Gate.io AMA with Clearpool-The First Decentralized Credit Marketplace

Time: Nov 27th, 2021, 13:00 UTC
Gate.io hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with Robert Alcorn, Co-Founder and CEO of Clearpool in the Gate.io Exchange Community.
Official Website: https://clearpool.finance/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClearpoolFin
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Guest

Robert Alcorn — Co-Founder and CEO of Clearpool

Q&A from Gate.io

Q1: Can you please introduce yourself and the core members of your team?

Rob: Sure.

I am Rob, I am the CEO and Co-Founder of Clearpool! I have over 20 years of business experience including 12 years in global financial markets. Before Clearpool I was utive Director, APAC Repo Trader at First Abu Dhabi Bank. I have been involved in crypto since 2015 when I started researching blockchain technology for a digital wealth management platform I was working on at the time. I’ve been trading crypto since then and have many friends in the industry, including my Co-Founder Alessio Quaglini, the CEO of Hex Trust. Alessio and I are ex-colleagues from our banking days. He is a senior advisor to Clearpool.

Jakob Kronbichler joined us on the founding team early on, he has a track record of launching various start-ups for Rocket Internet, and was more recently Commercial Director at one of the largest digital neobanks in Asia. Pavel Ivanov is our CTO and Vadim Zolotokrylin is our Product Owner, they both have rich experience in blockchain development, as does our wider team of developers. In total we are a team of nine based in Hong Kong, Singapore and Moscow.

Q2: What is Clearpool?

Rob: Clearpool is the first decentralized dynamic marketplace for unsecured liquidity. It allows institutional borrowers to attract liquidity directly from the DeFi eco without the need for collateral.

Clearpool introduces single-borrower continuous liquidity pools with a dynamic interest rate mechanism which takes its main input from the pool’s utilization ratio - the amount of liquidity currently being utilized by the pool’s borrower.

This dynamic mechanism, driven by market supply and demand, ensures that each pool will always reach a state of equilibrium in terms of pool size and interest rate.

Borrowers do not have any regular interest payments or scheduled principal repayments, and lenders are rewarded with higher interest rates when risks increase.

When lenders supply liquidity to a pool they receive cpTokens. These tokens represent the liquidity supplied to the pool, accrue the pool interest and rewards on every block, and represent the risk profile of the pool’s borrower.

cpTokens can be redeemed at any time subject to available liquidity, and can be traded in a secondary market, giving LPs optionality in terms of liquidity and risk management. cpTokens are the building blocks for a of tokenized risk which will allow Clearpool to later introduce further risk management and hedging solutions for lenders.

It is this level of sophistication that will position Clearpool to attract flows from the $120 trillion traditional capital markets eco.

Q3: So how can retail investors get involved in this project?

Rob: CPOOL is the utility and governance token for the Clearpool protocol. CPOOL holders will vote on the whitelisting of new borrowers, a process that will qualify participants to earn additional CPOOL through an incentive reward scheme.

Eventually, a full decentralized governance framework will be introduced, allowing CPOOL holders to propose, vote, and implement future changes and upgrades to the protocol.

Pre-staking will be available after the CPOOL launch on multiple CEX venues, and we also have attractive rewards for those who provide ETH/CPOOL liquidity on Uniswap v3.

A new staking program will be announced before the mainnet launch of the Clearpool v1.0 protocol, where long term stakers will earn significantly higher rewards. CPOOL staking will be a required action for borrowers, who must stake an amount of CPOOL to access the area of the protocol where they can make a proposal to be whitelisted.

Liquidity providers earn additional CPOOL rewards, enhancing pool interest rates to attractive levels. Clearpool will announce a buyback program, where a share of protocol revenue will be used to buy CPOOL in the open market to sustain reward pools perpetually.

So plenty of reasons to buy and hold!

Q4: Very interesting indeed! And how does Clearpool secure user’s assets? And how will you deal with the regulatory and compliance policies?

Rob: One of our main partners is Hex Trust, Asia’s leading digital asset custodian. Hex will be providing custody and transaction monitoring services to Clearpool and its users. Hex is licensed and regulated in both Hong Kong and in Singapore, so they bring a great deal of expertise when it comes to regulatory and compliance policies. Along with Hex, Clearpool has developed a proof of identity and KYC , which allows us to verify the identity and KYC status of our borrowers.

Having a close partnership with a company like Hex, shows that Clearpool has the foresight to operate in a compliant manner whilst at the same time leveraging the benefits of cryptography and decentralization. It is our long term goal to attract significant market share from TradFi and to make Clearpool the primary place for the issuance of on-chain debt, the partnership with Hex will help us to achieve this vision
The security of user funds is of the utmost importance to our team, to that end our smart contracts are being audited by a leading smart contract security audit firm to ensure that no vulnerabilities exist.

Q5: What is the next step after the IDO? Is there anything else investors can look forward to?

Rob: Yes! Long term CPOOL holders and stakers will have the best opportunities on Clearpool in the future.

Immediately after the IDO our pre-staking program will be available on various platforms, this will give CPOOL holders amazing opportunities to increase their holdings as we approach the mainnet launch. Keep an eye out for an announcement on this.

Clearpool allows retail investors to participate in some of the types of investment opportunities that in TradFi are typically only available to institutions or HNWIs. The institutional borrowers on Clearpool, such as very successful hedge funds and trading companies, generate huge returns, and therefore can pay higher rates of interest for unsecured liquidity. LPs on Clearpool therefore get to participate in the success of these firms’ strategies by lending to them, and receiving the higher rates of interest.

Additional bonus rewards paid in the native CPOOL token will boost overall APYs to very attractive levels, especially for long term holders and stakers. This will make Clearpool one of the most attractive venues in DeFi for lenders and investors!