Radiant Capital AMA with CRE8R DAO
Primer: Radiant Capital is fast making itself known as a leading money market platform on Arbitrum. It rose up the rank to be the top 5 TVL on Arbitrum in less than a week. What is Radiant Capital and what problems does it aim to solve in the DeFi space? Join us as we dive deeply into Radiant Capital in this AMA with CRE8R DAO.
Team
Tell us more about the team’s background. How many are in the core team? What are the different skill sets that each brings?
Core team:
• George - CEO/Project Lead
• Tom - CTO/Lead Dev
• Aaron - Chief Strategy Officer
• Liam - Operations Manager
• Merovingian - Marketing Manager
• Charles - Smart contract developer
• Ben and Jessica - Front end
Support Staff:
• Rich
• JD
• Konstantin
• Devan
• Ed
Our core team has been obsessed with DeFi since 2020, developing a friendship over the last few years anonymously through various crypto/DeFi chat groups.
Unfortunately, many of us still have non-crypto related “legacy” jobs, however with this experience now wish to make the foray into DeFi full time. We did not raise money and never plan to do so, and whilst a few of us have families, this is our dream job, we love DeFi, think we are all early and - in answer to your question about motivation behind the creation of Radiant - could not be working on a more rewarding vision of bridging together all the chains and fragmentation of liquidity.
Are the team doxxed or anon? Is there any reason for this choice? Do you find that being anon can cause people to have trust issues?
While the team would prefer to remain anonymous (this is not uncommon within DeFi), Offchain Labs has ascertained the identity of the team building the project by reference recommendations from upstanding members of the community that have shared mutual relationships with both Offchain Labs and the protocol.
While we did not share passport details with Offchain Labs, we have had a number of phone calls and they have received reference recommendations from upstanding members of the community.
What is the origin story behind Radiant Capital? How does the name Radiant come about and what does it signify?
Capital in DeFi is extremely fragmented across chains, evidenced by the dozens of different money markets, all with their own liquidity.
Lenders are forced to pick a chain, and the assets they withdraw must exist on that same chain.
If a DeFi user wants to deposit wBTC on Arbitrum and withdraw ETH on mainnet, they cannot do so without navigating through a series of cumbersome transactions across multiple user endpoints.
This creates a suboptimal borrowing and lending experience.
Radiant aims to be the first omnichain money market where users can deposit any major asset on any major chain and borrow a variety of supported assets across multiple chains.
Our primary goal is to consolidate the ~$22 billion of fragmented liquidity currently dispersed across the top ten alternative layers (source: DefiLlama)
"Radiant" is defined as a point or object from which light or heat radiates. The name Radiant aligned with our vision of a DeFi nexus—a primary focal point from which a universal money market could expand infinitely outward into the crypto universe.
What is the greatest challenge faced by the team so far with regards to starting Radiant Capital? How did the team overcome that challenge?
Many projects that rise fast so quickly often have to combat attempts at FUD. We had reached the top 5 TVL on Arbitrum in 2 days and were getting a lot of attention. Our Dev team had been working multiple days straight before and after launch, and hadn’t set up contract verification or a timelock. When we saw the reaction from the community, we immediately resolved this. I am happy to say both security measures have been applied.
If you can rewind time, what is the number 1 thing that you would have changed regarding Radiant?
It’s difficult to never make mistakes, no team or individual is perfect. In hindsight it’s possible we should have hired 1-2 more devs to ensure this didn’t happen.
In a world where everything goes perfectly to plan, what is the ideal vision of Radiant Capital?
While nothing goes perfectly to plan, the Radiant team is confident that we will execute on our vision to be the premier omnichain money market in DeFi. There is an unmet need, and we seek to fulfil it. While Radiant V1 has some omnichain functionality, our vision is to be fully operational in the near future. The Stargate team has been a pleasure to work with, and we are confident that this will become a reality.
Project
What is Radiant Capital in a nutshell?
Radiant aims to be a "one stop shop" money market, where users can deposit & borrow across multiple chains, seamlessly.
Imagine the tens of billions in liquidity spread across the dozens of money markets all centralized in a single hub.
Want to deposit WBTC on Fantom and borrow ETH on mainnet to buy a new NFT?
Radiant Capital aims to solve that.
