DeFi ‘Super App’ Parallel Finance Doubles Valuation, Plans Up to $60M Series B
Parallel Finance, a Polkadot-based lending and staking protocol, has announced a $5 million strategic funding round at a $500 million valuation, twice that of its token round last November. Investors included Coinbase (COIN), StarkWare and Section 32, a venture capital firm founded by the former head of Google Ventures.
During the second quarter, Parallel Finance plans to raise a Series B round in two tranches of $20 million to $30 million each at an undetermined valuation, CEO Yubo Ruan told CoinDesk in an interview.
Earlier this month, Parallel Finance launched a “super app” bundle of six products in a bid to become a one-stop shop for DeFi solutions. The initial launch included solutions related to crypto wallets, staking, crowdloans, cross-chain bridges, automated market making and yield farming.
The strategic funding will help Parallel Finance expand its super app on the Polkadot ecosystem and beyond. The focus will be on research and development, product expansion, user base growth and increasing the total value locked (TVL) on the protocol.
“We currently have around $700 million to $800 million TVL,” said Ruan. “We plan to increase that to $2 billion to $3 billion in the coming quarter.”
Parallel Finance is interested in working with strategic investor Coinbase on its ecosystem expansion and software plans, said Ruan. The protocol also plans to build on StarkWare’s StarkNet, a layer 2 product addressing Ethereum’s key scalability issues of slow speed and high transaction fees. Section 32 brings potential collaborations to the table as the firm moves to invest more in Web 3 projects.
Parallel Finance has plans to expand its super app beyond the Polkadot ecosystem, initially with Ethereum. There are also plans to expand into the non-fungible token (NFT) space by supporting NFTs as collateral on the lending protocol.
“The NFT holder can get access to a credit line or get access to capital they can borrow without having to sell to get liquidity,” said Ruan.
Asked about the large increase in valuation since November, Ruan noted that Parallel Finance has grown from about 10 to 20 employees since last August to 70. The firm has also launched seven products since the protocol was founded less than a year ago.
“I think growth and traction have helped us increase the valuation,” explained Ruan. “It’s also about our long-term plans about how to bring DeFi to mass adoption.”