Cook Finance Launches DeFi Index Platform on Avalanche

Cook Finance, a decentralized asset-management platform, is launching on Avalanche, bringing a suite of decentralized finance (DeFi) indexes to users in the fast-growing blockchain’s ecosystem.

The new service comes as Avalanche and other upstart blockchains look to win market share from Ethereum, where users have complained of high fees.

“We see this launch as providing an easy way for new users who want to get into DeFi indexes but were held back by high gas fees on Ethereum,” said Adrian Peng, CEO of Cook Finance.

Similar to index products in traditional finance, Cook’s index products are composed of a list of tokens and track the performance of the underlying assets, making it easier for investors to buy a diversified allocation of cryptocurrencies in a single transaction.

Cook Finance launched its mainnet on the Ethereum blockchain in June, and it’s also live on the OEC blockchain.

Additionally, Cook is launching three new Avalanche-focused indexes: the AVAX Ecosystem Index, AVAX Mega Cap Yield Farming Index and an AVAX Stablecoin Yield Farming Index.

The two latter indexes will involve a yield farming component through Avalanche’s Yield Yak.

According to data provider Messari, Avalanche is currently the 12th-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, topping $26 billion as of Tuesday. The token is among a group known as “Ethereum killers,” which drew increased interest from the crypto community this year as users on Ethereum complained of high transaction costs. The price of Avalanche’s AVAX token is up nearly 30-fold this year.

“We are getting a lot of interest from the community on expanding into new chains and layer 1′s with lower transaction fees,” Cook Finance Chief Marketing Officer Nathan Leon told CoinDesk. “Layer 1″ refers to blockchains that run independently of other blockchains – as contrasted with “layer 2″ solutions that aim to speed up transactions on existing blockchains like Ethereum.

Cook’s decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) launched in September, inviting the community of COOK token holders to participate in the protocol’s governance.