Minterest relying on experience in patience, discipline

Minterest follows a disciplined approach in developing a decentralized financial lending protocol, born of the founder’s experience and the company’s desire to help the industry provide the rails it needs to reach its full potential. ..

Founder and CEO Josh Rogers has been involved in building startups for 25 years, dating back to the telephone company in the late 1990s. He built a content billing engine, co-founded freelancer.com, and served as a non-executive director and CEO of Australia’s top order-ahead platform, HeyYou.

He vowed to never create another startup, but DeFi and its potential have changed.

Rogers believes Minterest is a DeFi lending protocol built to play a leading role in the sector. Gain value and distribute it to users through the on-chain clearing engine.

But the difference, he said, was that Minterest built a protocol to avoid third-party liquidators and do the distribution itself. The protocol does not have to be economically motivated to do that.

Recirculation fee

The protocol receives a clearing fee and interest generated, buys back tokens, bets tokens and distributes them to protocol users participating in governance. The team token vesting schedule is five years away.

“And the reason we’ve been there for so long is because we think we’re just the beginning of what’s really a very important DeFi wave,” Rogers said. “How do you build the world’s basic financial architecture in a way that is meaningful, long-term, world-like, and evolving like DeFi and cryptocurrencies?

“A significant portion of the team tokens aren’t really allocated and aren’t actually sold. They act as syncs. We assign teams very small tokens in the actual team allocation pool. But what really happens is Team Tokens, this big sink, making money in the form of Mint tokens from real protocol buybacks and distributing those Mint tokens incentives to our team As a reward. “

Adjusting these incentives allows different stakeholders to share the same priorities. This is the reason for Rogers. This is a wise suggestion and is currently the only source of yield, so it is occurring as more investors seek DeFi. TradFi is cautious, but it’s just getting started.

DeFiVC is evolving rapidly

According to Rogers, the status quo of DeFi venture capital is evolving right in front of us. It reminds us of the early days of the Internet when the project was experimenting with all kinds of technologies and solutions when the industry found its way. Ventures are poured into projects, many of which are gambling.

After that, a shakeout occurred around 2002, and a leap in quality was seen.

“Everyone has stopped funding projects that are very risky or unlikely to succeed,” he said. “The second thing that happened was that there was a very important set of users around the project that produced the most powerful network effect.”

Minterest is designed for these effects and is in the best position to take advantage of this shift.

“And from our point of view, it’s almost mana from heaven.”

Rogers believes that VC thinking about DeFi has evolved into a more mature and sustainable phase. These traditional questions are beginning to be asked more often.

But they also recognize that this sector is in its infancy. Rogers believes there is a difference between the crypto VC approach compared to TradeFi VC and the way it participates in portfolio companies.

Cooperation with 48 companies

He should know. Minterest has attracted participation from 48 companies, and Rogers estimates that they have pitched to 150. And Minterest did their research. They were noisy about who to sell to and wanted a geographical expanse.

“We are absolutely pleased with the support that investors provide to us. I think that’s something I’ve never seen. Certainly, the level you get at a venture capital firm. Not, “Rogers said. “In traditional finance, I’ve never seen the level of participation very extraordinary and very supportive, but they are willing to support and tell me that they can’t be positively seen. It was really great. “

VC had a very easy time getting a return on DefI, but Rogers thinks there may be a shift, which is good news. There can be too many people in the space and future integrations will be healthy. Companies have been set up to take advantage of the DeFi surge, but quality DeFi projects are becoming the choice for VCs.

The scene may still look a bit different to VCs who are new to DeFi. Rogers said he shook hands on the basis of trust. This is unprecedented in a more traditional space.

“I think they are against the methodology of how people invest in crypto, and I think they found a hump of speed that is difficult to overcome. Look, it’s very, very interesting. I think more money will move into space and you will see more money, more conservative money, but that money is much bigger, more important and more reliable projects. We support.”

Works with Moonbeam

Rogers has chosen to build Interest on top of Moonbeam, an Ethereum virtual machine compliant platform built on the smart contract platform Polkadot. Rogers said it was a future guarantee and a real Ferrari.

He acknowledged that the Moonbeam team gave a more comprehensive view of how technology needs to work in a more mature DeFi world than what we’re seeing today. Additional factors were improved gas pricing, reduced latency, and enhanced security.

Rogers said the industry should be very excited about the emergence of alternatives to Ethereum, along with Minterest, Solana and others. It overcomes the lack of architectural depth he saw in 2017.

“We didn’t have this necessary architectural infrastructure to support a huge and thriving cryptosystem,” Rogers said. “And we’re looking at it now. Part of that is that we have VC funding for it. This is very important.

“But if you look at the values ​​created by Polkadot, Solana, Algorithm, and Avalanche, there are many different networks of these independent networks. It’s a creation, they’re just getting started, and it’s a very important freight transaction. “

People ask Rogers when they can expect the probably unavoidable technological crash of cryptocurrencies in the dot-com era. Due to the enormous value created in the meantime, we haven’t seen one for 20 years.

“When the freight train started, it didn’t matter if the price was too high for a period of time because the freight train came in and supported its pricing. Was Google too high 10 years ago? Maybe, but The real value-creating freight train behind it is constantly being supported, so those who care will increase its value.

“In my view, freight trains are leaving the station in cryptocurrency, which is really in the early stages, and that means it’s an exciting time to be here.”