A conversation with Luca, Co-Founder and Chief Researcher at Cryptoverse.ch
How did you come to start a DeFi project and when did the journey begin?
My journey into blockchain and cryptocurrencies started in 2016. I’d been working in investment and had already had two tech start-ups in the past, so it was natural for me to completely fall in love with the potential of this new technology.
I’ve worked as a consultant for various DApps and been part of the Cryptovalley Association in Zug for several years. Then last year I decided that DeFi was the right market to build something on my own and leverage the relationships and knowledge that I’ve accumulated over the past five years.
Why knights? What’s the story behind this theme?
This is crypto space, and people love themed projects. We thought KingDeFi was a powerful name, and then from king to knights, and then into the medieval theme.
How are you backed? Is KingDeFi self-funded?
As I mentioned, I discovered cryptocurrencies in 2016, so not super early but early enough. My background is mainly in investment banking. I’ve been developing TA algorithmic strategies for several years and have made a fairly decent profit.
Naturally, part of those profits have been allocated to KingDeFi, and we’ve collected around 1 million in IDO, which is currently allocated to run the project for some years.
A few of the team, like you, are based in Switzerland, and many foundations, like Cardano, Ethereum, and Web3 Foundation, are also based here. Do you maintain relationships with these teams?
Yes, we’re very close to some important players in Zug. The CEOs of some Zug-based companies have been in contact with me in the past, some have now even switched from banking to crypto firms. Naturally, I can’t name any names for privacy reasons, but we meet on a weekly basis. The next step for KingDeFi is to become a more institutionalised and regulated business, starting next year.
How do you intend to stand out from the competition and attract users?
There are some fundamental competitive advantages that we’re going to leverage as soon as the market stabilises:
- Most projects promise more than they can deliver. We have a very ambitious roadmap, and as of now, all milestones have been delivered on time.
- Most projects out there are run by unprofessional, amateur people, which means that they won’t last long, as building a business isn’t only a matter of collecting money and having a big market cap but also a matter of experience, relationships, and good product development.
- Regulatory: people don’t get that investing in a Swiss-based start-up in crypto means that the company they invest in can act in a friendly regulatory environment. Most of our competitors are based in China and the US so who knows how long they’ll be allowed to run their business.
Your roadmap is fully packed: double reward farms, portfolio tracking, eth/poly/heco/sol/ada integrations, bridge, dex, mobile apps, etc. Which feature do you think will gain you the most attraction/growth?
Each milestone is key, as in my vision they are all connected: bridge brings expansions to other chains, so more partnerships, and it helps inflation management, spreading our circulating supply to seven chains; farms bring new investors; mobile apps improve user experience, etc. I try to always keep a holistic vision of the project, ensuring that each milestone fits in with next year’s plan.
Many projects have a convincing roadmap, but only a few are able to implement it accordingly. What is it about you that could convince investors of your ability to execute and create demand?
It’s very simple. As of right now, we’ve delivered on our milestones every time, even adding more to the roadmap over time. This is one of our biggest strengths so far.
I read in an AMA that you talked about institutional service offerings. What’s that all about?
So, at the moment we’re a DeFi project, but we have very strong relationships in Zug, and we’d like to keep the DeFi technology background and provide access to more institutionalised investors in the coming years. We’re currently starting a POC analysis with PWC Zurich to understand how to sort out the KYC part and leverage institutional access to our platform, which is a similar model to Swissborg.
Tokenomics is a complicated topic for many. What does your inflation curve look like? What’s the key to sustainable price development?
I usually write bi-weekly updates on our inflation management views:
https://medium.com/kingdefi/ceo-views-inflation-management-c391d81d574b
1. We moved on seven chains in order to open doors for new partnerships and provide strong buying pressure in economies where KROWN isn’t well known.
2. We’re working on a new smart contract, which will be launched in October. It’s integrated with a strong buyback KRW mechanism. This new feature will drastically help inflation management.
Any TVL growth forecast or TVL that you’ve set as your goal by a certain time?
TVL is the worst measure for evaluating the quality of a project, but unfortunately for most people new to DeFi it’s still used as a misleading metric.
We only issue native farms, meaning there is always a KRW in the LP when the farm is rewarding in KRW. In this way, investors are forced to stake KRW in order to be rewarded in KRW: TVL/MC ratio is then set at a target of 1:1, and inflation is managed better.
If a project has high TVL from non-native farms, the project is extremely dangerous. It means they’re minting their native tokens out of non-native LP pairs.
What’s your view on the next inevitable bear market? What’s the secret to surviving such a market as a new project?
These are normal conditions in crypto. It’s a cyclical market where some big regulatory frameworks need to adapt to this new technology.
What I see as a big difference, with respect to the previous 2017 cycle, is that a lot of engineers and CEOs accumulated enough budget to run projects for the next 3–4 years, so the financial barrier (which is one of the most important) is now sorted out.
At KingDeFi we’re planning to do the same. We’ve accumulated reserves to keep up development for the next 2–3 years. Plus, investing this money in the project generates goodwill, which can be targeted by some VCs in case the bear market takes longer to recover.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this interview, we’re not an amateur team, I’ve been working at investment banks for 10+ years.
Finding capital and partners to keep running the project is the least of our concerns.
When you look at the major Layer 1 ecosystems (eth, sol, bsc, ada, luna), which one are you the most bullish on and why?
Definitely Solana. I love the fact that it’s written in Rust, which makes it quite unique and in certain aspects safer, and also the potential behind their infrastructure is great. If they find a good way to decentralize their node control and avoid recent issues going forward, it will probably be one of the most successful chains of the future.
I’m still completely in love with ETH. ConsenSys is a great company and I always prefer ecosystems and foundations that have a strong business partner behind research teams.
You can invent the most beautiful piece of technology in the world, but if nobody uses it or sells it in real life, it’s worthless.
What project, besides KingDeFi, are you the most bullish on in general?
Crypto.com is one of the projects that I admire the most. They’re really helping crypto adoption. They have a real use case and continue to facilitate crypto access to people on a global level.
Our members are actively staking in KingDeFi and so far they’re quite enthusiastic, especially because of the high APR. Is there anything else you’d like to share with our community? Maybe an announcement? Of course, no one will say anything ;)
Yes. As you’ve seen, we’ve developed a new model of continuous contract interaction compounding:
https://medium.com/kingdefi/auto-compounding-explained-462819df8cf6
This is a very innovative way of compounding, as the more time you compound, the more you perform. So, we’ve started developing a smart contract that, like Beefy, allows our users to stake LPs other than KRW, and get rewarded in other tokens.
For example, you can stake BNB-BUSD and earn CAKE but at a higher APR due to this compounding model that will overperform Beefy vaults, and also a PCS manual one, which doesn’t have a continuous compounding model integrated.
We’ll also charge lower fees than these competitors, and a portion of the performance that we’ll generate due to this innovation will go towards automatic KROWN buyback.
Long story short:
- Our users can stake various LPs and earn tokens other than KRW.
- Performance APY & APR will be much higher than our competitors’.
- Overall fees will be much lower, around half of what our competitors currently charge.
- Buyback KROWN mechanism will really help inflation.
- Strong scalability, as we can launch ten farms per week, on average.
- Big TVL growth for the project without distributing KROWN, except for current native farms.
About Cryptoverse.ch
They’re the interface between Cryptoland and retail investors. They offer workshops and one-to-one trainings. The regular Cryptoletter uncovers fundamentally strong projects. Besides that, they work with an asset manager who allows them to invest cryptos for individuals. They also advise companies to migrate traditional applications, offerings and online services to the Web3 infrastructure. They believe in the future of digital assets.
