The world of financial services and technological innovation has never been more entwined. In recent years, we have witnessed the rise of cryptocurrency which carried into increased trading activity during the pandemic, as well as the adoption of blockchain enabled financial innovation, from peer to peer lending to better KYC and De-Fi.
There is a lot of ground to unpack and cover, and for this, we sat down with JoeZ Charanwattanakit and his founders to learn more about their newly launched platform,RobinHoodSwap, the long term mission to create a sustainable DeFi ecosystem and their views on how the platform can really allow people to do well whilst doing good.
You may recognize JoeZ from another startup; on demand cleaning services and maintenance platform Seekster, named DTAC Accelerate’s Best Performing Startup in 2017.
The Technology Jargon Behind The Platform
Complicated blockchain and financial technology jargons often throw people off when coming across the terminology, but RobinHoodSwap wants to make all that accessible for you.
“RobinHoodSwap is simply a DeFi yield farm that powers and facilitates our RBH tokens,” says JoeZ. “The core value of our platform is that it allows users to earn money and give back to charity.”
At its core, yield farming is a process that allows cryptocurrency holders to earn rewards on their holdings. Yield farming is very similar to banking, in that you deposit money into a farm and get an annual percentage return (APR). How is this calculated? It comes down to the mechanisms of blockchain, where there’s a certain emission rate; a certain amount of blocks that regenerate daily.
“In RBH’s case, it’s 0.2 per block. We generate 5,760 tokens per day,” says JoeZ.
The platform likely sees three kinds of investors; the first kind who will be drawn to the emotional angle of giving back, the second who will be a hybrid of charitable bullish crypto investors and the third will be crypto enthusiasts who are expectating 30x gains.
“Our goal is to attract the first two,” says JoeZ, “but we’re not saying no to anyone.”
Let’s take a few steps back.
DeFi, which stands for Decentralized Finance, refers to a blockchain based form of financial services that doesn’t require centralized financial institutions or intermediaries, such as banks or brokers.
A DeFi platform is kept accountable by Smart Contracts, which facilitates and records interactions between you and the other party for security.
RobinHoodSwap’s Mission
RobinHoodSwap’s core mission is to provide meaningful value for users through token and rewards, with a charitable twist and a clear mission to give back to society. The platform works with multiple charity partners in Thailand, such as Social Giver and Sati to provide 5% daily liquidated earnings.
“Our core mission is to be the link between offline charity organizations and global investors. To connect like minded investors who want to do well and give back, and using blockchain’s capabilities to exercise the authority of being decentralized,” says JoeZ.
RobinHoodSwap’s tagline, where prosperity meets charity, explains it best. The platform intends to be an exclusive farm with a vision of being the DeFi version of GoFundMe, whilst making it easier through blockchain without boundaries.
Talking Tokens
There are 32,000,000 total supply of RBH tokens, and the platform currently has about 500-600 holders. The goal is for the total supply to last about 9-11 years.
“We are planning to burn the tokens as we go,” says JoeZ.
The aforementioned 5,760 tokens generated daily. This determines the total amount of tokens that goes back to the community, which is then distributed by the amount a user puts into the farm.
“This is also related to the amount of liquidity provided to the project,” says JoeZ. It’s the people like the founders, who provide the liquidity to the automated market makers and it is those investors who get these yields are able to withdraw against that liquidity.
This is why, of the most important things related to the functioning of a crypto platform is the ease in ability to trade, which the founders addressed from the beginning by putting US$8,000 as initial liquidity for the platform.
“Now, we have investors who come in and help with liquidity and in return, they get tokens back,” says JoeZ.
The Charity Function
The team is actively involved in the charity aspect of the business, and they’re not just stopping at online donations.
“We have plans for an offline blood drive, on-ground donation work and a lot of community building things,” says JoeZ, “but all of it had to be put on hold because of the pandemic.”
The charity organizations have been quick to come on board as it gives them new exposure which could potentially come from all pockets of the world.
