Ankitt Gaur on EasyFi’s DeFi lending platform

0:01i'm ashton addison from event chain for investment pitch media and the crypto coin show and today on blockchain interviews we have ankit gar the founder and ceo of easyfi and kit welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time to be here thank you ashton nice to be here likewise i would love to just kick off our interview by diving right in and just

0:19starting with an overview and the focus of the ez5 platform absolutely aston so essentially easy fi is a lending platform a learning protocol which is built on matic which is now polygon a layer two layer to blockchain the idea which with with which we started with easy file is essentially d5 has an enormous supply of capital

0:45the avenues in which that supply can be deposited in a more trusted manner in terms of in a decentralized way are the ones which are yet to be explored and with that journey we started easy five so we the first challenge when we started ez5 was that of a gas problem and we saw that in times to come this problem is going to uh aggregate rather than reduce and hence

1:11we chose a layer to approach into in the beginning instead of launching on ethereum yes like any other initiative this also had some downsides but uh that's part of the deal now uh things are getting better on layer two so that was the first objective but the bigger and larger objective with which we started easy five was basically to work towards on the on

1:34the adoption and borrowing side of lending marketplaces money markets so what we are trying to build more and more interesting avenues for people to utilize their existing digital assets in different forms and be able to uh uh you know take loans for their various needs and during the show maybe we'll we'll chat about bit more on this but that is a brief about the the thesis

1:59and ethos behind easy pi well thank you for that and kit and yeah i appreciate that you mentioned talking about the borrowing side because you really need to have both sides working and we will dive into those details and and the fact that you're also building on the matic network which is now polygon uh to help with that scalability issue because that's really

2:18been a problem you know 50 to 100 transactions per you know dollars per transaction is just unfeasible especially in the micro services micro lending environment where people aren't even you know they're they're borrowing fifty dollars and then it's cost fifty dollars to do that is just unfeasible um so that's really interesting now do you have a uh something unique about easy phy

2:40that differentiates it from other lending platforms yes absolutely so uh there are many things there whether you talk about the under collateralized and uncollateralized loans that we are working on whether you talk about the most you know more innovative uh collateralization options that we are bringing in in recent last couple weeks we have launched couple

3:04new uh collateralization options and there are many mores to come as you will progress so these definitely differentiates us from a plain vanilla uh learning platform great and i think that the fact that it's also built with polygon is a unique factor as well and i just want to dive into that because people that are getting involved with defy see these transaction fees and they

3:28don't really understand you know why is it so expensive and how do we solve this and so what your team has done is partner with polygon as a layer two solution now for somebody that's borrowing or something that's lending is there a different process for this or is everything the same and does it make it easier or harder for people to lend by having a layer two solution on top of

3:49the ethereum network absolutely so uh basically that's the a problem with all layer two solutions from ethereum right now is a little bit of onboarding and upboarding hitch but once somebody moves into there and he is comfortable with that and they don't want to come back to uh ethereum that ways once they go gonna go into matic then the costs of a transaction

4:13definitely go down tremendously so if i take an example if you are taking if you want to if you have ethereum you want to take a loan against your ethereum and you want to buy let's say link against with the dollars that you take a loan then you want to sell the the link and you want to return your loan and get your ethereum free these entire six set of transactions on

4:36ethereum will cost you maybe a thousand dollars today looking at the ethereum price and the gas congestion and everything right yeah if all these transactions are you and tend to do on uh polygon on matic right you get to uh be able to do these transactions using easy fi and maybe other decks which is like a uni strap of in polygon called quick swap so if you

5:01if you uh consider easy as compound of polygon and quick swap as uni swap of polygon then then with these two products you can easily get these transactions done in less than or a dollar wow yeah that's quite a detailed thousand dollars to a dollar you can imagine that a difference right yeah the challenge uh the the other side because everything is not always as rosy and

5:24it's it's the is the part of the game right so uh the the challenge today people face is is when they don't understand they don't understand the value when they move tokens back i'm sorry when they move tokens back to uh matic from uh ethereum that is the time they there is a little bit of a delay in terms of moving it it takes five to ten minutes and then moving out from matic or um

