and statistical-arbitrage trades, and diversified multi-vault income sleeves.[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx) The company frames the market opportunity around roughly $300 billion sitting on-chain in [stablecoins](https://iq.wiki/wiki/stablecoin), and states that launching a compliant crypto neofinance product typically takes more than 18 months and a 30-person team — the gap its infrastructure is meant to close.[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx)​

City Protocol serves two categories of partner: those that supply yield, such as [RWA](https://iq.wiki/wiki/real-world-assets-rwas) and strategy providers, and those that bring products to users, such as platforms and distribution partners.[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx) Partners choose which vaults to offer, to which users, and in which markets, while retaining their own brand, customers, and relationships.[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx) The company publishes reserve proofs on a public proof-of-solvency page hosted at city.accountable.capital.[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx)​

## History and Pivot to Structured Products

City Protocol began as Cooking City, a project in the [Solana](https://iq.wiki/wiki/solana) ecosystem, before rebranding and refocusing.[\[3\]](#cite-id-u4hrx17bq6) In its earlier phase the project positioned itself around intellectual property (IP) rather than structured yield products. A commissioned press release published through Chainwire on [The Block](https://iq.wiki/wiki/the-block) on October 14, 2025, described City Protocol as "a decentralized protocol designed to establish capital market infrastructure for intellectual property," with a mission to liberate cultural and narrative assets from closed ecosystems and make them liquid, scalable, and globally accessible on-chain.[\[7\]](#cite-id-zpz4qr2thg)​

The IP-era design centered on four modules: an IP Verification Layer to establish authenticity and copyright ownership on-chain; IP RWA (IP Strategy) to enable financing and liquidity for early-stage and established IPs; an AI and Growth Scaling Engine powered by tools named City ID, Viral City, and The Totem Toy City; and a Launchpad for issuing and trading IP projects.[\[7\]](#cite-id-zpz4qr2thg) The release claimed creators could tokenize their IP "from Day 1," and framed the effort against the scale of IP-driven companies, citing Apple and Tesla as businesses that grew into "trillion-dollar enterprises" with capital access and Disney "with a [market capitalization](https://iq.wiki/wiki/market-capitalization) in the $200–300 billion range."[\[7\]](#cite-id-zpz4qr2thg) The core team was described as combining crypto-native experience from [Web3](https://iq.wiki/wiki/web3) projects including Animoca, [The Sandbox](https://iq.wiki/wiki/the-sandbox), [Dapper Labs](https://iq.wiki/wiki/dapper-labs), and [Memeland](https://iq.wiki/wiki/memeland) with backgrounds at HSBC, MediaAsia, and LVMH.[\[7\]](#cite-id-zpz4qr2thg) A co-founder identified only as "Kyle" was named as the contact.[\[7\]](#cite-id-zpz4qr2thg)​

This IP orientation extended into partnership announcements. Around late 2024 and early 2025, City Protocol promoted work on bringing on-chain IP forward together with CopySight AI, described as a specialist in copyrighting AI-generated content with prior collaborations involving Warner Bros. Entertainment and ABGO.[\[8\]](#cite-id-74uxhavful) It also announced a partnership with Optics Ventures, described as the organizer of the inaugural Comic Con in Hong Kong set for 2026, to explore integrating Web2 IPs into [Web3](https://iq.wiki/wiki/web3).[\[8\]](#cite-id-74uxhavful) The company promoted a valuation of the IP market at "over $60 trillion" and described building "full-cycle infrastructure" spanning creation, [tokenization](https://iq.wiki/wiki/tokenization), fan economy, and distribution.[\[8\]](#cite-id-74uxhavful) By the time of its 2026 funding announcement, the project had refocused on tokenized structured products under the City Protocol name.

