‘We want to build Minterest as a fairer financial system,’ says CEO Josh Rogers

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols have gained significant traction in the cryptocurrency sector, with a total value locked surpassing $271 billion, based on data from DefiLlama. One exceptionally popular category of DeFi services is that of decentralized borrowing and lending, where users can pledge their crypto as collateral and take out stablecoin loans (or vice versa) to pay for everyday expenses while their investment continues to grow.

Such protocols typically charge a spread or difference between deposit and lending rates as a service fee. But then there are protocols like Minterest that seek to distribute a vast majority, if not all, of their profits back to users. Earlier this month, Minterest launched on Moonbeam, an Ethereum-compatible smart contract parachain on the Polkadot network. During an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, Minterest CEO Josh Rogers further elaborated on the goals of building a user-oriented DeFi platform.

We’re proud to be the only @MoonbeamNetwork-native protocol on that list, as well as the only lending/borrowing protocol. #DeFiTwoPointOh let’s go!

Thank you ducky for your impressive work in collating and keeping up with these statistics! https://t.co/twn0xAyoDo

— Minterest (@Minterest) November 17, 2021

Cointelegraph: Your firm claims to be the world’s first lending protocol that captures 100% of value from interest, flash loan and liquidation fees, which then get passed on to users. Would you care to elaborate on that?

Josh Rogers: Traditionally, what happens is that when you look at models, when you look at value capture, what you notice is that there are different parties who are beneficiaries. So, you are looking at lending protocols where the owners/developers take profits out. You have external liquidators who act as the third party who extract liquidation fees. And the thing to especially know about is flash loan fees, which may be extremely [inaduible] to the community in some way. But the thing to know about is that, that value capture fee-income protocol, goes to all these different parties. The intention with Minterest is that we capture all of that fee income on-chain, on the protocol, then we distribute it around the community of users in a way in which we believe is much bigger and much more inclusive. One of the things that stand out in bringing out an auto-liquidation process is that the protocol fee income it captures is far more significant than anything else out there because that fee income is normally lost from the protocol.

CT: So, what are some expected yields from passing off those revenues to users?

JR: Well, what happens is, the answer is I don’t know [laughs]. It’s very difficult for me to forecast that kind of thing. But when you think about this very type of headline, if you are looking at some of the value captures of the sector, it’s measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. But what’s interesting is that when you look at lending protocols, generally there is no correlation between the supply of liquidity and lending activity and the token price. So, the value of the token is not correlated with protocols’ performance.

We do that when we capture all of this fee income. The protocol goes out on-market, and Minterest buys back its own tokens, and it distributes that token through to its users. Now, it’s not for me to say, and a big disclaimer is that I’m not trying to provide forecasts. But if you do headline numbers, if the protocols generate $100 million of fee income, which we should probably do when the borrowing is between $3 billion to $7 billion, that means the protocol is spending $8 million a month on its token. The protocol emits 820,000 tokens per month as part of its liquidity mod. So, if you’re spending $8 million a month and the token price is $10, then the protocol can supply all the tokens that it emits back, which is unrealistic. If the protocol is $8 million a month, then what is the token price? The answer is it’s more than $10. Now, at $40 a token, it’s buying back 50% of token emissions. At $80, it’s buying back 10%, which probably sounds more realistic.

The answer to the question is somewhere in there, or maybe more. The intention here is, and the reason that is important for the protocol generally is that it can compete with others in terms of APY. The more the token prices increase, the greater the internal APY that is actually being caused for the borrowers and lenders. That means it can attract more liquidity, outcompete and gain more longevity and relevance.

CT: Why choose Moonbeam, in particular, to launch your protocol?

JR: Well, there are a couple of key things. One, there’s the question of why Polkadot first, and why Polkadot is much more than another Solana or Algorand. There are some very powerful things about Polkadot that we really like. Initially, Minterest was built on Substrate — it was built to have its own…