Do DeFi Better: The Need for Functional, Familiar, and Fun Finance

Most agree that we are in quite the bear market at the moment. The price of Bitcoin — the ever-accurate representation of crypto health — sunk from nearly $70,000 in November 2021, to hovering around its 2017-high of $20,000.

Some of the catalyzing factors causing the crypto bear market include macro-economic factors out of the control of crypto fans — such as the War in Ukraine and the Tech Layoffs. However, there have also been internal factors that have led to these bearish times.

The collapse of FTX was a huge black swan event that rocked investor confidence in crypto, but some other slightly more minor collapses followed it. Terra, Celsius, and Three Arrows Capital all imploded quite suddenly, and unfortunately, they sparked a move away from DeFi protocols.

Moreover, with the recent surge in interest rates, inflation levels — and the so-called “risk-free” rate of return on six-month Treasury bills surpassing 5% — investor interest in decentralized options appears to be diminishing.

More recently, the banking sector has been under pressure with three important banks going under. This has actually been positive for the price of Bitcoin, and indirectly for DeFi; bank failures like this highlight the inherent dangers of CeFi and prove a need for DeFi.

DeFi, like all global markets, is going through a cycle. The problem lies with the players operating within the market rather than the technology itself. What we know of DeFi, which burst onto the scene, is probably gone, but we have a chance for a rebirth.

Functional, Familiar, Fun

Cryptocurrency itself is still incredibly niche; this makes DeFi proportionally even more niche. It has had its big moment in the spotlight, but perhaps it got too close to the lights and melted its wax wings.

For DeFi to make its comeback, it needs stronger products capable of solving real-world problems.

Varun Kumar, founder, and CEO of the decentralized exchange Hashflow, told Cointelegraph:

“This quick growth was a great Kickstarter for the space and created a lot of opportunity. However, now that conditions are different and volumes are much lower, business models and value propositions are being reshaped. Superior products will always win, from which consumer confidence will follow.”

At Pollen, we believe in this sentiment. We want to do DeFi better by creating a functional, familiar, and fun platform.

Pollen, at its core, is a trading platform. It is as familiar as any other Web2 trading platform in that users can build their portfolio on an easy-to-use and functional app, and look to make as much profit as their experience allows.

However, it is also Web3 enabled, allowing collective intelligence to dictate the direction of the trades.

As an active trader on Pollen, you strive to make good trades, earn reputation, and be rewarded as passive traders look to copy-trade from your successes. As a passive trader, you choose your successful active traders, learn their strategies, and profit from copy-trading.

The information that accumulates through group trading also allows for valuable data, which we use for community-curated, asset-backed Pollen Indexes. These upcoming Index funds are informed by collective trading of the top traders, and with dynamic rebalancing — every 24 hours — the Hive Mind of Pollen can keep users in the best position.

Familiar and functional are two aspects that most consumer apps would be striving for, but at Pollen, we want DeFi also to be fun. Asset trading brings possibilities of profit-taking and chances to land big trades, but we take this further with products like Leagues.

Our Leagues product allows you to set up your own championship trading league, setting up who you trade against in your community — be that your circle of friends, family, colleagues, or followers. We have also designed these leagues to cater to everyone — it doesn’t matter if you enter with 500 PLN or 5M PLN, your gains are taken as a percentage when it comes to leaderboards.

Expanding on the current version of Leagues, Leagues PRO will soon introduce branded, NFT-ticketed leagues curated by partners and influential crypto communities to give you the opportunity to earn prizes on Pollen and beyond.

Ready For The Next Wave

The next wave of DeFi will be built with the customer in mind. It will have to be familiar,

functional, and fun, but the projects re-shaping the next wave will be robust with strong fundamentals and real-world use cases. These are the projects that will continue to flourish and gain traction, even in challenging economic conditions.

At Pollen, we are aware of the precarious market position that we find ourselves in, and that is why we are working to give our customers more. We want you to have more peace of mind, more ease of use, more opportunities, and of course, more fun!

About Pollen

Pollen is a first-of-its-kind Virtual Trading Arena where the community holds all the power. Decentralized finance is designed to be by the people, for the people, and Pollen is acknowledging this by building the first, truly decentralized platform for measuring trading skill and on-chain reputation with its Pollen Virtual suite of products.

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