Onchain banking protocol NashPoint is coming out of stealth

NashPoint, a new DeFi protocol focused on real-world assets and onchain banking, came out of stealth on Tuesday, co-founder and CEO Abishek Punia told The Block in an interview. The system, which will officially launch in January, aims to provide users with simple and insured access points to DeFi yield and pools of capital for DeFi protocols to tap into. 

The protocol is being designed and built by developers with extensive experience in the DeFi space. Punia, for instance, got his start seven years ago when he started to contribute to the early decentralized lending protocol Set before moving on to major DeFi credit provider Goldfinch. CTO Cormac comes from Index Coop, which is used to build structured products. 

“We call it a banking protocol because the NashNodes built on top of us are like banks in the sense that they intermediate between people that need money and people that have money,” Punia told The Block. “We think this is a missing thing in DeFi for now.”

According to a slide deck, these permissionless-run NashNodes will initially be integrated with platforms like Centrafuge, Huma Finance, Goldfinch, the Heron Protocol, Maple Finance, Syrup, M^0, among other protocols, which will be a way for users to earn yield. NashNode’s first product will tap the Centrifuge protocol on the largest Ethereum scaling layer Arbitrum, Punia said. 

Meanwhile, new protocols — like those building DePIN loans or private credit — can use NashNodes to tap these pooled deposits for the capital needed to grow.

“We’re looking to build a new operating system for operating credit,” Punia said, adding that NashNodes is built to solve the onboarding challenges of getting new depositors into DeFi and the fragmentation of capital split between different protocols. “Really, we see ourselves as middleware that can scale DeFi.'

The team hopes to expand the protocol to the Layer 1 Sei Network as well as the Camp and Plume Layer 2 networks by Q1 2025. Superform Labs, ZKP2P and vaults.fyi have signed on as infrastructure providers while Sei’s Jayendra Jog and Set’s Alex Soong, among other angel investors from Citadel, Google DeepMind and Mongo DB, are early backers.