Revealed! The dark horse of the RWA track, GFI, surged fourfold in a week. What is the mysterious power behind it?
Why did GFI in the RWA track increase fourfold in a week?Author: Shine
Editor: Tian Tian
According to Shilian Niubi (niubite.com), in this year's cryptocurrency market, if OpenAI SORA, Nvidia, and others ignited the AI track, then the prosperity of the RWA track is attributed to the tokenized asset fund BUIDL launched by BlackRock in collaboration with Securitize, which has become a catalyst for the vigorous development of the RWA track.
The launch of BlackRock BUIDL has completely ignited the RWA track, with many project tokens such as ONDO, CFG, and OM experiencing significant increases, leading to a broad market rally in this sector.
Among these RWA projects, since BlackRock announced the launch of BUIDL on March 2, the increase in GFI has reached an astonishing 4 times, fully demonstrating the potential and market recognition of Goldfinch.
1. Introduction to Goldfinch
Goldfinch was established in 2020 as a decentralized credit protocol that provides crypto loans. By eliminating the need for crypto collateral and offering passive income opportunities, the protocol expands the potential borrowers who can use cryptocurrency and the potential capital providers who can gain exposure.
As is well known, in most crypto lending DeFi protocols, when users need to borrow, they often need to have on-chain assets as collateral and also require over-collateralization to borrow. If you do not have enough assets stored on-chain, you cannot borrow through these DeFi lending protocols.
In the real world, in addition to mortgages, credit loans are also a common form of lending.
As the name suggests, credit loans refer to loans issued based on the borrower's creditworthiness, meaning that debtors can obtain loans without providing collateral, for example, loans can be approved based on the debtor's income, asset situation, etc.
Although credit loans are already quite mature, the DeFi lending model is still in exploration, mainly due to the complexity of on-chain identity systems and other reasons.
As a leading DeFi protocol for credit loans based on Ethereum, Goldfinch connects on-chain and off-chain, allowing borrowing without crypto asset collateral, and the loans are fully collateralized off-chain.
Goldfinch primarily collaborates with credit institutions in multiple countries, outsourcing the credit assessment and lending processes to third-party credit institutions, ultimately issuing loans to small and micro enterprises or individual users in these countries, while focusing on the growth of savings capital, thereby achieving scalability in overall lending business volume.
The core process of Goldfinch is not complicated. Simply put, if you want to borrow through Goldfinch, a corresponding offline credit institution will review your qualifications, such as your assets, income, credit, etc. Once the review is complete, you can obtain the corresponding credit limit in USDC on the Goldfinch platform. Of course, borrowers can also convert USDC into cash.
2. Founding Team
The founding team members of Goldfinch, Mike Sall and Blake West, both come from Coinbase.
It must be said that Coinbase, as the training ground for many in the crypto space, has produced several well-known crypto projects from former employees, and most of these projects have received investment from Coinbase.
Co-founder Mike Sall graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and served as the Director of Product Research at Coinbase. He also co-founded Unbox Research and served as the Director of Data Science at Medium.
Co-founder and CTO Blake West also graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. As a senior full-stack developer, he has solid product development awareness and experience, having worked in development at Coinbase and being the first employee at HintHealth.
3. Financing
According to data from the rootdata platform, Goldfinch has completed three rounds of financing, raising a total of $37 million, with the most recent round occurring in January 2022.
The investment teams behind Goldfinch are mostly well-known teams in the crypto industry, such as a16z, Coinbase Ventures, BlockTower Capital, and Kingsway Capital.
Among them, Coinbase and a16z, as top investment teams in the crypto industry, have invested in many major projects with outstanding investment results. Both institutions participated in two rounds of financing for Goldfinch, indicating strong capital confidence in the Goldfinch project.
The backing of top investment institutions like Coinbase and a16z not only provides Goldfinch with financial support but also offers valuable resources and collaboration opportunities strategically, further driving up the premium of GFI.
4. Current Development Status
Currently, Centrifuge provides services in over 20 countries worldwide, supporting multiple borrowers with significant influence in local markets across various fields, such as payments, savings, and credit solutions.
According to data from the rwa.xyz platform, the scale of tokenized private credit has reached $600 million, second only to the scale of tokenized U.S. Treasury bonds.
In the niche market of tokenized private credit, Goldfinch's active loan volume has reached $266 million, ranking second, just behind Centrifuge.
In summary, private credit represents a massive market with a scale of over a trillion dollars, while the tokenized private credit market currently only has a scale of around $1 billion, indicating significant growth potential in the future. As a leading protocol in this niche market, Goldfinch currently has a market cap of only around $300 million, leaving ample room for future growth. From a medium to long-term perspective, it remains worthy of attention and investment.
P.S This article does not constitute any investment advice.
