From AI-driven pharmaceuticals to Bitcoin DeFi, 13 hardcore teams from EASY Residency Season 2 showcased their talents at Binance Demo Day.

This article is from: @yzilabs

Compiled by Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina ); Translated by Ethan ( @ethanzhang_web3)

On December 3, YZi Labs officially announced the complete list of 13 shortlisted teams for the second season of EASY Residency. The 13 shortlisted teams will make their official debut at the Demo Day session of Binance Blockchain Week.

It's worth noting that while maintaining the core AI and biotech focus of the first round, this season's selected projects have incorporated a more diverse range of narratives. The list includes native Web3 projects such as Bitcoin liquidity protocols and the Blast ecosystem prediction market , as well as cutting-edge technologies like spatial intelligence and gene therapy . (Recommended reading: " From Tokenized Stocks to Carbon Credit Tracking: A Review of Seven Hot Projects in EASY Residency's First Quarter " )

42. Space : Trading real-world events like trading memecoins.

Founding Team:

Leo Zhang (Founder): Former Head of Research at a New York-based crypto fund, previously worked at KKR and MS (Morgan Stanley) in equity derivatives. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Stanford University.

Steve Kim (CTO): Founding engineer for several startups (which were later acquired by Walmart/Discord), Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Aleksi Ollikainen-Read (Strategy/Operations/Legal Advisor): Former Head of Strategy and Operations at Consensys SMG, former law professor at Oxford University, fellow at Harvard University/Max Planck Institute, and qualified as a barrister in England and Wales (E&W) in 2018.

YZi Labs' investment rationale:

42.space is an asset issuance protocol that significantly expands the boundaries of prediction markets. By leveraging bonding curves to construct event outcomes as a token issuance platform, 42.space allows users to create and trade assets linked to real-world events. Trading like liquid tokens and settling like prediction markets, this innovative mechanism is driven by a powerful team comprised of Stanford and Harvard alumni and Wall Street veterans, blending top-tier engineering with advanced financial strategies. Through its partnership with BNB Chain, 42.space is bringing this novel, event-based asset to a large user base, further expanding the DeFi landscape.

4D Labs: Data Collection, Model Development, and Application of Spatial Intelligent Large Models

Founding Team:

Bruce Bai (CEO): PhD from Zhejiang University; serial entrepreneur; founder of two computer vision startups.

Ian Y. Xu (co-founder): Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan; PhD from the Chinese University of Hong Kong; formerly worked at Meta Reality Labs and SenseTime.

Xin Zhou (Lianchuang): Chief AI Architect, Baidu USA; PhD from the University of Michigan; with over 10 years of experience leading AI/generative AI systems.

Haoming (co-founder): Postdoctoral fellow at Peking University; PhD from Zhejiang University; formerly worked at Baidu; published more than 10 top AI papers; serial entrepreneur (founded Deep Pink Elephant and xPerception, the latter of which was acquired by Baidu).

YZi Labs' investment rationale:

At the intersection of AI, 3D technology, and Web3, 4D Labs is dedicated to solving a fundamental bottleneck in the era of spatial computing: how to acquire scalable, verifiable, and high-quality 3D data. With its large spatial models and 3D data generation and acquisition processes, combined with a tokenized data ownership framework, 4D Labs has become an early pioneer in the 3D data infrastructure field. As digital twins and Embodied AI accelerate, ownership-based 3D data networks will become crucial, making 4D Labs a timely and strategic investment in the foundational layer of the next computing paradigm.

AllScale : A lightweight, self-custodial new type of bank for cross-border business operations

Founding Team:

Shawn Pang (CEO) – Former Payments Product Manager at TikTok & Capital One; serial entrepreneur; previously responsible for KuCoin's listing business. Leo Wang (COO) – Former employees of Amazon, IBM, and Scotiabank; fintech and infrastructure builder.

Alisha Li (CMO) – Former Partner at Queen Bee Capital, former Sales Director at HP, Dell, and Sun.

Khalil Lin (Committee Leader) – Licensed New York Attorney; formerly worked at Kraken, The Block.

YZi Labs' investment rationale:

AllScale is building a new type of self-custodied stablecoin bank that simplifies payments, payroll, and invoicing for businesses in a compliant and intuitive way. Our investment stems from early signs of a strong product-market fit, supported by organic growth momentum and robust retention metrics. AllScale is well-positioned to capture market share by combining the speed and transparency of stablecoins with a user experience that perfectly aligns with the operational and compliance needs of modern businesses.

