Michael 0:01
Welcome to the New to Crypto Podcast designed to guide you through the crypto landscape with pinpoint accuracy created for the new and intermediate crypto investor. Join your host Crypto Travels Michael as he takes you through the different facets of getting started and succeeding in your crypto journey. New to crypto podcast brings you new episodes daily Monday through Friday with surprise bonus episodes sometimes on the weekend. Let me ask you, are you new to crypto and don’t know where to start? Are you more experienced but have questions? Then you’re in the right place. This podcast is designed for you coming at you from the Trading Center and the Lifestyle Dezign Studio. Here’s your host Crypto Travels Michael.
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Today I have on the show Konstantin Shirokov and Carlos Cano from a hot new lending platform in DeFi called fringe finance. And this one is about receiving loans and stable coins against your crypto. So join me in welcoming Constantine and Carlos to the show. This is definitely not one that you want to miss. Hey guys, welcome to the show. It’s a pleasure to have you here.
Konstantin 1:35
Hello, Michael. Thank you for inviting.
Carlos 1:36
Yeah, it’s a pleasure to be here.
Michael 1:38
Absolutely. Hey, before we dive in, can you tell our listeners just a little bit about yourself?
Carlos 1:43
Yeah. I’m Carlos Cano. I’m content manager for fringe finance. I also collaborated with a couple of projects you might have heard of such as Dcore, which is a crypto a blockchain research firm, and Panther protocol, as we were just talking about before, I’m very happy to be here to talk about fringe. Fringe is one of those things where you don’t know how much you need it in the crypto ecosystem until you hear about it. Because basically, you have a long tail of underserved assets in in DeFi. And that’s like 99.9% of coins. So we’ll talk a bit more about fringe. I know I will be talking about myself, but like, that’s just what we’re here to talk about to meet to make DeFi inclusive for everyone.
Konstantin 2:26
My name is Konstantin Shirokov, as you have mentioned, I’m working as marketing director for fringe finance. And my journey in crypto started four years ago and has absolutely turned my life upside down. It’s like, for me, it’s a key to the door that has opened brand new worlds for me, borderless demolition, that meeting new people understanding that technology. So I’m, I’m very passionate about the space. I’m learning every day. And I love it.
Michael 2:58
Awesome, guys, thank you for that intro. And before we dive in, can you provide like an overview about what fringe finance is for our listeners?
Konstantin 3:08
Yeah, in a nutshell, fringe finance is a marketplace that connects lenders and borrowers in a permissionless manner. lenders who are primarily institutional investors and high net worth individuals that want to have huge interest rates on their capital, deploy that capital on the platform on one side, on the other side, the ROB holders of smaller cap, medium cap, biggest cap altcoins on the market, they want to take a loan against this assets. Why would they want to do it? The reason is very simple, because if while you’re holding, you expect the growth or the token price, but you can’t use the capital that is that is locked inside of the assessor’s you can go on the market and you can sell it, but you will lose the upside volatility, the upside grow of the token. And the other option is to take a loan and to enjoy the capital and enjoy the growth of your coins.
Carlos 4:11
And that’s a bit of also what fringe aims to do that’s revolutionary. Like, we talked about providing DeFi access for assets that normally don’t have it. And we aim to do that through lending, but also through stable coin minting, which is like an exciting part of the platform to be able to do mean stable coins using your alt coins. And on top of that, well, we have the freedom token, which is the governance token that the fringe Dao will use. Right now we’re having deployed the Dao, but when we do it, they’ll be the governance token for it. And that token also acts as a mechanism to to allow users to earn reward from the platform. So like, by thinking the token and making it more scarce, you should also get the reward from the fees that people pay to the platform, so it’s basically a mechanism to distribute wealth back to to users.
Michael 5:07
Awesome. Can you guys break down a little bit about your primary lending platform?
