Review of the Month: July 2022

Hi, Poolsiders! 🏊

Welcome to our latest monthly review for July. Clearpool had another busy and successful month. The Clearpool protocol introduced new features, successfully launched on Polygon, onboarded new borrowers, and was covered by several leading media outlets. Let’s take a look back at what Clearpool accomplished in July.

New Interest Curve Mechanism

JUL 5. Clearpool announced a major update to its innovative decentralized liquidity protocol — a new interest rate mechanism that will significantly enhance how institutions and investors borrow and lend digital assets.

Developed over many months, the new interest rate model has been built specifically for Clearpool’s permissionless pools. It is based on a sophisticated first-of-its-kind formula designed to encourage borrowers to optimally utilize liquidity in their pools while compensating lenders with attractive risk-adjusted returns more accurately.

• The new interest rate mechanism will encourage optimal borrower utilization and enhance capital efficiency & supply interest rates
• The new curve will be derived from and move with the market, with a distributed network of Oracles providing the parameters which will shape the curve
• CPOOL holders will be able to participate in delegated staking to earn a yield on CPOOL holdings and help secure the curve pricing mechanism
• Delegated staking enhances the utility of the CPOOL token

“The development of Clearpool’s new interest rate model is a milestone. It will bring further improvements in capital efficiency, price discovery and transparency as well as further expand opportunities for borrowers and lenders across decentralized finance,“ said Robert Alcorn, CEO of Clearpool.

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Smartkarma featured Clearpool in their Exclusive Research Article

JUL 7. Clearpool was featured in Smartkarma’s exclusive research article: Crypto Lending Sector Series. The piece discusses the crypto lending landscape and deep dives into Aave and Clearpool, and shares insights from institutional borrowers.

“Future of the lending market — The lending market will become stronger and more mature- where the market will demand more 1) transparency, 2) credit differentiation between borrowers (and lenders), and 3) there will be a need to understand the creditworthiness of counterparties. Eventually, when we get past the current macro downturn and bear market, the lending market will revive. In terms of new protocols, Clearpool seems to have caught the attention of both borrowers. As an on-chain lender, it is leading in terms of how the interest rates are optimized in the protocol both for the lender and borrower in its newest version. In addition, the partnership with X-margin provides a good capture of real-time financials of the counterparty using live API feeds.”

Read their article here

New Feature: Pool Notifications

JUL 15. Clearpool announced the launch of its latest new feature: Pool Notifications. It allows users to receive notifications when permissionless pools reach specific levels of utilization.

Lenders can register to receive email notifications when a pool’s utilization and interest rate reaches a specific threshold level, which may signal a lend or withdraw transaction. Likewise, borrowers can receive notifications when their pool reaches borrow or repay threshold levels.

This feature is useful not only to current lenders and borrowers but also to those monitoring the pools with a view to deploying liquidity in the future.

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Clearpool team attended EthCC in Paris

JUL 19. The Clearpool team was in Paris on 19–21 July to attend EthCC, the largest annual European Ethereum community conference. Jakob (CCO and Co-founder) and members of our development team were there for the whole week and had many productive conversations with potential borrowers, lenders and partners!

Idle Finance launched Perpetual Yield Tranches based on Clearpool protocol’s Uncollateralized Loans

JUL 21. Idle Finance launched Perpetual Yield Tranches (PYTs) based on uncollateralized loans on the Clearpool protocol, starting with Wintermute’s USDC borrower pool. These new PYTs allow liquidity providers to access the emerging DeFi uncollateralized loan market with senior and junior risk-adjusted profiles.

Uncollateralized loans are a missing piece in the DeFi puzzle and are finally coming to open finance. While this new component is opening up to better capital efficiency and countless applications for DeFi, it comes with a significant challenge: appropriately managing risk exposure.

Enter risk tranching. At a high level, investors can choose between different risk levels — each with its own tailored potential for upside and downside — when depositing their digital assets into a specific pool. Tranche lending products are widely used in traditional finance and offer a pathway to risk management for decentralized debt. Essentially, it allows risk to be redistributed among different investor profiles.

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Clearpool X Polygon: Credit Protocols AMA

JUL 25. Polygon DeFi hosted a Credit Protocols AMA with Clearpool, Teller Finance, and Atlendis Labs. Robert Alcorn, alongside Polygon and industry guests, were discussing everything related to DeFi, revolving around credit protocols.

Listen to the recording here

TechCrunch featured Clearpool

JUL 27. TechCrunch featured Clearpool in their market analysis article. Robert Alcorn was interviewed about the current DeFi market.

“We see significant institutional interest in the [DeFi] sector.”

“This was apparent before the recent bout of volatility and continues despite it.”

“There is shared optimism from both types of institutions that DeFi concepts possess the ingredients necessary to build a more transparent and efficient financial market infrastructure,”

Read the full article here

Forkast News invited Robert Alcorn to provide an opinion piece on the DeFi sector

JUL 28. Clearpool was featured in Forkast News as Robert Alcorn, CEO and co-founder, was invited to provide an opinion piece on the DeFi sector.

DeFi continues to gain traction with large institutions despite recent turmoil in crypto markets. The failure of centralized lenders such as Celsius and Voyager has again exposed the problems inherent in centralized systems.

DeFi solves these problems by leveraging blockchain and smart contracts. Institutions are beginning to put more trust in code, and DeFi is firmly on their radar.

