In a blog post today, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Badger DAO announced a forthcoming integration with Fireblocks, a digital asset storage, management, and DeFi on-ramp for institutional investors.
“We’re excited to announce a strategic partnership between Fireblocks and BadgerDAO to enable their 200+ institutional clients to securely hold Badger assets on their platform and put their Bitcoin to work through the Badger protocol,” reads the post.
BadgerDAO founder Chris Spadafora said that the integration will help make Badger’s vaults and products more accessible to institutional investors, and not just the retail DeFi crowd:
“Our intention is to further help onboard institutional Bitcoin holders to defi. With Badger smart contracts being easily integrated by anyone/company without our permission, we anticipate many more centralized businesses servicing the institutional market to be powered by Badger.”
Fireblocks first offered institutional access to DeFi via an integration with money market Compound in March 2017. Since then it’s onboarded another dozen protocols, including mainstays like Synthetix and Aave. Clients include major cryptocurrency funds like Parafi Capital and Galaxy Digital, and in March the company raised a staggering $133 million in a funding round led by BNY Mellon.
When asked about the bump in total value locked Badger might see as a result of being added to the exclusive list of protocols, Spadafora declined to speculate but pointed to Fireblocks’ reach and clientele to give a sense of a possible ceiling.
“It’s hard to know exactly what TVL bump we will see but they have 200 institutional clients that have $400B in transfer/custody on their platform.”
The business development process bringing the DAO and the infrastructure provider together was an unusual one. Spadafora told Cointelegraph that a community member facilitated a intro between Fireblocks and the Badger DAO core team. While it’s not unusual for the community to “kickstart” BD efforts with other DeFi protocols, it’s one of the highest-profile instances of a DAO working with an institutional player to date.