Fantom Ecosystem Spotlight – SoulSwap
Looking for highly sophisticated tools wrapped in an easy-to-use, straightforward interface? Your search is over. SoulSwap founders BunsDev and DeGatchi have put a great deal of heart (and soul!) into this project: from meticulous attention to security protocols to the innovative implementation of a reserve currency; it’s all here. Read this to know why we’re confident that the best and brightest developers on DeFi are working on Fantom.
1. What is SoulSwap?
SoulSwap is a DeFi suite. We provide our users with the ability to:
- execute AMM swaps
- process limit orders
- leverage trade and lend crypto assets
- earn interest on staked crypto assets
- borrow crypto assets
- exchange crypto assets via atomic swaps.
We are also one of the very few decentralized exchanges with protocol-owned majority liquidity.
This means the protocol owns over 50% of our liquidity, thereby preventing the possibility of our exchange ever becoming obsolete; we will always have at least the base level requirement for operations to continue, even after we have reached our full supply.
SoulSwap operates in tandem with Luxor, leveraging the utilities that come from a symbiotic relationship between an exchange and a reserve currency with decentralized, in-house VC.
2. How do you introduce Soulswap to a novice or someone who knows little about Defi?
SoulSwap is an ecosystem that enables users to utilize a range of opportunities to explore decentralized finance. We enable you to do the following without an intermediary:
- Swap assets
- Lend crypto-assets
- Borrow crypto-assets
- Leverage trade
- Earn interest on crypto-asset deposits
- Create limit orders
3. What differentiates SoulSwap?
Our innovative bonding mechanism makes us competitive in the oversaturated DEX market. We have a bonding mechanism that has enabled us to reach a point of self-sustainability.
Additionally, we have a maximum supply of 250M SOUL, which makes us distinct from the vast majority of DEX tokens, for which there is no upper bound. SoulSwap also has the most secure smart contracts in the industry.
We are one of few that strictly operates on the latest versions of Solidity, with a comprehensive test suite on every smart contract in production. We have open-sourced our contract and the unit tests we constructed to ensure we follow best practices for smart contract security.
4. How have you sought to improve on the work of DeFi protocols that preceded you?
SoulSwap came about after experiences with protocols where I had zero say in terms of the underlying mechanics, the leadership was formulated before my involvement, and the crypto-economic factors were already agreed upon.
After observing where these projects and others had fallen short, I felt confident enough to build something better, and this is precisely what we have managed to accomplish.
SoulSwap avoids the smart contract bugs present in similar projects. For example, we use the latest versions of Solidity and have added a Reentrancy Guard from OpenZeppelin, which was not an option in the version of Solidity written prior to 0.7.0. The vast majority of SushiSwap or PancakeSwap forks come from Solidity version 0.6.12.
Anyone is welcome to (and very well should) investigate the smart contracts into which they place their funds. SoulSwap takes smart contract security very seriously, and we prove this by adding hierarchical roles in our smart contracts. This enables us to avoid ever being attacked due to the exposure of any one wallet, whereas in the case of our competitors, the same is not true.
Some well-respected protocols have overlooked the importance of basic security protocols and inevitably lost millions in assets due to a single point of failure.
For those interested in learning whether the contracts you trust are protected from a single point of failure, please check for “onlyOwner” restrictions in the relevant contracts. Ensure the Owner of the contract traces back to a multi-sig. If it does not, then you are trusting a team that puts all their eggs into one basket, so to speak.
Not only do we take this one step further – via hierarchical roles – our distinct roles operate within a carefully-planned system of checks and balances. One role can override the harmful actions of another role if either role is somehow hijacked.
For example, we have one role in our farms that can create a pool. If that role were exploited, then a bad actor would be able to allocate a huge sum of SOUL towards a malicious pool for which only the exploiter owned tokens.
But in our case, we have another role that can update the allocation for the malicious pool to zero. Our complex security protocols block the exploiter.
5. How do your unique personal backgrounds shape your perspectives?
My formal background is in Economics. I have a Masters in Applied Economics, and I have been in love with numbers all my life – I also love freedom.