Read the full article here

Clearpool Launches Uncollateralized Lending on Polygon

JUL 28. The big event of the month was Clearpool’s launch on Polygon, the leading sustainable scaling solution for Ethereum, to provide greater capital efficiency and improved user experience.

Clearpool is now live on Polygon, bringing large-scale institutional DeFi to the Ethereum-compatible scaling platform for the first time. Clearpool has originated over US$ 220 million of institutional loans since its launch on the Ethereum network in March 2022, with borrowers including leading crypto and TradFi institutions such as Wintermute and Jane Street. The integration with Polygon is expected to bring increased user efficiency and significantly enhance the platform's scalability.

Robert Alcorn, CEO & co-founder of Clearpool, said, “Launching Clearpool on Polygon has been part of our plans since day one, so we are very excited to finally reach this important milestone and bring institutional DeFi to the Polygon ecosystem. This integration will help us to take Clearpool to the next level in terms of user adoption and provide more efficient access to a wider network of lenders. This, in turn, will enhance diversification of funding for borrowers leading to even greater efficiencies across the Clearpool ecosystem.”

Hamzah Khan, Head of DeFi and Labs at Polygon, said: “The Clearpool team is innovating on the bleeding edge of on-chain borrowing and lending by providing a decentralized marketplace for unsecured institutional capital, while lenders can earn attractive risk-adjusted rates of interest. If we are going to onboard the next 1 billion users into Web 3, credit protocols like Clearpool are going to help lead the way.”

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Media Coverage

• The Block: Clearpool launches uncollateralized stablecoin lending on Polygon
• Blockworks: Clearpool Scales Uncollateralized Lending Marketplace to Polygon
• The Crypto Times: Clearpool Expands Uncollateralized Lending on Polygon Network
• Binance News: Clearpool to launch on Polygon
• CryptoNewsZ: Clearpool Has Launched Uncollateralized Lending on Polygon
• The Crypto Basic: First Ever Uncollateralized Institutional Lending Marketplace Coming To Polygon

Clearpool x Polygon | MATIC Farming Rewards Promotion

JUL 28. To celebrate the launch of Clearpool on Polygon, Polygon provided 170,000 MATIC tokens available to be farmed by early LPs on the Clearpool Polygon Market. For 60 days commencing on the 28th July 2022, all lenders (LPs) to liquidity pools on the Clearpool Polygon Market will receive additional LP rewards paid in MATIC.

To participate, you simply have to supply USDC liquidity to a borrower pool on the Clearpool Polygon Market during the promotional period. Be sure to deposit early, and ensure that you leave your funds deposited for the entire promotion period in order to maximize your rewards! USDC interest and CPOOL LP rewards will continue to accrue on balances that remain deposited after the promotion ends.

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Clearpool Announces New Borrower — Parallel Capital

JUL 28. Clearpool announced the latest single borrower pool on its DeFi protocol. The pool, launched by Parallel Capital, a high-frequency trading firm, will be available exclusively on the Clearpool Polygon market.

Founded in 2018, Parallel Capital is an algorithmic, high-frequency proprietary trading firm that specializes in providing liquidity within the cryptocurrency markets. They have a firm delta-neutral mandate and have achieved returns through a variety of proprietary market-making trading strategies.

Clearpool has integrated X-Margin’s privacy-preserving technology to dynamically measure and publish Parallel Capital’s creditworthiness, and to present an accurate risk score without revealing sensitive information. As a partner, X-Margin helps ensure Clearpool liquidity providers are informed and can make risk-based assessments. At the time of writing, Parallel Capital has a borrower rating of ‘AA’ and a total Borrow Capacity of US$44.5M. You can lend USDC on Polygon to the Parallel Capital borrower pool here.

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Staking Pools Extended on Kucoin and AscendEX

JUL 29. The CPOOL staking pools on KuCoin and AscendEX have been extended for another month until the end of August, and the APY remains the same at 20%.

If you’re already staking, poolsiders don’t need to do anything to continue earning rewards. On both exchanges, the pools will be extended, which means no need to unstake and restake in a new pool.

However, if you haven’t staked your CPOOL yet, you can do it here:

- KuCoin: https://www.kucoin.com/earn/promotion

- AscendEX: https://ascendex.com/en/staking/investment-product-details/CPOOL-S

Altcoin Buzz featured Clearpool on their recent Youtube Video

JUL 29. Clearpool was featured on Altcoin Buzz’s recent youtube video talking about Clearpool’s successful launch on Polygon.

Watch the full video here

Tweets of the Month

Now, check out these insightful July Twitter threads you should read for the tweets of the month.

Robert Alcorn discusses why the recent events that caused market turmoil are good for Clearpool in the long run.

Learn more about how Clearpool differs from other protocols.

Sharavana Rao, our ambassador, explained the significance of the Clearpool launch on the Polygon network.

Robert Alcorn’s thread discusses the similarities and the difference between Aave and Clearpool

Ian Wittkopp, COO and Head of Investment of Sino Global Capital, discusses institutional loans in crypto and featuring Clearpool.

That’s a wrap!

This concludes the recap for this month. Thank you for being a Poolsider and supporting the project! We’re always grateful for our community’s ongoing support.

Please follow us on social media to stay up to date on our most recent events and activities. Clearpool keeps building! Here’s to another productive month ahead 🚀