Konstantin 5:12
Yeah, the primary lending platform is, is a product that we have already described, it is connecting lenders and borrowers. It is in development since 2020. And now it’s on the absolute finish line of it, we are finalizing the audit of the payment delivery platform that has been conducted by two companies, one company that is developing its protocol. It’s also not only development, but also audit company. It’s called Cyber unit, and another one of these companies called hash X, they have done the audit, we have received the results. And we are on the final stage of fixing everything. And in the review of the problems that were previously fixed. Primarily lending platform, we are introducing a brand new feature into the lending markets of decentralized finance, we are divided the assets into different tiers. Previously, with the very well established and very well known protocols like Aave or Compound, all the assets hold on the same basket, but all their assets are different in terms of trading volume of liquidity of markets on which they are available, and the risks are different as well. So because there was no system that divides assets in different levels, these protocols cannot provide an access to lower cap altcoins on the platform. And with it with this innovation, we are opening the market, we’re opening the possibilities of unlocking the capital for the possibly hundreds of 1000s of the new altcoins.
Michael 7:04
Okay, thanks for breaking that down. And what is your USB stable coin platform.
Carlos 7:11
The use of stable coin platform is the platform where users can mint the USB stable coin, and what the USB stable coin is, you can think of it as a model very similar to Dai. So it’s basically the same concept blending as a as a procedure to mean stable coins. But what differentiates it is that it aims to allow you to mean stable coins using your alt coins. So let’s say that you hold a couple, the 30 something of coins that you picked up through your life just by investing in ICOs, and some of them maybe fail, but some of them didn’t, some of them are doing well. And some of them you just acquired them recently, because you’d like some projects and you wanted to support them. So what you should, what you will be able to do in the USB stable coin platform is to take those coins and use them to get a line of credit that then allows you to mint stable coins. And of course, you could get liquidated, but the platform is designed in a smart way to allow you not to get liquidated and make the most out of your coins. Thanks to that you can say, aside from optimizing your capital, because then you don’t only have your old coins, but you also have this line of credit that you can use to let’s say, buy some ether pay for your rent or buy some BTC whatever you want to do with that, or even stick them back in the fridge platform which also will be possible to earn some just passive income of that. Well, then what happens is that if one of your all coins that you were hauling, suddenly 30x is 100 x’s, whatever, you still have access to that. So you still can actually be exposed to the positive price volatility while limiting your downside. So you get people can also see that as a sort of option. And I think it’s a very clever design mechanism as well which is supported by the free token that aims to collateralize the USB stable coin platform so that amassing liquidation demand doesn’t wipe it out.
Konstantin 9:10
Michael one thing; we are currently facing the problem with stable coins, because most of them and the most popular stable coins are centralized. It definitely contradicts the original idea of cryptocurrencies, as permissionless and decentralized source of storage and source of wealth transfer, and we use the stable coin, we will create a truly decentralized stable coin that is that will be backed by the huge basket of other collateral and the thing that it will be backed by such an amount of different assets will make it even more decentralized.
Michael 9:52
Okay. And will there be a list of like our listeners who are listening and they’re interested, they’re intrigued, but is there a list of which You know, which are the tokens that I’m holding? You know that I can that I can bring forward and and borrow stable coins against? Yeah,
Carlos 10:07
That’s a great question. We try to, as it’s impossible not to step on people’s toes. But we want to lift in assets bit by bit, right. And the most political part about this. And the main reason people do not do platforms like this is because it’s very difficult to obtain Oracle price feeds for basically coins with low liquidity, because there’s a whole bunch of issues that relate to that. And you want to get your Oracle’s from decentralized sources like chainlink, as opposed to using other sources that can then expose you to certain types of attacks. Now, we’re not going to dive too deep into that. But what happens if the fringe needs to create a bunch of primitives that are also going to be usable for everyone in the crypto scene, not us, not just for ourselves? That’s it. We’re starting with assets, such as chainlink’s token (Link), help me because I’m blanking.
Konstantin 11:04
Polygon, Matic or Biotechs. So we will start with the top 100 assets.
Michael 11:13
Wow.
Konstantin 11:14
Yeah, but and we do have were a big partnership network at the moment. And it will grow even more after the platform launch, because some of the ones, some of our potential partners, they’re waiting for the results of audit and the platform launch to see how it works. And it is working stable. But even even before the launch, we have, to the moment, I don’t remember the exact number, I think 28 of the assets, or the partners with whom we have previously communicated and announced that they will be integrated. So we will start with Step by Step adding new assets to the platform and to increase all the conditions for these assets on the platform. So at the moment, it will be very conservative interest, very conservative loan to value ratio. And it’s its concept I will describe a little bit later.
