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The following transcript was created using artificial intelligence. There will be some grammatical errors below.

00:00:03:00 – 00:00:26:15

Richard Carthon: Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Crypto Current. Your host. Here is your car, Ethan. Today I have a very special guest all the way out in Bali, Indonesia, working on a really cool defi lending collateralized. All these amazing buzz word things that I’m excited to learn more about. Of course we have constant. Sure enough. The Marketing Director of French finance. How are you doing today?

00:00:28:03 – 00:00:37:08

Konstantin Shirokov: Hello, Richard. Thanks for inviting me. And hello to crypto current community. I’m doing pretty good today. Of course, being on your show for.

00:00:37:16 – 00:00:40:07

Richard Carthon: Sure, Michel. Pleasure to have you.

00:00:41:25 – 00:00:46:16

Richard Carthon: I want to start off with just getting a little bit of background on yourself. Can you give us a little bit of information?

00:00:48:11 – 00:01:05:12

Konstantin Shirokov: Thanks for the question. I have experience of ten years of working in marketing. The last five of them in the crypto space. I have previously worked in a variety of different industries. But when I landed in crypto, I understood that it’s a place where I want to stay.

00:01:06:29 – 00:01:28:10

Konstantin Shirokov: I have seen the enormous potential in the crypto space and a lot of the advantages as the retail user and even as the marketing person. Now it is the new normal, but back then it was the magic. When you were paying the contracts worldwide in a couple of clicks with verified that they have received the payment from you.

00:01:30:08 – 00:02:01:03

Richard Carthon: And the moment I was looking for a life activities that will not only bring me financial freedom, but also bring value and make the world a better place. Yeah, I know it sounds funny and corny, but in the case of crypto, it really is. It’s really so. The borderless and censorship free technology for finance and tons of different other industries is something we terribly need in the age of big tech tyranny and government sanctions.

00:02:01:12 – 00:02:16:16

Richard Carthon: That is to sum up that I love crypto and currently consume the majority of my time, but I also have different passions and attention. But I used to playing in rock bands and now I’m spending time with my family, especially with my daughter.

00:02:17:29 – 00:02:35:28

Richard Carthon: Man, that’s awesome. Really robust and very clear. You’re passionate about the space and, you know, being able to provide access to people, which kind of aligns with what you’re trying to do over at fringe finance. So can you just just what is French finance and what ultimately are you trying to solve?

00:02:37:19 – 00:03:12:01

Konstantin Shirokov: Yeah, I’ll be. Our memo says that French finance is a decentralized mining market designed to unlock the capital spend in crypto assets, regardless of their capitalization and supported networks. We are next generation defi lending borrowing ecosystem that unlocks the German capital from traditional financial markets and all to cryptocurrencies. What exactly does that mean? In reality, we connect altcoin coders that are interested in borrowing using their group the assets as the collateral.

00:03:13:02 – 00:03:36:00

Konstantin Shirokov: Institutional investors and high net worth individuals. Why interested in learning additional details on the capital yield that is higher than in the legacy financial system, or, as we call it, traditional financial system and crypto projects? What interested in providing the additional utility for the token holders?

00:03:37:23 – 00:04:10:04

Konstantin Shirokov: Currently on our primary lending platform. We are utilizing USD CE Stablecoin, but we are planning to add another Stablecoins. And finally, the next step for us will be the establishment of our own Stablecoin that is called USD with use. Be where I deliver in the vision. Mm hmm. All the stablecoins similar to makerdao. But that will be truly decentralized and backed by a huge variety of different crypto assets.

00:04:10:23 – 00:04:18:20

Konstantin Shirokov: We are also envisioning French finance to be governed as decentralized autonomous organizations

00:04:20:12 – 00:04:43:25

Konstantin Shirokov: with the key decisions decisions on the platform decided by the vote of the community and all the organizational process of majority of the organizational processes being worked out dramatically at the smart contracts. And we do believe that the future is on the side of just centralized autonomous organizations.

00:04:44:28 – 00:04:59:03

Konstantin Shirokov: For sure. Well, you just gave us a lot to unpack. I want to first start with with French finance being a way to be able to create yield on on crypto loans. So let’s first start there. Like, how are how do your crypto loans work on average finance?

