The Ones in the Arena: Nested Finance
“Representing a portfolio in the form of an NFT is totally natural, but no one thought about it.” — Rudy Kadoch, Founder, Nested Finance
Rudy Kadoch is a bold thinker. Not only are the ideas embedded in Nested creative and intriguing — picture the ability to copy a portfolio strategies from top traders, or to monetize your own — but the guy behind them also has strong (and compelling) opinions on many other topics, from UX to security.
As Nested prepares to enter the C4 arena (details below), we invited Rudy to weigh in on some of our favourite subjects. Read on to learn more about Nested, hear Rudy’s thoughts on the current state of DeFi, and his three-step security strategy.
What are you building?
Nested Finance is the first one-stop DeFi application to build, manage and monetize portfolios. It disrupts the way we DeFi today by providing the best and cleanest user experience of this space. Even CeFi did not achieve that.
On Nested Finance, you can pick the assets of your choice and build a portfolio. All of them are gathered in an NFT. All portfolios can be visualized and managed directly from the Nested app. Exiting the market is now a matter of one click!
Share your portfolio with your community members and earn money each time they copy your strategy. Be notified each time the owner of a portfolio you copied makes a move.
What sets it apart from similar offerings in the space?
- The NFT component: a portfolio is a non-fungible asset. My portfolio is different from yours. It must be tokenized in the form of NFTs. Other projects talking about portfolios do not deliver real portfolios. They deliver a set of assets managed by a manager. You can invest in this set but you don’t have any rights over it. If the manager wants to change weights or remove an asset, you cannot do anything about it. In this space, we use to say: “Your private key, your cryptocurrencies”; in Nested, we say: “Your NFT, your portfolio”. This sentence leads us to sovereignty.
- Sovereignty: Even if you copied someone else’s portfolio, you are still free to update it and diverge from the trader’s choices.
- The UX: We worked a lot to deliver a product understandable by anyone in this world. Fundamentals have been laid down, and now is the right moment to build a product with a beautiful interface capable of onboarding the masses. In 2011, Coinbase democratized the purchase and the sale of cryptocurrencies through a user-friendly application; in 2021, Nested wants to democratize DeFi with a user-friendly application.
- From a legal standpoint: portfolios tokenized in the form of NFTs cannot be considered as securities tokens, as they cannot be traded on exchanges via an order book or a liquidity pool, while ERC20 tokens can easily be redefined.
There’s much more about it here.
“If your project gets hacked, especially if it happens a few weeks after the launch, it will be fatal for you, your team, and your product. It’s a tradeoff: what do you prefer? Do you prefer to spend 60–100K in a public contest, or do you prefer having wasted your time for the last 6 months of your life?”
What’s your vision for your project? What are you building towards in the longer view?
We want to become the layer 1 of DeFi. We want people to use Nested as the sole and unique point to DeFi. That means developing a new paradigm where people will be able to build, manage, copy and monetize portfolios, lend and borrow assets, and use other third parties directly from Nested.
What’s the most innovative idea in your protocol?
The most innovative idea in this protocol is the NFT component. Representing a portfolio in the form of an NFT is totally natural, but no one thought about it.
Imagine being able to use your Nested NFT — your portfolio, your entire digital wealth — as collateral on Aave to borrow money?
It takes courage to undergo a public audit by a swarm of anonymous security researchers. It also says a lot about how much you prioritize security. What advice would you give to those on the fence?
Security is key! If your project gets hacked, especially if it happens a few weeks after the launch, it will be fatal for you, your team, and your product. It’s a tradeoff: what do you prefer? Do you prefer to spend 60-100K in a public contest, or do you prefer having wasted your time for the last 6 months of your life?
Also, even though a public contest does not guarantee unbreakable code, you will feel better than if your project gets hacked.
“DeFi is not an easy concept; the UX should help people understand how to use it.”
Security has become an increasingly vital topic in DeFi. How do you think the ecosystem needs to evolve in order to rise to the challenge?
Step 1: One private audit from a mid-tier auditor. Code is like writing a book: you might have made some mistakes you wouldn’t find by reading your book yourself, so someone has to do it for you. You also might have some centralization issues. Don’t expect these auditors to find major vulnerabilities. If they find some, you’re lucky!
Step 2: A public contest. At this stage, you can expect to find major vulnerabilities. It’s just like if you were hiring 20-30 white hats.
Step 3: A private audit from Open Zeppelin or TrailOfBits. Both are king in this space. This last step should make your work unbreakable.
What gets you most excited about DeFi?
Financial NFTs. Except for money, there aren’t a lot of fungible assets. Derivatives, commodities, bonds, etc. are usually non-fungible assets with specific parameters. Most financial products will be exchanged through NFTs in the future.
Complete the following sentence: “I wish more DeFi projects would…”
Focus on the UX. How can we onboard the masses with awful UX? DeFi is not an easy concept; the UX should help people understand how to use it.
“Nested is the only and best way to monetize knowledge in this decentralized space.”
What DeFi project name do you wish you’d thought of first?
Curve. The best tokenomics ever. Also, Curve is now a matter of sovereignty in this space. All DeFi projects should hold a subsequent amount of CVX or CRV in this space, especially with Curve V2 coming.
What do you geek out about, beyond DeFi?
Beyond DeFi, I love art (the physical kind) and video games (who wants to play a battle royal with me?)
Is there anything else you want to make sure we include?
If you are a newbie, a trader, or an influencer, join Nested! Either you won’t be lost anymore in this space by copying other traders’ portfolios, or you will earn a lot of money. Nested is the only and best way to monetize knowledge in this decentralized space.
Learn more about Nested:
- Website: nested.finance
- Docs: docs.nested.finance
- Twitter: twitter.com/NestedFinance
- Discord: discord.gg/VW8ZZsACzd
Nested’s $50K security audit contest opens November 11, 2021, and runs for 7 days. Details at code4rena.com.
The Ones in the Arena spotlights emerging and established DeFi projects and their founders, with an eye to celebrating and learning from them. The series’ name is inspired in part by Teddy Roosevelt’s famous quote, which has a central place in Code4rena’s philosophy.
