DCC: Distributed Credit Chain
Transforming Financial Transactions Today
The community has continously asked for more interviews since our article with BitValve and we sure got lucky (like NASDAQ level lucky)! We got a unique chance to interview the prolific Founder and CEO of DCC, Stewie Zhu about the project, where it is today, and where it’s going.
Tell us about DCC
Distributed Credit Chain (DCC) creates a credit infrastructure that allows financial institutions, pension funds, small/medium sized banks, etc. to perform borrowing and lending transactions on our public blockchain.
Why is this important? What problem is it solving?
We are building an alternative credit protocol for P2P lending processes on the blockchain that will decentralize credit for a global ecosystem. We’re giving access to credit to those people who don’t have it, known as the “unbanked.” By giving the ownership of credit data back to consumers, we can empower potential borrowers to create their own credit profile and allow them to seamlessly and securely receive loans in the form of cryptocurrency on our blockchain. This also solves the problem of powerful, centralized authorities who overcharge consumers on interest and transaction costs, as well as the cost of obtaining a credit score. With Distributed Credit Chain (DCC), costs are fixed and transparent to be more manageable for users.
This includes:
- Reducing the dominance and profiteering of traditional banks
- Protecting user data and privacy
- Eliminating the control and ownership of private data by big banks
- Improving data validation process efficiency while reducing costs
What is a real world news event or example you would reference to show the importance of DCC and its impact?
- Cybersecurity data breaches such as the one that happened with Equifax would be avoided in the credit realm. Our project would help against the “bad debt” problems (shown below) with the help of our trusted data provider partners who can verify the credit information of our users, which is all secured on our chain:
- The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission reported that non-performing loans rose 183 billion yuan ($26.6 billion) to hit 1.96 trillion yuan by the end of June 2018, the biggest quarterly jump in data going back more than a decade.
- Meanwhile, Indian banks are saddled with an estimated $210 billion of non-performing assets (NPAs)
- In Italy, over €185bn of NPLs were outstanding at the end of 2017, the most for any country in the European Union.
Let’s talk tech. What stands out as impressive with what you are doing?
- In terms of our technology, we use an IPFS-based framework for personal data management. The personal data storage function on DCC does not rely on any traditional cloud storage service provider. It is based on the IPFS structure, which enables the user to fully possess and control personal data. With DCCID (the unique ID assigned to each individual on DCC), users can interact with IPFS and manage sensitive data safely.
- Users of BitExpress, a DApp based on the DCC platform, will experience a shortened load time and make it easier to share encrypted data, as users will no longer need to send the local original data to the authorized counterparty. We expect to shorten the 20-second information loading process to about 3 seconds.
- In addition, we have SDKs for Chinese ID verification, bank account verification and mobile service carrier verification. We also plan to release an anti-fraud SDK supported by data from Ant Credit and Tongdun. The SDKs for Vietnamese personal data will also be on the Open Platform by the end of this month, which includes ID, passport, household registration, student ID, proof of income and driver’s license information. We also have a new customized DApp on the horizon for local Vietnamese customers which will help users digitize their identity info, based on a verification logic powered by DCC, with facial recognition support from SenseTime, an AI company focused on computer vision and deep learning technologies.
Tell us about your team and their experience
There are three co-founders, Stewie Zhu, Alan Wang and Cipher Tang and as well as supportive management members, detailed below:
Mr. Stewie Zhu is a serial entrepreneur in the internet and Fintech industry and scholar with multiple advanced degrees from the world’s most prestigious universities. Before founding Distributed Credit Chain, Mr. Zhu was CEO of TN Tech, a leading SaaS financial technology company in China, where he led a team to develop internet-based credit systems for over a dozen of trusts with multi-billion USD annual loan facilitation amount. Mr. Zhu was a Ph.D. candidate in Finance at The London School of Economics and Political Science with research focus on finance and game theory. Mr. Zhu also holds Master of Science degree in Financial Economics from Oxford University, Master of Science degree in Statistics from Yale University, and Master of Arts degree in Statistic as well as bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Nanjing University. Stewie successfully exited TN Tech as he sold the company to A shared listed 002537, which is China’s third largest payment company. Stewie is currently executive director of China blockchain research center, and also one of the major investors in Dragon Flyer, renowned MOM founded by Mr. Bo FENG
Mr. Alan Wang leads DCC’s global public relations, investor relations, marketing and community expansion efforts with nearly a decade of Wall Street experience. Before joining DCC, Mr. Wang led initial public offering and post-IPO investor relations activities for dozens of Chinese public companies that are listed on the NYSE and Nasdaq with market capitalization ranging from US$500 million to US$50 billion. In his capacity, Mr. Wang successfully doubled the firm’s revenue and client portfolio in four years and handles numerous critical corporate communication cases. Mr. Wang holds a Master of Science degree in Public Relations and Corporate Communication from New York University, and leads a team that all has wall street experience.