Michael 12:08
Okay, fantastic. I wasn’t aware that it was that many different options, you know, so the different bags that I’m holding, for example, I can bring them forward. Same with our listeners, and no thanks for unpacking that. Guys. I wanted to ask you how does the insurance feature tie into the platform I checked out in your white paper?
Konstantin 12:26
The decentralized financial space is famous for its money logo concept. And with that concept, it’s easy to integrate other protocols and other solutions into what we do. Insurance is one of the cases for that. We have already announced our partnership with Union finance insurance protocol that will help us cover smart contract breaches, and potential liquidations. But we also communicated with other protocols, insurance protocols, some some of them very, very famous in the market. And we definitely want to provide as many options as possible for our users and integrated solutions and make them safe in their decision.
Michael 13:11
Okay, thanks. Thanks for sharing that.
Carlos 13:14
Can I add to that?
Michael 13:15
Absolutely, Carlos.
Carlos 13:16
One thing that I wanted to mention is that insurance in DeFi hasn’t reached its final form. So there are many ways in which people can purchase or conduct insurance. And I’m sure there are gonna be a lot more innovations down the path. So that what constitutes that sale is exactly right. We want to keep bringing on new insurance styles. Because right now there are a bunch of things you can do. We’re aiming for the platform to be super secure, so that someone will allow us to insure the whole platform against any kind of attacks. And that’s one type of insurance. But there’s also smart contract insurance that protects against very specific types of attacks against your smart contract. There is position insurance, which is why you know, finance is pioneering, which is what allows people to purchase insurance for one of their specific positions. So let’s say you come into the fringe finance with a bunch of Link tokens, and you want to optimize and you’re going to get a loan based on them. Well, on top of that, you could also purchase some insurance, so that your downside is even further reduced. So you pay a small fee to you know, finance to insure your position. And in case you get liquidated, well, you don’t get fully liquidated, you get paid some of it back. So in that way, there are many things users can do. And of course, some may think of it as attacks and decide not to take it. But we want of course, this is the fight we wanted to be permissionless we want people to be in control of their own outcomes as much as possible.
Michael 14:49
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Michael 15:54
Absolutely no, that’s a great added benefit. You touched on it earlier and mentioned the fringe token. But for our listeners, this is going to be an introduction. So you have your own token. And it’s called the fringe token. And what is it used for?
Carlos 16:08
The fringe token is mainly used to go on the platform for the Dao, right? So once we’re in full download, fringe is going to be what you use to vote. In the meantime, however, we want people to stake the fringe token in the platform to receive the fees earned from the platform. So the platform will collect fees. But it’s not like we’re using those fees to get rich and buy X, we’re actually distributing that back to fringe stakers. What that does is that limits the amount of fringe tokens that are out in the market and make the token less whale friendly, more widely distributed, and also more scarce, we should drive up his value. But mainly what it does is that it allows people that govern the platform that will want to have a stake in the ownership of the platform to the benefit all around from participating in it and from others participating in it.
Konstantin 17:00
Yeah, let me add that the main purpose of the main goal of our platform is to generate profit for the holders of the token. So all other activities are deeply tied to that goal. So we want more lenders and more borrowers to have more transactions and to generate more fees that will be redistributed to the oldest of our token.
Michael 17:24
Okay, so based on what you’re saying right there, let’s jump into the friends staking rewards program platform or program.
Konstantin 17:31
Yeah, basically the staking rewards. Platform is providing the ability to stake our main token that is called fringe and participate in the distribution of all the fees that been distributed by the platform, it can be a good source of passive income, and a safe haven in case of the bear market for the holders of the token.
Michael 17:57
Okay, and can you touch on the yield farming and how that works?
Konstantin 18:00
Carlos?
Carlos 18:01
Yeah, so since fringe aims to integrate a wide range of tokens, and since our partner, we’re taking the most of mandatory kind of network effects, right? Like, we’re trying to get partners to bring partners to create partners to create a massive DeFi ecosystem. So what that allows us to do is that it allows us to leverage the platform for yield farming. So let’s say that, I don’t know you launched your micro token. And, you want your micro token to be listed on the fringe platform. So why not allow yourself to like, allow people to stake for in tokens to earn some micro tokens that then they can use on the same platform? That’s… The deal for me it is one of those things where it’s like, short term opportunistic activities, right? And we want to incentivize those on the platform, but always with a name to allow users to optimize their capital and to allow projects to lock their capital in places where it won’t be immediately sold out. Because that just goes against your long term strategy. Right?
