Alameda Research led an investment round worth $40 million in Oxygen, a Solana-based DeFi prime brokerage protocol. Alameda Research had earlier directly invested $50 million in travel app Maps.me on 18 January.
Oxygen protocol claims to be “100%” decentralized, non-custodial, and on-chain with no involvement from a centralized operator. The Switzerland-based project plans to offer borrow-lending services via pools that consist of users’ crypto deposits. Users’ assets are stored in a smart contract with the code of the protocol being “open-source, verified and audited by third-party auditors (in progress).”
The protocol is set to launch on Solana blockchain’s Serum, DeFi network, which boasts more than 50,000 transactions per second, “for less than $0.0001 each.”
The protocol’s native OXY tokens will offer holders reduced cost of using the protocol and allow them to make governance decisions. Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX Derivates exchange who is an advisor to the Oxygen protocol and Serum said in a statement:
DeFi could reach 1 billion users and $10 trillion of on-chain value. But projects have been limited by high fees, congestion and scalability issue.
With reduced protocol fees, alongside Solana’s comparatively affordable blockchain charges, the protocol aims to offer users an alternative to the Ethereum Blockchain, which has often been criticized for network congestion and extremely high Gas price.
According to the Oxygen Protocol team, Serum’s order book is “at the core of protocol” and will allow it to match borrowing and lending orders as well as “execute risk-management” through an upcoming DEX on Serum. In addition, FTX announced that it will host Oxygen’s Initial Exchange Offering on 11 March, and launch OXY on Serum DEX as well as BitMax on 16 March.
Excited to announce our next IEO @Oxygen_protocol! We are thrilled to be hosting the launch of $OXY — the native token of https://t.co/0HWwFLI79X — on March 11th, 21:00 SGT. pic.twitter.com/bipMmRnbXV
— FTX – Built By Traders, For Traders (@FTX_Official) February 24, 2021
