The decentralized exchange Brine Fi has stormed the scene, securing a whopping $16.5 million at a valuation of $100 million in an investment triangulation steered by Pantera Capital. Despite a dip in venture capital for digital asset businesses recently reported by Crunchbase, Brine Fi managed to raise this fresh funding.
This feat seems more promising when considering the 76% slump in cryptocurrencies and blockchain start-ups’ investments in Q2 2023 compared to the previous year, as reported by Crunchbase. Moreover, the shining star of Brine Fi stands out against the ruthless bear market that has shrunk trading volumes, pegging them at multi-year lows.
Interestingly, despite a momentary revival in spring, daily trading volumes on DEXs have since face-planted, flirted around just above $1 billion, as per DefiLlama data. Most of the trade volume is still the stronghold of centralized platforms such as Binance and Coinbase, who romp home with close to $11 billion in daily trading volume.
So, what makes Brine Fi special? Leveraging the strength of the Ethereum scaling system StarkWare, Brine Fi presents a non-custodial, decentralized orderbook that offers privacy for trading positions through zero-knowledge proofs. It means traders get to place hefty orders without the fear of front-running or alarming others. Not to mention, this platform accoladed for rapid trade execution has attracted daily trading volumes of $3 million – $4 million since its inception in May.
Pantera Capital’s managing partner, Paul Veradittakit, presents Brine Fi as a beacon, highlighting it addresses the main challenges blocking mainstream user and institutional adoption in DeFi. According to him, the demand for a self-custodial execution layer that is not only speedier and reliable but also user-friendly and cost-effective is surmounting, and Brine Fi is here to meet this demand.
It, therefore, looks like Brine Fi is here to break the ice and potentially change the current dull trading climate. Yet, one may ask, in a space where central platforms still reign supreme, will decentralized platforms like Brine Fi manage to tear a significant slice of the market share? As crypto watchers, we remain intrigued about these developments in the DEX landscape.
Source: Coindesk
