Fantom Ecosystem Spotlight – Beethoven X
When the composer Beethoven was 17, he traveled to Vienna in hopes of studying with Mozart. The story has it that when Mozart first heard Beethoven, he said: “Keep your eyes on him; someday he will give the world something to talk about.”
We humbly borrow Mozart’s words to enthusiastically say the same thing about Beethoven X, a new project in the Fantom ecosystem.
Founded by an experienced, eclectic team of financiers, developers, designers, athletes, visionaries, and, yes, musicians, the project is growing quickly on the back of innovative DeFi offerings and a dynamic community-focused approach. Who would have thought that being a “Ludwig” could be so rewarding?
1. What is Beethoven X?
Beethoven X is an automated portfolio manager, liquidity provider, and price sensor that powers decentralized exchange and the automated portfolio management of Fantom tokens.
We believe we can deliver a technically superior solution at the heart of DeFi on Fantom.
This is exemplified by our desire to cater to all users we believe are relevant, including:
- Traders
- DeFi & FTM Virgins
- DeFi degens
- Ecosystem partners
Within Beethoven X, this old-world “customer-centric” way of thinking has transitioned into a “community-centric” mindset. When we think of Beethoven X, we try to align core functionality and user experience to maximize impact and benefits for different users.
Our strength is our diverse team and our long-term focus on value creation for individual users. We promote amazing experiences with zero compromises. These values guide us at Beethoven X, and they are more important than what Beethoven is as a DEX and portfolio manager.
2. How do you introduce Beethoven X to a novice or someone who knows relatively little about DeFi?
Imagine that you walk into your bank, and your banker says: “Hello Human, we have these index funds where we manage risk to yield predictable returns.”
They continue: “Let’s put some of your money in these index funds. We will charge you a fee for managing this risk because Timothy, our portfolio manager, will oversee your investments and make sure they are always balanced.”
Finally, they add: “This, of course, takes time. You know, to be smart like Timothy, to understand markets like Timothy. It’s expensive stuff. And Timothy went to an expensive school. And if you want Timothy to look at digital assets… well, then it costs much more. If you come this way, we have a meeting room in our expensive building where we can eat a canape and discuss further.”
Do you really need Timothy and a Bank? No, you do not. You can just go to Beethoven X.
By leveraging the Balancer V2 Protocol, we provide our users with an automatically rebalancing index fund for free. Instead of paying Timothy to manage your assets, your investment portfolio earns fees through continuous rebalancing by traders and arbitrageurs making swaps.
“But what will then happen to Timothy?” you ask. Well, that is an interesting question.
3. How did you come up with Beethoven X, and what was your inspiration?
For Beethoven X, this is an answer which has 3 dimensions.
Building within Crypto and DeFI
For most team members, the crypto and, more recently, the DeFi space has represented an opportunity for infinite learning, a place of endless wonderment, and a pace of progress that has had our hearts racing for many years.
The decision to build within the space was not a one-off business decision but the culmination of many late-night conversations, personal experiences, and the desire to push our own and collective boundaries.
We asked ourselves, “If we could do anything, play any music, create anything we wanted, what would that be, who would it be for, and what problem is right there in front of us to solve?”
Forking Balancer V2
We strongly believe that the value proposition offered by Balancer V2 far exceeds any existing AMM on the Fantom network.
Balancer V2 is Uniswap V2, Curve, and automated index funds, all built on a highly extensible architecture that allows for infinite innovation of the swap invariant. We truly believe it is the next generation of AMMs.
While the technology powering Balancer V2 is second to none, they have struggled to achieve a dominant market position as a DEX on Ethereum. We believe that Fantom provides a very interesting opportunity to showcase the potential of Balancer V2 as a DEX.
The Beethoven X Brand
Stories; filled with wonder. Design; filled with humor. Hearts; filled with purpose. All on a platform of superior tech. What a gift to play with.
We set out to create a universe filled with childish, almost naive kindness, filled with a “South Park-ish” vibe of rebellion with music. What better place to do this than Fantom. The Fantom community is so wonderfully creative, and we feel like we have found a home for our universe to unfold.
Being embraced by a community getting close to 10,000 Ludwigs, we see that our tone and approach resonate. It is a straightforward approach. Have as much fun as possible, be kind, design, and build great solutions for humans.
Over time, you will see how the story unfolds with Baathoven, Skull Candy, and the Degen Apprentice. You will know how the universe weaves together products and stories.
