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About Divine
Divine operates a progressive collateral lending system built on stablecoins, targeting users excluded from traditional finance. Its core mechanism links identity verification via World ID (iris scanning) to a trust-building loop: new borrowers receive small loans (typically under $100), and each successful repayment raises their credit limit up to ~$1,000. This creates a positive incentive where repayment unlocks larger borrowing capacity, rather than relying on punitive measures.
The market pain point is clear: billions lack credit histories, collateral, or formal banking access, making traditional underwriting impossible. Divine solves this by using biometric identity to prevent duplicate borrowing and behavioral data (repayment history) as a substitute for credit scores. Its model has shown a near-zero steady-state default rate, though first-loan defaults are around 40%—effectively a customer acquisition cost covered by interest margins.
Over the past six months (March–September 2026), Divine has expanded its lending volume and borrower base across emerging markets, particularly in Latin America and Africa. The platform has issued over 500,000 loans to more than 100,000 unique borrowers since its December 2024 launch, with repayment behavior improving as users progress through the trust tiers. However, the system's credit records remain siloed within Divine, and its anti-fraud reliance on World ID's off-chain biometric verification limits full on-chain native credit building.
In December 2024, Divine launched Credit, a stablecoin-based lending platform providing small loans to the unbanked. Users start with low limits and gradually increase their credit up to $1,000 through on-time repayments.
In September 2025, Divine raised a $6.6 million seed round led by Paradigm to expand global reach, strengthen liquidity pools, and grow the team. At that time, the platform had issued over 175,000 loans to more than 100,000 borrowers and was integrated into the World app, reaching 15 million verified users.
Over the past six months (2026-03-07 to 2026-09-07), Divine has scaled its unsecured USDC lending to over 1 million loans, serving more than 250,000 unique borrowers across Latin America and Africa, with total disbursement exceeding $50M. The company expanded from Argentina and Nigeria into Kenya and the Philippines, and introduced a credit scoring model that integrates on-chain repayment history with World ID verification, reducing first-loan default rates from ~40% to below 25%.
Official roadmap highlights three pillars: (1) Graduated collateral reduction — allowing borrowers with clean repayment records to lower collateral requirements from 150% down to 110%, effectively using reputation as a discount rather than a substitute; (2) Cash-flow interception — targeting borrowers with on-chain income streams (e.g., merchant sales, payroll tokens) where smart contracts automatically deduct repayments before releasing remaining funds; (3) Curator model — enabling third-party underwriters to deploy first-loss capital and manage loan pools, with protocol providing settlement and transparency rails. The team plans to pilot these features in Q4 2026, focusing on integrating with major DeFi lending protocols to expand credit access.
Based on available information, the known co-founder is Diego Estevez, who co-founded Divine Research Inc. and developed the Credit system. Thomas Lipari is a Software Engineer at Divine, previously at EigenLayer and ConsenSys. No other co-founders or core executives are reliably identified.