Term Labs, Inc. Announces $5.5 Million in Strategic Funding to Bring Stability and Predictability to On-Chain Lending

SAN DIEGO, July 9, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Term Labs, Inc., a leader in blockchain R&D, is proud to announce the closure of a strategic funding round totaling $5.5 million. This brings the company's cumulative funding to date to $8 million. Leading this round was Electric Capital, with Maelstrom (Arthur Hayes), Ava Labs Blizzard Fund, Arete Capital, Inception, Delta Blockchain Fund and others participating. Angel investors, including Ether.fi founder and CEO Mike Silagadze, GP and Founder of Paper Ventures, Danish Chaudhry, Founder and Managing Partner of Neoclassic Capital, Steve Lee, Co-host of Up-Only, Ledger Status, Co-host of Into The Ether Podcast, Eric Conner, and Co-host of The Edge Podcast, DeFi Dad, also joined the round.

Term Finance is the first DeFi fixed-rate lending protocol to operate effectively at institutional scale. Since its inception last year, Term Finance has serviced over $100 million in volume through its auction-based fixed-rate lending platform, with consistent weekly clearing volumes in the seven-figure range. Its auction-based mechanism has proven effective in setting fair rates, consistently clearing between the supply and borrow rates on competing variable rate lending protocols. As a result, borrowers on Term have saved hundreds of thousands in interest, while lenders have earned hundreds of thousands more.

"The protocol's success in achieving early institutional adoption is due in large part to a focus on security, transparency, and economic risk mitigation," said Dion Chu, Founder and CEO of Term Finance. Term Finance mitigates contagion and concentration risk by using isolated and modular collateral pools and implements oracle safeguards with staleness and zero price checks, fallback oracles, and sequencer uptime checks for future rollup deployments. To verify integrity and correctness of implementation, Term Finance has undergone multiple code audits, traceable through its public GitHub repo and verified on-chain and completed formal verification using Certora's CLI.

"We chose to continue our support by leading this round of funding not only because we believe that the fixed-rate lending vertical has vast market potential rooted in traditional finance, but because Term Finance stands out as the only protocol to achieve fixed-rate lending on-chain at scale. There is demonstrated demand to borrow at fixed rates against DeFi native assets, and the rise of RWAs and tokenization represents a large untapped opportunity for future growth," said Ken Deeter, General Partner at Electric Capital.

Earlier this year, in partnership with MatrixPort, Term Finance piloted two auctions backed by permissioned RWAs—a market McKinsey estimates will reach $2 trillion by 2030.

As part of its ongoing commitment to fostering community engagement, Term Labs is introducing an invite-only rewards program aimed at rewarding early adopters for their participation in the protocol. Early supporters of the protocol have already been granted access to the program and do not need an invite to participate. Season 1 of the rewards program is expected to run through the summer into early fall, providing ample opportunity for users to engage and benefit from their contributions to the protocol.

"We're committed to rewarding our community for their active participation and dedication to our protocol's growth and success," said Dion Chu. "This latest round of funding, combined with the rewards program, will help us capitalize on our early traction and drive the next wave of adoption, advancing our mission to realize predictability and stability in the DeFi ecosystem."

About Term Labs

Term Labs is a blockchain research and development company dedicated to creating robust, transparent, and scalable fixed-rate lending solutions onchain. The founding team's combined experience in finance and big tech is the foundation for its innovative approach to defi solutions. Its founders have a track record of managing $1b+ portfolios on both the sell side and buy side at Citibank, Morgan Stanley, D.E. Shaw, and other institutions), as well as establishing interest rate benchmarks at exchanges that have done trillions in volume. They also have substantial technical backgrounds, including experience at the Amazon blockchain group, Bloomberg, and Planet Labs.

Media Contact Billy Welch media@termfinance.io