Author: Shine
Editor: Tiantian
Niubite.com shared that in this year's crypto market, if OpenAI SORA, Nvidia and others ignited the AI track, then the prosperity of the RWA track benefited from the tokenized asset fund BUIDL jointly launched by BlackRock and Securitize, which became a catalyst for the booming development of the RWA track.
The launch of BlackRock BUIDL has completely ignited the RWA track. Tokens of many projects such as ONDO, CFG, and OM have seen substantial increases, and a general rise has occurred in this track.
Among these RWA projects, GFI has increased by a staggering 4 times since BlackRock announced the launch of BUIDL on March 2, fully demonstrating the potential and market recognition of Goldfinch.
1. Introduction to Goldfinch
Founded in 2020, Goldfinch is a decentralized credit protocol that provides crypto loans. By eliminating the need for crypto collateral and providing a means of passive income, the protocol expands the potential borrowers who can use cryptocurrencies and the potential capital providers who can gain exposure.
As we all know, in most crypto lending DeFi protocols, when users need to borrow money, they often need on-chain assets as collateral, and they also need over-collateral to borrow money. If you don’t store enough assets on the chain, you will not be able to borrow money through these DeFi lending protocols.
In the real world, in addition to mortgage loans, credit loans are also a common form of loan.
As the name suggests, a credit loan refers to a loan issued based on the borrower's credit, which means that the debtor can obtain a loan without providing collateral. For example, the loan can be approved based on the debtor's work income, assets, etc.
Although credit loans are already very mature, the DeFi credit model is still in its exploratory stage, mainly due to the complexity of the on-chain identity system and other reasons.
Goldfinch is a leading DeFi protocol for credit loans based on Ethereum. It connects the on-chain and off-chain, allowing borrowing without crypto asset collateral, and the loans are completely collateralized off-chain.
Goldfinch mainly cooperates with credit institutions in multiple countries, entrusting the credit investigation process and lending links to third-party credit institutions, and ultimately issuing loans to small and micro enterprises or individual users in these countries. It can focus on the growth of savings funds, thereby achieving the scale of overall credit business volume.
The core process of Goldfinch is not complicated. To put it simply, if you want to borrow money through Goldfinch, the corresponding offline credit institutions will review your qualifications, such as your assets, income, credit, etc. After the review is completed, you can obtain USDC with the corresponding credit limit on the Goldfinch platform. Of course, borrowers can also exchange USDC for cash.
2. Founding Team
Goldfinch's founding team members Mike Sall and Blake West both came from Coinbase.
It has to be said that Coinbase is the Huangpu Military Academy of the crypto. Many well-known crypto projects come from former Coinbase employees, and Coinbase has participated in the investment of most projects.
Goldfinch co-founder Mike Sall graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. He was formerly the director of product research at Coinbase. He also co-founded Unbox Research and served as the director of data science at Medium.
Co-founder and CTO Blake West also graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. As a senior full-stack development engineer, he has solid product development awareness and experience. He has worked in development at Coinbase and was also the first employee of HintHealth.
3. Financing
According to data from the rootdata platform, Goldfinch has completed three rounds of financing, with a total amount of US$37 million. The most recent round of financing occurred in January 2022.
The investment teams behind Goldfinch are mostly well-known teams in the crypto industry, such as a16z, Coinbase Ventures, BlockTower Capital and Kingsway Capital.
Among them, Coinbase and a16z, as the top investment teams in the crypto industry, have invested in many large projects with outstanding investment results. The two major institutions have also participated in two rounds of financing of Goldfinch, which shows that capital is optimistic about the Goldfinch project.
The support from top investment institutions such as Coinbase and a16z not only brought financial support to Goldfinch, but also provided it with valuable resources and cooperation opportunities strategically, which of course further pushed up the premium of GFI.
IV. Development Status
Currently, Centrifuge provides services in more than 20 countries around the world, supporting a number of borrowers with significant influence in local markets, covering multiple fields such as payment, savings, credit solutions, etc.
According to data from the rwa.xyz platform, the scale of private credit tokenization has reached US$600 million, second only to the scale of US Treasury bond tokenization.
In the private credit tokenization segment, Goldfinch's active loan volume reached US$266 million, ranking second only to Centrifuge.
In short, private credit is a huge market with a scale of over one trillion US dollars, and the scale of the tokenized private credit market is currently only about 1 billion US dollars. There is huge room for future growth. Goldfinch, as the leading protocol in this segment, currently has a market value of only about 300 million US dollars. There is still a lot of room for growth in the future. In the medium and long term, it is still worth paying attention to and planning.
PS This article does not constitute any investment advice
