Markets and supply chain distribution today are more expansive and global in nature than ever before in history. The advent of e-commerce has allowed products to be sold and shipped to almost anywhere in the world. Consumers today have the power to view and order any product online at any time of the day & from anywhere in the world.

Manufacturers work to keep up with the demand and are constantly looking for ways to reduce costs through substandard manufacturing and low-cost supply of materials and components. These global opportunities however have created and encouraged the growth of counterfeit goods and the theft of companies’ intellectual property. 

Blockchain: A Game Changer

Blockchain technology offers a powerful solution to these challenges by introducing a decentralized, transparent, and secure system for recording transactions and tracking products. Let’s check out how blockchain is Revolutionizing supply chain efficiency in the Fashion Industry:

• Traceability and Transparency: Blockchain provides a ledger of all transactions, making it easy to trace the journey of each product from origin to consumer. In the fashion industry, this means every step—from sourcing raw materials to manufacturing and shipping—can be documented and verified. 

This transparency not only builds consumer trust but also helps brands ensure compliance with ethical standards and sustainability practices.

• Combatting Counterfeit Goods: Counterfeiting is one of the most discussed issues in the fashion industry costing billions of dollars annually. With the help of blockchain technology and its tamper-proof nature, it ensures that every product’s history is recorded and verified. This makes it virtually impossible for counterfeit goods to infiltrate the supply chain. 

Consumers can scan a product's blockchain record to verify its authenticity, protecting both brands and customers from fraud.

• Reducing Carbon Emissions: One of the most important concerns facing the fashion industry is its environmental impact, specifically carbon emissions. Blockchain technology can help reduce carbon footprints by streamlining supply chain processes. Blockchain allows for more effective transportation routes, fewer wasteful shipments, and lower energy use by giving precise, real-time data. 

Furthermore, blockchain can validate sustainable processes and the use of environmentally friendly products, pushing firms to get greener.

• Promoting Sustainability: Sustainability is becoming the primary concern in the fashion industry, and blockchain technology helps to achieve this aim by encouraging environmentally friendly practices. Blockchain technology can track the use of sustainable resources and verify that ethical labor standards are maintained throughout the supply chain. It can also enable transparency across a product's lifecycle, from raw material purchasing to manufacturing, distribution, and disposal. 

This broad visibility encourages companies to implement sustainable practices and empowers consumers to make informed, environmentally conscious decisions.

• Ethical Sourcing: Blockchain technology also ensures that raw materials are sourced ethically by providing verifiable information about their origin. This allows companies to ensure that their products are manufactured from resources that are socially and environmentally responsible. 

Ethical sourcing contributes to fair labor standards and promotes sustainable agricultural and extraction methods.

• LCA ( Life cycle Assessment): A system for evaluating the environmental impact of products across their whole lifecycle, from raw material extraction to manufacture, use, and disposal. Blockchain technology can combine LCA data, resulting in a transparent and immutable record of each product's environmental impact. 

This helps businesses to identify areas for improvement in their sustainability operations and customers to make informed purchasing decisions based on the environmental impact of the products they buy.

From Data to Impact

• A study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) revealed that implementing blockchain technology in the supply chain could help reduce up to 30% of the environmental impact of textile production by ensuring compliance with sustainability standards.

• According to a survey by IBM, 70% of consumers believe that transparency is important, and 53% are willing to pay a premium for brands that provide it. Blockchain helps meet this demand by providing detailed and trustworthy supply chain information.

• A report by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) projects that blockchain could reduce the global trade of counterfeit goods by up to 50% by providing verifiable product provenance.

• The Carbon Trust estimates that blockchain could help reduce emissions in the supply chain by 15-20% by 2030 through enhanced efficiency and better resource management.

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Industry Insights

1. LVMH

A luxury goods conglomerate has adopted blockchain technology to track the environmental impact of its products. This ensures full transparency and compliance with sustainability goals. By leveraging blockchain, the company is setting new standards in eco-friendly practices and reinforcing its commitment to a sustainable future.

2. H&M

H&M Group is exploring blockchain solutions to enhance supply chain transparency and efficiency, aiming to reduce carbon emissions associated with production and logistics.

3. Provenance

A leading blockchain technology company collaborates with brands to meticulously track the origins and authenticity of their products. This innovative partnership provides consumers with verifiable and transparent information about their purchases, ensuring trust and confidence in the products they buy. By leveraging blockchain, the company is revolutionizing the way brands and consumers interact

A Case study: Autify Network

Autify Network is developing a revolutionary trust protocol that leverages the power of blockchain and AI to increase transparency in the global supply chain. The company aims to create a decentralized ecosystem that ensures transparency, efficiency, and trust for all stakeholders involved in the supply chain of luxury fashion products. 

In September 2022, Autify Network successfully raised $1.9 million in venture capital and grants funding from Loop Ventures, NEAR Foundation, SIA Foundation, Stellar Community Fund, Biconomy, and Filecoin, marking a significant milestone in its growth and development to revolutionize supply chain management in the fashion industry. 

They are addressing an extremely complex problem that affects companies worldwide, resulting in losses exceeding $5 trillion due to supply chain inefficiencies, counterfeiting, and a lack of transparency.

From counterfeit goods to unethical labor practices, the issues have tarnished the reputation of some of the world's most famous fashion brands. Blockchain technology is said to be a promising solution to these problems. 

Autify network brings you the solution, they are one of the few developing modern, modular, and comprehensive supply chain management solutions catering to brands, vendors, suppliers, and end consumers. It is one of their standout features, setting them apart from the competition. 

By offering exceptional flexibility, and allowing easy customization based on business needs and size, all at a reasonable cost.

Supply chain management:

Autify Network is building an end-to-end supply chain management platform for businesses to manage the flow of goods and services from the point of origin to the point of consumption. Their platform will provide real-time visibility into the movement of goods and enable businesses to adapt to changes in demand or supply quickly. They can also help reduce costs and improve efficiency by automating routine tasks and streamlining workflows.

• Inventory management

• Order management

• Transportation management

• Warehouse management

• Supplier management

• Demand planning

• Analytics and Reporting

Supply chain traceability:

They are building a supply chain traceability platform to track the provenance of goods, including their origin, movement, and ownership. This can help to prevent counterfeiting and ensure the authenticity and quality of products. Their Platform will make it possible for different actors along the supply chain to have different roles and privileges.

Their system will provide real-time tracking of all players involved in the product journey from field to end consumer. By simply scanning a QR or NFC code, customers can easily access all relevant details about the product. They will keep a permanent and immutable record of transactions, which can help to prevent fraud, tampering, and errors in supply chain data. Supply chain participants can reduce the time and cost associated with tracking and verifying the authenticity of goods, and improve the efficiency of supply chain operations.

In addition to the supply chain management and traceability platform, Autify Network is also building several other innovative products:

Sustainability track and trace: Autify Network’s sustainability track and trace solution will allow companies to track the environmental and social impact of their supply chains, including carbon emissions, water usage, and labor standards. By providing transparent and verifiable sustainability data, they will help companies meet their sustainability goals and improve their reputation with consumers.

Autify Verified a Decentralized Sourcing Platform: Autify Network’s verified vendor sourcing will provide a trusted platform for companies to find and connect with verified suppliers and service providers. By using blockchain-based identity verification and reputation scoring, they can ensure the reliability and quality of their vendors and simplify the procurement process for their clients.

Integrating AI and Computer Vision for automation: They are leveraging the power of AI and computer vision to improve item tracking and identification within the supply chain. This will enable them to provide more accurate and efficient traceability solutions and help their clients reduce losses and improve inventory management.

B2B Cross-Border Payment Module:  Autify Network’s cross-border payment platform will allow businesses to make secure and efficient payments across borders. By eliminating intermediaries and reducing transaction costs, they will help businesses expand their global reach and streamline their international operations.

Their platform provides real-time visibility into the movement of goods and enables businesses to quickly adapt to changes in demand or supply. They also help reduce costs and improve efficiency by automating routine tasks and streamlining workflows.

Sources and References:

• https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/environmental-costs-fast-fashion 

•  https://issuu.com/fashionrevolution/docs/fr_fashiontransparencyindex2020 

• https://www.fashionrevolution.org/about/transparency/ 

• https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180515005775/en/Global-Brand-Counterfeiting-Report-2018-2020---ResearchAndMarkets.com 

• https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/un-alliance-sustainable-fashion-addresses-damage-fast-fashion 

• https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/fashion-industry-carbon-unsustainable-environment-pollution/ 

• https://www.businessinsider.in/slideshows/miscellaneous/the-fashion-industry-emits-more-carbon-than-international-flights-and-maritime-shipping-combined-here-are-the-biggest-ways-it-impacts-the-planet-/slidelist/71640838.cms 

• https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-fashion-industry-environmental-impact/ 

• https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/industries/retail/our%20insights/state%20of%20fashion/2022/the-state-of-fashion-2022.pdf 

• https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/state-of-fashion 

• https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/putting-brakes-fast-fashion 

• https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/environmental-costs-fast-fashion 

• https://www.ibm.com/policy/trust-transparency-new/ 

• https://bytescare.com/blog/the-economic-impact-of-counterfeiting-and-piracy#:~:text=Future%20Projections%3A%20Looking%20ahead%2C%20the,to%20%24959%20billion%20by%202022. 

What is Blur?

@blur_io was launched by @PacmanBlur on Oct 2022.

It has no marketplace fees, and enforces a 0.5% minimum creator royalty.

In 4 months, Blur has shaken Opensea’s domination.

Since it exploded onto the scene four months ago, Blur has disrupted the deeply entrenched power structure that has dictated the competitive dynamics among NFT marketplaces for a long time. After numerous miserably failed attempts to topple OpenSea have only bolstered the incumbent’s air of superiority, Blur has finally managed to break this pattern of defeat by genuinely threatening the giant’s dominance, which has turned into a standoff between David and Goliath.

The series of cleverly designed liquidity incentives, which have enabled Blur to take the NFT market by storm, have now culminated in the pinnacle of its growth strategy – the launch of the BLUR token. As part of its vision to function as the main steward for the pro NFT trading community, Blur puts the future development of its ecosystem into the hands of its users, which will be facilitated through a decentralized governance process.

To this end, the BLUR token will act as the decision-making instrument that will allow the community to set parameters essential to the platform’s value accrual mechanism. The token was airdropped to users in the form of Care Packages, which transformed into BLUR tokens on February 14th at 12pm EST.

