Donkey, launched Sept. 1, aims to become a DeFi service that brings more South Korean investors into decentralized finance by making their favorite cryptos more scalable and available.
Fast facts
- Donkey is a virtual asset deposit and lending protocol that runs on the Ethereum blockchain where anyone can deposit crypto as collateral and borrow other crypto assets. In case a user’s debt isn’t paid, the entrusted virtual assets as collateral will be liquidated to write off the debt. The deposit and lending process is done completely peer-to-peer between user wallets.
- Donkey differentiates from existing DeFi services in that it deals with cryptocurrencies that are popular among South Korean investors. Previously, tokens developed in Korea or tokens that are especially popular among Koreans were hard to find in foreign DeFi services such as Aave or Compound — thus making DeFi services not as available to Korean investors. Donkey plans to allow these tokens to become more scalable by including them in its pool of deposits and letting them roam around the DeFi market.
- Donkey currently supports 14 kinds of crypto assets including Ethereum, Tether, Link, Axie Infinity and Korean domestic tokens, or as some like to call “Kimchi coins” such as Bora, PlayDapp and Cobak token. Its developers Chain Partners and LikeLion say Donkey will focus on increasing its deposit pool of crypto, adding other blockchain support systems in line with the smart contract programming language Solidity and further developing its own token, DON.
- Meanwhile, the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi continues to surpass its all-time highs, currently at US$168 billion, rising a staggering 37.27% in just one month according to DeFi Llama.