In case you missed it, on August 8, 2023, Notum, an investment management app, had an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session with two crypto influencers. The hosts were a DeFi analyst, BMS, and a crypto project advisor, Headboy, who shed significant light on the project. It took place on Twitter at 5 p.m. UTC.
The AMA session was divided into two parts: questions from the hosts and right after that from the community. You can listen to the whole AMA by clicking the link or stay here to read the transcript.
Key Takeaways
Notum App is designed the way to become the only entry to cover investors' needs to successfully invest their funds.
The Notum team has highly experienced developers, DeFi analytics and a management segment deeply rooted in cryptocurrency and blockchain.
- It’s still possible to become a Notum community member and catch a chance to win $1000 USDT by gaining roles on popular Web3 platforms such as Zealy, Mirror, Link3, Galxe, and on Guild.
The platform is equipped with all the necessary functions such as comprehensive dashboards, the latest analytics, selected investment strategy cards, a swapping feature, and a lot more.
Such prominent protocols as Yearn.finance, Convex, Balancer, and Curve are already available on the platform, and Uniswap V3, Trader Joe v2, Gamma, and Velodrom Finance are coming soon.
Q&A
BMS: What are the specific challenges the Notum is aiming to address?
Dan: Years of experience and research in the field we’ve done, proved that people want to know one essential thing — how to effectively invest their funds so they can get a decent return and how to start interacting with all those DeFi protocols and to apply various strategies in the most successful way. That was the starting point for Notum to evolve. We clearly saw that there is still a huge gap between a user and a DeFi market, so we can be a kind of bridge between them.
Once we understood that we have a picture of how to start investing in crypto, what strategies could be applied, and how to reimagine a rather confusing design of the majority of DeFi platforms, we started to build the Notum App. It is a simple yet powerful way to use crypto by investing it smartly.
The platform has all the essential tools for doing this: dashboards, analytics, portfolio tracker, and investment strategies offered to our users in a clear, visual way of cards and infographics. We want to become an entire entry point for our investors and cover all their needs with one app.
BMS: What about the Notum team background?
Dan: As for me, we with a team have a started our crypto journey by building a web3 multi-chain wallet. But then we understood that we need to create something new and more necessary than a crypto wallet, as there are lots of modest options in the market. So, eventually, we with a team decided to pivot and redirect our passion to build a DeFi investment platform that covers all the pain point a crypto investor could face.
Max: My crypto journey kickstarted in 2017 during the ICO boom when I got my first taste of blockchain space and since that time I’ve been actively working with non-custodial exchanges, DEX aggregators, GameFi, and NFT projects digging deeper into web3 marketing. So, of course, being that close to all those crypto projects I used lots of investment tools such as DefiLlama, Zerion, Zapper, and the idea of Notum that aims to combine multiple features for a more effective and powerful feature and packed them all in one investing platform hooked me on right away.
BMS: Can you tell us a bit more about the key features of the Notum platform?
Dan: Yeah, sure. The heart and soul of the platform is its multi-functionality offering the swapping currencies with the lowest fees on the cross-chain swaps, monitoring all your assets in one window, using an ‘Explore’ tab for easily and instantly diversifying your crypto portfolio, and ‘Invest’ option that aggregates the liquidity pools, vaults and DeFi investments options on a single page. You could directly interact with Curve, Balancer, Yearn, and Convex through the ‘Invest’ tab and instantly invest with any token of your choice. This feature is rather crucial as it massively simplifies the whole investment process, as you don’t have to hop on and off between multiple protocols and waste your time while trying to understand how their rather perplexing interface acts. There is also no need in swapping your crypto to attract third-party resources, as you have the best rates swaps right in your Notum app.
Headboy: Can you share your plans and thoughts on partnership with other projects? How are you going to bring Notum to mass adoption?
Max: We at Notum absolutely sure that partnership is one of the most important things a project should think about. Thus, we’re partnering with such prominent data providers as Covalent, which is a decentralized software that empowers users to access blockchain data, and Wido, a cross-chain API for staking, depositing to Vaults, LP pools, and other non-liquid tokens. We’re aiming to bring even more opportunities for our users in the nearest feature.
Dan: I’d say that we have two directions in our partnerships: with infrastructures such as Covalent and Wido, and another one is building relations with protocols. We’re currently in talks with Harvest.finance and Idle.finance to place them on our platform. We surely will enter into partnerships with more protocols and EVM networks. We’re thinking towards zkSync, Starknet, Linea, and alike.
