Fantom Community Spotlight - IntroToDeFi
What drew you to crypto and web3?
I’m a civil engineer by training, but my country—Turkey—made it so I faced a steep uphill battle in terms of compensation. I didn’t want to work there because of the low salary, and although I was doing a Masters degree the pay was still very low. I decided to go out and do my own thing. Finance was a sort of hobby to me, so a lot of DeFi concepts came very naturally to me.
I avoid traditional finance because of stringent KYC regulations, and also because I never really feel like I’m in control of my own money. Sometimes I can’t withdraw money from my bank when I need it, and it reminds me that I need to be prepared for a worst-case scenario. For example, would I be prepared if all the banks failed in my home country? It’s happened before, where we’ve seen runs on the banks and people haven’t been able to withdraw their savings.
Although that’s a risk here, it’s an even bigger problem in other developing countries. If we take Venezuela or Afghanistan, it’s clear those countries need crypto the most because they’re trapped in an environment of extreme corruption and unstable national monetary systems. Cryptocurrencies and blockchains like Fantom are their escape ticket to get through the nightmare many of them are living in.
With geopolitical uncertainty and war, we’re even seeing the risks inherent to centralized financial systems spread to more developed countries as well. If you have BTC or FTM or ETH, all you need to remain in control of your savings is your seed phrase. Crypto doesn’t know geographical boundaries, and people in dire situations can safely escape dangerous situations without running the risk of having their wealth confiscated or devalued.
In my home country, we’re dealing with high amounts of inflation; the average person around the world is dealing with this too, to varying degrees. But even for those who do not want exposure to the volatility of crypto assets, stablecoins are a great opportunity to gain exposure to other currencies while gaining yield on your position and outpacing inflation.
Financial freedom is an important topic to me, and I try to educate people about it as best I can. In my opinion, Fantom is the best tool to achieve that goal.
How did you land on Fantom?
In May or June of 2020, I came across Andre Cronje talking about Fantom as a viable alternative to Ethereum for developers to launch their projects. Back then, there were just a couple Telegram chats to learn about what was going on, but that was about it. I saw a lot of confusion around the native Fantom DeFi suite, and I realized I could help clarify a lot of it for people. That’s how I got started creating content.
When you hold protocol tokens, you end up becoming a part of that team, whether you know it or not. I realized that if I helped educate people and get them to understand the technology they were buying into, then they would pay it forward by educating their friends and family on the opportunities this offered.
To me, Fantom was the best blockchain tech at that time, and I still hold this to be true.
What are the biggest changes you’ve seen take place on Fantom?
Andre Cronje leaving certainly marked the start of a new era. I think if he’d left two years ago, I would’ve thought the Fantom DeFi space was in trouble, because back then not much existed.
But now we have extremely talented native Fantom developers building incredible projects, and even DeFi primitives. A great example is LiquidDriver.
While Andre contributed a lot while he was around, I think Fantom has matured to the point that it doesn’t need him to the same degree anymore. The final message from Anton could’ve been phrased in a different way, and it panicked a lot of people. But now it’s a matter of thanking him for his contributions and continuing to build.
Now, there will be many talented developers fighting for the throne.
Where do you see Fantom fitting into a multi-chain world?
I view all of the different ecosystems as countries within the metaverse. For example, if Ethereum was a country and it got too big and too crowded, traffic became a serious issue, and it just became unlivable, people might start to wonder where they should migrate to next. To get to New York from Paris, you need the infrastructure to do so. That’s what cross-chain bridges are facilitating.
In the future, there will be many chains for different use cases. We’re seeing it happen now: some protocols are choosing to launch on multiple different chains at once. The "big picture" vision people are rallying around is one of an interoperable multi-chain future, and people are betting on protocols that are chain-agnostic. I believe Fantom will serve as the DeFi hub of all these chains, providing fast and low-cost transactions for its users. Fantom DeFi is built for the people; it’s a vibrant ecosystem where the retail investor is still king.
How do you leverage different channels for your content?
I use Twitter to write multi-part threads; people appreciate this medium if they’re on the move, or if they just want to read through something without having to listen.
YouTube is the ideal medium to make and share DeFi tutorials, because people can follow along and see what I’m doing on the screen. To a certain extent, this can help ease people in and give them a sense of security, since they’re seeing me go through the same processes in “real time” in front of them. More experienced users tend to forget, but using DeFi can be intimidating at the beginning. In my videos, I still use powerpoint slides. That way people can learn whatever it is from the slide itself, and later they can watch me doing it.
If you want to start creating content, don’t worry about followers or views—just do your thing, do what you’re good at. At some point, if you’re providing value, people will find their way to you.
What protocols are you using on Fantom?
SpookyswapIt's a fantastic DEX for swapping tokens. I also stake their native BOO token directly on the platform.
LD gives me access to a basket of governance tokens on Fantom, in an automated fashion.
Scream is perfect for lending and borrowing. I also stake their native SCREAM token there as well.
Reaper Farm
Reaper automates my yield farming on my behalf, making the process a lot easier to manage.
Tetu, Sturdy, Tarot and Yearn Finance are all excellent options for stablecoin yields. Although many people may not be familiar with Tetu, I can say with confidence it’s my go-to place stablecoin yields.
Anything else you’d like to share with the Fantom community?
I’d like to give a shout out to the Telegram and Discord managers across all protocols: it’s a difficult job, and we’re grateful to you for doing it. This also goes for the team over at adminguru.co—they’re bringing a valuable service to the crypto world with their community management offerings.
I’d also like to give a big shout out to the FTMAlerts team for all their hard work in bringing together the Fantom community. And of course a shout out to all the ‘degens’ toiling in the shadows and doing incredible work in the Telegram channels.
Lastly, thanks to the rest of the community; all of this is for you, and we wouldn’t be where we are without you.
