For many people, money and finance are loaded terms. Leading thinkers in both the financial and education fields have raised the interesting, yet perplexing query of why we still don’t offer financial education as part of everyone’s 12-year journey throughout the school system. Though it’s hard to imagine, not so long ago in the human evolution timeline, only the selected few knew how to read, write or use basic arithmetic.
Imagine a hypothetical scenario in which you go into a restaurant in a far, far away galaxy, where the menu and prices are a complete gibberish to you. And even worse, there is neither internet connection nor Google Translate in this dreadful scenario. Yikes.
If so, you then have to put your complete trust in your strange server. You can assume that in some cases this service provider will take advantage of your illiteracy and charge you more than the fair, stipulated price.
What if, just before you get the check, there were to enter a shiny, metallic droid “intended to assist you in etiquette, customs, and, most importantly, translation” - of both language and finance. A trusted simplifying program that you know was audited by the whole community, for the greater good and benefit of the community. Wouldn’t it be nice?
Closed Compartments
One of the cardinal issues with the current market in decentralized finance is that it works in isolated silos, meaning that for each asset and network there are different tools and tokens which are needed for the user to use in order to trade assets on-chain. This, in turn, causes an inability to leverage all of the user’s assets since they have to choose where to deploy them. Allowing the use of collateralized assets, across different chains and protocols, enables the use of margin for lending and other financial products.
Central Hub
C3 is a multi-chain and multi-collateral protocol being built on top of Algorand’s unique cryptographic technology. It’s an ambitious project which is trying to achieve a world where users can have the same advantages of using the FTX trading platform from a single application in a decentralized fashion.
Conceivable Potential
Traditional finance is a Leviathan, weighing 300 Trillion dollars that is currently being disrupted by blockchain technology ranging from DeFi to NFTs, insurance, and many new inventions that are being concocted in the minds of blockchain developers and entrepreneurs around the globe.
Cryptographic Innovation
C3 uses a new cryptographic innovation allowing Ethereum and EVM compatible blockchain assets (e.g. BSC, Polygon, Moonbean, and more) to be used as collateral without the need of trusted validators.
Cross Margin and Cross Collateralization
To avoid unnecessary liquidation of positions and therefore potential losses, C3 employs cross-margining which gives all blockchains access to a truly decentralized capital market as performant as TradFi. Briefly, cross margining enables a company or individual to use all of their available margin, across all their accounts, by reducing margin requirements and lowering net settlements – thus increasing liquidity and financing flexibility.
In the future, C3 will offer exposure to derivatives, money markets, borrowing and lending, spot trading, and leverage trading.
The Cross Collaterazation feature enables the usage of any of the different types of assets (e.g. USDC, ALGO, BTC, etc.) as collateral thus adding a layer of liquidity and flexibility to one’s trading. C3’s solutions enable users to utilize all their portfolio assets as collateral, and by doing so access all financial products without moving their collateral around.
Beyond the great improvement of the user experience, this lowers the costs for managing their financial product and results in lower margin requirements and better risk management.
Connecting to Algorand
C3 has multiple leading APIs in the Algorand ecosystem. It is “built to last” and withstand volatile fluctuations in demand, scalable to billions of users.
Algorand is a Pure Proof of Stake (PPoS) blockchain designed to facilitate the future of finance. Launched in 2019, it was designed by Turing Award (Computer Science’s equivalent to the Nobel Prize) winner, cryptography expert Silvio Micali and is supported by the works of the Algorand Foundation.
The blockchain trilemma - decentralization, security, and scaling - remains a major sticking point for blockchains today—and a number of projects have tried to resolve it. Algorand, a prominent public blockchain platform, represents one of the more ambitious attempts.
The platform is designed to address several of the key challenges facing other competing platforms today, by providing the infrastructure and tools builders need to create applications and assets that can be used by billions.
Creators and Creations
Rand labs consist of 40 team members who have been building the leading infrastructure on Algorand since day one. The engineering team comprises leading experts in the field with experience and expertise in building complex products.
Pablo Yabo is the Founder of Nektra, a software security provider, and the founder of CoinFabrik, a leading blockchain dev shop. He has been in the software security business for over 25 years and has been developing in the crypto space since 2013.
Rand Labs’ products and services serve as the pillar of Algorand’s ecosystem. Here is a shortlist of their current live products running on the Algorand Smart Contract Protocol:
Customer-Centric
User Experience is one of the most important aspects of a web service - especially when its intended customer is not technical by nature - and it can make or break an application. A simple, clear User Interface can give the users the certainty and confidence they need which are particularly important when deciding to invest and trade their financial assets.
In our discussions with the team, and by their Proof of Work with current live products, we are confident that UX and UI are top priorities.
Coming Soon
Here are some of the additional plans C3 intends to implement next. Integrations with additional blockchains and sidechains, cross-chain decentralized swaps on Thorchain, more derivatives products, whitelisted smart contracts for TradFi merger, a Single USD which will enable to deposit any USD stablecoin in Ethereum or Algorand, and a single USD token used in the system.
Coming to Life
Rand Labs’s products are the heart of the Algorand ecosystem. It is the lifeline bringing all the pieces together. From the fundamental tools for the average user in the form of a wallet and dApp gateway to the simple yet advanced API for developers. Now C3 is adding DeFi to complete the puzzle.
C3 is clearly one of the ambitious projects being built on top of Algorand’s Smart Contract Platform. As the Algorand ecosystem keeps on growing alongside DeFi ecosystems, the project has the potential to be a leading player in the decentralized cross-chain exchanges in particular - and DeFi in general.
Want to share thoughts?