Advent: An AI-Driven Precision Gene Therapy Platform

Founding Team:

Bonnie Zhu : Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST); PhD, Stanford University.

Kai Liu : Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; a globally recognized leader in the field of neuroscience.

Yuan Yao : PhD in Bioengineering from Stanford University; currently serves as the Sales and Marketing Director for the Infusion and Hemodialysis Division at BD Medical in the United States.

YZi Labs' investment rationale:

Advent is at the forefront of cell and gene therapy delivery, leveraging proprietary viral protein datasets and a specially built AI-driven platform to reduce the discovery time of adeno-associated virus (AAV) capsids from months to weeks. Its high-throughput data, scalable and differentiated capsid intellectual property pipeline, and synthetic capsids that outperform natural serotypes create a formidable technological moat in this rapidly expanding market. Advent's strong team and clear technological differentiation make it a timely investment entry point, aligning with major precedents in the cell and gene therapy (CGT) market.

AgriDynamics: Fruit-picking robots to solve the farm labor crisis

Founding Team:

Dr. Zhaojian Li (CTO): Associate Professor at Michigan State University, responsible for the commercialization of a patented modular apple-picking robot developed with funding from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Kyle Lammers (CEO): He has been researching apple-picking robots for six years and has received the Michigan Agricultural Biotechnology Innovation Award, the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers Best Student Report Award, and the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers Smart Transportation Systems Community Best Paper Award.

YZi Labs' investment rationale:

The company has addressed one of the most significant cost and labor challenges in U.S. specialty agriculture—apple harvesting—through a patented and field-proven robotic platform endorsed by major growers' associations. Labor costs account for approximately 70% of production costs in apple harvesting. Its modular, commercially viable system and defensible intellectual property give it a clear first-mover advantage in this multi-billion dollar sector. With a scalable roadmap to other high-value crops and recurring service or software revenue, the company is poised to become a core piece of automated infrastructure for specialty agriculture.

Bento.fun : The Social Layer of Prediction Markets

Founding Team:

Abhitej Singh (CEO): Former Head of Growth at Persistence/pSTAKE; Co-founder of Cosmos India; Founder of Filament (deal total of $100 million, $1.15 million in funding).

Pratyaksh Inani (CPO): Quantitative trader since age 13; former Head of Finance/Product at Persistence; co-founder of Filament.

Rajeeb Kumar (Engineer): Former Nethermind employee, Indian Institute of Technology graduate, with 6 years of DeFi/contract engineering experience, and 10-time hackathon champion.

YZi Labs' investment rationale:

Bento transforms everyday fan debates on Telegram, Twitter, and WhatsApp into simple, quick micro-bets ranging from $1 to $10, opening up space for a large casual fan base with significant trading volume potential. The founders possess deep domain expertise and aim to target high-traffic, high-turnover global fan communities such as cricket and Formula One. As a native prediction market component on the BNB Chain, Bento aligns directly with our ecosystem strategy, driving broader on-chain participation through low-friction social betting.

Frontrun : A professional trader wallet designed for rapid discovery, due diligence, and execution.

Founding Team:

Chris (Founder and CEO): Former Robinhood Crypto employee (responsible for building deposit and withdrawal functions); founding engineer of Sui (who led an 8-person team to build a browser, SDK, RPC, and a wallet with over 1 million users).

YZi Labs' investment rationale:

Frontrun is a trader-centric wallet designed for rapid asset discovery, swift due diligence, and seamless trade execution, directly addressing the key pain points of high-frequency traders. Early organic growth and strong retention data validate the product's fit with a highly attractive initial entry point: the high-value trader community within the billions of dollars in TAM (provided by Solana's annual fees exceeding $1 billion). Its multi-chain roadmap and synergy with the BNB Chain DeFi ecosystem make Frontrun a strategically important addition to the broader trading infrastructure stack.

Help.fun : A crypto-launching platform for non-profit tokens

Founding Team:

Helena Everley : Co-founder, Stanford University undergraduate.

Arash Attar: Co-founder and CTO, who developed one of the fastest mobile trading apps for memecoins, as well as a high-performance sneaker bot.

