AMA Highlights – RAMP DEFI
By Daniel Dal Bello, Director.
September 6, 2020 – 6 min read.
On Tuesday 1 September, we welcomed Lawrence Lim from RAMP DEFI (‘Ramp’) into the Hillrise Capital Telegram chat for an AMA. Lawrence is the Project Lead for this exciting new DeFi startup.
The entire DeFi ecosystem has seen a significant spike in momentum throughout the past few months, beginning in early July, as new protocols emerge and ‘Total Value Locked’ rapidly approaches US $10b. Nearly all of the DeFi ecosystem is contained within the Ethereum ecosystem with external assets unable to participate in the most popular products. Ramp exist to change that by proposing a new liquidity on/off-ramp to leverage illiquid staked assets form other blockchains into liquid capital which can be used within the Ethereum Network.
In this post, we have compiled key questions and answers from our AMA event.
Daniel Dal Bello
Welcome Lawrence, thank you for being here today, I’ve been looking forward to this conversation because DeFi is so hot at the moment and the problem you’re addressing with RAMP DEFI is a relevant one. Basically you are building a solution to unlock illiquid capital from outside the Ethereum ecosystem and allow it to be mobilized inside that DeFi world.
Before we get into that, could you please introduce yourself and give us some insight into your individual background and how you ended up here with Ramp? What type of work are you doing in your role as Project Lead? For anyone who is new to Ramp, could you also give an introduction to the company, motivation, and solution?
Lawrence Lim
Hey Daniel, thanks for having us here today! And everyone thanks for being here to learn more about Ramp. For sure – let me kick things off with a quick personal introduction, and then about the company.
I am from Singapore, and started working in the traditional finance industry in 2012, in private banking and corporate M&A. I then joined IOST, a layer-1 blockchain solution as their International Growth Lead in early 2018. I was with IOST since pre-testnet, to testnet, to mainnet, to onboarding over 300 nodes, and over USD $30m in staked assets. In late 2019, I started ideating with my cofounders to develop and launch what is RAMP DEFI today.
As the Project Lead, I focus mainly on communicating the vision of RAMP DEFI to investors and our community, and also driving product development to achieve this vision.
What RAMP DEFI wants to do is simple. We see that there are US $22bn worth of staked assets earning APY of 5-10% typically (which is low for crypto), and we want to create more opportunities for investors to leverage these assets, and make higher returns on capital. This is done by creating a derivative stablecoin on top of the underlying staked asset, which is then ported over to Ethereum to lend/borrow with fiat-backed capital (USDT/USDC). This way users retain their original portfolio, retain staking rewards and still can unlock additional liquid capital without injecting more money from the bank.
“This way users retain their original portfolio, retain staking rewards and still can unlock additional liquid capital without injecting more money from the bank.”