(Rejected) Crypto Startup Opyn Raises $2.16 Million Funding Round to Develop Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Interface
On June 22, the decentralized finance (DeFi) startup Opyn has revealed that its team has raised $2.16 million from investors. The funding rounding was led by Dragonfly Capital with participation from A. Capital, Uncorrelated Ventures, Version One Ventures, CoinFund, DTC Capital, and angel investors like Linda Xie, Robert Leshner, Dylan Field, Balaji Srinivasan, and others.
Super-Network for DeFi
Decentralized finance (DeFi) has recently gained significant traction and began to create substantial impact on financial systems. Protocols such as Balancer and Compound have started issuing specific tokens that boost their liquidity. As a result, services associated with decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols like risk management are grabbing users’ attention as users seek ways to hedge against perceived risks.
Opyn aims to address this problem, as it offers a two-side marketplace which is similar to a traditional insurance market. In DeFi, projects and users face threats and risks including market volatility, hacking, and the fluctuating value of Ethereum. With Opyn, consumers can protect themselves from such risks with protective put options identified as “oTokens.” Consumers can also deposit collaterals in a smart contract that allows them to sell and mint oTokens, thus earning premiums for protecting others. On the other hand, with Opyn, users can hedge Ethereum downside risk and protect their deposits by buying options contracts whose underlying asset can cover the value of their lost deposits.
With the funding capital raised, Opyn aims to bring risk management to decentralized finance (DeFi) thus further strengthening the position of the company as the primary DeFi platform available that allows crypto investors to hedge their Ether (ETH) and Decentralized Finance investments through options.
The firm intends to use this funding to make key hires, grow its team, and further protocol security and development. Security is Opyn’s top priority. With the additional funding, Opyn can continue investing even more in the security of the protocol.
Opyn has grown rapidly since founded in 2019. The San Francisco-based company has built a decentralized and open-source options protocol, which runs on the Ethereum blockchain. This protocol enables users to protect DeFi deposits as well as hedge against Ethereum risk.
DeFi Fosters More Open Economy
After the exponential boom and bust of the ICO economy, the decentralized finance community continued expanding financial services and products that are based on digital assets. Coinbase wallet recently enabled access of decentralized finance applications via iOS and Android. DeFi does not defy traditional finance, but has recreated traditional financial products using blockchain. The new features enable easier ways for wallet users to use DeFi platforms such as dYdX and Compound. For example, users can borrow and lend cryptocurrencies through smart contracts when their actions meet specific parameters, and many more.