B.Protocol Secures $2.2M in a Seed Round, Led by 1kx, To Make DeFi Liquidations Safer and More Efficient
We are excited to share that B.Protocol has recently closed a $2.2m seed funding round led by 1kx with participation from Robot Ventures, Spartan Group, Primitive Ventures, and Angel DAO. Some of the leading figures in DeFi have participated as well as angel investors in the round, including Jai Bhavnani (co-founder of Rari Capital), Ryan Sean Adams and David Hoffman (Bankless) Cyrus Younessi (ex-Head of Risk at MakerDAO), CKiller, and MonetSupply (Aave Risk, MakerDAO Risk, Tally).
The investors’ tokens were sent from the B.Protocol devs’ reserve to vesting smart contracts and will be gradually unlocked in a period of 4 years (until May 2025).
This round extends the project’s $2m pre-seed equity round made mid-2020 by Kyber Network.
The funding will be used to grow the B.Protocol core team, build new backstopped markets, and grow further into more L1 chains and L2 solutions, positioning B.Protocol as the Backstop of DeFi for any lending, trading, and synthetic asset platform in the ecosystem.
“We believe DeFi is still in its infancy and that infrastructure such as a Backstop primitive, is a crucial missing money lego to help the ecosystem scale in a secure and a decentralized way, while improving the capital efficiency platforms can offer to their users” Dr. Yaron Velner, B.Protocol’s founder and lead dev.
What is B.Protocol?
Capital efficiency in DeFi remains an issue. Lending platforms must offer their users low Loan to Value ratios, partly due to the lack of transparent and committed liquidity that can be used to liquidate risky debt.
B.Protocol solves this problem with an automated, transparent, user-based backstop solution for DeFi. “Backstoppers” can provide liquidity to the Backstop pools, enabling any user to participate and earn yield from liquidations that are taking place on the supported platforms. By democratizing the liquidation systems in DeFi protocols, B.Protocol offers higher stability to lending platforms.
Platforms can then turn these “Guaranteed Liquidations” into higher Loan to Value ratios, meaning their users could get a larger loan for the collateral they deposit in the platform. B.Protocol’s backstop solution also enables less liquid tokens to be borrowed against, a move that can open new frontiers for the entire DeFi ecosystem, creating new flows of capital. In addition, With its backstop solution, B.Protocol supports the fight against gas wars and MEV (Miners Extractable Value), shifting profits from miners back to the hands of the community.
“Liquidations are a key pillar of the DeFi ecosystem, and become especially crucial when markets are most turbulent. We couldn’t think of a more experienced team to build out this critical financial primitive, and can imagine that DeFi communities across the board will demand the “Backstopped by B.Protocol” badge to make sure their funds are safe in the most vulnerable moments.” Lasse Clausen, founding partner 1kx.
Where we are and where we’re going
B.Protocol is a fully decentralized protocol, governed by BPRO token holders, with around $75M TVL at the time of this writing.
Our backstop is already integrated with Liquity Protocol (LUSD), Hundred Finance (on Arbitrum), and has additional integrations with MakerDAO, Fuse, and others in the pipeline. The B.Protocol integration with Liquity is also available on Instadapp and has a Pickle Finance Jar built on top of it for extra auto-compounding of the LQTY rewards.
The focus going forward is on supporting new markets, integrating new protocols, extending integrations into more L1s and L2 scaling solutions, growing liquidity, and expanding the B.Protocol community.
We are hiring!
Want to join the growing B.Protocol team to help us achieve our vision of a safer and more efficient DeFi ecosystem?
We are looking for a community manager and developers — get in touch!
Want to join the B.Protocol community?
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