To participate in the protocol’s governance, BLUR token holders need to delegate their token balance to an address, which can be their own or someone else’s. Voting power is proportional to the BLUR balance of an eligible address, including the delegated balance. To enact a standardized procedure, the governance process will be conducted by means of Blur Improvement Proposals (BIPs), which will need to pass a three-stage process.

First, proposals need to be posted on the research forum for the purpose of eliciting feedback from the community. Once the proposal is battle-tested, it moves to the second phase. In short, the second phase consists of a 14-day voting period, which only allows delegated community members with a minimum of 100K tokens delegated to submit proposals.

If the proposal passes with at least 30M yes votes, it advances to the third phase. Lastly, an on-chain execution vote containing the code to be implemented will be set up, which will require a simple majority with at least 120M yes votes at the end of the 14-day voting period in order to be executed.

Above all, the primary levers for the community to pull through the governance process would revolve around the issuance of treasury grants as well as the change of the protocol fee. In addition, three committees will chaperone the early community, which will be tasked with specific functions, such as ensuring adherence to guidelines or executing policy changes around royalties.1

1/ Blur dropped its token on Feb 14.2

The same day its trading volume exceeded OpenSea’s.

360M BLUR (12% of total supply) were distributed to holders.

Whether the momentum is sustainable remains to be seen.

2/ After 4 days, Opensea made “big changes” in response:

- OpenSea dropped fees to 0% for a limited period of time,
- Implemented a 0.5% minimum creator earnings model,
- Allowed sales using NFT marketplaces with the same policies (including Blur)

3/ NFT Marketplaces’ main KPIs

- trading volume
- users (unique buyers)
- number of sales
- average number of trades per user
- Average sale size

On Blur vs Opensea specifically, we add:

- royalty fees
- community engagement

4/ Trading volume

In the week of Feb 13, Blur was killing it.

Its trading volume was over 5x Opensea’s volume.

Worth noticing, top 3 wallets on Blur each received $1.5M+ worth of $BLUR.

Even considering wash trading - this was substantial.

5/ Daily users

So far, OpenSea has a steady daily user volume dominating the market.

Blur’s # of daily users has increased by 3x since their airdrop on DATE.

6/ Sale count

You can see, Opensea and Blur are two big players.

On Feb 20, Blur even got ~70k trade counts, while Opensea had ~77k.

Blur was capable of flipping the game

7/ Average number of trades per user

This indicator tells how well user retention is.

Blur’s early supporters are super active.

But the trend is volatile too, compared to Opensea’s.

8/ Average sale size

OpenSea is a marketplace for NFT projects of any size.

So the average sale size is low (< 1 ETH).

Blur has a slightly higher average size.

Blur executes a lot of high-value trades with an average NFT sale price of $1,365 vs. OpenSea’s $351. OpenSea’s large, mass-market userbase trades smaller values. But Blur’s smaller target audience of NFT power users trades larger values.

9/ Royalty fees — associated with the sale of NFTs, a percentage of sale price going to creators

Opensea: creators are limited to earning royalties on only one platform at a time.

Blur: trying to let creators earn full royalties everywhere.

10/ Blur wants 100% loyalty.

A creative and bold move — a loyalty button.

Users get a 100% loyalty score if they don’t have listings anywhere else.

Blur wants to wipe out Opensea by having 100% loyal users.

11/ Now, Blur looks promising to beat Opensea.

Top 3 pillars that win Blur the market share:

- expansive choice of NFTs
- impressive speed - 10x faster, 20% gas efficient than GEM
- slick UX — simple and easy to understand

Blur has doubled down on speed since day one to make itself stick out from the competition via real-time listings and instant NFT metadata reveals. According to Blur, its marketplace is in the ballpark of being 10x faster and nearly 20% more gas-efficient than Gem, which is OpenSea’s NFT aggregator for veteran traders.3

12/ Opensea has been the market leader but Blur’s tokenomics changed that

By and large, Blur’s go-to-market strategy has been shaped by the belief that a token can be a useful vehicle for bootstrapping liquidity but has shied away from exploiting it as a means to sugarcoat modest traction, which might distract from the quality of the product. Therefore, the BLUR token economics renounce unnecessary complexities and, instead, double down on a tried-and-tested approach.

Simply put, it emulates Uniswap’s UNI vesting schedule, except for an additional cliff. More precisely, 51.0% of the total supply of 3bn BLUR tokens is earmarked for the community, of which 23.5% will be reserved for community members while 76.5% will be earmarked for the community treasury.

Apart from that, 28.9% will accrue to core contributors whereas 18.9% will be distributed among investors. The remaining 1.0% will flow to advisors and will be subject to a prolonged vesting schedule of 48 to 60 months as well as a cliff ranging between 4 and 16 months.

The platform is currently distributing its governance token to traders, based on a point system. This model rewards users for providing liquidity to the order book through listing NFTs and bidding on them. Users are rewarded for both, the amount of liquidity provided as well as the risk of the liquidity provided. Higher bids and lower asks, relative to the order book, will increase the point value of your orders. This mechanism gives weight to each order that incentivizes real liquidity to fill Blur’s liquidity pool order books.4

To maximize the number of points, traders can place bids as close to the floor price as possible on collections with high trading volumes. Accepting bids may reduce the chances of receiving rewards, which is why some traders place and cancel bids repeatedly. This creates a bidding wall of user-provided liquidity on Blur. Traders exchange these points for Care Packages, which contain an unspecified amount of BLUR tokens.

When properly designed, token airdrop mechanics can fuel a flywheel of behaviors that can jumpstart a project’s user adoption.

Blur’s structure offers NFT traders the lowest fees as well as the deepest liquidity on the market, and it’s working. Blur’s marketplace is outperforming OpenSea while Blur’s aggregator is outperforming Gem.

Blur has found product-market fit while leveraging its token to capture market share from OpenSea. Blur is proof that tactical incentives powering quality products rule the world. With decentralized blockchains, unenforceable royalties find themselves in a race to zero, one that Blur has fully embraced. The platform has now entered the “Airdrop Season 2” phase and specifically notes that traders that “bid on top collections closer to the floor get more rewards.” In other words, traders that put in a bid close to the floor price—that is, the cheapest available NFT for a certain project—of a popular project will maximize their eventual rewards. They’re both buying and selling in bulk as a result.

13/ @LooksRare and @the_x2y2 launched their own tokens and had price spikes.

Now, they have cooled down.

Many tokens tend to fall after their initial hype.

Will this happen to Blur too?

(Please note all the information below is publicly available on Coinbase website or twitter internet)

This was also a week where Coinbase turned 10 years! With ~100M KYC users and $300B crypto traded in just one quarter, Coinbase has firmly established itself as a crucial gateway to the Web3 ecosystem.

At Permissionless, our Chief Product Officer also unveiled some of our most important products: Dapp wallet/browser and Coinbase Pay SDK

• Dapp wallet and browser: Launched a web3 browser built directly into its main mobile app, powered by MPC tech that eliminates the need for you to manage your own keys.

• Coinbase Pay: The easiest fiat-to-crypto solution - purchasing or transferring crypto takes just a few clicks and developers can apply for access to the SDK.

Looking back to Brian Armstrong’s Mission, Vision & Strategy statement - we can see how far we have we have come along as Coinbase evolves into an app platform and new financial ecosystem

About five years ago, I wrote the Coinbase Secret Master Plan that outlined the four phases I envisioned cryptocurrency going through on its path to reaching 1 billion users. We have made incredible progress towards this plan, with >50M verified users on Coinbase, and more using other crypto products.

If our mission of increasing economic freedom is what we’re trying to achieve, then our strategy represents how we’re going to get there. This revised framing reflects where we are in the evolution of crypto 5 years later, and what we think the next 5+ years will look like.

Our strategy has 3 pillars (July 2019):

— Brian Armstrong

Coinbase Ventures is also advancing crypto & Web3 by partnering with exceptional founders who share Coinbase’s mission of creating more economic freedom for the world. It is recognized as one of the most active corporate VCs in the world by deal count. To date, we’ve invested in 300+ teams building everything from layer 1 protocols, Web3 infrastructure, centralized on-ramps, decentralized finance, NFTs, metaverse technologies, developer tooling, and more.

Coinbase Ventures generally break down our investments across six categories. Within these six categories, here’s how our activity shook out in Q1 ‘22.1

3 years later, not much has changed from the original vision except that the articulation has become sharper with increasing realization on how important open-source, decentralization and self-custody are! 
As we evolve towards the Product 3.0 strategy, these 3 guiding principles influence how we think about building with the users at the center of our decision: 

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1. API - first

Empowering developers and other ecosystem partners to build along with us

2. DeFi - first

Innovating in DeFi to allow permissionless, 24x7, global, instant access to everyone

3. Self-custody first

Embracing decentralization while building trust and ease of use for next 100M users

For more inspiration on our crypto spirit of “default to open,” watch this 2019 video where Coinbase hosted an open house with Brian

W22 companies are building in more than 80 sectors but Fintech + Crypto comprises more than a third of the batch. ~30 Crypto companies span various sub-sectors such as NFTs, DeFi, web3 services and crypto investing. As usual, this was a hard exercise to do, but we sifted through many of these amazing companies and founders in the space to shortlist 7 Most Promising Crypto and Web 3 Startups in Y Combinator Winter 2022 batch you need to watch out for! Without further ado, here is the list:

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🚀 Top 7 Crypto & Web 3 Startups

1. NFTScoring: NFT Trading Platform

• One line pitch: “NFTScoring is the place for you to discover, analyze and trade NFTs. We give you the superpowers to understand the NFT market in any given moment, make the best decisions, and take faster actions.”

• Why it is exciting: NFTScoring is trying to build a better dashboard for NFT traders which accounts for some of the unique attributes that make some NFTs more valuable than others, all while helping users find trending projects early. A big emphasis appears to be tracking which projects NFT whales are buying into through tracking a network of wallets. The startup has premium tier pricing which users need to pay for with Eth.1

• The team: Adam and David met while working together in the Avast AI research team. Together, they launched multiple companies, including an AI agency, and a logistics SaaS business. They are both technical founders with Data Science and AI master degrees.

2. Remi Labs: Everything a business needs to launch their own NFTs

• One line pitch: “Launching an NFT collection can seem tantalizing for brands, however, when executed poorly can create long-lasting negative implications. We take the cringe out of NFTs.”

• Why it is exciting: Businesses need to keep up and utilize the power of NFTs to help grow products lines and services. Launching an NFT collection can seem alluring for brands. However, when executed poorly, it can create long-lasting negative implications. Most businesses do not have the technical expertise, or the understanding of how to generate NFTs. Remi makes the NFTs for e-commerce businesses that want to sell to their customers. With Remi, customers don't need cryptocurrency, or even a crypto wallet.

