Meet the EASY Residency Season 2 Cohort

2025.12.9 • 12 min read

Today, YZi Labs unveils the full lineup of founders and companies from EASY Residency Season 2 as they gather at Binance Blockchain Week to debut their work on Demo Day.

This season brings together founders building across Web3, AI, and Biotech, reflecting YZi Labs’ conviction that the next decade will be shaped by the convergence of three forces:

Blockchain to unlock ownership, scalability, and global liquidity
AI to accelerate creativity, labor, and intelligence
Biotech to extend healthier, longer lives

YZi Labs and EASY Residency back founders creating breakthrough technologies and unlocking global distribution at scale — from AI-driven drug discovery and robotic automation to the financial primitives and infrastructure powering a tokenized future.

Let’s meet the teams.

42.space: Trade real-world events like memecoins.

Founders:

Leo Zhang (Founder): ex-Head of Research (crypto fund NYC); prior KKR & MS Equity Derivatives; Stanford Math B.S.
Steve Kim (CTO): founding engineer at multiple startups (exits to Walmart/Discord); Stanford CS B.S.
Aleksi Ollikainen-Read (Strategy/Ops/Legal): ex-Consensys SMG Strategy & Ops Lead; taught law at Oxford; fellow at Harvard/Max Planck; Bar of E&W (2018).

Why YZi labs invest: 42.space is an asset issuance protocol that significantly broadens the scope of prediction markets.By structuring outcomes as token launchpads via bonding curves, 42.space allows users to create and trade assets related to real-world events. Trade like a liquid token; settle like a prediction market.

This innovative mechanism is driven by a powerhouse team of Stanford and Harvard alumni and Wall Street veterans, blending top-tier engineering with high-finance strategy. In partnership with BNB Chain, 42.space is expanding the horizons of DeFi by introducing novel, event-based assets to a massive user base.

4D Labs: Data collection, model development, and application of spatial intelligence large models

Founders:

Bruce Bai (CEO): PhD, Zhejiang University; serial entrepreneur with two prior computer-vision startups.
Ian Y. Xu (Co-founder): Postdoc, University of Michigan; PhD, CUHK; ex-Meta Reality Labs and SenseTime.
Xin Zhou (Co-founder): Principal AI Architect at Baidu USA; PhD, University of Michigan; 10+ years leading AI/GenAI systems.
Haoming (Co-founder): Postdoc, Peking University; PhD, Zhejiang University; ex-Baidu; published 10+ top AI papers; repeat founder (Deep Pink Elephant, xPerception acquired by Baidu).

Why YZi labs invest: 4D Labs operates at the convergence of AI, 3D, and Web3, addressing a foundational bottleneck in the spatial computing era: scalable, verifiable, high-quality 3D data. Its spatial large model and 3D data generation/acquisition pipeline, combined with a tokenized data-rights framework, position it as an early mover in 3D data infrastructure. As digital twins and embodied AI accelerate, ownership-backed 3D data networks will become essential — making 4D Labs a timely and strategic investment in the foundational layer of the next computing paradigm.

AllScale: Lightweight self-custodial neobank for cross-border business operations

Founders:

Shawn Pang (CEO) – ex- PM TikTok & Capital One payments; serial founder; ex-KuCoin listing.
Leo Wang (COO) – ex-Amazon, IBM, Scotiabank; fintech & infra builder.
Alisha Li (CMO) – ex-partner Fenghou Capital, ex-HP/Dell/Sun sales director.
Khalil Lin (Compliance) – licensed NY attorney; ex-Kraken, The Block.

Why YZi labs invest: AllScale is building a self-custodial stablecoin neobank that streamlines payments, payroll, and invoicing in a compliant and intuitive format for businesses. Our investment is driven by early indicators of strong product-market fit, supported by organic traction and solid retention metrics. AllScale is well-positioned to capture market share by combining the speed and transparency of stablecoins with a user experience aligned to the operational and compliance needs of modern businesses.

Advent: AI-driven platform for precision gene therapeutics

Founders:

Bonnie Zhu is an Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST); PhD from Stanford University.
Kai Liu is a Cheng Professor at HKUST and a globally recognized leader in neuroscience.
Yuan Yao, holds a Bioengineering PhD from Stanford University, Sales and Marketing Director for Port & Hemodialysis at Becton, Dickinson and Company.

