Today, Wenia, a new digital asset company from Bancolombia Group, one of the largest financial conglomerates in Latin America, announced it has integrated Chainlink’s Proof of Reserve (PoR) to provide a fully transparent view of the Colombian peso reserves backing the COPW stablecoin.
PoR increases consumer confidence in and adoption of stablecoins by leveraging Chainlink oracles to verify in real time that onchain assets are fully collateralized and triggering circuit breakers that prevent new stablecoins from being minted if collateral values dip below a certain threshold.
COPW is backed 1:1 by Colombian pesos on Polygon. To ensure additional COPW is not issued without sufficient reserves, Chainlink PoR is integrated directly into COPW’s minting function and supported by third-party audits from Harris & Trotter. As a result, Wenia users can securely buy, sell, and convert COPW to BTC, ETH, MATIC, and USDC with the Wenia App.
As the industry-standard decentralized computing platform, Chainlink has enabled over $12 trillion in transaction value throughout the web3 economy. PoR belongs to Chainlink’s comprehensive suite of oracle services that are critical for creating and securing tokenized real-world assets and stablecoins capable of scaling onchain finance to billions of users.
Stablecoins account for 31% of acquisitions in Colombia’s growing crypto market, which ranks 32nd globally and among the top five in Latin America, according to research from Chainanalysis. With a goal of onboarding 60,000 users by the end of 2024, Bancolombia launched Wenia as an accessible, secure, regulated digital asset platform that meets the demand for stablecoins while mitigating the risks associated with peer-to-peer transactions.
In an official announcement, Wenia CEO Pablo Arboleda described the platform’s PoR integration as “a significant milestone in Colombia’s digital asset landscape” that underscores the country’s growing embrace of cryptocurrency.
“Onchain Proof of Reserve data is a critical component to digital asset adoption, serving as a stepping stone toward increasing consumer confidence in using stablecoins and other tokenized assets. We chose Chainlink for its industry-leading platform, and we’re excited by the potential of its technology to increase transparency, utility, and accessibility for our users now and in the future.”
Wenia expects to expand its Chainlink collaboration by integrating Price Feeds for accurate, reliable market data and Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) for secure cross-chain interoperability.
“Chainlink is excited to provide end-to-end transparency for Wenia’s Colombian Peso stablecoin reserves and help to protect its users from infinite mint attacks,” said Angela Walker, Global Head of Banking and Capital Markets at Chainlink Labs. “Underpinned by Chainlink’s highly secure and reliable services, these digital asset initiatives from Wenia, a part of Bancolombia Group, can profoundly impact the lives of millions of Colombian citizens in a very powerful way.”