• The team: Brant and Dan both worked at Podium (YC W16) and helped scale it to $100M ARR in three years. Doug and Roger have spent the last several years at Vivint, leading sales teams of 1000+ across the country. We all launched an NFT project together and have spent a lot of time in the space as consumers.

3. LiquiFi: Carta for crypto / web3

• One line pitch: “LiquiFi (“Carta for crypto”) helps companies and DAOs automate their token vesting, management, and distribution to employees, investors, partners, and community members. Secure, audited smart contracts guarantee timely distribution of vesting tokens and save significant time and resources spent building your own solution.”

• Why it is exciting: Token management is a clear web3 startup growing pain and YC has always been particularly successful in helping scale “startup-for-startup” products. The team stumbled across the idea for LiquiFi while working at a previous crypto companies they experienced how painful it was to set up and distribute tokens with a vesting schedule. As a result, they decided to work together to build a solution that would solve this token vesting problem.

• The team: Robin (CEO) and Oliver (CTO) were good friends for 6 years before starting LiquiFi. Robin worked as a Product Management Lead at various companies such as Eco, Adobe, Coffee Meets Bagel, and LinkedIn. Oliver worked as an Engineering Manager and Software Engineer at Set Protocol, Twitch, Amazon, and Salesforce.

4. Poko: Replace LLCs with DAOs in Emerging Markets

• Pitch: “We are building Slack for Web3. We aim to replace LLCs with DAOs in emerging market cross border collaborations. We will take costly multi-step months-long company registration and setups down to $50 a month and with the ease of opening a Slack channel.”

• Why it is exciting: DAOs are hot, but the tooling behind them is still catching up with the hype. Poko is leaning into the idea of using DAOs as LLCs which has some legal blurriness stateside but less so in plenty of other geographies.

• The team: Van led Netflix marketing strategy and growth in Southeast Asia and Australia, establishing fan communities in the region. Sean is an avid community builder and podcaster in the gaming, sports and mental health space. Geoffrey built a digital identity product that had 20M+ users in India and Vietnam. They have known each other for 18+ years - experience include being founding team members of a $2B coin cap protocol, creating a blockchain-based exchange that partially exited to Binance, and authoring consumer protection recommendations at the World Economic Forum's Digital Currency Governance Consortium.

5. Chaingrep: Search for blockchains

• Pitch: “Chaingrep is a search engine for on-chain interactions and digital assets. You can think of it as a new kind of block explorer. We think that current block explorers like Etherscan are too complicated to use for regular users, and that abstracting a lot of their functionalities and filtering out all the noise can dramatically improve the experience of finding on-chain information.”

• Why it is exciting: The transparency offered my blockchains is only as good as the platforms that make interpreting that data simple and readable, something that will become more important as more non-technical users find their way to web3 platforms. Block explorers are hard to use and haven't changed in years despite the exponential growth of blockchains like Ethereum. There could be a better way to organize the cambrian explosion of digital assets like NFTs and on-chain interactions. Just like web pages, we won't be able to put them in labeled lists forever or even categorize them. Your interactions should be human-readable, and you should be able to find an NFT simply by describing it. Thats why ChainGrep is building an Etherscan for humans.

• The team: Merwane (CEO) and Rosco (CTO) met in 2019 while working on their own projects. Rosco has a MSc in Computer Science and Merwane dropped out of university. They both worked as software engineering contractors prior to founding Chaingrep.

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6. Argo: a platform for monetizing premium short film entertainment

• Pitch: “Argo is on a mission to empower Film and TV makers worldwide. It’s the easiest way to upload and monetize your content. Argo provides the technology and the ecosystem for the Filmmakers to monetize their film and tv work through advertising, subscription and NFT sales.”

• Why it is exciting: Argo is a media startup focused on short films first and foremost, offering a platform for filmmakers to showcase their work while also tapping NFT sales as a way of helping them monetize their work and build buzz. Argo’s believes that short form content doesn’t just HAVE a future, but that it IS the future; and they are approaching it from “creators first” mentality that empowers filmmakers to monetize their work in new and innovative ways.
  They are building a social ecosystem Argo is building for short films, bringing together filmmakers, film festivals, brands, and influencers to provide better recommendations and a more engaging experience.

• The team: Arcadiy Golubovich was a seed investor in FUBO TV that IPOed in 2020. He found the largest entertainment financing company in Russia before that. He has built a career on being on the intersection of technology and entertainment. He has produced several feature films that premiered at top film festivals, and was an early investor in companies like Boxee that sold to Samsung, Fable that won several Emmy's for media innovation, Prizeo that sold to Custom Inc and more.

7. Finnt: Decentralized Finance & Crypto for Families

• Pitch: “Finnt is the first DeFi app for families. We provide multi-user, high yield saving accounts, which make it easy to save with crypto for your children or family members.”

• Why it is exciting: DeFi for families is an interesting take by mainly focusing on allowing users to link sub-accounts to a central investment account. While this is a bold bet since entire family savings are now potentially at risk in the DeFi world, there is a massive opportunity IF the guardrails are in place. Attractive value props here include creating cross-border savings accounts, using stablecoins to protect against inflation, generating high interest rates to beat unstable economy; and designing multi-users accounts to allow for better planning and remittance.

• The team: Anji & Faouzi met in 2008 during their Masters in Computer Science. They co-founded DOZ.com in 2010, a Marketing SaaS that got acquired in 2017. Also in 2018, they launched together an Ethereum Dapp, Varanida.com, acting as personal data wallet, that peaked at over 200K DAU.

..and that is a wrap! Check out the list of all companies👇

Follow me on LinkedIn

Nakul

If you liked this post from Cryptechie, please subscribe and share! 

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As the crypto market goes through a cycle of volatility, the optimal way to invest is to spend some time doing research. Try to study projects and learn some of the fundamentals before putting any significant amounts into them. A basic approach on how to do some high-level research when it comes to DeFi tokens or NFT projects:

#1 find token in CoinGecko
#2 check market cap, fully diluted valuation, volume and Mkt Cap/TVL ratio
#3 check website
#4 study tokenomics & pre-sale
#5 analyze team
#6 check github activity
#7 visit telegram/discord rooms
#8 search ticker on twitter
#9 check reddit/4chan
#10 analyze holders
#11 chart & trade history

For NFTs, determine how on-chain the NFTs are and analyze on-chain activity (using tools like OpenSea's Rankings page and NonFungible.com's Market History hub).

Here are a few projects I have been tracking that are trying to solve real problems and have an interesting approach:

1. Lido: a non-custodial, liquid staking service ($LIDO)

Problem Statement:

It currently costs ~$100K to become an Eth2 validator! That’s insane. The 32 ETH threshold has priced out a lot of people.

It’s an issue—the current requirements go against Ethereum ideals and the notion of open, democratized access to financial services. Adding to it, running an Eth2 validator requires a fair amount of technical knowledge. You need hardware, you have to run the software, keep it maintained so you don’t get slashed, etc. It can be a lot.

So how can anyone expect the average individual to stake ETH?

Luckily, there are two main options out there.

1. The first is staking ETH through a centralized exchange like Coinbase and Kraken. This is the most beginner-friendly approach as they’ll abstract away all the complexities and allow you to stake any amount of ETH (not just the fixed 32 ETH required!) while earning a decent return.

   The problem is that it’s centralized. You have to trust the exchange to hold your ETH and they usually take a hefty cut on the rewards you earn. Obviously, this isn’t an ideal solution for those that align with bankless values.

2. The other main option is decentralized staking providers. This is the holy grail for staking ETH and the one that we like to advocate for. These open protocols democratize access to staking, providing you with an easy UI to stake any amount of ETH while also giving you a tokenized representation of your deposit to use elsewhere. The best part is that these protocols are designed to hold the deposits in a non-custodial fashion—you don’t have to trust anyone! Lido is the key contenders in this area. They’ve already accumulated hundreds of thousands of ETH in deposits, valuing the total outstanding stETH (the protocol’s tokenized staked ETH derivative) to over $2.3B.1

How LIDO is solving it:

Lido simplifies staking ETH to make it as easy as using any other DeFi protocol, transferring the technical and slashing risk to world-class operators. Importantly, due to the pooling of user funds, holders with less than the 32 ETH required to run a validator can now stake and earn passive income on their holdings.

The stETH token—Lido’s staking derivative—also provides a major benefit for users by allowing them to access liquidity on their underlying Ether. Traditionally, staked assets are locked and unable to be used for other purposes. This is especially true at the current moment, as the Beacon Chain will not enable withdrawals until after the PoS merge.

Through stETH, Lido users can earn staking yields, maintain their share of the network, and also unlock the value of their tokens. In other words, stETH can be used as collateral for other DeFi protocols, drastically improving the utility of their staked position.

Source: Token Terminal

Since its launch in December 2020, Lido has nearly $10B in total value locked (TVL) and is generating $2.5M in protocol revenue each month, about $30M when annualized. Interestingly, we can also see that Lido did not experience as severe a decline in revenues compared to some other projects during crypto’s recent market sell-off. Lido’s revenue may not be as susceptible to influence from market and DeFi activity when compared to other projects. It also illustrates how Lido benefits from the secular nature of staking: Holders are going to want to stake their Ether irrespective of market conditions, meaning that Lido will be able to grow from within any backdrop

Competitive Advantages of LIDO:

1. Due to the “liquidity begets liquidity” nature of staking derivatives, Lido benefits from strong network effects.

2. The integration of stETH within DeFi is critical to Lido’s success and helps reinforce its network effect. 

3. New staking protocols face incredibly high barriers to entry. Between the complexities of interacting with the Beacon Chain, slashing risks, and the inability to fork staked assets to go along with the active governance needed to ensure the orderly operation of the system, it’s incredibly difficult to run and maintain a staking service. 

4. Lido benefits from an incredibly strong cohort of intellectual capital. Along with a highly skilled and competent core team, Lido boasts multiple prominent members from all walks of crypto as contributors and community members

5. The staking industry is expected to explode in growth over the next several years, with even TradFi institutions such as JP Morgan expecting earnings from staking to grow to $40 billion by 2025. 

   Risks: Control over Lido may still be highly concentrated (63.5% of the total supply was allocated to protocol insiders as per Bankless). While Lido is non-custodial, the protocol is not yet fully trustless. A substantial portion of Lido’s deposits, and therefore sources of revenue, are concentrated within a small group of depositors.

