A crowd loan is a Polkadot (DOT) crowdsourcing event in Polkadot that allows the community to support project bids in upcoming parachain slot auctions. Users contribute DOT, receive rewards in project tokens and get their DOT back in two years (a standard slot lease duration). This mechanic helps projects raise substantial capital in DOT tokens that may even exceed a few hundred million in dollar notion value.
The obvious downside for users is the need to lock their DOT for two years where they don’t have access to their liquidity during this lockup period.
Alex Melikhov is the CEO and founder of Equilibrium, an interoperable DeFi conglomerate on Polkadot comprised of a cross-chain lending platform and order book-based decentralized exchange. With over 14 years of entrepreneurial and fintech experience, Alex has been involved in the cryptocurrency world since 2013. His current project, Equilibrium, aims to solve the problem of liquidity fragmentation in DeFi.