Simple and secure DeFi solutions become the focus of a 185 million dollar funding round

Although decentralized finance (DeFi) is gaining popularity, to reach mainstream adoption, a cohesive user experience must become a focus. As crypto assets are being utilized in different ways, they are also becoming dispersed across more chains and protocols. Furthermore, for DeFi users, the added complexity of the latest industry developments, including new tokens, emerging yield farming opportunities and different projects, make it difficult to understand the lay of the land. The result is that users will require several different apps, software and other tools to track their portfolio. The comparison can be made to Instagram, which began as a simple interface for posting photos but has since evolved to include many features and tabs, adding complexity for new users.

Despite this expansive landscape, developers are constantly improving the user experience to make DeFi easier to interact with by eliminating fragmentation. The resulting user interfaces take several features and make them accessible from one consolidated ecosystem. Fields may also be simplified to help guide the user through otherwise complicated processes. By taking advantage of several of these new design concepts, developers are quickly racing to drive down the barriers to mainstream adoption.

Kava Labs, an organization focused on democratizing financial services, aims to further improve the user experience by curating the highest value best-in-class projects and launching them on the safest DeFi platform. The development of their ecosystem will merge layer-one architecture and institutional-grade security to create a new home for DeFi.

Scott Stuart, the CEO of Kava Labs, goes on to share, “There’s a massive opportunity in DeFi right now to be the first to bridge the gap between the early adopters and the untapped mainstream. The Ignition Fund is about getting Kava there first. The untapped market we’re building for is made up of completely different people to the first generation of DeFi participants. They need to trust that their life savings are secure. They need product experiences that feel familiar to them.” His belief is that Kava might just be in the position to achieve this.

Building an ecosystem

Advancements of the Ignition Fund have been accelerated by a series of funding that began with an initial round of $185 million. With this funding round, the Kava Ecosystem will now expand the available services on the platform, each of which will deliver on the same quality and security that users already associate with Kava. As a result, an in-depth understanding of the current DeFi marketplace is necessary to continue sifting through the active projects and determine which ones will provide the strongest user value.

Kava will guarantee these projects by incentivizing top-tier projects and developers with funding rolled out in three phases. These funds will help offset some of the development costs and add liquidity at launch to verify that products are not being pushed into the market at the expense of users.

The ecosystem addresses simplicity with a streamlined user experience, cross-chain composability, dedicated developer support and multiple on-ramps. On the security side, Kava leverages a SAFU fund to underwrite unforeseen losses, add up to 10k+ TPS throughput as well as provide robust, Golang (GO)-based architecture.

Taken together, Kava Labs believes that they can truly simplify the experience for all users. Looking at the team’s last 12 months, this isn’t the only initiative that has improved user experience.

A better-served community

Back in April, the team completed the Kava Platform, which among other updates, brought together Kava and Hard web apps into a single application, allowing users to interact with both of the protocols without needing to reconnect.

Now, as the team looks forward, efforts have been put into place to expand their ability to serve the Ethereum (ETH) community, which includes the launch of an Ethereum bridge in the fourth quarter of this year.