Hedera Launches USD 155M DeFi-Focused Fund

A development fund worth USD 155m intended to boost the use of the Hedera (HBAR) network in DeFi applications has been announced by the HBAR Foundation.

According to an announcement from the foundation on Tuesday, the new fund – dubbed the Crypto Economy Fund – will focus on “increasing accessibility into and within the Hedera Network,” while also accelerating the growth of the broader HBAR Economy.

“In addition to establishing yield generation opportunities, fiat-onramps via mobile and credit card options will remain a priority,” the emailed announcement said.

It added that USD 60m of the fund’s capital will go towards decentralized exchange liquidity rewards, which the team hopes will further the development of DeFi protocols on the network.

The first recipient of a grant from the new fund is Stader Labs, a project working on so-called liquid staking for the Hedera token.

Liquid staking allows users to stake an asset in exchange for rewards while at the same time using that asset as collateral for other opportunities in the world of DeFi.

Stader reached USD 820m in total value locked (TVL) and onboarded more than 30,000 users within just ten weeks of the launch of its project in November 2021, the foundation said. 

Formerly known as Hedera Hashgraph, Hedera is a decentralized public network where developers can build applications with “near real-time consensus.” 

At 12:49 PM UTC, HBAR, ranked 38th by market capitalization (per Coingecko), traded at around USD 0.248 and was up almost 1% in a day and 17% in a week. The price was down 28% in a year.
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(Updated at 13:53 UTC to clarify that the announcement was made by the HBAR Foundation, not Hedera.)