Decentralized finance (DeFi), one of Web3’s pillars, has gone from a tech jargon to a global headline. DeFi’s combination of blockchain technology with cryptocurrency has led some to believe it only affects the public blockchain infrastructure. Industry analysts, on the other hand, see DeFi as more than simply a significant step forward for the financial industry; it’s a threshold that must be crossed if Web3 is to be realized
DeFi, in comparison to centralized finance (CeFi) and the existing state of the finance world, lowers transaction costs and hurdles to entry, allows for efficiency, noncustodial ownership, pseudo-anonymity, and is open source, all of which serve to bring the best out of developers globally. According to some analysts, this benefit gives DeFi a distinct advantage over CeFi. DeFi, which is based on blockchain technology, allows noncustodial ownership of assets across many blockchains that are updated and validated on a regular basis, allowing financial transactions to take place. The proof-of-work or proof-of-stake mechanisms are typically used to validate the blocks. DeFi’s ideas and mechanisms eliminate intermediaries, allowing for simple transactions.
DeFi is Massive, although still in its infancy
DeFi is still in its infancy, despite the fact that it has already disrupted financial systems. According to Defillama, the total value locked in DeFi, a statistic that measures the total value of crypto held in DeFi projects, is projected to be over $144 billion. This amount would position DeFi as the 19th largest bank in the United States based on deposits if it were a bank.
Despite the fact that DeFi is still relatively new, the stats demonstrate that it is a force to be reckoned with. All of the moving parts must function with precision before it can compete with the industry-standard CeFi. The question of several blockchains and how to facilitate transactions between them is one of the moving parts. DeFi will be pulling its weight, with Gartner forecasting that 20% of major enterprises will use digital currencies for payments, stored value, or collateral by 2024.
Xiaohan Zhu, co-founder, and CEO of Meter, believes that as companies explore new business models or redefine how business is performed across traditional industries and ecosystems, they will be guided by a variety of objectives and use cases. According to Zhu, alternative architecture, consensus techniques, token kinds, and other characteristics are required for these various purposes and use cases, opening the way for a multi-chain ecosystem.
“Any single blockchain infrastructure, even across use cases like DeFi and NFTs, is not scalable enough to reach mainstream adoption.” TCP/IP protocols enabled different enterprise network communications to be interconnected and reach greater audiences, allowing the internet to scale horizontally. “We see a comparable need for protocols that have the ability to enable organizations to connect across blockchains in this multi-chain environment and to seamlessly communicate, cooperate, share, and transact with various entities across different platforms,” he said.
Zhu mentioned the significance of constructing an interconnected system when describing the need for SumerMoney, which is the fulcrum that holds Meter’s goal of connecting many blockchains together.
Developing DeFi’s latent potential
SumerMoney seeks to increase capital efficiency and deliver a seamless user experience to uncover the latent potential in DeFi, while Meter’s blockchain and interoperability infrastructure allow it to scale and link the financial internet in a multichain environment. Sumer creates a multichain native asset class that gives customers a credit card-like experience thanks to its decentralized money market. The goal is to facilitate cross-chain smart contract communication and multichain liquidity.
Meter plans to take on the DeFi space and bridge its many gaps, according to Zhu in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat.
“We begin by building initial liquidity in the DeFi market on key chains such as Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. Then we’ll go on to other chains, forming agreements with various dApps,” he explained. “With Sumer’s stable coin, we will then expand to the fintech industry, targeting mass consumers, with the goal of enabling micros loan, payment, and saving account for people.”
According to Zhu, the underlying technology will provide a fundamental abstraction to the token economy’s major cryptocurrency assets. SumerMoney allows assets to have the same meaning independent of which chain they are accessed on, similar to how information supported by TCP/IP protocols has the same meaning regardless of where it is viewed on the internet. This allows for frictionless data movement over the blockchain architecture.
Sumer assets are liquid and spendable across all supported blockchains, similar to monies on a credit card, allowing users to maximize their capital efficiency. Decentralized applications will be able to provide the cross-chain user experience with SumerMoney assets.
Using Meter as a payment option
Zhu is optimistic about Meter’s technology and the tremendous good it can achieve in the DeFi arena. He claims that the technology Sumer and Meter are developing hides the complexities of numerous public and private blockchains, making cryptocurrencies more accessible to the general population. On the company level, low cost of engagement and cost switching between private and public chains can help firms reduce overhead costs and increase agility.
Meter is a decentralized infrastructure that links and scales Ethereum and other public blockchains, allowing tokens and other digital assets to be exchanged between them. This is accomplished through a development toolkit that connects to other current blockchains and allows for the quick deployment of a new blockchain with its own architecture, consensus methods, and other features to fulfill various aims and use cases. According to Zhu, businesses may either utilize the Meter chain directly for product development or use the toolkit to put up a private blockchain with just a few nodes in minutes and effortlessly scale to a public chain grade blockchain with thousands of nodes.
While SumerMoney provides the architecture that allows private and public blockchains to interact, Zhu claims Meter provides the high-performance infrastructure. He claims that this infrastructure takes the form of a layer 1 blockchain powered by the HotStuff consensus engine, making Meter one of the most decentralized and fast Ethereum sidechain scaling options. Meter can handle thousands of transactions per second while maintaining frontrunning resistance, quick finality, and a consistent low gas cost.
Meter started the SumerMoney project to develop the TCP/IP layer from multichain DeFi, while also providing a high-performance interoperable layer beneath it. Sanctor, Blockwall, ROK, Waterdrip, Kernel, AngelDAO, NoviDAO, and other DeFi founders and executives participated in a $2 million funding round led by Pantera and A&T Capital, with participation from Sanctor, Blockwall, ROK, Waterdrip, Kernel, AngelDAO, NoviDAO, and other DeFi founders and executives.
