Bonded. Finance AMA Recap

On Monday, June 28th at 28:00 UTC, we welcomed Paul Mak and Dave D from the Bonded. Finance team for another amazing AMA session.

Thanks to everyone who joined us, and congratulations to the five winners of best questions. We’ll be in touch and get your prizes to you soon.

Wonder what we talked about? Read on for the most important things covered.

To Paul/Dave: Please introduce yourselves to the community. What is your experience in the crypto world?

Dave D:” I’ve got pretty a varied business background, both entrepreneurial and more traditional, having founded a behavioural health company during the dot com era, which saw me segue onto the private equity side of things. I’m a published writer and ended up working with an investment memorandum that often fuses marketing, legal and accounting into one, so I got a good sense of what makes things go.

You have to realize there’s never been a loser on paper so sussing out the contenders is something I became competent at. When I got into blockchain a few years ago, it stumped me into how people will learn their way into this because it’s not as intuitive as it should be, so anything that can attract people to something captures my attention. I started listening to Andreas Antonopoulos back in the day, circa 2016 and thought the distributed ledger thing was fascinating as its applications were first unfurling. But, in 2017, I sold out for a while and was trading before finding my way into projects.”

Paul M: “My name is Paul Mak. I’m the CEO at Bonded.

As for my background, I’ve been an investor/operator for the last 16 years. Before crypto, I was the lead investor for a private investment fund; we started migrating capital towards bitcoin in 2014 and altcoins in 2016. Since then, I’ve operated largely as a capital allocator and strategic advisor.”

To Danish: Many crypto-based organisations have given importance to developing innovations within the crypto lending ecosystem. How, in your opinion, does Bonded.Finance differ?

Danish: “Well, for starters, competitors’ offerings are all pretty standard about their lending solutions, which still works, but sometimes it’s not enough. Bonded.Finance provides something with a little more exotic, enabling investors to increase yield and risk exposure significantly, complemented with their automated risk parameters to boot. Plus, they support a lot more altcoins due to their smart contract designs.”

To the Bonded.Finance Team Would you kindly tell our community what Bonded.Finance is, and its long-term goal for the future?

Dave : As for what is Bonded, let me personalize it some. I’m an altcoin degenerate at heart but found most of them lacking until 2018 or so. There were a lot of narratives but thin on real utility. Then the fat protocol plays came along and the rumblings of DeFi. I knew gaming was supposed to be the early winner for crypto but the infrastructure being built mattered.

In early 2019, Paul and I were discussing DeFi, but it was early days. We wanted to do something and had a few criteria: We wanted to develop something with an actual business model for the token and a token that could “Bond” to the network. We looked at Roscas, private stable coins because custodial assets will be bigger in the future, but some ideas were good, and of course, lending always loomed. There was Salt and a bunch of others that never got that far, but Nexo raised 52m and showed more promise.

It wasn’t going away but overall, kind of underwhelming. I was earlier to liquidity mining and farming than Paul, but he was very prescient in knowing that the liquidity problem in alts was hurting the whole space. So Bonded is basically the way to make altcoins more robust. Give them asset quality and services. Then the fight for liquidity began, and soon there was incentivized liquidity pools, and all the rest, which were problematic for two reasons — one, only a few of the biggest alts were participating, and two, it was unsustainable.

From there, we saw this comes down to a fight for liquidity and, going forward, a way to maintain returns. As an altcoin lover, it seemed very reasonable that something like Bonded, which is designed to support alts, could not only put these well-capitalized, solid project’s tokens to work, but we could help stabilize and maybe even inject some rocket fuel into the space.”

I think that’s a more general overview of how Bond formed and aims to evolve. The long term goal is to be a super active network where value sharing becomes a network quid pro quo of sorts that all goes back to the Bond token.

Paul: “Bonded finance is built to be the ultimate lending and borrowing facility for all alt-coins and eventually all digital assets.

Having an encyclopaedia of options for lenders to have to choose from isn’t ergonomic though. Different assets as collateral, different interest rates etc is not ideal. If I’m lending capital I don’t want to have to assess the individual risk of a variety of different forms of collateral. I want to know how much value is held in collateral against my money and is adequately securitising my capital. If yes then what’s my ROI. Simple.

So what we’re doing is essentially taking every asset and placing them into a single siloed index the automatically balances the risk so we can offer a single high-interest rate to lenders and an easy click and withdraw facility for borrowers.

As for long term goals. We want to convert every altcoin into a single collateral asset then drive institution-grade capital into our ecosystem.”

What are the benefits for BOND holders?

Dave: ”I can anticipate how Paul will answer so again, I’ll stay somewhat aerial on it — The problem we face now is that projects, DeFi and others tend to lean on governance. We know that’s potent when done right in terms of directing a project. That said, in the early going, what are you governing?

Too many projects use that as an excuse to create a token that they basically hand over prematurely. We will move to governance contracts in time but for it to be of value you have to build something worth governing which is why we’re here in the first place — to build a suite of products that thrive before we turn them over to the people that hold the token and drive the network. The products have to be secure and usable to benefit Bond holders.