## Platform Architecture

City Protocol's stack is organized into five connected service layers, though its funding-round communications emphasize a three-layer core of [tokenization](https://iq.wiki/wiki/tokenization), vaults, and issuance-and-operations.[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx)​[\[4\]](#cite-id-zily2iep4e) The company states its contracts are built in [Solidity](https://iq.wiki/wiki/solidity) and deployed on [Base](https://iq.wiki/wiki/base) and all EVM-compatible chains, with native cross-chain messaging and chain abstraction that allows deposits from any supported [EVM](https://iq.wiki/wiki/ethereum-virtual-machine-evm) network while strategy execution runs on the optimal chain.[\[2\]](#cite-id-cf2uz8uuxz)​

### Tokenization as a Service

The [Tokenization](https://iq.wiki/wiki/tokenization) as a Service (TaaS) layer turns yield sources into programmable, verifiable, distribution-ready on-chain products through prebuilt modules for institutional strategies and [real-world assets](https://iq.wiki/wiki/real-world-assets-rwas).[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx) It helps yield providers, asset originators, and strategy managers define what a tokenized product represents, configure investor eligibility and subscription and redemption rules, set product metadata and supported networks, and connect NAV monitoring, oracle publication, attestations, proof records, and reporting logic so a product is ready for distribution.[\[2\]](#cite-id-cf2uz8uuxz) Investor access is managed through [know-your-customer](https://iq.wiki/wiki/know-your-customer-kyc) (KYC) checks, whitelists, and permissions, and finished products can be routed to partner platforms, [DeFi](https://iq.wiki/wiki/defi) protocols, and investors.[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx)​

### Vault as a Service

The Vault as a Service (VaaS) layer provides standardized [ERC-4626](https://iq.wiki/wiki/erc-4626) vaults — the token standard for tokenized vaults — in which depositors receive shares representing their portion of a vault's assets.[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx) External strategy curators decide how deposited assets are allocated.[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx) The vault cycle proceeds through five steps: deposit, verification, allocation, monitoring, and redemption.[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx) In the documented workflow, a vault creator defines a mandate; the platform deploys and configures the vault with accepted assets, capacity, fees, strategy rules, liquidity terms, and investor eligibility; users deposit through City Protocol or partner front ends or the API; a vault security layer checks permissions, limits, allocation rules, and product status; and strategy managers can allocate capital only to whitelisted strategies and approved venues.[\[2\]](#cite-id-cf2uz8uuxz) The company calls this principle "creator-bound execution," under which the vault creator defines the mandate while strategy managers execute only within approved boundaries.[\[2\]](#cite-id-cf2uz8uuxz) Redemptions are handled through liquid or epoch-based flows depending on vault design.[\[2\]](#cite-id-cf2uz8uuxz) City Protocol maintains a curated, continuously expanded catalog of pre-integrated vaults covering strategies such as delta-neutral basis trades, lending, tokenized [RWAs](https://iq.wiki/wiki/real-world-assets-rwas), and long-short trading, and states its vaults use pre-audited contracts.[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx)​

### Issuance and Operation Layer

The issuance and operation layer packages tokenized assets and verified vaults into investable products, each with a stated methodology, a product-level NAV, and lifecycle controls from issuance to redemption.[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx) It maintains issuance records, aggregates NAV, applies methodology rules such as weighting and rebalancing, and handles fee logic, reporting cadence, subscriptions, redemptions, disclosures, and lifecycle state across City Protocol vaults.[\[2\]](#cite-id-cf2uz8uuxz) Example outputs include ETP-style income products, [RWA](https://iq.wiki/wiki/real-world-assets-rwas) baskets, thematic allocations, multi-vault strategies, and structured yield products.[\[2\]](#cite-id-cf2uz8uuxz)​

