DeFi Project Ref Finance Closes $4.8M Round Led by Jump Crypto

Ref Finance, an automated market maker and stableswap marketplace for the Near blockchain, announced on Thursday that it has closed a $4.8 million round of funding led by Jump Crypto.

• Alameda Research and Dragonfly Capital also provided funding for the round.

• Automated market makers (AMM) are key infrastructure components for decentralized finance (DeFi), a term used to describe the financial activities carried out on blockchain without the use of conventional middlemen.

• AMMs are key to the functioning of decentralized exchanges like Uniswap. They allow users to become liquidity providers in an exchange by giving them a cut of the transaction fees as well giving out free tokens as an incentive. A stableswap marketplace is a version of an AMM specifically for stablecoins – which play an important part in any liquidity pool.

• As the Near blockchain grows to support multi-chain interoperability, Ref Finance will play an important role as a liquidity gateway, the company said in a press release. Currently, Near supports the trading of ether, SOL, LUNA and CELO tokens via asset bridges.

• Bowen Shen, co-founder of Proximity Labs, the team behind Ref Finance, in an interview with CoinDesk said that trading on Near costs around 1 cent a transaction and has a one to two second transaction finality. Building on Near allows Ref Finance to "be a step closer to DeFi retail adoption,” he said.

• “The raise will be mainly used to expand the team to continue building out DeFi products and services that better serve the ecosystem, the partners and the users,” Shen told CoinDesk. “Our investors in this round are some of the most credible VCs in the DeFi space; we consider their experience and strategic alignment the most valuable part in this funding round.”

• Before the news was released, Near’s token was trading at $11.40, with a $7.2 billion market cap, according to CoinGecko, while Ref Finance's token REF was trading at $1.70.