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2. Olympus DAO: Crypto reserve currency ($OHM)

Problem Statement:

Over the last couple of years, stablecoins have come under a lot of scrutiny and faced increasingly strict regulatory issues. With cryptocurrencies becoming more mainstream, this trend is unlikely to reverse. On top of this, the fact that the most popular stablecoins used today are centralized seems antithetical to crypto's value proposition of decentralization. The recent wave of algorithmic stablecoins aim to solve most of these issues using algorithms to back their stablecoins instead of reserves. Without reserves, these projects don't need to be periodically audited and can be decentralized. However, these coins still have one big issue: they're still pegged to a fiat currency which is controlled by a central government. Even if algorithmic stablecoins are able to maintain a perfect peg to their fiat currencies, which has already proved difficult to do, they are still at the hands of various governments who control the fiat currency.2

The relatively new category of "non pegged stablecoins" is the market's answer to this issue. What if you could have a stablecoin that was less volatile than other cryptocurrencies, and therefore more suitable for everyday transactions, but had no reliance on any fiat currencies? Olympus aims to achieve this with their OHM token.

Through a treasury of assets as well as minting and burning, Olympus' long term goal is to become a currency that is stable enough to be used in daily transactions with the reasonable expectation that prices will remain the same over time while not relying on a traditional peg.

The project was originally proposed at the beginning of February and held an Initial Discord Offering to community members in the middle of March. The project officially launched shortly afterwards and has seen tremendous growth in the first couple of months of its existence. Less than a month in, the team successfully proposed and implemented a core change to the protocol, introducing DAI bonds to replace the old sales contract, in order to grow the treasury faster and take advantage of the large premium of OHM price at the time.

How OHM is solving it:

So how do we get a digital currency that is stable, collateralized, and decentralized? That's where Olympus comes in. The Ohm token is a decentralized reserve currency maintaining a floating market driven price.

Source: Olympus Dao dashboard

Olympus is a "non pegged stablecoin" that attempts to be less volatile than traditional cryptocurrencies while not being pegged to any fiat currencies. Instead, the value of its OHM token is meant to float based on the value of its underlying treasury of assets and parameters set by the DAO. It achieves this through minting OHM when it is greater than its intrinsic value and burning OHM when it is less. The end goal of the project is to become a crypto-native currency that is used as an alternative to the USD or other fiat currencies.

As of this writing, Ohm is at ~$1,150. You can buy Ohm for market price on Sushi Swap. Or you can purchase them at a cheaper rate through two different bonds: reserve & liquidity.

With reserve bonds, you purchase assets like Dai, Frax, etc. and trade those in to the treasury. You receive the Ohm at the end of the vesting period which is every 15 epochs or 5 days. This keeps the Olympus treasury and the Risk Free Value (RFV) growing.RFV are the funds the treasury guarantees to use for backing OHM. This is the intrinsic value backing Ohm that bitcoin and Ampleforth don't have. The key here is that Ohm is backed, not pegged!

If you're on crypto twitter, you've probably seen (3, 3). This is essentially the HODL for Ohm. It's based on the idea that rewards are the highest for everyone if people perform positive actions (staking & bonding).

There is also a sOhm pool on Pool Together - this essentially is a lottery model where you can forego your staking rewards (8000% APY as of today) but get a change to win everyone else’s staking rewards every 3-5 days (quite a big prize pool). Legal or not, this is the ultimate gamification of money reserves!

Competitive Advantages of OHM:

1. Has been stress tested and survived due to Protocol owned liquidity: There was a dump in $ohm price exacerbated by a cascading liquidation event due to the overleverage of ohmies doing (9,9) in RariCapital pools. The price went from $1200 to $600 in a -50% dump. The Liquidity Owned by the protocol gave the exit liquidity needed for the big whales selling and also the smaller panic sellers. The dip was immediately bought by people that was waiting to get into the (3,3) train.

2. As the Olympus market grows, the protocol also accrues revenue from liquidity provider rewards, which are deposited into the project’s treasury (which is now massive). Ultimate application of Game Theory: whether or not a participant will stake OHM, bond, or sell their OHM

3. The ‘Ohmies’ have emerged as one of crypto’s most passionate communities in 2021. On a more intangible level, “Ohmie culture” is beginning to proliferate throughout that of broader crypto, with (3,3) turning into one of the most popular twitter handles suffixes, along with .eth and of course, the 🦇🔊.

4. Another interesting characteristic of Olympus that may contribute to the passion of the Ohmies is that it’s governed directly by OHM holders.
   This differentiates it from other stablecoin protocols, such as DAI, FEI, and RAI, and of course, centralized stablecoins like USDC, or USDT, whose monetary policy is determined by holders of a secondary governance token or c-suite management, respectively. This means that the holders of the actual currency, rather than owners of a secondary governance token, are the ones who determine monetary policy.

5. As we speak there are more than 15 forks of OHM trying to replicate its success - watch out for any rug pulls!

Olympus DAO is a fascinating project. The protocol is attempting to tackle a hugely ambitious problem through its unique design and incentive mechanisms. It’s also managed to be hugely successful at attracting rapid growth and a rabid community.

While it’s unclear if it will ultimately succeed in achieving its vision, it is clear that Olympus is a project worth keeping an eye on.

3. TokeMak (Toke): Liquidity Reactor

Problem Statement:

Standing up liquidity for a new project is costly and inefficient. Current solutions to the problem of token liquidity are:

• Engaging centralized market makers, a costly affair

• Incentivizing their users through yield farming, an equally costly solution

Engaging with a market makers creates a unique set of challenges. A market maker is an entity that centralizes three rare resources: capital [money], market knowledge [strategy], and trading/pricing expertise [technology]. Current examples of these organizations are very centralized, often the brainchild and property of just one individual. DeFi has yet to produce a primitive which is capable of disaggregating these three things, which is why we as an industry have been leaning on TradFi for this service. The small steps we’re about to take here at Tokemak will result in a big leap for the future of finance. Vive l’avenir de la France.

Meanwhile, yield farming introduces inflationary tokenomics to bootstrap liquidity, and has a creeping impact on the overall health of the project, often strangling the project’s resources for innovation. The budgeting of so many tokens in pursuit of liquidity is akin to early internet entrepreneurs spending their budget on armies of IT professionals and massive server farms. It’s redundant and there’s a better solution —during the era of Internet 1.0, the answer was AWS as a utility for cloud server hosting; for Web 3.0, the answer is a utility for sustainable liquidity: Tokemak.

Tokemak is a new DeFi protocol aiming to build sustainable infrastructure for liquidity—for everyone.

How TokeMak is solving it:

Tokemak creates sustainable DeFi liquidity and capital efficient markets through a convenient decentralized market making protocol. Tokemak provides a generalized liquidity aggregator for decentralized exchanges.

For the liquidity provider, Tokemak works as a single-sided yield platform where they can deposit reserve assets — for example, Ether (ETH), USD Coin (USDC) and Dai — as well as tokens for the projects using Tokemak. The Tokemak platform will then direct the liquidity into automated market maker pools and other market-making opportunities. Key to this concept are TOKE holders, who act as “liquidity directors,” expressing their preference on where the liquidity should be sent. Tokamak has also managed to attract significant liquidity for TOKE with a TVL of north of $1B.

Source: Tokemak Interface

Tokemak is designed to be primarily used by:

• Liquidity providers and yield farmers: any user can deposit single assets into the network to be utilized as liquidity

• DAOs: DAOs can harness Tokemak’s liquidity flow in order to strengthen and direct liquidity for their project, offering an alternative to traditional liquidity mining

• New DeFi projects: New projects will be able to inexpensively stand up their own token reactors and use the Tokemak’s protocol controlled assets to generate healthy liquidity for their project from its inception

• Market makers: MMs can take advantage of the network’s store of assets in order to direct liquidity across various exchanges

• Exchanges: exchanges can also leverage TOKE’s utility in order to gain access to deep liquidity to bolster their market depth

Tokemak is a fascinating protocol, with paradigm-shifting implications on several different levels. Given its scarcity, there are only 100,000,000 total TOKE in existence, it’s also been posited that we could see something along the lines of “TOKE wars” in the future where protocols compete to acquire TOKE.

Does he who controls the TOKE control the liquidity in DeFi?

4. L1 Summer - Terra Ecosystem ($LUNA)

Problem Statement:

Ethereum transaction prices, called gas, have soared in 2021 month on month. Over the course of this year, L1s such as Luna, Avax, Solana etc. have been chipping away at Ethereum’s DeFi market share, even as TVL in DeFi overall has increased 10x to $110B+.

These platforms enable users to use DeFi apps built with smart contracts. Yet they tend to be much cheaper to use than apps on Ethereum such as Compound Finance and MakerDAO. Layer 1s achieve the lower fees through different means. Some like Binance Smart Chain process more transactions per block, and the higher supply lowers prices. Others such as Polkadot run many data structures, usually blockchains, in parallel, which also increases transaction throughput, lowering prices. 

Ethereum ecosystem’s share of DeFi TVL as well as share of the smart contract platform market is decreasing rapidly (though it is still an ultra-sound triple point asset). For example, Ethereum’s share of the smart contract platform market was about 84% at the beginning of the year and has since decreased to about 65%

How LUNA is solving it:

Terras founder realized that a big barrier to entry for many newcomers was that too many crypto projects were too technically complex to understand and easily intimidated users. Rather than throwing all the complexity of DeFi at users, they instead wanted to build an ecosystem that offered a user friendly portal into DeFi.

The easiest way to understand Terra is to think of it similar to a traditional bank that facilitates payments, transfers, investments, loans and savings, but automated. It is implemented as a public blockchain and is community owned, community governed, and accessible to anyone in the world with an internet connection. Users enter the ecosystem through Terra stablecoins and access the above banking functions through a suite of apps and protocols. Terra improves on the existing banking model by being globally accessible and non-rent seeking.

Terra supports stable programmable payments and open financial infrastructure development. It is supported by a basket of fiat-pegged stablecoins which are algorithmically stabilized by its native crypto asset, LUNA

To date, one of the most successful applications utilizing Terra includes CHAI, a Korean-mobile payment app that allows consumers to pay for items online by simply adding their bank account. According to the analytics provider Chaiscan, the application has nearly 2.4 million users and slightly more than 72,000 daily users. Aside from payments, Terraform Labs, the firm behind the development of Terra, is working on other financial solutions to bring decentralized finance (DeFi) to its ecosystem. These DeFi products include Anchor, a money market protocol to earn yield from stablecoins, and Mirror Protocol, a protocol for creating and trading synthetic assets.

Anchor is quite a game changer. It stakes collateral from borrowers to offer lenders a fixed 20% annualized return on UST deposits. By staking on major PoS networks, Anchor is able to maintain a steady, cashflow-generating stream of revenue for depositors.

