Oasis.app, a decentralized finance platform that allows users to borrow, exchange and earn on their cryptocurrency assets, said Thursday that it has raised $6 million in an early funding round led by Libertus Capital.

The Series A funding round included crypto-focused investor Road Capital and was received in both cash and cryptocurrency.

Oasis.app provides a decentralized finance product, also called DeFi, which are services that eschew the control of middlemen and centralized bodies such as banks. DeFi applications allow users to conduct transactions peer-to-peer using blockchain technology and programmable smart contracts to exchange tokens.

DeFi is a Web3 technology. Web3 is the name given to what is known as the “decentralized web” and is built on apps that run on smart contracts and allow the exchange of data using blockchain technology. DeFi is fundamental to allowing investors in cryptocurrencies exposure and access to tokens as well as financial capacities available to traditional customers.

For example, the Oasis.app product allows users to exchange Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dai, Yfi, Uni and many more tokens. It also permits them to borrow Dai, a stablecoin, against their crypto assets and a feature called Multiply which allows users to earn more Dai from their assets. Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency that remains pegged to another currency such as the U.S. dollar.

The importance of stablecoins is that they are useful for moving value between different DeFi products without the concern for volatility. They can then be moved out of the DeFi apps to a centralized exchange such as Coinbase or Gemini if the trader needs to exchange the cryptocurrency for dollars or some other traditional currency.

“We’re proving our vision of becoming the most trusted place in DeFi to deploy and manage capital,” said Chris Bradbury, chief executive of Oasis.app. “This latest funding allows Oasis.app to scale the features our community will be looking for next.”

This funding round follows a $5 million seed round in June 2021.

In March, the platform reached $3.7 billion in total volume transacted, up from $1.6 billion in February, with a total of 2,086 transactions. Oasis.app counted 10,515 unique connected users and 803 vaults holding tokens. “This is a big time for DeFi as users are not only seeing the potential but finding the tech to access it,” said Bradbury.

Since it’s still “early days for DeFi,” he added, Oasis.app will be “driving the next phase of adoption.” The new funding will be used to develop more finance offerings and bring on more people to the team to scale up its capabilities.

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