Simon Lewis on Bundles Finance decentralized prediction market

0:01i'm ashton addison from eventchain for investmentpitch media and the cryptocoin show and today on blockchain interviews we have simon lewis the founder of bundles finance simon welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time to be here today no thank you it's uh it's a pleasure to be here ashley thanks simon i i would love to kick off the interview

0:23by just hearing a little bit of bundles finance your history and blockchain and why you created the platform um so i've been in blockchain since 2017 i actually have another project that's ongoing it hasn't actually got a token but it's a blockchain based health project called elevate health and then in october of last year myself and my co-founder sid launched

0:54bundles finance we felt that one of the the main use cases for defy uh was in prediction markets um so we wanted to create a platform whereby people uh users could use their um crypto prediction skills uh to compete against other users um to win or lose cryptocurrency um so that was the founding basis for bundles

1:23thanks simon and i know that there have been prediction markets in the early days of blockchain even back in 2014-15 on centralized more centralized exchanges and order books and more recently there are d5 platforms like bundles that are coming up with prediction markets because i think that there's an unmet need in the market there and those older blockchain projects

1:46never really seem to spark an interest with a widespread audience is there something unique and different with bundles finance in terms of a decentralized prediction market that gives you a competitive advantage or will attract a lot of users um so i think we have a gamified element to our platform as well so you're competing against other token holders within the

2:12prediction pools we have live running leaderboards we have a hall of fame so we wanted to bring a gamified competitive element to it so that users would would engage and in terms of us marketing you know it's a constant marketing theme that's going on in terms of you know winners being um you know added on a on a regular basis

2:41so i think the competitive gamified element um to the platform is what makes us somewhat unique definitely and the majority of d5 applications right now are running on ethereum and we know that there's some defy setbacks i was reading into that bundles finance is also partnering with the rootstock rsk which we've had on the show and is working on smart contracts on bitcoin

3:04and other platforms as well can you talk about how focused your platform was on attracting the current d5 market in ethereum but also integrating other protocols uh that may be better suited um so originally we launched on ethereum and say we launched in october last year and you know we had very very high uh user engagement uh within the prediction pools but

3:31subsequently gas fees became um significantly higher and that made it quite expensive for people uh particularly smaller investors uh to participate within our pools so we had to find a cross-chain solution for that so i know it's it's kind of been very popular for people to to launch on finance smart chain but we actually wanted to find a

3:58cross-chain partner who was you know actually supportive and invested uh within bundles so my previous project elevate health actually shares the same venture capitalists as rsk so we had a previous relationship with them um so actually today we're launching on our our prediction pools uh on rsk and yeah they've been a very supportive

4:26partner so they've provided liquidity on rsk swap which is their version of a decentralized exchange they're also providing liquidity rewards so for fund uh token holders who provide our bund which is the bridged version of bond on our btc uh and our btc liquidity they can actually state

4:53those tokens on our platform and earn rewards in the native token of rsk which is called riff very cool simon i haven't heard of a platform partnering with rsk for a prediction market yet i have seen polygon as a layer 2 solution uh being a lot as well but rsk is definitely an interesting platform when i spoke to them

5:18and i think that it may be something that might attract other users outside of the ethereum ecosystem i'm curious your imp uh what you think of the impact of moving on to rsk from just ethereum before when you started the platform how big of a move is that going to be for growing the adoption of the platform that's i mean that was that's a very good question and it was

5:45one of the important factors that we brought into the equation with regard to who we should partner with obviously rsk have a very big south american and north american community and that's really something that i'm not sure the d5 space is previously engaged particularly the south american community so one of the main reasons why we decided to go with rsk

6:15was the fact that we'd be putting bundles in front of an audience that had never previously probably heard about it um so yeah that was a very important factor that's great to know and i do know they do have a strong presence in in south america and you mentioned with that partnership you can stake bund token and and create our bund and i'm curious to know

6:38if there's other functionalities in the prediction market or what are the main functionalities of the bund token and does it create a sustainable and rewarding ecosystem for the participants um so yeah i think this is something that we're constantly building upon is the utility of the bun token so initially you need the bun token uh to be able to stake within our

7:04prediction pools uh we're a sting a single uh a single token staking platform so you just need bond uh and then you can participate within our prediction pools but furthermore since our initial incarnation um under actually has further use case as well um so we we got quite heavily into the nft space over this year so you need the bond token to be able to stake to earn our

7:34nfts and also we've um we're developing two um sources of revenue in other tokens uh through the bond platform so first of all we're opening our prediction pools to other tokens within the uh rsk infrastructure so people will be able to stake their rift tokens or their rbtc tokens on the bundles platform and there's a network fee for doing that

