The Ones in the Arena: prePO
“There’s no reason to be on the fence — the more eyes on your code, the more likely that any issues will be discovered!” — Xavier Ekkel, Founder, prePO
Up next in the arena is prePO, a decentralized trading platform that allows anyone to gain exposure to pre-IPO companies and pre-token projects. While their mission is to democratize pre-public equity, they also strive to make trading fun and social.
Beginning March 17th, prePO is sponsoring a 3-day security audit contest at Code4rena with a prize pool totalling $30K. With suspense building for their contest launch, we connected with prePO founder Xavier Ekkel to find out more about their platform, his views on security, and his passion for effective altruism. As a bonus, he also shares about the play-to-earn battle royale themed game that his team created for the prePO Universe.
What are you building, and what sets it apart from similar offerings in the space?
We’re building prePO — a decentralized trading platform for gaining synthetic exposure to pre-IPO companies and pre-token crypto projects.
prePO is the only platform in DeFi dedicated to providing all investors with these private market opportunities.
What’s your vision for your project? What are you building towards in the longer view?
prePO’s mission is to democratize pre-public equity, taking what was previously reserved for only the wealthy and well-connected, and instead allowing anyone to gain exposure to private markets.
What’s the most innovative idea in your project/protocol?
prePO’s synthetic pre-public markets allow for permissionless, infinitely-scalable participation in a previously inaccessible asset class. Furthermore, users gain this exposure with no liquidation risk, low fees, and 3 Layers of Rewards (trading profit, token incentives, and passive yield).
As a side effect, prePO will also be the go-to information source for anyone who wants an up-to-date market valuation for a pre-IPO company or pre-token crypto project.
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?
There’s no reason to be on the fence — the more eyes on your code, the more likely that any issues will be discovered!
Security has become an increasingly vital topic in Web3 and DeFi. How do you think the ecosystem needs to evolve in order to rise to the challenge?
Projects should be building with security in mind from day one. An audit should only be a final check on what should already be comprehensively tested internally.
What gets you most excited about Web3?
We’re all building a more decentralized, democratized, and user-owned world through the power of transparent, interoperable, and indestructible code.
Complete the following sentence: “I wish more Web3 projects would…”
I wish more Web3 projects would open source their code and develop in public! Public, open source development will encourage more participation, reduce wasted time on reimplementations, and increase security through transparency.
prePO will be developing in public soon — after all, we’re all about turning private things public!
What do you geek out about, beyond Web3?
Effective altruism! It’s all about finding ways to do the *most* good with whatever resources we have. Many people don’t realize that we can often provide >100x more impact with our money for others in poor countries than we can for those in rich countries. For example, it costs over $50,000 to provide a guide dog for a single blind person in the US, but $50,000 could also deworm *50,000* children in developing countries.
Is there anything else you want to make sure we include?
We’re currently hiring for many roles, including Smart Contract Engineer, Frontend Engineer, and even Meme Artist!
We’re also accepting registrations for our token launch whitelist, which makes you eligible for bonus rewards.
Finally, we created a play-to-earn M&A-themed battle royale game called Acquisition Royale, which you should all check out (a big update is on its way)!
Learn more about prePO
- Website: prepo.io
- Twitter: twitter.com/prepo_io
- Discord: url.prepo.io/discord-c4
prePO’s $30K security audit contest opens March 17th, 2022, and runs for 3 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.
