Major DeFi Platform Comes to Cardano (ADA) With Native Sidechain

Ken Olling, founder and CEO of MELD, a decentralized protocol for lending and borrowing cryptocurrency, dismisses the rumor about leaving the Cardano (ADA) ecosystem and sheds light on next big milestones for his product.

MELD lending protocol has no plans to leave Cardano (ADA)

Decentralized finance protocol MELD is still building a product on top of Cardano (ADA), the second largest proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain, and is going to launch a native sidechain on its base.

They haven’t left… pic.twitter.com/4ZGjgyBHrl

— Jonathan (@SeektheTruth87) May 26, 2023

This statement was made in a discussion between Cardano (ADA) enthusiasts and staking pool operators on Twitter. One of them directly asked MELD’s founder Ken Olling on Discord about its work with Cardano (ADA).

Olling confirmed that IOG’s blockchain remains the technical basis for the development of his product. He also confirmed that MELD is building its own L1 sidechain in parallel with Cardano-based service.

Recently, the code base of MELD was open sourced. Right now, the team is in the middle of a third-party security audit of its technical design organized by Vacuum Labs. Namely, the researchers are stress-testing MELD’s multi-sig on Cardano (ADA).

Olling also highlighted that his team directly works together with Input Output Global, one of the entities behind Cardano’s (ADA) technical progress:

We are working with IOG. If we were not building on Cardano (ADA), we wouldn’t be working with IOG (simple logic)

As covered by U.Today previously, MELD has been working on various DeFi solutions for the Cardano (ADA) ecosystem since 2021.

Cardano (ADA) DeFi ecosystem TVL smashes through 450 million ADA milestone

As mentioned by the official MELD website, the product is also going to support major EVM ecosystem’s blockchains, including the likes of Ethereum (ETH), BNB Chain (BSC), Avalanche (AVAX), Polygon Network (MATIC) and others.

In the past few days, the Cardano (ADA) ecosystem of DeFi protocols witnessed an unparalleled spike of ADA-denominated total value locked (TVL).

As displayed by the DefiLlama dashboard, the net TVL of Cardano’s DeFis sits over 452 million ADA locked. It is more than 125% higher than that of early 2023.

Five largest Cardano-based applications — Minswap, Indigo, Wingriders, Djed and Liqwid — are responsible for over 80% of the net TVL of Cardano-based dApps, with Minswap being the largest DEX.