Flavors of Innovation in the DeFi Cuisine
With its passing of BIP 59 in the last couple of weeks, the Balanced platform has turned itself into a tasty main course. We’re talking RWA backed savings rate, cross-chain native swaps and economic enshrinement into the ICON Network 💯 Let’s take a look at all three dishes below.
RWA backed Savings Rate, powered by HiYield
The Balanced Savings Rate provides a new earning opportunity for users who hold bnUSD. It is partially backed by tokenized real world assets, which are being bridged over using ICON technology!
It’s quite exciting that Balanced is tapping into the benefits of asset tokenization by collaborating with the HiYield application on the Avalanche blockchain. HiYield facilitates a Treasury Bill Pool with a TVL of $1,348,871 and an estimated APR of 4,47% at the time of writing.
Below we can see HiYield Co-founder Benny Options explain how USDC tokens from the Balanced stability fund are being actively converted to yield bearing tokenized real world assets:
Instead of holding bnUSD in your wallet, you can now deposit it into the Balanced platform and earn a share of Balanced’s revenue. The % APR tends to fluctuate, but you can check it out yourself by visiting the Balanced app here.
Cross-chain Native Swaps
Balanced’s cross-chain journey officially began at the tail end of last year. Users can since connect an Archway wallet to swap and transfer assets cross-chain within seconds.
“So what can we expect next?”
Balanced uses ICON’s General Message Passing (xCall) to go cross-chain and a peek at this integrations overview might give us a hint! Though it must be said that the recent BIP62 proposal is a little less ambiguous:
“This proposal if approved will allow BNB tokens to be traded on Balanced. Also enables swaps directly between Avalanche (AVAX) and BSC (BNB). It does not however make it ready for the frontend. However it allows the ICON network to start accruing liquidity in preparation for a full launch.”
With a 99,89% approval rate at the time of writing, it is very likely that both BNB and AVAX tokens will become available for cross-chain native swaps in the near future!
Economic Enshrinement of Balanced
ICON has made no secret of its ambitious goal to position Balanced as a leading decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, drive adoption for ICON tech ánd generate revenue for the network.
A big part of this strategy has been to economically enshrine the Balanced app into the ICON Network. As a result, asset backed emissions are already enhancing user experience through well-funded liquidity pools. More detailed specifics of the economic enshrinement are best found in this forum post. Nonetheless, a share of Balanced’ fees is now already directly burning ICX tokens 🔥 as well!
The Balanced platform and ICON Network look to be working together closer than ever. Making great use of cross-chain (RWA) opportunities and creating a vastly improved environment for its users thanks to the aforementioned economic enshrinement.
Of course, tastes differ! So always be sure to stay with your own risk appetite and do your own research into new developments in the (cross-chain) blockchain space.
- Follow me on X if you’re hungry for more.
- Follow ICON on X if you’re craving cross-chain tech.
- Follow HiYield on X if you like the taste of t-bills.
- Follow Balanced on X if you want to save for later.
👋 David
