SVET Reports
BarnBridge Review and SVET Rating
System (Security - Velocity - Engineering - Transparency)
As global (CeFi) markets choose to stay irrational seemingly ignoring the rapidly deteriorating economic fundamentals and our local DeFi environment experiences a new Renaissance (again :) I continue to publish my erratic ratings briefs of DeFi projects, which seem to be doing pretty well. Must be - Zeitgeist :)
BarnBridge, which, basically, applies an old idea of 'tranched' CML to crypto (Engineering is b+) has a new breed of projects devs adding financial engineering risks on top of the smart contracts one. (Security is c+).
Platform's founders seem to have a commitment to make it decentralized in a future. However at present the code repositories are controlled by a couple of people and project governance is not community centric by far (Transparency is c+). With that its scalability might be an issue (Velocity is c+).
Result for BarnBridge System (Security - Velocity - Engineering - Transparency): c+ / c+ / b+ / c+
Vision (Singularity - Volume - Empathy - Timing)
At its present size (f.e. only 5.3th followers on Twitter) BarnBridge is punching far above its weigh attracting media attention thanks to purported uniqueness of its idea (Singularity is b+) and a growing popularity of hedges strategies among users, most of which are tired of inherent market instability (Empathy and Timing is a). As to the market size for derivatives it can be much bigger than that of the underlying asset classes. For example, current global debts level is above $250 trillion, which more than trice of that of World's GDP (Volume is a).
Result for BarnBridge Vision (Singularity - Volume - Empathy - Timing): b+ / a / a / a
Execution (Solution - Validity - Equity - Team)
BarnBridge's legal status is not questioned by me yet but it is better to be clarified by smb :) (Validity is c). Its business model is 100% token based (Solution is c+). This project is led by Troy Murray, which previously run RUDE_labs (Barn's main devs den), as well as by Tyler Scott Ward ( previously in charge of Proof Systems - a marketing arm of the same project) and Milad Mostavi (platform's main architect). This is not a who-is-who list but it provides a nice balance of three crucial business components - system, vision (markets) and execution (Team is b+). Besides all of those good people are closely associated with ConsenSys.
This team is supported by $1mio seed received by them in September 2020 from a pool of experienced crypto-players (joined by some newbies).
This pool of investors is headed by Andrew Keys (ConsenSys co-founder), Stani Kulechov (Aave and ETHLand founder), Kain Warwick (works at ConsensSys) as well as Parafi Capital - a small (~4 mio USD under management) but already high-flying 'crypto-boutique', which is formed by Bain Capital Ventures giant (more that 400 investments) added by Dragonfly Capital Partners (~50) and 9Yards (35 investments), which has made less than a dozen investments so far but has already landed Uniswap and Aave.
Other members of management team includes Ben Forman (KKR former regional director) and Kevin Yedid-Botton (CS at University of California and former portfolio manager of 8200 Global Investment Group).
It is joined by Centrality (fledgling New Zealand crypto-fund led byAaron McDonald - his job list includes a position in Vodafone's as a marketer - with 4 investments up to date, the most recent investment was on Sep 11, 2020, when BarnBridge raised $1M.), Fourth Revolution Capital - a brand new (founded October 2020), low-key crypto-fund, which positions itself as 'micro VC', founded by Keegan Selby (former credit asset manager with Carrington Holding Company, CA) and Edward J. Rogers (former strategy analyst at the Carrington).
Plus :)
It is accompaigned by a bunch of other less known investors which goes under 'Blockchain Companies investment team' acronym :)
A hell of a pack if you ask me:)
Result for BarnBridge Execution (Solution - Validity - Equity - Team): c+ / c+ / b- / b+
Trust (Sustainability - Value - Engagement - Transaction)
Project's coin - BOND (ERC20) - is currently over-hyped and has an ugly 9x stock-to-flow coeff. However, it is non-inflationary (Value is c+) and aims to be 'the system’s governance token' (Sustainability is c).
It is listed on Uniswap, Bilaxy, Hoo, HotBit (Transaction is b+) for anyone who cares to take it on the current level of about ~>100 USD. 68 percent of tokens are allocated to community, which is not good but still stays in a positive contrast with the most of projects of that kind, backed by prominent VCs (Engagement is b).
Result for BarnBridge Trust (Sustainability - Value - Engagement - Transaction): c / c+ / b / b+