Building Successful Defi Product
Xend Finance
The first case study example on African Defi ecosystem is Ugochukwu Aronu CEO of product Xend Finance who has been CEO of Xend Finance from 2019 to date, University of Nigeria graduate of Electronic Engineering (2015), Founder of Wicrypt(2018 to present), Founder Ugarsoft (2015 to present)
Xend Finance is a Defi platform for cooperative and credit unions that provide multilateral interest by optimizing and aggregating different Defi lending protocols by providing high yield.
Overview
- Team
- Product
- Investors, partners & community
Team
When working on a Defi product it is important to have a team. Xend Finance team have collaborated together for over 5 years on cross-multiple projects within Nigeria.
Product
When deciding on the Defi product to work on you can consider replicating existing projects. You have to take the following into consideration:-
- what project do you want
- what problem do you want to solve
- what's your target audience
One Defi product has a connection to another Defi product, you don't need to restrict yourself to build everything by yourself you can add already existing open-source projects like integrating Metamask wallets to your product.
Partners-Investors Community
Partners, investors, and community are key in supporting the push of your product i.e Community-driven. You need to raise money without looking who'll benefit. A great product undergoes a continuous process and investors are there for a long time.
Community
Partners and investors/retail investors but your token and act as part of marketing strategies and advisors to your team.
Digital space is cool and a feel welcome. In the crypto space specifically, it's easy to communicate and there's a lot of support & opportunities.
Experience in marketing and better communication to welcome more people into the community is important
Xend Finance Key Features
- Defi lending protocol aggregator to provide high yields to financially underserved.
- Built on BSC
- Focusing on adoption by non-crypto savvy users
- Developers friendly platform with SDK for non-blockchain engineers.
Xend is built on solidity for smart contract and frontend built on react & web3js for smart contract interaction. Xend Finance GitHub profile which has documentation, smart contracts, and addresses developers are welcome to test the product.
Developer's Challenge
- Integrate the Xend Finance smart contract into your existing contract to offer saving features to your users.
- Integrate the Xend Finance SDK into your existing web/mobile app to offer saving features to your users. cash prize of 1000 BUSD for 3 best use cases.
Bundle Africa
Second, on Defi Case Study is Yele Bademosi the CEO of Bundle Africa.
Crypto offers Africa a lifeline on poverty, healthcare, and education on matters Good governance and capital allocation which can be achieved through parallel financial systems can create through Defi not dependent on central government or organizations. Decentralized i.e no need for trust e.g Uniswap & Pancake. Protocol and services that move Africa forward. Our generation has the potential to change Africa.
Why Binance Smart Chain(BSC)
offers low fees: fees have slowed blockchain adoption across Africa. BSC has a layer 2 protocol that makes fees lower. BSC is considered Africa first. African-focused blockchain ecosystem in terms of talent & skillset. With our problems, we can solve them using blockchain protocols and offer volume to the undervalued.
Where to get ideas
- Notepad/jot down ideas: daily living ideas "I wish this existed or when someone shares issue/ideas starting with problems"
- Not everything is a payable problem. Come up with a formula of grading
problem rate of (1 to 10 ) x Number of people that have the problem.For example, Social media is a solution to boredom problem.Final Part : Getting users
- distribution structure first gets 100 users by distributing to them the idea. The beauty of distributing is- - scalability
unscalable product struggle to entrepreneur
- timing
- solve i.e product to solve a problem
Build a Community: people on social media i.e telegram community(admins), podcasts(host) are already building a great distribution channel for their users. Bundle Africa community is open for African developers. The ecosystem accelerates growth for other African developers. Get hands of people (100-200) to start off your community.
Scalable.
Single technical founders are easy to fund than two non-technical founders technical founders prefer technical ones. If you're a technical founder you have the control you can iterate and change as per the feedback and suggestions you get.
Improve your skills
Technical skills and social networking.
- Be technical since it is easy to attract non-technical founders but not easy to know how good they're as you work with them.
- Don't confirm equity before giving them a small project to work on e.g marketing through friends(referral/references) and also hire friends that you trust.
Web 2.0 world needs technical and business side skills to run their business. It is potentially reliable being technical members. You can't rush someone you would like to work with 5-8 years ahead.
Binance Africa Team is a community field for successful products that will raise impact across the continent.
Raising money
As a crypto project, it is easy to raise funds than a web 2.0 project. More funds and people can see the success across tech in Africa. CRypto ability to build community-owned/driven projects.
Binance ecosystem started as an ICO but today they've grown into a big community of projects. If they would have stopped there would they be here?
Fundamental blocks: start raising capital. CRypto allows you to raise more money, unlike web 2.0 products. Incentives are aligned to boost blockchain/crypto adoption and development. BSC is funding BSC projects cryptocurrency companies in Africa.
BUILD SOMETHING first -> solve a PROBLEM -> MARKET -> build a TEAM -> Have a VISION - RAISE CAPITAL