00:05:00:20 – 00:05:55:15

Konstantin Shirokov: In all in in the traditional loans there are five CS like character capacity, capital, collateral and conditions. Even the decentralized and permissionless manner or the curriculum. No one yet has implemented a credit score or any sort of identity associated with a loan that is being taken out. So the only seat remaining and that is being taken into consideration is the collateral and collateralization, you know, for for those unfamiliar with that is when borrowers put an asset as a means for the lender to recoup their capital in the in the instance of default and defaulting is when the borrower fails to pay

00:05:57:00 – 00:06:31:16

Konstantin Shirokov: according to his agreement. It’s the obvious part of how traditional Collateralization collateralized loans works. The key difference between traditional Collateralization and Defi one is that on defi lending protocols it is required for the borrower to the collateralized. The loan and French finance is not an exception here. One of the most important parameters on our primary lending platform is called LBA.

00:06:32:18 – 00:07:08:02

Konstantin Shirokov: It is loan to value ratio and it defines the amount of capital that can be taken from our capital pool by the borrower. And Elvira’s amount, it depends on the level of the of the assets. So different assets are assigned to different loan to value ratios. That parameters is assigned. It’s calculated by the to the most drawbacks from the price in a given period of time.

00:07:08:22 – 00:07:11:27

Konstantin Shirokov: So let me give an example. You have

00:07:14:00 – 00:07:41:08

Konstantin Shirokov: 1000 worth of asset, and this asset has an alveolar level of like 50%. In the case, you want to take a loan stablecoins on the platform. The maximum amount that you can take from this thousand is $500 worth of stablecoins.

00:07:42:24 – 00:07:50:05

Richard Carthon: Got it. So you you basically have a ways to do collateralized lending and all over collateralized lending. And in exchange.

00:07:51:01 – 00:08:36:04

Konstantin Shirokov: Let let me add a little bit to that. Okay. And a lot of people ask, what are the use cases for crypto loans? They do not understand why people need to take capital, especially the people who are outside of the crypto industry. They do not understand why people need to take capital if they already have capital and they put even more as the collateral on the platform. We define like three major cases of proofs of laws. The first one is the most obvious that you need to use or deploy your capital, but you don’t have the desire currently to sell that underlying asset.

00:08:37:07 – 00:09:20:28

Konstantin Shirokov: So you go out and take a loan. The second reason for the crypto loan can be that you have an opportunity in the broader DEFI or crypto ecosystem to utilize the capital and earn more ILS. So you do not go selling the tokens. You take a stablecoin loan and earn more ILS than you pay as an interest for the loan. And first case is can be that for tax itemization because if there is no case of profit on your side, there is no case for that for the taxation.

00:09:23:05 – 00:09:59:14

Richard Carthon: So there are three really good points and to just re-emphasize them, one is you don’t necessarily want to take profit on a particular coin to get liquid, so you’d rather keep the upside of that particular crypto on your end to keep appreciating while being able take out liquidity against it so that you can do whatever you need to in that capacity. The other is, if you decide to sell the token, then that means that you technically have a taxable event and you don’t necessarily want to take that taxable event yet, and you would rather instead get to get a loan against your asset and be able to make other things opportunities.

00:10:00:00 – 00:10:00:15

Richard Carthon: With that.

00:10:01:15 – 00:10:03:06

Konstantin Shirokov: And for.

00:10:03:09 – 00:10:13:13

Richard Carthon: Your person who aren’t for your person who’s not used to necessarily using, uh, lending as a means in which to

00:10:15:08 – 00:10:36:06

Richard Carthon: open up more opportunities to have your overall portfolio and assets grow. Some would argue that this potentially could be risky, or some could say that there are more downside than upside with with doing that. What would you tell those people who have questions around loans in that capacity?

00:10:38:21 – 00:10:50:17

Konstantin Shirokov: Definitely that the like. In every case, there are pros and cons of all the loans and in the crypto space

00:10:52:09 – 00:10:55:25

Konstantin Shirokov: there are definitely big amount of pros.

00:10:57:12 – 00:11:33:06

Konstantin Shirokov: The first one and obvious one is that it is available to the people worldwide, pretty much in the permissionless manner. So, uh, there are billions of people underbanked now that cannot use financial service for the different, you know, number of reasons. And decentralized financial space is available for everyone. I think that’s a huge opportunity and huge upside of of all of what are we doing right now?

