‘Astarter’ brings DeFi to Cardano (ADA)

On Friday, Cardano’s official commercial arm EMURGO announced Astarter, a joint venture with China-based technology firm BlockChain4A, to build decentralized financial (DeFi) services infrastructure on Cardano blockchain protocol.

The joint venture will combine EMURGO’s technical expertise of Cardano’s founding entities, coupled with Blockchain4A’s experience in DeFi technical infrastructure development.

After Cardano’s Alonzo hard fork successfully integrated smart contract functionality to Cardano’s blockchain, it now provides developers with tools for decentralized applications (dApps) building, including DeFi, NFTs, and more.

Astarter is going to create an initial decentralized exchange offering (IDO) launchpad by the end of the year and later a decentralized exchange (DEX) platform on Cardano.

Later, Astarter also plans to integrate lending & borrowing (decentralized money market) features, aiming to bring more utility to Cardano ADA users and open up financial services to underserved regions with a greater audience.

“DeFi has been gaining traction very rapidly over the past year as it can provide more accessible financial services to many people that have been underserved by the current financial system. A wider range of services promotes financial inclusion and social cohesion, especially in areas lacking in traditional financial services,” claimed in a statement Ken Kodama, EMURGO CEO.

“Decentralized finance has appealed to the crypto community through its improved transparency, security, and credibility of processing financial transactions. The value of crypto assets under management in DeFi apps has risen sharply,” he added.

According to a report of the World Economic Forum, the value of digital assets locked in DeFi smart contracts raised from $670 million to $13 billion, while associated user wallets increased from 100,000 to 1.2 million from 2019 to 2020.

“DeFi represents a distinct and potentially significant development, both within the landscape of blockchain and financial services more generally,” the report also reads.

Currently, the total locked value (TVL) in DeFi applications reached around $150 billion. And Cardano seems to aim for a share of that market.

EMURGO was founded in Japan in June 2017 and has since expanded to Singapore, Indonesia, India, and New York. It acts as the official commercial arm of the Cardano project and closely with IOHK and The Cardano Foundation to grow Cardano’s ecosystem globally and promote its adoption.

As reported before, recent Cardano’s upgrade has brought in the network new abilities like smart contracts and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), by the words of founder Charles Hoskinson. However, it could take several months before DeFi protocols come to the mainnet.