Fuji DAO or Fuji Finance? A soft rebranding story.
When we started Fuji (the project) back in January 2021, we had no idea of what it would become. At that time, we saw it as a hackathon project that would help us gain experience working remotely and in DeFi. During our initial brainstorming calls for the hackathon idea, we were not 100% sure what we would build. However, we were eager to test our skills. Prioritizing the core idea over the project name, we only had a few minutes in one of our meetings to discuss and set our name. During those few minutes, it was brought up how cool and exciting the 2019 DevconV in Osaka was for some of the team members that attended. Hearing the amazing stories of the time there, we moved on to discuss the iconic landmarks of the area. Among those was Mt. Fuji. “Fuji” is a short, two-syllable word, easily recognized by anyone, a majestic iconic symbol, and a bearer of memories. It is an overseer of the city too. We liked it and we took it as our name. Following that discussion, and realizing we were all from different countries, and along with the emerging idea of DAOs becoming a staple in crypto, we decided to append “DAO” to our project name. Then the team decided to move on to other subjects, and by implicit agreement, the matter was settled. We were then, the “Fuji DAO team”.
In the next meetings, we finally formulated what we wanted to build and committed our project to building the best app where users could borrow crypto assets in DeFi at the lowest interest rate possible. The idea made sense for us then, makes sense now, and it will continue to make sense in the future. The general public is yet to discover the powerful financial toolkit available for them in decentralized finance, especially when it comes to credit. We decided to build the first borrowing aggregator and started building our product and project since then.
Fast forward two years, one thing we didn’t know was that building a solid project in DeFi is very difficult. Based on personal observations, if a project magically appeared to make it easy, then it is likely just a shooting star. It comes, it glows, it fades away, with many rekt users on their way. All that said, building a solid and consistent team has been a hurdle. A hurdle that demonstrates that quality products are not built overnight, and that web3 building has many aspects that web2 has already ironed out. We began using more traditional team management methods, and the idea of the “ideal” DAO became increasingly an utopia. Now, broadly generalizing, the concept of a group of people simply gravitating around, magically distributing work, contributing at the same rate, with the same enthusiasm, professionalism, and skills is not realistic. In addition, on the subject of decentralization, much has already been said. It is not a black or white matter, but in fact, a spectrum. We do agree that all “true” DeFi projects should slowly be moving towards decentralization, however, building a well self-governed and structured DAO is a project on its own. This made us realize that, although we want to decentralize the project and operate as a DAO at some point, “decentralization” doesn’t come out of the box by simply being a new DeFi project.
When the time is right and the project has matured, we have a clear vision of what the Fuji DAO should be. We envision it as a collective, similar to a credit union, where actors will govern the protocol and work to optimize and arbitrage crypto asset money market interest rates for the benefit of smaller users. While we believe that the DAO will eventually be an integral part of the Fuji project and that decentralized governance will be used to reach consensus on decisions, we currently feel that it would be inappropriate to label ourselves as such. Therefore, we have decided to undertake a soft rebranding, shifting our focus to what the project truly is: a financial product in the DeFi space. With this in mind, we are proud to unveil Fuji Finance.
Please bear with us while our socials get updated, and follow us these upcoming weeks with the release of our V2, which is known as “Himalaya”. We are proud to share that we are breaking ground as the first cross-chain money market aggregator, and the innovations we will introduce in the future.
Want to learn more about Fuji and what we are building? Join our Discord and be a part of the discussion: https://discord.com/invite/dnvJeEMeDJ
About Fuji:
Fuji Finance built the first borrowing aggregator on Ethereum and is building the first cross-chain money market aggregator. Use Fuji Finance to make borrowing and lending in DeFi simple. Save time & money when taking out DeFi loans.
