zkLend: blockchain money market protocol built on StarkNet raises $5M

zkLend, a money market protocol being built on StarkNet, has announced it has raised $5 million in seed-round funding led by Delphi Digital, anchored by StarkWare and Three Arrows Capital.

Produced on Starkware’s StarkNet, zkLend will be able to scale at a factor of 1-200 of Ethereum’s usual cost, while inheriting Ethereum’s high level of security.

In building one of the core primitives on StarkNet, the zkLend team will launch Artemis, their permissionless lending offering, in Q3 2022.

Artemis will enable DeFi users to borrow against their assets in a cheap, efficient, and safe way. Institutional and corporate users needing a KYC and AML-compliant solution will be able to use Apollo, the permissioned solution expected to launch early next year.

The funding from this round will go towards the launch of the aforementioned products Artemis and Apollo, in addition to team expansion across tech, marketing, and business development.

“zk-Rollups are the ultimate solution to true Ethereum scaling – where security is guaranteed by math not people. Building our next-generation money market protocol on StarkNet means that we inherit Ethereum’s security and decentralization while leveraging zk-Rollup’s massive scalability potential. For the first time, it means that permissionless and secure financial services that put individual sovereignty first are within reach. Given the passionate StarkNet community, we are certain that this will be the future L2.” said Jane Ma, Co-Founder of zkLend.

The protocol will adopt an ouroboros model to incentivize users to participate in the targeted money market pools. Other highlighted features enabled by zkLend include double-sided borrowing & collateralization factors, protocol-to-protocol lending, and variable liquidation fees.

ZEND, the native protocol token is a lynchpin of the protocol. Users staking ZEND will be able to enjoy governance, booster rate rewards, and claims to the interest income earned by the pools.

“zkLend has two products to cater to both DeFi users and whitelisted institutional users, serving as the fundamental money lego in the emerging zk-Rollup ecosystem of dapps and users,” commented Brian Fu, Co-Founder of zkLend.

Other investors in the seed round included Genesis Block Ventures, Alameda Research, CMS, MetaCartel DAO, DCVC, Amber Group, TPS Capital, Ascensive, D3Web Capital, 4RC, and SkyVision Capital.

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