We are excited to introduce Timeswap — a new DeFi primitive which is the first fully decentralized AMM based money market protocol. Timeswap is powered by a novel 3 variable AMM and will be oracle-less and permission-less from day 1.
Timeswap’s vision is to build the most capital efficient, secure & permissionless money market within DeFi
Background
DeFi witnessed a cambrian explosion in the summer of 2020 thanks to protocols like Uniswap, Aave, Compound, Yearn, Sushiswap, Curve, Synthetix and others. Today the total value locked in DeFi is close to $100 billion with over 50% locked in lending and borrowing protocols.
While existing money market protocols have amassed significant liquidity there remain inefficiencies that need to be addressed. Existing lending and borrowing protocols are not fully decentralized, market creation requires an unwieldy process due to governance voting mechanisms. This restricts liquidity for long tail assets wherein projects are dependent on the money market token holders who decide which token can be used as a collateral.
Arbitrary collateralization ratios have led to capital inefficiency wherein tokens with different risk profiles have similar collateralization ratios. Deciding collateralization ratios for every asset via governance mechanisms means additional operational overhead.
Oracle attacks have drained millions from the DeFi ecosystem till date. Every lending and borrowing protocol is only as strong as their weakest link i.e the price oracles that feed the liquidation engines. Oracles remain a significant roadblock for scaling and securing money market protocols outside of the deeply liquid top tier assets.
What is Timeswap?
Timeswap is the first fully decentralized AMM based money market protocol which is self sufficient, non-custodial, gas efficient and works without oracles or liquidators. Timeswap’s proprietary 3 variable AMM is motivated by the constant product AMM used by Uniswap. It provides flexibility to the end user by allowing the user to decide their risk profile and accordingly set the interest rates & collateral ratio for each lending or borrowing transaction. It is minimalistic, gas-efficient and permission-less, allowing anybody to create a borrowing / lending market for any ERC-20 tokens.
Timeswap’s vision is to
(i) build the most secure, self-sufficient, oracle-less money market protocol
(ii) be fully permissionless thereby unlocking liquidity for untapped long tail assets
(iii) build the most capital efficient money market using market-driven interest rates & collateral ratios
Introducing 3 variable AMM
Timeswap introduces the unique 3 variable AMM that powers our liquidity pools for lending and borrowing transactions
X*Y*Z=K;
X = Principal pool
Y = Interest rate pool
Z = Collateral factor pool
Learn more about our AMM in our documentation here
Key Features of Timeswap
Market driven interest & collateral — As lenders, borrowers and liquidity providers interact with our pool by executing transactions, this changes the supply of assets thereby changing the interest as well as collateral required for each transaction. This dynamic interest rate and collateral factor ensures greater capital efficiency and flexible risk management.
Oracle-less — Timeswap works without the need of oracles as lending and borrowing of assets is determined by demand and supply of tokens in the pools rather than based on any price oracle.
Permission-less — Timeswap is fully permission-less thereby allowing anyone to create a pool for lending and borrowing of any ERC-20 tokens with any other ERC-20 token as collateral with any maturity date
Fixed Maturity- Timeswap pools have fixed maturity enabling the creation of fixed maturity financial products such as bonds, options etc
Isolated Markets- Isolated pools means collapse of one collateral does not effect other markets compared to the pooled liquidity model in other protocols
Minimal attack vectors — Since Timeswap works without oracles or liquidators there are minimal attack vectors on the protocol
Announcing our Seed Round
Timeswap is excited to announce our seed round led by Multicoin Capital with participation from Mechanism Capital and Defiance Capital.
We are also deeply thankful to our earliest supporters & advisors Sandeep Nailwal and Jaynti Kanani of Polygon for all the help & guidance extended to us during our journey.
We are also pleased to announce participants in our angel round: Balaji Srinivasan, Surojit Chatterjee, Mihailo Bjelic, Ryan Sean Adams, Alex Svanevik, John Lilic, Julien Bouteloup, Larry Cermak, Mika Honkasalo, Kenzi Wang, Calvin Liu, George Lambeth, Vaibhav, Sina Habibian, Tanmay Bhat, Akshay BD, Ajit Tripathi, Min Kim, Sanket Shah, Sachin Tomar, Ajeet Khurana
Timeswap Team
Ricsson Ngo — is a masters graduate in applied mathematics in finance from one of the top universities in the Philippines. He is a self taught full stack developer and is a former editor of one of the most popular smart contract development courses on Udemy. He is also a serial entrepreneur in the field of education & hyperlocal e-commerce. Ricsson was deeply inspired by Uniswap and set out to build a permissionless & oracleless money market in late 2019 which led to the inception of Timeswap.
Harshita Singh — is a feted alumni of a top Indian B school. She has previously held various leadership roles with Walmart India and India’s largest FMCG conglomerate ITC. She was also the winner of ETHIndia hackathon in 2020 where she developed SaviFi Protocol, a decentralised investment portfolio manager.
Ameeth Devadas — was previously head of product management at a fintech platform called Aurigin, the largest investment banking platform in the world. And prior to that he was a private banker with a leading financial institution. He has also been deeply involved in Crypto for over 4 years before deciding to bring his expertise to co-found Timeswap.
Meet our full team at www.timeswap.io
What’s next for Timeswap
We will be launching our testnet soon, follow our social media channels to stay updated on the launch.