The DeFi revolution is accelerating, with institutional players now accounting for around 70% of all crypto capital flows—a figure that continues to grow. 

Radix’s network and technology stack are uniquely designed to meet institutional needs. With industry-leading smart contract security via Scrypto and the Radix Engine, programmable composability through the Transaction Manifest, and built-in identity primitives for compliance, Radix offers unparalleled benefits. 

What’s been missing is a gateway for institutional capital to fully engage with the Radix Ecosystem. 

Enter Blend: a Radix-powered platform for institutional crypto lending and borrowing. Blend is more than just a dApp—it’s a transformative step for DeFi on Radix. 

The Size of the Market

Within crypto, the lend/borrow market is already over 33% of TVL in the space, with Aave recently crossing $20Bn of TVL and $8Bn in market cap. Between Aave, Maker, JustLend, Spark, Compound, and Morpho there is over $40Bn, with another circa $40Bn for Bitcoin collateralized loans on centralized venues such as exchanges. 

With the advent of Real World Assets, such as tokenized treasury bonds, coming to public networks, that number is set to rise significantly further, bringing new types of collateral that can be used to borrow against on-ledger.

The Gap in the Market

However, institutional crypto lending and borrowing is facing a major bottleneck: for every $5 in borrowing demand, only $1 is available for lending. The collapse of centralized venues like FTX, Celsius and BlockFi not only left unmet demand but also eroded trust, with risk departments unwilling to re-engage with opaque, closed book operations. As a result, the crypto lending market has only recovered to 10% of its 2022 peak. 

What will it take to restore that 90% of liquidity—and grow the market further? 

Institutional lenders overwhelmingly need: 

• Fixed-rate lending, to manage risk and cost of borrowing effectively.
  
  
• Rigorous compliance on borrower capital, so they can meet their regulatory standards.
  
  
• Transparency of the management of collateral, so there are no Celsius-style games.
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In the absence of better alternatives, institutions remain stuck with centralized exchanges or fragmented OTC markets–inefficient and unable to connect idle lending capacity with growing borrowing demand. A more efficient, transparent solution is urgently needed. 

The Allure of DeFi for Institutions

Platforms like Aave and Compound, while innovative and transparent, fall short for institutional lenders. Compared to Blend, they lack fixed-rate lending options and fail to meet the compliance assurances institutions require. Furthermore, liquidity is often restricted to protocol-native assets, forcing borrowers to navigate multiple venues for diverse collateral types–a cumbersome and inefficient process. 

This fragmentation leaves DeFi lending with significant gaps: variable rates appeal to only a subset of lending needs, and compliance standards fall short of institutional expectations. 

Yet, DeFi remains highly appealing to institutions due to key advantages:  

• Aggregated Liquidity: Access to a broad pool of assets and counterparties.
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• On-chain Transparency: Real-time visibility into loan health and collateralization.
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• Automated Loan Management: Smart contracts enforce the rules and streamline renewal, repayment, and liquidation actions at scale.
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• Eliminated Counterparty Risk: Smart contract-based loan management means little or no reliance on single entities.
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• Speed & always on: Transaction times that are not measured in days and markets that are always open.
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These features offer institutions increased capital efficiency and agility, directly impacting their bottom line making DeFi attractive despite its current shortfalls.

Blend is being developed to bridge the gap - bringing DeFi’s liquidity, transparency and automation together with the regulatory assurances and fixed-rate options institutions demand, creating a seamless alternative to CeFi and fragmented OTC. 

Introducing Blend

Blend is currently in the definition phase, with features and timelines still being finalized. The initial product is aimed to be a fixed-rate institutional lending and borrowing platform on the Radix network, addressing key institutional needs:

• Speed: Rapid loan origination and execution.
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• Transparency: Full visibility into transactions and loan statuses.
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• Aggregated Liquidity: Access to a wide range of assets, lenders, and terms in one place.
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• Standardization: Loans will share a single master loan agreement and be managed in the same way.
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• Regulatory Compliance: Borrowers and lenders onboard with AML/CFT/KYC that allows both sides to automatically meet familiar institutional compliance standards.
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• Efficient Liquiditation: Anthic provides a key source of liquidation liquidity for any loans that require liquidating on ledger, even at very large size.
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Blend is designed to unlock previously untapped liquidity, providing institutions with a secure, efficient, and transparent solution for borrowing and lending. With open bookkeeping and collateral management, it offers a seamless experience for institutions to meet their capital needs confidently.

