Parker McKeeThe past 2 years in DeFi have given us an early view into what can happen when you bring global, trustless financial products to anyone with a digital wallet.
The results have been exciting, with billions of dollars taking part in trading, lend/borrow, derivatives, and insurance.
Yet, the DeFi experience today has been limited with slow transaction times, high fees, and poor user onboarding.
Unique to Web3, DeFi projects inherit the pros and cons of the protocols upon which they are built. As large Algorand supporters, it felt obvious that the protocol’s speed, scalability, and security made it the perfect solution to many of DeFi’s problems.
When we met the AlgofFi team, two things stood out — the brilliance of the team, and the size of their vision.
AlgoFi’s two founders are ex-citadel colleagues, John Clarke, who graduated from MIT in CS and Math, and Owen Colegrove who received a Ph.D. in Physics at UCSD. Their vision is to build the first crypto native bank with multiple products and users all around the world. We were immediate believers, and started working with the team to think through how they could move their vision forward.
Last week, AlogFi’s first product, a decentralized lending protocol, launched mainnet allowing users to lend and borrow assets with no trusted intermediary. The team also launched an algorithmic stable coin (STBL) that will provide utility throughout their platform.
Over the coming months, the AlgoFi team will grow their product suite with the goal of bringing DeFi to the masses.
We are thrilled to join our friends at Union Square Ventures and Arrington XRP to lead AlgoFi’s $2.8M seed round.