Asymmetry Finance is a firm that is offering a protocol that has been developed as a comprehensive solution to address the issue of centralization within the staked ETH(Ethereum) market. It is pertinent to mention that the major objective of designing blockchains was to decentralize operations, services and data. Asymmetry Finance is therefore, implementing a protocol to incentivize users with an efficient yield generating model that will result in market-leading returns. The firm offers an LST(Liquid Staking Token) protocol that is custom-built to solve the issue of centralization in the liquid staking sector.
In recent days, Asymmetry Finance has announced that it had raise $3 million in a seed financing round that was led by venture capital fund Ecco Capital. Other investment firms that backed this financing round include Republic Capital, gmjp and Ankr – a fellow liquid staking protocol. This event brings the post-funding valuation of Asymmetry Finance to around $20 million. The announcement of this round came in conjunction with the official launch of its platform.
The global LST market is currently valued at $13.6 billion and still has potential to grow tremendously. This make sit one of the most attractive sectors in DeFi (Decentralized Finance) due to its liquidity and flexibility. However, the LST market is highly centralized as 88% of the LST market is currently staked on Lido Finance. This creates a single point of failure that poses a significant security vulnerability, that is, if the major node falls, it brings the whole sector down with it. This concern however, will continue to grow as the centralized custodian continues to witness a flock of users who want to stake their tokens especially after the recent Shappella upgrade.
The DeFi ecosystem is in urgent need of a liquid staking protocol that promotes decentralization while at the same time, retaining the benefits of LSTs and optimum capital efficiency. Asymmetry therefore, offers an immediate solution the scalability and centralization issues facing the Ethereum LST market.
According to Justin Garland, co-founder of Asymmetry Finance, staking in Ethereum is essential for securing, scaling and sustaining the network. He also further added that the percentage of ETH staked as compared to other chains is significantly lower therefore, presenting a unique opportunity for the firm to onboard more users and reshape the highly centralized market. He also noted that the challenge is to incentivize users to contribute to wards decentralization rather than compounding on the centralization that is currently evident in the market.
Hannah Hamilton, another co-founder of Asymmetry Finance, noted that substantial centralization directly contradicts with the core fundamentals of DeFi and has potential knock-on effects on the entire ecosystem. Hamilton also added that the firm’s vision is not to directly challenge Lido and Rocketpool but rather offer a novel liquid staking alternative.
One of the products being offered by Asymmetry Finance is safETH(Simple Asymmetry Finance Ethereum). This product aims to deliver consistent yield to users in a safe and efficient manner. The benefits derived from this offering include fee-free decentralized asset basket, Simplicity and Accessibility as well as indexed products.