00:11:35:11 – 00:11:46:04

Konstantin Shirokov: Another another pro in that case is that you don’t have to go through that, you know, some huge variety of legal processes and

00:11:47:27 – 00:12:21:18

Konstantin Shirokov: that the duration of time that you need to take a loan in the device space is minutes. It’s not weeks and as it is made in permissionless manner. So also, unlike in the traditional banking space, of course on the side of the contrast is that it is over collateralized. So you have to put huge amount of or exceeding amount of capital in order to take a loan.

00:12:24:12 – 00:12:53:07

Richard Carthon: Yeah. And like you said, the pros and cons with this just really varies from person to person. And depending on how you’re trying to utilize liquidity and what it means, especially both during bearish times and during bullish times, but obviously you have some competitors out there who are doing something similar in this space. What do you do? What would you say is the biggest differentiator of French finance compared to some of the other opportunities out there?

00:12:55:15 – 00:13:27:22

Konstantin Shirokov: Uh, we do not consider, you know, other platforms that are doing similar things that we are doing as the, you know, competitors or rivals here, because we see a lot of opportunities and we think that there will be enough of space when the market will start growing enough of space for different projects with different key target audiences and different niche aspects in them.

00:13:30:13 – 00:13:32:21

Konstantin Shirokov: If I would highlight the

00:13:34:09 – 00:13:55:10

Konstantin Shirokov: the key differences or key advantages of French finance from other lending platform, I would say that our our key idea is, you know, our motto is defi for everyone. And we are bringing the access

00:13:57:03 – 00:14:09:03

Konstantin Shirokov: to financial services, to decentralized financial services, to to smaller capitalization altcoins to all tier

00:14:10:20 – 00:14:51:17

Konstantin Shirokov: crypto assets that are currently leg side for utility in the DEFI space. So we are opening the market money markets to the assets that doesn’t currently they do not currently have them. We are introducing the tier system to defi or win landscape. So we evaluate every asset and provide every asset with it with parameters so that allow us to scale the amount of assets that will be available on the platform.

00:14:53:06 – 00:15:28:27

Konstantin Shirokov: But at the same time, when with this very same mechanism, we are establishing a new funding model for crypto projects because it is not only they are retail users who can use the platform and who can take a loan against given assets. It is the protocol, it is the projects themself who can take a loan against their treasury, they can fund their operations and, you know, market and take side

00:15:30:13 – 00:15:35:06

Konstantin Shirokov: anything with their own tokens. We are bringing

00:15:37:00 – 00:15:42:16

Konstantin Shirokov: that with that model that works in the traditional banking into crypto.

00:15:44:06 – 00:15:49:18

Konstantin Shirokov: So currently these opportunity do not exist in the in the defi space.

00:15:51:11 – 00:15:52:11

Konstantin Shirokov: What we also

00:15:55:04 – 00:16:03:12

Konstantin Shirokov: point in is that and we are aiming a lot to is to become the decentralized protocol and we are doing

00:16:05:04 – 00:16:22:05

Konstantin Shirokov: it, doing that in different directions. As I have already mentioned, we are planning to switch our governments into the dollar mode. So the key decision will be made by the holders or the tokens

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00:16:24:00 – 00:16:37:26

Konstantin Shirokov: in the voting process. We are introducing the decentralized interface. So even in case of some bookings or anything that can a cure,

00:16:39:13 – 00:16:46:27

Richard Carthon: anyone can establish the interface and interact with the protocol.

00:16:49:00 – 00:17:01:27

Konstantin Shirokov: It makes us, you know, immutable. In the majority of cases, all the regulation, sanctions and other similar situations.

00:17:04:09 – 00:17:08:07

Konstantin Shirokov: And that is not unique. But we are also

00:17:10:05 – 00:17:42:21

Konstantin Shirokov: having the insurance aspect of the platform. So the users on both sides, both lenders and borrowers, would be protected in case of different scenarios, in case of liquidations, in case of smart contract breaches, hacks, all of the things. So, so to sum up, we are opening the access to the money markets. We’re doing that by introducing the tier system.

00:17:43:19 – 00:18:07:29

Konstantin Shirokov: We are creating the new funding model for crypto projects. We are going as is to to the extent as possible, decentralized, and we are introducing insurance to the protocols. And of course, let me add that we are planning to go cross-chain. So the users can.

00:18:12:22 – 00:18:25:23

Konstantin Shirokov: Can use our protocol in the in the manner that they do not have any issues with bringing the capital between different chains.

