Beyond Blockchain Borders: the Balanced Approach to Cross-chain DeFi

Balanced is a decentralised finance (DeFi) product making its stablecoin and exchange accessible from a wide range of blockchains. Its dedication to design sets it apart from the rest of the industry, with a streamlined cross-chain experience that has it poised to become the leading cross-chain DeFi hub. With seven blockchains connected and many chains and features still to come, learn why you should care about Balanced.

DeFi for the rest of us

Balanced is a DeFi product crafted for simplicity. Home to the bnUSD stablecoin and a decentralised exchange, its deliberate design style focuses on the functionality you need to take care of your crypto — and then get on with your life.

Built during 2020, when less than 1% of crypto investors could use decentralised finance, Balanced was designed to bring DeFi to the rest of us.

Design-led businesses outperform their peers by 2 to 1, so the contributors used their design expertise and a philosophy of “reduce time and effort” to create a product that’s loved by crypto beginners and experts alike.

You can use Balanced to borrow bnUSD, trade, supply liquidity, and transfer crypto between connected chains. Multi-chain assets are represented by a single token, and transactions cost as little as $0.14 and finalise in 12-60 seconds, so your experience is simpler, cheaper, and faster than the rest.

Available on a growing list of blockchains

The DeFi space is growing, but liquidity (value) is fragmented across many different chains. It’s difficult for blockchains to interact with each other, and those that can require bridges, wrapped tokens, and more complexity than people should ever have to deal with.

Cross-chain DeFi has not been adequately solved. The leader will be the one that makes cross-chain interactions even more seamless than a centralised exchange.

Cue Balanced.

Balanced began its cross-chain journey at the end of 2023 with its connection to Archway, a blockchain in the Cosmos. The next phase of its journey began eight weeks ago with connections to Avalanche, Arbitrum and BNB Chain, Base, and Havah.

It supports AVAX, BNB, BTC, ETH, HVH, and USDC, and bnUSD is available on every connected chain. Each blockchain provides the opportunity for new token listings, and with connections to Injective, Optimism, Solana, Stacks, Stellar, Sui, and others in the works, Balanced’s utility has begun to snowball.

Balanced is based on the ICON blockchain, where it can take advantage of ICON’s cross-chain technology. Known as General Message Passing, GMP is a cross-chain messenger that can interact with any blockchain interoperability protocol. Balanced deploys three smart contracts on every chain it connects to, then GMP routes transactions through ICON to reach the chosen chain at speed. Use Balanced on your favourite blockchain, or on all of them at once.

To fuel the adoption of Balanced and facilitate cross-chain trading, the ICON blockchain has dedicated a portion of its ICX emissions to supply liquidity for the native cryptocurrency of each connected chain.

Cross-chain loans and concentrated liquidity, coming soon

Balanced’s utility will grow through more than just blockchain connections.

Native bnUSD loans are coming soon, with an interface that has no competition. Once live, you’ll be able to deposit collateral from any supported chain, and receive bnUSD on the blockchain of your choice. The bnUSD stablecoin is decentralised, over-collateralised, and designed for cross-chain use, so it’s available on every blockchain Balanced connects to — wrapper-free.

Concentrated liquidity also launches later this year. Its addition will improve trading efficiency on the exchange, so Balanced can provide low-slippage trades with less liquidity.

With so much in the pipeline, you can expect to hear about Balanced a lot more going forward.

Use Balanced for your cross-chain needs

Swap crypto on different blockchains, and transfer between supported chains.

It’s wrapper-free, and once you try it, you won’t want to use anything else.

When you’re ready to get started, visit the app, check out the website, and join the Discord channel.