Dharma Community Update: 90-Day Retro
It’s hard to believe that Dharma launched a little over three months ago. In that time we’ve had some amazing growth — both in user volume and product features. Our team has learned how to adapt to user feedback and fix the things that aren’t working well. There were some bumps along the way, but we have grown from the experience and continue to focus on improving the reliability of the Dharma platform. We want to take this opportunity to say thank you to all the Dharma supporters out there, it’s been great to have you along for the ride!
In honor of our three month “launchiversary”, we thought it would be fun to reflect on how far we’ve come and share a bit about where we’re going next!
April: Dharma invites the world to experience magic internet money!
In April, Dharma officially opened its virtual doors to the public, allowing anyone in the world to start earning interest on their crypto! We expected people to be excited about the product, but didn’t expect such high volumes right at the beginning. In the short span of a month, Dharma originated nearly $7 million USD in loans, helping connect hundreds of borrowers and lenders. There was quite a bit of interest around our new product, so we released an FAQ and several blog posts to give people more information about Dharma.
We also announced our #ReFi with #DeFi initiative, which enabled CDP holders to refinance their existing loans and move them onto Dharma for a cheaper rate.
May: Adding USDC and improving scalability
May was all about improving the user experience and soliciting feedback from the community in regards to which assets they wanted to see on Dharma. At the beginning of the month, we launched support for USDC, which helped us breach $2 million USD in originations for the month. An interesting note: demand for DAI was so high in May, that our lenders were earning 14% APR on their deposits.
Towards the end of May, we experienced an increase in user activity and the platform was not as reliable as it should have been. We had a handful of website outages and realized that we needed to buckle down and improve our technical infrastructure to be able to scale with user demand.
June: Say hello to new products!
The majority of June was spent working on the most requested feature to date — instant interest. Our lenders were frustrated that their funds would sit idle for weeks without earning a dime. We recognized this wasn’t the ideal user experience and launched instant interest, which allows anyone to deposit DAI or USDC and start earning interest immediately.
Along the way, we also launched our new custom borrow experience, giving our borrowers the ability to customize their loans, and introduced everyone to Dharma Account, where you can sit back and watch your money grow. As with most new product features, some users experienced issues that needed a technical fix, and we resolved as quickly as we could.
What’s next?
Our main focus over the next few weeks is improving Dharma’s reliability and scalability. Our users deserve a seamless user experience that works exactly as promised. We also have some exciting things on our roadmap, so stay tuned for those announcements!
In addition to product improvements, we are scaling support operations to better address the needs of our users, bulking up external resources, and building a strong and supportive Dharma community. Finally, we’re hiring amazing, mission-driven engineers who embody Dharma’s vision and who can help us build the best place to experience magical internet money.
Thanks again for support and patience, we couldn’t have done it without you!
Connect With Us
Rachael McWhirter is the Community Lead of Dharma — the easiest place to borrow and lend cryptocurrency.
Before Dharma, Rachael managed the Regulatory Affairs program at Coinbase, and graduated from University of California, Berkeley with a B.A. in Political Science.
