Kava is a decentralized lending platform that allows its users to borrow stablecoins against all major cryptocurrency assets. 

Built on the Tendermint protocol, Kava was founded by Brian Kerr and Ruaridh O’Donnell. The team consists of 9 members, with advisors including Compound Finance CEO Robert Leshner, Cosmos research scientist Sunny Agarwal and Chorus One co-founder Brian Fabian Crain, among others. 

The platform launched in June 2020, with Binance Coin (BNB) collateral, USDX loans and minting as initial features. Kava uses two native tokens: KAVA and USDX. The former is the platform’s native token that allows users to govern the network, and can also be used for lending purposes. USDX is a stablecoin that is generated when users collateralize assets. USDX can then be staked to earn a yield. 

The capacity to take loans against collateral on major assets, combined with the ability to mint USDX to buy more of the same asset, is essentially an indirect long position on the asset. Thus Kava offers synthetic and derivative products, in addition to just being a lending platform.

The public testnet of the platform was released in Q2 2019, and was iterated upon until the mainnet launch in Q4 2019. This was followed by work on the beta version of the CDP system, which was released in Q2 2020. Custodial and non-custodial BTC pegs are expected to be implemented in Q3 2020.

Kava has partnered with a number of well-recognized businesses in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, including Binance, Huobi Pool, OKEx, Ripple, Cosmos (ATOM), HashKey, Coil and Arrington XRP Capital, among many others.

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