Compound Token Surges After CEO Steps Down And Unveils New Venture

The token of one of DeFi’s most venerable protocols has quietly doubled over the last two weeks.

COMP, which governs Compound Finance, a DeFi lending platform with $2B in assets deposited, has rallied over 100% in the past week, according to The Defiant Terminal. Major digital assets like BTC, and ETH, as well as the S&P 500, have all gained less than 3% in that time frame.

Founder and CEO Robert Leshner stepped down last week to start a new company with four other alumni of Compound Labs. Leshner headed Compound Labs since starting it in 2017.

Superstate

His new venture, Superstate, aims to offer a compliant fund focused on U.S. treasury products.

Superstate’s assets will come with the option to be represented on Ethereum, according to a prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing cited “operational efficiencies” enabled by blockchains in a section explaining the use of the technology.

Leshner started one of DeFi’s first protocols to attract significant deposits of assets. Compound, and a handful of other protocols like MakerDAO, were among the first to showcase that blockchains had other use cases aside from token transfers. The launch of COMP in June 2020 kicked off the liquidity mining boom known as DeFi Summer.

With his departure, Compound Labs, and its associated protocol are entering a new era in terms of leadership. That said, COMP token holders have technically already been in full control of the protocol through governance.

Jayson Hobby, who started at Compound Labs as its head of design, has announced that he will take over the role of CEO. Hobby did not respond to The Defiant’s emailed requests for comment.

Airdrop Speculation

A possible explanation for COMP’s price action comes from speculation rippling through social media that COMP holders could receive some sort of airdrop from Superstate. There has been no official announcement from Superstate indicating that COMP will play a role in the new firm’s operations, however.

One specific investor is contributing majorly to COMP’s upward trajectory — the Ethereum address has withdrawn over $10M worth of COMP tokens from Binance in the past week.

COMP’s jump comes as some other tokens associated with the beginnings of DeFi have also gained ground.

MakerDAO, DeFi’s second-largest protocol by value deposited, has seen its MKR token jump over 21% over the past two weeks. Meanwhile, AAVE has surged over 31% in that time frame.

Compound’s last significant upgrade came in August 2022 with the launch of Compound III, which only allows people to borrow the USDC stablecoin. The product also isolates people’s collateral by only allowing people to borrow against their own assets. In contrast, Compound V2 used a pooled model where users can borrow other users’ collateral.