Yieldly’s CEO Says Interoperability In DeFi Is More Important Than A Market-Leading Blockchain
October 23 2021 - 1:00PM
NEWSBTC
Decentralized finance (DeFi) is no doubt one of the leading
offerings of the crypto market. DeFi has provided users
alternatives to traditional investments that they would otherwise
not be able to access and this has been one of the major factors
driving the growth of the space. Currently, there are a
number of blockchains on which DeFi protocols are programmed,
namely; Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, Algorand, which Yieldly is built
on, among others. These blockchains seem to be in an arms race to
secure the most market share and lead the space. However, Yieldly’s
CEO Sebastian Quinn does not believe this is the way to win.
Instead, Quinn says, the focus should be more on interoperability
between blockchains. Quinn sat down with NewsBTC for an interview,
where the CEO shared thoughts about the space, programmable
blockchains, and some exclusive insight on future listings of
Yieldly’s native token YLDY. NewsBTC: Can you tell us about your
background and what led to Yieldy? Sebastian Quinn: My professional
training is in corporate law. I worked in corporate law for about
five years doing a range of things primarily in corporate finance
and M&A. Through that, we saw a lot of interesting tech deals,
and I moved full-time into tech doing a number of things – advising
and assisting startups. I advised some of the very first ICOs that
ever happened. Then over the course of 2017, we assisted a
number of hugely successful ICOs and a number of companies that, to
this day, are still performing exceptionally well. I also, during
that time, set up one of the first AI and blockchain accelerators,
with the group JD.com, which is a large listed Nasdaq company. We
started to see the early interest that big corporations had in
understanding and wanting to work with distributed ledger
technology. Over the last three or four years, we’ve been
continuing our work in the space, keeping a very clear eye on what
the trends are, and continuing to invest in projects. It was about
two years ago now that we started to see a shift in the projects in
our portfolio, and those that we advised, which were building much
more towards DeFi products in the space. We thought it was
time to utilize all our learnings and really build out a DeFi
product that brought together our understandings both of crypto,
corporate finance, and then a very real and lived experience of
what big corporates like JD.com were looking for when they were
contemplating how crypto or DeFi can be used for traditional
finance use cases. Yieldly came out of that experience.
NewsBTC: Why did you choose to build on Algorand instead of other
blockchains? Sebastian Quinn: The commercial opportunity, in terms
of we knew that we could have a commercial advantage if we were one
of the first in the market to deliver DeFi on a big Layer 1.
Algorand, as a protocol, has some technical advantages over
Ethereum. Algorand is significantly faster and you have 40,000 TPS.
It’s extremely and reliably low cost. The gas and transaction fees
don’t fluctuate. It’s also carbon negative which is important for
us. It has technical advantages too. It’s been around for 2+ years
and it has never been offline. Crypto needs to be built to attract
the next 100 million users and it has to be built in a way that is
extremely user-friendly. Algorand ticks all of those boxes. The
tech is fundamentally more user-friendly than peers at the moment.
NewsBTC: Yieldly’s native token (YLDY) just listed on the MEXC
exchange, are there any other exchange listings we should expect?
Sebastian Quinn: We have fought hard with Yiedly being the first
DeFi product on Algorand, and also be recognized by exchanges to
list our token. Our token is built on Algorand and Algorand
Standard Asset (ASA), that means that most exchanges typically
haven’t integrated their technology to allow for that ASA.
We’ve been very fortunate to be the first ASA listed on MEXC.
Additionally, we’ve been proactively engaging with Korean exchange
Probit. We’ll be listed there in the near term, making YLDY the
first ASA token listed in Korea. In terms of future exchange
listings, there’s a number of discussions currently happening with
brand-name exchanges. Without giving the game away, you can
basically identify which exchanges are being very public in wanting
to list Algorand assets. We’re working closely with our partners to
manage and launch our token on those exchanges. NewsBTC: Presently,
when people think of NFTs, they think Ethereum. How does Yieldly
plan to push more NFT adoption on the Algorand blockchain?
