Over the last 12 months as part of the collapse of the FTX ecosystem, centralized prime brokers such as Genesis collapsed due to poor, opaque risk management processes. What was left were on-chain venues that either required overcollateralization, were too simple with their capital use-cases, or too risky for lenders. Asset managers require Prime Brokerages to access leverage, improving their capital efficiency and returns.
Arkis, through their risk engine – encompassing asset-specific valuations (with cross-margining) and cross-chain liquidation planning – aims to serve institutions as an auditable prime brokerage that will be more capital efficient for borrowers and safer for lenders.
Superior for Borrowers and Lenders
Borrowers in Arkis are able to leverage capital more effectively across a variety of venues/chains supported by the protocol due to their integrations and the unique way account equity is valued. Positions on multiple-chains are all factored into a borrower’s overall health score and are based on the type of asset being held (and its correlation to where and how borrowed assets are deployed). ERC-20s factor in past volatility and liquidation slippage; DEX LP Tokens (split into fungible and NFTs in the case of Uni v3) factor in fee accrual and IL characteristics; and Lending Pool LP tokens factor in interest rates and accrued fees.
The Arkis risk engine is constantly running calculations (offchain) to ensure account health and building dynamic, cross-chain liquidations plans that can be used if an account reaches the liquidation threshold. This engine ensures Arkis can effectively liquidate positions (and collateral, if needed) quickly at the best prices, saving borrowers money while preserving the safety of lender capital. Arkis runs the risk engine and liquidation process in house, but anyone can observe the calculations and health ratios via their API.
Team
Arkis backs up their effective design with a strong team led by co-founders by Serhii Tyshchenko (CEO) and Oleksandr Proskurin (CPO), childhood friends from Dnipro, Ukraine who have known each other since they were 5 years old. Both are crypto native and have extensive backgrounds in traditional finance before founding Arkis.
Serhii worked at a San Francisco-based hedge fund then became a portfolio manager in London before shifting to found (and serve as CEO at) LiquidWage, a personal finance startup. His prior entrepreneurial experience showed determination in the face of adversity that is not only admirable but profound, as a pending acquisition fell through due to extraordinary circumstances, leaving him to start over from scratch. With this, he and Oleksandr – a quant researcher and algorithmic trader that started his own quantitative market neutral fund in equities that evolved to become a digital asset hedge fund – began working on Arkis.
Conclusion
Arkis has already processed their first onchain transaction with mainnet launch coming soon. Having worked with institutional-class entities and crypto firms alike, Serhii and Oleksandr are poised to usher in a new leading form of prime brokerage, one that not only reduces friction to enable greater flexibility in capital uses, but also satisfies stringent institutional safety requirements.
Disclaimer
Information is provided for general educational purposes only. This presentation is not an offer to sell securities or a solicitation of offers to buy securities. Nothing contained herein constitutes investment or other advice nor is it to be relied on in making an investment decision. For more important information, please see disclaimer
