Compound Launches Money Markets for Ethereum Assets
San Francisco — September 27, 2018 — Today, Compound is launching its money market protocol on the Ethereum blockchain — allowing individuals, institutions, and applications to frictionlessly earn interest on or borrow cryptographic assets without having to negotiate with a counterparty or peer. Each market has a dynamic borrowing interest rate, which floats in real-time as market conditions adjust.
After significant testing, and external audits led by Trail of Bits and Certora, the Compound protocol has been deployed to the Ethereum address 0x3FDA67f7583380E67ef93072294a7fAc882FD7E7, and initially supports the following markets:
- Ether (Wrapped via WETH-9)
- 0x Protocol (ZRX)
- Basic Attention Token (BAT)
- Augur (REP)
“Blockchain assets are novel and exciting, but they lack the most fundamental financial infrastructure — efficient interest rates,” says Compound’s Founder and CEO Robert Leshner, CFA. “Over time, hundreds of trillions of dollars of assets will be tokenized, but the institutions that deploy them will require the usefulness of traditional financial markets — today’s launch is just the first step.”
Compound’s protocol is accessible through the Compound App using a Web3 browser (such as Metamask or Coinbase Wallet) and an Ethereum address. For real-time market and protocol statistics, Compound has published a transparency dashboard. This is the first public release of the Compound Protocol, and should be considered extremely experimental technology — use of the protocol should occur only after reading the source code for yourself, and making your own determination of it’s safety.
In May of 2018, Compound announced $8.2 million in Seed funding. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain Capital, and Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Transmedia Capital, Abstract Ventures, South Park Commons, Compound VC, and Danhua Capital.
About Compound
Compound’s mission is to establish frictionless money markets for cryptographic assets, allowing investors to share a larger economic pie. The company was founded in 2017 by Robert Leshner, CFA, and Geoff Hayes, and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
