#BuiltOnDAPP: Chintai Merchant Network
Chintai Launches DAPP Token Leasing Marketplace Bringing DeFi to the DAPP Network
#BuiltOnDAPP is a LiquidApps blog series that spotlights the exceptional projects and teams building scalable decentralized applications which utilize the DAPP Network universal middleware of services. This series showcases some of the most cutting-edge use cases and remarkable projects being built on our platform today.
We spoke with Ryan Bethem, COO of Chintai, a comprehensive DeFi exchange for digital assets/resources.
Q: Could you introduce Chintai and some your core service offerings?
Ryan Bethem: We offer a range of services including token leasing, automated resource management, and white labeled products for institutional finance and commercial business. Our goal is to remove the technical challenges that have historically hindered meaningful adoption of blockchain technology so that businesses and entrepreneurs can focus on market delivery.
Our team has deep roots in institutional finance, so we’re very focused on that market opportunity, while being agile enough to pivot towards opportunities as they arise. Similar to how a platform like Shopify offers the means for anyone to easily sell products in a custom storefront, Chintai provides infrastructure for financial institutions to support custom issuance and trading of securitized assets on blockchain.
We just recently signed a letter of intent with a company in the San Francisco Bay Area called CinderBlox, who will use our technology for issuance and secondary trading for a $27M tokenized real estate development in Chicago.
Q: What role does Chintai play in the DAPP Network ecosystem?
Ryan Bethem: Our first offering as a project was token leasing. Most recently, we built a leasing market for the DAPP token. As your community knows, businesses need DAPP to access DSP packages. Under normal circumstances, this means businesses would need to buy the DAPP token and stake them to a DSP of their choice.
The DAPP token leasing market on Chintai enables businesses to decouple token ownership from token utility. This allows businesses to borrow DAPP instead of owning it in order to stake for DSP services. As a business this means you can pay as you go rather than tying capital in DAPP tokens and therefore being exposed to its market conditions. Everyone who has run a startup knows how important it is to create as much predictability whenever you can with your balance sheet and have capital on hand to induce growth.
Off the back of this leasing market opens a genuinely exciting proposition — using the DAPP token leasing market and LiquidLink as a gateway for ANY chain to leverage DAPP network tools.
It’s no secret that chains like Ethereum and others have tremendous value rooted in robust decentralization and a high-quality developer community. But the missing link (no pun intended), is a way to build high-throughput dApps that don’t overexpose end-users to the inefficiencies of blockchain technology and leave developers with burdensome technological overhead. LiquidApps solves these issues as a middleware software provider. Chintai can act as the connective tissue that allows other blockchains to access the tools with our DAPP leasing market. We have an idea of how we can essentially create a “middleware environment” whereby all of the tools in the DAPP Network can be used by developers of any protocol, and access DSP packages for these tools by using the Chintai leasing market. I can’t say much more, but I think it’s a game-changer for the industry if done correctly.
Potentially nearer term we will model out using LiquidLink for EOSIO cross-chain functionality of the Chintai DAPP leasing market. This will include accessing DSP packages on other EOSIO chains with DAPP tokens on EOS mainnet.
“The DAPP token leasing market on Chintai enables businesses to decouple token ownership from token utility. This allows businesses to borrow DAPP instead of owning it in order to stake for DSP services. As a business this means you can pay as you go rather than tying capital in DAPP tokens and therefore being exposed to its market conditions.”
Q: What is Chintai’s business strategy for scaling its services beyond EOSIO?
Ryan Bethem: Our approach is chain agnostic. Since we’re mainly focused on institutional finance, we’ve found that many people are building on public chains like Ethereum and Tezos. The protocols have some advantages, but when it comes to speed and fees, EOSIO is simply a better choice. You cannot build deep liquid markets when there isn’t enough speed and the fees are prohibitive.
There are several teams working in the issuance space but don’t have their technology built on EOSIO at all yet — but want to access the benefits. We believe LiquidLink will play an important role here. Porting assets from different chains to an EOSIO chain for secondary trading is very valuable.
This is just one example of how the DAPP Network can help us.
Q: Describe Charm, your automated resourcing service, and how does it plan to integrate with DAPP Network?
