What Is TrueFi (TRU)?

TrueFi, the pioneering credit protocol of the DeFi sector, revolutionizes lending, borrowing, and capital management. Leveraging the Ethereum and Optimism platforms, TrueFi's capital markets establish a seamless connection among investors, borrowers, and capital managers, facilitating uncollateralized lending across both crypto-native assets and conventional financial opportunities.

By introducing on-chain asset management, TrueFi eliminates intermediaries, providing lenders with enhanced yields on their loaned capital. Moreover, it opens up a range of financial prospects typically restricted to the ultra-wealthy.

Simultaneously, TrueFi incorporates multiple layers of protection against defaults, empowering portfolio managers to tap into global liquidity. This, in turn, facilitates more efficient lending for borrowers, optimizing their capital utilization.

Discover how TrueFi is overhauling the colossal global credit market, valued in trillions of dollars. Through this transformative process, TrueFi empowers its token holders and places the future of finance firmly within their grasp.

Basics

With the global lending market currently approaching an impressive $8 trillion, it is astonishing that most of these funds are still being managed using outdated financial infrastructure dating back to the 1970s. These antiquated technologies, like SWIFT, often result in slow, costly, and exclusive investment processes.

Consequently, retail investors rarely have access to the most enticing investment opportunities, including corporate debt, specialty real estate, and emerging market prospects.

However, the emergence of blockchain technology presents a transformative solution, revolutionizing the movement and allocation of capital. By leveraging blockchain, investments become more efficient, faster, and significantly more transparent. Nevertheless, blockchain alone fails to address crucial challenges such as assessing the creditworthiness of borrowers, incorporating real-world collateral, and effectively managing defaulted loans.

To tackle these issues head-on, the ingenious TrueFi team has developed a hybrid structure that grants the protocol unrestricted functionality under the guidance of TRU token holders. Furthermore, TrueFi relies on the participation of independent portfolio managers who benefit from TrueFi's infrastructure while maintaining control over the centralized aspects of underwriting and collections in the physical world.

In the following sections, we will delve into the extraordinary journey of TrueFi, a groundbreaking protocol that has rapidly evolved into a multi-billion dollar entity, unlike anything seen before.

TrueFi

TrueFi is a pioneering blockchain-based platform that has revolutionized the decentralized finance space by launching the industry's first uncollateralized lending marketplace. This groundbreaking development enables borrowers to access on-chain loans without the need for collateral lock-up, significantly enhancing their capital efficiency and resulting in a remarkable surge in demand.

In 2021, TrueFi achieved a significant milestone by expanding its offerings beyond connecting crypto-native borrowers with DeFi lenders. It established a marketplace of financial opportunities expertly managed by independent portfolio managers, all underpinned by its cutting-edge lending infrastructure.

Today, TrueFi proudly presents a diverse and expanding array of financial prospects. These include investment avenues in emerging markets, fintech financing, real estate ventures, and lending opportunities tailored for gig workers. In essence, TrueFi seamlessly bridges the gap between traditional lending and assets, effectively bringing real-world lending and assets into the realm of DeFi.

How Does TrueFi Work?

Within the realm of public financial utilities, TrueFi stands as a prominent player, providing robust infrastructure to facilitate lending, borrowing, and asset management. However, the true essence of the protocol unveils itself when these distinct user groups converge, utilizing TrueFi as a dynamic marketplace to fulfill their respective requirements.

As a decentralized protocol, TrueFi heavily depends on the stakers of its TRU governance token. These individuals play a pivotal role in offering vital loss protection to lenders, shaping the protocol's future governance, and making indispensable contributions essential for the overall success of TrueFi.

Lenders

TrueFi serves as a platform of choice for both retail and institutional lenders in both the crypto and traditional finance sectors, enabling them to discover optimal risk-adjusted yields for their loaned capital. With a wide array of portfolios encompassing crypto-native and real-world lending, TrueFi offers highly competitive earning opportunities in the DeFi space, spanning various asset types.

To participate, lenders can easily access the TrueFi app, explore the available pools and portfolios that match their eligibility criteria, and make allocation decisions based on their risk appetite and desired returns.

Given the flexibility provided by TrueFi, not all portfolios are accessible to every lender. Some may require compliance with specific jurisdictions or verification of identity, procedures that can be conveniently completed within the TrueFi platform.

Lenders typically enjoy the freedom to exit their loan positions through multiple avenues. While certain portfolios may entail a minimum lock-up period, popular pools managed by the TrueFi DAO and automated lines of credit (ALOCs) offer a convenient option called Liquid Exit. Through Liquid Exit, lenders can exit the pool for a nominal fee, exchanging their loan token for unutilized capital within the pool. Alternatively, lenders can choose to sell their loan token on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap.

While defaults are inherent to the credit industry, TrueFi implements several measures to safeguard lenders from the full impact of such events, particularly within specific portfolios.

Firstly, lenders benefit from coverage up to 10% of staked TRU tokens, which are proportionally slashed in the event of defaults. These slashed tokens are then utilized to compensate affected lenders.

Furthermore, the TrueFi SAFU (Secure Asset Fund for Users) may deploy its reserve funds to provide additional coverage to affected lenders.