5:51polygon to ethereum there also it takes up to 30 minutes sometimes so that is a little bit of a gap that is there but that is also getting solved gradually as in polygon is working on various different initiatives to simplify this problem similar thing is with binary smart chain so on binance margin also the costs are very low and then when you move stuff from ethereum to

6:15binance margin that's where it takes bit of a time but gradually so once that will be there uh the ideal situation in which i see should be ready and should be available in the market in overall as an industry d5 industry in 12 months or so is that you do not know ashton where your swaps are getting done all you are all you're getting done is about best gas fees

6:38so imagine what uh uh you know paraswap and all these uh kyber and all these companies did was they they gave you the best rates across multiple taxes now similarly imagine you want you said you go to a platform and you say that i want to uh swap my ethereum uh to usdc which is the best place i can get with the least amount of gas now you don't know whether this swap is

7:04happening on binance smart chain or ethereum or matic now that is the ideal world for an user definitely right this is where the industry is moving towards similarly so easy fi is here now easy fi is not just about polygon it is a multi-layer multi-chain product and with that vision easy fives is is the one is a product which is which was conceived as a universal multi-layer

7:30layer to solution where a user do not wherever there is liquidity whether it is on let us say today easy fires on polygon tomorrow it will expand to binary smart chain you know and and then wherever the the liquidity is available for whatever kind of assets for a user it's one single thing yeah that's great to know and thank you for explaining that and it

7:53makes total sense that it takes a couple extra minutes but you're saving uh potentially a thousand dollars for all of these transactions it seems worth it and even so it's going to be faster as time moves on and the platforms like easy fi evolve and just make it a more smooth process and really that's the point of getting more adoption is just lowering those

8:14barriers to entry making it easier for people to actually use the applications without a lot of technical knowledge and i know your team is working on a couple different campaigns i was reading into the do more with defy campaign that you're running can you can you talk about that campaign and what are your goals behind that oh absolutely ashton happy to talk about

8:35it so basically do mode with d5 campaign was built essentially to get give people uh more and more options to do with their assets that they have especially in the bull run to give them liquidity and be able to educate them on various things that a lot of people don't know about so most of the people in crypto markets who are not actually b5 legions they don't know how

8:59to uh leverage and benefit from their assets that they're holding and they can get more returns out of it so do more with d5 essentially is a campaign in which we we sort of are enabling those options on easy fi where people can actually come in and you know do more with stuff with what the assets that they're holding so case in point uh we did a partnership the first

9:25partnership under do more with d5 with boring dao which is essentially a a a non-erc token rails to erc20 erc20 ecosystem wherein uh communities of uh ltc bitcoin cash nem can actually participate into the whole d5 ecosystem uh via boring dow uh rails now imagine this you have ltc and today

9:54you cannot uh or a bitcoin cash you cannot really put them as collateral on erc20 and take a loan against it now you you want to keep your bitcoin cash and you want to continue with your position in bitcoin cash so using boring dao you can bring that in get it wrapped up on erc20 and then put that as collateral on easy fi and take a loan against it so you got

10:17liquidity now right and with that liquidity you can do amazing stuff in bull run number one yeah similarly similarly uh we have recently started state derivative assets that's one of the most interesting and and an initiative very very close to my heart personally is because it is enormously utilizing the the value of your assets which are locked in

10:41point of this proof of state blockchains right now what happens is so so there are uh there was an evolution from proof of work blockchains like bitcoin ltc ethereum it is now moving towards proof of stake blockchains like polygon binance smart chains etc but even in including even easter east 2.0 for that matter now uh with all these pro uh point uh

11:07this proof of stake block chains what happens is that you deposit your assets for staking in these chains so that you can continue to get rewards now consider this as a fixed deposit where you have invested money and you are getting a return on top of it now to unlock this there were liquids taking companies which came in so liquid staking companies came in they

11:33started to give you a proof of your investment of the uh as a as a token as a derivative token that you have invested let's say a thousand ethereum in each 2.0 as your stake and then you get a derivative token against it fantastic you got it but now what we'll do about it what will you do with it unless there are more avenues right so easy if i gave

