Crypto-backed P2P lending platform raises $2.7m

Cryptocurrency-backed peer-to-peer lending platform RociFi has raised $2.7m (£2.08m) ahead of its launch.

RociFi has developed a protocol that leverages data and machine learning to facilitate under-collateralised loans through the blockchain.

Its scoring process will assess borrowers based on their digital identity and allow investors to lend money according to the credit risk scores.

RociFi has closed a seed funding round of $2.7m from Arrington, Goldentree, Nexo, LD Capital and Skynet Trading, to expand its engineering and labs teams and take the product to market.

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“The promise of RociFi is to create an open financial system that allows anyone, anywhere to use their established decentralised finance (DeFi) presence to access capital,” Christopher Brookins, chief executive of RociFi Labs, said in a blog on the platform’s website.

“Our evolving system will prove that Web 3.0 can better facilitate capital access compared to traditional financial systems.”

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“Under-collateralised capital markets represent one of the biggest opportunities to transform capital efficiency in crypto,” Ninor Mansor, partner at Arrington Capital, said.

“The distinct lack of non-economic recourse in DeFi means other types of ‘social capital’ cannot be deployed by borrowers. RociFi changes the game, introducing the idea of on-chain credit scoring as well as non-fungible token identity.”