Nomis AMA with CRE8R DAO
Primer: One of the main barriers to entry for mainstream adoption into DeFi lending space is overcollateralization. Find out how Nomis is tackling this problem with its unique credit scoring solution in our summary highlights of the AMA with CRE8R DAO.
Team
Tell us more about the team’s background. What are the different skill sets that each brings? How do the team know each other?
There are 3 co-founders behind Nomis: Alex, Arty, and Fedor:
Alex:
M.Sс. in Mathematics and Economics;
Deep AI and ML skills;
15 years of experience in neural network and expert systems research;
5 years of C-level experience;
Previously founder at GoRecruit—HR-scoring SaaS product;
Arty:
M.Sc. in International Business Development;
3 years of experience as a Product Manager;
4 years of experience as a Product Designer;
4+ years in blockchain and web3
Previously founder at KREO—AR/VR studio (clients: Huawei, Yandex, Mazda, RedBull);
Previously co-founder and Product Manager at KickCity—web3 event/ticketing platform on Ethereum (non-fungible tickets and referral invite tokens);
Fedor:
Ph.D. in Computer Science;
Author/co-author of more than 40 scientific publications on AI;
Holder of 8 patent certificates for programs for computers using trained neural networks;
Developed multiple blockchain solutions on Solidity (Etherium, Polygon), and Exonum (Rust) framework;
Skill-matching: each of the Nomis co-founders brings a valuable and unique skill set to the table:
Alex brings deep mathematical modeling experience as well as strong technical management;
Arty brings creative design and vision for the product and a lot of connections in the web3-world;
Fedor brings strong technical/hacker capabilities, allowing the team to ship updates quite rapidly;
How the team met
Alex and Arty met 4 years ago through a mutual friend, and Arty was helping Alex with his first product in web3; After that, they were regularly meeting online and offline, always discussing and brainstorming on the new promising ideas and innovations in the web3-era of the internet.
What is the origin story behind Nomis?
As active DeFi lending users, Alex and Arty decided to democratize it and crush one of the most significant barriers to entry and adoption for the DeFi lending industry, overcollateralization. Co-founders believe that the mass-adoption won’t happen until this problem is solved. In the TradFi world, banks overcome this problem by hiring credit scores. Such a tool could also be implemented in DeFi making crypto loans more accessible for fair users and underserved populations, cultivating trust and reputation culture. Moreover, credit score solutions negatively impact the number of crypto fraud cases by disincentivizing actors to play dirty.
Why the name Nomis? Any reasons behind this?
Nomis is a short form of Greek’s Νόμισμα /nómisma/, “currency”. As the project is closely tied with digital currency, we decided to hire a short form of Greek’s Νόμισμα /nómisma/, “currency” as the project name.
Nomis
Can you tell us what Nomis is all about, in a nutshell?
Nomis is an open-source wallet qualifier and credit score protocol enabling developers to build better DeFi solutions. We collect user on-chain data from top L1s and L2s and transform it into a credit score. It enables mainstream borrowers and underserved populations to literally leverage their on-chain reputation and get better DeFi lending terms. Although, the long-term vision for Nomis goes far beyond credit scoring for DeFi: other dApps will be able to build their own custom scores for any need (e.g. wallet qualifier for jobs applications, whitelists, special terms, etc.). In other words, our big-picture vision includes building the credential and identity infrastructure layer and empowering developers to build on top of it.
What is the #1 problem that Nomis is trying to solve? What is the proposed solution?
DeFi lending overcollateralization. We propose a best-in-class credit score solution to make DeFi loans undercollateralized.
What’s the unique selling point that Nomis has over other competitors? Why should people use Nomis?
We offer a user-friendly, web2-like user interface to help mainstream borrowers smoothly roll-in into DeFi. Moreover, we’re going to connect users with the most relevant DeFi lending offers from our partners.
Which blockchain can Nomis score a wallet for? Which other chains is Nomis going to expand to?
Nomis is a one-stop credit score solution. Today users can get their score based on on-chain activities on Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, BSC, Ripple, and other chains. We’re going to expand scoring to all of the top L1s and L2s.
Can you explain to us what Nomis Score is and how it is calculated? What is the importance of the Nomis Score?
We collect all the on-chain data available and construct >20 weighted variables. Ex., wallet turnover, wallet age, participation and activities in DAOs. Nomis enables users to leverage their on-chain reputation, in other words, use their on-chain reputation as a part of the collateral.
Let’s say a person is not a degen. He always borrows wisely and returns on time. As a result, he gets a good score and a low rate for a loan (or gets an under-collateralized loan) since he is deemed low risk. How does Nomis ensure that this behaviour from the past can extend to the future?
Currently, Nomis, like any other DeFi credit score solution, cannot predict the default rate of a particular user. Our first step is to help users get custom loan terms (collateral factor, APR, liquidation) and minimize risks for DeFi lenders. The next step is to pilot with one of our partners (a DeFi lending protocol) to collect correlation data between custom initial loan terms and defaults. Then we’ll leverage our strong technical capability to actually predict the default rate.
How do you prevent people from gaming the system? Those who have knowledge of how the scoring system works (including the team) can have an unfair advantage in what the Nomis Score is to be used for
Practically, one is able to hack any score :) The main question here is Why? As our mathematical model consists of weighted parameters, the hacking process becomes a months-long and costly process. We believe that the value gained as a result of such manipulations is always less than the premium (less collateral + better APR) they’d pay for a loan having a lower credit score.
It’s more secure to use different wallets for different activities and not to put everything in one wallet. Can the wallet score be integrated with different wallet addresses to give an overall score, to better reflect actual usage?
You’re absolutely right, and we share your multi-chain vision! That’s Nomis’ long-term vision too. We aspire to build a multi-chain ID solution.
How does Nomis plan to generate revenue? What’s the business model?
TBH we’re still working on that point, but the possibilities are endless: API subscription, a small fee to get a score, etc.
Can you give us some examples of clients who would use this product (e.g. Aave, Paraswap etc)? Any actual use-case examples by these businesses?
Currently, we’re working on a pilot project with one of our partners (a DeFi lending protocol) to test some business model hypotheses as well as to get more data for the mathematical model. The idea is to incentivize DeFi lenders to provide custom lending terms for users to shape business and risk models and get more clients,
What is centralized Identity? Why is it important? Explain how this concept gels with the general wish to stay anonymous, especially in crypto.
We believe that in the future users will treat their crypto wallets, scores and identities as the web2 ones while staying (pseudo-)anonymous on-chain is just today's killer feature of crypto. Nomis helps build an on-chain reputation institute to help users leverage their fairness to thrive in the long run.
Token
Will there be a Nomis token? If so, what are its utility and key features?
We plan to issue governance+utility tokens. The governance part will enable holders to determine product and community strategy, and the utility part will help them to get even more attractive DeFi lending terms.
Community
What are your plans for decentralization? Will there be a Nomis DAO where the community eventually takes over the operations of the project?
Nomis is initially designed to be governed by DAO, as it helps to build a transparent and fair credit solution.
Would community members be invited to contribute to the calculation of the Nomis Score?
We have no such plan at this stage, but it sounds like an interesting idea :)
Roadmap
What is on your roadmap for the next 6-12 months?
Joint pilot with a DeFi lending protocol
Pre-seed round
The score is built on all the data available on the top L1s and L2s
1M active score users