Welcoming Sovryn to the Collider Labs and Collider Ventures family

4 min readDec 16, 2020

We’re thrilled to finally announce publicly that Collider Labs and Collider Ventures had incubated and invested in Sovryn!

Sovryn has just completed a $2.1M funding round (symbolic of Bitcoin’s total supply), that will help the team build products that will serve Bitcoiners and spearhead DeFi that is as close as it gets to the Bitcoin’s original values and is 100% bitcoin-denominated, without a need to hold another token.

We’re particularly excited about Sovryn as it is the first company we’ve incubated in Collider Labs with a fast follow-on investment by Collider’s Ventures flagship fund.

DeFi is Exploding with BTC in the lead

Decentralized Finance is the fastest growing segment in the crypto space, with over $10B of value locked, while just 1 year ago $500K was locked.

Within DeFi, Bitcoin is the fastest growing sub-segment, with $2B BTC locked and a wBTC dominance of 65%, despite it all being on Ethereum. This does not take into account other types of synthetic bitcoins out there on Ethereum.

Yet DeFi solutions today for Bitcoin require either trust in a 3rd party, or using collateral in another Ethereum-native asset that derives a synthetic BTC, or a MPC scheme that requires collateral and rewards for signers. They also all have Ethereum’s high transaction fees and require the user to have ETH to pay those fees.

Bitcoin-native DeFi — The Missing Piece

Following the Bitcoiner’s mantra of adding features slowly, after observing well-tested implementations and topics that were thoroughly debated, Sovryn have learned best practices from the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem and chose to build a Bitcoin-centric DeFi on RSK. A bitcoin sidechain, with a strong emphasis on UX.

Sovryn is a decentralized platform for trading and lending Bitcoin. On Sovryn.app users can trade Bitcoin in a permissionless, non-custodial, and censorship-resistant way.

The SOV token will be a governance token for this decentralized project. Holders can vote to collects fees, modify parameters and promote changes. Users will be able to earn SOV tokens through liquidity mining.

It’s important to note that Bitcoiners don’t need SOV or any other token to use Sovryn; just their Bitcoins.

Why RSK

Sovryn is committed to Bitcoin-native and Bitcoin-denominated DeFi today that would give Bitcoiners a user experience and security that is better than the one achieved on Ethereum.

After doing extensive research on existing solutions the team has found that RSK as a sidechain to the bitcoin network, as opposed to other solutions out there, is the most sovereign one and requires the least amount of trust in any 3rd party delegation, councils or other structures.

RSK is the best solution to having a BTC-denominated financial system that has high security (merged-mined with 40%-80% of BTC’s hash rate) and is economically efficient (lower fees, and a 1:1 BTC ↔ RBTC peg that means significant capital efficiency on BTC trades and BTC collateralized assets). RSK also has better storage handling and a better data structure (learn more in this article).

Furthermore, Collider decided to support the RSK ecosystem by running a node and adding to the resilience and decentralization of the network.

The Fit for Collider

We’re bitcoiners ourselves and we are big believers in creating new financial rails that are permissionless, inclusive, and allow open innovation.

Sovryn fits into that vision perfectly and we’ve known the team for some years before they started Sovryn. Members of them have been actively involved in the blockchain space between 5–9 years, they maintain a very active, open and transparent Discord server, they’re very professional and dedicated, and are open to feedack.

Timing is also important; DeFi is proving itself and there are already quite a few successes and mistakes we can learn from. In addition, Bitcoin is experiencing growing mainstream attention.

Catering a wide audience is another factor, therefore we believe Bitcoin-denominated DeFi positioned well to gain traction as Bitcoin grows in popularity, and having a great user experience is key to newcomers and OG’s alike.

We are excited to join forces with great investors such as Greenfield One, Monday Capital, The Crypto Dog, Lionschain Capital, and more, together with the Sovryn community members in their journey to build the future of finance.

Learn More about Collider Labs and Collider Ventures

Website: www.collider.vc
Twitter: https://twitter.com/collidervc
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/colliderventures/

Learn More about Sovryn

…

The information above is provided for informational purposes only and shall not be construed as investment advice or as requests to engage in investment operations. Neither should it be construed as recommendations or advice on legal or regulatory aspects.