Why YZi labs invest: Advent operates at the frontier of cell and gene therapy delivery, leveraging proprietary viral-protein datasets and a purpose-built, AI-driven platform to accelerate adeno-associated virus (AAV) capsid discovery from months to weeks. Its in-house high-throughput data, scalable pipeline of differentiated capsid IP, and synthetic capsids that outperform natural serotypes create a defensible technical moat in a rapidly expanding market. A strong team and clear technological differentiation, Advent represents a well-timed entry opportunity aligned with major cell and gene therapy (CGT) market precedents

AgriDynamics: Fruit harvesting robot that solves the farm labor crisis.

Founders:

Dr. Zhaojian Li (CTO) is a Red Cedar Distinguished Associate Professor at Michigan State University, leads the commercialization of a patented modular apple-picking robot developed through NSF and USDA funding.
Kyle Lammers (CEO) has been working on the apple picking robot for six years; earned Michigan Agbio Innovation Award, ASABE Best Student Presentation Award, ASABE ITS Community Best Paper Award

Why YZi labs invest: The company solves one of the most acute cost and labor challenges in U.S. specialty agriculture—apple harvesting, where labor drives ~70% of production costs—through a patented, field-validated robotic platform already endorsed by major grower associations. Its modular, commercially ready system and defensible IP provide a clear first-mover advantage in a multi-billion-dollar category. With a scalable roadmap into other high-value crops and recurring service/software revenue, the company is well positioned to become core automation infrastructure for specialty agriculture.

Bento.fun: Social Layer for Prediction Markets

Founders:

Abhitej Singh (CEO) – ex-Persistence/pSTAKE growth lead; co-founded Cosmos India; founded Filament ($100M vol, $1.15M raised)
Pratyaksh Inani (CPO) – quant trader since 13; ex-Persistence treasury/product; co-founded Filament.
Rajeeb Kumar (Engineer) – ex-Nethermind, IIT grad, 6 years DeFi/contract engineering, 10× hackathon winner.

Why YZi labs invest: Bento turns everyday fan debates in Telegram, Twitter, and WhatsApp into $1–$10 micro-duels across simple, fast formats, opening a large casual-fan surface with meaningful volume potential. The founders bring strong domain expertise and are targeting high-velocity global fandoms such as cricket and F1. As a native prediction-market primitive on BNB Chain, Bento aligns directly with our ecosystem strategy and drives broader on-chain participation through low-friction social wagering.

FingerDance: AI infrastructure for 70M deaf people with sign language translation.

Founders:

Kevin Gong (Co-founder) — M.S. Business Analytics (NUS); Miracle Plus fellow.
Alex Xu (Co-founder) — Ph.D. Computer Science (Peking University);
Enzo Xu (Co-founder) — MSE Computer & Information Science (UPenn);

Why YZi labs invest: Sign Language is the first language for the global Deaf community, yet access to information remains restricted by a critical lack of interpreters. FingerDance addresses this underserved market head-on. By deploying a state-of-the-art Sign Language Large Language Model (SL-LLM), FingerDance uses AI to provide real-time, scalable translation services that human infrastructure simply cannot match. With five years of dedicated work alongside the Deaf community, the team is uniquely positioned to revolutionize communication accessibility

Frontrun: Pro trader’s wallet purpose-built for fast discovery, due diligence, and execution.

Founders:

Chris (Founder/CEO): Ex-Robinhood Crypto (built deposit/withdraw), founding engineer at Sui (led 8-person team to build explorer, SDK, RPC, wallet with 1M+ users).

Why YZi Labs invest: Frontrun is a trader-focused wallet designed for fast discovery, rapid due diligence, and seamless execution — directly addressing clear, high-frequency trader pain points. Early organic traction and strong retention validate the product’s fit with an attractive initial wedge: the high-value trader segment within a multi-billion-dollar TAM (evidenced by $1B+ in annual Solana fees alone). Its multi-chain roadmap and alignment with the BNB Chain DeFi ecosystem make Frontrun a strategically relevant addition to the broader trading infrastructure stack.

