Our Journey Thus Far…

Saying a lot has happened since our last blog post is definitely an understatement. To our supporters, followers, new and old friends, I want to fill you in on our journey thus far as we enter a new and exciting phase for NUTS Finance.

The Beginning

Our journey began in April 2018, right at the start of a grueling crypto winter.

Despite the harsh market conditions, we were very much locked in on the vision that aligned the core team in the first place; leveraging blockchain technology to improve the existing workflows in financial services.

We spend the better part of 2018 on researching and learning how to integrate blockchain technology with existing financial applications. Specifically, we evaluated traditional workflows such as credit scoring, balance sheet and cash flow management.

At the time, decentralized financial applications were limited. Most blockchain transactions were simple send and receive transactions; resulting in a lack of usability for financial analysis purposes. In addition, there was insignificant default data for building trustworthy credit scoring models for wallet profiling purposes.

Which drove us further down the rabbit hole of trying to solve a bigger problem; to enable financial instrument diversity on the blockchain; a missing puzzle to the ecosystem at the time.

Our approach was to build a middleware solution that would simplify the financial instruments issuance process for anyone who wishes to launch a financial application on the blockchain.

The Process

We released our first proof-of-concept lending application at the start of 2019. It was based on a peer-to-peer transaction model where borrowers and lenders have the flexibility to customize a loan offer.

The purpose of building the PoC was for us to conceptualize the key components required in building the middleware, also known as the NUTS Platform. The NUTS Platform is a collection of smart contract modules designed to support the issuance of multiple classes of financial instruments.

At the time, the DeFi lego concept was at a nascent stage and we envisioned the potential in creating a middleware solution that could empower application builders to launch a wide range of financial applications in a secure and simple way.

We were locked in on the prize and spent the remainder of 2019 designing and building the NUTS Platform. We iterated two versions (v1.0 and v2.0) and created a suite of frontend development tools that would further simplify the creation of dApps.

Progression

As we began product market fit testing in late 2019, the DeFi space was also coming to life. DeFi legos, composability, TVL were common terms and metrics being used to measure the traction of a DeFi project.

We spent the first quarter of 2020 to onboard our first pilot firm; a wealth management platform looking to issue crypto-to-fiat swap instruments. To support the initiative, we upgraded the NUTS Platform to v2.5 to include the multi-swap instrument module.

The multi-swap application was launched, but demand was lackluster due to a disappointing go-to-market effort by the pilot firm. From a go-to-market standpoint, the pilot was a failure as there was no actual usage for the application.

From the lens of application builders, the NUTS Platform proves to be a robust solution for launching secure and innovative financial applications via the simple integration of composable modules.

Fast Forward to Today

Still very much convicted in the capabilities of the NUTS Platform, we have shifted our focus to the application layer. With the current DeFi narrative quickly developing, we believe the most efficient way to increase traction is through delivering secure and useful applications.

One glaring problem we have identified is the usability of ERC-20 BTC in DeFi applications, namely:

• Limited competitive decentralized financial applications
• Susceptible to slippage when exchanging between ERC-20 BTC
• High user cost and friction in converting between native BTC and ERC-20 BTC

The lack of competitive DeFi applications for BTC holders presents a tremendous opportunity for us to introduce an application ecosystem designed specifically for native BTC and ERC-20 BTC holders.

We are thrilled to announce the launch of acBTC; the first BTC DeFi application ecosystem on Ethereum. acBTC is a composite asset made up of a basket of ERC-20 BTC, its primary use case serves as collateral and yield generating asset.

The introduction of acBTC will enable BTC holders to:

• Utilize BTC as an effective collateral asset with high degree of collateralization
• Swap between native and ERC-20 BTC at a 1:1 constant peg
• Earn effective returns through competitive yield farming opportunities

Stay tuned for more details on the official launch of acBTC!

💬 Join Us on our Journey!

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