Interview with Chris Brookins, Co-Founder Of RociFi
Chris Brookins is a veteran blockchain entrepreneur whose company RociFi is turning heads in the DeFi sector with its innovative approach to lending and its groundbreaking credit scoring tools. As RociFi prepares for an upcoming token launch, Chris spoke to Brave New Coin’s Aditya Das about the company’s processes, vision, and roadmap.
Aditya Das BNC: DeFi History & Credit Scoring – DeFi transactions are transparent and permanent. How does RociFi ensure the privacy of users’ transaction history while calculating credit scores? How would a user identify that they own a particular blockchain address? Have any users had any qualms about self-identifying and is there some kind of ZK-style way for users to identify addresses anonymously?
Chris Brookins RociFi
The RociFi credit scoring system is an opt-in service thus users choose the information they want to share with the protocol. The non-fungible credit score (NFCS) minting process allows users to bundle multiple addresses to their soulbound credit credential NFT by signing a small transaction to verify that they are the owner of the addresses being bundled. We are currently working with Sismo and zCloak to allow users attestation of certain criteria, e.g. holding NFCS with good credit score without revealing their master addresses publicly; adding an additional layer of privacy.
Mint your NFCS here and multiple address tutorial here.
Check your credit score and credit history here.
BNC – Algorithm Details: Can you share a bit more about the machine learning algorithm that powers RociFi’s credit scoring system? How did you train it, and how do you handle biases in the data?
Answer: We have great documentation of our machine learning process on our blog and by our former Machine Learning Engineer for those looking to dive deep.
Tl;dr: we analyze a user’s wallet history based on transactions, linkages to malicious actors, and borrowing history.
BNC – Undercollateralized Lending: Undercollateralized lending is a risky venture, even with traditional credit scoring systems. Web3 and crypto users have a reputation of being volatile. How do you manage and mitigate this risk in the volatile world of crypto?
Answer: RociFi no longer offers under-collateralized credit given the majority of demand currently is for lowering borrowing costs with minor improvements to loan-to-value ratios. Despite that, the RociFi lending protocol is a new primitive built from scratch that can easily shift back to under-collateralized lending in the future.
RociFi is also working with several traditional finance providers like Mastercard and zero knowledge proof privacy providers like Sismo to ensure that the Web3-native vision of under-collateralized lending will be transparent, private, and efficient.
BNC – Scalability: How does RociFi plan to scale in a rapidly growing DeFi sector? Is there a potential for your credit scoring model to be adopted industry-wide? Can the RociFi credit scoring model be used by protocols like Aave, Maker etc.
Answer: RociFi credit score will be the Credit Oracle of DeFi with both TradFi and DeFi leveraging it to create new credit products that serve the masses.
BNC – Security: The DeFi sector is no stranger to security issues. What measures does RociFi take to ensure the security of the platform? A question that I often think is who regulates the regulators of Defi?
Answer: RociFi rigorously tests our solidity code and has audits from some of the leading firms in the space. All audit reports can be found here. We also do Immunefi bounties to reward white hats who find vulnerabilities in our code.
In the future, RociFi will introduce smart contract and loan default insurance, coupled with credit default swaps from on-chain derivatives providers.
BNC – Future of RociFi: What is the long-term vision for RociFi? Do you see the model expanding beyond DeFi and potentially interfacing with traditional financial systems?
Answer: The RociFi credit score and NFCS will be the key data bridge allowing DeFi and TradFi to create better products that actually drive a real-world impact to users rather than Web3-native “money games.”
BNC – Regulations: Regulatory bodies worldwide are grappling with how to manage and regulate the DeFi space. How does RociFi plan to navigate this evolving regulatory landscape? (I’d love a future where a users DeFi credit score could be used as collateral for a mortgage)
Answer: We currently play within the existing guidelines set forth by the regulatory bodies and will be launching our token in the near future so that we can decentralize every aspect of our protocol.
Despite the regulatory scrutiny, our end goal is to enable credit access to anyone, anytime – anywhere in the world via RociFi credit scores. For example, our recent partnership with ImpactMarket pilot in Venezuela on Celo.
BNC – Role of NFTs: Can you elaborate more on the role of NFTs in boosting credit scores? How do you determine the "value" of an NFT in terms of a user’s creditworthiness?
Answer: RociFi’s goal is to enable better credit terms for DeFi users regardless of asset collateral, e.g. NFTs, by leveraging our credit scores of a user’s propensity to manage risk and repay loans. We currently don’t analyze NFT data within our credit system but we plan to in the near future.
BNC – Competitive Landscape: There are several other DeFi lending protocols in the market. How does RociFi differentiate itself from these existing protocols, and how does it plan to compete with them? Is there another DeFi protocol you see as similar to RociFi (The only comparison I am aware of is Maple Finance)
Answer: RociFi’s credit score and NFCS is in a league of its own with over 900,000 scores served via API and almost 40,000 NFCS minted. There are some other projects tackling on-chain credit scoring but none with the experience or traction of RociFi.
DeFi lending is incredibly crowded but the majority are Compound or Aave forks, thus lack the ability to offer users customized loan terms. RociFi’s lending protocol was built from scratch to solve this pain point, so quality users based on RociFi credit scores can be rewarded with lower borrowing rates or higher loan-to-value ratios. To-date, we’re still the only protocol that offers this permissionlessly. However, we’re speaking with several large DeFi protocols about integrating RociFi credit scores to enable similar functionality.
BNC – User Adoption: What strategies are you using to encourage the adoption of the RociFi protocol? How do you plan to build trust among potential users, especially those who might be wary of sharing their transaction history for credit scoring?
Answer: Adoption comes from solving a pain point and building trust with your community. With RociFi, we work hard to unlock benefits for users so that their RociFi credit score makes them money while respecting their privacy.
Furthermore, our goal is to decentralize and turn over power of the scoring system and protocol to the community, once we launch our token in late-Q3. Thus, ushering in the first, Open AI product that is a common good owned by the token holders and improved by a hivemind of developers.
After token launch, the core team plans to introduce an incentive and staking system designed to attract and retain sticky token holders that promote long-term growth and sustainability of the protocol.
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