Solana-based decentralized finance (DeFi) app Tulip raised $5 million in a bid to expand its yield aggregation and crypto lending products.
The seven-month-old protocol, which at press time held over $800 million in crypto assets, said Jump Capital and Alameda Research led the “strategic investment.” Tulip recently rebranded; it won a $25,000 hackathon prize as “SolFarm” in June.
Pseudonymous CEO “Senx” said in a phone interview that Tulip intends to double its five-person team. A shortage of Solana-focused engineers could complicate that goal, he said, underscoring the heated competition for DeFi developer talent.
Tulip allows users to chase double-digit yield on their token deposits and facilitates crypto lending as well as leveraged yield farming. Senx said over 150,000 unique wallets have interacted with those tools and 10,000 wallets maintain “active, meaningful positions” in the five figures.
An upcoming “v2″ will have “bigger managed strategies” for users, he said.
He said the protocol remains “self-sufficient” by capturing around 1.2% of Tulip’s nine-figure total value locked (TVL), which is the U.S. dollar value of the cryptocurrency committed to DeFi protocols that are built on a layer 1 blockchain. Funding will help them invest more in TULIP tokenomics.
The investors – mostly venture capital firms: Amber Group, Cadenza Ventures, Fisher8 Capital, CMS Holdings, Rarestone Capital, FinTech Collective and DV Chain – will receive TULIP governance tokens from a vesting smart contract, he said.
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