What is the problem that Radiant Capital is trying to solve? What is the solution that Radiant Capital brings to the table to solve this problem?
Our aim is to consolidate liquidity across chains and eliminate the need for other money markets. There are still billions of dollars in money markets across many different chains, and we think there is a lot of opportunity in defragmenting the liquidity and revenue accrued by other chains.
There are much bigger opportunities that come from large liquidity pools in terms of accessing borrowing demand across different asset classes that don’t necessarily present themselves via small, fragmented, pools
We’re in a number of conversations with some of the larger Arbitrum projects and hope to soon implement the opportunity to offer the utilization of Arbitrum eco project tokens as collateral!
What is your unique selling proposition? Why would someone use your product over other lending platforms? What are some features in your platform that are not present in other lending platforms?
What are the options in DeFi right now to obtain yield? DeFi has been really quiet with respect to exciting new opportunities for yield for users - so without doing much marketing, that yield itself spoke for itself. Users also didn’t have to take native risk on a native token, they simply had to provide liquidity to earn a best in class DeFi yield. And in the meantime, get exposure to the Arbitrum ecosystem, which naturally we are fans of. We’re believers in optimistic roll ups and we believe there is a lot of latent demand to use platforms like Arbitrum, particularly as ETH is trending into the merge. So a confluence of those factors + lack of competition from interesting yield opportunities I think are what led to drawing in capital quickly. In addition, locking APR is a super compelling proposition, with shorter lock times (28 days) giving users the ability to get >100% in “hard asset” (BTC, ETH, stables) APR. Locking APR is 1,100% and Pool2 750%. This is assuming 0 compounding and true APR right now.
We understand that Radiant Capital is a fork of Geist and Aave. What do you think is the main issue of Geist/Aave and how do you prevent Radiant Capital from repeating this problem?
First, we tip our hats to Aave as there would be no DeFi as we know it without them. We have utmost respect for their products and teams and have been big fans since genesis. DeFi summer definitely provided one of those “aha” moments for us as a team with respect to seeing one of the first “killer” use cases for smart contracts.
Aave has been launching cross-chain, but hasn’t looked to make the experience seamless whereby users can leverage those same assets cross-chain - something that Radiant aims to solve. Stargate/LZ (LayerZero) is incredibly fascinating tech and when combined with a money market with tokenomics that more directly favor users, we think we can truly solve a) cross-chain borrowing/lending and b) liquidity fragmentation.
Aave native tokens are purely used for governance purposes, and we feel that users of money markets, in the ethos of DeFi, should be able to capitalize on protocol fees in the form of both hard assets (BTC, ETH, Stables) in addition native token rewards.
Geist was immensely successful in drawing liquidity, growing to $10b in deposits over a short period of time. That. is. Insane. They did so through:
1) A combination of highly concentrated liquidity mining program and, 2) They had a strong narrative around sharing a much larger share of protocol fees to dedicated users of the platform through locking, whereas Aave didn’t. That + the prospect of 100x the yield to competitors sucked in an immense amount of liquidity during an economic boom.
I’ll also say this was at a time well before many of the high profile bridge hacks, and people were much more comfortable bridging assets onto new chains. Geist struggled by launching at $400M FDV (fully diluted network value) with a very thin liquidity pool (think they launched with $500 USD) which led to very strange price action. The token surged to ~$10b in FDV which created insane yields, up to very high TVL, but as users became aware of what the true network value was, the price corrected.
Team tokens were also not locked and immediately started vesting at these crazy FDVs (unlike Radiant team tokens, which are on a 3 month cliff and 1 year linear vest). FTM had a number of issues stemming from Andre leaving, Solidly issues, etc.
Users were far less keen on lock period for longer periods of time, we saw in 2021 the Curve/Convex wars that 3 months of locking in crypto is equivalent to a lifetime, so convincing users to lock for 3 months is extremely difficult.
Again, we are big fans of Geist and some of their unique changes to tokenomics, protocol revenue sharing. They made some really interesting innovations there that we’re looking to build off of.
Why Arbitrum blockchain instead of other L2?
Radiant has been eight months in the making, as we strive to invent a new but very necessary DeFi primitive.
As such, given the current state of alt L1s, Radiant will be launching v1 on what we believe to be the most secure and decentralized blockchain – Arbitrum.
