The ICON Foundation has marked an important milestone in the advancement of decentralized finance when it announced about the $50,000 grant from the Stellar Community Fund. The grant is expected to support the integration of Balanced, one of the ICON’s popular cross-chain decentralized exchange and stablecoin platform, with the Stellar blockchain. The integrated connection between the two blockchain networks is expected to create more synergies in the global DeFi ecosystem.
ICON’s Balanced Platform Enhances Global DeFi Efficiency
Balanced is an established innovator in its cross-chain DeFi solutions, making it easy for participants to interact with native cross-chain DeFi primitives. From now on, the integration seeks to create a more interconnected and efficient global DeFi ecosystem.
At a high level, Balanced is a cross-chain DEX and CDP-style stablecoin platform where users can attach their native wallets, lock collateral in native assets, mint Balanced-native USD, and swap among various secure decentralized blockchains. However, using a significant percentage of the ICON network’s monthly ICX emissions to augment deep Network Owned Liquidity within cross-chain liquidity pools sets the platform apart in terms of delivering capital-efficient on-chain data-based solutions.
Therefore, ICON plans to first put the Balanced and ICON GMP smart contracts into Soroban, Stellar’s decentralized smart contracting environment, as part of the grant alternative strategy. Here, ICON can realize the future integration direction on a small scale. The full integration of Balanced with Stellar will increase the experience for Balanced’s current users and introduce Balanced’s advanced trading and stablecoin services to the Stellar ecosystem.
Stellar Community Fund Backs ICON’s Push for DeFi Connectivity
Integrating Balanced with Stellar will provide users with advanced trading and stablecoin use within the Stellar ecosystem. It will grant opportunities for taking native stablecoin loans to lend simply by depositing XLM, increase liquidity, and make cross-chain interaction easier. Additionally, it will provide more smooth DeFi experiences for both Stellar and Balanced users.
Moreover, this partnership between the ICON Foundation and the Stellar Community Fund is just the first act of what we all can accomplish together. Therefore, the grant will be an important sign of the sophisticated infrastructure that the ICON Foundation aims to create in terms of DeFi interoperability.
