21co announced the launch of 21.co Wrapped Tokens. The Company’s first wrapped tokens feature a mix of underlyings from the top crypto assets by market capitalization, across multiple blockchain networks.
Wrapped tokens present the opportunity to increase cross-chain liquidity and utility regardless of blockchain ecosystem, and address the security challenges of cross-chain bridging. 21.co is uniquely positioned to deliver institutional grade security and liquidity at scale through the suite, bolstered by Onyx, 21.co’s proprietary product management system, which has created and redeemed over $3.3B in crypto-backed assets.
Effective cross-chain interoperability and liquidity allow members of the DeFi community to tap into a larger liquidity pool of assets without being limited to a single blockchain ecosystem. Greater accessibility leads to a greater ability to scale DeFi as a whole. Historically, cross-chain interoperability has been a technical hurdle for the DeFi community. Solutions like cross-chain bridge protocols have proven to be vulnerable to security hacks, posing a significant threat not only to assets but to trust in blockchain technology.
The new 21.co Wrapped Tokens introduce cross-chain liquidity for the most popular alt-layer one protocol tokens in the Ethereum ecosystem, securely. Onyx, developed by 21.co, ensures minting and burning processes are executed swiftly and securely. 21.co Wrapped Tokens are 100% physically collateralized, and underlying assets are held in cold storage by institutional-grade custody.
“DeFi needs cross-chain interoperability to be successful, but up until this point existing solutions have been plagued by serious security vulnerabilities,” said Hany Rashwan, co-founder and CEO at 21.co. “We firmly believe DeFi is the future, and have long been committed to bridging traditional finance and decentralized finance with our experience and our products. With the launch of centralized wrapped assets, we are thrilled to be offering a much-needed technology to the DeFi community that will help DeFi continue to win.”
The Index Coop will be the first organization to offer a multiple-blockchain index token – Index Coop Large Cap Index (IC21) powered by 21.co Wrapped Tokens. With 21.co’s technology, the IC21 Token brings a number of non-EVM blockchain tokens to the Ethereum network.