Nadav Hollander: Dharma – A protocol for tokenized debt

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Lending is one core pillar of the economy, enabling one person or company to be entrepreneurial with someone else’s capital. However, in the traditional banking system processes in lending are often opaque and the barrier to entry into this market is high. The emergence of easy to use Decentralized Finance is one of the hallmarks of 2018: To date, DeFi has brought us crypto-collateralized stable coins, decentralized exchanges, tokenized credit default swaps, trustless derivatives, and decentralized margin lending.

We’re joined Nadav Hollander, co-founder and president of Dharma. Dharma is a decentralized protocol for credit products which connects debtors with creditors through a transparent mechanism. The protocol itself is agnostic towards the collateral and terms used, however, the team recently introduced a crypto-collateralized margin lending application running on top of the Dharma protocol, Dharma Lever.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Nadav’s background and how he became interested in both blockchain technology and debt
• The vision behind distributed lending
• The mechanics of the Dharma protocol
• The role of underwriters in the Dharma protocol
• Dharma lever, an application for margin lending on the Dharma protocol
• Dharma’s business model
• The future of decentralized finance

Episode links:

• Dharma
• Dharma Lever
• Introducing Dharma Lever (article)
• Request For Blockchain Lending Startups (article)
• Current and Future Approaches to Unsecured Lending in Dharma Protocol (article)
• Dharma protocol: Debt & Liquidity for ETH (video)

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/267