At CEDE, it’s important for us to build for the present but also towards a future we believe in while keeping our values. Here is our vision for the web3 ecosystem and the values that we support.
Market
Right now we can divide the crypto ecosystem into 2 parts:
- CeFi (Centralized Finance): it’s when the finance is governed by a trusted third party, like a company. Finance always has been centralized in web2 and it’s the same for a whole part of web3: products like Centralized Exchanges (Binance, Coinbase, Kraken,…).
- DeFi (Decentralized Finance): it’s the opposite, a financial system without any intermediaries like a bank or a company. Code is everything. Everything is transparent and auditable. Products include decentralized exchanges, but also lending, borrowing, yield protocols,…
Each ecosystem has different trust perceptions from users because of how it’s built, each ecosystem offers a wide range of pros and cons.
- On one hand, CeFi is close to what we already know in web2: account verification, account recovery, customer support, regulated, fiat gateway, more liquidity,… But at the same time, it lacks transparency, token possibilities, more fees on certain actions, risk of losing everything,…
- On the other hand, DeFi comes with its set of advantages: better yield because of fewer intermediaries, auditable, open to everyone, rapid dApp onboarding (1 click, without creating an account via email and setting up a password), can do governance,… But: less liquidity, less UI/UX friendly, more exposed to usage errors, no recovery, smart contract hacks (rekt) …
While people argue that DeFi is the only way to solve everything and others argue that CeFi will triumph because of its compliance, we believe both are here to stay and will even complement each other because both ecosystems come with their set of rules and advantages. Here is an article that digs deeper into that vision.
At CEDE, we want to get the best out of CeFi and DeFi. And we are doing that while being in line with the following values.
Self-custody
One of the most repeated phrases that we hear in the crypto ecosystem is: “Not your keys, not your coins”.
That means that you need to have the private key associated with your blockchain wallet to really own your cryptos.
For example, when you generate a new blockchain address on a non-custodial wallet (like Metamask or Ledger), the wallet generates a pair of keys using special algorithms and stores those keys for you in a place that you control: your computer, an external device,… It stays within the same place and can’t get away without your consent. Those are the keys to accessing your funds and you have the responsibility to safeguard them. That’s the price to pay to get rid of financial intermediaries.
Unlike when you have crypto on a Centralized Exchange (Binance, Coinbase,…), you can’t ask for your private keys. The company behind owns the private keys (so your money) and can do anything with your cryptos. If it falls, you fall with it.
That’s easily understandable by looking at all the CEX that fell down in the past (like Mt. Gox) or at present (hey FTX). There are no “too big to fail” companies. FTX was worth $32B, was considered one of the most reliable exchanges on the market, and went to $0 within literally a week.
Self-custody of your private keys is the only way to be sure that your money will not disappear without your consent (except if you purposely give your private keys to someone/a program (phishing)).
We extremely value self-custody in our own usage and in what we build. That’s a value that applies to blockchain keys but also to all kinds of access keys.
Remember: “not your keys, not your cryptos!”
DeFi UX
DeFi and decentralized applications (dApps) have introduced a new way of interacting with cryptos through wallets. Here, we’ll talk about the browser wallet experience but the mobile wallet experience is really similar.
Browser extensions act like your gateway to the blockchain: it lets the user have custody of his keys and interact with the blockchain to do any kind of transactions: transfer, swap, invest,…
We can distinguish 3 actions that are revolutionizing the user experience:
- Connecting to a dApp in literally a click. Your wallet acts like your account for all dApps so you’ll never need to give up your personal information (name, email, password, keys,…) to a third party.
- Being able to verify the data that is going to be signed by the user. You can monitor everything you do through a little popup that displays the data you’re signing and the action you are going to do. Wallets usually transcript the data into something human-readable but you can always access the raw data in case you need to audit it. Some wallets add transaction risk analysis, transaction simulation,…
- Signing manually the blockchain request. Traditionally, all requests are made and signed by a trusted third party.
It’s a breakthrough for us in terms of accessibility and usage. Anyone, regardless of legal country, religion, or net worth can access and use any DeFi financial services with just a wallet. Finance finally accessible.
The current DeFi UX needs of course a lot of upgrades regarding fluidity and security.
But what if we could apply that UX to something else than DeFi?
Aggregation
As the crypto ecosystem is getting bigger and that crypto use cases are multiplying, we believe that aggregation is key for healthy and efficient usage.
We can see aggregation for many things: data, marketplace, wallet, dex, cex, yield, lending, and so on…
That was also true in web2 with agendas, planes, transport, food, goods, apartments,…
Here is an article talking about aggregation theory in web2 and web3.
What we want to propose are efficiency and possibilities within the same solution around CeFi and DeFi aggregation (more coming soon 👀)
Conclusion
At CEDE, we want to take advantage of what’s best in Centralized and Decentralized Finance while keeping our values of self-custody, DeFi UX, and aggregation.
Thus, our goal is to build a non-custodial CeFi/DeFi tracking and managing solution.
To do that, we have two products:
- cede.link: A decentralized application (dApp) that lets you track and manage your CeFi and DeFi assets
- cede.store: A non-custodial browser extension to manage your cryptos in Centralized Exchanges.
Our vision is to become the gateway between CeFi and DeFi.
Articles will come soon to dive deeper into our products…
In the meantime, don’t hesitate to look at our landing page and subscribe to the private beta 🐼
