Polkadot-integrated RAI Finance raises $1.5 million from crypto-funds

DeFi protocol RAI Finance is in the news after it announced that it raised $1.5 million worth of strategic investment led by global crypto-funds including GBIC and Alphabit.

RAI Finance aims to build a DeFi ecosystem with a higher amount of liquidity and a diverse set of financial use cases through an integration with the Polkadot ecosystem.

RAI would harness the Polkadot network’s cross-chain compatibility to solve problems in building DeFi-based digital assets and supplying liquidity to existing distributed financial ecosystems.

The $1.5 million investment from GBIC and Alphabit represents an interest in a project that has many potential use cases in pushing the DeFi ecosystem to new levels of adoption and functionality, especially with Polkadot’s cross-chain composability.

The announcement was celebrated by RAI Finance’s Lee Keonho who said,

“We are pleased to attract strategic investment from global crypto funds ahead of the launch of Rai Finance. We will strive to complement and further develop the existing distributed financial ecosystem through Rai Finance.”

Polkadot has been busy lately with a host of partnerships. It recently partnered with Ontology, a partnership that will integrate its DeID solution on the network. This was part of a wider effort for Ontology to build a parachain on Polkadot. The parachain in question is intended to bring cross-chain liquidity to the Polkadot network.

Cross-chain functionality is increasingly important to scale DeFi and offers users access to more asset classes across the ecosystem. The growth of Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) is the perfect example of how important interoperability is to users.

Polkadot is a network protocol that allows not just tokens, but also arbitrary data to be transferred across blockchains. Its partnership with Equilibrium in August highlights the emphasis on cross-chain interoperability to boost DeFi market growth.