Ugo Aronu on Xend Finance’s lending protocol for cooperatives

0:01i'm ashton addison from eventchain for investmentpitch media and the cryptocoin show and today on blockchain interviews we have ugo oronu the ceo of zend finance ugo welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time to be here thank you very much i really appreciate it very happy to be here likewise i'm excited for our discussion let's just dive right into it by

0:22starting with an overview and the focus of zen finance and the problems that your team is solving for right great um so zen finance um is actually a defined platform for cooperatives and for credit unions the idea behind zen finance is to provide a platform for these um cooperatives and credit unions to be able to earn interest in stable currencies

0:52and also and um zen tokens as rewards you know when they save or perform some operations on the send finance protocol and zen finance as a platform is actually aggregating different lending protocols to be able to give very high yields to these cooperatives and credit unions okay and now one very interesting thing about zen finance is the audience that we're targeting so

1:18we're actually targeting people who are not crypto savvy people who don't even understand they value who don't understand crypto but people who need the value that crypto has to offer right people who are living in um financially um on those who are financially underserved people who are living in unstable economies these are people that really need the

1:42real value of crypto these are people that really need to have their assets protected people who are living in uh who have faced multiple devaluations like where i come from right nigeria we're based in africa you know these are people that need it and that's why we created tech finance to solve these problems and we are super excited to like have made

2:03this yeah that was like a brief overview on definitely and that's a great intro ugo thank you for that and what i find really interesting that you mentioned is the credit unions and you know getting smaller businesses and it usually decentralized finance are focused on very consumer level which you are as well but it's interesting to throw in you know credit unions and banks and things

2:28like that which need to get involved in this and they need to get up to speed as well um can you talk about why you chose that ally to to start zen finance in okay yeah so the answer to that question is um i'm actually a part of a credit union i belong to corporate myself you know my mom and a lot of people i know belong to chief train competing care in nigeria

2:55actually um cooperatives and credit unions have um assets okay globally what's over manager says what's over 2.2 trillion dollars right the market size over 1.4 trillion it's it's actually a market where a lot of people don't really or a lot of blockchain or crypto projects have never really focused their attention and bringing this back to nigeria bringing this back to africa you

3:22know we've realized that these are people that really need um g5 these are people that really need the value that crypto has to offer now because most of these unions most of these corporations come together to do things like savings they come together to take loans you know to help them start up the project to help them support their family pay their kids through school

3:47right but these credit unions usually don't even get a lot of support from financial institutions because most of them are even on register right most of them are actually operating in like an info but that is where a lot of you know there's a lot of money there's a lot of value there and we realize that if these credit unions right still operate in this manner they are

4:11going to phase out with time because they're not getting real value they're not getting support and this is why the blockchain was created this is why we have d5 to be able to take people right from where they are give them access a global money market without going through things like um the banks or going through any middle man right that is why we

4:35created and that's why was made and that is what we are now taking because they are the ones that really needed they have a lot of value but they are not getting what they are supposed to get we you know they are not getting the real um value out of what they are doing they are not getting the real value out of their regular operations because you know the financial

4:56institutions are not able to really help them or are not they are they are probably taking so much from them rather than giving back but now the difference all that is going to be in the past because they are going to be able to gain real access actually protect their um assets gain very good ap wise and even end rewards right by actually leveraging defy and we are

5:21going to treat that gateway so hugo you talked about bringing value to the consumers and how you're connecting with multiple lending protocols to provide liquidity can you just talk a little bit more about what are the specific lending protocols how it switches between them and how consumers can access that easily okay so um there are defending protocols

5:45um you have um compound you have a you have a full chrome you have gydx you have d5 you have things like m stable so um there are different lending protocols um currently like on the ethereum blockchain so one of the things we're doing is um we are aggregating these protocols right by removing fonts right from one protocol let's say for example we look at all the

