Ref Finance to Oversee Protocol Development & Management of Burrow

4 min readJun 28, 2023

TL;DR

Ref and Burrow have agreed to transfer the development and control of the Burrow protocol to the Ref dev team and fully integrate Burrow into the Ref product suite
The purpose is to integrate Burrow under Ref and expand upon its product stack under Ref’s mission to deliver a one-stop-shop DeFi experience on NEAR.
Starting June 28th, 2023, the Ref dev team will be added to the Burrow DAO council, and current council members will be removed.
The Burrow protocol will be fully integrated into the Ref product suite.
The current arrangement does not include plans for the respective DAO treasuries to be merged or for any changes to either the $REF or $BRRR tokens.

Overview

Incepted in May 2021, Ref Finance has firmly established itself as a prominent and highly capable participant in the NEAR and broader DeFi ecosystems. Ref stands out as the leading DeFi application on NEAR regarding daily active users (DAU), total value locked (TVL), development prowess, and security practices. In the past two years, the Ref dev team has demonstrated its ability to effectively manage and expand the earliest NEAR DeFi protocol, all the while creating synergies with other DeFi projects for the sake of the ecosystem.

In its ambitions to become the primary one-stop-shop for DeFi on NEAR, Ref has implemented various features such as the multi-chain router, which aggregates Trisolaris liquidity pools, the Orderbook UI powered by Orderly Network, and most recently, the Burrow UI powered by Burrow. Ref’s track record proves that it has the NEAR ecosystem’s best interests at heart, creating the best-unified entry point for DeFi users on NEAR through active collaboration with ecosystem projects.

Over the few past months, Ref has been in conversations with Burrow to align on development goals for the NEAR DeFi ecosystem. The Ref dev team (in consultation with the Ref community and DAO) and the Burrow DAO have agreed to transfer development and control of the Burrow protocol to the Ref dev team and fully integrate Burrow into the Ref product suite.

All parties agree that instead of building critical DeFi building blocks such as a money market or margin trading in parallel to Burrow, thereby fragmenting liquidity and UX, a more powerful and concentrated product can be created by consolidating the efforts and integrating Burrow into Ref.

Concretely, this means that starting on June 28th, 2023, the Ref dev team

will be added to the Burrow DAO, replacing the current council members
will oversee Burrow’s protocol and treasury management

Benefits of Burrow

Complete integration of Burrow into the UI of Ref Finance, the most popular DeFi product on NEAR
Dedicated, full-time support from an experienced and high-quality team of product and engineering professionals
Enhanced community engagement, marketing efforts, and financial backing to support the growth and success of the protocol
Ongoing development and improvement of the Burrow UI, Burrow protocol, and Burrow community
Future plans to further enhance composability between Burrow and Ref

Expectations for the Ref Team

The Ref team plans to fully integrate Burrow into the Ref UI and to launch a deeper protocol integration by the end of 2023. In addition, the Ref team will regularly communicate with and support the existing and future Burrow community, properly manage the treasury as members of the Burrow DAO Council, and release regular updates regarding development.

DAO & Treasury

The Ref dev team will be added to the Burrow DAO council and oversee the management of the protocol and treasury. The current arrangement does not include plans for the respective DAO treasuries to be merged or for any changes to happen to either the $REF or $BRRR tokens.

For further inquiries or feedback, please leave your thoughts on the Ref Governance Forum post

Ref Finance to Oversee Protocol Development & Management of Burrow

TL;DR Ref and Burrow have agreed to transfer the development and control of the Burrow protocol to the Ref dev team and…

gov.ref.finance

About Burrow Cash

Burrow is a non-custodial liquidity pool platform that functions as a decentralized money market, allowing users to supply and borrow assets for trading.

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About Ref Finance

Ref Finance is a community-led, multi-purpose DeFi platform built on the NEAR Protocol. Ref Finance takes full advantage of NEAR’s low fees, one-to-two-second finality, and WebAssembly-based runtime (hello, Rust smart contracts!).