Why is insurance so critical to DeFi?

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) aims to offer financial services by leveraging the decentralized technologies, mainly public blockchain networks, in an open and transparent manner with universal accessibility. It has been at the forefront of innovations in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space since 2019, and exploded in 2020 with various projects blossomed. The total value locked (TVL) in DeFi has boomed in the past few months, which, as of today, has reached US$14.12B, and the number of monthly active users has hit a new high of 300,000 in Oct. 2020.

However, since the inception of cryptocurrency, cybersecurity hack has been one of the biggest challenges and threats to the industry. There are quite a few infamous and shocking attacks to the crypto space, such as the Mt. Gox hack back to 2011–2014 causing US$460M loss, the NiceHash hack in 2017 causing US$64M loss, the Bittrex hack in 2018 causing US$18M loss and etc., which have been shaking the foundation of the crypto world.

With the advent of DeFi, the cybersecurity issues come along. There are 10 publicly reported security hacks to the DeFi community since the 2nd half of 2019, including attacks to some well-known protocols, causing US$45.16M loss in total .

Needless to say, the cyber-attacks have been posing significant threats to the whole DeFi ecosystem fundamentally. Besides the technical approaches to resolving this problem, insurance, by its nature, has been another effective means to manage this risk.

However, by taking a deeper look at the current DeFi landscape, insurance products still remain scarce. According to the data from DeFi Pulse, there are only 3 notable insurance protocols available out of the 100 major DeFi projects been selected, i.e., the Nexus Mutual, Opyn and Augur.

Nevertheless, the overall DeFi TVL been covered is extremely low by the existing insurance projects. According to the data disclosed by Nexus Mutual[1], the total value covered is US$65M at its peak, which occupies merely 0.6% of all asset across the landscape.

Active Cover Amount by Nexus Mutual

On the one hand, the DeFi space has been rapidly. On the other hand, the cyber risk has also been growing continuously. The market is calling for more insurance products to safeguard the whole ecosystem.

And InsurAce is here to fulfill this mission!

About InsurAce

InsurAce is a decentralized insurance protocol, aiming to provide reliable, robust and carefree DeFi insurance services to the DeFi users, with very low premium and sustainable investment returns. InsurAce’s highlights include “0” Premium, Enriched Product Line, SCR Mining and Sustainable Return. InsurAce’s mission is to redefine DeFi insurance and protect users from security risks with user-friendly product accessibility and capital efficiency.