YZi Labs' investment rationale:

Help.fun aims to build a crypto-native fundraising channel, allowing nonprofits and startups to issue charitable tokens through fair, bot-free distribution, thus addressing the long-standing issue of trustlessness in on-chain fundraising. Its anti-front-running mechanisms (including bait, puzzles, and gas traps) ensure fair participation, providing a credible alternative to predatory Memecoin launches. With its strong early execution and high alignment with BNB Chain's culture and liquidity, Help.fun has the potential to become a scalable on-chain fundraising platform for mission-driven organizations.

Hertzflow : A permissionless leveraged market for any asset

Founding Team:

Vincent Shang : Co-founder; with over 10 years of experience in the crypto industry, and also an influential Chinese KOL.

Hero: Co-founder and Head of Product; formerly worked at Coinbase, where he was responsible for the CDP and Prime MPC wallet businesses.

Soren: Technical Lead; former core developer of Mantle (early engineering team member, involved in building from scratch).

YZi Labs' investment rationale:

Hertzflow aims to bridge the gap between the traditional retail derivatives market, with its $4.5 trillion daily trading volume, and the on-chain economy. Led by a team with deep expertise in traditional derivatives, the protocol is specifically designed to reach a large and untapped community of non-crypto native traders. Hertzflow boasts a technologically mature product operating within the BNB Chain ecosystem, combining the efficiency of permissionless on-chain settlement with a user experience tailored to the vast global trading market.

Manifolds: An AI-driven 3D spatially controllable video generation platform

Founding Team:

Qingyuan Shan (CEO): Former Senior Vice President of Enterprise Business at Whaley Technology; Former Head of Strategy at Taiyang Chuanhe; Undergraduate in Mathematics from the University at Buffalo; Master of Applied Analytics from Columbia University.

Yudong Tao (CTO): Former Meta Research Data Scientist; Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Fudan University, PhD in Computer Engineering from the University of Miami.

Naiyuan Huang (COO): Former Head of Sales and Marketing at Whaley Technology (Series A); alumnus of CEIBS; previously spearheaded the development of China's second-largest AI talent community.

YZi Labs' investment rationale:

Manifolds is heavily betting on controllable, 3D-aware AI video technology, viewing it as an enabling layer for next-generation content creation and embodied AI applications. Its technological differentiation—including 3D space generation, physically-aware simulation, hybrid rendering, and sophisticated object/camera control—positions it well in high-growth verticals such as e-commerce visualization and real-world AI integration systems. Strong early-stage business momentum (annualized revenue of $150,000 and 60 paying enterprise clients without paid marketing) demonstrates clear product maturity, scalability potential, and excellent founder-market fit.

MeleeMon : A competitive mobile game based on stablecoin betting

Founding Team:

Alex (CEO): A Pokémon competitive player who has been ranked among the top 500 globally for four consecutive years; possesses excellent founder and market fit.

Jasper (CTO): Has over 6 years of experience in Unity and React development.

YZi Labs' investment rationale:

MeleeMon is a skill-based mobile monster battle game. The team boasts excellent founder-market fit, possessing both YC-backed game development experience (their previous company, Gamebytes, had over 5 million users) and deep expertise in the Pokémon competitive gaming arena, along with a clear understanding of the blockchain-enabled game economy. The project targets the large and proven Web2 gaming market, while introducing a novel competitive game loop mechanism on-chain. Given YZi Labs' priority focus on high-quality, engaging gaming experiences on the BNB Chain, MeleeMon demonstrates a strong strategic fit and reliable execution.

Neomera BioLab: A non-opioid drug development platform for chronic pain and major chronic diseases.

Founding Team:

Rebecca Miao (CEO): Has over 15 years of experience in drug development; formerly served as Chief Scientific Officer of AKSO Biosciences; led multiple investigational new drug applications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; secured $75 million in pharmaceutical collaborations; holds over 200 patents; postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University.

Jimmy Xu (CTO): Bachelor's degree from Johns Hopkins University; PhD and postdoctoral fellow in bioengineering from Stanford University; expert in drug screening optimization and biomedical AI.

Yi Lu (CFO): A serial entrepreneur who transitioned from investor to entrepreneur, who took a novel pain management method from concept to clinical trials and received coverage and awards in top international publications; holds an MBA from Stanford University; previously worked at Bain Capital and Madrone Capital partners.

