AppWorks Backs Fluid Lending Protocol with Strategic Investment
AppWorks has invested in Fluid, a decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol founded by Samyak Jain, co-founder of Instadapp. The deal size and valuation were not disclosed.
Fluid aims to reduce capital fragmentation in DeFi by enabling the same collateral that backs a loan to provide trading liquidity simultaneously. This approach targets higher revenue per dollar of total value locked (TVL) compared to established lending protocols like Aave and Compound.
Jain previously co-founded Instadapp, which reached around $12 billion in TVL at one point and was backed by investors including Pantera Capital and Naval Ravikant. Lessons from the 2022 LUNA and stETH market stress led Jain to pause further development on Instadapp and rebuild a lending stack from first principles.
Fluid already powers several front-end products, such as Jupiter Lend on Solana through a roughly 50/50 economics split with Jupiter Exchange. Bitwise also uses a Fluid-powered market on Jupiter Lend for Ethena exposure as an early sign of institutional participation.