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UNION, a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol building risk management tools, has raised $3.9 million in fresh funding.

The round was backed by Alameda Research, Solidity Ventures, 3Commas, and Black Edge Capital, among others. With fresh capital in hand, UNION looks to launch its protocol in the coming months.

John Liu, chief product officer at UNION, told The Block that the protocol would offer “complete risk management” tools for DeFi.

“DeFi is still growing. It would be disingenuous of anyone to state that they ‘know all the risks’ of DeFi,” said Liu. “We see clear blocks of risk, and the ones we have prioritized are transaction finality (things end up where they should be), smart contract risk (specific to project or dApp), Layer-1 risk (entire protocol fails), Impermanent loss (specific to liquidity providers), collateralization risk (specific to lenders).”

Some other DeFi risks that the UNION protocol is investigating are flash loan exploits and portfolio correlation risk, said Liu.

UNION could be seen as a rival to DeFi insurer Nexus Mutual, but Liu said the two protocols are different on various counts. For instance, UNION is not restricted in a members-only model, said Liu, adding that “we don’t need anyone to ‘wrap’ our insurance product to be KYC-free. We are open, KYC-free.”

UNION is expected to launch protection products, as well as a secondary market for its products in the coming months. “We believe that with these products, buyers and writers can offload their risk, which is crucial to the maturation of DeFi,” said Liu.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Gemini is calling on developers who want to assist the effort to bring the FIL token to Ethereum.

We’ve all watched bitcoin rally sharply since September. But what’s driving the bull market?

Telokanda, a collaboration between Telos and open-source weather tech company Kanda in West Africa hopes to engage local communities in collecting and sharing weather data on the Telos public blockchain. –

Quick Take

• CME bitcoin futures is on a record-breaking year in terms of reportable trader engagement, trading volumes, and open interest in 2020
• The product cracked the Top 60 of all CFTC reportable futures contracts (n=261) ranked by the total number # of large open interest holders in October (was outside the top 100 a year ago)

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Agri-trading platform Cerealia will focus on international trading for the world’s largest wheat market, Russia.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has put stablecoins and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) front and center of the U.K.’s efforts to remain a financial services hub post-Brexit.

In a statement issued Monday, the U.K. Treasury said it would put forward proposals for regulating “relevant stablecoin initiatives” to ensure they are held to the same standard as rival payment methods.

Sunak tweeted that the Treasury would “publish a consultation to ensure new privately-issued currencies, stablecoins, meet the high standards we expect of other payment methods.”

The chancellor also welcomed the work carried out jointly by the Treasury and the Bank of England into whether and how central banks could issue CBDCs as a complement to cash.

Further details of the plans were lacking, but the stablecoin proposals referred to may be the “starting gun” which Fnality International boss Rhomaios Ram recently told The Block he was expecting by year-end.

Nikhil Rathi, chief executive of the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority, said the regulator would continue to work with the government to deliver the plans outlined by the Treasury, including to “encourage responsible innovation in finance.” 

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Lawyers of embattled former NFL player and investor Reginald Fowler have filed a motion to withdraw as his representative counsel.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Balancer Labs has raised a seven-figure sum via the sale of its native governance token BAL.

The backers are Pantera Capital and Alameda Research. While Balancer did not disclose the investment amount, Alameda founder Sam Bankman-Fried told The Block that his firm invested a seven-figure sum, i.e., a minimum of $1 million. Pantera did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

With fresh capital at hand, Balancer plans to expand its team ahead of the protocol’s V2 launch. The second version will introduce “significant improvements” to transaction costs and improve user experience, said Balancer.

Balancer operates as an automated market maker protocol and can be seen as a rival to decentralized exchange protocol Uniswap. According to data compiled by The Block Research, Uniswap is ranked first and Balancer fifth in terms of trading volumes. Uniswap had $11.2 billion worth of volume in October, while Balancer got $0.35 billion, i.e., 32 times less. 

Today’s funding comes in addition to a $3 million seed round Balancer raised in March of this year. That round was led by Accomplice and Placeholder, with participation from CoinFund and Inflection.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The former Microsoft software engineer was sentenced Monday for an elaborate criminal scheme involving bitcoin and digital gift cards.