YZi Labs' investment rationale:

Neomera is dedicated to addressing the urgent need for non-addictive therapies for over one billion chronic pain patients worldwide. Its "biology-first, AI-accelerated" discovery platform offers a unique advantage: it generates highly relevant proprietary internal data and successfully tackles indications where traditional methods have failed. This tightly integrated wet lab and machine learning loop fundamentally compresses experimental timelines by up to 80%, creating a scalable and differentiated engine for rapid drug development for refractory chronic diseases.

Sats Terminal: A native Bitcoin liquidity protocol

Founding Team:

Stan Havryliuk (CEO): Former senior leader at Bitcoin.com , ZondaCrypto, and Ambisafe; led several teams to grow from 5 to 50 people.

Rishabh Java (CTO): A serial fintech entrepreneur with exit experience; developed multiple Bitcoin products; previously served as CTO of Ordinals Council, ToshiPad, and Crackedevs.

YZi Labs' investment rationale:

Sats Terminal is built on the BTC and EVM chains (primarily BNB and Base), operating in a large and expanding market driven by demand for BTC-backed lending, yield, and trading. Initially entering the market with a swap aggregation model, they quickly built a solid B2B user base (accounting for 75% of Runes' total transaction volume; boasting over 30 integrated projects) and are now expanding into the BTC lending and yield market, showing strong initial momentum. Their early institutional backing includes a $1.7 million pre-seed funding round led by Coinbase Ventures and Draper Associates.

Saturn Labs : A Bitcoin-based lending platform offering yields of over 10%.

Founding Team:

Kevin Li (Co-founder and CEO): Co-founder and researcher at ParaFi; former head of DAT at Artemis

Sebastian Melendez (Co-founder and CTO): Co-founder and former head of Artemis stablecoin.

Ellis Osborn (Co-founder and COO): Chairman of Penn Blockchain; former investor in M31 Capital.

YZi Labs' investment rationale:

YZi Labs supports Saturn because the team is building an interest-bearing stablecoin with yields exceeding 10%, powered by MicroStrategy's STRC (a transparent and institutionally-reputable BTC lending instrument). Saturn sits at the intersection of three of the fastest-growing sectors in crypto: stablecoins, DATs, and RWAs. The increasing demand for transparent, scalable, real-yield reserves, coupled with the founding team's extensive experience in DATs, DeFi, and stablecoin architectures, makes Saturn a potential core layer of the on-chain economy.

Predict.fun : Leveraging DeFi to Enhance Liquidity and Address Capital Inefficiency in Prediction Markets

Founder:

Ding : Former consultant/investment banker; joined Binance in 2017 and built the Research & Listing team; led Binance Launchpad (2019); founder of PancakeSwap (2020); co-founder of Predict.fun (2024).

YZi Labs' investment rationale:

Predict.fun empowers a new type of mainstream prediction market by transforming event trading into a yield-generating, leveraged, and self-custodied financial primitive, allowing users to fully enjoy DeFi services while participating in predictions. By integrating DeFi native yields, a seamless on-chain user experience (such as AA account abstraction and gas-free trading), and composability, the protocol effectively lowers the user barrier and positions the prediction market as an accessible, utility-driven product for a broader, non-crypto-native audience.

Trellis Robotics: Unlocking AI Soft Robotics Platforms for Hard-to-Reach Industrial Assets

Founding Team:

Yimeng Qin (CEO): PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University; chief developer of core vine robot technology (to graduate in March 2026).

Elvy Yao (COO): Master of Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University (graduating in December 2025); a key contributor to the Trellis platform in sensor housings, steering, and mechatronics.

William Heap (Technical Lead): PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University (to be a full-time employee after 2028); has been conducting research on vine robotic systems at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Stanford University since 2019.

YZi Labs' investment rationale:

Trellis Robotics addresses one of the most costly and hazardous challenges in industrial operations: the inspection of confined space infrastructure. Its unique vine-like robotic platform offers a level of precision, reach, and safety unmatched by human inspectors and existing tools, creating a significant competitive advantage in a large and underserved market. Early validation, including pilot projects with Dow Chemical and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as well as interest from BASF, Bayer, and Chevron, demonstrates that the technology is market-ready and has a viable path to enterprise-scale applications.