And we can not hide how much we love it, so you will hopefully also feel the love.
4. What’s your background?
Our backgrounds are very diverse and yet rooted in experiences that have been key to building Beethoven X.
Most of us have worked together in various constellations before, which has helped us avoid all friction within the team. We have brought people together with diverse skill sets that have unleashed something unexpectedly wonderful.
Compare this to an orchestra: different sections, individual talents, and instruments need to play together. For us, Marketing, Development, Brand, Technology, Finance, Community, Partnerships, Testing, and Dev Ops need to play together like an orchestra to realize our vision.
Some of the experiences within our team we bring with us are:
- A founding team of a successful web 2.0 SaaS company that went through bootstrapping, investment round, management buy-out, and many more phases of entrepreneurial existence.
- Experience advising and building technology and running communications for top global brands.
- Experience building one of the world’s most successful educational platforms for design and technology innovation.
- Experience in Finance with global top 5 banks and fintech start-ups.
- Experience leading top brands’ sustainability efforts.
- Several years in quantitative research and statistics.
- Deep competence in gamification and loyalty in a travel-tech environment.
- Decades of building customer-centric technology in B2B, B2C, and B2B2C.
- Olympic athleticism.
- Conservatory-level music skills.
5. Why did you decide to build on Fantom?
We strongly believe that the technological innovation offered by the Lachesis consensus algorithm and the Fantom Foundation’s focus on both DeFi and advancing Solidity development through the Fantom Virtual Machine will allow Fantom to define itself as a premier destination for DeFi.
We feel fortunate and humbled to have the opportunity to contribute to this developing ecosystem.
Apart from the technology, the Fantom community is truly second to none. After many hours spent lurking in Discords and engaging with community members, it became evident that the community is the “special sauce” that Fantom has to offer.
6. How did you learn about Fantom?
We were under ground for 200 years, but our spirit has wandered across stars and universes throughout this time.
I tell you, there is a lot of talk about Fantom amongst dead, bony, semi decomposed composers in the afterlife:-)
We knew a good deal about the projects on Fantom and had heard good things about the community through our network. We started looking into it from a distance, dived deeper, and could immediately feel the love.
7. How was your experience of building on Fantom?
The developer community on Fantom has been incredibly supportive and helpful all along the way.
We’d like to give a special thanks to the entire Byte Masons team (developers of Reaper), Tigris of Gaul (member of the team behind Tarot), and the Paintswap team for really going out of their way to help out with questions we’ve had.
We’ve had a great time iterating and learning. We hope to start contributing back to make it easier for projects that come after us.
8. What brings you to DeFi, and what excites you most about the space?
What is not exciting about redefining how finance works and bringing an alternative investment vehicle to millions of individuals?
Seriously, we believe that we can positively impact the emerging economy in this sector and offer an alternative to the traditional financial sector.
9. How did the community receive Beethoven X?
Simply amazing. We were lucky to win over jeffery and 0xwives – long-time community members – early on to strengthen our team.
Not long after, we were inundated with Fantom DeFi friends, who have been instrumental in shaping our journey. And now our Beta and Early Ludwigs all come hang out, with their Beethoven NFTs naturally, in the Ludwig Lounge.
For us, this means we are well on our way to creating a community we can be proud of! There is nothing we want more than to contribute to their success and co-create Beethoven X’s future with them.
10. What’s coming up for Beethoven X? Free alpha!
Baathoven and The Degen Apprentice. Wen? Soon.
We just released our roadmap v0.2, which has a detailed summary of our main goals for the next two months.
11. What do you want to say to fellow developers who haven’t started building on Fantom yet?
Fantom is unique, and we sincerely believe it will soon be recognized as one of the top DeFi ecosystems. DeFi and, by extension, the crypto space is not a zero-sum game.
Everyone can win and wagmi together. Come join us on the dark side. We would love to offer our guidance, just like the community offered us guidance. Pay the love forward.
12. Is there anything that we haven’t asked that you’d like to add?
Maybe you didn’t notice that we have a climate fund. It might seem like a basic thing, but we are diverting 2% of the team shares of the protocol fees to the “Beethoven X Climate Fund.”
We wish to capture more Co2 than we emit. Co2 is not a token:-). We will calculate our impact on the environment and capture equivalent amounts using natural and technology-driven solutions.
Hopefully, we can inspire others to do the same so that the re-design of the financial industry is built on a more sustainable foundation than the system before us.
Engage with Beethoven X at:
