Parallel Finance is a Decentralized Money Market Protocol that offers lending, staking, and borrowing in the Polkadot ecosystem. Depositors can lend and stake simultaneously to earn double yield on their staked coins, and borrowers can collateralize to borrow. The project refers to this feature as “leverage staking,” because users can lever up against their staking collateral to increase their yield overall. In addition, when a user’s DOT and KSM are staked through Parallel, a reputation-determining algorithm is applied which maximizes staking yield on behalf of the user. In the future, projects and individual users will also be able to source their auction loans through Parallel’s interface–a feature we call “auction loans.” This feature will give users the ability to stay liquid while their DOT/KSM is locked in parachains, an it will give projects direct access to the liquidity they need to win parachain auctions.

PARA Token is the native token of Parallel Finance on Polkadot Deployment, distributed among key actors and partnerships in the ecosystem. This paper also details the economic designs of the token, and plans for parachain auctions. The utility token for Heiko (HKO), which is Parallel’s sister program, will have the same utilities mirrored on Kusama.

Parallel Finance, a lending and staking platform based on the Polkadot blockchain, raised $5 million at a $500 million valuation, twice the valuation of its token round last November. Investors in the strategic funding round included crypto exchange Coinbase Ventures, blockchain technology company StarkWare and Section 32, a venture capital firm founded by Bill Maris, a former head of Google Ventures. Parallel Finance plans to raise a Series B round during the second quarter in two tranches of $20 million to $30 million each at an undetermined valuation, CEO Yubo Ruan told CoinDesk in an interview.