Big money heads to DeFi: Fidelity-backed Fireblocks teams with Compound

By Robert Stevens

Fireblocks, a crypto startup backed by investment giant Fidelity that helps companies keep their crypto secure when moving them between smart contracts, today announced its integrated with decentralized lending platform Compound. 

Compound is a decentralized finance protocol that lets anyone take crypto loans out, so long as they can put up crypto as collateral. People can also lend out their crypto to earn interest. Currently, Compound lends $163 million across eight markets, part of a digital asset lending industry that Fireblocks pegs at $4.7 billion. 

Moving money around is a worrisome problem for institutions, and a potential roadblock to investing in DeFi, a hotly growing space that last month had $1 billion worth of crypto locked within its contracts. By integrating with Fireblocks, Compound aims to help its customers move money around quickly and safely. 

Compound is also accessible through MetaMask, a Chrome web-extension wallet and key vault. That works fine, but Fireblocks says that its platform does away with fiddly deposit addresses. That makes it easier for its customers—OTC trade desks, market markers, hedge funds, and exchanges—to move large amounts of crypto around safely. 

NYC-headquartered Fireblocks claims that this is the only integration of such a service on a DeFi—decentralized finance—protocol. 

“The industry has been waiting patiently for a secure, institutional platform that can access Compound markets,” said Robert Leshner, CEO and founder of Compound. “Being able to add incremental returns into your existing workflow is a game-changer that will allow institutional investors to enter decentralized finance for the first time.”

Fireblocks raised $16 million in a Series A funding round last year, backed by Fidelity (via its venture arm, EightRoads). It moves $2.5 billion each day, Michael Shaulov, CEO and co-founder, told Forbes in November.

Compound has raised $33.2 million, according to Crunchbase, with $25 million in investment from top Silicon Valley investment firm Andreessen Horowitz.

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