Alameda Research is leading a USD40 million investment round in Oxygen, a decentralised prime brokerage protocol that will offer prime brokerage services that have traditionally been limited to investment banks and hedge funds to everyone, free of centralised control.
The investment round will be joined by MultiCoin, Genesis Capital and CMS.
The Oxygen protocol will integrate into MAPS.ME bringing a potential user base of more than 100 million into the liquid DeFi Serum ecosystem.
“Oxygen will be the most sophisticated and elegant risk management tool in DeFi – with a strong team, growing ecosystem and large potential user base, we believe this is the next step in mass adoption of DeFi,” says Sam Bankman-Fried, advisor to Serum and Oxygen.
Prime brokerages facilitate leveraged trading and asset lending for banks, wealth management firms and hedge funds. Oxygen believes these tools should no longer be limited to institutions.
“We are excited to take the next step in decentralising finance, using the Oxygen protocol to offer prime brokerage services that cater to the needs of DeFi applications, financial institutions and individual users,” says Alex Grebnev, Co-Founder of Oxygen. “Oxygen will create a more democratised financial system where anyone can lend, borrow or trade portfolios of digital assets in one place,” adds Viktor Mangazeev, Co-Founder of Oxygen.
Oxygen will launch on the fast-growing Serum decentralised exchange which runs on Solana’s scalable and low-cost blockchain. Solana currently processes up to 50,000 transactions per second with each transaction costing $0.00001, with plans to further scale these capabilities.
Oxygen.org AG is based in Switzerland, which is recognised as an advanced jurisdiction for distributed ledger technology. Oxygen works with a Big Four audit firm and with leading international legal advisers to ensure asset safety and regulatory compliance.
As the industry grapples with network transaction fees hitting all-time highs, Oxygen aims to become a universally adopted on-chain prime brokerage with the capacity to support activity akin to that of Goldman Sachs and US exchanges combined.
“DeFi could reach 1 billion users and USD10 trillion of on-chain value. But projects have been limited by high fees, congestion and scalability issues. Composability on Solana means that any application building on DeFi can automatically integrate every other one as if it was native. Oxygen will fill an important role in Serum’s financial ecosystem,” says Sam Bankman-Fried.
Oxygen will first offer borrow-lending services via pools, in which users will deposit their assets and leverage Serum’s on-chain infrastructure to lend according to their desired terms. Users can also simultaneously lend to generate yield while borrowing against their portfolios. Borrowers can also utilise multiple asset types in their portfolio as collateral, helping to manage their risk.
Oxygen services will be embedded into the Maps.me wallet, ultimately enabling its users to earn passive income and bringing greater liquidity and strength to the Serum decentralised exchange ecosystem. Alameda Research and Genesis Trading will also be active on the protocol.
Oxygen’s later phases will explore the possibility of launching volatility trading and tools that enable users to create their own structured products on-chain.
Oxygen is powered by the OXY token, which will allow users to govern the Oxygen protocol and to benefit from 100 per cent of Oxygen’s net revenues.
OXY will be available via an Initial Exchange Offering on 11 March, and lists on FTX, BitMax and Serum DEX on March 16.
