From April 18-April 25 a majority of the team at ease was at DevConnect in Amsterdam! While there, the team met with current partners and investors, while also establishing new ones! Robert even spoke at two of the events held during the conference. Below are all of the highlights from Devconnect.
The Team at ease, in Person
Remote work adds much-needed flexibility to the modern work environment. However, it does remove the benefits of in-person collaboration.
A large part of the ease team got to spend the week utilizing the various coworking spaces together to collaborate in person. Some of them met face to face for the first time!
Some much needed relaxation was had as well to celebrate the launch of the Uninsurance ecosystem only a week prior. Below are some of the highlights of the team at work, and at ease.
The Team Explores Partnership Opportunities
Devconnect was an exciting opportunity to talk face to face with other builders and investors in the blockchain community and receive more direct feedback on our Uninsurance ecosystem.
The team at ease has received a lot of positive feedback from multiple investors and other protocols. This feedback also spurred discussion for protocols to deposit treasury assets directly or to establish vaults in the ecosystem through direct partnerships!
Now that the event has concluded, the team is in the process of finalizing partnerships with the interested parties. Expect to see targeted TVL acquisitions, as well as direct protocol partnerships, in Q3-4 2022.
The Team connects with Partners
Another exciting part of the conference was to finally connect face to face with our partners!
The team attended events hosted by both 1kx and Collider Ventures, two of the initial strategic partners. We were able to collect their direct feedback on our Uninsurance model as well as discuss future investment opportunities.
The team was also invited to attend the D1 Conference, hosted by our longtime partner Nexus Mutual. There the team was able to discuss the future integration of Nexus’ much anticipated v2 model and its effects on arNXM and arNFT products.
We were also able to finally meet with many of the team over at Bright Union’s HQ and during our shared panels. We could jointly celebrate each other’s successes, with the launch of our ecosystem, and their Bright Risk Index. The teams also discussed the details of integration of our ecosystem into the BU protocol. Users can expect to see the launch of the Uninsurance platform on Bright Union’s frontend within this Q2!
CEO Robert Forster participates in panel discussions
Robert speaks on Coverage in DeFi (Secureum’s TrustX – 4/22/2022)
Robert was joined by other industry leaders in discussing the future of DeFi coverage and the current hurdles it is facing.
One issue highlighted by Hugh from Nexus Mutual is the capacity issue in DeFi cover, as the space is trying to cover “a small amount of large, catastrophic risks”.
A reason for this issue is due to the traditional underwriter method that most coverage protocols utilize. There are not enough underwriting funds to provide sufficient capacity to cover a vast quantity of DeFi. As Hugh states, “the most amount of capacity between all of us right now is $150, maybe $200 million”.
However, Robert provides the counterpoint. He states “There are new models that can increase capacity like crazy… With a risk sharing model where we don’t need underwriters… essentially the supply of coverage grows with demand”.
Robert is speaking about Ease’s Uninsurance model. With the covered assets simultaneously being used as coverage collateral, the available coverage capacity grows directly with the amount of covered funds in the system. This system can provide the capacity needed to cover these large catastrophic risks that Hugh references earlier in the panel.
Many other interesting discussions happened throughout the panel, which can be found in its entirety here: https://youtu.be/up9eqFRLgMQ?t=14011
Robert speaks on Securing DeFi (DeFi Day – 4/25/2022)
Robert joined other industry members in discussing the risks of DeFi and how best to secure the ecosystem against them.
One important note Robert bright up was his belief that “these markets can be super irrational… trying to price risk accurately in an industry like this is not possible”.
To clarify and expand on this comment it’s important to understand the infancy of the DeFi space:
Looking at traditional coverage protocols, their documents point to utilizing a buffer of funds to help protect against black swan events that would drain underwriting capital. These buffers are commonly based on European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) Solvency II methodology for a 1-in-200 year event (Source).
However, at most DeFi is only 3 years old, so there is a significant lack of data for these methodologies. Our partner Kiril from Bright Union further expands on this issue of the lack of historical data for modeling in the Secureum panel (Source) and in their DeFi day presentation.
Kiril states at Secureum,
“the risk is absolutely unknown in this industry, if you treat someone like Aave as ‘blue-chip’ and it’s secured, it’s totally not… you cannot measure risk like this, there are no history records, there are no simulations…most of these techniques are not applicable to DeFi at all”.
This lack of accurate risk assessment is a major pillar of why the team at ease has launched its Uninsurance product.
Current data shows that most traditional providers are charging greater values than what is necessary to cover these losses. This cost can be as much as 80% cheaper than what a normal policy costs, based on hack payouts from 2021.
Join the coverage revolution with Ease’s uninsurance and pay only what you need for a hack, not to fill the pockets of middlemen.
Back Home and Building
With the event concluded last week, the team is back home and focused on expanding the ecosystem through additional vaults as well as targeted acquisition of TVL and protocol partnerships. Many thanks to the Ethereum Foundation for hosting Devconnect. And special thanks to Secureum and Crypto Canal for inviting Robert to speak at their events. Until the next DevCon, remember to DeFi Safely, at ease.
About ease
The team at Ease shares a common vision:
- Blockchain technology and decentralization are a giant step forward and DeFi is a game-changer.
- Access to and usage of DeFi must be as easy and safe as possible. We do this by using the benefits of blockchain technology to bypass the negatives of TradFi.
- By covering Crypto risks easily and affordably, we can onboard many more crypto users.
- Crypto is just getting started, but the more users we can help get aboard, the faster the revolution will be.
In 2020, Armor.fi revolutionized DeFi coverage by making it flexible, automatic and not connected to memberships.
Since then, the team has been thinking about how to cover all of crypto. This is how Ease, and the model of Uninsurance came to be.