Mission
Tatva Finance is “Nerd Wallet for DeFi”, an onramp retail investors into DeFi that enables them to make smart decisions about where to invest their digital assets without wading into a complex due diligence that nobody has time for in crypto. We do this by aggregating relevant on- and off-chain metrics in a standardized format across chains combined with an educational component to ensure our customers know how to interpret this information. Eventually, we plan to cover spot asset purchases such as tokens, but our initial focus is focused on yield-generating use cases such as: yield farming, staking, and lending. Our goal is to make understanding investment options simple in order to overcome the skepticism of yield-generating protocols that turns many investors away from these incredible opportunities.
Community Values
- Bring DeFi to everyone through data accessibility
- Many of the problems in the crypto markets are due to asymmetric information. Whales and institutional players have a deeper understanding and access to better data that enables them to make better decisions and take advantage of high quality opportunities before they are apparent to retail investors. This is nothing short of tragic, as the promise of crypto has been to move the locus of power away from large, centralized players, but today’s retail investors are being taken advantage of by more sophisticated centralized players. We aim to make the most important data understandable and accessible to any investor in DeFi.
- Build trust by focusing on data veracity
- In order to build trust with our users, we will need to ensure that our data is representative of real performance and results. Because crypto markets are not regulated and opaque, particularly with regards to off-chain information, protocol developers make independent interpretations of how to compute critical metrics, such as APY. Our intent is to present any information using the highest standards that means we will need to ensure that formulas and metrics are applied without prejudice and standardized for design differences.
- Drive conviction through education
- The best solution for skepticism of crypto projects is education. We have consistently found that increasing people’s understanding of the fundamentals using first principles thinking can dramatically shift their perspective, quickly moving them from skepticism to bullish. The approach here varies, and we will continue to iterate on how to best solve the education gap in order to build investor conviction.
- Longer term and fundamental value driven investment approach
- We consider ourselves “thoughtful apes” who are comfortable with risk, but are unwilling to blindly ape into investments with complete disregard for investment quality. We believe that some opportunities are inherently better than others due important fundamentals such as: tokenomics design, token distribution, developer track records, or revenue generation. These projects should outperform over the longer term and we intend to make these opportunities easier to spot in this crowded and noisy market.
- Broad ecosystem support for all DeFi investment opportunities
- There are many competing chains, and though we have our own allegiances and preferences, we are not maxis of any ecosystem. We intend for our platform and our own decision making to be data driven. For example, today we are thinking about a multi-chain future even though most of the DeFi activity has to date been in the Ethereum ecosystem. Furthermore, this also means that we have to put careful consideration around launching a native token so as not to anchor to a specific ecosystem.
Lighthouse Goals (0-12 months)
Tatva Finance will become the most influential community in DeFi measured by retail investors onboarded, community members, and TVL directed into DeFi protocols.
- Develop a “due diligence” template for yield farming and staking that enables retail investors to better understand and compare investment opportunities
- Build data pipeline and warehouse that aggregates and standardizes disparate data coming from >20 DeFi protocols across at least 2 chains (initial chains are Polygon & Ethereum)
- Build a non-custodial investment execution functionality that drives >$10M in TVL directly into supported DeFi protocols
Motivation
DeFi rewards vary dramatically in terms of quality, but the general perception is that they are all high risk and the only reasonable strategy is to get in and out quickly or to expect extremely high returns. As a result, we primarily see risk-seeking behavior (e.g. triple digit+ APY opportunities) that compensate for the perceived high risks. The problem here is that these high yield opportunities are short-lived and often lower quality by the fact that they have to offer such high yields to attract capital. We know that there are numerous opportunities that offer “double-digit” yields with sound fundamentals which can be expected to outperform over a longer term horizon while simultaneously generating ongoing returns. Our intent is to simplify the process through which a savvy investor can identify these opportunities by providing them with a curated set of analytics and comparisons.
Approach
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[Launch an MVP] Provides due diligence frameworks and demonstrates increased TVL to underlying protocols
Prior to automating or scaling up, we want to ensure that we have achieved product-market fit. This means we need to refine our investment frameworks such that we can demonstrate that they add value, measured by their impact on TVL driven through our platform.
- We are well on our way to this goal and have already tested a number of frameworks that are already showing promise
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[Backend for v1 Product] Build automated data pipelines and data warehouse for Polygon defi protocols
In our v0, the goal is to focus on yield farms across protocols on Polygon, and as a result drive TVL to these protocols through our platform.
- Remove initial hesitation/barriers for users to avoid DeFi due to the high gas fees on the Ethereum network. (We want to ensure that the new wave of retail investors onboarded into DeFi don’t have to think twice about staking/approving/unstaking gas costs.
- New protocols/Rising DeFi activity on Polygon: One of the biggest drivers of MATIC price and on-chain activity has been the addition of new protocols to the Polygon network through project launches and cross-chain migrations.
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[Frontend for v1 Product] Develop custom designed diligence dashboard
The dashboard will aggregate the most relevant on- and off-chain metrics in a standardized format with a UX that can feed curiosity across all levels.
Supported by media, content & partnerships in the ecosystem, Tatva intends to become a source of analysis and diligence for the broader DeFi ecosystem, primarily helping with retail onramp.
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[GTM] Token presale for defi protocol contributors and strategic partners
We have natural, strong incentive alignment with the DeFi protocols that we integrate and ultimately plan to drive TVL to. We can further align those incentives to drive mutual benefit through intelligently designed tokenomics that govern how DeFi protocols work with Tatva. For example, we anticipate that key protocol contributors, in Marketing or BD roles, would answer FAQs or hold AMAs to address our users diligence concerns. In addition, protocols will be expected to publish off-chain data to us and we want to create an economics incentive to ensure this information is accurate.
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[Growth] Community development through education
- DeFi DYOR course for community members (with intial focus on Polygon DeFi protocols here)
- Discord membership growth
- DeFi related events, workshops, AMAs, etc.
Outcomes
Ask
$10k grant from Polygon
Demo Screens
Available upon request from team