July: Monthly Update
Let us begin with an editorial footnote—the recent spate of hacks and compromises have been numerous and significant. Overall, it has been detrimental to the space and there are pundits who believe that the recent downturn in the market, despite strong fundamentals, is being driven by a narrative among institutional players that DeFi is simply not ready for prime time. Certainly, there are myriad contributing factors but it is the goldfish memory of many in the space that will likely cause continuation of this alarming pattern. While the asset class will certainly prevail in due course, Bonded Finance has traveled a road of let downs and frustrations which have been costly, time consuming and frankly, stressful. Nonetheless, this is what we signed up for and it is inherent to the process of building anything worthwhile. We spent months building something that we decided to throw out and subsequently fired half our team. We dismissed numerous consultants, reworked algorithms in their entirety and revamped our architecture; all under the watchful eye of a “wen” community. There is no “woe is me” in this as plans in tech are constructed with the understanding that they will not go to plan. It is a marathon of attrition and steel sharpens steel. Let us move on.
Chainlink
Grouping altcoins, creating individual risk profiles and extrapolating histories where there is none is not for the faint of heart. It is new, it is different, it is innovative. Chainlink is very forward thinking and our recent discussions with them centered on risk i.e. creating price feeds and individual risk matrices per token. Resultant to this, we have refined and developed our requirements for a “Tiered” Oracle system. We were made further aware of the key considerations and essentially, have decided to group altcoins into tiers. The determining factors are history, volatility and volume. In the simplest of terms, Tier 1 projects would have substantial liquidity, wide market distribution and other contributing metrics sustained over a longer lifecycle, while a recently launched project would sit at a Tier 5. The logic is simple and flows through the assets by grouping.
Sameep
Sameep has been instrumental from the beginning. His expertise has never been lacking and given the amount of turnover we’ve had, he remained stalwart throughout. However, Sameep is no longer able to provide Bonded with the focus it deserves as he has other commitments. We wish him the very best and will continue to consult with him on an as needed basis. From Sameep to the community.
“Bonded is daring to do something different. They are innovating and I always admired this and could not say no. I believe they can change the view and value proposition for altcoins and finance, and I credit them for never taking shortcuts. They’ve pushed me and I’ve learned a lot from Paul, their team and advisors. I leave with a heavy heart.”
Introducing Aleksandar Djordjevic
Our new head of Defi.
Aleksandar is a professional technologist with ten years’ full-stack software engineering experience who has worked on a multitude of projects across many continents. He has five years of blockchain, smart contract and DeFi development experience and has worked on DeFi lending solutions, stablecoin solutions, staking & rewards solutions, yield farming and blockchain layer1 development projects. We’re very pleased to have Alex join our team because he brings experience directly related to the technical and development goals we have ahead of us. He has a high degree of conscientiousness and professionalism that will help deliver our platforms and will be an asset to our token holders. His LinkedIn can be found here.
HitBtc and ProBit Listing
As per the goal of broader token accessibility and new investor demographics, we have continued to take advantage of listing opportunities. Bonded is now listed on four exchanges of some repute, with Probit to follow first week of August and we will continue to seek out additional listing opportunities. We do take a higher level view as we prepare for a greater audience, additional reach and the understanding that Bond needs a more comprehensive issuance.
The Primary Index
We will begin with the index in a rather rudimentary form. Without the lending component, it’s functionally speaking, a collateral depository. We will be reaching out to partners to lock their tokens as collateral in order to build TVL. This process will be ongoing as we will be sure to securely onboard everyone.
We are very excited to be at this stage but must manage expectations. We did not come all this way to fumble on the proverbial goal line. This rollout phase is modular and staged; replete with extensive testing.
After initial deployment, there will be a testing phase followed by the onboarding of partners. From there, we will essentially be educating our partners as prospective borrowers and lenders, prior to integrating the lending and borrowing components. These functionalities will then be tested as non-native users invariably come up against difficulties we can not anticipate. Once “hardened,” we will begin a testing phase for the USB integration followed by the BOND rewards mechanism/staking solution. Again, more testing and once complete, we will begin to implement BOND governance, ultimately empowering our community of token holders to become integrated contributors.
The emphasis on testing can not be overstated as our primary index is to be our flagship collateral vehicle. This decentralized financial instrument aims to be a destination where borrowers can deposit almost any altcoin. This instrument works with oracles and a sophisticated balancing algorithms to assess and define risk which enacts mitigating functions in order to manage capital elimination. It generates fees, executes liquidations and will have the capacity to monitor a basket of potentially thousands of different digital assets in real time.
We understand our community is excited to see our cardinal product in action. We are presently making some minor interface iterations, following which our CTO, Brian, will be producing an introductory walkthrough of the primary index. The “soon” squad shall be missed.
PIXT
The primary index issues its own ERC20 token with the ticker PIXT (Primary Index Token). This token is issued as a receipt to users who deposit their altcoins as collateral which, 1—represents the equity in the underlying asset and 2—acts as a redemption ticket for deposited collateral. In time, the PIXT token will be traded on public markets relative to its proportional variable value of the entire index and will perpetually grow in market cap, liquidity, trade volume and reputation.
Rebrand
We had the unfortunate situation of entering the market as one of three projects bearing the name Bond. Bonded finance and the BOND token was something we believed embodied our product and ethos — to BOND the entire crypto market into a single collateral vehicle; a unified whole if you will. A lot of resources had gone into this as brands are not just loosely fabricated. It is not something you can just change overnight. It takes planning and comes at a cost. That said, we have made the decision to move away from the Bonded.Finance brand and the BOND ticker.
To that end, in April, we began speaking with branding firms to formulate a new identity and engaged Maker Street in Queensland, Australia. Yes, we have a working title. We are currently in brand development and creating an aesthetic that will complement our forward looking strategy.
Finally, the token will require a new smart contract and will necessitate a 1:1 token swap. To be clear, the swap will be 1:1 and we will be in contact with exchanges to seek out support.