Cipher Tang, Co-Founder and CTO
Mr. Cipher Tang has over ten years of experience in fintech. Before joining DCC, Cipher served as CTO of WeXFin, which, under his leadership, became a top third-party payment company owned by a major player in the internet sector, with the largest amount of transactions. Starting 2015, WeXFin servied numerous online loan service providers, such as Qianbao and Shoujidai. Starting 2016, he startd the blockchain project at WeXFin and provided technical support to multiple projects including QUNQUN, TNB and Ruff. Also, his team established a strong collaboration with Wanxiang Blockchain and helped with the development of Juzix. Cipher also has strong connection with the product team at Baidu which will continue to provide talent for the DCC team as well.
Dr. Daniel Lu graduated from Yale University, and is an expert in mathematics and financial engineering. He has strong academic background and rich experience in investment banking and asset management. With his insights into blockchain and finance, he oversees DCC’s business model development.
Mr. Stone Shi is an expert in quantitative market making, derivative pricing, and quantitative model risk analysis. Before joining DCC, he was a vice president at JP Morgan. At DCC, Mr. Shi is in charge of market making team.
What sets you apart from your competitors?
DCC raised $26.4 million in two rounds of private sale in the form of cryptocurrency, and finished its public sale in 20 minutes, raising 14,498 ETH. There are a number of collateralized lending options in the crypto market such as SALT Lending, Ethlend, and many others, however we don’t face any notable competition in the market since we are focused on peer-to-peer lending. Ripio is a peer-to-peer credit network protocol based on co-signed smart contracts, however they only offer digital asset lending in Latin American market, and the system has not been online yet. DCC is a lending ecosystem based on credit accumulation, therefore, DCC emphasizes external credit information and endogenous credit data. Given our management team’s deep background in p2p lending and payments, we were able to create an integrated credit system based on blockchain technology.
How did the idea come about? How did the team come together?
Stewie Zhu has been exploring effective solutions to the fundamental problems in the current financial industry, caused by the centralized system. Before founding DCC, he was already working in the fintech industry. His first company provided tech solutions to mini-lending platforms in China, so he was able to dive into the market by studying their data. Stewie came to realize that the centralized system was the cause of many of the problems in the financial industry — high interest rates, lack of security, and low efficiency. Since then, Stewie has been looking for a comprehensive solution, to make the current financial systems more reliable and efficient. The nature of blockchain makes it a possible solution to the current financial industry. With blockchain technology, DCC protects users’ privacy and improve the efficiency of credit services. In our ecosystem, individual users fully own and control their credit data, while financial service providers can easily and securely obtain the necessary information to evaluate their potential clients.
What is coming up next for the project that you are excited about? What should our readers know to look forward to?
We recently entered into a JV partnership with one of the largest and only licensed payment providers in Indonesia and expect to expand our offering into this region by 2019. We are also building out one of our DApps, BitExpress to be functional for Vietnam which is up and running and will continue to develop in early 2019. We are constantly building relationships with partners which become a part of our lending ecosystem.
- Website: https://www.dcc.finance/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DccOfficial2018/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/dccofficial2018?lang=en
- Telegram: https://t.me/DccOfficial
- Medium: https://medium.com/@dcc.finance2018
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX0Y5MQwTLGPtIP1jAJm9Ng