00:18:27:15 – 00:18:46:13

Richard Carthon: Right. And I appreciate you expanding on all of that, because there’s, you know, definitely a bunch of differentiators. So right now, as it stands today, someone’s listening to this and that sounds wow, that’s really cool. I want to check this out. I want to see how I can participate. How can users currently today interact with the protocol and use some of these different resources?

00:18:49:14 – 00:19:24:23

Konstantin Shirokov: Yeah, we are currently on the best stage of our protocol. It’s been almost two years that we are working on the on the development and now we have got the results of the audit. We are audited by two respected entities, what it is called cyber unit that I also our development company, but they have a separate entity that is doing audits and another company that is called Hassocks.

00:19:25:01 – 00:19:32:11

Konstantin Shirokov: So we have the results of these two audits. We have passed them. And so we really about

00:19:34:25 – 00:20:05:01

Konstantin Shirokov: to deploy the protocol. We have already deployed our smart contracts and set up the interface to interact with the protocol. We do not currently recommend to users to interact the protocols because we will have the we will additionally make the announcement about the launch date. But you know, it will be in the coming weeks or even maybe maybe earlier than that.

00:20:05:13 – 00:20:32:22

Konstantin Shirokov: So users can enjoy all the functionality of lending and borrowing and soon after that they will be also available the functionality of staking. And that’s also a crucial part of the platform because one of the main aims of the platform is to generate profit for the holders of the free tokens

00:20:35:20 – 00:20:36:05

Konstantin Shirokov: part

00:20:37:21 – 00:21:13:22

Konstantin Shirokov: or the fees collected by the platform is distributed to the status of free token and that opportunity will be available on the on I was taken facility. And so as the additional reward on early stages on the platform, there will be additional reward for four lenders so they can stake their F token that will represent their share of the capital, the on the platform

00:21:15:20 – 00:21:50:02

Konstantin Shirokov: and you know, earn additional alt on that. So we are having the primary lending platform after that we have a stake in facility and soon after that we are already working on that. We will have our own stablecoin that is called use V that I mentioned previously to celebrate all the things happening. First of all, the launch for the primary lending platform, we are planning to have the biggest and the first ever party in the metaverse.

00:21:50:24 – 00:22:26:05

Konstantin Shirokov: It will be decentralized, decentraland metaverse and we are inviting our community and everyone who is interested and in the defi space and what are we doing there to enjoy the right? There will be a d, g, there will be some contests and that some laser activity and that will be decentralized bar saying that I am and we have constructed the yeah it was initially a joke in the community that we should gather on the Yeah.

00:22:26:07 – 00:22:46:12

Konstantin Shirokov: To celebrate because it took a lot of time for us to, to deliver the platform. So we have decided to, to turn that joke into a reality, into metal reality and invites everyone to celebrate that. Even for us it’s awesome.

00:22:46:14 – 00:23:09:25

Richard Carthon: Well, after years of Building Town, it sounds like you are now ready to bring this to market. Have all of these new users be able to come on and start doing some lending, getting some staking and participating in Decentraland launch party? That sounds like a lot of fun for people who are listening, who want to learn more about everything happening at Fringe. What are ways that they can connect with you and get more information?

00:23:12:13 – 00:23:50:23

Richard Carthon: Yeah, sure. We have official Twitter where we post all the official information and the news happening with the protocol. We have the telegram channels with the awesome community a little bit crazy, but still awesome. We invite everyone to enjoy that trade. We have the website for each notify and with the links to our documents we have a guidebook where all the information is presented about how protocol works and the documentation on the smart contracts.

00:23:51:20 – 00:23:59:12

Richard Carthon: And of course, to the most diehard, we invite you to read our white paper.

00:24:01:18 – 00:24:10:26

Richard Carthon: All right. Well, play information. We’ll make sure to share those links. But as we conclude here, man, for everyone listening, what’s like a final thought that you want to leave with everyone here today?

00:24:13:11 – 00:24:15:09

Richard Carthon: I would say do your own research.

00:24:17:17 – 00:24:36:25

Richard Carthon: That’s a good one. Make sure you verify, validate. And when you’re ready to move forward, you can go and do that. So do your own research. I think that’s a great final thought. Thank you so much for spending time with us today, dropping all this incredible insights. And of course, for everyone listening, stay cryptocurrency.