A brief history of Plural

Written by our CEO, Viroshan Naicker:

Last year I was offered the chance to build my own Web3 startup — in insurance, with seed funding from one of the world’s most well known incubators.

The Founders Factory Venture Studio (which builds and spins-out startups from scratch) approached me to pitch for the CEO and Founder position for an insurance project on Web3. They’d done their homework, and they had the feeling that there was a billion dollar opportunity within the space that the right team could unlock: They asked if I would like to build the team, or at least pitch for the chance.

In my wisdom at the time, and having just experienced the fallout from Luna, I turned it down.

Insurance, that’s simply going to be too difficult — they have no clue how volatile Web3 really is, I am not sure that any conventional solution would work here,….Those were the thoughts revolving in my head.

But then I got to thinking; risk is the biggest unsolved problem in Web3 (and having worked on difficult problems for most of my career; including 50+ page induction proofs in graph theory and fundamental models on token systems) I changed my mind. I realized I was up for the challenge. It was time for me to take a risk.

In July 2022, I pitched for the project while carrying a cold, and started said pitch by talking about what the World Trade Center (WTC) was; There are two stories that struck me about the WTC, and have stayed with me for a long time.

One of them was about Phillipe Petit, the famous acrobat and slack-liner; Phillipe had walked between the Twin Towers, on a slack line, with a balance pole, at 1,312 feet high (400 metres) just as a challenge to himself. The second, and better known story, is one that has made it to history books as one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in western history: 9/11.

The pitch was successful, and fast forward a few months, here we are.

There are different kinds of risk under different circumstances and causes behind them — there are voluntary risks that we chose, and those risks that we cannot predict at the tails, which can wipe us out. The majority of people can deal with chosen risks, since we have agency over them. However, those that we don’t choose, that appear out of nowhere, are the ones that hit us hardest.

Insurance is that thing that is meant to help us navigate the risk space of unknowable unknowns. In crypto that could be wallet drains that cost individuals or smart contract failures that cost communities. So, while we’re early and we’re learning, the trick is to make these things cost us very little, and make it so that we can bounce back quickly and effectively.

If Web3 is going to succeed, then navigating the risk space is the big open question to answer and we’re right at the beginning of this with Plural.

For the last eight months we’ve worked on figuring out how to deal with and diversify risk through underwriting systems; tested out product ideas with Web3 natives; and spent time building a team — the right team — , to take this forward.

• The Plural whitepaper (mostly written on planes and in Cafe’s) was the first real output from this adventure and we’ve detailed some of our thinking on how insurance systems over smart contracts can work.
• The first product we are aiming to release is coverage for NFTs that covers you in the event that you are wallet drained by a malicious smart contract. We’re doing this all on-chain, and underwriting funds are segregated and claims are validated through a consensus mechanism.

All in all, we know that it won’t be easy journey, but that’s where we thrive — challenge is our forte.

There are three key threads that we’re weaving though: (1) community (2) creativity and (3) resilience. We become resilient through our communities and our creativity; and our resiliency helps make our communities and creativity thrive and adapt in the face of challenge.

Thanks you being a part of this, and let’s make Web3 resilient, together.