Climb - the very first step
Climb is a quarterly newsletter for you, fellow farmers, the one who joined, participated and helped to build deFarm along the way. Climb series was made with an aspiration and vision in mind, that we are trying to climb to the top. No matter if we succeed in the future or not, our journey will be recorded from now to many years to come. Come read with us to see what we have built, what our struggles are and what might come next.
One small step for deFarm
deFarm was born in the middle of the Crypto 2022-2023 bear market. Projects and narratives are dying like flies, trading volume on exchanges was 1/10 of the last bull run peak, regulators are hunting everyone down and funding for new startups was basically frozen. At the same time, the macro environment is incredibly bad. A tightening credit environment, global recession and a looming threat of another world war/global conflict is bad for businesses everywhere (unless you are selling weapons, vital foods or you are already super ultra rich rich).
Yet, deFarm team emerged in late 2022, with the effort from Chainslab and TCVN. We are somewhat dreamy builders, got ditched by a giant gap in the industry, and decided that we must do something with it. Fully decentralization is the next logical step for the crypto industry, and on-chain is the new online. Sooner or later, most of user activities when interacting with digital assets will occur on DEXs, not CEXs. Yet DEXs, especially perpetual ones, are facing one giant problem: they have relatively low volume, liquidity, user number and a clunky UX. (trust us, we survey our large base of users, most of them won’t return to Perp DEXs like GMX or DYDX after first tries. Cuz Binance is way better in terms of everything).
So, users will be punished for being an early adopter of Perp DEXs. Professional traders might use them without hassle, but an average retailer will say “hell no”. We started our journey in crypto as an average retailer, so we understand that. Trading and investing in crypto is hard enough, if you have to also deal with fees, complicated user steps and too-long-to-read mechanisms, you could quit from the start. Also, trading on DEXs is a no-go, because no one is trading on DEXs.
That is when we come up with our solutions. Basically, deFarm is a Social Layer, built on top of an on-chain asset management platform, which is built on top of a liquidity layer from our partners, which is built on top of many Layer 2 Networks
Hard to understand eh? We thought so too, so we spent lots of time making our products flow easy to understand, just needed to go to https://testnet.de.farm/ to test it. (If you’re new, this Guide would be helpful)
With deFarm, we try to bring win-win situations to everyone involved.
If you are a Trader, you can earn much more efficiently with your trades. Instead of trading solo with your own funds, you can double leverage your trades by crowdfunding for your trading ideas/funds. By creating and managing your own on-chain vaults, you can showcase your skills, earn performance bonuses, get featured and become famous on our social platform.
If you are an investor who just wants to put your money to work in passive mode, come to deFarm habibi. Browse through our Social Feed, discover the best traders and watch your investment grow up.
That is our concept, that is our aim and what are we trying to achieve. We want to build a platform that can help connect traders and investors, to make crypto investing more easily, efficiently and transparent. That platform must also be fun, easy to use, and available on mobile as a social application so that mass adoption can happen.
To us, dis is de way, our small step toward the future.
A Giant Leap for our Farmers
So, deFarm was built from the ground up in early Jan 2023. 6 months since, what we have achieved included:
Finished not only our MVP while we didn't get much funding (Mostly self-funded, with a little help from our frens at K300 Ventures), but also the Testnet for our first product, Single Farm.
Put together a thriving community, oversubscription of our Private Testnet even in a realllyyy terrible market condition when no-one whatsoever wants to participate in anything other than escape crypto market. We got like, 200+ participants, a few hundred thousand of testnet volume, and found out many bugs to fix. Props to those guys who put out feedback.
Tried to raise funds, but got turned away from most VCs and partners. Some feedback that our concept is “too new and will have no traction”, some feedback that our concept is “too old and the others who go before us have failed”. Yet we are still here. Not only keep buidling (I mean everyone here is already building), but also trying to do that efficiently. Also still trying to close the Private rounds.
We’re close to finishing the Testnet for Seasonal Farm, our key product in 2023 - 2024.
Made new friends. Some of them are builders like us, who share the same vision. Some of them are investors who are willing to go with us through thick and thin in the years to come (we will try our best to not let them down). Some of them are early adopters who just want to try new things. Also some airdrop hunters on Twitter and Discord come to say GM every morning. You are all awesome.
Finished branding, documentations, and prepared everything for our launch plan in early 2024.
In the next quarters of 2023, we are trying to achieve the following goals:
Seasonal Farm and Single Farm, both on Testnet and fully functional, ready to go-to-market at any time.
Bring new friends to our cap table. It’s a hard process since we choose our investors carefully, but hey, at least we tried!
Audited and security tested so you don’t have to worry about your funds safety when it comes to deFarm.
Grow our community 3x. Bring in new traders and retailers/investors to deFarm. Cuz it ain’t social if you don’t have friends around.
… and maybe, a peak at our Airdrop plan :)
What we have done so far is a lot for us, because our team is fairly small (yet full of passion). And we also hope to bring a lot of positive impact to the trading/investing journey of our community members in the years to come. We are immensely grateful for the support and encouragement we have received throughout the journey.
Looking ahead, we’re excited about the future and the opportunities to make a meaningful difference in our community. Our focus remains on demystifying crypto trading and investing, making it accessible to everyone. We also aim to provide educational content, regular updates, and innovative features to help our community members navigate the ever-changing landscape of the markets. With your continued support and feedback, we can build a vibrant and supportive community that thrives on knowledge sharing and collective growth.
We will keep our journey updated and transparent to the public along the way, so don’t forget to follow us through our links.
Cheers, and hope to see you in our next newsletter :)
nice jobbbb, keep doing guys
Let's climb to the top everyone