Compound Finance Shifts Focus to Institutional Investors with $52 Million Budget

Compound Finance, a pioneering decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol, has made significant changes in its leadership team and strategy. The company replaced its leadership and approved a $52 million budget to focus on attracting institutional users. Compound's new plan involves offering real-world assets, partner integration, and credit infrastructure for traditional financial markets.

The decision comes after the value of assets locked on Compound tumbled from $12 billion in September 2021 to $1.2 billion. The company has processed approximately $480 billion in deposits and borrowing volume since its inception. Despite losing ground to competitors like Aave, which holds over 11 times Compound's TVL with $14.8 billion, the new leadership is optimistic.

'Now is a great time for initiatives like these,' said Gal Stern, chief business development officer at deBridge. 'Real capital going toward structural work and bringing in bright minds from the institutional sphere can explain it to a risk committee in their own language.'

The new team includes Chief Operating Officer Christopher Donovan, who previously held the same role at the Near Foundation, and Steven Liu, who scaled Maple Finance from $500 million to $5 billion in assets. Aaron Schnarch, former CEO of Coinbase Custody, joins as an executive director.