Aspan

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  User Dashboard

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  New deposit

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  Withdraw from Aspan

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  Homepage

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  Wallet integration & fiat on-ramp

Inspiration

We are building borderless USD savings accounts on the blockchain. By reducing optionality and abstracting away technical concepts, we aim to bring web3 to retail savers globally, particularly in emerging markets. Deposits still earn interest from top DeFi platforms, but Aspan simplifies discovery, depositing, and withdrawing.

The problem your project addresses

Aspan has the potential to unlock 138B USD annually in DeFi deposit volume. DeFi’s inherent offer of financial flexibility and inflation protection is currently lost upon emerging markets who need this most, and we believe a simpler user experience is key to bridging this divide.

A large part of today’s muted DeFi volume comes down to its geographical focus. Consider that over 65% of DeFi users come from Western countries, where financial services are already extensive and dynamic. Emerging market financial institutions, meanwhile, are notoriously inflexible, inconsistent, and plagued by nepotism. Additionally, many emerging economies regularly post inflation rates that exceed the interest rates on standard bank savings accounts. USD savings options exist but often pay interest below the 1% to 3% rates that top DeFi platforms like Aave can offer. Lastly, emerging markets have relatively risk-averse retail savers that will look dubiously upon high-yield APY offerings, which are commonplace among today’s DeFi apps. In sum, today’s DeFi space does a poor job of targeting its highest potential user base.

Perhaps the best evidence of DeFi’s latent appeal is the high degree of organic crypto adoption among emerging markets. Latin America and Southeast Asia, for example, often rank high when it comes to their shares of crypto ownership. In Kazakhstan alone, individuals purchase 10M USD worth of crypto on Binance every month. This crypto excitement, however, has not yet been converted into DeFi adoption. Most crypto ownership, after all, happens on centralized exchanges, whose applications often resemble a Bloomberg trading terminal with gimmicky get-rich-quick offers. We are creating Aspan to simplify and refocus what the blockchain means to everyday people.

How we've addressed this problem

We are building a mobile-first blockchain application offering borderless USD savings accounts for emerging market retail savers. The Aspan app will allow crypto novices to create a blockchain wallet, buy USD stablecoins, deposit into decentralized finance (DeFi), earn a modest variable interest rate (1% to 3%), and withdraw at any time. Our app makes discovery and transacting effortless by abstracting away technical complexities and limiting optionality.

Technologies we used

Our approach to simplification starts by facilitating first-time crypto ownership. By integrating with a cybersecurity firm, Magic Labs, we will abstract away concepts like private key management, blockchain network fees and delays, and fiat on-ramping. Magic’s SDK allows us to offer wallet creation via an email sign-in, deployment on Polygon with low gas fees and transaction latency, and a single entry point for purchasing crypto with most emerging market bank accounts and cards.

Having seamlessly connected users to the blockchain, we then lessen their cognitive load when it comes to exploring DeFi. Aspan will launch with a single savings account earning a modest interest rate. Our initial scope is to integrate with Aave, one of the most respected and audited DeFi platforms. Aspan scans Aave’s flagship USD stablecoin lending markets, selects a few offering the top APYs, and creates a savings product that routes deposits into many such markets at once. The result is a commonsense, moderately stable, and diversified blockchain financial product. As for transacting, Aspan will handle the blockchain’s widespread (and overwhelming) intermediary logistics. Aspan will avoid making users navigate the differences between tokens, swap assets, pay gas fees, or review complicated approvals. Our users will purchase any flagship Polygon asset, deposit it, and receive that same asset when they withdraw. Via an integration with 0x, we will handle the token swaps necessary to route deposits into Aave. An integration with Biconomy will allow Aspan to sponsor users’ gas fees. Lastly, we will only ask users to sign an on-chain transaction once, thereby consolidating a vast array of approvals. We want to make depositing and withdrawing as easy as a cash app.

Similarly, Aspan will eliminate DeFi’s complicated intermediary logistics to make account management intuitive. Aspan depositors will receive Aspan tokens that function as deposit receipts. Instead of needing to track the value of their holdings across multiple Aave lending markets, depositors will have a unified measure of their account value. When it comes time to withdraw, Aspan depositors will redeem their Aspan tokens via the Aspan app. Behind the scenes, Aspan-deployed smart contracts will mint Aspan tokens for new depositors, maintain a real-time USD price feed for Aspan tokens (tied to the underlying Aave markets), burn Aspan tokens when deposits are withdrawn, and restrict any secondary market exchange of Aspan tokens (to limit speculator arbitrage). Aspan strives to bring structure and coherence to an otherwise chaotic process of navigating DeFi. That said, our attempt to simplify is not only meant to improve Aspan’s user experience, it is also a cornerstone of our risk mitigation strategy. We recognize that the crypto world has been rocked by instability from opaque behemoths and hacks of frontier features. Aspan’s approach is designed to account for this. We are integrating with Magic because it prevents us from managing user’s private keys, leaving Aspan no way to limit withdrawals during market crashes. Aspan’s code is open source, giving us no room to obscure underlying asset holdings or the true price of the Aspan token. We are also deliberately leaving out features like cross-chain compatibility and community voting over our DeFi lending strategy. Although both introduce flexibility and optionality, they also increase complexity that can be exploited. We will publish a rigorous and intelligible risk assessment that lists and scores the lending markets we route deposits into.

Built With

• 0x
• chainlink
• hardhat
• solidity
• thegraph
• waffle