By Nemil Dalal, Daniel Que, & Pete Kim
2019 has been called The Year of Decentralized Finance (“DeFi”), with the money locked up into decentralized finance protocols skyrocketing. In 2020, these protocols are starting to provide global access to financial services like savings and exchange.
To encourage growth in USDC and DeFi, Coinbase launched the USDC Bootstrap Fund last September with $2MM of initial funding. The USDC Bootstrap Fund invests directly into smart contract protocols, providing important, early liquidity for entrepreneurs and developers looking to grow their protocol.
With USDC, we hope to provide critical infrastructure that will enable DeFi to grow and increasingly compete with existing financial products. In addition to our publicly announced investments in Compound and dYdX, we are proud to announce further investments in Uniswap and PoolTogether.
Uniswap is emerging as one of the most liquid exchanges on Ethereum. Their constant market maker model makes it easy to launch a liquid exchange for any token, and is increasingly becoming critical infrastructure for tokens and applications that need liquidity. In a little over a year, Uniswap has grown from $0 to $31MM of liquidity, and now has exchanges (also known as “pools”) for well over 880 tokens. The USDC Bootstrap Fund has provided $1MM of liquidity to the USDC/ETH pool.
PoolTogether is a savings game built on Compound. Users deposit funds which earn interest, and are paid out to a winner chosen at random. So far, $19K of prizes have been awarded. The USDC Bootstrap Fund has provided $100K USDC as a pool sponsor, increasing the reward for USDC depositors.
We encourage DeFi developers and smart contract projects that want to integrate USDC to apply for the USDC Bootstrap Fund. We look for teams who build innovative products, leverage USDC, and effectively manage risks. To apply, please fill out this form.