Binance Labs announced that it’s investing millions into DeFi lending protocol Radiant Capital in a bid to connect more blockchains together, and thus improve how easily users can lend or borrow across them.
Radiant Capital—which is already built on top of another Binance-supported company known as LayerZero Labs—will receive $10 million to execute its expansion plans, including $5 million to go towards Radiant’s DAO. The protocol currently allows users to borrow and deposit tokens, and the goal is to extend this capability to more than one blockchain, beyond where it currently resides on the BNB Chain and Arbitrum on the Ethereum blockchain.
LayerZero hit a $3 billion in April following a fundraising round backed by Christie’s and Samsung.
Yi He, who heads Binance Labs and is co-founder of Binance along with her partner Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, touted the investment in Radiant as a way of “driving mass adoption” of DeFi protocols across the crypto ecosystem. A spokesperson for Radiant said that it intends to be “chain-agnostic,” and intends to launch on every EVM compatible chain that the DAO votes in favor of. They add that this approach will promote more transparency in a way that does not cost users any security in their transactions.
Binance Labs has previously supported similar bridging projects, including Cosmos Labs’ development of its Neutron platform, a smart contract solution that is designed for connecting projects across different chains.
According to the announcement, Radiant is looking to expand into more chains across the Ethereum Virtual Machine, a virtual environment that allows different chains powered by smart contracts to interact with each other. Any of these new cross-chain options will be driven by community votes across its DAO, the members of which will be allowed to vote on aspects like Loan-to-Value parameters for borrowers, according to Radiant core contributor George McCallan.
This fits into Radiant’s stated mission of growing into a cross-chain money market akin to the Polkadot Project-based Equilibrium.
Currently, Radiant supports a mix of ten digital asset classes, including tokens like Arbitrum and ETH as well as stablecoins like USDC.
Bridging different chains on Ethereum is a common goal of many developers and companies looking to improve on the shortcomings of the mainnet. Because of high levels of activity on its base layers, Ethereum can often be expensive and slow to use.
Solutions known as Layer 2 blockchains, like Arbitrum, are designed to bundle transactions together to speed up settlement on the main blockchain, and cut down their costs.
Currently, Radiant supports a mix of ten digital asset classes, including tokens like Arbitrum and ETH as well as stablecoins like USDC. Once the new investments manifest on the mainnet, it will support up to 20 other assets including liquid staking derivatives (LSDs), LUSD, SNX and others that the DAO votes to consider safe.
Editor’s Note: This article was updated to add details about how the funding will be distributed and Radiant core contributor George McCallan.
