Ajna launches oracle and governance-free lending protocol on Ethereum

The Ajna Protocol has been deployed on the Ethereum mainnet following more than two years of development.

Ajna’s lending and borrowing DeFi platform offers a non-custodial and permissionless system that eliminates the need for oracles and governance, according to a statement.

The protocol consists of pools for lenders and borrowers, enabling users to borrow against nearly any fungible or non-fungible token and lend any fungible token, Ajna claimed. It also introduces additional features, including perpetual loans, liquidation bonds and permissionless pair creation.

Fungible tokens hold the same value and are interchangeable with each other, like ether. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have a variable value that cannot be exchanged on a one-to-one basis.

“The mission of the Ajna Protocol is to improve on existing DeFi lending and borrowing protocols by giving users a truly decentralized system with more options and less systemic risk,” Ajna said.

Eliminating governance and oracles

A more unique aspect of the protocol is that it is designed without governance, ensuring that it cannot be altered or updated upon launch. While this provides immutability, the absence of upgrade functionality can leave such protocols open to security vulnerabilities and bugs.

Ajna also eliminates reliance on oracles — systems that provide near real-time price feeds from external sources for decentralized applications. Ajna argues this removes a common point of failure, as they rely on trusted intermediaries and vulnerabilities or compromises of such systems can introduce risks such as price manipulation.

The protocol has undergone six security audits conducted by Sherlock, Trail of Bits, Quantstamp, Prototech Labs and Code4arena to ensure its robustness and resilience against potential vulnerabilities, Ajna said.

Ajna Protocol is live on the Ethereum mainnet and plans to extend support to Layer 2 solutions in the coming months.