• BENQI, the first DeFi lending platform on Avalanche, has reached over $1 billion in total value locked.
• The platform has plans to collaborate with cross-chain projects as part of the Avalanche Rush initiative.

BENQI, the first DeFi lending platform on Avalanche, has announced having over $1 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL). Launched just last Thursday, the non-custodial liquidity market protocol enables easy lending, borrowing, and interest-earning through digital assets. Liquidity providers earn a passive income while borrowers can do so with over-collateralization (OC). Users also get to access cost-efficient liquidity on-demand and participate in protocol governance by earning the Qi native token.

Importantly, the Avalanche Rush initiative and Avalanche Bridge helped advance BENQI’s liquidity. The former brings more applications and assets to Avalanche while the latter eases the transfer of Avalanche and Ethereum tokens. BENQI Co-Founder, JD Gagnon noted;

This has been an incredible week for the team and we are overwhelmed by the amount of support our partners and the Avalanche community has shown us leading up to this. The Avalanche Rush initiative coupled with the new Avalanche Bridge has proved to be a major catalyst for the rush of liquidity to not only BENQI but the rest of the Avalanche DeFi ecosystem. A big thank you to everyone involved!

We’re currently optimizing the protocol, and have plans to collaborate with projects going cross-chain to Avalanche as part of the Avalanche Rush initiative.

BENQI and the DeFi industry

In the past two years, the DeFi industry has grown incredibly. Its unprecedented 2020 boom led to a 400+ percent surge with the market’s TVL approaching $50 billion. This year alone, the TVL locked on DeFi protocols has swelled by over 600 percent. The explosive growth has been fueled by stablecoin adoption, underbanked financial services, and remarkable innovation.

Nevertheless, since most DeFi projects exist on Ethereum, the network has become congested resulting in unbearably high network fees. This has been a weighty obstacle for existing users and a notable entry barrier for new users.

Built on a highly scalable and decentralized platform, BENQI aims to resolve all these issues. Its approachable and simplified platform allows users to instantly supply and withdraw liquidity from a shared liquidity market. BENQI also allows instant borrowing from a liquidity market, with users’ supplied assets making collateral. Even more, users get to have 24/7 real-time and transparent interest rate updates based on assets’ market supply and demand.

Notable milestones

BENQI did its initial coin offering between 28 Apr – 29 Apr. Out of the total 7.2 billion tokens, 25 percent were available for sale, raising $6 million. BENQI also partnered with Avalanche Foundation to launch up to $3 million in liquidity mining incentives to expand Avalanche’s DeFi ecosystem. AVAX, Avalanche’s native token will be offered as a reward to lenders and borrowers of crypto assets on BENQI. More incentive programs for BENQI users are expected soon.

Recently, BENQI closed a $6 million investment round backed by Avalanche Foundation, Dragonfly Capital, Mechanism Capital, Arrington XRP Capital, and the Spartan Group.