Michael 19:08
Okay. Yeah, no, absolutely. So can you walk our listeners through the process of actually on your platform of like becoming a lender, like just the simplifying just the steps? So they they understand?
Carlos 19:20
Yep, I’ll take that, okay, if you want to become a lender, let’s say that you own 150 USDC, very small number right, are relatively small. So what you would do with that tokens and what why I’m saying USDC, you’re starting to backtrack, but I think that’s important. We have a chance to list a bunch of stable coins as possible assets for lending. It can be any number, eventually we want to focus on most as much as possible on the USB stablecoin. But to get started, we will start with USDC. So you take your USDC to the platform, and what you do is that you lock them in a smart contract that smart contract then allows you to earn rewards on your USDC. So like you will continue to get a yield paid to you as those coins are available for others to borrow. And what those others will be doing in turn, will be to develop their own stable coins to access a line of credit paid back to them in USDC. One figure that we haven’t touched on too much on this conversation are liquidators. And although no one wants to get liquidated and liquidated, let’s remember that we’re on the Ethereum mainnet. So liquidations are expensive. The platform is not like a centralized platform, or like a traditional finance platform where they want to liquidate, you know, in here, we’re actually paying big Ethereum fees for the liquidations. So we want to optimize the platform for people not to get liquidated. But once in a while you know someone that’s going to happen, someone’s gonna get liquidated, and the liquidator performs that function and earns a reward from that. And that, in turn, stabilizes the platform. So you ask for lenders, lender, lending is the most secure thing you can do. Because whatever happens, you always be earning a yield is not a fixed yield, because it’s just gonna fluctuate based on the activity of borrowers. So when there are more borrowers, your rate for lending is gonna go down. But if there are not enough borrowers, then it’s gonna go up to incentivize these activities. I hope that answers the questions a bit more from the side of lenders.
Michael 21:31
Absolutely. I wanted to ask you about your partner ecosystem, can you share a little bit with our listeners about about that?
Konstantin 21:39
Yeah, we have already touched a little bit on the partner ecosystem. It has some big names like Polygon, Chainlink, and Ram, Elrond, and some coins and assets that will lower market capitalization. But our partnership network allows us not only for the tokens to be listed on the platform, but also with some other partners, we can have a much deeper integration, one case that was already mentioned is Union; with whom we can go through the process of insurance. Some other cases, for example, Chainlink, who provide us with an Oracle, and for the price phase, or other assets on the platform. We also have some offers from our partners that I can’t disclose in details. But our solutions like lending solution can be integrated in applications for examples for users who hold stable coins. And leisurely in that applications, the holders of the stable coins can just use our service to lend their stablecoins and receive the additional interest out of it. Other example can be with protocols like Router, that is providing the cross chain solution. So with our partnership network, we try to use the network in effects as as much as possible. And also, I want to add one thing we are introducing the innovation in the market is that our partners that not only the holders of their assets, the retail users can use the platform, but also the protocols themselves, they can come to our old platform and take a stable coin loan against their treasury, so they can fund their operations with the help of our service. And there is no need more to that for them to, you know, to sell their tokens and reduce the trust in the in the platform and reduce the price, make it lower. And they can just come and take a loan and use this capital to fund the operations or marketing and development and all other things. So it is another angle of integration that our pipe has in go with our platform.
Michael 24:01
Yeah, man. That’s huge. That’s Wow, what what a solution to provide to other projects, especially maybe towards the beginning or the middle of you know, their growth.
Carlos 24:04
I like it, very good point there, Michael. Because right on the middle is where difficulties can come through, right? Like, if you’re not in an ideal market, if you’re not in an ideal moment in time, let’s say that you raised 20 million on an ICO or whatever. But at some point that may start diluting and your token might not be doing too well. Your Treasury might not be doing too well, because you want it to do the sensible thing and not dump all your tokens back on the market do not hurt Hollier holders. So you have your bunch of tokens and well what’s better than to optimize those and to make a big commitment to your community that you’re keeping them by taking the line of credit on them. Now also, we are not saying just go take lines of have credit without doing your own research and without thinking about it. But that’s always a great option to have, isn’t it?
