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Masa Finance, a hybrid credit protocol and decentralized credit bureau founded through Pngme CEO Brendan Playford in late 2020, raised $3. 5 million in seed funding. and developers with the team to access blockchain creditsss technology. “
The fundamental principle of the blockchain focuses on the ownership of assets, adding cash and monetary data. The formula tries in some way to reduce that of classic monetary establishments, such as banks and credit bureaus, which for decades have been collecting and storing monetary data. of other banked people around the world.
The premise of decentralized finance transcends this segment of other banked people. Analysts have argued that the generation can succeed in positions not filled by those monetary institutions. According to them, blockchain can allow other unbanked people to have faster access to loans, loans. and purchase of insurance.
Still, there is still room for collaboration between the two worlds, or at least in the case of Masa Finance, even if it targets the underserved.
Masa Finance links classic currency accounts and assets from credit reporting systems and banking knowledge with users’ cryptocurrency holdings. This connection allows the company to create non-fungible credit reports for users, which they can use for credits and other monetary tools.
“The vision I’ve had for a long time is how credit bureaus evolve and what they’ll look like in the long run,” the Playford founder told TechCrunch on a call. “The long-term Masa protocol will have to be completely decentralized, transforming governance and control into a CAD structure. “
Before launching Pngme, an open investment startup that raised more than $18 million in venture capital investments, Playford actively worked in the area of blockchain and crypto for nearly a decade. Last February, he revealed that this involvement had led him to be offering short-term crypto loans to entrepreneurs, especially in Kenya and Tanzania, and classic Pngme loans before switching to an open-ended finance game.
Masa Finance is the result of these collective enterprises. According to Playford, the company is based on three blocks: unlocking financial data (which Pngme does), new capital resources, and allowing Americans to own their credit history and share it with any lender. themselves.
The startup’s Web3 infrastructure works with more than 10,000 off-chain knowledge resources from credit reporting agencies, banking knowledge aggregators, and knowledge of choice in 78 countries, allowing Masa to create a chain credit score for its users.
So, by adding off-chain and in-chain knowledge into a non-fungible credit report, Masa says it provides lenders and developers with the equipment needed to assess the borrower’s threat and release loan products for Americans and businesses around the world.
“The global we build for is one where people’s knowledge is owned by themselves. This will connect an out-of-chain global with centralized knowledge to a new global chain that will grow over the next 10 to 20 years,” said Playford, who leads Masa. with the leader of Dusty Swartz. ” So you can attach other knowledge resources to create a credit profile stored in Masa in a decentralized way and have sovereignty over your decentralized credit profile. “
Masa says his knowledge of the chain covers 26 integrations, from exchanges to wallets, opening up a market of 4. 95 billion other people where 67% are invisible to credit. These wallets come with Binance, Coinbase, FTX, Gemini, and Metamask.
“The explanation for why they marry the credit bureaus is that it increases the policy for the largest number of users. Our project is to bring the next billion people to DeFi by offering credit bureau reports. And to do that, you need the existing infrastructure and spouse with those who are ultimately on the market,” Playford said when asked why Masa chose a hybrid style over a fully decentralized one.
Playford said that Masa is based on Celo and Ethereum, and that the platform, which is coming out of beta, already has another 36,000 people registered. Most of its existing users are located in sub-Saharan Africa, adding Nigeria and Kenya. Users in those countries, in addition to Uganda and the Philippines, are to blame for the volume of loans earned through Goldfinch, a competitor that raised $25 million from a16z and Coinbase Ventures in January.
Goldfinch Raises $25 Million from a16z to Fund Its DeFi Lending Protocol for Borrowers in Countries
Masa Finance claims to have over 2100 node operators in its live check network, which support knowledgeless personal transactions and smart contracts. There are also up to three hundred developer registrations, with seven projects registered to integrate. The first credit products introduced in the protocol come with a creditssbuilder loan, chirographic loans and a line of credits to SMEs through its application, the company said in a statement.
With the help of new capital, Masa says it has recorded a double-digit expansion each and every month since the beginning of the year. The cycle, which has no main investor, comes from traditional web-based VC3s. They come with Unshackled Ventures and Lateral Capital (supported by Pngme), executives from GoldenTree Asset Management, Flori Ventures and GSR. Other attractive investors are Decentranet Intersect VC, Peer VC, Alves Ventures and some angel investors in the fintech/blockchain space.
“This is the time when Unshackled has supported Brendan Playford, and it’s not a coincidence,” said Manan Mehta, founding general spouse of Unshackled Ventures. “What Masa reflects is a more equitable long-term that provides access to capital to a global population, largely ignored through classical finance. “
The next step for Masa is to raise a table, he said in a statement. The upcoming investment will allow the company to hire more engineers, launch the production edition of the protocol, conduct a public token sale, develop node operators and bring in developers. and lenders to the platform.
African fintech Pngme raises $15 million for its monetary knowledge infrastructure platform
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