With the triple functions of payments (CHAI), savings (ANCHOR) and investments (MIRROR), Terra has built up a vibrant ecosystem with multiple uses for its stablecoins. It removes the basic issue of having to convert crypto back to fiat because there are merchants already willing to accept stablecoin payments on CHAI. As demand for these services grows, demand for UST and subsequently, price of LUNA grows.3

5. Chainlink: The Oracle of Choice ($LINK)

Problem Statement:

Mass adoption of interesting smart contracts will require data feeds that are secure, external to the blockchain (i.e. interest rate data from a bank), and maintain privacy when incorporated into a smart contract. Data feeds that meet these conditions are not currently available for a number of reasons. Broken down, the problem lies with the following:

• Blockchains (and smart contracts running on the blockchain) cannot directly fetch and incorporate external data; they lack the networking capabilities necessary.

• Current solutions are powered by a community of centralized oracles, software that connects external data feeds to blockchains for smart contract functionality.

• Relying on single sources of data for a smart contract is inherently insecure; the single entity is left vulnerable to tampering or data corruption. The self-executing nature of smart contracts makes data integrity paramount.

• Lastly, data requests transmitted through the blockchain are publicly available; observers can see any data fed into a contract which possibly leaks sensitive information.

These conditions result in extremely limited smart contract functionality and low adoption rates. If you are a large enterprise, the tamperproof value of smart contracts is effectively nullified if contracts are public and the underlying data feeds are insecure.

How LINK is solving it:

So, how do we ensure that the data feeds that trigger smart contracts maintain their integrity? The high-level solution is that ChainLink employs decentralization & reputation scoring to set up and maintain data feeds.

Oracles are critical components of nearly all DeFi protocols in use today, most commonly as reporters of token prices. At the basic level, oracles are bridges between on-chain and off-chain data, allowing smart contracts to act upon data from the world outside of the blockchain. 

ChainLink is a decentralized oracle solution. At a high level, the project aims to provide secure inputs (data) for smart contracts, and secure outputs (payment functionality) for those smart contracts to settle once triggered. An example would be ChainLink providing interest rate inputs for banks for a bond coupon payment contract, and facilitating smart contract outputs — in this case paying USD out to the corresponding bank account stipulated in the contract.

Chainlink is the leading oracle provider in the DeFi space today. Its oracles are used throughout popular protocols such as Synthetix, Aave, and dYdX, among many others.

Chainlink has demonstrated the applicability of comprehensive and dedicated oracle providers, which is likely why it is used in many of the top DeFi protocols today. It has been successful in integrating a host of third-party node operators and external APIs, which has allowed it to build a significant network effect and remain the market leader for oracles. 

Chainlink provides a wide range of oracle services for the smart contract ecosystem:

6. Genie: The NFT Aggregator of Aggregators

Problem Statement:

While OpenSea acts as an aggregator of data and NFTs, OpenSea users aren’t able to instantly purchase NFTs listed on other marketplaces instead they are required to bid and wait for acceptance of the purchase. What if users were allowed users to instantly buy NFTs listed on other marketplaces. While OpenSea remains the largest NFT exchange, there are a variety of marketplaces for dozens of categories of assets including pfps, IP, art, sports, collectibles, and more. Currently, the liquidity between marketplaces remains fragmented. Listing assets across a variety of exchanges is time-consuming and purchasing NFTs of the same collection from a variety of exchanges has been tedious.4

How Genie is solving it:

Genie’s core focus is on aggregating marketplaces enables it to potentially become an aggregator of aggregators.

Genie offers two features, Genie Swap and Genie List.

• Genie Swap: Instant Liquidity & Floor Sweeping: Genie Swap enables anyone to buy and sell multiple NFTs across a variety of marketplaces in a single transaction. Genie users can purchase NFTs using a combination of Ether and/or NFTs.

• Genie List: In the event that instant liquidity isn’t available, Genie List enables users to batch list NFTs on Rarible and Opensea within the same transaction.

Genie Swap users leverage four major benefits:

1. All major marketplaces in one interface

2. Batch buy and sell in a single transaction

3. Gas savings when batch buying and selling

4. More efficient routing when buying and selling

To date, Genie has facilitated over 6,500 ETH (~$26 million) in Swap volume, notable considering the protocol experienced significant volume while in beta.

7. Community Token: Friends with Benefit ($FwB)

Problem Statement:

In portending the modern landscape for Community DAOs, social media was an obvious canary within Web 2.0. Twitter and Facebook amplified the growth of digital tribes, but also extracted most of the value of these tribes for themselves. Shifting to Web 3.0, digital communities leveled up by introducing native monetary units: tokens.

As exciting as superfan clubs may be, they are inherently uni-directional. Members may trade in and out of their RAC tokens for profit. Maybe token holders retain exclusive non-monetary privileges like stage passes or opportunities to collaborate with the artist. Dapper Labs plans to enhance the utility of TopShots clips by integrating them into a fantasy sports game, Hardcourt. But ultimately, in most of these cases, one party creates and the rest follow. The next evolution of community tokens need to be more generative and inclusive, weaving a symbiosis between tokens, members, and creation. Instead of top-down, the model should be bottom-up.5

Just like with the growth of digital NFT art marketplaces, COVID-19, and really, the internet, has forced artists and creators to rethink how they can connect with their fans and monetize online.

How FwB is solving it:

Tokens that provide access rights to online communities are now possible because of new tools like Collab.Land. Collab.Land acts as a bridge between chat applications like Telegram or Discord and your MetaMask wallet. One such community, Friends With Benefits ($FWB) uses Collab.Land, which to users appears a chatbot that ensures community members are holding enough $FWB tokens in their MetaMask wallet to access various Discord channels. FWB is now also using SourceCred to distribute $FWB tokens commensurate with upvotes on discussions ranging from music production, NFT discussions, breaking news, memes, Substack articles, and trading tips. 

Community DAOs like Friends with Benefits (FWB), BanklessDAO, and PleasrDAO flip the script. Instead of a parent organization dictating the community’s ethos and capturing the value, community DAOs self-organize, plot their own guiding principles, and generate/capture their own value. Just as children mature into adults, so have digital communities.

Since its humble beginnings as a social experiment in September 2020, FWB has grown to nearly 2000 members and its community has driven an outsized portion of the cultural value in web3. DAO members have launched a (now canonical) token-gated events app, an NFT gallery, a web3-focused editorial venture, a virtual music studio, and a real-time community dashboard, in addition to a series of parties around the world. Their next venture, FWB Cities, aims to scale the DAO’s IRL footprint, partnering with city-specific spaces, communities, and experiences to bring real world benefits to the FWB membership. In this way, FWB Cities offers a glimpse into the very first IRL metaverse and will make the entry fee even more accessible to more people.

Because of FWB, it’s now possible to envision a world where the first time you interact with crypto is when you walk into a bar or attend your friend’s concert. Our goal is to offer guidance as FWB navigates the complexities that come with the next phase of DAO maturity. We plan to actively participate in governance and we will empower key community members through delegation. We’re thrilled to be a part of the FWB community as they lead the charge toward mainstream adoption of web3. - a16z on its $10M investment in FwB

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This is not investment advice. Crypto currencies and tokens are highly volatile. Only invest what you can afford to lose. You must decide how much of your investment capital you are willing to risk. No warranties are expressed or implied.

This was one of the hardest exercise to do, but we sifted through 102 amazing companies and founders in the Fintech & Crypto space to shortlist Top 10 Startups in summer 2021 you need to watch out for! Without further ado, here is the list:

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💡 Top 5 Crypto & Blockchain Startups

1. DigiBuild: Building construction software powered by blockchain

• Robert Salvador, CEO. Former Founder/President of a national construction company. Managed more than $500 million worth of construction projects over the last 20 years. Early to the crypto scene & has worked as an analyst for blockchain-focused investors. Named to Crain's Chicago “25 Rising Stars in Tech”. Experienced Builder l Project Manager l Construction Technologist

• Ivan Franco, VP of Engineering. Full stack and blockchain developer with 6+ years of experience. Currently being considered for Thiel Fellowship. Has worked on projects with Coinbase, Iota, IBM.

• April Moss, COO/Customer Success- 20+ year corporate executive with P&G. Built national sales teams for P&G, Starbucks, and large sales/marketing brokers. Previous experience at Construction Specifications Institute.

• April and Rob have known each other for 12 years. Ivan and Rob have known each other for 4 years. All 3 founders have been working together for 3+ years.

2. Walrus: Neobank for Young Indians

Founders have previously worked in banking, consulting, technology. The holy trinity to build a fintech firm. Bhagaban - (BB) - is an IIT alum and has been a serial entrepreneur for last 10 years. Sriharsha - (Harsha) - has been working in startups as director of engineering & CTO positions for the last 10 years. He has built products that have scaled to millions of users. Nakul - is an IIM Ahmedabad alum and has extensive background in consulting.

3. Hedgehog: Cryptocurrency Robo-adviser

• Taylor Culbertson - Employee #10 at Acorns, designed initial web app and helped design marketing strategy to acquire the first 2 million app downloads, created branding and digital marketing materials for diverse clients including Microsoft, Hyliion, and more.

• Colton Dillion - Former CMO and Global Director at Acorns, helped acquire investment adviser and broker-dealer licenses in both the US and Australia, 10 years of human-centered design consulting experience.

• Jason Dillion - 5th team member at Hyliion, confirmed proof of concept, Former Program Manager at Panasonic Avionics, managed contracts valued over $200 million for China's three largest airlines.

4. Algofi: Fast, low-cost crypto lending market on the Algorand blockchain

In a previous life, Owen was a particle physicist doing research at CERN, whereas John was a CS major at MIT doing research in ML. After their studies, John and Owen worked together for two years on a four man team at Citadel. John handled trading while Owen developed strategies for a $1bn portfolio. They helped the team transform from a money losing enterprise to one that was highly profitable.

They both discovered a passion for decentralized financial (DeFi) in the fall of 2020. They quit their jobs to work on finding a solution to help DeFi go from tech-savvy early adopters to the mainstream community. They are starting by building Algofi - a fast, low-cost lending market on the blockchain. Up next are fiat railways and retail banking services powered by DeFi.

5. Coinrule: Automates Your Crypto Investments

• Gabriele Musella, CEO, UX, Product Management, Leadership, Sales - International experience in the USA, Finland, Italy, and UK at leading organizations such as Vodafone, Nokia, WPP, British Government and MIT in Boston. Gabriele holds a BSc/MSc from the Polytechnic of Milan and attended business programs at LSE and Harvard University. He worked in Fintech at the Innovation Labs of Lloyds Banking Group and UBS Bank.

