Lending Protocol Echelon Closes $3.5M Seed Round with Cypher Capital

Decentralized lending protocol Echelon closed its $3.5 million seed funding round with the participation of multi-strategy crypto investment firm Cypher Capital.

According to an Aug. 28 announcement, in addition to Cypher Capital the seed round saw the participation Amber Group, Laser Digital, Saison Capital, Selini Capital, Interop Ventures and Re7. Cypher Capital’s announcement explained that the investment shows the company’s support to the decentralized finance (DeFi) industry. Harsh Agarwal, Investment Lead at Cypher Capital said:

“Echelon has demonstrated that their project is truly driving innovation in the DeFi space. [...] Echelon’s focus on capital efficiency, user-friendly design, and its potential to integrate real-world assets makes it a standout in the evolving DeFi landscape. We are excited to support their efforts in developing high-performance lending markets.”

Echelon is trying to improve capital efficiency in DeFi lending, integrate with other DeFi protocols and provide yield strategies on Move-based blockchains including Movement and Aptos. Move is a smart contract programming language developed by Meta for its Diem blockchain.

The project promises to increase borrowing power on correlated assets, isolated pools for niche asset markets and in-wallet integration for yield generation. Echelon aims at institutional-grade markets with affordable borrowing rates and yield opportunities. The firm’s cofounder Glen Rose said:

“This funding will help us build additional lending and risk management products, expand to new networks, and provide global access to dollar-denominated yields. [...] We’re excited to build core primitives on high-performance Move-based chains.” 

Echelon plans to spend its newfound wealth on enhancing its product by developing strategies around treasury and real-world assets. The firm also plans to implement cross-chain deposit vaults and to expand its full-stack and smart contract development team.

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