Astarter was formally announced today by EMURGO, the official commercial arm of the Cardano blockchain protocol. Astarter is a collaboration with the Chinese technology firm BlockChain4A. The two companies intend to use Cardano to build a decentralised financial infrastructure (DeFi). DeFi applications currently have a total locked value (TVL) of around $150 billion USD. According to the report, DeFi is a "potentially significant development" in the blockchain landscape.