6:10protocols and we see the ones with the best um apis so we just move funds from the current one and move it to that one with the best api so you can give the best payouts or the best interest to the users or to our users and one of the things we've done in order to make this very easy right for us without trying to reinvent the wheel is by leveraging a protocol

6:33um yen finance so jan already does that for some of these protocols right so um he tried to actually reduce the amount of work we had to do okay by leveraging hearing so for the remainder of the protocols that are not supported by them we actually give our users the option users can actually just switch between those protocols as well yeah so this is how we're able to achieve this

6:56and as time goes on we're actually even i'm getting more partnerships with more protocols that give very good apy so over time we're going to have um like a large array of multiple protocols that at every point in time these users are getting very good apis and there's no limit really to how big their interests can be because that's the good thing about our protocol

7:18we don't let's say shut out some interest and then keep some you know everything is open so as much as it gets it goes back to the users yeah wow that's very interesting and one of the things that's really being a big burden in the decentralized finance industry right now is the ethereum transaction fees and you know when you get access to those decentralized markets

7:42all of a sudden it doesn't really work for you know the people that you're trying to target if you're using the ethereum protocol where if you're trying to do a micro loan or you're trying to do a 20 transaction you know the transaction fee is the same cost or even more right now but i know that zend is working into the binance chain network and also just

8:02cross-chain decentralized finance to try and solve these issues and i guess be more of a business maximalist and find you know where can we find the best network you don't need to work on ethereum if that's not the best choice for you know zen's protocols then we're not going to use that can you just talk about the cross chain d5 strategy and and why

8:21you're choosing binance as well to provide the best best value with these liquidity protocols yeah very very well um very very very good uh thing you pointed out there so we're building on the finance smart chain actually right and we our test net active laws on the finance marching okay and immediately the balance matching got launched i mean we were very excited

8:44because we have built the first version of our system on the ethereum blockchain and of course we know that an ethereum is plaguing some of these problems such as very high piece congestion of the network you know um delaying transactions or some of these things but then you know we've actually built our tests that are going to be building the second

9:03version of our maintenance of the finance matching and why we chose the binary smart chain is one the finance matching has um cross-chain functionality right it's interpretable across multiple blockchains fees are extremely low okay because fees are extremely low you also have a very fast transaction that has like very high teeth which is highly secure

9:23so when you have multiple transactions it doesn't mean that fees will you know go very high or go high like um the ethereal blockchain and this really serves the kind of people we're actually trying to target just like people in africa people in this south eastern asia and some other regions of the world who have very small amounts of money you don't expect them to spend maybe on

9:47a ten dollar transaction spend 30 dollars to process a ten dollar transaction that's just outrageous that's too high so because of um the financing because of the binance marketing and the features okay it presents it makes it very easy for us to be able to give much more value to our users give them very cheap transactions and very fast transactions as well and

10:10the beauty of the binance matching is it's going to connect easily and seamlessly with the ethereum blockchain right because of the interpretability so we don't have any problems at all with having um our projects our protocol running on the binance market and on through blockchain right because of the cross-chain functionality it makes everything very seamless

10:31so we're really excited to be working with on the binaural smart change and we're also very happy that we're going to be giving these users access to very cheap transactions and very fast transactions as well yeah it's going to be so interesting to see how this whole decentralized finance movement plays out because this is growing so exponentially and you know binance has been growing

10:54uh even more exponentially than than ethereum in throughout 2021 in in this almost like a version 2 of decentralized finance and i think that you know we're still at the very beginnings it's going to explode now one of the other ways that i see that zen finance is like adding more value to the consumers and just the protocol overall is the zend token i just want to touch

11:18on that briefly in terms of you know can you just describe the main functionalities of the zen token inside of the ecosystem and does it create a sustainable ecosystem for zen oh yeah so yeah so one of the functionalities of design uh token is uh governance right so because of our system is actually a decentralized system so we want people to be able to

