Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Ref Finance has raised $4.8 million to build out its vision of a "one stop shop" for DeFi in the Near Protocol ecosystem.
According to an announcement, the strategic OTC sale was led by Jump Crypto, with participating investors including Alameda Research, Dragonfly Capital and Kucoin Ventures.
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.
What is Ref Finance?
Ref Finance is an automated market maker (AMM) and stableswap marketplace—essentially an AMM specifically for stablecoins—built atop Near Protocol. The platform aims to bring together DeFi tools including a decentralized exchange (DEX), lending protocol and synthetic asset issuer in a "one stop shop".
The Ref Finance platform claims to offer a trading experience close to that of centralized services, with low fees and "less than 2 seconds network transaction finality".
Using the platform's Rainbow Bridge, it's possible to transfer Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens to the NEAR ecosystem, where they can be swapped or used in Ref Finance's permissionless liquidity pools. Other asset bridges enable the trading of Solana, Terra and Celo in the NEAR ecosystem.
"We’re excited to support the Ref team in their mission to become the leading financial services platform and trading venue for the NEAR DeFi ecosystem," said Ashwin Ramachandran, General Partner at Dragonfly Capital, in a press release accompanying the announcement.