Arbitrum's transaction fee mitigation, combined with Ethereum's security and institutional adoption, enables our team to build an ecosystem that provides our users with competitive interest-bearing opportunities while maintaining a high degree of safety.
What does it mean to be built on top of Layer Zero? What is Layer Zero and Stargate’s stable router interface and how does it fit into Radiant Capital as a whole?
It all starts with Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe... Kidding, but we love his work and found a lot of similarities within the documentation of LayerZero. Stripe’s call to fame is “instant payment solutions with 7 lines of code.”
LayerZero offers a similar unique selling proposition, in the form of “cross-chain interoperability solved with 50 lines of code.”
Working with Stargate has been nothing short of amazing. They’ve made it incredibly easy to implement and build atop Stargate with thorough documentation. On https://radiant.capital/#/deposit now, you can see for yourself our v1 implementation!
You can seamlessly borrow USDC or USDT on any major chain, leveraging your collateral on Arbitrum. All of this can be done virtually self-service without talking to the team. And yet they offered their own time to review contracts and have been super supportive. We have been cognizant of the LayerZero team for quite some time and love that they are solving a true pain point within DeFi with respect to a) cross-chain liquidity and b) doing so in a novel fashion with their take on messaging and finality vs other bridges that are susceptible to hacks (as we’ve seen, unfortunately).
We felt this was a strong confluence within the ecosystem of a money market that can be leveraged to make liquidity seamlessly accessible cross-chain. We’re really looking forward to additional collaboration with LayerZero and Stargate for the v2 version of the product - which will add additional support for more cross-chain borrowing - and ultimately v3, our magnum opus so to speak, which will allow deposits of collateral on additional major L1 chains.
How is the project funded? How long is the runway for the core team?
Radiant is self-funded, there was no private sale, IDO, or VC involvement, which aligns with our ethos of decentralization with no bias. We are in talks with a few VCs who wish to become strategic advisors, help with listings, etc - but are not sure if this is something we need or want at this time and are confident in our vision.
Will there be more collaterals added to the platform? How are new collaterals selected? By the team or the community?
Radiant v2 (coming soon) will allow for the gradual rollout of additional assets voted on by the Radiant DAO. We also plan to launch the ability to deposit on any major chain within the next 2-4 weeks.
Are there any backup plans to ensure that smooth and timely liquidations happen, especially in the event of a massive crash in the price?
Radiant’s liquidation codebase is a fork of Aave, and has been audited by Solidity Finance and Peckshield. The combination of Aave’s audits on top of our own should provide users with security knowing the platform will handle liquidations smoothly. As always, DYOR, and feel free to review the audits for further details.
Tokenomics
What is the utility of the RDNT token? Will any of the revenue earned by the protocol be accrued to the RDNT token?
That is the main value driver of RDNT, that while vesting or locking RDNT tokens, you earn a share of platform revenue from borrowers paying interest on their loans in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Stablecoins. In addition, Radiant lockers receive penalty fees when users exit early from their vests. The APRs on these are some of the highest in DeFi, definitely worth looking into.
What happens after 2 years when the entire supply of RDNT has been emitted?
Great question and I’ll use this opportunity to drop a little alpha for your community - Radiant is launching 2 initiatives in the next 4 weeks: a) cross-chain deposits, and b) curbing emissions by 90%. We intend to be the only protocol in crypto where users can literally deposit collateral in any major chain, borrow on any major chain, and lock RDNT to earn hard assets (BTC, ETH, Stables) while also earning RDNT.
We love Aave, but why do users use it? Our codebase is a fork of Aave, so we are similarly safe, yields will be higher, and we are cross-chain using Stargate and LZ tech. Radiant as a token will be extremely scarce, and emissions will be curbed to last 5 or more years before hitting max supply. Update tokenomics will be released soon.
Why does the team have a shorter unlock schedule than suppliers, borrowers, and LPs?
I don’t think this question is accurate. The Vesting/lock periods (for rewards earned by liquidity providers) are 28 days, while team tokens have a 3-month cliff and a 1-year linear vest after that.
