Decentralized Finance is taking the world by storm, and many people are currently embracing this new financial system. This means that more and more DeFi projects are being introduced in the market, and the need for better blockchain networks is increasing. One network that currently supports DeFi growth is Avalanche.

Avalanche is an Ethereum competitor and a flexible smart contract platform, which facilitates in creating custom blockchains, including private ones and decentralized apps (dApps). Launched in2020 by Ava Labs, Avalanche currently has four blockchains within the Primary Network, one of which is C-Chain, a smart contract chain that utilizes EVM and is 100% compatible with existing Ethereum tooling. So basically, it is a platform for platforms.

In this Human and Machine episode, we have interviewed three projects from the Avalanche Ecosystem.

‍

Elk Finance

Elk Finance is a cross-chain liquidity network that aims to be the Forex market in the decentralized economy. They are currently building a network that will support cross-chain liquidity, allowing users to exchange cryptocurrencies from any chain, anytime, anywhere. This DeFi project’s goal is to ensure lower fees on cross-chain trades, which is essential for accelerating the blockchain mainstream adoption.

“We are focusing on cross-chain interoperability. And so, we're building an ecosystem that makes it easy to move value and move data across blockchains. We also run our own DEX on, currently six chains, and we support six chains with the plan to support many more by the end of the year, and expand the range of services that we offer on top of the ecosystem,” shares Baal, founder of Elk Finance.

Through Avalanche, Elk Finance can launch a state-of-the-art liquidity pooling system with a decentralized peer-to-peer network that is fast, trustless, and cheap swaps across different chains.

‍

Pangolin

‍Pangolin is a decentralized exchange (DEX) on the Avalanche network that currently uses the same automated market-making model as Uniswap. While there are many DEX in the market today, Pangolin offers three critical benefits that set them apart from other exchanges: fast and cheap trades, community-driven development, and a fair and open token distribution.

“Pangolin is unique as a DEX because it's a DAO-driven DEX. It's a decentralized, community-based DEX. I mean that we like to vote through on-chain governance on major decisions such as spending treasury money, major product shifts, and things like that. In traditional finance, very centralized like the C-suite, makes decisions, the boardroom. In crypto, it appeals to a lot of people because people have a voice, kind of starts from the bottom, or when it comes to decisions and investments and things like that,” explains Leo Chen, COO of Pangolin.

Verso Finance

Verso is a decentralized marketplace for the regulated financial service industry. The company is trying to bridge the gap between DFi and the traditional finance space by standardizing how financial products connect to consumers from existing relationships through bank accounts and digital wallets. It also enables traditional financial service providers to distribute microfinance at scale.

“We are connecting DeFi to traditional finance. The way we are doing this is by enabling a standardized way how financial products can be distributed to custodial regulated e-wallets. So we are coming from the e-wallet space, a very traditional world in that custodial wallets need to be regulated as such. But today, these e-wallets have billions of users, actually, mostly in emerging markets. It is complicated to connect them to DeFi. It is challenging to connect them to traditional finance when it comes to microfinance, and this is our mission,” says Gregor Arn, CEO of Verso.

Conclusion

Avalanche has provided many DeFi projects a home where they can take advantage of the incredibly high performance, low latency, unparalleled customization, and interoperability that can transform the traditional finance space into a blockchain-based system. This is just the beginning, and Avalanche, along with all the projects it supports, will help create a better future in the financial space.