Tips to Mitigate Risk in Crypto Lending and Borrowing: How Nolus Provides Safety and Security

In the fast-paced world of cryptocurrency, lending and borrowing have gained significant popularity. However, it’s crucial to acknowledge the risks and ensure the safety of participants’ funds. At Nolus, we understand these concerns and have implemented robust measures to mitigate various risks. In this article, we will explore the risks associated with crypto lending and borrowing and how Nolus addresses each, ensuring a secure and reliable platform for its users.

Nolus
Nolus
6 min readJun 20, 2023

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Loan Liquidations and Price Drops

One prominent risk in crypto lending is the potential for loan liquidations when asset prices experience significant drops. Cryptocurrency markets can be highly volatile, and sudden price fluctuations can lead to borrowers’ collateral values falling below the required thresholds. To address this risk, Nolus recommends a few proactive measures that empower borrowers to manage their positions effectively:

First, users are encouraged to keep their Loan-to-Value (LTV) ratio low, which means maintaining a higher collateral value relative to the borrowed amount. By doing so, borrowers create a cushion against price drops and reduce the likelihood of triggering liquidations. Additionally, Nolus provides borrowers with real-time information about their LTV ratio, enabling them to monitor and adjust their collateralization levels as needed in an intuitive, easy-to-use UI.

Moreover, in cases where asset prices do experience significant drops, Nolus emphasizes the importance of topping up collateral promptly. By promptly adding additional collateral, borrowers can bring their LTV ratio back to a safer level, reducing the risk of liquidation. Nolus offers a seamless process for borrowers to top up their collateral, ensuring accessibility and ease of use.

Partial Liquidations

However, if users cannot provide more collateral in time, Nolus offers partial liquidations that bring the LTV of loans back down to a safe ratio without liquidating the entire DeFi Lease. By initiating partial liquidations, Nolus aims to strike a balance between preserving the borrower’s position and mitigating the risk of insolvency for the platform and lenders. Instead of liquidating the entire DeFi Lease, Nolus selectively liquidates a portion of the collateral to bring the Loan-to-Value (LTV) ratio back to a safe level.

This approach benefits borrowers in several ways:

  1. Retaining Ownership: With partial liquidations, borrowers maintain ownership of a portion of their collateral, ensuring they still have exposure to potential price recoveries and future gains.
  2. Minimizing Losses: By liquidating only a portion of the collateral, borrowers can potentially reduce the losses incurred during price drops. This is particularly advantageous if borrowers believe that the asset’s value may increase in the future, allowing them to recover part of their collateral.
  3. Preserving Platform Access: By avoiding full liquidations, borrowers can continue to access the Nolus platform and utilize its services, including the ability to repay the loan or adjust their positions as market conditions change.

Overall, the benefit of partial liquidations offered by Nolus is that it provides borrowers with a more forgiving approach during times of market volatility. This user-centric approach reinforces Nolus’ commitment to supporting borrowers and promoting a fair and sustainable lending ecosystem.

Dodgy Smart Contracts

One of the significant risks faced by lending platforms in the crypto space is the presence of vulnerable or malicious smart contracts. If not properly audited or secured, these contracts can lead to potential exploits, hacks, or loss of funds for users. Nolus recognizes the importance of addressing this concern and strongly emphasizes the security and integrity of its platform.

To mitigate the risk of interacting with unauthorized or compromised platforms, we strongly advise users to engage exclusively with Nolus through its official web app. By bookmarking the Nolus website and using it as the sole access point for their lending and borrowing activities, users can significantly reduce the likelihood of falling victim to fraudulent or malicious platforms posing as Nolus.

Unverified Teams

In the crypto industry, it’s crucial that the teams behind lending platforms have a credible background. Nolus stands out by providing transparency and credibility. The Nolus team comprises professionals with a background in Traditional Finance (TradFi) and related sectors. This diverse expertise brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the platform, instilling confidence among users that their lending and borrowing activities are managed by a team well-versed in financial markets and best practices.

To further strengthen trust and demonstrate its commitment to security and reliability, Nolus has taken additional steps to establish transparency. The platform has undergone comprehensive audits by reputable third-party firms to validate the security of its smart contracts, infrastructure, and overall operations. These audits provide independent assessments of Nolus’ systems, ensuring they meet high industry standards and resist potential vulnerabilities or exploits. More on the audits can be found here.

Moreover, Nolus has open-sourced its code, making it available for public scrutiny. Nolus fosters transparency and encourages collaboration in identifying and addressing potential issues or vulnerabilities by allowing the community to review the underlying codebase. This open approach to code enhances the overall security and reliability of the platform, as the community’s collective intelligence can contribute to identifying and mitigating risks effectively.

High Interest Rates

Managing interest rates is essential to create a balanced lending ecosystem. Nolus offers a unique solution by allowing users to stake $NLS tokens, granting borrowers reduced interest rates on their loans, making it more affordable and advantageous. This mechanism not only promotes participation in the platform but also empowers users to have greater control over their borrowing costs.

Illiquidity

Liquidity is a critical factor for both lenders and borrowers in a lending platform, and Nolus recognizes the importance of addressing the challenge of illiquidity in the crypto lending space. To ensure a healthy and vibrant lending ecosystem, Nolus employs a dynamic approach to adjust the Annual Percentage Rate (APR) based on the platform’s utilization rate.

The utilization rate refers to the ratio of funds borrowed to the total funds available for lending on the Nolus platform. As the utilization rate increases, it indicates higher demand for borrowing and potentially a decrease in available liquidity. To incentivize lenders to provide liquidity and balance the platform’s supply and demand dynamics, Nolus employs a mechanism where the lending APR rises in response to increased utilization.

By dynamically adjusting the lending APR, Nolus offers attractive yields to lenders as the utilization rate increases. This incentivizes lenders to supply additional funds to the platform, increasing liquidity and ensuring that borrowers have access to the desired loan amounts. The higher lending APR acts as a compensation mechanism for lenders, reflecting the increased risk associated with higher utilization rates.

Simultaneously, Nolus also adjusts the interest rate for borrowers based on the utilization rate. As the utilization rate rises, the interest rate for borrowers also increases. This serves as a disincentive for excessive borrowing activity, helping to maintain a balanced lending ecosystem and preventing potential strains on liquidity.

By implementing these dynamic APR adjustments, Nolus effectively manages the challenge of illiquidity. The platform encourages a healthy equilibrium between lenders and borrowers, ensuring that both parties are incentivized to participate and that sufficient liquidity is available for lending activities.

Additionally, Nolus will tap into liquidity from multiple exchanges using ICA. This integration will allow the platform to inherit liquidity from exchanges such as Osmosis and pave the way for future collaborations with additional exchanges. By expanding the liquidity pool through interchain integration, Nolus enhances the availability of funds for lending, further addressing the illiquidity challenge.

Conclusion

Nolus stands as a reliable and secure platform for crypto lending and borrowing, prioritizing the safety of users’ funds. Through proactive risk mitigation measures, including managing loan liquidations, ensuring smart contract integrity, maintaining liquidity, and avoiding insolvency, Nolus establishes itself as a trusted partner in the crypto lending ecosystem. Users can confidently engage with the Nolus money market by following the advice given in this article and understanding the strategies we have adopted to mitigate risks.

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