Getting back in the saddle and journeying to new heights
Rodeo Finance Finance’s HWxFrank 's hustle, story & future.
Lambro interview with cool crypto natives!
I hope I have provide you joy, alpha and value throughout my 177 post since Jan2023.
For my loyal readers & community, I apprecate all the dms & support msg throughout my ups & downs this year!
I will keep this substack free, but if you ever want to support me feel free to join my subscription
📍Short intro about FRANK!
My name is, or isnt, Frank and I am one of the core team from Rodeo Finance.
I am mostly focused on product management and growth aspects for our protocol in the defi space.
📍How did you fall into the crypto & started @Rodeo_Finance
I first got intrigued by the mysterious Bitcoin whitepaper and what the implications might mean not only for financial independence, but rewiring how society interacts with tech and currency shift as a driving force.
I tend to hold a bit of a Utopian view believing blockchain tech can lead to a positive sum nature.
I have an engineering background and soon started tinkering with GPU mining and later followed Ethereum give rise to DeFi.
The rest is history ..
Regarding Rodeo, our founding team took a hard look at the DeFi landscape back in mid-2021. We were in the tail of a bull market frenzy, and Ethereum's gas fees were hitting the roof.
We predicted a future where the exorbitant cost would sideline the average user from participating on mainnet, pushing users, capital and innovation toward Layer 2 solutions.
My early experiences with Dopex and GMX, and particularly GMX's role in igniting a burst of genuine yield opportunities, convinced me that Layer 2 was where the future lay.
By mid-2022, the pieces came together.
Arbitrum emerged as the clear frontrunner—a fertile ground for innovation.
Our team was motivated to create something resilient, a product that not only fit the market at the time but could evolve with the rapidly changing narratives and technological advancements.
We aimed to contribute positively to the ecosystem. And thus, Rodeo Finance was born.
📍What is rodeo finance ?
Rodeo is a decentralized finance protocol that allows its community to earn yield on a range of managed and passive investment strategies.
At its core, Rodeo has two sides: passive liquidity providers (lenders) earning high, yet safe APR by providing single assets for use by leverage farmers, and leverage farmers who borrow up to 10x to farm real yield strategies.
Thus, the protocol enables users to take undercollateralized borrows to increase their positions in vaults and/or yield farming strategies, resulting in higher returns for both active yield seekers as well as passive lenders.
Rodeo’s vision is to become a leverage hub for maximizing yield and capital efficiency.
Enabling users and protocols to become more capital efficient, generate higher yields, and onboard the next generation of DeFi users through a simplified, composable solution
📍Can you share a bit on the whole in incident?
How it happen, how did you handle it & the emotional journey
For those who dont know, Rodeo was exploited through an oracle manipulation attack back in July, through an unreleased farm.
It was preventable and an unfortunate misstep which, although a major setback, led to an improvement in all aspects of our security and OpSec practices.
The event happened after the Rodeo had just completed a hard fought successful fair launch on Camelot, which was an extreme emotional turn around.
Like all areas in life, its how you respond to challenges that define you.
The team took a step back, came up with a mitigation plan to make all holders whole (by paying back funds from our treasury) & a new plan to work towards our vision.
It made us look deeply at our product fit, and revenue model and helped birth the next step in our roadmap, Alamo
📍Always respected you for the continous building,
so whats next fo rodeo finance
Well appreciated ser, likewise i respect your constant hustle and content. It feels like ages since we first spoke
Rodeo is introducing Alamo, a novel collateral use case for liquid staking tokens and other yield bearing tokens (currently under audit from Paladin).
This is big for us as it allows us to accept a wide array of ecosystem tokens and give them a secondary ability to earn additional yield
We will be releasing several new farms upon our Paladin audit including GMX V2 GM pools, Umami, VLP
& finally furthering our commitment to our partnership with Camelot by migrating liquidity to their V3 to take advantage of the added efficiency, STIP grants &upcoming innovations
📍 Any advise for other protocol founders out there?
Still navigating in the space, my biggest takeaways are:
1. 1) Security and reputation are everything.
2. 2) Build something that adds value instead of looking to extract value. Focus on how your protocol earns income.
📍any alpha for the community?
Look out for ETH lending pool which opens up the potential for Rodeo vault strategies ;)
We are in talks with a partner to utilize Rodeo in their quant trading strategies which, if successful, could drive significant notional volume through Rodeo
Cross chain collateral (and lending)
And of course expanding with more farms and partners in the ecosystem
📍What do you think is required to make it in crypto
Interest, patience, thick skin, and the willingness to keep learning