If NEAR is the Future of Finance Let's Bring that Future Onto NEAR

Ecosystem Projects
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With the launch of the Rainbow Bridge and the planned launch of the EVM we know that NEAR is poised to become compatible with Ethereum, as a hybrid L1 - L2 solution.

This means that existing DeFi solutions that have trouble scaling (i.e. Uniswap or Sushiswap, Balancer, etc. etc.) are going to be prime candidates for porting over to NEAR.

But What About the Future of DeFi?

Right now, DeFi remains in its infancy. Lending, Trading, Aggregation, and Insurance are some of the primary use-cases for today.

But what about tomorrow? If we really believe that DeFi is the future of finance - that the global financial system is poised for disruption - infrastructure inversion - as they say, then NEAR would do well to focus on the DeFi solutions that are just launching today, that will be maturing over the next 2 - 3 years. In short, we can get AHEAD of the curve by bringing them onto NEAR before they go mainstream.

What might this entail?

1. Fixed Rate Lending (Yield Curves): Yield Protocol, Notional Finance, UMAā€™s yUSD

2. Interest Rate Markets (IRS): Horizon Finance, Benchmark, Swivel

3. Securitization/ Tranches (CLOs): BarnBridge, Saffron

These verticals, are (arguably) a huge part of the future of Open Finance. They represent the early projects of the next phase of decentralized financial innovation, modelled off of traditional finance but built for a world of smart contracts and tokenization. They are also all young solutions, primarily built on Ethereum, but also on other networks such as Binance Smart Chain.

The opportunity here is to provide them with support and community development on NEAR, before they entrench in their existing L1 of choice. They will scale better, they will onboard easier, and they can get more attention / support.

As a developing community, I firmly believe this is a great play - where we they will be more than accommodated with the emerging Sputnik DAO infrastructure, NEAR Account Model, and low transaction costs.

What do we think?

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@jlwaugh @mallynear @potatodepaulo @illia @mattlockyer @erik.near @waverlymaven @amosbestcookie @AlexTinsman @alex.shevchenko CCing NEAR Team to hear all of your thoughts on this proposal. Community is very excited about DeFi on NEAR and wants to make sure we are keeping up with the pace of development in the space.

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Great proposal, Ozy and Royo! I definitely support this and ā€œgetting ahead of the curveā€ is totally aligned with our approach to ecosystem building. Would be interested in hearing your thoughts on some concrete mechanisms to determine/identify/define some of these next-gen projects, as well as how to best collaborate and support them in a way that makes sense all around.

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Iā€™m not a holder, but have observed YLD (Coinerā€™s project) to have a very active community. They are dying to use the dapp more but it is just impossible given the fee situation on Eth.

They have been looking at fantom for scaling solution, but could they be lobbied instead to come to NEAR?

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Uni has decided to go to Optimistic, and sushi to SOL. What are the advantages of NEAR compared with them? The NEAR operation is too late. Without Rainbow Bridge and EVM, NEAR should also build various DEFIs on its own mainnet. Looking at the rapid progress of SOL, we should learn from it! Every new project on SOL will involve tens of thousands of people. Very few people participate in paras, flux, berry club, ref

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Taking what seems to work and making it way better wonā€™t cause a stampede. There will be a tipping point when enough people move that the rest will have no choice but to follow.
Nothing happens overnight, but the quickest path to critical mass only comes from earth-shattering paradigm shifts.

NEAR solved sharding, fundamentally a synthesis problem. In the same vein, the problem we solve for DeFi can be what Apple did with its M1 chip. Synthesize many chips into one: less electrons bouncing around back and forth between chips = better speed and power usage.

Money Legos are cool, but come with their own crypto-economic headaches on a macro scale. Itā€™s still many chips spread out, and figuring out compatibility tradeoffs between them and their tokens. This decentralisation comes with a security cost, as protocolsā€™ weakest LINKs cascade into each other.

Those problems are easier to solve on a micro scale, when you squeeze features onto a single protocol in a way that they feed off of and secure each other, leaving no room for weakness. Instead of requiring features to stand separately as self-sufficient protocols, the co-dependency makes them more efficient and secure.

What if ironically, the best thing that could happen to DeFi was a bit ofā€¦central planning. If you have a track record of building on NEAR, and want to test DeFiā€™s version of Da Vinciā€™s Self Supporting Bridgeā€¦ping me john@quid.io

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Concrete plan of action:

Step 1: Prepare answers to these questions ahead of time - as other L2ā€™s are making their move:

  1. When would this proposal have integration with NEAR completed?
  2. How much SFI from the treasury does the proposal want to spend?
  3. Is this proposal asking to research the specifics of deploying to NEAR? Or, is there something specific implied here?
  4. How would the proposal be prioritized with current V2 development?
  5. Who would implement the proposal? The Saffron Team or another party?

Step 2: Community activates and proposes to consider NEAR within these communities.

Step 3: Loop in NEAR Team with proposal already prepared to begin discussions.

Step 4: Seal that deal and start the migration of the future of DeFi onto NEAR :slight_smile:

I know everyone is busy and getting rekt with things on their plate. Yetā€¦this is a pretty nice window of opportunity that is wide open for the taking.

As they say ā€˜gogogoā€™ :smiley:

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