Sovryn, a Bitcoin-based DeFi protocol, has today announced that it secured $5.4 million in its latest funding round led by General Catalyst. The funds will be directed towards expanding Sovryn’s global financial operating system for providing individual self-sovereignty and financial autonomy to people around the world.
Besides General Catalyst, the other investors who participated in the funding round include Collider Ventures, Bering Waters, Bollinger Investment Group, and Balaji Srinivasan.
Sovryn’s Zero protocol public launch
The funding round came ahead of the public launch of Sovryn’s Zero protocol, which is a highly innovative lending product.
Zero will allow users to take out loans at 0% interest using bitcoin (BTC) holdings as collateral. The loans will also have no repayment or maturity dates. Users will decide when to pay them back if ever they want to repay.
The waitlist for access to the Zero protocol is already open.
Growing appetite for traditional investors to get involved in DeFi
Sovryn’S funding round that attracted traditional investors highlights the rapidly growing appetite from traditional investors to get involved in Bitcoin and decentralized finance (DeFi) despite the recent dramatic downturn of the crypto market. The funding round demonstrated the confidence that investors have in the crypto space in general.
According to General Catalyst managing director Kyle Doherty:
“We believe the team at Sovryn has the technical ability and community to build products that will actually fulfil the promise of DeFi by bringing it to the dominant network, Bitcoin. We are philosophically aligned with the goals of the Bitcoin and Sovryn networks to empower people, promote individual freedom, and achieve broader financial inclusion.”
The funding round was voted for and approved through a community governance vote on the Sovryn platform in a proposal named ‘The Sovryn Improvement Proposal (SIP).’ The governance style adopted by Sovryn is referred to as Bitocracy within the protocols ecosystem and it is geared towards ensuring that no entity makes major decisions or changes on the system independently.
In March 2021, investors including Anthony Pompliano, AscendEX, Gate.io, DeFi Technologies, Cadenza (a BitMEX-affiliated venture fund), Collider Ventures, Blockware Solutions, Monday Capital and Greenfield One participated in another Sovryn funding round.
What is Sovryn?
Sovryn is a leading Bitcoin-based fully community-owned and governed DeFi platform. Being built on Bitcoin, the protocol uses BTC as its primary token. It was launched a little over a year ago.
Sovryn delivers decentralized and autonomous finance at scale to bridge the gap between Bitcoin and the rest of the smart contract world for individuals and projects who want to access finances without being at the mercy of governments and intermediaries.
Sovryn offers a selection of financial services including sport and margin trading, liquidity pools, and borrowing and lending. It has so far seen a total of $1,552,421,305 spot traded, $112,131,176 margin traded, and $322 million borrowed and lent on the platform.
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