Echelon Secures $3.5M in Seed Funding to Advance DeFi Lending and Real-World Asset Strategies
Echelon, a decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol, has successfully nabbed $3.5 million in a seed funding round led by one of the biggest global trading institutions, Amber Group. The round also included some famous crypto venture capital firms, such as Laser Digital, Selini Capital, Interop Ventures, Saison Capital, and Re7 which participated in the round.
Funding to Propel DeFi Ecosystem Growth
In its statement on August 27th, Echelon revealed that the newly raised funds would be used to develop more products, expand the team, and innovate by introducing cross-chain vaults, a treasury, and real-world asset-backed strategies. This is likely to further boost Echelon’s status in the DeFi space.
Eyeing DeFi Across the Move-Based Ecosystem
Echelon is a money market platform that enables users to borrow and lend crypto assets via non-custodial pools. These pools enable customers to earn interest and thus support them in keeping their purchasing power intact. Moreover, the platform is a stepping stone for earning through staking and real-world assets (RWA).
Echelon intends to expand its DeFi and RWA products in the Move-based ecosystem. One such project is Aptos, which is a proof-of-stake blockchain written in the Move programming language. Move, a Rust-based language thrust into the smart contracts space, became very popular after it was used in Meta’s now-defunct Diem project.
Expanding Interoperability with Movement
Echelon doesn’t stop at Aptos when it comes to projects for they also plan on building the Movement, a network of modular Move-based blockchains. Movement is meant to give developers a chance to build portable and decentralized applications (dApps) that extend beyond Move-based platforms and even Ethereum’s virtual machine (EVM) ecosystems. It is worth mentioning here that Movement Labs, another major participant in this space, have recently raised $3.4 million pre-seed funding to create a software development kit that will facilitate web3 compatibility.
Strategic Partnerships and Future Prospects
The seed round’s triumph is a sign of the increasing interest and trust in Echelon’s vision. The organization is in a strong position to foster innovation within the DeFi sector, especially with the cross-chain functionality and real-world asset integration, through the strategic backing of industry leaders like Amber Group.
As Echelon expands its presence all over the Move-based ecosystem, we expect them to become almost instrumental in the evolution of decentralized finance and the gap between digital and real-world assets.
