Ren protocol has announced that its core product RenVM has gone live on mainnet.
According to reports, RenVM is a decentralized finance (DeFi) project structured to bring cross-chain assets to the Ethereum ecosystem. The new project will begin with Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Zcoin (ZEC).
What RenVM is all about
The RenVM mainnet aims at removing liquidity silos that have long hindered DeFi’s growth potential. Therefore, the project will serve as a robust and permissionless tool available for DeFi applications.
Essentially, RenVM functions like a decentralized custodian holding digital assets and then minting them in a one-on-one representation on Ethereum as an ERC20. Apart from this, its in-house evolution in Secure Multi-Party Computation (sMPC) is very innovative. The sMPC effectively allows a set of nodes to store blockchain private keys in complete privacy. As a result, it creates a virtual machine (hence the name RenVM) for moving assets around. It can do so at the request of programmatic logic without needing the permission of any central entity.
Taiyang Zhang, CEO and co-founder of Ren said: “Successfully launching RenVM’s mainnet is a critical step in our long-term mission of creating a decentralized platform for DeFi that is self-sustaining and advances the industry as a whole.”
He also mentioned restriction to interoperability being a perpetual pain point for DeFi. According to him, it was the motivation behind building RenVM that could solve this problem by enabling cross-chain liquidity to crypto investors.
Ren $33 million funding
In 2018, Ren had raised about $33 million from leading venture capital funds and investors. In line with this, it has now released RenVM with the support of its newly formed Ren Alliance. It comprises a consortium of over 50 organizations helping to secure, develop, and utilize RenVM.
The members of the Ren Alliance include decentralized applications (DApps) as well as decentralized exchanges (DEX). Institutional investors and other DeFi projects are also part of the alliance. They represent tens of thousands of network participants who can utilize RenVM to access cross-chain liquidity and earn a passive yield on their crypto.
Loong Wang, the CTO and co-founder of Ren, explained that their focus for the present would remain on functioning as a bridge between Bitcoin and Ethereum. Also, they would consider other blockchain-based tokens, including stablecoins like Libra and China’s digital yuan.
About Ren
Founded in 2017, Ren’s open protocol reportedly enables the permissionless and private transfer of value between blockchain. Besides, its core product, RenVM has the objective to bring interoperability to DeFi through its decentralized custody solution.
Previously, we had covered Ren’s development update describing the steps on how to roll out Mainnet SubZero. Also, last week, renBTC, the latest Bitcoin implementation on the Ethereum blockchain was finally been launched although it’s not yet open to the general public.
