Becoming Kava’s flagship DeFi lending protocol
ATR.- Kava Network has proven to be one of the most solid L1 projects in blockchain technology and it is now extending its participation in the Cosmos’ space. Their innovative vision towardsDeFi is also granted by new actors that facilitate a seamless and fast integration through liquidity oriented products for more users to get their piece of the pie.
DeFi services provide liquidity, with no centralized financial structure in the middle, for many aspects of a working blockchain project, scaling this to other projects or individuals who participate, through initiatives like Hover. And Hover aims to be the number one DeFi Kava enabler by focusing on DeFi Primitives this blochain's community will use.
Primitives are just components of DeFi services. Whether they are Oracles, Vaults, Automated Market Makers (or AMMs), Liquidity mining and Bonding curves, these functionalities work interlaced to create more complex functions that end up building working capital. So, by lending, staking or trading wisely, users get yield while contributing to the project's capital.
This is the key to understand Hover’s role for Kava and it’s community. Now, will this approach scale with so many competitors in other blockchain communities, DeFi oriented?
We spoke to Vincent Wu, Director of Hover, the most recent member of the Kava ecosystem and the potential of this company to, through DeFi Primitives, start a tide of adoption among users in this community, mostly on the lending and staking side, while still keeping in sight what Cosmos may hold in the future.
As a strategist yourself, what’s your take on bringing lending protocols to Kava?
Personally, I think we’re building out the lending protocol of tomorrow. I’ve been in crypto since 2016. I worked in liquidity aggregator protocols, building out their go-to market strategies. I've also worked at centralized exchanges helping build out product and leading institutional sales. Most recently, I was at crypto.com as the director of Institutional Sales, covering North America.
I think our community would imagine the motivation behind creating a lending protocol such as Hover, which can provide valuable things to any blockchain ecosystem like Kava, in this case.
Is that the reason why your Core Team created this company?
We started hover because we identified an opportunity to build out DeFi Primitives on the Kava ecosystem. We aim to optimize the TVL (Total Value Locked) within Kava with Hover, the premier lending protocol. Our main goal is to utilize our platform to build deeper lending products and financial tools, having Hover as a base layer for us to start building the lending ecosystem.
Including myself at the company, we have several advisors and 3 Core contributors. For example, Aileen Dauz, has experience in government data analytics and previously worked at Rome Blockchain Labs. My other colleague Geoff Shearer has been in the crypto space since 2017 working on dozens of TGEs and having raised over $1B in valuation. To say the least, our team is extremely competent and I'm very happy to be working with them.
Why did you Hoverers pick Kava as the native ecosystem to launch? Was it for Cosmos OR Kava itself? Both of them, maybe?
That's a good question! We chose KAVA because they have such a strong and innovative team. They are always looking for exciting new projects to onboard. I have never seen other ecosystems so future forward. Since day one, we've found their team to be extremely supportive. I've been working closely with their Product Lead, Karmel Elshinnawi, as we build out Hover and we work together with great synergy.
I would like to partner across the Cosmos ecosystem and have connectivity to appchains so we can leverage unique products with custom blockchain onto Hover.
In addition to that, their EVM co-chain infrastructure is amazing to onboard users using hot wallets such as Metamask or Rabby. Being able to have that EVM co-chain in addition to the Cosmos SDK, allows us to aggressively expand our user growth. With our current product roadmap, we see this as a huge opportunity to scale across both ecosystems and have meaningful partnerships as the premier lending protocol within Kava and the Cosmos ecosystem
Also, it’s my first time hearing that title: Hoverers. We're still throwing in the ballots for what name should our community, but that’s a good one!
But, since we're on THAT shore, what would you say, in innovation terms, that makes Hover a significant part of the Kava ecosystem? What’s the special spark, if I may ask?
I love this question, Alexis. We're looking to become the flagship lending ecosystem on the EVM side as noted above. Probably due to its accessibility or ease of use, we've seen a lot of the TVL on KAVA move from the Cosmos SDK side to the EVM side. With that, Hover is definitely trying to make the best out of it.
Since there are no well established big players in this space building Primitives, we want to be able to enter this space at an early stage and give shape to all the partnerships involved to have a more collaborative ecosystem.
In terms of innovation, we're looking to build out new and interesting yield products working closely with the Kava team and ecosystem partners to look at primitive yield and various financial derivative products as well.
Hover could make more new members of the Kava/Cosmos, or even the Daoversian, communites, an easier entry to the DeFi space. What's in it for thoses? What would you offer to make newcomers feel secure and given to use your products?
Good question, indeed. We've actually done that with the opening of our Genesis Pools. You can supply your assets on Hover before our platform is open to earn $esHOV tokens as newcomers can do research on how to use a lending protocol before our official launch.
On a wider note, lending protocols can be intimidating and we fully understand that issue. We're working closely with our partners to establish a solid foundation of education collateral, technical support, seamless UX/UI and doing our best to make the end-user experience as frictionless as possible.
We understand that Hover doesn't necessarily solve the learning curve issue with lending protocols but we can get our users as close to understanding as possible with our content!
Now that you mention the Genesis Pools, after this launch, what did you find so far on acceptance from your target audience of investors?
On the first couple days of the opening of our Genesis Pools, we've accumulated over $1M USD in deposits! Excited to see this number grow and provide liquid lending markets for everyone.
We launched the GPs (Genesis Pools) to reward our early adopters and also be able to bootstrap the liquidity on our lending protocols. By doing this, we can lower the cost of borrowing for everyone once we are live. In addition to that, people that supported us from the start will have accumulated some $esHOV to have the option to partake in our Staking Program and enjoy the rewards.
I think our community would imagine the motivation behind creating a lending protocol such as Hover, which can provide valuable things to any blockchain ecosystem like Kava.
What are your personal goals for Hover's growth and further development?
My personal goal would be to become the beacon of the Kava ecosystem. We want to onboard more Defi protocols onto Kava and be able to collaborate early on. This allows us to have an ecosystem of projects that work with each other to grow market share instead of competing with each other for TVL. This turns KAVA into a collective so we can have stronger momentum and become the prime zone on Cosmos.
I would like to partner across the Cosmos ecosystem and have connectivity to appchains so we can leverage unique products with custom blockchain onto Hover.
Lastly, Hover has a number of revolutionary product developments coming in 2024 that will further establish us as the flagship lending protocol within DeFi. Unfortunately, that's all I can say at the moment while our team continues the product development. I would say, stay tuned!
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