• Oleg Giberstein, COO, Operations, Management, Economics, Business development - Oleg studied Politics and International Relations (BA and MPhil) in London and Oxford and subsequently worked in Banking and Risk roles at Citigroup London for a number of years. In his last role at Citi, Oleg was Chief of Staff to Citi's Global Public Sector Portfolio Head.

• Zdeněk Hofler, CIO, Technology, DevOps, Full-stack, Team management, Agile - Zdeněk has been developing web applications for almost 20 years. A self-taught developer - he studied Cybernetics in Pilsen, Czech Republic, and dropped out to focus on programming.

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🚀 Top Ten Promising Fintech Startups

1. Koshex: Automating wealth creation for 400M Indian millennials

• Founders have more than 15+ years of combined experience ranging from technology, product management, design, business and P&L management, sales & operations. The founders personally have a strong domain understanding of financial services and the product is at the intersection of personal finance and technology. The Founders bring complementary skills (Business + Tech) to the table and have a track record of building and scaling several businesses.

• Akash in his 9 years of experience in Consumer Fintech (Wealthtech, Lending, and Payments) and Investment Banking. He has worked at Ola, UBS, Rothschild, and CapitalFloat. Komal has over 6 years of experience in building and leading the technology for Consumer and SaaS products in Fintech, Hiring Automation, and E-commerce and worked with Yahoo, Olx People, and CapitalFloat.

• Komal and Akash met while building a consumer lending business and scaling it to $15m in book size in less than 6 months. That’s when we realized that most Indians would rather spend more than their disposable income than save it for things they need. This is turn led us to the biggest insight for Koshex which is designing a platform around Individuals rather than financial products.

2. Shopscribe: Subscriptions for local shops

Lorenzo (CTO) is a full-stack Software Engineer who grew up in a family of small business owners and experienced firsthand the struggle of competing with online retailers. Alex (CEO) went to the #1 school in the world for hospitality, is a 2x YC founder, and spent the last 3 years selling B2B2C tech.

3. Nomod: Square minus the hardware for international merchants

Omar founded JadoPado in 2010 which started as an online store in the UAE, and morphed into a regional Amazon-style marketplace platform. For five years, we bootstrapped, invested whatever we could, and survived on the cash flow from supplier credit. In 2015, through sheer determination we raised a $4 million venture round. In May 2017, a couple of months after Amazon entered the UAE, Noon’s billionaire founder acquired JadoPado, to use its technology stack to launch and fight back!

Omar graduated from the University of Warwick with a BsC in Electronics Engineering and Business Studies.

4. Trii: US and local equities for retail investors in Latam

Esteban and Carlos met seven years ago, working as investment bankers.Esteban was a private equity banker while Carlos worked for Citigroup- Luis was a senior engineer for Firefox. We are second-time founders, and we have over 20 years of combined experience working in fintech.

5. Verihubs: Data and Verification Platform for Indonesian Fintechs

Both founders are local Indonesian. The CEO, Rick is an experienced B2B expert with ~8 years of experience. He previously worked at an SMS gateway company in Indonesia.
Williem is one of the very few computer vision experts in Indonesia, with a Ph.D. in Computer Science and more than 10 years of experience. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Vision from Inha University, Korea. During his studies, he has done various industrial projects, from Samsung and SK Telecom Korea, while publishing papers at Top Tier Computer Vision conferences and journals (CVPR, ICCV, TPAMI). He is also acknowledged as Top Paper Reviewers in Top Tier Computer Vision Conferences.

6. Swipe: Simple billing and payments for 75M+ Indian SMBs 🇮🇳

Aditya (CEO) and Sri Teja (CTO) known each other from past 7 years. They are repeat founders and co-founded Swipe after they found it hard to send bills and collect payments to their customers at their last startup. Aditya has done his Masters from University of Washington and ex-Amazon. Sri Teja has done his Masters from IIIT Hyderabad and is one of the early members of the Data Science team at Great Learning (BYJU's).

7. Contalink: Help Accountants automate work and serve their customers online

Contalink is a SAAS to help accountants in Mexico automate bookkeeping and serve their clients online. We help accountants do bookkeeping 5x faster. 2700 paying users managing over 10,000 companies, making $50,000 in MRR. Focus on Mexico, where 80% of SMBs and accountants still use windows desktop-based legacy software, and companies are required by law to operate using electronic XML documents ( invoices, payroll, collections, and beginning October 21 Shipments). There is a $2.5 billion market plus a significant opportunity to establish itself as the biggest financial data source for SMBs in Mexico. Contalink is a 500Startups, and Y Combinator backed company

8. Chari: B2B e-commerce and fintech platform for traditional proximity stores

Ismael & Sophia are a married couple: they have two kids together, and Chari.co is their third (Digital) baby. They are both ex-strategy consultants. Ismael worked for BCG for 3 years before funding several successful tech companies in Morocco. Sophia worked for McKinsey for 4 years before joining the Chari adventure.

9. Mentum: Investment management API for fintechs in LATAM

• Gus, the CEO, recently left his position as a quantitative researcher at BlackRock’s leading AI investment team. Prior to that, he built investment platforms for asset managers that are trading hundreds of millions of dollars. He graduated Summa Cum Laude with an Msc. in Data Science and a Bsc. in Finance from Hult.

• Daniel, the CTO, worked at Confluent in SF as a backend engineer in the Kafka Connect team where he integrated data-streaming solutions to multi-national companies. At Apple, he worked as a backend engineer at the iCloud Photos team, building one of the worlds largest cloud infrastructures. He graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bsc. in Computer Science from RIT.

• Simon, the COO, worked at Wish in SF, where he helped expand digital payments and fraud detection across 10 countries in LATAM. He graduated with a Bsc. in Finance from Hult.

10. inai: Segment for global payments

..and that is a wrap! Check out the list of all companies👇

Follow me on LinkedIn

Nakul

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As a hedge fund analyst who invests in publicly traded stocks, my friend from MoneyLemma watched the blockchain revolution from the sidelines. Blockchain is a transformational technology, there’s no denying that. However, many crypto assets don’t have predictable cash flows. Bitcoin, Crypto Kitties NFTs, NBA Top Shots, Ape Memes - all are innovative and exciting technologies but it’s hard (if not impossible) to quantify the cash flow these assets could generate. Like gold, Beanie Babies or toilet paper during a pandemic, buyers seem to be betting that someone else will pay more down the line. 

However, an increasing number of crypto assets are fundamental, not speculative, in nature. Blockchain technology is being used to build real businesses - businesses that generate cash flow and can be valued on the basis of future cash flow. The rest of this post is dedicated to doing just that: valuing the Axie Infinity Universe, a blockchain-based video game, as if it were a publicly-traded com…

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The usual suspects remained the same globally: Sequioa, Accel, Ribbit, a16z and Index Ventures were some of the most active investors in the space

Many of these fintechs are now choosing the SPAC route to get quicker exits at unheard of valuations - a mega-trend that may last through 2022 until we see some retail investors left picking up the pieces

But the big question is, how do Venture Capital firms gain enough conviction to invest in some of these fintechs?

What does the investment thesis and memo look like?

We use the case study of one of the most disruptive fintech companies and look at the investment memo to start understanding how VCs think about these larger deals.

Investments memos are a powerful tool that can be used to power fundraising narratives, project guidelines, product pitches, and much more. They have 3 main reasons: forming conviction, relationship building and stakeholder alignment

Case Study: Investing in Hippo, $5B fintech darling

As per Forbes, Hippo is among the most innovative fintech companies of 2021, raising $700M+ capital to date, going to SPAC with a $5B valuation and with an impressive roster of global investors.

So what gave VC titans such as Ribbit Capital and Reid Hoffman enough conviction to invest in Hippo, a company just 5 years old that offers homeowners insurance in a faster, cheaper and more convenient way? Let’s dive in and look at deal memo from the eyes of these investors1

1: Exec Summary of Investment Thesis

Clear articulation of the key reasons investors believe that Hippo is poised to win

2: Strength of Founding team and ability to attract talent

Ability to show the depth and breadth of relevant experience of the founder, the team and ability to attract talent is imperative. VCs will often do extensive reference checks and assess founder & team fit before investing (domain knowledge, prior track record, ability to execute, passion and hustle).

3: Market dynamics, inflection points and how the Fintech is positioned to win

Turns out, home insurance is a large, growing AND fragmented market with enough complexities to create sufficient barriers to entry.

Next big question is: so how can our fintech company Hippo create a moat in this industry ripe for disruption? Read the 3 slides below and you will be impressed

Immense Potential TAM → Small Penetration = Large Outcomes

4: Healthy unit economics & strength of business model

The age of loss making neo-banks raising billions may be passing, as VCs look for attractive customer dynamics (Hippo earns $1,200 average premium with a 8+ Years customer life) and compelling unit economics (Hippo has a sound 5.5 LTV/CAC ratio)

Hippo focuses on partnering with best-in-class reinsurers to cede risk and sophisticated reinsurance structures optimize volatility of earnings against attractive returns from holding premiums.

Ability to de-risk the business model, show healthy gross margins and improve unit economics with scale are a winning combination as we can see below.

Achieving standard loss ratios as the business and insurance book scale creates a very compelling outcome for Hippo. The flywheel effect:

• Over calendar year 2020, Hippo launched services in 12 new states, bringing the total to 32 states.

• In the fourth quarter of 2019, 55% of Hippo new policy premium came from sales to customers in Texas. By the fourth quarter of 2020, the percentage of Hippo new policy premium from Texas had declined to 13%

• Greater diversity will reduce the impact of catastrophic weather events in any one geographic region on Hippo’s overall loss ratio, improving the predictability of financial results over time as the Company scales

• Increased geographic diversity will also improve Hippo’s ability to secure attractive terms from reinsurers, which would improve overall cost structure and profitability

5: Unfair advantage over competition: Customer and Product focus

Best fintech companies win over their customers from competition with superior product-led functionalities or experiences that delights them while solving core pain points effectively. Hippo’s product does this 10x better than legacy solutions.

Doing this effectively, naturally leads to rapid adoption of the product as we can see in Hippo’s superior growth rates and retention rates (~90% one-year retention)

6: Distribution is key for startups

The battle between every startup and incumbent comes down to whether the startup gets distribution before the incumbent gets innovation - a16Z

Finding 1-2 distribution channels that scale well at a low-cost can make or break a fintech. For Hippo, an omni-channel approach provides strategic flexibility in trading off capital light growth versus higher LTV of DTC channels.