### Neofinance and Attention Layers

The Neofinance as a Service (NaaS) layer exposes products and financial modules through application programming interfaces (APIs), software development kits (SDKs), and partner integrations, allowing partner applications to embed yield vaults, tokenized products, swaps, lending, borrowing, or rewards without integrating each provider individually.[\[2\]](#cite-id-cf2uz8uuxz) City Protocol lists four core neofinance modules with example integrators: yield via [Gauntlet](https://iq.wiki/wiki/gauntlet), Steakhouse, and [Superstate](https://iq.wiki/wiki/superstate); swap routing via [PancakeSwap](https://iq.wiki/wiki/pancakeswap), [Aerodrome](https://iq.wiki/wiki/aerodrome-finance), [Uniswap](https://iq.wiki/wiki/uniswap), and [Li.Fi](https://iq.wiki/wiki/lifi); lending and borrowing via [Aave](https://iq.wiki/wiki/aave), [Compound](https://iq.wiki/wiki/compound), [Morpho](https://iq.wiki/wiki/morpho), and [Maple](https://iq.wiki/wiki/maple-finance); and [KYC](https://iq.wiki/wiki/know-your-customer-kyc)/[AML](https://iq.wiki/wiki/anti-money-laundering-aml) compliance via Persona, Veriff, Onfido, and Comply Advantage.[\[2\]](#cite-id-cf2uz8uuxz) Developer access is provided through a unified TypeScript SDK, the `@cityprotocol/core` package, which wraps multi-step transactions into asynchronous functions, alongside a Portfolio Client that exposes indexed vault data, user transactions, and historical total-value-locked snapshots through a subgraph interface.[\[2\]](#cite-id-cf2uz8uuxz)​

The Attention as a Service (AaaS) layer treats distribution as part of the product lifecycle, supporting discovery, campaigns, contribution tracking, user education, and rewards so partner products can be surfaced to users.[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx)​[\[2\]](#cite-id-cf2uz8uuxz) Its named components include an AIUGC Layer for AI-powered user-generated content, a Mindshare Arena that tracks project mindshare through heatmaps and leaderboards, and a Reward Hub where users follow, post, and engage to earn token bonuses, with contribution measured through a system the documentation calls "Viral City and the Mindshare Layer."[\[2\]](#cite-id-cf2uz8uuxz) The company describes an "Attention-Capital Flywheel" that it claims connects mindshare measurement directly to on-chain capital deployment.[\[2\]](#cite-id-cf2uz8uuxz)​

City Protocol states its security model separates duties among Vault Admin, Curator, Valuation Provider, and Whitelist Manager roles, requires multi-party computation (MPC) or multi-signature approvals for critical actions, and records reporting immutably on-chain, reinforced by independent third-party NAV valuation and audits.[\[2\]](#cite-id-cf2uz8uuxz) Fees are encoded directly in [smart contracts](https://iq.wiki/wiki/smart-contract) and surfaced to users before deposit.[\[2\]](#cite-id-cf2uz8uuxz)​[\[4\]](#cite-id-zily2iep4e)​

## Venzo

Venzo, offered through Venzo Finance, is City Protocol's flagship product and the primary front end built on its infrastructure.[[3]](#cite-id-u4hrx17bq6) The company states Venzo democratizes access to structured products by offering curated strategy vaults and on-chain token portfolios (OTPs), and that its vaults are [ERC-4626](https://iq.wiki/wiki/erc-4626) share vaults managed by external curators using City Protocol's underlying vault infrastructure.[[1]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx) The Venzo application is hosted at app.venzofinance.com.[[1]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx)

At the time of the August 2026 funding announcement, Venzo had launched four strategy vaults covering strategies including quantitative hedging, cross-exchange [arbitrage](https://iq.wiki/wiki/arbitrage), private credit, and on-chain yield.[[4]](#cite-id-zily2iep4e) Reported total value locked figures varied across the announcement: material released with the financing put Venzo's total value locked at roughly $30 million, while an earlier version of the announcement cited $40 million.[[4]](#cite-id-zily2iep4e)[[5]](#cite-id-tuv4rcepsl) These figures are reported as the company's own claims rather than independently verified.

City Protocol has said it plans to expand Venzo with rule-based thematic portfolio products that operate directly inside users' wallets rather than as pooled vaults, automatically trading and rebalancing assets according to publicly disclosed rules.[[6]](#cite-id-ta6ab7p1vi)[[4]](#cite-id-zily2iep4e) A planned product called "People Tracker" would follow the disclosed holdings of prominent investors, institutions, and public officials, while a "Sector Themes" set would target areas such as space exploration, metals, and electric vehicles.[[6]](#cite-id-ta6ab7p1vi)[[4]](#cite-id-zily2iep4e)

