Moola Raises $1.4m Seed Round
Moola, a mobile money market protocol democratizing access to yield on the Celo network, is thrilled to announce we have raised a $1.4m seed funding round. Notable backers include; Polychain Capital, Flori Ventures, as well as angel investors.
Built on the Celo network, Moola markets are easily accessible to users via their mobile phone browser. Moola’s mission is to contribute to the conditions of prosperity for everyone by providing open access to yield for savers and credit for borrowers. Starting with today’s public beta launch, Moola will be providing yield to owners of Celo’s stablecoin, cUSD and its native asset, CELO. To start generating yield, download the Valora payments app and head over to app.moola.market.
“We are excited to be seeing the emergence of a new decentralized financial ecosystem being built on top of Celo’s infrastructure. We feel the mobile-first focus of Celo’s technology stack, and of Moola’s DeFi money markets on top of it will expand access to DeFi products to previously untapped markets where the primary digital access point is mobile phones. We believe the future of crypto is in easily accessible, user-friendly, mobile-compatible platforms and are thrilled to see these teams pushing the design envelope forward in these areas.” Olaf Carson-Wee — Polychain Capital
Benefits to Moola’s mobile money market protocol include:
For Savers: With as little as 0.01 cUSD or CELO, savers can deposit into a Moola market without incurring prohibitively expensive transaction fees. Savers with short time preferences can deposit into Moola markets with the confidence that when they do need to withdraw, they won’t give back all their earned yield to cover network fees.
For Borrowers: Borrowers can now speculate on the cUSD price of CELO by taking on-chain leveraged long or short positions. All loans, except flash loans, are over-collateralized. Flash loans must be repaid within the same block they are taken. Moola markets offer borrowers variable or stable interest rates. Borrowers whose collateral value drops below the liquidation threshold can be liquidated by anyone holding the borrowed asset.
Low Cost and Fast: Deposit, borrow, and repay transactions on Moola cost less than 0.001 USD in transaction fees and are finalized on average within 5 seconds.
Non-custodial: Moola never takes custody of users’ assets. Instead, it uses the Valora mobile payments app to sign transactions, similar to how MetaMask works on Ethereum. Wallet and dapp developers can directly integrate with Moola markets by leveraging Moola’s APIs. Moola is currently accessible via mobile phone browser or via CLI commands. We will soon launch support for desktop and hardware wallets.
Governance: Moola will follow a path of progressive decentralization. Currently, the Moola core team controls the admin keys which can upgrade the Moola contracts. Over time, as Moola achieves product market fit and builds a community of active supporters, we plan to hand over control to the community.
Ancestry: Moola has shared ancestry with the open-source Aave protocol on Ethereum and is deeply grateful for the amazing work of the Aave team and community. 🙏🏼
About: Moola was founded by Patrick Baron in 2020 and is headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Moola participated in Celo Camp Batch 2 (Registration for batch 3 is now open), placed second overall during demo day, and is a proud member of the Celo Alliance for Prosperity.
We’re hiring full-stack and smart contract engineers! Please reach out to us at info@moola.market.
