Ref Finance Raises $4.8M To Establish DeFi On Near Protocol

By Kevin • February 19, 2022 2:44 pm • Comments

Ref Finance is an established decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol  that just recently raised $4.8 million to accelerate the growth of DeFi on the Near Protocol.

The recent funding involved multiple investors and was led by Jump Crypto while having other prominent investors such as Alameda Research, Dragonfly Capital and Kucoin Ventures.

The company states that the funds raised will be used to hire new employees and to build DeFi services that will specifically enhance the emerging blockchain network to be able to take advantage of the growing DeFi industry.

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The company sees this as an important priority if it ever wanted to compete with other top blockchain networks all of which are also focusing on adding DeFi to their list of use cases.

DeCrypto.co reports:

The funds raised will be used to expand the Ref Finance team and “build DeFi services that would better support the NEAR ecosystem.”

“We are excited to partner with Ref Finance as they build one of core DeFi primitives on NEAR”, said Saurabh Sharma, Partner and Head of Venture at Jump Crypto, in a press release accompanying the announcement.

Sharma said that Near Protocol’s technology, including its dynamically sharded proof-of-stake design and support for developer-friendly languages including Rust and AssemblyScript, positions it as one of the leading Web3 platforms.

“We believe Ref will play an important role in its growth,” Sharma added.

Within the DeFi space, Ref Finance is specifically an automated market maker which are key for decentralized exchanges to operate correctly and efficiently.

As the Near Protocol network is looking to build out multi-chain operability so that its network can communicate with other blockchains, Ref Finance would help the Near Protocol act as a liquidity gateway.

As of right now, the Near Protocol already allows for the trading of other digital assets like ether, Solana, and Luna through the use of asset bridges.

Investors are optimistic that the launch of this project will allow for the Near Protocol to get closer to larger DeFi adoption.

CoinDesk reports:

Bowen Shen, co-founder of Proximity Labs, the team behind Ref Finance, in an interview with CoinDesk said that trading on Near costs around 1 cent a transaction and has a one to two second transaction finality.
Building on Near allows Ref Finance to “be a step closer to DeFi retail adoption,” he said.
“The raise will be mainly used to expand the team to continue building out DeFi products and services that better serve the ecosystem, the partners and the users,” Shen told CoinDesk.
“Our investors in this round are some of the most credible VCs in the DeFi space; we consider their experience and strategic alignment the most valuable part in this funding round.”
At the time of writing, the Near Protocol has a total market cap of $7.2 billion and is currently ranked the 23rd largest on CoinMarketcap.

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