Journey into Defi - Rafaella Barraldo

all right buffakorns up next we have rafaela from pods finance we're really excited to listen to her talk about the journey into d5 rafaela how are you today hello thanks for having me oh we're so excited to talk to you today how's your day been how have you how's your conference been going absolutely great great like i miss each denver in prison so much in some of the most interaction we've had outside of real life in a long time i hope you've been making into the castle and seeing some old friends we're so happy to have you back absolutely um i can't wait for the next one as well in fact east denver was my last like in person real conference and and i hold it very dearly in my heart um yeah absolutely so my goal here today is to share a little bit about pod's history in my history a little bit as well and maybe to inspire some of you that are in this between going out of hackathon and deciding to start a project so i'm going to put here a presentation and can i share my screen really fast yes absolutely let me see here so pods is creating uh what we are calling the easiest way to hedge your crypto so essentially we are working with options under the hood and our own options amm to allow people to buy hedge uh seamlessly this is something that is really hard to do in traditional finance and and to me is is very um it's something that brings my attention that it's possible to do in defy and change the experience completely around around hedging your assets in within crypto so i'm just going to go back a little bit on our story so my co-founders and i started working together for a blockchain company in brazil we're all from brazil uh that was in september last september 2018 um this company decided to shift to d5 very early in this very early days of defy and so we were there in in our in the small office learning everything that there was about d5 to to learn um and in we just absolutely fell in love with d5 with everything that was happening with this new solutions and and so on so we we couldn't help ourselves so we started uh doing side projects together so we did a side project in september 2019 in brazil which was something very specific to like um it was actually a more broad uh hackathon but we we shifted to d5 like our project was around d5 was super interesting in in that hackathon we started discussing ideas of futures and options in d5 and to us that was really really interesting and we want to keep working on this and like within that week a really interesting protocol came out it was called convexity protocol this protocol was uh talking about ideas that were really similar to what we were just discussing uh this you know this past weekend so we were uh very excited to see that happening elsewhere in the world and and we were like oh i mean we should we should build a tool uh for this like we were talking about this makes total sense let's build a tool uh so we did that and that was our first um options contract that we put out a live on mina that was in november 2019 back then where no one almost no one was talking about options uh he was called oh my die so that project was really fun to do we did right before the multi-collateral diet update and it was offering like insurance for die in case died lose the peg because back then the community was a little bit divided between is that going to keep the peg or not so we did that back then and then uh we went to tweet denver which is super important in our story in february last year and in february last year we decided to expand oh my dice mission which back then was only uh american pit options for stable assets so it was dye usdc so we extended that to volatile assets which was die in east and we did also call options and we combined the two to form a straddle so we did that last year in denver that was really nice we were one of the finalists we presented in the big stage um i still remember that day as if it was yesterday and it was very important for us because uh in that moment i think that it was clear to to us that we wanted to keep working with this so badly um and so if you are in the situation as well i i definitely recommend that you pursue your dreams because it's actually really um really a fun ride in in d5 right now so after each denver we we found our way out of the company we used to work for and we started pods in may so um when we started pods the first version of pods was had a what we call smart collateral so it was built on top of ave so anyone could use a tokens or adai or ausdc as collateral in in in pods and what happened back then was that we were using uni swap as a venue of exchange for those tokens ultimately we well we went all the way uh to produce this mvp and make it work in fact we had a cold audit for this and we were ready to go live and we decided not to especially because we realized that in permanent loss for liquidity providers could be a significant um in and that would be really bad for our users so we decided to stop that and create a new options amn that would allow for reduced and permanent loss in more like vision or transparency on risks and that's what we did so in a project perspective in september we started working on this options amm we called it designed it and now we're working on a cold audit for it which is which is going going well we expect to to go live in q1 this year um and of course that throughout all this process many things happen in fact um i would love to to discuss it a little bit with you guys here now because um coming out of if denver back then in february um last year the scenario was very different from what it is now uh coming in and also coming from brazil we didn't have such a vision or understanding of how the venture market worked in in other countries or even in within d5 and that was all new to us so we learned a lot during this process so i would say that um we participated on on a few things during our story uh within d5 within defy and within pods that helped us understand a lot of what was happening in how the market was changing so fast and those things were uh we participated in in three main um accelerator programs so one of them was called is called boost vc the other one is kernel uh and the other one is defy chicago alliance um all of them was really interesting uh for us it was just like a really absolutely fun um source of learning and knowledge to all of us so um i would say that when we started fundraising in in july last year the market was very different from what it is today but we