Findora’s DeFi Spotlight takes a look at up-and-coming developers who, like Findora, take a professional and creative approach with their products and creations to revolutionize the world of finance using decentralized technology.
Forerunners in the Prediction Market PlotX is the subject of today’s edition. We have a chat with Ish Goel, Co-founder of PlotX about his views on decentralized finance (DeFi) as well as what he is working on with his team right now, and his perspectives on the future of DeFi.
Hi there, great to chat with you in our DeFi Spotlight Series, what are some things that you look for when creating alliances and partnerships and why?
We look for two primary characteristics when partnering;
- Authenticity – The project should be traceable, transparent, adds value to our project and broadly to blockchain and crypto community. The teams should have a strong understanding of the technology, clear vision about their project- what problem are they trying to solve and the reason to partner
- Feasibility – There are multiple blockchain projects currently live or in the testing phase, but a partnership can only be successful if the two projects have the potential to scale and benefit mutually.
What are some things that you have learned in founding your company?
I firmly believe patience and perseverance are the keys to build a successful company. There will be dull days, moments of surprise, and achievements, but the focus on why the company was founded should never be affected. Any company’s success truly depends on the right blend of people it has, culture, bold decisions made to sustain the business, and responsiveness to change.
What do you think ETH is lacking and blockchains like Findora can offer developers?
Ethereum offers DeFi composability like no other blockchain at the moment. It has the world’s largest developer community backing it. However, we’re seeing some interesting alternatives such as Binance Smart Chain, Polkadot and Findora emerge. As a protocol, we take into account things like the technical feasibility of the base chain to support the project, the level of decentralization, the ease of end-user experience and the availability of dev tools before taking other chains seriously.
How would you describe DeFi to a newcomer?
DeFi is a system that provides people access to well-known financial services such as payments, lending, borrowing and trading in a decentralized, efficient and transparent manner. The traditional financial system is conservative, bound by geography, inconsistent laws, highly centralized with high barriers to entry for the new players. Decentralized Finance is created so that anyone with a browser and an Internet connection can get access to financial services without having to go through a centralized gateway of seeking someone’s permission.
What is your prediction for DeFi in 2021?
DeFi is going to only get bigger in the next year. We’ve seen the TVL go from $600m in Jan 2020 to $20B in Jan 2021. While a correction will come eventually, we feel the use cases are also getting market validation. Prediction Markets, one of the most exciting DeFi use cases, came of age during the US presidential election in 2020. Prediction Markets for the 2020 US Presidential Election saw millions of dollars worth of market liquidity, something that was previously unheard of. What’s even more exciting to see is that those markets were actually able to extract the wisdom of the crowds and point towards the correct result! With more projects going on L2 for scaling, we are confident that DeFi and particularly, Prediction Markets are going to become big in 2021.
Do you believe that DeFi projects that have tokens do better than those that don’t?
Having tokens is neither good nor bad. The success of any DeFi project is highly dependent on the community that is built up around it. Tokens are a great way to incentivize and grow that community. It is in the ethos of DeFi to have the value of the project flow to its community. Hence, it makes sense in most cases to have a token associated with the project. We believe that most projects that do not have tokens at the moment will release one in the future.
Finally, do you have any advice for people who are looking to start a DeFi company?
I think one of the biggest differentiating factors in the whole DeFi/crypto industry is the ethos of this space. I think somebody who’s trying to enter this space or, someone who is excited about the whole DeFi/crypto ecosystem has to do some work to actually understand the ethics of how this space works, stand for the aspects of decentralization, and stand for the aspect of community-driven ecosystems.
Even if you are a developer, you should not look to learn the syntax behind Solidity or, for that matter, the syntax behind any other blockchain infra out there. You should rather first focus on understanding the ethos of the space – why is decentralization important, why are aligned incentives important, what is it that blockchain is trying to do, learn all that first, and then jump into development.
About PlotX
PlotX is a non-custodial prediction protocol that enables users to earn rewards on high-yield prediction markets.
Dubbed as the Uniswap of Prediction Markets, PlotX uses an Automated Market Making algorithm to create, settle markets and distribute rewards on the Ethereum Blockchain without any counter-party risk. Markets are focused on crypto-pairs like BTC, ETH, YFI etc and are automatically created in intervals of 4 hour, 1 day and 1 week.
