• Elrond has launched a $1.3 billion incentive program that it claims is the largest ever for DeFi, aiming to provide liquidity for the Maiar DEX.
• The incentive program was announced on the same day that the Maiar DEX launched, with ownership already distributed to more than 60,000 accounts.

Elrond has announced one of the largest incentive programs in the DeFi space, worth $1.29 billion. The incentive program targets making Maiar DEX DeFi platform one of the industry’s largest as it launches today.

In a press release shared with CNF, Elrond described the program as “perhaps the largest DeFI incentive program to date, and represents a strong step toward pushing DeFi adoption beyond the current boundaries of the crypto space, into the mainstream.”

The incentives will be in MEX, the native token of the Maiar DEX that caters to governance and utility. In the first month, Elrond will distribute $282 million in MEX tokens to users who provide liquidity in its token EGLD, as well as in MEX and USDC stablecoin.

Elrond aims to accelerate the adoption of the Maiar DEX with follow-up incentive programs for its users, The users can also claim MEX tokens proportional to their activity involving products from other DeFi platforms such as Uniswap, Sushi Swap and PancakeSwap.

Maiar is the Elrond answer to Uniswap and PancakeSwap

DeFi has proven to be one of the facets that the cryptocurrency industry will be built on for years to come. It’s one of the key reasons that Ethereum has become a cryptocurrency mainstay, anchoring an overwhelming majority of the platforms. Other blockchain networks are waking up to the vast opportunity that DeFi offers.

Binance Smart Chain now has PancakeSwap and Venus, Solana has Raydium, Curve is spread across Polygon, Fantom, Ethereum and Avalanche, Terra has Anchor, and TRON has JustLend – all with billions of dollars in total value locked.

Elrond is seeking to venture into this exciting world with its first DeFi platform. Maiar has been audited and stress-tested for months now, and according to Elrond, these tests “have validated its performance and capability to scale even under the harshest conditions.”

Maiar also comes with an easy-to-use app that only requires a phone number to register. According to Beniamin Mincu, the founder of Elrond, Maiar’s biggest strength lies in its decentralized ownership nature. He commented:

By distributing Maiar DEX ownership to the next billion users, we lay the foundation for a truly global financial system that is accessible to everyone, everywhere.

Despite launching today, according to DeFiLlama, Maiar already has $103 million in total value locked.