Ryan Bethem: Glad you asked. So Charm is simple. Automatic allocation of blockchain resources and utility. For people who don’t know, many times you need network resources or some form of token utility to transact and keep the engine running on blockchains. So in the case of the DAPP Network, you’re required to stake DAPP tokens to access DSP service packages. The amount of DAPP you need to stake is based on your usage. With Charm, we will build functionality for the DAPP Network whereby businesses automatically allocate DAPP to the packages they need on the fly. No manual handling. No guessing. No downtime. Just let it work for you and focus on building. As you can tell, everything we build is meant to keep people focused on building and market delivery — not focused on all this backend clunky blockchain stuff that makes working on this technology unreasonably difficult. This general approach is where Chintai and the DAPP Network are “kindred spirits” in my opinion.
Chintai can act as the connective tissue that allows other blockchains to access the tools with our DAPP leasing market. We have an idea of how we can essentially create a “middleware environment” whereby all of the tools in the DAPP Network can be used by developers of any protocol, and access DSP packages for these tools by using the Chintai leasing market.
Q: How can DeFi go mainstream, and how will it balance regulation while keeping true to decentralization?
Ryan Bethem: DeFi can go mainstream a few different ways and I’ll highlight a couple. First way is a protocol like Equilibrium or MakerDAO getting enough traction in societal fabric. These collateralized stablecoin projects are very interesting and exciting to observe. However, there is way too much friction and confusion about how to use these platforms for your “average Joe”. Crypto, in general, is not trusted or known about. Those products are mostly interesting to finance tech geeks like us. There are all sorts of problems with regulators and stablecoins. I love what those teams are doing but I have some doubts. I hope they prove me wrong.
But a second option is far more likely to go mainstream and be impactful — integration into existing institutional finance. That’s what we are doing. It’s more of a “regulated DeFi” approach.
We’ve already spoken with and had asset management firms approach us about porting their existing assets to blockchain. And the reason why they would do this is really simple. Asset management companies have one goal — build wealth. And we can save institutional finance well into the billions. Why? The way assets are stored, handled, and managed is like using morse code when compared to what’s possible with blockchain technology. Chintai technology is the “smartphone” that makes the old system obsolete. The writing is on the wall. Everyone who knows finance and blockchain knows this is coming.
So why not do this on ETH, Tezos etc.? Some asset managers are, and we’re partnered with teams who focus mostly on issuance for those platforms. But when it comes to things like secondary trading, you need high performance. You also need compliance baked into the blockchain and token layer itself. Otherwise the logic needs to go off-chain and you lose efficiency and regulatory oversight. EOSIO is superior in that sense. We can keep everything on chain, which is what regulators want, while offering a high-performance solution. Everything about compliance is baked into the chain, account, and token layer. It’s extremely unique in the current market landscape.
The main benefit from blockchain technology that links back to what one might say is a part of the original ethos of this revolutionary technology, is that our technology not only saves institutional finance money, but it makes the financial system transparent and accessible to a broader range of participants. Normally regulators rely on reporting, which can be, and is manipulated. So in this sense transparency brings fairness. Second, because the existing systems are so damn clunky, the costs are passed back down to consumers, which makes getting into the investment class very, very difficult. If you live in America you know that we have two economies — the wage economy and the stock market. Only 15% of Americans have access to the investment class — and we’d like to change that with more efficient technology.
Q: What does the rest of the Chintai Roadmap look like for 2020?
Ryan Bethem: Our 2020 roadmap and goal are expansion and execution on everything we’ve been building for the past two years. We’re finishing up a couple core deliverables while we focus on institutional finance. This includes finalizing the last leasing markets and getting smart matching live. And as I mentioned before, we’re very keen on providing these “middleware” gateway for any blockchain to access the DAPP Network tools. That’s high on the list.
Beyond that we’re raising capital for a seed round and focused 100% on implementation in institutional finance. The market opportunity is clear, our technology is ready, and we’re smelling blood.
Stay tuned for more of our #BuiltOnDAPP Spotlight Series, where we’ll highlight some of the most remarkable projects utilizing the DAPP Network Universal Middleware to scale their decentralized applications.
If you have a project you’d like to share with us, please email contact@LiquidApps.io.