Help.fun: crypto launchpad for nonprofit tokens

Founders:

Helena Everley - Co-founder & CEO, previously started an AI company, Stanford undergrad, Z Fellow.
Arash Attar - Co-founder & CTO, previously built one of the fastest mobile trading app for memecoins and developed high-performance sneaker bots.
Bill Tai - Co-founder, VC with over 23 IPOs.

Why YZi Labs invest: Help.fun is building crypto-native fundraising rails that allows

nonprofits and startups to raise. Its anti-bot mechanics addresses long-standing integrity gaps in on-chain fundraising and creates equitable participation for charity tokens. Moreover, the price action mechanics and innovations in legal structure allows for startups to launch tokens backed by real equity and revenue. Strong early execution and alignment with BNB Chain's culture and liquidity position Help.fun as a scalable on-chain fundraising vehicle for mission-driven organizations.

Hertzflow: Permissionless Leverage Market for Any Assets

Founders:

Vincent Shang— Co-founder; 10+ years in crypto and one of the most influential Chinese CT KOLs.
Hero — Co-founder & Product Lead; previously at Coinbase working on CDP and Prime MPC Wallet.
Soren — Tech Lead; former core developer at Mantle (early engineering team, built from scratch).

Why YZi labs invest: Hertzflow is bridging the gap between the $4.5 trillion daily traditional retail derivatives market and the on-chain economy. Led by a team with deep domain expertise in traditional derivatives, the protocol is specifically designed to onboard the massive, untapped user base of non-crypto native traders. With a technically mature product operating within the BNB Chain ecosystem, Hertzflow combines the efficiency of permissionless on-chain settlement with a user experience tailored for the vast global trading market.

Manifolds: AI-powered, 3D space-based controllable video generation platform

Founders:

Qingyuan Shan (CEO): Ex–SVP Enterprise at Heywhale; former Head of Corporate Strategy at Taiyang Chuanhe; U. Buffalo BS Math, Columbia MS Applied Analytics.
Yudong Tao (CTO): Former Research Data Scientist at Meta; Fudan BS EE, University of Miami PhD Computer Engineering.
Naiyuan Huang (COO): Ex–Head of Sales & Marketing at Heywhale (Series A); CEIBS alumnus; previously scaled China’s second-largest AI talent community.

Why YZi Labs invest: Manifolds is a focused bet on controllable, 3D-aware AI video as an enabling layer for next-generation content creation and embodied-AI applications. Its technical differentiation — including 3D spatial generation, physics-aware simulation, hybrid rendering, and fine-grained object/camera control — positions it well across high-growth verticals such as e-commerce visualization and real-world–integrated AI systems. Strong early traction ($150K in ARR, 60 paid enterprise clients achieved without paid marketing) demonstrates clear product readiness, scalability potential, and strong founder-market fit.

MeleeMon: Competitive mobile game using stablecoin wagering

Founders:

Alex (CEO): Top-500 competitive Pokémon player for four years; strong founder–market fit. YC ’19.
Jasper (CTO): 6+ years of Unity and React development experience. YC ’19.

Why YZi labs invest: MeleeMon is a mobile, skill-based monster-battle game built by a team with strong founder–market fit — combining YC-backed gaming experience (5M+ users at their previous company, Gamebytes) with deep credibility in competitive Pokémon and clear understanding of blockchain-enhanced game economies. The project targets a large, proven Web2 wager-gaming market while introducing a fresh, competitive gameplay loop on-chain. As YZi Labs prioritizes high-quality, fun gaming experiences on BNB Chain, MeleeMon represents a strong strategic fit with credible execution capacity.

Neomera BioLab: Drug discovery platform to deliver better non-opioid therapies for chronic pain and major chronic diseases.

Founders:

Rebecca Miao (CEO): 15+ years in drug development; ex-CSO of AKSO Bio; led multiple FDA-cleared INDs; secured a $75M pharma partnership; holds 200+ patents; Stanford postdoc.
Jimmy Xu (CTO): Johns Hopkins BS; Stanford PhD/postdoc in bioengineering; specialist in drug screening optimization and biomedical AI.
Yi Lu (CFO): an investor-turned-serial-entrepreneur who built a novel pain therapy from concept to trials, earning top international publications and awards; holds an MBA from Stanford University; previously at Bain Capital and Madrone Capital partners.