Hippo’s vertical focus provides several advantages such as compounding know-how in core insurance product in data aggregation for underwriting, and diversification of risk portfolio

7: Risks and trade-offs: know your base outcomes, downside & upside

Make sure to capture any strategic risks - VCs play the devils advocate all the time - and know your upside drivers as well. There are always trade-offs to be made as only hindsight is 20/20.

We believe there are few true network effects in the home insurance business today… but that may change in the future
As data availability expands, Hippo will have an edge over incumbents in integrating data into the underwriting process and driving down loss frequency and severity. Over a long time horizon, we believe Hippo can realize loss-ratios below incumbents using technology

8: Valuations & business projections that make sense!

Valuation is always more an art than science in the fintech space for VC funding. However, unit economics, gross margin efficiency and how much capital a business will consume are key considerations for a VC during fundraising.

Hippo commands reasonable valuations based on AV/gross written premium or AV/revenue given the growth rates and projected margin expansion at scale.

That’s all for Hippo - but there are many such well-know startups today that VCs had to gain enough conviction early on to take the plunge.

Here you can see the early pitch decks of 25 unicorn companies (and exited unicorns), including Coinbase (when the price of bitcoin was around $6.25) and Airbnb (when it was AirBed&Breakfast). You can also see Revolut in its early pitch deck, the fintech company says it gained 4,800 pre-product subscribers within a month and asks for £1.5M ($1.9M). Now, it boasts more than 15M personal customers and 500,000 business customers, and it has garnered $916M in funding to date 2

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The article on How DeFi is eating financial services (exploring the DeFi stack, use cases, benefits, risks and the ecosystem) generated 13K+ views with hundreds of new subscribers signing up. I am humbled and awed by the response from the community and daily messages pouring in to learn more about DeFi and how to get started.

As a supplement to the main article, above I compiled below a comprehensive Guide and resources publicly available that will be useful to a beginner or advanced user to get more hands on with the world of Crypto and DeFi.

Please remember - the most important section below is learning by doing. So flip through slides, watch some videos below and then dive straight into doing! Happy reading!

I also created a special offer in the spirit of making DeFi knowledge accessible to all!

Get 100% off for 1 year

Summary

Step 1: Flip through high-level slides to get familiar with terms

Step 2: Watch a video course

Step 3: Learning by doing DeFi (basic)

Step 4: Bookmark resources to read every day/week

Step 5: Learning by doing DeFi (advanced)

Step 6: Learn Solidity, Smart contract etc. (Technical Skills)

++ Additional resources at the end!

Step 1: Flip through high-level slides to get familiar with terms

Go through these slides by Defiant1

Step 2: Watch a video course

Start watching video playlist of DeFi Dad which combines DeFi explainer videos from the DeFi 101 Series I produced with the The Defiant, as well as DeFi Dad how-to tutorials. It's designed for someone to go from A to Z with DeFi.

Step 3: Learning by doing DeFi (basic)

1. Setting up an account at a crypto exchange

2. Buying ETH

3. Setting up an Ethereum wallet

4. Withdrawing to MetaMask

5. Use Uniswap and trade from ETH to DAI

6. Lend stablecoins on DeFi protcols

7. Connect your wallet to portfolio trackers (Zapper.fi)

Watch Step-byStep guide here 👈

Basic tasks to start out

Uniswap: Buy a token on Uniswap on Layer 1

AAVE: Lend 10 USDC on Aave to earn yield

Open Sea: Buy an NFT on OpenSea

ENS: Register your own ETH domain name in ENS

Step 4: Bookmark resources to read (1 month plan)

1. Foundational Concepts

DeFi 101:

🧑‍🏫 Trust, Intermediaries and Censorship

🧑‍🏫 What Does “Permissionless” Mean?

🧑‍🏫 How Does DeFi Differ From CeFi?

🧑‍🏫 What is KYC?

Additional Material:

📰 This is How Wall Street Becomes Obsolete

🎙 Crypto Devs Are "Building a Life Raft For The World After Fiat Falls Apart:" Erik Voorhees'

🎙 Mark Cuban: "ETH Has an Advantage Over BTC as a Store of Value"

🎙 Winklevoss Twins Say Stablecoins Are Still Missing Their "Facebook Moment"

🎙 "Fintech Can Be a 1.5 Bridge Into 2.0 DeFi:" 11:FS Co-Founder Simon Taylor

2. Wallets and Dapps

DeFi101:

🧑‍🏫 DeFi Wallets and Self-Custody: How to be 100% in Control

🧑‍🏫 What is a Dapp and How Does it Use Smart Contracts?

Additional Material:

🎙 "In DeFi My Money is Actually Mine. It's a Beautiful Concept But it Comes With Responsibilities:" Andre Cronje

💭 We're Totally F*cked If We Don't Find Useful Things to Build With Blockchain: Pet3rpan

3. Decentralized Exchanges

DeFi101:

🧑‍🏫 DEXs vs CEXs

🧑‍🏫 What are Automated Market Makers Like Uniswap

🧑‍🏫 DEX Aggregators; The Search Engines of DeFi Trading

Additional Material:

📰 Uniswap's UNI Instantly Becomes One of DeFi's Most Widely Held Tokens

📰 The Road to Uniswap’s $100B in Trading Volume

4. Resources & Projects

DeFi101:

🧑‍🏫 Top Tools to Get Started with DeFi

🧑‍🏫 Top Teams Building DeFi

🧑‍🏫 Top 10 DeFi Resources

Additional Material:

📺14 #DEFI​ Buzzwords in 2 minutes!

5. Common Use-Cases of DeFi

DeFi101:

🧑‍🏫 Lending, Borrowing, Trading, and Stablecoins

🧑‍🏫 Lending and Borrowing with Compound and Aave

🧑‍🏫 What is MakerDAO and How Does DAI Work?

🧑‍🏫 Algorithmic Stablecoins

Additional Material:

📰 Engineer Becomes His Own Lender in First DeFi Mortgage

📰 Cypherpunk Stablecoin RAI is Live on Ethereum

📰 The State of Stablecoins in DeFi: A Deep Dive by DappRadar

🎙 "What We're Building is Very Big and We Should Have The Least Concentration Possible:" Aave's Stani Kulechov

🎙"All the Dizzying Ways People are Farming Yield is Proof of DeFi Composability's Success:" Ampleforth CTO

🎙 MakerDAO Founder Rune Christensen On DeFi's Biggest Test Yet

📺 Algorithmic Stablecoins: Sexy AF or A Load of Pants?

6. Decentralized Derivatives

DeFi 101:

🧑‍🏫 Trading Every Asset Class with DeFi Derivatives

🧑‍🏫 Decentralized Perpetuals Trading with dYdX and MCDEX

🧑‍🏫 DeFi On-Chain Options

Additional Material:

📰 DeFi Stocks Trading Climbs After Robinhood Fail

🎙 "There's the Opportunity to Make Really Complex Financial Instruments More Accessible”: Opyn's Alexis Gauba

🎙 DEX Progress to be a "Landmark Event" Over the Summer: Framework Ventures

📺 How to trade stocks if your Robinhood account is frozen (Mirror.Finance)

7. “Yield Farming” & Investing

DeFi101:

🧑‍🏫 What is Yield Farming and Liquidity Providing

🧑‍🏫 What is yearn.finance

Additional Material:

📰 Top DeFi Yield Farmers Share Secrets to a Profitable Harvest

📰 Hotdog & Kimchi Coins Flash Million-Percent Yields

📰 Results Are In: DeFi10 5x-ed in 2020

🎙 "You Can Wake Up With an Idea for a Fund and Deploy it in Minutes:" Melon's Mona El Isa

🎙 Balance Sheet as a Business Model for DeFi Platforms: Framework Ventures

🎙 "It Was Exciting But it Was Also Terrifying:" Dan Elitzer and Clinton Bembry on Yam Finance's Backstory

🎙 "It's not just about money; it's touching a very primal desire to connect with others:" ParaFi's Santiago Roel

🎙 "We're at the Early Stages of a Truly Novel Structure That can Organize Humans and Money:" Polychain Capital’snOlaf Carlson-Wee

🎙 "Things Tend to Get Better. For Anyone Involved in Crypto, It's Obvious That This is 1,000x Better," 1kx's Lasse Clausen

📺 DeFIRE: how to retire using only DeFi with passive income

📺 The ultimate guide to Yield Farming in DeFi

💭 DeFi Will Eat Traditional Finance and Active Investors Can Reap the Rewards

8. Scaling

DeFi101:

🧑‍🏫 What’s Layer 1 vs Layer 2?

🧑‍🏫 What is Gas and How to Save on Fees?

Additional Material:

📰 The State of Layer 2 With Ethereum Scaling is at Stake

🎙 "Basic Financial Services is a 21st-Century Fundamental Human Need:" OMG Network's Vansa Chatikavanij

🎙 Decentralized Money Shouldn't be Traded on Centralized Exchanges: Loopring Founder Daniel Wang

📺 Layer 2 scaling on Oculus Quest 2!? Loopring, Matic, Aavegotchi and Synthetix

9. NFTs & Digital Art

Material:

📰 The Defiant’s Guide to Digital Art & NFTs

📰 Digi-Physical Art Drives Record-Breaking $3.5M in NFTs Sales

🎙 "For the First Time, You Can Buy a Piece of the Art, and a Piece of the Gallery:" MetaKovan

🎙 "I'm Imagining a World Where Every Song Has an Investable Layer:" DJ 3LAU

🎙 "We've Been Creating Value for Instagram and TikTok With Very Little Actually Accruing to Us:" Trevor McFedries

🎙 "It Turns Out Music Does Have Value. We've Been Pricing It Incorrectly For 20 Years:" RAC

📺 The Beeple Bonanza unpacked with Trevor Jones

📺 The Defiant guide to Digital Art and NFTs

💭 NFTs Should Be Experiences, Not Just Products: IDEO CoLab’s Ian Lee

10. Risks

DeFi101:

🧑‍🏫 Risks of DeFi

🧑‍🏫 DeFi Insurance and how Nexus Mutual Works

Additional Material:

📰 Yearn Loses $11M in 2021’s First DeFi Hack

📰 For All You Degens Farming in Public: Here's Your Privacy Toolbox

🎙 "I'm Not Super Bullish on DeFi. We're Using This Tech to Enrich a Small Group of People:" James Prestwich

🎙 Blockchain Devs Are Neglecting Data-Related Risks, Chainlink's Sergey Nazarov Says

📺 You stole $37M, now what? The $CREAM $ALPHA exploit unpacked

📺 Flash Loans, and Attacks -- explained

📺 DeFi Dre and the Invisible Hacked Pickles

11. Cross-Chain DeFi

DeFi 101:

🧑‍🏫 What is Interoperability and Why is it Important?