“There’s no catch for them,” says JoeZ, “all we ask is that they endorse our platform and help us spread the world, as well as help distribute information and on ground resources.”
For example, RobinHoodSwap would like to know how many meals were given to how many families from their US$700 contribution to Social Giver. This way, it keeps both sides accountable to the cause.
“We cannot go on ground and actively give back right now,” says JoeZ, “but when things are better, we’d like to do offline events and get the community together.”
An offline element that would see the team give back to their causes and communities would be a unique way to measure the success of the platform, and one that really showcases the core values of RobinHoodSwap.
Addressing the Trust Issue
We address the elephant in the room, about whether a blockchain powered platform that powers its own cryptocurrency token can be faced with apprehension and trust issues from the end users. RobinHoodSwap has actually taken actionable steps to ensure trust within the community.
“We’ve directly addressed the trust issue through three mandates,” says the founders. “Firstly, our Masterchef has a tightlock of 24 hours, and any changes we make to the smart contract will notify the users, who will then have 24 hours to withdraw money before the change is executed.”
Apart from that, the platform works with third party auditors who can verify that they are safe and secure. This includes AntiHack, as well as CertiK within the next couple of months.
The third thing? RobinHoodSwap actually has anti-whale features on the smart contract, but it hasn’t been activated. “Honestly, it’s hard to prevent a pump and dump,” they say, “and whilst we care about sustainability, it may not hurt to have a few whales on the platform!”
Side note: Pump-and-dump is a scheme that attempts to boost the value of a token, which takes advantage of users but makes money for the “scammers”.
Fostering Thailand’s Landscape
We also touched on Thailand’s entrepreneurial and startup landscape. One of the key limitations often attached to Thai startups is that the services and solutions are often very localized, which then places a cap on growth.
One benefit of launching a DeFi platform is that there are no geographical boundaries and location limits on users. This is part of the reason why the team is excited about the technology.
“DeFi is here to stay and will change a lot of things, until the next big technology comes along in 3-5 years,” says JoeZ. “Everything that has to do with lending, borrowing and payments has the potential to be innovated, also for crypto traders in terms of using tokens as collateral.”
The real question and challenge is, how can we bring DeFi’s possibilities to the offline world to people who have no understanding of it?
“People don’t have to understand blockchain, they just need to be able to use it. Someone may deposit money into a wallet, but the backend is all powered by blockchain. The biggest opportunity is how to bridge this with the mass market?”
Financial institutions such as Siam Commercial Bank and Kasikorn Bank are diving deeper into investments and exposure into blockchain technology, simply because it is the financial future. In a market like Thailand, it will also be these big banks that will have the funds and scale to bring innovative technology to the hands of the masses.
“When financial institutions can achieve that, it will also be a win for us as a platform and for the ecosystem,” says JoeZ.
Milestones & Future Plans
Within two months of launching, RobinHoodSwap has already reached some significant milestones.
“We hit TVL of US$2.5 million in ten days,” says JoeZ. “But we did get hit by the market condition with BTC when there was a dip.”
The charity aspect of the platform has also been making strides, with funds having been distributed to several charity partners across education and Covid-19 relief.
The platform is now working towards a big goal this year; to serve 100,000 meals through their charity partners through the liquidated gains from the platform. Currently, users are able to see how many meals have been served by the platform, and how many students have access to education. This is a very encouraging way to keep track whilst enjoying the financial benefits whilst farming.
“We plan to stick around for a long time, until the last RBH token will be minted. We are also intent on going global, and create an army of Robinhooders with the same vision to utilize DeFi to do good for their communities whilst investing. We’d like to build a community of like minded people,” says the team.
The company is also working towards launching an online marketplace, where they would work with charity partners such as Saturday School to sell children’s art as a physical piece and an NFT for auction.
Needless to say, the team’s product focused roadmap, alongside equally important charitable goals sets it apart from many other blockchain projects out there.
“We’re committed to this cause for the long haul.”
