DeZy is a centralized exchange that turns your SGD into Crypto and stake them in high-yield decentralised finance protocols, so you don’t have to.

The recent tsunami of sell-off caused many crypto firms to come under fire. Big industry players like Three Arrows Capital (3AC) and Celsius are said to be insolvent. CeFi (Centralized Finance) crypto-saving giant, BlockFi, had to be bailed out by FTX with a US$250 million credit line.

Many other crypto-saving platforms like Nexo and Holdanaut have a lot of ongoing FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about potential insolvency too. But among all these crypto-saving platforms, DeZy was one of the few platforms that flew under the radar.

We had a talk with Eric Dadoun, co-founder and CEO of DeZy, to understand more about DeZy and how is it impacted by the current climate.

Since the dawn of time, crypto, in general, is not beginner-friendly. The steep learning curve on top of the cumbersome interface was a big turn-off for many new users.

“In my view, that has left us in a situation where non-native market participants are either left to navigate a very complicated environment on their own or are left with no choice but to remain in traditional systems,” says Eric.

In their efforts to lower the barrier of entry, Eric and his team came out with the idea behind DeZy. “We’re more fintech than crypto and more “web 2.5” and than “web3.0″, focused on the next wave of adoption.”

With that mission in mind, DeZy managed to raise US$2.5 million in funding from various reputable Venture Capitalists like Defiance Capital. At the time of writing, DeZy has over US$3.75 million in deposits and has generated over US$ 175,000 in yield.

Risk mitigation strategy

Apart from being customer-centric, DeZy takes a more conservative approach and uses a risk mitigation strategy for investing.

“We’ve taken a risk mitigated and customer-centric approach since day 1. We’ve never lost any customer funds and although that shouldn’t necessarily be something teams need to celebrate, we are proud to say that in light of recent market events.”

The risk mitigation strategy also include not exposing users’ fund to anything other than 1:1-backed stablecoins. Furthermore, DeZy do not engage in either leverage or trading

On top of that, DeZy has partnered with InsurAce to insure users’ capital and also their yield. The insurance will cover both smart contract vulnerability and custodian risk.

While many were unhappy with how InsurAce handled the UST de-peg claim situation, DeZy on the other hand has complete faith in InsurAce as they did fulfil the claim obligations and also they were constantly communicating to the affected parties.

Weathering the storm

The current bear market saw a record number of withdrawals from the crypto market. Both CeFi and DeFi have started to cut yield across the board.

DeZy on the other hand has no intention of lowering its current interest rate. “We feel it is sustainable and at least as of right now have no plans to reduce that yield.”

But then again, DeZy yield is lower than a lot of crypto-saving platforms in the market. The yield DeZy offer is more realistic in nature and doesn’t rely on hyperinflationary reward tokens to show the high APYs.

“Our goal has never been to be the highest yielding product in the market but to be a risk mitigated way for users to either passively expose themselves to a combination of DeFi primitives or for non-crypto participants to start learning about the industry and technology.”

Moving forward

When prompted about DeZy’s roadmap, Eric pointed out that DeZy will have its very own earn and learn function.

“We’re prioritising transparency and education as much as possible. To educate we are looking at introducing more “learn and earn” functions for customers to get a better sense of DeZy and of the underlying technology.”

Aside from educating their users, Dezy is also working on a transparency solution to address the lack of transparency in CeFi and also the underlying investment strategies.

“We are looking at DeFi native solutions that will enable us to disclose risk assessments for DeZy as a whole and eventually for each one of our partners.”

While DeZy is not MAS licensed, they work very closely with Singapore-based crypto/fintech lawyers to ensure they are not breaking any rules or regulations.

“We have taken various decisions since launch that impeded our own growth but done with the interest of protecting customers and respecting domestic nuances.”

Find out more on DeZy’s FAQ page here.

[Editor’s Note: This article does not represent financial advice. Please do your research before investing.]

Featured Image Credit: Chain Debrief

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