Huobi Group’s Investment Arm Makes a Strategic Investment in Defi and Cefi Aggregator Openocean

Amid the growing popularity of DeFi and cryptocurrencies, traditional venture capital firms and crypto incumbents are trying to identify and invest in the most promising early-stage DeFi projects. 

Huobi Group’s $100 million Huobi Ventures fund has made a strategic investment in the DeFi and CeFi aggregation platform OpenOcean. Even though OpenOcean is less than a year old, it has processed more than 730,000 transactions worth $2 billion USDT in cumulative transaction volume. It also boasts more than 200,000 active unique addresses.

Huobi Ventures will act as a partner and active supporter to help OpenOcean launch more innovative solutions connecting DeFi and CeFi. The fund aims to expand and diversify the Huobi Group’s offerings, reducing its reliance on trading.

Other major crypto projects and VC firms have also become aggressive investors. For instance, crypto investment firm BlockTower Capital recently set up a $25 million DeFi fund and Polygon has launched a $100 million fund to fuel DeFi adoption. Polygon’s #DeFiforAll fund aims to bring the “next million users” to DeFi.

OpenOcean is a one-stop full aggregation protocol that aims to bridge the gap between DeFi and CeFi. It allows users to access the entire crypto market via a single, user-friendly interface. It means users have access to the aggregated liquidity and best pricing across the decentralized and centralized exchanges.

Huobi Ventures is not the first major investor in OpenOcean, though. The aggregator has previously raised $2 million from a Binance-led group of investors including Multicoin Capital, Kenetic, MarketAcross, CMS Holdings, LD Capital, and Altonomy. It also counts DAOMaker, OKEx Blockdream Ventures, AU21, FBG, TRON Foundation, Asymmetries Technologies and LIAN Group among its investors.

OpenOcean said in a press release that Huobi’s investment along with the previous rounds of strategic investment and private placements will help accelerate the development of its protocol and the ecosystem.

It has successfully aggregated leading decentralized exchanges on ETH, EHT Layer2, BSC, TRON, and SOL. A few other DeFi protocols such as Polygon will also be integrated in the near future. OpenOcean plans to offer lending & insurance, derivatives, yield products, combined margin products, and intelligent wealth management services in the coming months.