## Funding

City Protocol raised a combined $11 million across its seed and pre-Series A rounds, announced on August 25 and 26, 2026.[\[6\]](#cite-id-ta6ab7p1vi)​[\[4\]](#cite-id-zily2iep4e) The company said the capital would expand its three-layer infrastructure for tokenized structured products and grow Venzo.[\[4\]](#cite-id-zily2iep4e) Named participants in the financing included [Dragonfly](https://iq.wiki/wiki/dragonfly), Jump Crypto, [CMT Digital](https://iq.wiki/wiki/cmt-digital), Stratified Capital, Adaverse, and Mirana.[\[5\]](#cite-id-tuv4rcepsl) Valuation terms were not disclosed.[\[4\]](#cite-id-zily2iep4e) Aggregated investor data additionally associates Bitscale Capital, Everest Ventures Group, and Mirana Ventures with the project.[\[3\]](#cite-id-u4hrx17bq6)​

Earlier, during its IP-focused phase, the project had been described as backed by Jump Trading, Dragonfly, and [CMT Digital](https://iq.wiki/wiki/cmt-digital) and "other institutional partners."[\[7\]](#cite-id-zpz4qr2thg) A third-party summary by 8Blocks reproduced on the company's LinkedIn page similarly described City Protocol as "backed by Jump Trading and [Dragonfly](https://iq.wiki/wiki/dragonfly)" with approximately $7 million raised at that point.[\[8\]](#cite-id-74uxhavful) The company lists its size at 11 to 50 employees and classifies its industry as financial services.[\[8\]](#cite-id-74uxhavful)​

## Adoption and Developments

City Protocol reports more than 20 industry partners live, more than five vaults onboarded, and over 51,000 registered users.[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx) Its roadmap describes a fourth-quarter 2025 period in which its ecosystem [NFT](https://iq.wiki/wiki/non-fungible-token-nft) holders surpassed 9,400, verified City ID users reached more than 51,000, and the project claimed the top pre-token-generation-event mindshare in Korea with more than 1,400 Korean community members.[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx) Around the same period it launched a Base Mini-App, reporting that users generated 19,000 videos and produced 57,000 casts, 31,000 likes, 58,000 comments, and 18,000 reposts on the [Base App](https://iq.wiki/wiki/base-app).[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx)​

For the first quarter of 2026, the company reported hosting a [Base](https://iq.wiki/wiki/base) Meetup during the [Hong Kong Consensus](https://iq.wiki/wiki/consensus-hong-kong-2026) event with more than 1,400 sign-ups and over 400 approved participants, securing what it described as a high-stakes contract to build a neofinance solution for a customer, integrating its Attention module with 26 projects on Base, and running a Base Discovery Campaign with 11 Base ecosystem projects that onboarded more than 4,000 unique participants.[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx)​

The company also operates a blog and educational pages under the name City Academy, which has published material on centralized-decentralized finance ([CeDeFi](https://iq.wiki/wiki/cedefi-centralized-decentralized-finance)). One entry dated July 8, 2026, argues that "CeDeFi is credible only when centralized execution is wrapped in vault-first controls, creator-defined mandates, approved venue policies, continuous monitoring, and redemption logic."[\[1\]](#cite-id-wil7jqewpx) On its LinkedIn page, the company has also described itself as "the first Neobank-as-a-Service provider in the $300b [stablecoin](https://iq.wiki/wiki/stablecoin) market" and said it is building "City Neobank," a unified platform for earning stable yield through tokenized [RWA](https://iq.wiki/wiki/real-world-assets-rwas) and [DeFi](https://iq.wiki/wiki/defi) vaults, swapping assets across chains via intent-based chain abstraction, and earning daily rewards through a proof-of-contribution engine.[\[8\]](#cite-id-74uxhavful)​

Coverage of the funding placed Venzo alongside other vault-based access models combining crypto-native strategies such as [arbitrage](https://iq.wiki/wiki/arbitrage) and hedging with private credit and RWA yield, noting broader industry activity including HSBC's tokenized structured note issuance for Hong Kong institutions and a $100 million RWA vault launched by [Plume](https://iq.wiki/wiki/plume) and [Ether.fi](https://iq.wiki/wiki/etherfi) offering exposure to overcollateralized credit pools, collateralized loan obligations, and bond ETFs, later integrated into [Binance](https://iq.wiki/wiki/binance) Wallet.[\[4\]](#cite-id-zily2iep4e)​