GCR

By Element Finance

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The Element Finance team has been focused on building and researching since we closed our seed round this past December and are excited to introduce new primitives to the decentralized finance market. We couldn’t be more excited to announce our team and share the details of our seed fundraise. 

Our seed funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and Placeholder accompanied by SV Angel, A.Capital, Scalar Capital, and Robot Ventures.

Additionally, we are thrilled to share our backing from some of the most experienced pioneers in the space: 

• Joseph Lubin (Fund in stealth, Founder of ConsenSys, Co-Founder of Ethereum) 
• Fernando Martinelli (Co-Founder & CEO of Balancer) 
• Stani Kulechov (Founder & CEO of Aave) 
• Mariano Conti (Former Head of Smart Contracts at Maker Foundation) 
• Robert Leshner (Founder of Compound)
• Tarun Chitra (Founder of Gauntlet)

Our Focus

The Element Protocol brings the attractive high fixed rate yields that DeFi users crave while maximizing capital efficiency, creating market liquidity, and reducing user costs. Our users will be able to purchase BTC, ETH, and USDC at a discount without being locked into a fixed rate term, allowing easy swapping between the discounted asset and any other base asset at any time. 

The need for capital efficiency is an underserved feature as the decentralized finance ecosystem continues to grow. When users are required to have their principal locked in a yield generating position, such as a Yearn vault or an ETH2 validator, they cannot access further opportunities, incur significant costs if they decide to move their position, and the market often lacks liquidity.   

The Element Protocol, at its core, works by splitting the base asset positions (ETH, BTC, USDC) into two distinct separate tokens, the principal token, and the interest token. This splitting mechanism allows users to sell their principal as a fixed-rate income position, further leveraging or increasing exposure to interest without any liquidation risk. This competitive activity along with the custom curve built on Balancer V2 is what drives the high fixed yield markets, bringing liquidity to fixed yield income while minimizing slippage and fees as the discount decreases, ultimately opening the door to a number of new DeFi primitives.

Element will be an open, self-sustaining, community-governed protocol. The protocol is intended to enable financial freedom and provide open access to financial products for people all around the world. Together, we will build better, more stable, and efficient financial systems while holding strong to the principles of decentralization that make DeFi so powerful. 

About Element Finance

Our Team

Will Villanueva, CEO

Jonny Rhea, CTO

Will Villanueva and Jonny Rhea are the founders of Element Finance. Combining their technical backgrounds as Eth1 and Eth2 researchers along with years of experience in software engineering and product development, they are excited to build and deploy novel solutions that move the entire DeFi ecosystem forward.

Charles St.Louis, COO

• Previously, Decentralized Governance Architect at the Maker Foundation. Charles remains involved with MakerDAO as MIP Editor and is an active contributor to the DeFi and Ethereum ecosystem. 

Windra Thio, Growth and Strategy 

• Previously Managing Director of Next Ventures, a digital investment firm specializing on digital data privacy, gaming and commerce. 

Danny Delott, Lead Front-End Engineer

• Frontend engineer with 6+ years of experience building UIs for big data, urban planning, and now DeFi.

Matt Brown, Senior Full-Stack Engineer

• Senior Full Stack Web Development Software Engineer with a growing passion for web3 and the decentralized web.

Paul Vienhage, Lead Solidity Engineer

• Mathematician, Cryptographer and Smart Contract Engineer, previously, ZKP + L2 R&D @ 0x and Security Auditing @ Authio

Nicholas Evans, Senior Solidity Engineer

• Previously, Lead Smart Contracts Engineer @ tBTC and Smart Contracts Developer @ Keep.network. 

We’re always open to growing the team for the right person. If this direction peaks your interest and you’re a solidity dev, designer or community manager, send us a message at careers@element.fi.

Our Advisors 

• Fernando Martinelli, Founder & CEO @ Balancer Labs
• Mariano Conti, Former Head of Smart Contracts @ Maker Foundation
• Evan Van Ness, Week in Ethereum News
• Eric Conner, Co-founder @ EthHub | Into the Ether Podcast
• Danny Ryan, Eth 2 R&D @ Ethereum Foundation 
• Andy Chorlian, Co-Founder @ Fractional
  • Andy is an early contributor to Element but has recently moved to an advisory position as he has launched his own project, Fractional. 

Our Release is Imminent, Now Back to Work… 

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what the Element Protocol will bring to DeFi. If our mission resonates with you, join our community and help us build a better future. We have a lot of content, simulations and deeper analyses coming soon, stay tuned! 

To follow our progress: 

• Twitter
• Website
• Discord
• Telegram (Announcement Channel)