Sebastian Quinn: One of the coolest things that have happened in
crypto this year has been the advent of all the interest in NFTs as
an asset. It’s a product that appeals very widely to a vast number
of people. It touches a great number of interest groups. You’re
right in saying the majority of that happens in Ethereum, but
there’s no real reason why that would be the exclusive domain. NFTs
on Algorand make a lot of sense. It’s user-friendly, cheap to
transact, cheap to mint, it’s a straightforward process to create
NFTs on Algorand. We’re going down a process to create tools that
allow for a thriving and healthy ecosystem on Algorand. We’ve had
something in the order of about 400 creators pitch and send NFTs to
be distributed to the community. We’ve had NFT creators on Ethereum
reaching out and asking us for help to mint on Algorand because
they want to bring their NFT collections over. We think it’s
just a matter of time. There will be an NFT ecosystem that can have
a chance to rival some of the big NFT ecosystems in crypto at the
moment. NewsBTC: How does Yieldly differ from other DeFi protocols
on the Algorand blockchain, and of course, on other programmable
blockchains like Solana? Sebastian Quinn: We always wanted to be
the first to prove that applications for DeFi can exist on
Algorand. The numbers speak for themselves in terms of validation.
At our peak, we had about $160M staked in our staking pools. We sit
consistently in that $100M mark. There is no competitor, as it
stands, in Algorand. We continue to build products that matter to
prove our expanded use cases for DeFi. We have staking pools not
just for Yieldly, we have staking pools for multiple projects on
Algorand. We have the largest diversity of assets for anyone that
holds ALGO or ASA tokens to allocate those assets into our
products. How we compete with protocols on other blockchains is
through great use cases that we are proactively trying to tackle on
Algorand. We compete by having tech that is built on a technically
better protocol. NewsBTC: What innovations are you most excited
about in the DeFi space? Sebastian Quinn: One area that is
capturing our attention at the moment is the intersection of what’s
happening with NFTs and what’s happening with DeFi, where they’re
converging. We’re seeing really interesting things happen where
with smart NFTs, people can do more than just hold them. You’re
getting dividends from those NFTs. From a tech point of view, that
opens up a whole raft of use cases to create more exciting
financial products or pseudo-financial products. I think there’s
quite a lot of innovation that is yet to play out. Then
anything that is touching the way with which the regulatory
environment is contemplating how to deal with DeFi and the
acceptance of DeFi as a product in tech, that will be able to be
utilized and accessed by a wider number of people. NewsBTC:
What would you say has been your biggest achievement in the one
year Yieldly has been in operation? Sebastian Quinn: It’s been a
wild year. Everyone in this industry knows the pace is unparalleled
to almost any other industry. Things happen extremely fast. I would
say launching the product and getting validation from users that
the things we’ve built matter to them. We’re very excited to be on
the edge of creating products that will last a long time and be in
an industry that is just starting and making some very interesting
disruptions along the way. NewsBTC: Do you see a blockchain like
Algorand overtaking Ethereum in the future? Sebastian Quinn: We’re
somewhat tech-agnostic. Our worldview is informed by where we can
create products that are the most user-friendly. At the moment,
Algorand has a very compelling argument which is why it was chosen
for building our product. We know that there is still a long
way to run in the adoption of crypto across the world. We also
recognize that we can’t necessarily pigeonhole ourselves into one
protocol. The idea of interoperability is extremely important, and
that’s evidenced in the tech we’ve built. We built the first
Ethereum-to-Algorand bridge to allow for DeFi tokens to be
exchanged across it. We have to be very realistic in the fact that
none of us have a crystal ball on which protocol will be around.
But what we all know is that the industry will continue to grow and
evolve, and so we want to make sure that our product and our tech
is built on the best protocols to suit our users and the use cases.
At the moment, there is really no comparison to Algorand. NewsBTC:
To wrap up, what price range would you put Bitcoin and Ethereum by
year-end? Sebastian Quinn: We’re crypto maximalists and Bitcoin is
the canary in the crypto coal mine. We don’t see crypto going
anywhere but to a world where it’s further adopted and becomes
ubiquitous as a piece of technology that is critical to core use
cases across the world. It would not surprise us if Bitcoin is well
and truly above $100,000 in the very near term. Featured image from
ProBit Global Support
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