GoldFinch, Psyoptions, Exotic Markets, Shade/Silk, Friktion | Hidden Gems
Review Date: January 24, 2022
We scored over 50 projects this week, and these are the 5 we think you should know about:
- GoldFinch
- Psyoptions
- Exotic Markets
- Shade/Silk
- Friktion
Please keep in mind that some of these projects have not yet been subjected to our code review process, but we want to call them out here for preliminarily catching our eye based on our fundamental analysis process.
Goldfinch (80%)
Website – Documentation
Goldfinch is a decentralized credit protocol that is restructuring crypto markets by offering banking services that are similar to traditional banks. Goldfinch aims to create capital efficiency across the globe by providing an uncollateralized crypto loan.
Why we like it:
Attempting to expedite the transfer of funds globally, Goldfinch realized the potential of blockchain to increase underlying capital efficiency across borders. With increased capital formation for lenders and borrowers, Goldfinch will be able to monetize loans much faster turn than traditional banking. They are also creating a credit fund on crypto that makes off-chain sources of yield available and composable on DeFi.
Investors:
Approximately $40 million was raised from Andreessen Horowitz, BlockTower Capital, Coinbase Ventures, William Ackman, and Balaji Srivinasan.
Team:
Goldfinch currently has 19 employees, some of their experiences and backgrounds come from universities and companies like Princeton University, Goldman Sachs, Coinbase, Wharton School of Business, and Medium.
Token Utility:
GFI is currently a capped supply token, however, there are future plans to integrate inflationary mechanics down the line through liquidity provisions. Currently, GFI is mainly utilized as a governance-based token.
Where can you buy the token:
Goldfinch is not out yet, the native token GFI, has a planned launch this month via Coinbase Pro.
Psyoptions (78%)
Website – Documentation
Built with composability and flexibility in mind, Psyoptions is an American-style options protocol built on Solanas blockchain. Creating an ecosystem of permissionless vanilla options via APIs, the team behind Psyoptions envisions the project to eventually become the home of decentralized, community-owned financial services platform for Solanas ecosystem.
Why we like it:
PsyOptions aims to become one of the foundational DeFi primitives on the Solana blockchain by offering completely trustless American-style options for any SPL token.
With two dApps already building on top of Psyoptions, it can potentially become a fundamental contributor to Solanas money markets.
Investors:
Approximately 4 million was raised from Wintermute Trading, Alameda Research, CMS holdings, LedgerPrime, and MGNR.io.
Team:
A total of 18 contributors on Github, the Psyoptions core team has varying backgrounds coming from Solana itself as freelancers and early contributors.
Token Utility:
PSY is purely a governance token that manages the smart contracts, and treasury of tokens through on-chain voting. Proposals will be made on-chain and voted on with the PSY token.
Where can you buy the token:
PSY is currently tradeable on FTX, Gate.IO, and ASCENDEX.
Exotic Markets (78%)
Website – Documentation
Leveraging the high throughput of Solana, Exotic markets expands on DeFi’s current offerings by offering flexible structured products like pre-packaged investment strategies on a single asset, a basket of securities, options indices, and commodities.
Why we like it:
Exotic Markets offers the widest range of structured products out of any defi platform. Their overarching vision is to offer a sustainable yield to the defi space and innovate new solutions that have never yet been offered in a decentralized manner.
Investors:
$5 million was raised from MGNR.IO, Morningstar ventures, LedgerPrime, 3Commas, Paradigm, and Alameda Research.
Team:
A total of 2 employees currently, The Exotic Markets team includes Dalet, who spent nine years trading volatility products and served as a quant volatility hedge fund manager, and Benjamin Rameau, who has a background in equity sales and blockchain technology.
Token Utility:
ExoticMarkets native token, EXO is a utility token that provides reduced fees, staking, and over-arching governance of the DAO.
Where can you buy the token:
TBA
Friktion (78%)
Website – Documentation
Introducing Circuits into DeFis ecosystem, Friktion is DeFi’s first full-stack portfolio manager – built for DAOs, individuals, and traditional institutions. Circuits offer both active and passive portfolio management strategies for DAOs and traditional institutional asset managers.
Why we like it:
Utilizing Friktion, projects can efficiently deploy funding for long-term capital inflow for their DAOS. Through Circuits, DAOs will be able to access curated portfolio construction and risk management to scale the next generation of DeFi users.
Investors:
Approximately $6 million was raised from Delphi Ventures, Petrock Capital, Defiance, Jump Crypto, Solana Ventures, and Dialectic Ventures.
Team:
5 total contributors on GitHub, one individual contributor comes from Saber protocol, another popular Dapp within Solanas ecosystem.
Token Utility:
Soon
Where can you buy the token:
TBA
Shade/Silk (76%)
Website – Documentation
Shade is a new decentralized, algorithmically backed stable coin built on Secret network. Hoping to avoid the common death spiral many stable coins are subject to, Silk aims to become the next full-proof stable coin by ensuring its backed value via a commodity index.
Why we like it:
With many internal talents coming from Enigma/Secret network itself, Shade/Silk is in a unique position to quickly become a well-known project through its competitive vision and unique tokenomics. With plans of creating private protocols like Anchor and Mirror in the Secret networks ecosystem, Shade is combining DeFi 2.0 features with a privacy layer of successful DeFi primitives like synthetics.
Investors:
The investor list has not been released yet.
Team:
A total of 10 contributors on Github, the Shade/Silk core team has varying
backgrounds coming from Secret and Enigma itself as early contributors.
Token Utility:
$SHADE accrues value as $SILK stable coin is used, to use SILKS stable coin capabilities users have to bond a specific asset (aSCRT) into the DAO, when utilizing $SILK, 1% of minting/conversion fees goes back to the Shade treasury.
Where can you buy the token:
$SHADE is not out yet, users can receive an airdrop of the governance token via qualified COSMOS wallets.
