TOKENIZED RISK PROTOCOL
INTRODUCTION:
The traditional financial system, or TradFi, is experiencing a historic uptick in aggregate debt levels while yield and interest rates plummet. Over the last year, we have seen the emergence of a rudimentary decentralized financial system, DeFi in this paper, burgeoning in the digital economy with digital assets and cryptocurrencies. While debt levels, which is referred to as TVL, or total value locked in decentralized financial protocols, has increased from hundreds of millions last year, to billions of dollars in 2020, yield on these instruments continues to dwarf the menial rates offered by comparable products in the legacy TradFi system.
Conversely, due to assumed higher risk levels coupled with higher efficiencies provided by smart contract technologies, annual percentage yield (APY) is far higher on decentralized protocols than what can be found in the traditional financial system. Working capital is following the historical trend of following higher yield which is why we are seeing TVL moving to DeFi at an accelerating rate. This is a trend that will continue. The need for familiar TradFi instruments to exist throughout the DeFi ecosystem has never been stronger. BarnBridge is an idea whose time has come.
MY VIEW
With this paraphrased introduction from the
Barnbridge Whitepaper, I am glad to have the pleasure to introduce BarnBridge and its team to the Bitcointalk forum. I came across them while exploring the DeFi and Farming business that has taken over much of the Alt-Coin space in the last few months. I personally believe that at its very foundation, DeFi has been enabled by the performance and security of Bitcoin. DeFi allows holders of cryptocurrencies to lock money (as stable-coins or Custodial wrapped BTC) and earn "Yield". This is a lot like how banks used to provide interests on deposits. The difference is that unlike banks; there is no institution, building, managers, the sexy receptionist and associated expenses/fees. All of that overhead is replaced by a very non-sexy smart-contract. The survival and growth of your deposit depends on the bulletproof-ness of that Smart contract. It has to be kept in mind that several Hundreds of millions have been lost in the last few months through exploits. This is why it is necessary to have a trustworthy, public team committed to their goals who aren't just selling tokens to unsuspecting crypto-newbies.
Till now, the safest method of earning yield is to lock stable-coins and crypto on platforms like Balancer, UniSwap, AAVE, Compound etc. The platform uses those deposits to match lenders and borrowers and earns the difference, while splitting it with the liquidity providers. The risk, relatively speaking, is low and so are the returns. If you want higher returns, there is a whole array of risky speculative projects which will make you lose money.
The team at BarnBridge is attempting to bring a greater variety of financial instruments to DeFi which will allow people to choose from options based on their own risk tolerance.
CURRENT STATE
BarnBridge allows anyone to lock three types of stablecoins, USDC, sUSD and DAI and earn their $BOND token. There is no ICO but there has already been a private seed investor round allotting 7.5% to investors, 2% to advisors and 12.5% to core team. This is what the website looks like:
Apart from locking stablecoins, you can also earn $BOND by following two methods:
1. Providing Liquidity on Uniswap*
2. Staking Bond tokens (Remaining 2 weeks out of 12 weeks)
The reward from above 3 methods are distributed every week. The rewards scale on a pro-rata basis through the week depending on how long you were staked continuously before the finish of epoch (End of Sunday).
BOND TOKEN
In the vein of all DeFi protocols, BOND is the governance token with the following distribution cycle:
Here are the links to discover more:
In the DeFi space, you need to understand and know what project you are going to spend your time and money on. That is the biggest risk of all. This is all a growing space and knowledge is your friend. Head over to discord for meeting the team and a great bunch of people ready to answer all your questions. I have been there for some time trying to get my head around the financial model for the risk tranches. You can find me there as @amish. You can also ask your questions in this thread. I also hope to have someone directly from the team to answer the queries as well as informative posts related to the financial products.
The team does fortnightly project calls where a group video call is broadcast on youtube explaining about the background work. All the previous calls and the notes are also available on Github.
* Providing Uniswap Liquidity has the risk of Impermanent Loss caused due to fluctuations in Token Value.
DISCLAIMER: If you are new to DeFi terms and platforms, you are welcome to ask me via PM. This thread is not financial advice to put your money on the line and there is no "Announcement" for ICO or Bounties. This is not a get rich quick scheme and buying the token on Uniswap gives you no guarantee of returns. As always, Do your own research and never invest more than you can afford to lose.