Interview with Simon Schaber | Spool DAO
Interview with Simon Schaber | Spool DAO
- Interview with Simon Schaber – 11 important answers about Spool DAO.
- One of the best ways to better get to know a crypto project is to talk with that project’s founders and team members.
- DezentralizedFinance.com sat down with Simon Schaber, Head of Business Development at Spool DAO to discuss the latest developments & news from Spool DAO and the importance of liquidity providing services for the whole Crypto & DeFi ecosystem.
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Yield for the World. Fuel for DeFi.
- About Spool DAO: Spool is composable and permissionless DeFi middleware that connects Capital Aggregators with DeFi Yield Generators to dynamically, automatically, and efficiently allocate funds and ensure optimized yields for custom strategies managed by DAO-curated Risk Models.
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Question: Kindly introduce yourself and describe your Crypto journey and share the reasons why you joined Spool DAO as well as the process.
- Simon: My Crypto journey really started with finding a thread about the Ethereum ICO on a forum that I used to frequent back in the day. I had heard about Bitcoin some time around 2010 already but didn’t think too much of it. I mentally archived it as “freedom dollars online”. Ethereum changed things. I devoured the Whitepaper and became enamored by the idea of smart contracts. For me, Bitcoin held the potential to replace money. Money however is not great business in and of itself. Industries built around and on top of money are where the real value is at. Building a “world computer” that enabled people to create unstoppable applications was the best thing since sliced bread as far as I was concerned back in the day. It’s amazing how far we have come in just a few years. DAOs governing billion-dollar organizations, $100B USD locked in Decentralized Finance and every major bank on the planet working fervently on a blockchain offering.
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Simon Schaber: For me, Spool is the necessary but so far missing link to enable the DeFi future that I have dreamed of for the better part of the past 7 years. It functions very much like an “Operating System for DeFi” and allows traditional financial actors to access DeFi yields.
- It’s really a labor of love and has originally been built out of necessity. The initial builders needed to optimize the administrative and fee cost of their yield farming badly. Soon they realized that any professional actor in DeFi has these pains. From my experience, this is the best reason to start building on a new product.
- My journey to join the Spool DAO has been quite interesting. Ever since the first DAO, back when the idea was more about a self-governing set of smart contracts and less about a decentralized, human organization run via votes of stakeholders around the globe I was fascinated by the concept of digital organizations fit for the 21st century that are not simply derivative versions of 20th-century organizational structures.
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How to join the Spool DAO!
- At Spool I was scouted in late December and contacted by some DAO members right after Christmas. I went through a series of interviews with multiple active DAO contributors in order to get to know each other and see if I was a cultural fit and if my DeFi know-how was up to speed. After this round of talks, I started writing my own job description. This was a way of showing the DAO what I will bring to the table. Followed by a proper proposal/offer. In this document I laid out clearly what I will be doing in my role as CBDO, how I will go about it, what my strategic vision and short-, medium- and long-term goals are.
- After submitting these documents, I conducted two one-hour long “Ask Me Anything” sessions in the DAO Discord with dozens of members joining and grilling me on every facet of Spool, DeFi, Business Development, community management and even the global macroeconomic situation and its implications for Spool.
These AMAs were incredibly enjoyable and rewarding as I got to know the broader DAO community and saw just how involved they were. These guys were not just sitting in the Discord passively and hoping for the token price to go up but really involved. They wanted to help out wherever possible, contribute to the success of Spool from an economic point of view and identified heavily with the project. The AMAs made me incredibly optimistic about Spool. - As a proper DAO, all important decisions at Spool need to be made by the DAO members. Because of that, my next step was to write a proposal for the DAO to hire myself in order to put it up for a Snapshot vote. I put into a 6-page long document why I want to join Spool, what value I would bring to the DAO and how I plan to do so.
- After a couple of days and thousands of Spool Tokens used for votes I had the confirmation. I was officially on board as the CBDO of the Spool DAO.
- Both from a legal- and organizational point of view, this entire journey is incredibly interesting. Plenty of issues in the world of traditional HR can be avoided while at the same time hundreds of new questions pop up.
- We are living in times of massive change and there is nothing worse than to try and navigate them with yesterday’s mindset. I am very glad to have the opportunity of thinking about things anew, without the baggage of a hundred years of industrialization and the corporate structures that has burned into the skulls of managers around the globe.
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Question: Describe the Spool DAO and Spool Labs use case and the value that you are offering to the Crypto and DeFi ecosystem? What problems are you solving with your service?
- Simon: A Spool is a Smart Contract that routes deposits into an array of different Yield Generators in a risk-managed and yield-optimized manner. In simple terms, a Spool could be compared to a “traditional DeFi vault”, as both take on the job of managing and compounding capital via a strategy. The key difference is that a Spool can be individually setup by users in a permissionless manner. A Spool contains an assigned Risk Tolerance, a chosen Risk Model.