11:42make a proposed votes you know vote on certain actions or maybe some parameter changes and then those votes the the code or the contracts that will affect those changes will be put in place so governance is one thing so it gives people the power to govern that which is very essential that's one two is with our tokens people can actually take people can stick those tokens right

12:06so you can take those tokens and actually end some more tokens in future right so you can lock up the tokens and another thing we do is um rewards and you know the distribution of our tokens so to make the protocol um or to drive adoption right instead of probably just giving out you don't just distribute tokens for free we encourage people to perform operations

12:29on the protocol and then end tokens for example we have multiple savings strategies currently implemented so as you perform a savings strategy as you have um deposits on our platform on the protocols you have funds locked on the protocol within a certain period of time you end a setting and fraction of um tokens or certain personal sentences how it's implemented can actually be

12:53found on the light paper right so and the code is actually going to be open source so people can read it to see how everything works so we enable distribution of the zenfone 4 pressures and this ensures the growth of the protocol because it makes people involved it makes people an interest in this table currency and also an interest in our own tokens right so

13:16we pay our tokens to people as rewards for performing operations on the platform which is very very interesting so these are like some of the um functions or the utilities of our toku and these utilities will ensure that we have a highly sustainable ecosystem and a highly sustainable protocol over the years because this is something that we're here you know for the long

13:37run and we want people to also be here for the long run as well well thanks for that you go and yeah i've been following zen for the past few months here so far and what i've seen and i know that you're already successful in you know the early stages of the project private rounds you're heading towards a tge and you know we're nearing the end of the show but i want to talk about the

14:02future in terms of the next steps for zen finance can you just talk about the the upcoming launch the road map for the first half of 2021 and what things that you need to check off next on the list okay yeah so um uh uh tg is something that a lot of people you know have actually are waiting for you know and from our roadmap we're actually looking at having our tv in q1

14:27okay of of 2021 one of other well the other thing we're actually working on currently on our roadmap is um our sdk so what the future really holds for zen finances we are building a platform where existing um think tech applications traditional applications can plug in seamlessly right without having to bother about the complexity of the blockchain without having to bother

14:51about you know how things work at the back end of the blockchain so we are creating an sdk which we're going to have a test version available by um the first or second week of march currently working on it so that sdk will enable people integrate zen finance easy and have access to defined uh um system you know without any barriers at all so we are actually removing that

15:14complexity you know creating a better experience for users and we intend to capture up to ten percent of the credit union markets okay in the next five to ten years so it's a long term play it's a huge market right and we believe that we have what it takes with the community and we actually just announced an ambassador program because we're trying to have people in

15:38all parts of the world you know who buy into our vision help us implement and attract more users attract more platforms to build and send finance so we actually announced the zen finance um warrior ambassadors program where you have people representing us in different regions of the world and it's going to be really cool we are having like thousands of applications

16:01in less than like two days of announcing so we're super excited about what the future holds we send finance we're going to be getting into all the originals of the world starting from you know from nigeria right here so it's really really what we've been able to to achieve yeah and where we're heading so i'm super excited yes wow there's a lot of great things to

16:24look forward to and for the viewers that are looking to get involved with the zen finance community right now um you know follow the project as these updates are coming out what's the best way for them to learn more and to get involved yeah the best way for them is actually to follow our twitter handle at sendfinance and our telegram as well you know at

16:46zen finance so they can also visit our website send your finance to learn more and um that's that's basically it okay anything they need at all they can get it from our telegram from our twitter and also subscribing to our newsletter is very important our newsletter has information that gets to the users before the rest of the community so subscribing to our newsletter is

17:10something i must recommend so you get a lot of information because most of the announcements most of the things before they happen you will get to hear about it yeah sounds great i will leave all those links in the description box below uh for the viewers thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show ugo all the best with zen finance moving forward in throughout 2021 and

17:32beyond and let's follow up in the near future thanks very much ashley i'm really happy to have this interview i'm very excited and looking forward to having a great future with them thank you very much