DeFi Projects We Have Our Eyes On

Decentralized finance (DeFi) helps minimize our reliance on central authorities like governments and institutions, whose power has grown as our economies have become more complex. DeFi helps you manage your money without depending on anyone in power, allowing you to issue, manage, and exchange crypto assets in an open and verifiable way. Here are a few projects we’ve come across in the lending and borrowing, investing, and insurance spaces doing interesting things in the DeFi space.

Lending & Borrowing

• InstaDApp
  InstaDApp acts as a Smart Wallet for DeFi. It uses smart contracts operating on algorithmic logic in order to secure transactions, storing your assets on Contract Wallet. This makes all user transactions traceable and irreversible. Users need an ethereum web3 wallet like Metamask, Coinbase Wallet, TrustWallet, Imtoken etc to interact with the service’s portal and a mobile app is on its way.
• DeFi Rate
  DefiRate bills itself as a trusted resource for all things DeFi, and its main page allows you to explore interest rates from the top cryptocurrency lending protocols and crypto banks, which is updated every day. You don’t have to worry about sifting through projects and trying to pick out what’s worth looking into — DeFi Rate states that it only reports on what they deem reputable to keep up the quality of its resources.
• Aave
  Aave is an open-source and non-custodial lending and borrowing protocol to earn interest on deposits and to borrow assets. Some of the functionality includes flash loans that let users borrow quickly without putting up collateral, and rate switching, in which users can switch between stable and variable to get the best rates when the market is on their side. Check it out here.

Investing

• Set
  Set is a decentralized algorithmic asset-management protocol for investing in digital asset indices and crypto investment strategies. A Set is a smart basket ERC20 token that represents a fully collateralized portfolio of other assets including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and fiat-pegged coins that automatically rebalances based on the strategy you choose. This makes investing easier so you don’t have to manage your multiple assets manually.
• Melon
  Melon’s Ethereum-based protocol helps people and investment managers manage their wealth in customized, on-chain investment vehicles. They are working to solve the current problems of the current fund industry, which is a “complicated web of financial intermediaries required for compliance, auditing, administration, custody and overseeing transactions” that make fund operations expensive and lacking in transparency. Learn more about Melon’s solution here.

Insurance

• saveDAI
  This DeFi project lets you open an insured, high-interest savings account — without a bank. According to the creators, “saveDAI deposits your DAI into Compound and receives back cDAI, then purchases insurance from Opyn Protocol in the form of ocDAI. Your saveDAI tokens then represent the combination of cDAI and ocDAI — effectively a self-insured savings account.” Learn more about how it works on their site.
• Nexus Mutual
  This “people-powered alternative to insurance” offers the Ethereum community protection against smart contract failure. As an alternative to traditional insurance companies, Nexus strives to provide its members with more simple, transparent, accessible and cheaper financial protection against their risks.

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