They have to be able to iterate because things change in a hurry. Let’s make things work and allow the protocols to mature, harden incrementally. For us, I think you can see that developing an inclusive network makes it sticky and of value for token holders. Sure, fees, liquidations, rev sharing and the governance piece are solid but once you’ve got partners on board, you’ve got new communities and then you’re really onto something. NFX and what shared value and exposure can bring trip my trigger personally. This is the value.

Holding the Apex token within a thriving framework of lending products and financial service instruments to a population of tokens that is ever-growing is where the long term benefits lie.”

Paul: “For starters, the bonded finance platform will transition to a community-operated governance model to finally consolidate bonded as a pure Defi play.

As a governance asset, our community can work in harmony to optimise the performance of the network to then share in the distribution of the rewards circulating within the network.

With the amount of altcoins we are supporting and the interest premiums we collect on higher risk assets, there is a significant financial incentive that is structurally built into the BOND token.”

To Danish: Given your expertise in crypto, blockchain and at the exchange, would you like to share your thoughts on the current crypto climate with our community?

Danish: “Looking back a bit at the beginning of 2021, it was like we were back in the golden days from the trader and exchange’s perspective, but the fact that we had meme tokens making 100x should’ve been suggestive that a correction was bound to happen at some point.

A lot of users sold, but those weren’t really into crypto or blockchain, and just wanted to make some money fast, they’re pretty much all out now, but the real crypto believer stayed, the ones that see a future for blockchain and crypto, and even if the price to some doesn’t look great, to others it looks like a fantastic place to start accumulating.

Like I said the correction was inevitable, now the true question is; Will there be another correction? Or is the only way up from now? We’ll have to wait and see, but yeah, I’m bullish.”

Your project is one of the most unique ones in this crypto market. Since its a totally fresh concept, how is your team planning to bring the target market to your project?

Paul: “I think the idea is unique but within the confines of what is already existing and evolving. The target markets are the tokens we are working with and their communities. I think the island approach to a crypto project is fundamentally flawed. The opportunity lies in bonded collaborations.”

Can you explain, which one is your top priority? Security, Product, Partnership, or Token price?

Dave: “I would say the order in which you phrased the question. Security in DeFi is everything. There have been innumerable exploits and hacks already and guarding against this in concert with building the product has been a challenge but remains the priority.”

Paul, can you show us some equations that will dictate the behavior of the platform?

Paul: “We can start sharing some formulas during rollout (which you know is coming soon) but it would be a little premature to fire them out before then. Schematics and the works will be published in due time.”

Where are we in terms of the primary index?

Paul: “We’re actually playing with it right now. Just basic testing. All on schedule as per the newly issued roadmap though.”

Many DEFI project coins have plummeted over the past week. What is the Bondedfinance project doing to make a difference and improve the user experience?

Dave: “Altcoins still follow bitcoin. At some point, a project’s token has to stand on its own merit. Is it valuable to hold this token assuming there was no market to trade. I think this is the way to differentiate and the UI of course comes from continually upgrading. Too many try to finish and it’s never done.”

Is your project recommended by an existing big project or influencer or do you even have a great partner who fully supports this project?

Dave: “There are innumerable projects that support Bonded. Visit the Medium to see a rundown.”

Bonded Finance - Medium

How can we investors be sure that this isn’t another rug pull since those have happened frequently in the recent past?

Paul: “Well we are a public team for starters but most importantly is commitment to third party audits on all code and transparency with all vesting and lock ups.”

What current problems do you see in the blockchain environment that prevent you from growing and what are you doing to solve it?

Dave: “I think early-stage companies as tradable assets are hurting blockchain. Typically companies get private funding and are given time to work without being under a microscope. Fortunately, we’re finally closing in on launch and will be able to work within a framework that we had hoped for since inception.”

How are you so confident?

Paul: “It’s a natural progression for this space. Crypto needs solutions like Bonded finance to adequately mature into a robust financial system ready for mass participation.”

What’s your revenue model?

Paul: “4 primary revenue flows.

1. Network transaction fees on any successful transaction.
2. Liquidation fees.
3. Interest percentages.
4. Asset listings.”

Hi PAUL, I am wondering about catching bluefin tuna. I heard you have a yacht. Is it better to use Polymer or filament?

Dave: “If he has a yacht, I’m missing out. Monofilament is a little passe. I’ve heard good things about braided but I only fish freshwater and cast from dirty shorelines.”

I’m an American and I miss out on staking and it really kills my morale, how is platform staking looking?

Paul: “I feel you. That would frustrate me too. We do have single asset network staking built into the system but we have to adhere to our stages roll out. This was determined by our Devs as the optimal way to ensure the delivery goes well. Staking will follow the lending and borrowing integration.”

Do you plan to develop many different communities such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Korea, … about your project so that they can easily communicate and understand your project?

Paul: “Yes, we do actually. We’re speaking with a couple of foreign agents. Indonesia looks to be the next community we add to the fold.”

Thanks to all our participants and if you want to learn more about Bonded.Finance, head to their website.