understood that because we were building something so interesting and in within this this space of the centralized finance venture was also different and and so we were not limited to investors in brazil in fact we were actually uh meeting investors all over um which was which was very interesting um for us and we ended up meeting investors that are extremely helpful and i would recommend that you do that if you want to pursue your hackathon project forward i would recommend you to find investors that are going to work with you to to make you go further and and help you get to where you want to go so meeting your investors and having long conversations with them is is is an extremely maybe undervalued or underrated advice um and so i i think that the the programs that we participated were extremely valuable if i could i would do them once at a time instead of all of all of them together but since every like life doesn't doesn't stop and it it it's not a call you can't pause it so you you have to to do the and take the opportunities that you have and that's what we did so um we took our opportunities and we learned with them so at d5 chicago alliance we met market makers we understood how other projects were approaching liquidity and it was extremely valuable all of those conversations at colonel we met the community we started looking at how the community gets together and you know learn differently and i love how this is all questioned and like proposed a new way of doing so within kernel and i highly recommend everyone to participate especially if you're in crypto and d5 so our team members are also invited to participate in kernel moving forward so i i think that um it's it's really interesting to see how uh the the crypto community and the d5 community is building around those learning centers as well um and i think that this is extremely valuable please let me know if i'm uh passing in my time got about five minutes okay great okay so if if there's anything that i could recommend you guys to to do coming out of a hackathon is to uh take risks uh and and take like smart risks so know that uh whatever you do is is gonna shape you how you are and you're gonna learn with it and even though like if whatever you decide to do it also means that you're deciding to not do something else and so when you decide to go on a route and do something do it with your full heart and go all the way around it and always know that you're what then the risk of upside on learning and and having experiences is always always bigger than the risk of downside so having the experience of going through a hackathon going out of it starting a project with it opening up a community developing a project you know all of this all of those experiences are extremely valuable and they're going to shape you how you are and how you're going to be in the future so take advantage of all of those opportunities of learning learnings and and i think that kernel is a great place uh to be in this moment because you you also get the chance to meet other people that are going through the same thing um and and this is like key you you can't do all of this alone it's just you can't go through this alone this is a lot um in in sharing experiences and learnings is where in my opinion i think we have uh a really big advantage as comparison to other markets so just as a an example i come from traditional finance so i have a background in like trading desks and hedge funds and there the way things work is absolutely different from here so here you you see something on twitter you read about it you you learn about it you talk to the person that that created it you make questions and then there's this ball of knowledge being created all around uh in in because of that because of that characteristic of being online 100 of the time in 24 7 and knowledge being shared and open source um we are moving extremely fast like if you launch something today and someone finds an error uh they could find it like within i don't know hours and that could take a lot longer to appear if if it wasn't in some some other type of market that it doesn't have uh this type of infrastructure that we are creating here for a community to to live and grow in in tribe so i am extremely bullish in this way of creating community and in learning with it and growing within it and i guess that if number and kernel and d5 alliance and boost are really important pieces um of of the that community creation so i'm really grateful for for participating in all of them and um if there's anything that i could ever help you guys with uh count on me i've been there i've you know participated in in this journey of starting a project and going through through those uh moments so if there's anything i could ever help you guys with let me know if you're interested in options and and you want to maybe work with us you can for sure join our team so we have a few open positions um and absolutely interested in hearing from you guys and i guess that's it so if you have any questions or if there's anything i can do to help please feel free to reach out this is our contact so you can reach out twitter my twitter at rafaela baraldo and pods twitter is pods that finance and i think that that's that's pretty much it if there are any questions i'd be happy to take them that was so awesome rafaela thank you and thank you for bringing it back to how much this community matters we are such a growing group of people that are really dedicated to helping each other's projects and contributing to see each other succeed it's really awesome that you called that out absolutely and thanks for offering to help us it's it's so great that people can reach out and ask you if they need anything and uh we'll be sure to keep tweeting out and publishing your project and anything else you want the quick community to know before you take off yeah so i i would just recommend and encourage you guys to take uh smart risks so whatever you do go and go with your proof heart learning everything that you can about the experience you're living because this is going to shape you how you are moving forward um and and yeah that's it that it's such a great time to be alive and to participate of this market like all of what we're creating is a unique thing and this is absolutely exciting so be excited about that and and let's do it that's awesome it's a super exciting time to be involved this what's just even what's happened in the last couple of weeks has been pretty crazy so thank you so much we're really grateful to you thank you