11:54that avenue where you can put that asset as a collateral and you can get liquidity out of it that's great so so so you you you have matic your stake matic while your original matic are still earning interest now there's taking rewards that is a death you get a derivative matic token which you bring to easy fire put it as collateral and you take usdt

12:19yeah double win so so so that's what the that's what uh do-more with d5 is all about and there are many more such uh interesting collateralization options uh uh planned in the queue for people to be able to do more with d5 that's great and kit and that's sort of you talked about staking and um voting with voting down in governance a little bit and i'm curious to know

12:44if the easy token is incorporated into the platform through those functionalities as well or is there a token economic system in the platform and how is it sustainable okay so uh definitely one of the most important uh function of easy token is going to be governance then as i said we are going to go multi-chain so another uh important function that easy token

13:07will perform is going to be acting as a settlement instrument across multiple chain inflow outflow because there the the transactions will have to happen in real time then in that particular case easy will play a more very important role as a cross settlement across ah cross chain settlement currency and then over moreover there are other options other incentivization

13:32programs that we are running for the community from in the concept in the context of staking community incentivization user acquisition so these are the important roles that that ez is playing that's great and you do have quite a bit of campaigns going on right now can you give a glimpse into the road map or if there's anything big that's coming up for easy phy you know throughout this

13:55bull run or at least in the next six months uh yes there are many things that we are working on the product side as i said we are the all our uh options uh are working and driven through a framework so we don't do random partnerships we don't do random stuff many people in crypto in the past have been doing random partnerships just for the sake of partnerships so easy five one is very

14:19very selective for when it does a partnership it is always aligned and driven with a particular campaign or a particular framework of things that we are building towards uh so uh towards a particular initiative case in point we recently did two partnerships but both of them were aligned with the derivatives take tokens for example we did with ramp we did with staffing

14:41both are liquid staking companies and we have couple other lined up for with liquid sticking companies so that we give people more and more options to bring it from more and more platforms to come into easify and accept their derivative tokens stake derivatives against lending similarly we will have couple more campaigns where we are trying to open uh or i would say

15:04enable more innovative collateralization options so rather than so so a big differentiator between compound ave or cream finance and easy fi is the kind of collateralization options that you get on easy fire are not available anywhere so so so that's the that's a very very unique point about ev5 because the the collateralization options we are consciously working on it and

15:30rather than just random listing many people come and ask us why don't you load listeners why don't you list that my answer to them is guys if you want to really just stay land btc and borrow usdt you have compounded now a boss why do i you need easy five yeah ideally easy fire is supposed to be making a difference yeah well like compound and now we're

15:52not giving you an option to stake to to lend your uh to use your deri and derivative assets as a collateral and give you usd tell me one lending platform which is doing that no one yeah and that's the difference between ez5 and others that's great now ankit we're running out of time but on the flip side i want to ask you about do you foresee any upcoming challenges or obstacles

16:15as you continue the growth to towards more mainstream adoption with easy fi oh yes uh again as i said and these are like core interrelated and uh like we subscribe for these challenges by choosing to go with the layer two but essentially that is the future and that is where the direction and industry is moving towards the biggest challenge is towards

16:38sourcing the liquidity on the protocol so we we initially had a very interesting and innovative incentivization program so we were we were clocking like a 44 50 million worth of tvl and loans so we gave out 30 million dollars worth of loans in first 36 hours which no layer 2 platform has ever done so we we understand that okay people had that appetite

17:03to do things the only thing is they need to be incentivized better and we we did stop the rewards uh and hence the liquidity died down and people sort of moved on so so liquidity and continuous supply of money from layer 1 to layer 2 is a challenge which we think is there and definitely is going to be solved but the point is we know how this can this will be solved

17:26as a matter of choice so we are first bringing on setting the whole machinery up once the whole machinery is there the liquidity as a fuel will have will be brought in with various different incentivization programs and then the machine is running great well thank you for that and we're at a time but the viewers that are looking to get involved with the

17:47easy five communities and just learn more about easy fi and use the platform what's the best way for them to get involved they should join our telegram easy fire official okay sounds great i will leave that link in the description box below thank you and for coming on the show it's been a pleasure learning more about easy fi and all the best with these campaigns and updates

18:07that you have moving forward and let's follow up in the near future thank you ashton have a nice day bye bye