In 2022, the popular blockchain bridge plans to expand its services.
One of the oldest cross-chain bridges has announced a $7.5 million funding round in order to expand functionality with a cross-chain automatic market maker (AMM).
According to a press release distributed to the media on Wednesday, Ren Labs, the creators of the popular bridge Ren, announced the raise with participation from Amber Group, Multicoin Capital, BlockTower Capital, Cumberland DRW, GBV Capital, Chiron, Fisher8 Capital, LedgerPrime, Bixin, and PetRock Capital.
The funds will be used to advance the development of Catalog, a new AMM that will be the first application built on the upcoming Ren blockchain.
Catalog has been in the works since at least October 2021, when Ren announced the formation of Ren Labs with the goal of expanding the protocol’s functionality in order to build a new, interoperable chain.
Susruth Nadimpalli, co-founder of Ren Labs, stated in an interview that the new platform’s goal was to simplify the AMM experience for users – even those on chains that did not have smart-contract functionality.
“With Catalog, we want to bring DeFi to blockchains that don’t have DeFi,” he explained.
Features
Catalog will have a number of unique features when it launches.
Catalog, according to Nadimpalli, will try to mitigate impermanent loss through single-sided staking, in which users deposit assets that are then managed by a market maker, earning interest on the asset they deposit. Impermanent loss occurs when the quantity of an asset locked into an AMM pool changes as a result of trades against liquidity, resulting in an unrealized loss for the user in comparison to holding the asset on its own.
A temporary loss protection insurance pool will also be built into the functionality of a future Catalog token.
According to a press release, Catalog will also be able to interact directly with users’ bank accounts for “easy deposits and withdrawals.” There were no specifics on how this would be accomplished.
The goal of the design is to simplify the user experience by abstracting away the “extreme complexity on the backend,” according to Nadimpalli.
The team is currently aiming for an April launch for Catalog and a full Ren chain launch in “Q3 or Q4”, though the full launch is contingent on a number of outstanding technical and integration-based milestones baked into Catalog’s development.
Ren’s long-term goal is to develop a full suite of DeFi products.
“Once we solve these problems for Catalog, we’ll be able to solve them for the entire Ren chain, and then other people will be able to build on it as well,” Nadimpalli explained.
Disclaimer: These are the writer’s opinions and should not be considered investment advice. Readers should do their own research.
