Earlier this month, Atlendis Labs hosted its first community call. Two of Atlendis Labs’ co-founders, Alexis Masseron, CEO, and Sylvain Laurent, Principal Engineer, joined Atlendis Labs’ community and growth lead Manuel Gunzburger for an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session. There was a great turnout of participants and it was a fantastic opportunity for the community to learn more about Atlendis and the AtlendisWorld, what is happening in the Atlendis ecosystem today, and what is in preparation for the coming months.
Can you introduce yourselves and describe your roles at Atlendis Labs?
Alexis: I have a background in signal processing and computer science. I have been working for more than 6 years in the software engineering sphere. I specialized in crypto in early 2018, when I joined ConsenSys as a software engineer to work on a derivative product platform called VariabL, and later I worked on multiple other enterprise projects. At Atlendis Labs, I’m taking the CEO role and my main focus is building the Atlendis ecosystem as a whole, from a sales perspective, to legal, strategy and partnerships.
Sylvain: Hey peeps, I’m Sylvain, 33 years old, I started programming when I was 6 and I have been working in different areas over the years, and especially in the cryptocurrency industry since 2011 as a builder. I’m a principal engineer at Atlendis Labs, my role is mainly supporting the team in every technical aspect.
Manuel: I have a background in Finance and Mathematics and I joined Atlendis Labs’ team in January, to work on growth and community. We have a lot of exciting things planned for the Atlendis community and I will do my best to answer all community related questions. So please don’t hesitate to reach out to @ManuelG if you have any questions, feedback or suggestions regarding the Atlendis protocol’s community.
Who is the Atlendis Labs team and where are they based?
Alexis: Right now we are a team of 11 people. Half of the team consists of software engineers and developers in R&D working on the Atlendis protocol. The rest of the team is split between marketing, legal and community efforts. We are a decentralized team and spread across Europe, we have an office in Paris and people working from Berlin, Brussels, Copenhagen and the UK.
How did you get into blockchain and DeFi?
Sylvain: I started in 2011, when it was still a hacker thing, trying to mine Bitcoin on my school computers where I had access to a computer grid. At the time, it was just a fun project where you could mine using CPUs and see the blocks passing over IRC chats.
When the arms race with the GPUs started, I chose to only use mining when I had to, for example to heat up my mother’s house. It was pretty cool to participate in something while heating up the place, but it was quite noisy though.
I started working professionally when a high school friend asked me to join her company back in 2014, where I participated in a Bitcoin Staking alternative competing against Ethereum. I only discovered Ethereum later in 2016 when I started as a freelancer in the industry. After that, I joined ConsenSys where I built the Ethereum Staking offering, and it is also where I met the colleagues that are now part of the Atlendis Labs’ team.
Alexis: I fell down the rabbit hole in 2017 by joining the French crypto community called Crypto FR. There I discovered a French Ethereum association called Asseth which was later renamed as Ethereum France. I learned a lot there and that’s what led me to make the big jump, and work full time in Web3 by joining ConsenSys as a software engineer in early 2018, and just like Sylvain, that’s where I met my actual colleagues and co-founders, Charlotte, Stéphane and Sylvain.
Overview of the Atlendis Protocol
How did you get the idea for the Atlendis protocol?
Alexis: I participated in a hackathon called MarketMake organized by the ETHGlobal initiative, that is part of the Ethereum Foundation, with a few teammates of mine from ConsenSys back in January 2021. The hackathon was sponsored by Aave, and our team came up with the idea for using Aave’s new credit delegation feature to delegate unused collateral sitting on Aave into lending pools that could then allow borrowers to take out unsecured loans from those lending pools. That was the first step of the exciting journey that brought us to what Atlendis Labs is today, and this is just the beginning.
What is Atlendis?
Sylvain: Atlendis is a capital-efficient DeFi lending protocol that enables crypto loans without collateral. In layman’s terms, we help lenders and borrowers as the protocol enables borrowers to benefit from nice rates and have flexibility on Atlendis, as they will not have to lock any collateral to meet their needs for recurrent and short term liquidity.
How do you see Atlendis making a difference from other uncollateralized lending protocols being built at the moment?
Alexis: The Atlendis protocol uses a specific liquidity pool for each borrower, which increases security. Borrowers will have access to instant loans at a fair rate via Atlendis’ bid order book, so for borrowers the Atlendis protocol enables the opening, on the blockchain, of something very similar to revolving lines of credit. Lenders will have the ability to choose the borrowers that they trust to lend to, as well as their preferred lending rate. This gives lenders more granular control over their portfolios as they are able to make their own risk assessment, and select their lending rate based on their investment profile (vs. other lending protocols that have large shared borrowing pools, where lenders could be impacted in the case of a default). Lenders also benefit from higher rewards than overcollateralized lending platforms. Finally, each pool has its own order book that enables a fair market rate discovery.
What do you currently consider to be Atlendis Labs’ biggest challenges?
Sylvain: From a technical standpoint, keeping up with all the technologies that are coming out everyday is a full time job! It used to be one blockchain, it’s now a myriad of economically intertwined EVM compatible blockchains with different layers and bridges, and regulation is a big challenge as well.
From a general perspective, regulation is also something that is important to us. It helps protect both sides of the lender-borrower equation, and keeping-up with that is equally important for the future.
Will the Atlendis protocol be on other blockchains?
Sylvain: We are eager to go where the liquidity goes and where liquidity providers are, while keeping in mind the needs of the borrowers (and also some values that drew us to Ethereum in the first place, like decentralization). We are focusing on Ethereum mainnet at the beginning but are also actively building on other chains that we will reveal upon launch!
Which services or activities will be propelled by uncollateralized lending in DeFi or what DeFi use cases will benefit from uncollateralized lending the most?
Alexis: Most of the Web3 use cases remain unanswered right now and are not addressed by the competition. I strongly believe that use cases like fast withdrawals that require extra liquidity for users to withdraw instantly from one chain to another are going to benefit from uncollateralized loans.
Funding for DAOs is also going to be a hot topic. Instead of always raising funds through VCs and Angel investors which is highly dilutive, DAOs could have access to uncollateralized loans in order to continue their development in a non dilutive way.
Finally, working closely with bridging solutions that have a direct need for liquidity is also a big use case in our mind. It’s a slightly more complicated one as it requires us to be on many different chains to completely address this problem.
Where and how do you see Atlendis Labs fit in the ecosystem in an ideal future?
Alexis: We are building a fundamental building block for the DeFi ecosystem and we really believe that providing an alternative to funding and liquidity streaming to Web3 corporate institutions, DeFi protocols and DAOs, will position Atlendis as the default liquidity provider for the whole DeFi ecosystem.
Can you tell us about the Atlendis Community?
Manuel: I would like to start by thanking everyone for your display of interest in working with Atlendis Labs since we have received plenty of supportive messages, and a bunch of applications to be part of Atlendis’ community contributors.
In the long term, Atlendis needs to be supported by motivated contributors and the goal is to make that possible in every aspect. On the way it implies attracting motivated people in the community, providing the tools and incentives for them to signal their skills or interest in sharing their expertise and help build Atlendis.
So I personally see a lot of upcoming contribution opportunities after our launch.
Sign up for more updates from Atlendis Labs and don’t miss the next community call. In the meantime, please feel free to reach out to the Atlendis Labs team on Discord for any questions or feedback. See you soon in the AtlendisWorld!