- DeFi is an ever-changing landscape. For example, Yields often change based on new market conditions. Another example of this non-static landscape is found in protocols, which may increase in risk as they become more complicated, or less risky as they become more battle-tested. This highly dynamic landscape was the breeding ground for Spool. Most users do not have the time, ability, or capital to efficiently (re-) allocate between different Yield Generators.
- Spool solves these issues by offering a way to participate in multiple yield generators while maintaining proper diversification, managing risk appetite, and benefiting from economies of scale when it comes to rebalancing and compounding. A user simply deposits into an existing Spool (or makes their own) and in turn enjoys automated and optimized decision-making curated by the Spool DAO.
- It’s the ultimate “set-it-and-forget-it” solution since a given Spool will always optimize for the best yield/reward scenario (while being fully decentralized).
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Yield for the World. Fuel for DeFi.
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Question: How important is easy access to DeFi solutions and products?
- Simon: Usability and open access to DeFi are the key factors for mainstream adoption. Real yields are great. Most people would jump at the opportunity of having a 5% savings account. These returns are very real in DeFi, however, accessing them is difficult. This “road bump” is keeping most people away from crypto. If a fintech offers the user experience of Monzo with a savings yield of DeFi and cashback on card purchases like Crypto.com, then that’s a winner.
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Question: Tell us more about the Spool DeFi middleware.
- Simon: Spool connects users to existing and new Yield Generators & Yield Optimizers. Spool routes TVL to existing Protocols while maintaining freedom & flexibility for its users. Good middleware is unnoticeable. Spool operates in the background to the benefit of all participants within the ecosystem. Spools can be seamlessly integrated into UIs via the SDK, for example into a partner’s website so users can easily click and deposit or a bank’s user dashboard for quick access for all customers.
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Question: Please describe your average target customer or user?
- Simon: Spool allows any group of people to get exactly what they need out of DeFi without being eaten alive by gas fees and having to watch portfolios 24/7.
Spool allows anyone to create permissionless and non-custodial yield farming strategies. It enables communities and organizations to “bank” themselves. People don’t have to pool money or take other’s funds into custody in order to offer them a savings product that is custom-tailored to their exact needs. The average Spool creator is in a position where they want to offer others DeFi yield. Risk-managed and diversified strategies with the risk-return profile that suits their audience. Whether it is for investors, clients, followers, guild members or a communal retirement “fund”. -
Question: Can you introduce your team to the readers? What relevant experience do they have?
- Simon: The Spool team of contributors is vast and fully “doxxed”. We have some of the most experienced and capable people in all of Blockchain. Most of them can be found on our website at spool.fi. We have been growing a lot recently.
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Question: Please share your mid- and long-term roadmap with our audience
- Simon: With our product launch will also come the ability to stake Spool DAO tokens in order to not only receive 80% of the Spool DAO fees but also accumulate voting power. The so-called “vote-locked-Spool” will increase in weight for votes over time. The longer you remain staked, the more voting power you will receive, making it more attractive for 3rd parties to incentivize you to vote for their proposals. Think of it a bit like veCRV but you will be able to unstake at any time, even if the opportunity cost to do so increases over time.
- With the product launch will also come a couple of great partnership announcements. Look out for Tradfi entities like Fintechs and banks as well as DeFi heavyweights. In the short term, we focus on increasing Total Value Routed through Spools (TVR), partnering with great projects and companies and improving our offering. Version 2 of Spool is already in the works and with it we will see a host of additional features and strategies for all Spool users. From staking-based yield strategies to cross-chain interoperability, there is plenty to be looking forward to as a Spooler.
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Question: How to get in contact with your team and your community?
- Simon: Make sure to follow the Spool Twitter Account and join the Discord server for the fastest updates. If you want to dive deeper then check out our Gitbook. It is quite comprehensive and helps tremendously with understanding the intricacies of Spool.
- Spool Twitter
- Spool Discord
- Spool Website
- Spool Docs
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DezentralizedFinance: Thank you for your time and the great talk, it was really fun. Hopefully, we can repeat the interview in the future.
- Simon: You are welcome, thank you for the great chat and stay safe.
- Find more valuable interviews at DezentralizedFinance.com in our category Interviews.
- RISK DISCLAIMER: All information presented above is meant for informational purposes only and should not be treated as financial, legal, or tax advice. This article’s content solely reflects the opinion of the writer, who is not a financial advisor. Do your own research before you purchase cryptocurrencies. Any cryptocurrency can go down in value, also to zero. Holding cryptocurrencies is very risky.
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