The Tools that Make Blend Possible

Instabridge: Expanding Asset Accessibility

Instabridge enables institutions to bring any asset they wish to borrow or use as collateral onto the Radix network, removing the constraints of ecosystem-specific assets. This expands the available token pool while maintaining compliance within a secure framework.

As a VASP-regulated token bridging service, Instabridge issues wrapped assets on the Radix network, leveraging institutional-grade custody solutions like Fireblocks to ensure secure token management.

To date, Instabridge has facilitated over $250 million in asset transfers between Ethereum and Radix. It is now expanding to support connections with all major Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchains, further enhancing its utility and accessibility for institutions.

Anthic: Efficient On-Ledger Liquidations

Anthic is a groundbreaking liquidity system launching on the Radix Public Network, offering a single, decentralized venue for confidently trading top crypto assets. Users can avoid the hassle of switching between venues and chains, enjoying centralized exchange-level liquidity with the added security and transparency of DeFi. 

By integrating with Anthic and its connections to leading crypto market makers, Blend gains the ability to perform liquidations automatically and reliably on-ledger. This ensures efficient risk management for loan liquidations at the scale required for institutional lending. 

Building with Industry Leaders

Blend and Anthic have been developed through close collaboration with industry giants like Brevan Howard, Keyrock, and G-20, alongside feedback from dozens of hedge funds, lending desks, market makers, custodians, and prime brokers. Their insights have been critical in shaping products that address real market demands.

The Blend team is actively securing commitments from both lenders and borrowers, ensuring that the Blend MVP will be immediately valuable to its partners, who will be announced soon, and customers when it launches.

Meet Ken Sielecki - VP of Partnerships

Ken Sielecki, a seasoned professional whose career bridges the worlds of traditional finance and crypto. 

Ken began his career in finance, spending seven years in sales and trading at Merrill Lynch, London, where he developed deep expertise in equity markets. A transition to tech and entrepreneurship brought him to Southeast Asia, where he discovered a passion for scaling businesses and solving real-world problems. His journey into crypto began in 2015 and after dabbling for a few years he finally gained conviction during DeFi Summer and since 2021 been working in the crypto industry.

As an ex-founder and in corporate leadership positions, Ken has focused on strategy, execution, and product development. At OYO Thailand, a Softbank backed unicorn, he was part of the leadership team that scaled the business to over 20,000 rooms, making it the largest hotel group in the country. At Zipmex, a regional South East Asian crypto exchange, he was instrumental in growing the user base to over a million across Southeast Asia and assets on platform to several $100m.

Since joining RDX Works, he’s focused on driving Radix’s institutional strategy and using his experience to engage hundreds of financial institutions, hedge funds, and market makers to refine Radix’s institutional product offerings culminating in the planned launch of Blend. Ken is excited to help shape the future of DeFi and advance Radix’s mission to lead the industry.

The Radix Network: A Gateway For Capital

The Blend MVP is expected to initially focus on permissioned DeFi, but its architecture is designed to support future expansion into permissionless markets, significantly broadening its potential user base. In addition, Blend’s lending and borrowing activities will bring in substantial assets onto the Radix Network, representing a significant influx of capital for the entire ecosystem. 

Each loan on Blend creates opportunities for Radix DeFi projects to integrate with Blend and offer additional use cases for that capital.

With Radix’s composability and transaction model, there’s many opportunities for builders to explore novel ways in generating yield or serving new customers coming to Radix.

Final Thoughts

Blend is more than just a new set of products - it's an important step in unlocking the full potential of DeFi on the Radix network. By addressing real-world constraints and collaborating with industry leaders, Blend is positioning itself to become the go-to platform for institutional lending and borrowing in crypto.

More assets on Radix means more opportunities for other dApps to build products and services that keeps those assets within the ecosystem and further grows the potential of the Radix platform.

With the integration of Blend, Instabridge, and Anthic, the Radix Ecosystem is not only stronger, but now positioning to attract institutional capital. 

Stay tuned for more updates on Blend by visiting: https://www.blendmarkets.io/