🧑‍🏫 How Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Other Blockchains Fit Within DeFi

Step 5: Learning by doing DeFi (advanced)

Advanced tasks

Maker: Mint DAI by creating an ETH based CDP on Maker

Uniswap: Supply tokens to Uniswap

AAVE: Borrow against your collateral on Aave

Nexus: Purchase insurance on Nexus

Polygon: Delegate Polygon tokens

Web3 Infra: Try out Uniswap v2 subgraph here to find how many tokens called “USDC” are there

Your Yield Farming Guide2

Starting Wallet

Make sure you have your stablecoins in your Metamask wallet along with some ETH (for gas fees) before starting.

1. Go to Curve.fi

If you scroll down, you will see the different curve pools with their different yields for providing liquidity. As you can see, the sUSD pool is yielding 6.69% for the stablecoin deposits and a large number (113%) in CRV tokens

Lets head to the Curve sUSD pool : https://www.curve.fi/susdv2/

2. Connect your wallet and “Deposit” your coins

Go to Deposit → Connect your Metamask Wallet → Select the amount of coins you want to add.

In my case, I have $2518 USDC and $400 USDT which I will be adding to this pool. In return, curve says I will receive 2826 Curve susdv2 LP tokens reflecting my ownership share in the pool.

Click on Deposit

3. Approve Transactions

Metamask will popup a window asking you to allow curve.fi to spend your USDC and USDT (2 different transactions). Based on current gas fees, each of these transactions will cost~ $4.5Click on Confirm

4. Add Liquidity to Curve

You will now see a metamask window asking you to allow curve.fi to run the add liquidity smart contract. My estimated gas fee to run the smart contract is $26.98 !

Click on Confirm !

Here is the actual transaction. As you can see, the actual gas fee was $13.28 (small consolation !) and I’ve received 2855 Curve sUSDv2 LP tokens into my Metamask wallet

5. Check your MetaMask wallet.

Most times, these LP tokens dont directly show up in the metamask wallet display. You will need to ‘add’ it as follows:

Go to Metamask → Add Token (at bottom) → Custom token → Paste the smart contract address in the Token address field.

In this case, I pasted “0xC25a3A3b969415c80451098fa907EC722572917F” which is the Curve CRVPlain3sUSD smart contract address. I had to edit the token symbol field (since Etherscan only allows 11 characters), and renamed the tokens to crv3sUSD

Click on “Next”, you should see the tokens in your wallet

6. Head to the Curve Guage to stake the Curve tokens

Now, if we stopped at step 5, we will earn a 6.89% APY yield (acc to the curve.fi data). In order to see the large returns, we need to stake our liquidity pool tokens.

Go to https://dao.curve.fi/

Connect your wallet, scroll down to the susdv2 liquidity guage and hit “Deposit & Stake”

7. Approve the transaction

Once again, you’ll need to approve the transactions (with crazy possible fees).

Hit confirm. You have now staked your tokens !

8. Check the Curve Gauge

Go to https://dao.curve.fi/minter/gauges. Scroll down, you should see your gauge allocation.

Needless to say, these rewards wont last forever since the returns are dependent disproportionately on the price of the CRV token. Keep checking this site to see your rewards (in CRV and SNX tokens) to claim them.
Note: I spent around $41.86 in Gas fees on the above transactions. If the 110% APY returns on CRV holds, I’ll recover this in 5–6 days !
Eventually, you will need to unwind these transactions (unstake, etc) to get your original stablecoins back.

Step 6: Learn Solidity, Smart contract etc. (Technical Skills)

I would recommend this course on Udemy - for $20 it will be best investment you will ever do :)

Ethereum courses are becoming more popular than ever for developers, as web3 and a decentralized ecosystem are slowly beginning to adapt to global blockchain adoption. As blockchain technology is only 12 years old, there are still a lot of developments and adjustments needed as the space continues to grow at an exponential rate. 

Learning Ethereum is quickly becoming a necessity for developers in the tech industry to keep up with the innovation and stay ahead in their careers. Get in the know now – we are still in the ‘early adoption’ phase of the blockchain technology life cycle, and once it becomes mainstream with the majority of the population on board, there will be more people learning these skills. Therefore, if you can get ahead of the game now, you will be ahead in the future. 3

• Be able to program money – create your own smart contracts to move money upon specified conditions being met.

• Learn the programming language for smart contracts to be deployed through the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine)

• Create decentralized applications – there are limitless opportunities as to what you can create!

• Know the most in-demand hard skill in 2020, according to LinkedIn  there is a global need for this knowledge to be shared.

• Earn between $150-$300k per year – the demand for these skills pays very well and will vary between how you choose to work. 

• Be able to travel the world with your work, through programming or educating.

Additional resources

• Complete reading list library: Decentralized.co

• Best DeFI research and deep dive reports: Messari

• Videos

  • Ultimate guide to Yield Farming

  • What is Impermanent Loss

  • Is yield farming dead

  • DeFi Dad

    • A DeFi Lesson: What is Yield Farming?

    • How to DeFi with Akropolis

    • How to Zap into DeFi Investments with Zapper.fi

  • Binance yield farming feature review

  • Uniswap ROI Calculator rundown

• Dashboards

  • Zapper

  • Zerion

  • DeBank DeFi

  • https://delphi.akropolis.io/

• Yield trackers

  • https://yieldfarming.info/

  • https://www.coingecko.com/en/yield-farming

  • Defirate.com

  • https://pools.fyi/#/

  • https://www.stakingrewards.com/

• Other tools

  • https://liquidity.vision/#

Newsletters / blogs / Crypto resources

• CB Crypto Forward Resources

• CB Around the Block

• CB Blog

• CB Design Team Reading List

• A16 Crypto Canon

• The Block

• Token Economy

• Week in Ethereum

• Fred Wilson - Avc.com

• Albert Wenger - continuations.com

• LAUNCH Ticker

• Axios Dan Primack

• Benedict Evans Newsletter

• Stratechery

• The Control - thecontrol.co

• Proof-of-Work

• Messari

• Coinmarketcap.com

• Dark Pools (Amazon or ask someone on team to borrow)

Podcasts

• Hash Power

• Why Crypto Tokens Matter

• Cryptocurrencies, App Coins and Investing in Protocols

• Quiet Master of Cryptocurrency

• Unchained

• Blockchain Development Daily

• Epicenter

Follow me on LinkedIn

Nakul

If you liked this post from Cryptechie, please subscribe and share to our 1 year offer! 

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Here's what you need to know👇🏼

1. They have 18 million cumulative funded accounts, out of which 17.7 million are monthly active users. For the perspective, Chime, the biggest neobank in the US, reportedly has 10-12 million customers in total.
   

2. $81 billion in assets under custody. For instance, Coinbase, one of the biggest digital asset exchanges in the world, now has $90B in AUC and is worth north $51 billion in the public markets.
   

3. Robinhood did $522 million in 1Q21 revenue vs. $127.6 million in 1Q20. That's x4 growth over 12 months 🤯
   

4. The brokerage app did $958.8 million in revenue in 2020 reporting $7.5 million in net income. For example, Revolut, one of Europe's biggest FinTechs, reported a loss of $280 million in 2020.
   

5. Based on filings about 72% of the revenue (=$690M) came from PFOF (Payment for Order Flow). In other words, routing its clients' trades to a market maker.

6. 34% of their entire cryptocurrency transaction-based revenue for the three months ended March 21, 2021 came from dogecoin. And during that quarter, 17% of total revenue came from cryptocurrency transactions.

7. Robinhood's famous referral program that promises users "up to $500 in free stocks''? It turns out around 98% of customers receive a reward in the much-less-enticing $2.50 to $10 range.

8. Robinhood lost $1.4 billion in the first quarter of 2021!
   
   Despite all the negative publicity and challenges, Robinhood is seeing immense growth!
   

Robinhood released its long-awaited S-1 filing, required for an initial public offering, on Thursday, July 1. The filing came one day after Robinhood settled with FINRA, the brokerage industry's self-regulatory body, paying a record $70 million fine. The S-1 dropped months after Robinhood revealed it had confidentially submitted documentation to the SEC, with Bloomberg reporting that regulatory concerns had held up the filing.

Revenue. Revenue by cohort is an important indicator of customer usage of our platform. We categorize our customers on a cohort basis based on the month, quarter or year they first funded their accounts. We track the annual revenue from those cohorts over subsequent one-year periods. On average, revenues per user increased nearly three-fold in the first 24 months for both our 2017 and 2018 annual cohorts. While not all forms of customer engagement with our platform directly contribute to revenues or otherwise impact our financial results, as more users join our platform (increasing our Net Cumulative Funded Accounts) and engage with new and existing products (contributing to our DAU and MAU), we expect to generate increased amounts of revenue over time. The chart below illustrates our revenue by annual cohort, reflecting our customers’ increasing activity on our platform.

In terms of KPI's they are focused on Net Cumulative Funded Accounts, MAUs, AuC, and ARPU. The knock on & other "free" trading products has always been monetization but at $137 ARPU in 1Q21 that's above nearly all "neobanks" who depend on lending / interchange.

Risks to consider in Robinhood's IPO1

1. "If demand for transactions in dogecoin declines and is not replaced by new demand for other cryptocurrencies available for trading on our platform, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be adversely affected," Robinhood writes in the S-1.

2. Robinhood cited a concern that analysts have highlighted: its heavy dependence on revenue from payment for order flow. Such payments have been heavily criticized by regulators and lawmakers, especially in the wake of the GameStop trading frenzy. Robinhood disclosed that 75% of its total revenue in 2020 came from market-maker payments and other "transaction rebates." That number jumped to 81% in the first quarter of 2021.

3. Robinhood said any major change in payment for order flow due to regulation "could have an outsize impact" on its operations and results. The company even noted a key criticism of payment for order flow, saying that if that belief becomes more widespread, Robinhood could lose business to competitors. One of its main rivals, Public, dropped payment for order flow in favor of tips in the wake of the GameStop controversy.

4. The new SEC chairman, Gary Gensler, is not exactly a fan of payment for order flow. And Robinhood acknowledged in its filing that there is "no guarantee" that the SEC or other agencies would not put out new rules that "could substantially limit or ban" the practice.

5. Robinhood had a first-mover advantage, but there are now dozens of new competitors looking for a piece of the market. The company writes: "We operate in highly competitive markets, and many of our competitors have greater resources than we do and may have products and services that may be more appealing than ours to our current or potential customers."