As the DeFi market surges at an unprecedented rate, Huobi Group announced a new business unit Huobi DeFi Labs that will manage its investment fund focused on the DeFi space.
DeFi is the hottest flavor of the season currently in the crypto market and exchange operator Huobi is all set to enter into it. On Monday, the Huobi Group announced a new fund to invest millions of dollars in the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) space.
For this, the company has also launched its new businesses unit – Huobi DeFi Labs – to manage the fund. Currently, with a staff of four, the Huobi DeFi Labs will focus on research, investment, and incubation of Defi-based projects. To lead this new initiative, Huobi has hired former banker Sharlyn Wu as its chief investment officer.
Previously, Wu was leading the blockchain investment arm at China Merchant Bank International (CMBI) for three years. This is an overseas branch of one of China’s biggest banks aka the China Merchant Bank. Under Wu’s leadership, the CMBI ventured and invested in several blockchain and crypto projects. This includes public blockchain projects like Nervous as well as wallet startup Bitpie. Speaking about this new opportunity, Wu said:
“It is exciting to see the power of the permissionless economy unleashed at global scale. However, there are still many problems to be solved at the theoretical and technical levels.”
Huobi Supports Thriving DeFi Space And Rising Investments
The launch of Huobi’s new DeFi fund just comes at a time when venture capitals have increased their investment in DeFi-based projects. Last week itself, Binance Labs’ Injectve Protocol raised $2.6 million in a funding round led by Pantera Capital. On the other hand, Polychain and Three Arrows also backed another DeFi protocol dubbed KeeperDao.
Over the last two months, the overall DeFi market has seen massive inrush on funds, especially the protocols on the Ethereum blockchain network. In the last three weeks, the total locked assets in Defi jumped by over $2 billion. The total locked assets in the DeFi market have gone from $2 billion to now over $4 billion. The overall Defi market cap for the top 100 DeFi coins has surged above $8 billion.
DeFi projects like Compound, Maker, Aave, and Synthetix are currently in the news. Another interesting fact is that DeFi has also helped the Ethereum market cap to surge to its highest levels since August 2018. The Ethereum market cap has crossed $40 billion for the first time in the last two years.
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