Genius Yield is the first DeFi platform in the industry to combine an order-book DEX with an AI-powered liquidity management system.
Genius Yield was designed to address the complexity of navigating yield opportunities in DeFi. Our mission is to democratize DeFi for everyone.
Our team has taken a first principle approach to smart contract design. As such, our two products the Genius DEX and the Smart Liquidity Vault have been designed from the ground up to fully benefit from Cardano’s EUTxO-based ledger.
Tell us about yourself?
I am Chief Scientific Officer at Genius Yield, leading the Genius Labs team in charge of the research and development of our DEX and yield optimizer. My background is in machine learning & AI engineering. Before getting into the crypto industry, I spearheaded the development of Freenome’s research platform. A biotech startup developing an FDA-approved early cancer detection test, using next-generation DNA sequencing. It has recently surpassed over $1 billion in funding alone.
I got started in crypto as a senior consultant on the Ethereum and Cosmos blockchain developing DeFi products for clients, such as Sommelier Finance. I have in-depth knowledge of DEX architectures and ML-driven yield optimization strategies.
As a Cardano enthusiast, I have also been very fascinated by Cardano’s best-in-class PoS consensus algorithm and its bespoke UTxO-based smart contracts. For these reasons, I knew I wanted my next project to be on Cardano. Genius Yield plans to take full advantage of Cardano’s unique architecture, meaning DeFi will not just be better on Cardano, it will provide functionalities not possible on other blockchains.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
I would say don’t focus too much on being a domain specialist. There is a lot of value in being a generalist, especially when you work at the cutting edge of technology. From my experience, it is often the interaction of different fields that fuel innovation. People who cultivate diversity in expertise and experience tend to be creative in different ways than domain specialists.
Blockchain and DeFi are great examples of this. It combines many fields (e.i. cryptography, distributed systems, economics, game theory, finance) and attracts people from all walks of life. As a result, it is a vibrant environment bubbling with creativity.
I would tell my younger self not to hesitate to explore different hobbies and interests no matter how eclectic they are. You have no idea how they will change you or serve you in the future. Keep an open mind. At its core, innovation is about finding new ways to combine old ideas.
What problem does your business solve?
Democratize the benefits of DeFi for everyone by providing an all-in-one solution to yield optimization opportunities. Genius Yield is launching a next-generation decentralized exchange (DEX) combined with an AI-powered liquidity management system, specifically designed to take advantage of benefits provided by Cardano’s unique smart contracts paradigm.
Based on a highly parallelizable order-book design, the Genius DEX supports powerful functionalities such as limit, dynamic and algorithmic orders, enabled by our programmable Smart Swap protocol. Moreover, Genius DEX achieves high capital efficiency by allowing for concentrated liquidity positions, resulting in higher earnings for liquidity providers.
Genius Yield’s secondary product is the Smart Liquidity Vault, an active liquidity management system. The user can pick from a number of algorithmic trading strategies designed by Genius Labs and passively benefit from yield optimization opportunities.
Finally, we are creating the Genius Academy, a community-driven educational and mentorship platform that teaches about DeFi and blockchain technology. The objective is to empower individuals to make better-informed decisions and achieve financial freedom.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
Genius Yield was designed to address the complexity of navigating yield opportunities in DeFi. Our goal is to make DeFi easy for everyone by providing best-in-class, access to yield opportunities.
What is your magic sauce?
Genius Yield will offer functionalities fundamentally not possible on EVM blockchains. Most other blockchains are based on Ethereum’s smart contract design, and therefore all suffer from the same limitations of the account-base model. Genius DEX is a complete reinvention of the traditional AMM architecture. It adopts a novel design pattern that specifically benefits from Cardano’s EUTxO paradigm, such as enhanced security, determinism, parallelism, scalability, and composability.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
The long-term vision is to become a driving force in the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies across the globe. Blockchain technology has the potential to create a new world financial system that is internet native, socially inclusive, privacy-preserving, and an equalizer for financial opportunities.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
Since the Genius DEX is based on an order-book design, it involves three parties: users, liquidity providers, and market markers (bots in charge of matching and processing orders). At scale, each of these parties is decentralized and competing with each other to maximize personal gains.
The challenge at hand is to correctly fine-tune the set of incentives, such that competition alone results in a capital efficient and high-performance DEX within a trustless environment.
In order to better understand adversarial behaviors and possible attack vectors, Genius Labs has built a custom research platform where the DEX can be rigorously tested against simulated market conditions. Genius Labs is taking an evidence-based approach to design, in order to achieve fast order execution, efficient flow of liquidity, and market-driven price discoverability.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
Genius Yield is fortunate to have a large and vibrant online community. The best way to get our latest product updates and share your thoughts with our team is by connecting to our social media channels:
Telegram: https://t.me/geniusyield_official
Discord: https://discord.gg/TNHf4fs626
Medium: https://geniusyield.medium.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GeniusyieldO
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0Lw_flS1WokWYH9ZHIQv2g
Instagram: https://instagram.com/genius_yield_official
