After launching five Permissionless Pools, Clearpool established its first-ever permissioned pool that allows institutional lenders to earn yields up to 15% by staking USDC. The project partnered with Jane Street Capital – a global proprietary trading company aiming to enter the cryptocurrency industry.
Permission Pool
Decentralized capital markets provider Clearpool launched a permissioned pool on Tuesday, enabling borrowers with higher Know-Your-Customers (KYC) requirements to access funds lent out by institutional partners.
According to the press release , the pool – initially funded with $25m of USDC –  plans to increase to $50m soon. Users can stake USDC to earn the 15%-APR yield paid in CPOOL, the protocol’s utility and governance token,
Partnering with Jane Street, a quantitative trading firm with more than 1,700 employees, and BlockTower Capital, an investment firm focused on crypto and blockchain, Clearpool considers the launch a “watershed moment for DeFi.”  The protocol noted that it is the first time “a major Wall Street institution has entered into a borrowing transaction on a DeFi protocol.”
Launched on the Ethereum network less than two months ago, Clearpool specifically works to facilitate institutional borrowing and lending of digital assets. Its previously released program, Permissionless Pools, offers “whitelisted institutional borrowers” the opportunity to be liquidity providers (LPs), competing with retail and institutional lenders for lucrative yields. The protocol’s partners are primarily intuitions from the traditional finance world.
The release added that Clearpool LP tokens, called cpTokens, are the building blocks for a system of tokenized credit and on-chain risk management.
KYC Compliance
The release highlighted the importance of KYC compliance as a critical component of traditional financial institutions seeking to enter DeFi. The protocol positions the tool’s launch with the two regulated institutions as a signal that it will lead the bridge between traditional finance and decentralized finance.
Clearpool’s CEO Robert Alcorn promises more to come, saying, “it is only the beginning of what Clearpool will achieve as we continue to innovate and grow liquidity and risk management capacity across the digital asset landscape.”