So why Pike?

The Base mainnet is now live, and with it, a whole suite of new applications, protocols and usecases which are augmenting decentralized finance as we speak.

Among them - is Pike, a natively multi-chain lending market which doesn’t make use of any bridges, or wrapped assets, and allows users to leverage their assets across the ecosystem without limitations and with security as a primary focus.

What makes Pike unique are 3 specific pillars that refer to the following:

• Cross Chain: How Pike facilitates seamless flows between ecosystems and in a way that is innate to the protocol’s design.

• Security: By not using bridges, or wrapped assets - Pike is able to eliminate one of the most prominent attack vectors in all of DeFi.

• User Experience: Since Aave, the quintessential lending experience has not changed or been streamlined in any meaningful, despite the countless projects that have followed suit - which Pike has focused on addressing and improving upon.

Cross Chain:

Unlike typical DeFi protocols, Pike is natively cross-chain. What this means is that Pike exists as a single entity across multiple chain with ecosystems flow occurring within the protocol itself. This is in contrast to typical dApps which are cross-chain in the sense that they have deployments on different chains, which, while having the same front-end, are distinctly seperate and silo’d from one another.

An excellent example of this are traditional lending markets - while the dApp exists on say Ethereum, Arbitrum and Optimism - the liquidity markets are distinctly silo’d from one another, with a user only able to interact within a single chain and that chain alone.

With Pike however, each chain’s markets are accessible from any other chain and users are able to deposit collateral on one chain, and borrow on another - without the need to move or bridge assets around.

Furthermore, since Pike does not utilize bridges for any of it’s cross-chain functionality, we also do not have any need for wrapped assets, which have been a necessity as assets are often not native to multiple chains. The issue with this, is that there are countless bridge protocols that allow users to move assets cross-chain, and the vast majority of them have their own unique wrapped token model - which results in several different “versions” of the same asset.

Security

Being a lending market, security is by far the top priority for Pike, especially due to how innate cross-chain functionality is, which is typically facilitated by bridges - the largest attack vector in DeFi. Because of this, Pike does not use traditional bridges in anyway, specifically due to all of the risk factors associated with them.

The way we’re able to do this is by using Wormhole’s cross-chain messaging which allows Pike to tangibly verify on-chain, that assets have been either borrowed or deposited as collateral on one of Pike’s spoke-chains. This allows full confidence to then issue loaned assets on another chain, while also enabling cross-chain liquidations, all without a bridge or reliance on proprietary, Pike-specific infrastructure.

Furthermore, we don’t think that the native cross-chain experience should only be limited to borrowing flows. As such, we’re also utilizing Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) which effectively makes $USDC native to every chain within DeFi.

How this works is, as a user within Pike, you can seamlessly borrow USDC on Optimism, but let’s say you’ve have these assets deployed or locked, but want access to your original collateral. Instead of needing to liquidate assets on another chain, bridge them to Optimism and paying back the loan - what you can instead do, is simply use USDC on any other chain, say, Arbitrum and use that to pay back your initial loan. This allows your Optimism activities to remain unaffected, but also removes the need of exposing your assets to bridging risks.

User Experience

Finally, the 3rd pillar of our philosophy is the priority of the user experience of actually using a lending market as designed, and it’s central to how we’re building Pike. Cross-chain applications and infrastructure is extremely clunky, not to mention full of features and oddities unique to individual protocols, and do not seamlessly integrate a borderless experience into the product.

A key component of this is the decision to not use bridges in any way within Pike. While the primary motivation for this of course are the security concerns, even from a user experience perspective - bridges are extremely clunky and difficult to use, with quite a lot of uncertainty.

As such, the borrowing flow within Pike is extremely simple and also designed to lessen the mental bandwidth required from the user - a stark difference from typical lending and bridging flows. Despite Wormhole’s cross-chain messaging taking place in the background, you’re met with a simple loading screen, which can be minimized and accessed in the background - such that your experience isn’t interrupted. As a user, you can easily see your wallet balances on all the Pike-supported chains, without having to manually check by changing networks, as well as all the potential assets you’re able to borrow - regardless of network.

Continuing from this though, is the cross-chain experience when repaying your USDC loan, with USDC on any CCTP supported chain. Pike offers you all the options you have at a glance, without putting the onus on the user to participate in a self-inventory of assets and funds within different ecosystems. It then makes it simple to execute repayment accordingly, with a single click of a button, and all the underlying logic and processes are then handled within Pike itself.

What’s next?

We’re building Pike because we think true interoperability benefits everyone in DeFi and we’d love for you to play a role in our development. We will be launching a testnet campaign to enlist the DeFi community’s help in stress-testing Pike and giving users the ability to experience native cross-chain lending firsthand as hosted on Base.

Stay tuned for an announcement outlining the campaign details in the coming weeks.

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