What is Concrete?
The Concrete appchain enables users to generate the best risk-adjusted market yields with single-sided staking, and borrow at the best rates with the option to protect yourself from liquidation.
This introduction is specifically an explainer for how the appchain unlocks the most efficient and rewarding borrow experience in DeFi, across any chain.
Concrete’s appchain operates as a hub and spoke system, seamlessly integrating with chains and lenders across EVM and non-EVM environments.
Users can manage all positions from the Concrete UI in their preferred execution layer while being able to benefit from liquidation protection and opportunities to earn best in class yields through Concrete Earn 4626 vaults.
Concrete’s Probability Engine structures, prices, and manages the liquidation protection agreements for each loan originated through Concrete. The Probability Engine is an ensemble of statistical methods and proprietary quantitative models hosted on the Concrete appchain - this is the hub.
Users who want protection from liquidation simply query the engine for free, and then for a small fee purchase access to a fully automated facility that will top up their collateral deposits as their loan approaches liquidation. Each facility can deposit three tranches of protection.
The Concrete hub utilizes LayerZero messaging to generate and manage protection products across the connected spoke chains and money markets. This architecture allows Concrete to quickly support new chains, lenders, and other DeFi yield protocols in a fully composable manner.
Concrete will support Berachain, Avalanche, Arbitrum, and Base on launch. Over the following couple of months, Concrete will be available on all major L1s and L2s.
How to Use Concrete
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Visit Concrete: Go to https://www.concrete.xyz/ and launch the app. The app will prompt the connected EOA to mint a portfolio. This portfolio serves as the account to manage all concrete loans and earn positions.
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Explore money markets: Concrete aggregates lenders and allows users to explore the best rates across any integrated money market on any connected chain.
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Take a loan: Concrete covers any associated gas costs with supplying collateral and withdrawing debt tokens. Choose a preferred money market (Aave, Compound, Silo, Radiant, and more) and then select the asset to borrow against.
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Choose a protection plan: Once the loan is open, users can use the Concrete Probability Engine to generate a protection plan. Sold as an optional addition, the plan is issued as a contract to facilitate the automatic deposit of credit to protect against liquidation.
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Monitor & manage: Track and manage any number of loans through the Concrete app without the need to access the destination protocol, accrue all rewards as well as Concrete points.
Key Benefits of Concrete
Liquidation protection
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Avoid forced sales of your assets during periods of volatility.
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Protection is deposited in three tranches, meaning a loan can approach a liquidation threshold three times before Concrete must foreclose it.
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Borrowers pay a small claim fee when credit is deposited, but the net LTV of the loan dramatically increases, offering users maximum capital efficiency.
Bad debt prevention
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Concrete’s credit is auto deposited just before LTV thresholds, upending traditional liquidation mechanisms and stopping lenders from having to pay liquidator premiums. This allows lenders to massively save on fees and OEV leakage.
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Loans that have triple dipped into liquidation are foreclosed by Concrete. In return for having 3 credit injections, Concrete closes a position just before the final LTV threshold and leaves the account with the lender in good standing. Residual assets are returned to the borrower and the lender is saved from any bad debt accrual.
Scalability
- Modular by design, Concrete can integrate with protocols for a variety of use cases such as decentralized safety funds, liquidity routing, or risk adjusted yield farming.
The Need for Concrete
With over $30B in TVL, lending comprises more than 1/3rd of total DeFi TVL. However, current money market structures are not well equipped for periods of volatility - leaving users subject to asset loss and money markets to massive bad debt accrual.
Concrete’s novel protection products are an answer to this structural hole within DeFi, and lay a new foundation for debt and credit while opening the door to a new series of derivative assets.
“The lending market, one of DeFi's largest sectors, stands to benefit immensely from Concrete's contributions, potentially capturing significant market share from TradFi debt markets. These advancements promise to elevate lending's role in supporting diverse derivative products, especially leverage-based ones, marking a new chapter in DeFi's evolution.
Concrete's unique approach positions it as a key primitive in the on-chain lending space, capable of capturing substantial market share through its innovative solutions.” - Simao Cruz & Diogo Almeida, Lightshift
The Future of On-Chain Debt & Credit
Concrete addresses a critical gap in DeFi, making debt and credit management safer and more capital-efficient. As Concrete evolves, it will become the foundation for a new on-chain credit ecosystem, enabling the development of structured products, derivatives, and novel financial instruments.
If you are interested in working together or being an early participant in the Concrete ecosystem, please reach out to hello@blueprintfinance.com
Follow along on Twitter and join the community
Concrete Protocol: https://twitter.com/ConcreteXYZ
Blueprint Finance: https://twitter.com/Blueprint_DeFi