Folks Finance selects Avalanche as Core Engine of Cross-Chain Lending App
Avalanche’s versatility and well-rounded strengths met the requirements for an expansive DeFi Suite
April, 2024
Folks Finance is a DeFi hub offering lending, leverage trading, swaps, liquid staking, on/off ramp, and leveraged liquid staking. With the lending protocol acting as the engine of the product line, Folks is expanding its entire suite, starting with a new cross-chain lending protocol using Avalanche as a hub.
The totality of Folks’ product suite makes it flexible and robust enough to support a wide variety of market strategies, and the cross-chain expansion will upgrade Folks into a well-equipped home base for a unified portfolio.
Why Avalanche?
Avalanche is a Layer-1 blockchain built as a modified enhancement of Ethereum. It excels as a fortified all-round network with high speeds, low fees, and strong security. The Avalanche ecosystem has proven resilient since launch, emerging from the 2022–2023 crypto winter with vigor and purpose. Now, with a community of up to 100,000 daily active users, Avalanche is poised to meaningfully grow its ecosystem of DeFi, NFTs, and games.
Folks is preparing to become a major player in the Avalanche DeFi scene by utilizing the network as its hub-chain for expansion. With the lending protocol acting as the engine of the product line, Folks is able to compose unique tools like leveraged liquid staking and margin trading without perpetuals or futures contracts.
Cross-Chain Concentrated Liquidity
Folks cross-chain lending is based on an innovative and unique hub-and-spoke model, Avalanche will serve as a connective junction for the spoke-chains. Information and capital will flow through Avalanche on its way from network to network using Wormhole and Chainlink CCIP.
Stablecoin Pools
Avalanche, as the Hub Chain, will host a unified USDC pool which all Spoke Chains can access. By utilizing Circle CCTP, stablecoin liquidity is assured across the entire Folks platform. In turn, larger amounts of USDC can be borrowed when compared to fragmented liquidity pools commonly seen in DeFi. The structure of this design turns Folks into a stablecoin magnet, attracting USDC from across the industry to be stored for use.
As a user, the size of the unified pool leads to healthier interest rates on stablecoin borrows and a lending market with more predictability and lower volatility. Focus more on strategy, less on rates.
User Interface and User Experience
Although Avalanche will play a key role in Folks’ expansion, it operates behind the curtain. The experience of using Folks Finance will be consistent no matter the network one chooses to access from. That could be Avalanche, or it could be any of the numerous networks planned for integration in 2024. Our goal is to allow you to come in with your favorite wallet, from your favorite chain, and easily start building your portfolio.
Ava Labs
The support offered from Ava Labs contributed to the decision to select Avalanche as the Hub Chain. The Ava Labs team immediately understood the vision of building a cross-chain DeFi suite. Users of Folks can look forward to this partnership maturing over the coming months and years.
Coming Soon…
We can’t wait to launch Folks on Avalanche and join the ecosystem. Keep your eyes open for our Testnet, set for release in the upcoming weeks. Mainnet will follow soon after. Programs will be established for Testnet and Mainnet incentives — usage of the app, social tasks, and more will be monitored before the FOLKS token release. The best way to keep updated with all the news and information is to follow Folks Finance on social media and join our community channels.
Gidon Katten, CTO of Folks Finance: Our new cross-chain lending protocol marks a significant leap in the DeFi ecosystem. To support such a powerful product you need great infrastructure and tooling, with Avalanche at the forefront for both. We’ve been working tirelessly on xLending and we can’t wait to hear feedback from the community!
Matthew Schmenk, Sr. BD Associate at Ava Labs: “We are excited to be leveraged as the hub-chain for Folks Finance’s cross-chain lending protocol. This collaboration reflects our commitment to providing scalable and secure infrastructure that meets the diverse needs of the Avalanche ecosystem.”
Thank you for reading. See you on Avalanche soon.
Folks Finance is a cross-chain DeFi platform offering a suite of innovative tools to lend, borrow, trade, and manage digital assets in one location. Folks Finance has more than 10,000 monthly users and is backed by some of the top investors in the ecosystem — Borderless Capital, Jump, Parafi, Coinbase Ventures, OKX, and more.
Avalanche is a smart contracts platform that scales infinitely and regularly finalizes transactions in less than one second. Its novel consensus protocol, Subnet infrastructure, and HyperSDK toolkit enable Web3 developers to easily launch powerful, custom blockchain solutions. Build anything you want, any way you want, on the eco-friendly blockchain designed for Web3 devs.
