Forte Protocol

Forte was founded in San Francisco in 2019 by Kevin Chou and Josh Williams to give game publishers compliant onchain economy tools, letting items, tokens and trades operate within regulatory limits.

In November 2021 Forte raised a $725 million Series B led by Sea Capital and Kora Management, with a16z, Tiger Global, Solana Ventures, Polygon Studios, Animoca and Warner Music participating, for about $910 million in total funding.

Its PTI entity obtained financial transaction licences for blockchain games in February 2022; in December 2024 Forte open-sourced its Rules Engine, encoding minting, transfer, lockup and sanctions checks directly onchain.

In February 2025 Forte acquired identity and privacy company Sealance and in July partnered with Sequence for payments, widening its remit from games to stablecoins, RWAs and cross-border payments.

In May 2026 Forte launched Fairground, a perpetuals exchange on Arbitrum with no funding rates, bootstrapped through a Season 0 testnet and XP program, marking a shift from infrastructure to running its own venue.

Nearly $910 million raised sets high expectations, yet no token has launched, and Fairground's mainnet timing and real volume will decide whether Forte turns compliance into revenue.

Forte, founded in 2018, builds on-chain compliance infrastructure. Its core product, the Rules Engine, decouples compliance logic from business contracts: projects define graduated KYC and know-your-wallet verification, sanctions list screening, risk-based transaction limits, lockups and vesting schedules, and caps on minting, burning and transfers, all without modifying the core contract, with rules that are upgradable and reusable. The engine is open source, shipped with an SDK and Trackers that persist on-chain values for rules to evaluate, and supports EVM chains including Ethereum and Polygon. Through the acquisition of Sealance it gained a ZK Policy Engine that enforces identity and policy checks using zero-knowledge proofs without ever storing or accessing personal information.

On funding, early investors included a16z, Griffin Gaming Partners, Union Square Ventures and Animoca Brands, while later coverage cites roughly $725 million raised in total with participation from Coinbase, Galaxy, Animoca Brands, Samsung Next, Polygon Studios and Solana Ventures. The 2026 product is Fairground, a perpetual trading environment built on Forte emphasising transparent pricing, no funding rates and upside-only rebates across crypto, FX, equities and commodities. Season 0 is live on the Arbitrum Sepolia testnet, where approved traders receive testnet USDC each daily epoch and accumulate wallet-bound XP from a fixed pool according to their relative activity.

Future strategy and roadmap: Forte has expanded from game economy compliance tooling into an underlying architecture for tokenised economies, running RWA investor access and collateral checks, redemption and access rules for compliant stablecoins, and integrated identity and payment rails on the same programmable policy layer, with Fairground as the commercial attempt of that capability in trading. The risk is that a compliance engine is worth what regulation actually compels: if on-chain enforcement remains voluntary, projects treat the Rules Engine as optional rather than essential. The testnet XP programme is also not a commitment to a token, and whether Fairground converts testnet activity into real volume remains unproven.

Josh Williams is co-founder and chief executive. He began as a serial entrepreneur across games and interactive entertainment, founded Forte in 2018 and in 2026 owns strategy and regulatory affairs.

Kevin Chou is a co-founder who previously co-founded the esports organisation Gen.G and served as its chief executive. He handles capital strategy, publisher relationships and ecosystem growth.

Brett Seyler is a co-founder with an MSc in mathematics, economics and political science from the University of Oregon, and was earlier a general manager at GarageGames and Unity.

Christopher Jimison is chief technology officer and was earlier director of technology at the games company DeNA. He owns the rules engine architecture and in 2026 leads the zero-knowledge policy engine.

Bela Pandya is chief financial officer. She previously held finance vice president roles at Rocket Fuel and Credit Karma, and in 2026 runs global finance and audit.

In April 2026, Jared Grey officially joined Forte Protocol as Chief Strategy Officer (CSO). Previously, he served as "Head Chef" of SushiSwap and Managing Director of Sushi Labs, bringing extensive management and product experience in DeFi. In his new role, he will lead the strategic rollout of Forte's new non-funding-rate perpetual DEX, "Fairground," helping expand its presence in on-chain compliance and decentralized trading markets.

This key executive appointment marks Forte's further push into the DeFi trading sector beyond compliance infrastructure. Jared Grey's industry connections and governance expertise are expected to accelerate ecosystem development.

2022, Provenance Technologies, the compliance business incubated by Forte, obtained a New York State Department of Financial Services virtual currency licence (BitLicense), letting it issue, custody and exchange virtual assets, including NFTs, for blockchain games.