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About Codex
Codex is a stablecoin-focused L2 on Ethereum, built with OP Stack and using USDC for gas, aimed at cross-border payments, FX conversion and B2B settlement. Fees on general-purpose chains move with congestion, so payment applications cannot fix costs in contracts, and converting between fiat and stablecoins still runs through several intermediaries with settlement measured in days. Codex posts transaction data and proofs back to Ethereum, uses native stablecoins as the unit of account and for fees, and hooks issuer compliance checks into the protocol so onchain transfer and offchain screening happen in one step; its wholesale FX platform merges fiat on-ramping and stablecoin swaps into a single quote flow.
The trade-off is a single sequencer and thin liquidity: the team runs sequencing, concentrating liveness risk, and sparse onchain DeFi activity makes the chain read more as a settlement rail than a general execution environment. Commercial focus has shifted toward OTC FX and fiat corridors rather than the public-chain ecosystem itself.
Key milestones in Codex's development as a stablecoin payment infrastructure include: completing a $15.8 million seed round led by Dragonfly Capital with participation from Wintermute, Coinbase Ventures, and Circle Ventures, establishing the project's capital foundation. Subsequently, Codex Chain, a Layer 2 blockchain built on OP Stack, officially launched its mainnet with native USDC support, marking the realization of its technical infrastructure. Founded by former Optimism developer Haonan Li, the project aims to address pain points in enterprise stablecoin adoption. Codex plans to launch institutional-grade services in the Philippines and expand to regions including Singapore, the UK, Dubai, and Hong Kong, demonstrating its commercialization path.
Codex announced a $15.8 million seed round on April 4, 2026, led by Dragonfly with participation from Circle Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Cumberland, Wintermute, and Selini Capital.
In July 2026 it launched Codex Par (a 1:1 USDC-USDT swap API for payment operators); Codex FX surpassed $1 billion in monthly cleared volume with settlement under 30 minutes; and Codex Chain's native USDC supply exceeded $52 million in January, adding the Korean won stablecoin KRWQ.
Future strategy and roadmap: Codex closed a 15.8 million dollar seed round in April and in July launched Codex Par, a 1:1 USDC-to-USDT conversion API for payment operators, alongside the Codex FX settlement platform clearing over 1 billion dollars monthly with sub-30-minute settlement. Next it will decentralize Codex Chain, currently run by a single sequencer, and extend Codex FX currency coverage to emerging-market currencies such as the Chilean peso, Colombian peso, Turkish lira and Argentine peso, growing on-chain supply of native USDC and the Korean-won stablecoin KRWQ.
Founder and CEO Mark Lurie earned an MBA at Harvard Business School, previously built and sold the fine-art trading project Lofty, and started Codex in 2017 with John Forrest and Jess Houlgrave. COO Jess Houlgrave came from the art market and compliance side, having worked at Sotheby's and an art-finance advisory firm, and turned a large consortium of auction houses into a working relationship surface before shifting to digital-asset policy research. CTO John Forrest owns the protocol and indexing layers and led the conversion of the title registry into composable metadata services. Co-founder Alex Gordon-Brander serves as chief evangelist and previously worked at Bridgewater Associates. The founding team kept direct control of engineering and operations, with engineering, operations and compliance reporting on separate lines.