Why YZi labs invest: Neomera tackles the urgent need for non-addictive pain therapies for over 1 billion chronic pain sufferers. Its biology-first, AI-accelerated discovery platform creates a distinct advantage: the capability to generate proprietary, highly relevant in-house data and successfully target indications that traditional methods fail to address. This tightly integrated wet-lab + ML loop fundamentally compresses experimental timelines by up to 80%, establishing a scalable, differentiated engine for rapid drug development across difficult-to-drug chronic diseases.

Sats Terminal: Native Bitcoin liquidity protocol

Founders:

Stan Havryliuk (CEO): Former senior leader at Bitcoin.com, ZondaCrypto, and Ambisafe; scaled multiple teams from 5 → 50.
Rishabh Java (CTO): Serial fintech founder with an exit; built multiple Bitcoin products; former CTO at Ordinals Council, ToshiPad, and Crackedevs.

Why YZi Labs invest: Building on BTC, and EVM chains (primarily BNB and Base), Sats Terminal operates in a large, expanding market driven by rising demand for BTC-backed loans, yield and trading. They entered the market with an aggregation model for swaps where they quickly gained an impressive B2B base (75% of all Runes transactions; 30+ integrations) and now expanding into Bitcoin credit and yield markets with strong initial traction. Early institutional backing includes a $1.7M pre-seed led by Coinbase Ventures and Draper Associates.

Saturn Labs: 10%+ Yield, Backed by Bitcoin Credit

Founders:

Kevin Li (Co-Founder & CEO): Co-founder, Research @ ParaFi; former DAT Lead @ Artemis
Sebastian Melendez (Co-Founder & CTO): Co-founder, Ex - Stablecoin Lead @ Artemis
Ellis Osborn (Co-Founder & COO): President, Penn Blockchain; former Investor @ M31 Capital

Why YZi Labs invest: YZi Labs backed Saturn because the team is building a 10%+ yield-bearing stablecoin powered by MicroStrategy’s STRC, a transparent, institutionally credible Bitcoin-credit instrument. Saturn sits at the convergence of stablecoins, DATs, and RWAs, three of the fastest-growing sectors in crypto. Demand for transparent, scalable, real yield reserves is accelerating, and the founding team brings deep experience across DATs, DeFi, and stablecoin architecture—positioning Saturn to become a core layer of the onchain economy.

Predict.fun: Prediction market solving capital inefficiency with DeFi-boosted liquidity

Founders:

Ding — ex-consulting/investment banking; joined Binance in 2017 and built the Research & Listing team; led Binance Launchpad (2019); founded PancakeSwap (2020); co-founded Predict.fun (2024).

Why YZi Labs invest: Predict.fun enables a new class of mainstream prediction markets by turning event trading into a yield-generating, leverage-enabled, self-custodial financial primitive — allowing users to fully access DeFi while participating. By integrating DeFi-native yield, seamless on-chain UX (AA, gasless transactions), and composability, the protocol lowers adoption friction and positions prediction markets as an accessible, utility-driven product for a broader, non-crypto-native audience.

Trellis Robotics: AI capable soft robotic platform that unlocks unreachable industrial assets.

Founders:

Yimeng Qin (CEO) – Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford; lead developer of the core vine-robot technology (completing March 2026).
Elvy Yao (COO) — M.S. Mechanical Engineering at Stanford (completing Dec 2025); key contributor to sensor housing, steering, and mechatronics for the Trellis platform.
William Heap (Technical Lead) — Stanford Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. candidate (full-time post-2028); working on vine-robot systems since 2019 across UCSB and Stanford.

Why YZi Labs invest: Trellis Robotics addresses one of the most costly and hazardous challenges in industrial operations: inspecting confined-space infrastructure. Its differentiated vine-robot platform provides precision, reach, and safety levels that human inspectors and existing tools cannot match, creating a clear moat in a large, underserved market. Early validation — including pilots with Dow and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and interest from BASF, Bayer, and Chevron — demonstrates strong demand readiness and a credible path to enterprise-scale adoption.