Lastly, TrueFi retains the option to initiate collection efforts against defaulted borrowers, seeking to recover liquidatable assets that can be used to support lenders still impacted by the default situation.

Borrowers

Before aspiring borrowers can access the benefits of TrueFi, they must undergo a meticulous evaluation of their creditworthiness. This comprehensive assessment encompasses both off-chain and on-chain data, examining factors such as the applicant's company background, assets under management, asset exposure, leverage, and performance history.

Once the TrueFi Credit Committee confirms the borrower's creditworthiness, the decision moves to TRU token holders, who exercise their voting power to either approve or reject the borrower's application. Upon receiving approval, the borrower becomes eligible for a loan from any of TrueFi's open-access DAO pools. The loan's interest rate is determined by the prevailing market conditions, taking into account the borrower's exclusive TrueFi credit score.

Borrowers place their trust in TrueFi due to its swift lending process, often making capital available on the same day the borrower's credit application is approved. Additionally, TrueFi's loans eliminate the need for capital lock-up, empowering every borrower to optimize their capital efficiency to the fullest extent.

Portfolio Managers

In 2021, TrueFi introduced its steadfast support for independent portfolio managers, marking a groundbreaking advancement that enables fund managers and institutional investors to seamlessly transition their operations onto the blockchain.

TrueFi presents portfolio managers with an unparalleled fusion of DeFi and institutional finance. These managers gain access to global liquidity around the clock, starting from the moment they launch their portfolios. Simultaneously, they benefit from the cost-efficiency and transparency afforded by a fully on-chain lending book.

Furthermore, portfolio managers enjoy a comprehensive feature set akin to institutional credit products. They possess complete autonomy over lender selection, encompassing KYC requirements, as well as the terms of their portfolios and individual loans. This includes the ability to design portfolio strategies, establish rates, and set fees.

Becoming a portfolio manager within the TrueFi ecosystem mirrors the process of becoming a borrower, necessitating approval from the community before a manager's portfolio can be listed on the TrueFi app. However, thanks to TrueFi's employment of open-source infrastructure, portfolio managers can effortlessly leverage TrueFi's smart contracts to independently launch their own portfolios without direct involvement from TrueFi.

Presently, TrueFi's astute portfolio managers leverage the liquidity of DeFi to allocate capital towards fostering growth in the Latin American fintech sector, exploring opportunities in emerging markets, supporting crypto mortgages, and more. Through these endeavors, they consistently generate competitive and diversified returns for the lenders associated with TrueFi.

The TRU token

TrueFi, functioning as a decentralized lending protocol, operates by incorporating the valuable input of its token holders and contributors to establish and fulfill significant objectives. To effectively manage various off-chain responsibilities such as tax filings, legal activities, and collections actions, TrueFi employs a hybrid DAO model that integrates a real-world foundation. This model ensures seamless execution of essential tasks.

Empowering TRU holders with substantial decision-making authority, TrueFi entrusts them with binding on-chain voting privileges. This grants TRU holders the power to shape the trajectory of TrueFi by actively participating in token-gated DAO discussions and casting votes on Snapshot and Tally motions.

TRU stakers play a vital role as the front line in both TrueFi's governance structure and the primary safeguard against defaults. Through staking TRU tokens, these individuals gain formal entry into token-gated DAO conversations, enabling them to contribute to discussions and exercise their voting rights. By doing so, they actively influence the future direction of TrueFi, ensuring its continued success.

TrueFi's Future Direction

In order to fully capitalize on the immense opportunities presented by the global credit market, TrueFi is embarking on a comprehensive strategy that bridges the gap between DeFi and institutional investors. This multifaceted approach aims to drive deeper integration within traditional financial institutions while simultaneously expanding DeFi integration with prominent DAOs, lending protocols, and retail DeFi applications.

Advancing Institutional Adoption 

TrueFi remains committed to refining its protocol and lending products to align the controls of institutional finance with the enhanced performance offered by blockchain technology. Collaborating with significant protocol contributors such as Archblock, TrueFi is securing liquidity from funds and family offices while exploring the potential to onboard institutional asset managers onto the blockchain.

Exciting upcoming features from TrueFi include the introduction of tranching, empowering institutional investors to select their desired risk-return profile within specific portfolios. Additionally, the protocol will implement capital formation periods, enabling market interest testing before committing capital to a financial opportunity.

Furthermore, TrueFi is dedicated to enhancing reporting capabilities and providing improved institutional dashboards for lenders and managers through strategic collaborations with key partners.

Deepening DeFi Integration

To enhance accessibility within the DeFi ecosystem, TrueFi is working towards making its loans and portfolios compatible with the ERC-4626 standard. This compatibility allows for seamless integration of TrueFi's vaults with other DeFi opportunities, enabling the inclusion of corporate debt and credit in offerings across various DeFi protocols.

Additionally, TrueFi is actively engaging with major DAO and protocol partners such as MakerDAO, FRAX, and dYdX to establish itself as a preferred partner for yield generation and DEX liquidity. These strategic collaborations hold the potential to attract substantial capital, potentially injecting hundreds of millions of dollars into the protocol.