The team bootstrapped Radiant themselves, entirely out-of-pocket. They provided the capital for development, audits, marketing and the liquidity pool. Nearly $1M+ in costs. This was by design, for two main reasons:
1. To incentivize the team's performance and make sure that our goals were 100% in alignment with the success of the project
2. To mitigate issues that arise when relying on startup funding from VCs, silent partners and other early-stage capital providers who would be acting in their own self-interest
This allocation is the only way the team is compensated and isn't out of the ordinary for this space. For example, Geist has a 1-year linear vest for their team allocation, as well.
Any VCs participation or pre-sale for the tokens? Are there any well-known advisors and core contributors that you can share with us?
No VC participation or pre-sale. The stargate and Arbitrum teams have had numerous discussions with the Radiant team.
Community
What strategies will you use to ensure the staying power of your community? How do you minimize your community members from jumping to the next hot yield farming project?
Remember, the term “radiant” refers both to an object which glows or emanates light/heat, as well as the focal point in space from which such phenomena occur. We took inspiration from this not only for branding, but for our overarching mission.
Currently, locked and vesting RDNT have some of the highest rewards in crypto paid in BTC/ETH/Stables, and we believe the community sees the value there, and in our vision of Omnichain lending.
We are in the process of expanding and building out support for international communities. We are currently translating the GitBook to Chinese, and creating tutorials in other languages.
Radiant continues to be active in partnership opportunities with other platforms on Arbitrum and beyond to stay on the cutting edge of DeFi.
And most importantly, we have some major strategies in the pipeline that we can't speak to publicly (yet). Initiatives that will expand on our vision of Omnichain lending, while concurrently bringing value back to our community members.
We urge you to stay tuned for our plans to shake DeFi.
What is your stance on decentralization? Will Radiant Capital progressively decentralize into a DAO?
We believe that Radiant holders (vesting/locked) while earning a share of platform revenue, should also be able to vote on which assets are added to in the future. The idea is to provide all RDNT holders with a stake in the new Central Bank of DeFi. That’s all I’m allowed to say :) More updates on this in the future.
Are there different roles in your Discord community? How does one get those roles and what benefits do they confer?
Radiant is less than a week old. Liam, our Operations Manager, is hard at work ensuring that the current moderator team is equipped to sufficiently support our community before expanding out additional features and channels within Discord. I’m confident that additional roles will be forthcoming.
Is there a name for your community e.g. Link marines for Chainlink?
That’s up to the community to decide. As we continue to grow, we are excited to see what names, memes and other themes organically come forth from our community!
Security
Is the protocol audited? If so, by who? Any bugs bounties set up?
Radiant Capital has been audited by Solidity Finance and PeckShield. We are proud to say our smart contract logic has no critical or major vulnerabilities found by either firm.
Bug bounties will be set up in the near future.
At the end of the day, an audit does not guarantee that users' funds will be safe. How do you give assurance to that concern?
Audits are not full-proof, but go a long way. The peckshield audit found no critical or major issues in the smart contract logic. The code base is forked from Aave and Geist, neither have been exploited (AFAIK) and have been operational for years.
There is no protocol that can provide a 100% guarantee when interacting with smart contracts. Always DYOR in crypto as a general safety measure.
One option would be to partner with an insurance protocol like Nexus, to provide users with the option to insure their funds.
What are some contingency plans that you have put in place in the event of an exploit?
Emergency pause of the lending pools, notify the community and work with the Arbitrum team to intercept any stolen funds before bridging.
Roadmap
What is planned for the next 6 months to 1 year?
Continue scaling the global investor base by opening up deposits on other major chains - starting with BSC, ETH, AVAX, etc.
Launch additional international communities, starting with China
Pursue partnerships with synergistic projects on Arbitrum/other ecosystems
Exchange listings
Full cross-chain deposit/lending support
Roll out Radiant DAO, vote for additional asset support
Much more that we can’t discuss quite yet, but it WILL disrupt DeFi
Given that so many protocols have delayed their launches due to the bearish market sentiment, why do the team choose to do so right now? Are you worried that the bearish sentiment can affect the success of your launch?
Good teams build in the bear and offer an unmet need regardless of market conditions. That is what Radiant is doing. We reached a peak of $500 Million TDV and are currently in the top 5 TVL on Arbitrum. We are less than 1 week old and the DeFi world is well aware of what we are doing.
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