8:02and also with our nft marketplace where the purchasing currency is ethereum either via a fixed price or by auction and all the fees that we earn either in rif or ethereum uh we'll be giving back to bond token holders so you can stake your bond we have a fixed supply of bond and you'll be able to earn an apy in either ethereum or riff so we think

8:30that's a really really exciting feature to have definitely that's a really exciting feature and being able to earn rewards in other rootstock platforms is a great bonus as well i think and you mentioned you're creating nfts now i know they're really hot in the industry throughout 2021 so far and an nft marketplace where those fees can go back to

8:56the bund holders that's a nice twist on these nft marketplaces i'm curious how many nfts are you creating or have you created and is this marketplace filled with bundle finance nfts already so we already have a range of uh bond nfts but actually the purpose of the marketplace is to create a a platform for other um artists or sports clubs or designers

9:27to launch nft drops so we plan to be more of an exclusive platform than other marketplaces that are available now um for example openc is a fantastic platform but it's extremely crowded and it can be very hard to to get noticed on there so we plan to be much more exclusive you'll have to be whitelisted in order to be able to launch an nft on the bundles platform um

9:55so it's going to be a lot a lot less but a lot more exclusive and high-end nfts um that will be launching very cool and how are are you going to attract more people to the nft marketplace is it going to be through specific digital art that's rare or partnering with artists or some other way that you're going to grow rapidly uh yes so what we'll be partnering with

10:24with artists we've actually got a really exciting artist who'll be launching their nft series on ombun uh his name is bran simonson um he's a he's a well-known artist sells his work for significant sums of money we also have a really exciting sports team projects launching on on the platform in july i can't say too

10:52much yet but uh yeah they're they're a very very big team that um anyone who's a football supporter would have very exciting i will look for that in july and you have a lot going on right now with the nft marketplace and the prediction market and i want to know in terms of the next six months your roadmap or milestones what are the biggest things that you're looking to

11:15deliver to the users on the prediction market um so in terms of the prediction markets um we're going to be opening up um to a higher number of assets that you can choose to predict the price of we'll also be opening more pools in terms of different reward structures um so i think in the in the cryptocurrency space it's very different from

11:422017 2018 when you know you do a raise and maybe your actual product is delivering in 6 to 18 months now the market is very impatient so you need to be constantly delivering constantly evolving um so though it's quite hard work um as a team you know we're very innovative and very engaged with bundles um so you're gonna see regular updates um throughout 2021 and beyond

12:12that's nice to know and what would you say throughout 2021 and in the next three to five years will be one of the key factors to success for widespread adoption of bundles finance um so i think i think the team um and the community we have a very very strong community um you know we we take a lot of feedback from the community and i also think we're in areas that are

12:38a very um very of the zeitgeist so both in terms of prediction markets and nfts you know they're very very popular um i mean vitalik thinks that prediction markets are the sort of key use case of d5 um and also i mean we've seen the the hype over nfts over the past few months so i think the fact that we're very much in the areas that are the most important

13:08is going to be uh extremely useful for bundles yeah thanks simon and on the flip side what are some of the challenges do you think that are unique to bundles as a d5 prediction market that you're going to have to overcome to get the widespread adoption um well i mean let me have a think about this

13:35um so i think that the level of competition you know there's a lot of projects launching um you know on a daily basis so i think keeping ahead of the competition and constantly innovating uh is is the important thing that will uh enable the success of bundles um there's new platforms new projects launching every day uh and yeah it's keeping that competitive

14:02advantage um is probably the the main important thing that we'll need to do well i think you have something really unique going on with this rsk partnership so all the best with that if there are users that are interested in looking at the marketplace or trying out the prediction markets what's the best way for them to get started and to get involved with the

14:25community so the best thing will be to go to our website which is bundles.finance at the bottom of the page you'll see our social links so we have very very active social channels in terms of twitter youtube and we have a fantastic telegram community i think one of our our key um factors is the fact we have such an engaged um and long-standing community so i'd

14:52recommend joining the telegram and you'll get a fantastic welcome thanks simon i will leave those links in the description box below for the viewers all the best with everything moving forward with bundles finance and let's follow up in the near future lovely ashton many thanks for having me on the show today all right nice work cool thank you very much

15:18thanks simon no worries i'll get this out uh in the coming days here and i'll send you an email it's going to go to multiple financial networks as well as the cryptocoin show and when you do have bigger announcements just send me a message and we can always try to do more content together lovely much appreciated no worries have a great rest of your day and i'll talk

15:41to you soon cheers thank you