Burrow

UPDATE:

Burrow is now part of RHEA Finance.
In February 2025 in a major milestone for decentralized finance (DeFi), Ref Finance (NEAR’s leading DEX) and Burrow Finance (NEAR’s top lending protocol) have officially merged to launch Rhea Finance — a next-generation chain-abstracted liquidity platform connecting Bitcoin, NEAR, and major EVM ecosystems.
Burrow is a decentralized, non-custodial pool-based interest rates platform that enables users to supply assets to earn interest, and to borrow against them to unlock liquidity. Burrow is similar in nature to Aave, Compound, and other pool-based protocols.

Burrow runs natively on the NEAR blockchain, a layer 1, proof-of-stake, sharded blockchain with a WebAssembly runtime. The Burrow protocol’s smart contracts are written in Rust.

Burrow aims to unlock liquidity for interest-bearing assets, particularly layer 1 staking derivatives such as stNEAR and stETH. Users of Burrow will be able to deposit stNEAR as collateral, then borrow more NEAR to create a leveraged staking position, or borrow a stablecoin to create a self-repaying position.

Updated: July 7, 2025