Venom Hackathon Winners Spotlight: An Interview With Unb@nk

4 min readJul 5, 2023

We’re back with another Venom Hackathon Winners Spotlight! This time, we had a quick chat with the winner of the DeFi & CBDCs track, Anastasiia Kondaurova, from the project Unb@nk.

Unb@nk is a banking infrastructure designed to manage CBDC on the Venom blockchain. Read on to find out more, and check out our previous interview, if you haven’t already done so.

Congratulations on your winning project, Anastasiia! Can you Introduce your team and tell us how you started your Web3/blockchain journey?

Our team hails from Mad.Fish and we’re mainly involved in R&D. We focus on market research and hypothesis validation in anticipation of the next bull market. Two of us participated in the hackathon — Vlad, our COO and myself.

Vlad joined Mad.Fish in early 2020. Before he got into the crypto industry, he cofounded a game development outsourcing company. Intrigued by the potential of blockchain technology, he embarked on a deep dive into DeFi and explored nearly all the projects listed on DeFi Pulse before DeFi Llama came about. Nowadays, Vlad runs a DeFi community, Degen Hustle, and is a regular speaker at crypto events.

As for me, my blockchain journey stemmed from an offline course where we built and ran our own blockchain, Pitcoin, on Raspberry Pi. We developed a wallet for it, implemented a few smart contracts, and went through many other things. During this time, I won the Blockchain UA hackathon and met the Mad.Fish team. I have a deep love for hackathons and sometimes people introduce me as a “hackathon cruiser” since I’ve won more than 15 blockchain hackathons as a dev.

That’s impressive! Tell us how you came up with your project concept.

We noticed that Venom blockchain focuses on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) and is backed by a relevant license. This inspired us to consider the interaction between banks and retail in a new light. By leveraging our understanding of traditional financial institutions and harnessing the potential of DeFi, we envisioned a more efficient banking system on the blockchain.

Our project aims to bridge the gap between conventional banking and the decentralized digital economy — a task that is ideal for Venom’s pioneering platform.

Can you explain how your project works?

Unb@nk, built on the Venom blockchain, is a scalable banking infrastructure designed for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Our project integrates a hierarchical management system, drawing parallels to traditional banking structures with founders, chief managers, and mid-level managers. Decision-making is democratized through a specific TIP-3 token representing a stake in the bank.

Our system offers retail accounts linked to debit and savings cards with adjustable limits and automatic payment features. Venom’s in-box account abstraction eliminates gas fees for users, making transactions seamless.

Furthermore, Unb@nk can accommodate interest-free lending with guarantor mechanics, manage blocklists, perform AML checks, and efficiently handle multiple CBDCs. We aim to offer an inclusive and seamless banking experience by fusing blockchain technology with innovative financial services.

How does Unb@nk meet business needs/solve real-world problems?

We enhance traditional banking capabilities by making the services faster, cheaper, and more transparent. This transformation improves efficiency, promotes financial inclusivity, and democratizes access to financial services.

How is Venom’s blockchain integrated into your project and what role does it play?

Venom’s blockchain is crucial to Unb@nk. The entire infrastructure is built on it, offering reliable security for operations. On top of that, Venom Foundation’s license from the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) provides a significant advantage, allowing banks to employ our constructed infrastructure with assurance.

How did you find the Venom Hackathon experience?

Our experience with the Venom Hackathon was mostly positive. We found the tools provided to be dev-friendly, and the developer community was highly responsive, which was beneficial. Comparatively, the learning curve for developers on Venom is steeper than EVM chains, yet much more approachable than Tezos, which we used to build on.

We did face one issue related to outdated documentation. Despite this minor hurdle, the overall experience was great.

What was your biggest takeaway from the hackathon?

My biggest takeaway from the hackathon was witnessing firsthand the evolution of developer tools in the blockchain space. I’ve worked with the Telegram Open Network(Fift, FunC) during its early stages, and it’s the ideological ancestor of Venom. It was gratifying to see how developer tools have become significantly more developer-friendly and powerful.

Moving ahead, what are your next steps?

Moving forward, our immediate focus is brainstorming new ideas and grounded use cases for the infrastructure or another project. Once we’ve established these, we plan to engage in discussions with Venom Foundation.