Headboy: As for the community, how do you actually track and understand that the community is engaged and involved?
Max: We have a whole bunch of activities for our community and an Early Adopter Program, that gives our followers to get customed NFTs that have real utility in the form of special bonuses and above all, a chance to get $5000 USDT for 5 lucky ones. For getting those NFTs, one just needs to grab an Early Adopter role in our official Discord channel by earning 6 activity roles on Web3 platforms Zealy, Mirror, Link3, Galxe, and on Guild. This program is still active and you can hop on any time, as it’s about being a part of our community and our journey in reimagining the DeFi crypto investments.
BMS: What are the prospects for Notum's growth?
Dan: We’re planning to introduce a risk assessment feature to clarify the investment process and make it more transparent for an investor no matter how they are involved in the DeFi narrative. Our professional DeFi analysts are currently working on risk methodology and risk assessment for each protocol, vault, or liquidity pool that is presented on our platform. We want to highlight the risks and make this field much clearer, as DeFi is still a perplexing area full of black holes. This will vastly help our investors to make wiser and smarter decisions to grow their crypto funds.
BMS: We know how crucial security is for the crypto industry. What fraud-prevention mechanisms are you going to implement?
Dan: That’s indeed a pivotal point for Notum. As an entirely decentralized platform, we don’t have any access to your personal data and we’re working only with verified providers and protocols that went through a series of audits and are largely reputable being more than 5 years in the market. We don’t have a KYC procedure and you, as our user, just connect to Notum in one click to get started interacting with various protocols. We act as a joint for you to have access to the best investment options placed in one space.
We ourselves are going through audits to prove how important security issues are for us.
BMS: As an investment platform, what risks your users should be aware of when interacting with the strategies presented there?
Dan: Our platform is a place where all the best investment solutions meet and are wrapped into a comprehensive UI/UX design to make the whole process as straightforward as possible. You can invest in Yearn.finance, Convex, Balancer, or Curve. There are a lot of protocols to come as we’ve just started our journey. We’re about to add Uniswap V3 and Trader Joe v2.
As we all know, the DeFi is rather a risky area and everything depends on an investor’s risk tolerance. In regard to the risk management of liquidity pools, the main risk is, of course, an impermanent loss. Therefore, you should be aware of it when considering an investment. So, coming back to the platform, we highlight if the strategy you’re interested in is a subject of impermanent loss or not. Then, you should be cautious of low TVL strategies even if those protocols and/or vaults promise a high APY.
We want to stress that being an investor is a responsible role involving DYOR. It’s always a good idea to make proper due diligence before starting any investment. It's also good to remember that
Headboy: Typically, DeFi investors invest in different protocols, so how is it possible for them to manage and monitor their investment positions using the Notum app?
Dan: Once you’re connected to the Notum platform with your wallet, you’ll see all your assets and positions on the platform and would be able to use an ‘Investment’ tab for either investing in a liquidity pool or leaving the position in the pool. Having all the latest analytics on the pools and protocols performance in the app, you could decide if you want to engage with a definite pool or not.
Headboy: Is portfolio tracking just a feature or you’re aiming to push it forward?
Dan: That’s right, we definitely have the intention to improve the portfolio tracking feature in terms of making that possible for our users to track their investments in other protocols. In a couple of months, we’re going to implement more detailed data on how our users’ positions are performing and on the returns of each position. It’s going to be an advanced version of what our platform has right now.
After a Q & A session ended up, a few questions from the audience flew into the chat.
Q1: Are you going to add lending and borrowing features to the Notum platform?
Dan: Yes, we have this in our roadmap, but now we’re all focused on yields with high APY, as it’s something that drives people to crypto investments and passive income generation. Our mission and ambition are to provide the best practice in the field combined with a comprehensive interface making the process painless and less time-consuming, as we know that's it's a kind of impossible to leap from one app to another trying to keep one's finger on the crypto market pulse.
Q2: Are there any incentives that liquidity providers receive in Notum?
Dan: Notum doesn’t provide its own liquidity, and we don’t have a token. We gather such protocols as Yearn.finance, Balancer, Convex, and Curve for our users to start investing their crypto assets there to make them grow and generate passive income. The platform’s core idea is to be an entry point for all above mentioned and upcoming protocols such as Gamma and Velodrom Finance placed in one space to simplify the crypto investing routine.