Pledge, a Stanford-led decentralized lending protocol project, has successfully raised $3 million for its cross-chain ecosystem focused on long-term financing. It also aims to be one of the most innovative projects in the field of decentralized finance (DeFi).
DHVC, a Palo Alto-based venture capital company, has led the investment round. Gary LaBlanc, a U.C. Berkeley professor, and Stanford University community members Ray Wong and Torsten Wendl have also participated in the funding.
The fresh funds will advance Pledge’s ambitious goal of becoming one of the top crypto-asset lending platforms and set the stage for tokenized real-world assets.
A big Pledge to make
The Pledge project was initiated by a group of blockchain-focused researchers at Stanford University and supported by professors including Nicole Chang, Torsten Wendi, David Tse, and Ray Wong.
By using the Binance Smart Chain, the researchers aimed at infusing Pledge with long-term financing capabilities for crypto holders, because they believe that financing remains to be one of the most pressing problems in crypto investing.
Pledge makes this possible by allowing users to diversify their portfolios with non-crypto assets while being protected with interest-rate volatility. The protocol’s token, called “Pledge Tokens” or PGLR, has a total supply of 3 billion.
The DeFi rise
This year, the DeFi market’s popularity has risen rapidly and attracted a lot of investors who hope for higher earnings from this young market.
Aave, an open-source and non-custodial protocol, currently leads the highly competitive DeFi market, but a lot of new players are entering the market, aiming to establish a strong position by rolling out enticing offerings.
But even with the rise of the DeFi market, it is also facing serious challenges from regulators all over the world. Authorities are highly concerned about the protection of investors and are currently figuring out if the virtual assets managed by DeFi companies are bound by federal security laws.
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