RociFi, a decentralized zero and under-collateralized lending protocol, has announced completing a seed funding round of $2.7 million USD (closed in November 2021) from Arrington, Goldentree, Nexo, LD Capital and Skynet Trading.
RociFi has developed a protocol that leverages on-chain data, machine learning and decentralized identity data points to facilitate undercollateralized loans via the blockchain. This protocol is set to revolutionize lending for those whose digital identities are increasingly centered on the semi-autonomous Web 3.0. RociFi’s scoring process will identify a borrower's trustworthiness based on their digital identity and allow lenders to lend their money according to their credit risk scores.
“The promise of RociFi is to create an open financial system that allows anyone, anywhere to use their established DeFi presence to access capital,” said Christopher Brookins, CEO of RociFi Labs. “Our evolving system will prove that Web 3.0 can better facilitate capital access compared to traditional financial systems.”
"Undercollateralized capital markets represent one of the biggest opportunities to transform capital efficiency in crypto,” said Ninor Mansor, Partner at Arrington Capital. “The distinct lack of non-economic recourse in DeFi means other types of ‘social capital’ cannot be deployed by borrowers. RociFi changes the game, introducing the idea of on-chain credit scoring as well as NFT-based identity."
The seed funds will be used to expand the RociFi Labs team and take the product to market, taking advantage of the growing interest in decentralized finance from the traditional finance industry. The newly acquired funds will increase the size of the engineering team and launch the protocol.