# What is Ref Finance? DeFi Protocol Guide

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**Publisher:** Decentralized Finance Publication (https://decentralized-finance.io)
**Author:** James Thornton
**Category:** Top DeFi Protocols
**Updated:** Apr 23, 2026
**Trust:** Independent, ad-free editorial research. No display advertisements, no paid protocol coverage, no affiliate-driven rankings.

## Summary

Rhea Finance (formerly Ref Finance) is a community-governed decentralized finance platform operating on the NEAR Protocol. In February 2025, Ref Finance and Burrow Finance combined to establish Rhea Finance, a next-generation chain-abstracted liquidity platform.

Rhea Finance, previously known as Ref Finance, is a community-driven, versatile DeFi platform developed on the NEAR Protocol.

A strategic merger between Ref and Burrow Finance took place in February 2025, resulting in the creation of Rhea Finance.

## History

The platform was originally established by Illia Polosukhin, NEAR Protocol's co-founder. The initial Github commit occurred on March 9, 2021. Following its launch in April 2021, Proximity Labs, a development organization specializing in NEAR ecosystem advancement, obtained financial support from the NEAR Foundation to develop and expand Ref Finance.

During early June 2021, Proximity established the Ref Finance DAO, selecting members through evaluation of their participation, engagement level, and overall contributions across communication channels including Telegram and Discord.

In February 2025, Ref Finance and Burrow Finance unified to establish Rhea Finance, positioning itself as a new iteration of chain-abstracted liquidity platforms.

The merger was initiated to strengthen decentralized finance infrastructure overall. Both organizations consolidated efforts to tackle the problem of market fragmentation.

## Overview

The platform functions on the NEAR blockchain infrastructure. It operates as a fully permissionless system without reliance on trusted intermediaries, emphasizing transparency and resistance to censorship. Participants can exchange tokens and serve as liquidity providers by contributing equal amounts of paired tokens in exchange for LP tokens representing their proportional share. These tokens can be converted back to the underlying assets whenever desired.

The Ref Finance ecosystem encompasses six participant categories: traders who conduct token exchanges, liquidity providers earning incentives from pools, stakers receiving protocol revenue distributions, lenders and borrowers accessing ecosystem liquidity, governance participants voting on proposals and incentive distribution, and developers utilizing Ref Finance smart contracts to enhance token interactions and trading functionality.

During March 2022, Ref Finance executed an OTC transaction with institutional and angel investors, securing $4.5 Million in stablecoins for 3,664,943 REF tokens. Jump Crypto led this funding round, with participation from Alameda Research, Dragonfly Capital, D1 Ventures, OKX BlockDream Ventures, Kucoin Ventures, SevenX Ventures, WOO Network, Move Capital, and Puzzle Ventures.

The capital raised was designated for development expenses and operational costs spanning a minimum of 24 months from March 2022 onward.

## Tokenomics

$REF functions as the governance mechanism for the REF ecosystem, compensating token holders through a protocol revenue-sharing arrangement.

Allocation

$REF maintains a maximum supply of 100,000,000 tokens. Distribution includes 60% designated for Liquidity Incentives, 20% for Treasury reserves, 10% for Development Fund, 2.5% for IDO participation, 2.5% for REF Token Liquidity Provisions, and 5% for Airdrops (Strategic allocation 2%, Early User allocation 1%, and Future Airdrops 2%).

Utility

$REF provides multiple functions including protocol revenue generation through staking mechanisms, participation in pooling and farming activities, engagement in boosted farming programs, and governance participation through veToken acquisition enabling proposal voting and liquidity incentive allocation decisions.

## Rainbow Bridge

Ref Finance incorporates the Rainbow Bridge, a trustless cross-chain solution facilitating token transfers across Ethereum, NEAR, and Aurora networks. Aurora, an Ethereum-compatible protocol built on NEAR, created and maintains this bridge infrastructure.

## Partners

On February 22, 2024, Ref announced a collaboration with cede.store establishing a streamlined pathway for transferring assets from centralized exchanges into DeFi platforms.

The partnership enables users to efficiently monitor, exchange, and move their centralized exchange holdings via Ref Finance's non-custodial wallet interface.

In March 2024, Ref announced the integration of Frax Finance's FRAX token into its liquidity pool offerings to expand ecosystem diversity and strengthen the NEAR Protocol infrastructure. Liquidity contributions were made to enhance Ref Finance pool availability and Burrow's stablecoin offerings. The initiative seeks to increase participation and activity within the NEAR ecosystem.

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