K-Y-Who? De-risking DeFi for Mainstream Ethereum Growth
To safely grow DeFi for everyday users, Zuni is Re-thinking Identity, Leadership, and Trust. It’s time to move from KYC (Know-Your-Customer) to KYL (Know-Your-Leadership).
In legacy finance, user safety is guarded, in part, by a regulatory mechanism called KYC — an acronym meaning: “Know Your Customer”.
The stated objective of KYC is to protect everyday users from getting involved with malicious investment schemes, and to give an avenue of legal recourse should bad leadership exploit the public trust.
In crypto, things are a bit different.
Privacy for end-users is axiomatic to Cryptocurrency.
There isn’t much more to say about that. KYC, at best, is tolerated as a mechanism necessary to interact with Legacy Finance, and nothing more.
Any attempt to deploy KYC for Blockchain-Native applications is doomed from the start. People don’t want it. Simple as that.
While it’s ideal to preserve user privacy, there is little reason to withhold information about the people in protocol leadership positions.
What good are technical code audits when basic issues like Conflicts of Interest & Accountability aren’t even in the equation? We simply can not grow Ethereum adoption when every mainstream headline is about an exit scam.
The reputation of each DeFi team affects the reputation of DeFi in general.
Launching a new crypto protocol is an honor and a responsibility that developers should respect. Thousands of people worldwide are excited by the prospect of transforming finance to better serve the general public. That sincere excitement can easily slip into an avalanche of FOMO, and without appropriate safeguards, users will be hurt, and progress will be reverted.
Our Approach
For that reason, ZuniSwap has launched our community with clear K-Y-L: Know Your Leadership. Feel free to read more about our team.
We are real people, publicly available to communicate, answer questions, and stand accountable for our decisions as developers of an emerging Protocol.
Our team is young & new to the space. We are not asking you to trust us today.
Community First (or Community 0th)
We are taking time to develop broad community support and robust, well reviewed code designs, before releasing the $ZUNI token & the ZuniSwap Platform. If you have thoughts or questions, find us on Discord, WeChat, or Telegram. Be careful of fake $ZUNI. Stay with the tribe.
But wait…what about Satoshi Nakamoto — Our Great Anon Leader?
While our team is working very hard, we are willing to bet that none of our innovations will spark the global transformation that followed the BitCoin Whitepaper.
The idea that it’s somehow ‘cool’ or ‘credible’ for ordinary DeFi teams to go anon, asking their users to completely disregard basic issues of accountability, conflicts-of-interest, and Protocol level design —is nothing short of half-baked.
In the best case scenario, the lack of basic accountability is a roadblock to mainstream DeFi growth. In the worst case scenario, it’s outright malicious.
To sum it up: More DeFi users is a good thing for everyone.
DeFi and Ethereum are just getting started. Vitalik Buterin set the gold standard for personal, transparent accountability. It’s no coincidence that the top DeFi protocol today, Aave, has a public, accessible founder, Stani Kulechov. And the most innovative person in the space, Andre Cronje, is approachable and ready to chat with anyone.
Offer KYL (Know Your Leadership) for your users— a simple, nearly costless mechanism that can raise the standard of comfort and adoption for mainstream users, and #growthepie for everyone.