These two factors drove me towards cryptocurrency and eventually to leave my salaried position in the corporate world as a forecaster and logistician to co-found a project.
The leap towards co-founding came about after working as the lead Solidity developer for 3 protocols and Community Moderator for more than I can recall. Working as a Community Moderator taught me a lot about the inner workings of crypto projects – the good, bad, and the ugly.
Practicing Solidity quickly became an everyday activity for me, and I have not gone longer than 48H without developing ever since launching SoulSwap. This is because I know what works and what doesn’t work, and I know that a lot of work needs to be done to get from where we are and where I want us to be.
Sleeping with this in mind is a bit difficult. I never feel fully satisfied and likely never will be because I know I can continuously improve. I am dedicated to ensuring our community receives the highest-quality representation possible.
I believe this makes a true leader – the willingness and eagerness to serve the best interests of those they lead.
6. How did you learn about Fantom?
Fantom wasn’t really on my radar until DeGatchi and I sought out options for launching SoulSwap. We learned about all that Fantom has to offer in our research phase.
7. What have your experiences been like building on Fantom?
Fantom landed on the top of our list when we looked for a blockchain that enabled quick, low-cost, reliable transactions on a decentralized network. The DAG technology and active development team made it a no-brainer to launch on Fantom.
We compared Fantom to practically every EVM-compatible network, and when we decided on Fantom, we never looked back. We were fascinated to discover the vibrant community after we decided to launch, and this has been a rather welcoming and encouraging experience overall.
8. How do you see DeFi evolving?
DeFi is an inevitability. The world changed the moment Bitcoin was created and will never go back to where it was. We opened Pandora’s Box.
The evolution of Defi is highly-contingent on the most influential members of our community, who will take us where we need to be.
My mission is to contribute to our trajectory in a positive and, most of all, honest manner. One that provides pragmatic, tried and true solutions for responsible innovation, and that remains transparent and responsible.
Honesty will lead us to the path of illumination and enable us to break free from the chains of centralized authority. We have the power to make this happen, and I am optimistic about what’s to come.
9. How did the community receive SoulSwap?
Our community consists of some memorable personalities, most of whom have been around since the very beginning. Some even followed me from previous projects I have worked on because they believe in my leadership and development abilities.
The SoulSwap Community is highly engaged and constantly pressures me to improve.
The vast majority of the growth we have experienced in terms of our features, interface, and overall experience has been the direct result of community-given feedback. We always keep our community’s best interest in mind and tirelessly aim to serve them to the best of our abilities.
Given our reluctance to engage with any VC investors, our community is 100% grassroots. We accepted zero funds from VC investors, and we take pride in this, as does our community.
10. What’s coming up for SoulSwap? Free alpha!
We’re releasing our stablecoin $SOR very soon. We also just released Limit Orders as well as our Underworld Markets.
Our Underworld Markets consist of a borrowing and lending protocol where each lending pair operates as an isolated lending market.
Unlike traditional DeFi money markets, where high-risk assets can introduce risk to the entire protocol, in the Underworld, each market is entirely separate.
This means the risk of assets within one lending market does not affect the risk of another lending market. The ability to isolate risks into individual lending markets means that the Underworld is flexible enough to permit users to add any token.
Additionally, isolating the risks of the different lending markets enables users to achieve leverage in one click without ever leaving the platform. Most lending platforms require you to borrow on one platform to lend on another and repeat.
Because the Underworld separates markets into distinct, isolated pairs (markets), lending and borrowing into the same market are composable. This composability results in the Underworld providing the unique opportunity to automate leverage in a single click.
11. What would you like to say to fellow developers who haven’t started building on Fantom?
Testing in production on Fantom makes the environment like a breeding ground for innovation. It lets you focus on your code over the costs associated with rolling out products with the hopes that it will respond in the same manner as it did during your testing phase.
The majority of my knowledge has directly resulted from honing my skills daily. Check out the 1K+ open source repositories on my GitHub.
Engage with SoulSwap:
