Xend Finance - Next generation DeFi Credit Union

DeFi has challenged traditional financial institution’s status quo and successfully created its own unique space in the economic ecosystem. However, to make the vision of a decentralized future a reality, numerous technological advancements and innovative projects need to be launched. With the same spirit, a Nigerian Startup, Xend Finance, has launched an evolutionary DeFi platform for credit unions and cooperatives. It is decentralizing savings, lending, borrowing and investment operations of credit unions, and providing multi-level interest returns to members of these unions. Xend Finance is the first protocol to target this over $2.2 Trillion credit union global market.

Background

Traditional credit unions were created with an aim to offer financial products with low-interest rates and fees. However, their old methods of functioning are limited and outdated in nature. There is a huge gap between traditional financial services and the needs of people today. These credit unions are location and access dependent, provide low returns, have insufficient access to liquidity and give zero insurance cover on deposits. Also, centralized and Fiat savings platforms are always limited by fees and cross border payment regulations that restrict investing in other countries. That’s where Xend Finance steps in. It is a decentralized Credit Union protocol built to optimize, improve, and add value to credit union’s core operations globally. Credit unions and cooperatives worldwide can leverage this DeFi platform and channel capital into savings and earn higher interest in stable currencies.

Xend Finance — A stable alternative in Africa

Xend Finance is the first platform in Africa to be built on the Binance Smart Chain. Thus, opening limitless opportunities for the African crypto market. Various countries in Africa are witnessing economic and financial issues like high inflation rate, volatile currencies, capital controls, and lack of banking infrastructure. Xend finance will be a turning point in the African economy, laying the foundation of a stable and secure alternative to traditional financial institutions.

Xend Finance breaks down the entry barriers with the help of blockchain technology in innumerable ways –

• It gives credit unions and individuals an opportunity to save their valuable earnings and earn instantly.
• It provides high annual percentage yields of up to 20%.
• It offers a trustless and stable alternative to unstable currencies across the world.
• It enables access to global decentralized financial services such as DeFi savings, DeFi lending and DeFi borrowing. Anyone from anywhere in the world can utilize these financial services.
• It gives access to decentralized insurance to ensure the protection of deposited assets.
• Credit unions and Individuals can now easily store their money in foreign and stable digital currencies, earn interest in the foreign stable currencies and also borrow in foreign stable currencies.

XendFinance is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) governed by $XEND token holders using three different smart parameters: Xend Token Smart Contract, Governance Smart Contract and Time Lock Smart Contract. These smart contracts will allow the XendFinance community to propose features, vote and execute approved proposals. $Xend is the native token that performs multiple operations like rewarding users, protocol fees, and governance voting on the platform. XendFinance smart contract integrates the DeFi lending Protocol smart contracts to enable seamless communication between the protocols.

Currently, they have two exemplary apps — Xend and Geena. Xend app has processed over 2 million transactions and has more than 55K active users. It is a one-stop solution for business and personal transactions. Via Xend App, one can transfer money to any Xend account or bank account within Nigeria. Apart from this, one can pay bills, receive payments and make offline payments.

Geena enables businesses to make fast sales from one or multiple sales points. One can monitor real-time sales data, generate and send custom receipts. The app provides a network of solutions that help you make informed business decisions and keep track of daily activities.

Why Binance Chain?

Binance Smart Chain is fully EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine)-compatible and has support for the majority of the tools used by Ethereum developers such as Metamask, Remix, Truffle, Ganache-CLI, and more. Binance Smart Chain already has support for infrastructures like ChainLink and Band Protocol Oracles. Also, the consensus mechanism used in Binance Smart Chain is Proof of Staked Authority (PoSA), which combines features from Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) and Proof-of-Authority (PoA). It can produce a block approximately every 3 seconds, which will significantly improve the speed of DeFi protocols built on the Binance Smart Chain. The low fees will drastically reduce the cost of using DeFi protocols and hence improve user adoption. Xend Finance will support multiple currencies across different blockchains as a result of the cross-chain asset transfer feature of the Binance Smart Chain.

Their first testnet on Binance Smart Chain is currently scheduled for December.

An exceptional team

Xend finance’s team is made up of experienced mathematicians, finance, cryptography, and blockchain engineers. The founding team has worked with some of Africa’s largest employers, including KPMG, Chevron, and Stanbic Bank. They have received intensive mentorship from Google’s engineers and leadership team.

Latest Updates

Recently, Xend Finance secured a $1.5-million investment round from Binance Labs, Google Developers Launchpad, AU21 Capital, Ampifi VC, JUN Capital, TRG Capital, and Matic Co-founder, Sandeep Nailwal, Twin Apex Capital, DeltaHub Capital, and Moon Whale.

According to the Xend Finance roadmap, a lot more would be happening in the next few months. Partnership announcements with Credit unions, exchange listings, more App development, and the governance model’s implementation are some of the major upcoming developments and updates on the cards.

Conclusion

Backed by technological advancements, blockchain has the power to transform the global economy. However, there is still a lot to explore and achieve. Interestingly, developers are coming up with unique and revolutionizing solutions to bridge the gap between traditional financial institutions and blockchain technology. With the launch of a DeFi platform for credit unions and cooperatives, Xend Finance has hit the right spot. It will play a crucial role in enabling credit unions, cooperatives, and individuals worldwide to leverage this superior technology’s benefits, pushing the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency by mass users.

However, this is just the beginning. The platform is new. Therefore, they will need to invest in creating awareness about their platform and establish their own brand identity. They are receiving support from incredible investors. So, that will definitely make a difference.

All the best to the team. We will be tracking their progress closely!

If you want to know more, join their communities on Telegram and Twitter.

Visit the website — https://xend.finance/