Stanford researcher-led Pledge raises $3M for decentralized lending protocol

Decentralized lending protocol Pledge has secured $3 million in investments for its cross-chain ecosystem focused on long-term financing, highlighting continued innovation in the DeFi sector. 

The investment round was led by DHVC, a Palo Alto-based venture capital firm, with additional participation from U.C. Berkeley Professor Gary LaBlanc and Stanford University community members Ray Wong and Torsten Wendl. The raise will support Pledge's mission to become a premier crypto-asset lending platform that eventually paves the way for tokenized real-world financial assets.

Pledge was created by a group of blockchain-focused researchers at Stanford University, including Professor David Tse, Nicole Chang, Ray Wong and Torsten Wendl. Professor Gary LaBlanc also contributed to the protocol.

Utilizing Binance Smart Chain, Pledge aims to facilitate long-term financing for crypto holders, something the researchers say has yet to be addressed in the industry. The protocol achieves this goal by allowing users to diversify their portfolios with non-crypto assets without being exposed to interest-rate volatility.

The protocol is powered by Pledge Tokens, or PLGR, 3 billion of which comprise the total supply. No market data is currently available for PLGR.

DeFi lending markets have exploded in popularity this year, attracting an influx of new users on the promise of higher yields and increased access to new markets. While Aave dominates the DeFi lending market, several protocols have launched over the past year, each one providing its own value proposition.

Related: DeFi attracts 2.91M Ethereum addresses, according to ConsenSys

Currently, just under $44 billion in total value has been locked into DeFi lending markets, according to industry data. That accounts for just over half of the total decentralized finance market.

DeFi’s growth has attracted unwanted attention from regulators who are growing more concerned about investor protections and whether certain assets fall under federal security laws. As Cointelegraph recently reported, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has warned cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase that its proposed yield program violates securities laws.

Related: SEC vs. Coinbase: Alex Mashinsky says Celsius will have to ‘wait and see’ on fallout