Following a $7.5 million raise led by Hashed and Tribe Capital, Blueprint Finance, emerging from stealth, today announces Concrete Protocol, an on-chain credit market that protects borrowers from liquidation, while offering yield to liquidity providers to fund short-term capital demands.
“The goal of 2024 is to make it irresponsible for any [crypto borrower] to do it any other way than through our protocol,” cofounder and CEO Nic Roberts-Huntley told Fortune.
Blueprint Finance is betting that DeFi is approaching a major inflection point—and lending activity will massively increase—and is seeking to work with retail users, companies, and liquidity providers alike.
“We can help anybody in crypto,” said Roberts-Huntley. “If you’re a casual user, and you want to start using debt in crypto, you would be crazy not to use us.”
Blueprint Finance was founded in 2022, when the collapse of FTX shattered much of the industry. Watching everything unfold, Robert-Huntley recalled, the team observed the need for more robust and capital-efficient DeFi markets.
“The implosion of centralized lenders created an opportunity for massive volume growth for on-chain money markets,” the company said in a statement. However, the team noticed a “void” in solutions and liquidity for DeFi users to protect positions when leveraged against volatile assets, often resulting in asset liquidation.
Concrete is a protocol layered on top of crypto’s existing $20 billion lending market. Its aim is to protect leveraged positions against collateral depreciation and thus minimize the need for capital on hand. Simultaneously, it offers yield opportunities for liquidity providers to fund positions.
But unlike other lenders in the space, Concrete will also absorb some of the gas fees and offer liquidation protection. “When you take out that loan through us, because it’s brokered through smart contracts, you’re afforded the option to buy liquidation protection. That is effectively a fully automated agreement between you, the borrower, and Concrete, the protocol,” Roberts-Huntley explained.
The liquidation protection is created by using a series of quantitative methodologies. In essence, Concrete calculates the probability of collateral depreciation over time and creates an automated protection agreement to fund a position as it approaches a liquidation threshold.
“Blueprint is building decentralized software that could help safeguard future traders from major market events—this is critically important to the safety and growth of crypto worldwide,” Boris Revsin, a managing director at Tribe Capital, said in a statement.
Participating investors include SALT, Hypersphere, Lightshift, Portal Ventures, and Awesome People Ventures.