Michael 25:05
Absolutely. Now it opens additional solutions and opens doors. You know, tell us about your roadmap for 2022. What should our audience expect with fringe finance?
Konstantin 25:17
Yeah, we would definitely start with a platform launch with a primary lending platform, the next big step will be our staking platform and yield farming opportunities, it will be in that the next huge milestone for us is, of course, the launch of our stable coin and implementation of the decentralized organization that will be in control of the most operations that will be in place in our primary lended platform and use. We’re planning also to onboard as much as possible insurance solutions and other integrations, there is a cross chain, there is a plan for integrating cross chain solution into the platform. And Carlos help me, what else? What else, what haven’t I mentioned?
Carlos 26:10
I think you covered the roadmap pretty well. But if I should just touch on one particular writing of it that I’m excited about, it’s going Dao. So Daos, you saw yesterday that Joe Biden passed this executive order to start regulating crypto assets, and you’re seeing a lot of very active regulatory movements, towards cryptocurrencies all over the globe. And that’s huge to us. But it’s also it keeps bringing up an ever present threat to the crypto ecosystem. And that that you don’t know when governments are going to start cracking down on this, and where they’re going to do it, and in which way, so we really think that the sensible thing is for everything to be as decentralized as possible, including our own jobs. I mean, Konstantine is from Russia. And God only knows what’s going to happen in Russia. And they have threatened even before this, earlier in this year, to take crackdowns on citizens that are holding cryptocurrencies, India, they ended up withdrawing the thing, but it really makes you think. So we also want to launch the platform into the AFPs system. For it to be decentralized, we want to have a decentralized UI, that’s probably not going to happen in this year. But that’s pretty important in the in our roadmap for people to be able to access the fringe primitives, almost regardless of their own, of how they access it.
Konstantin 27:38
Yeah, I have just remember one more thing that I want to add regarding our roadmap, and that thing is fixed interest rate for lenders. That is, in my opinion, it will be a huge move for us in attracting the capital of institutional investors, because what are they looking for, they’re looking for a stable platform, that will be easy to use for them and easy to transfer the capital. And they want the to have the result that can be easily pocketed. And they can do it at the moment with the interest rate that is floating, and they do not know what to expect from it. But if we will have a fixed interest rate, the results and the outcomes will be known. And I think that will be a huge move and attracting the institutional investors to our platform.
Michael 28:32
Absolutely. Now, that’s definitely an important component that’s definitely needed. Guys, in closing, is there anything else you want to share with our listeners about you know, the amazing things that you guys have coming in with fringe? Also, when are some anticipated dates for for release for some of the rollout here?
Carlos 28:50
Yeah, so we don’t have any precise dates. And the reason we don’t have any precise it is because we’ve been so stringent about like, launching 100% audit, by all of our auditors without cutting any corners. We’ve seen time and time again in DeFi how major players I’m not gonna name names, but you know who you are people. You don’t fully audit your platforms before launching. And then someone comes in discovers a vulnerability. And the ones that end up paying are the users of the platform. So this is what we want to avoid. We don’t want to gamble with our own. First of all jobs. We don’t want to gamble with your money. We want everything to be as airtight as possible. And therefore since the process involves a lot of submitting and then getting results and then re submitting, but we cannot assure people of any dates. If you’re watching this is probably about time for our launch. And if you go to our Twitter, you can probably see a launching date about to happen. That’s a great place for us to hype up our Metaverse jet party. We’re going to be hosting a party in decentraland. There’s going to be DJs there’s going to be a bunch of people. Michael’s probably going to be there if he wants to attend. We’re all going to be there. And you can come you can party with us in the metaverse and celebrate that we’re about to launch.
Michael 30:06
Awesome. That’s exciting. Guys, it was a pleasure to have you here on the show, and I welcome you back in the future. And, you know, thanks for being part of today’s episode and really unpacking for our audience. You know, all of the components about fringe finance
Carlos 30:21
Has been great. Thank you, Mike.
Michael 30:23
Thank you.
Carlos 30:23
Look like Konstantin froze right on time for this.
Michael 30:26
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