Over the years, the crypto space has covered significant ground in the quest for true decentralization. The journey has not been straightforward.
We’ve had ups and downs testing the resilience of the ecosystem. From regulatory battles to technological hurdles, the road has been rough. However, every obstacle has only fueled innovation.
Throughout thick and thin, there have been entities advocating the need to build “genuine DeFi” for all users, and The DeFi Collective has been one among them.
As such, they’re a Swiss non-profit association incorporated in Zug dedicated to supporting DeFi protocols that check the decentralization box.
The evolution of the DeFi landscape
DeFi has seen a range of innovations aligned to the collective interests of protocol participants.
Even though these innovations have been considerable, core values — like transparency, resilience, accessibility, utility, and trustlessness — have somewhere or the other been eroding.
The state of the DeFi landscape is currently similar to the Internet in its early days. Alongside optimism, skepticism parallelly prevails.
In such a scenario, having public institutions tackle issues of public interest within the DeFi arena could prove to be a game changer.
Initially funded entirely from donations pledged by value-aligned projects, The Collective has already received more than $1.2 million from major teams, including Liquity, Team CAT, Maverick, DYAD, and Diva.
The Collective team evaluates the level of decentralization of projects and supports them with on-chain and off-chain activities ranging from liquidity management, research, and governance.
The number game
The association already controls liquidity-driving positions that can sustain north of $30 million of TVL in liquidity pools across six different chains. These funds are dedicated to support truly autonomous and trustless protocols.
To break it down, The Collective uses “DeFi for better DeFi.” In other words, they scale up the capital invested by backing projects that have more impact, supporting genuine DeFi
Until now, its revenue has always exceeded the operational cost, with 60% surplus harnessed each month.
The bottom line
The Collective has already been in existence for a year. It seems to be on the right track to continue the legacy going forward too.
For this year, its focus is clear — it is looking to provide the ecosystem with a comprehensive database allowing anyone to evaluate the decentralization status of DeFi protocols.
They are also targeting to review and evaluate a major chunk of the top 100 protocols by next year. Furthermore, they’re looking to streamline providing on-chain support and off-chain advising to “nascent” and “pre-market relevant” DeFi protocols.
Sometimes having a back to lean on can come along a long way, and at the moment, The Collective is providing the support.
