“The impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way.”
Marcus Aurelius
After an incredible four years of operation, our team has learned a lot about what it takes to succeed in this industry. As a totally bootstrapped operation, we broke records, managed billions in TVL, and helped build some of the most successful DeFi protocols of all time. We successfully navigated the Luna crash, the Celsius implosion, the fall of Genesis and 3AC, the explosion of FTX, and the great Multichain rugpull. We’ve watched as hundreds of competitors rose and fell, including many of our beloved partners.
Beginning today, 05/27/2024, our team has come to the mutual decision that we are going to continue building in DeFi. This decision was an incredibly easy one, and one that took very little convincing or introspection. If you haven’t been paying attention, however, you may be surprised by what this will look like.
Introducing Cod3x (Ko-Deks)
Since the collapse of the crypto universe in 2022, our team has been searching diligently to find our fit in the market again. Where we excel in engineering, security, and risk management we realized we needed a lot of work on product, marketing, and capital formation. Adding to this, the wide breadth of our work and lack of value accrual led users to become frustrated.
Nevertheless, we’ve never deviated from our mission to solve DeFi’s biggest problems.
Today, we’re honored to finally unveil our end-game strategy for DeFi – the culmination of nearly four years of work by over 50 contributors: Cod3x.
Cod3x began with a simple idea: DeFi shouldn’t suck. There was no way we would let the future of finance be 450 single-purpose web applications and certainly no way we would let people convince us filing away an index card with 20 grand on it is the most secure way to custody funds.
We decided to solve these problems at the root.
The Future of Finance, Today
Our team’s stubborn commitment to pushing DeFi forward gave birth to Moon in early 2022. Before ChatGPT was cool and before somebody coined the term ‘intents’, we were building infrastructure to elevate the Web3 user’s experience higher than ever before.
By developing cloud-based hardware wallets, infusing them with the best properties of MPC, and engineering the most robust set of middleware and SDKs on the market, the seed of Cod3x was planted.
From there, we invented the Agentic Interface – a tool designed to perform complex operations using only an expression of intent. To do this, Cod3x utilizes a network of lightweight AI agents to interpret user commands, build transactions, and manage queries – turning transactions that would normally take five applications, two bridges, and 15 minutes of stress into a single swipe to confirm.
Our mission is to continue pushing this technology further toward generalization, and continue giving everyday users the power to accomplish what was previously impossible.
Accessibility, Demand, Distribution
In our four years building and servicing DeFi applications, we’ve talked to thousands of users. We’ve felt their struggles navigating new systems and their pain when they make mistakes. We’ve also seen the curiosity and ambition that pushes them forward. In Cod3x, we’ve engineered an environment that eliminates users’ difficulties while still satisfying their urge to explore and grow.
Internally, we call this financial freedom – the freedom to think about an outcome and instantly gain all the knowledge and tools needed to make it a reality. For users, this is the freedom to focus on their lives and their families instead of worrying about their finances. For developers, this is the freedom to focus on building the best financial products instead of pouring money into interfaces and UX.
Increasingly, human beings have demanded this freedom. Since the beginning of time, we have fought for the right to gain access to privileges often reserved for the few, and through DeFi, we’ve attained the ultimate freedom – over our money, our futures, and our access to the global economy.
Our team will continue to invest our time, energy, and capital into bringing this financial freedom to the world through Cod3x. We believe that our users should be able to execute the most sophisticated financial strategies using the best financial protocols with the lowest barriers to entry possible.
The Cod3x Foundation
The Cod3x Foundation has a single mission: to grow the DeFi market, push DeFi technology forward, and empower users and developers to achieve more than they ever thought possible.
Today, the Cod3x foundation maintains a massive suite of DeFi technology. Through nearly four years of work by dozens of talented developers, this technology includes several industry-leading innovations across the lending, stablecoin, and yield product categories.
Having just finished its first round of auditing by Trail of Bits, Granary V2 will henceforth be called Cod3x Lend. Read more about Cod3x Lend here. Our team has also removed redemptions from Ethos Reserve and redesigned its rehypothecation engine for improved flexibility – this new V3 system shall henceforth be called Cod3x CDP.
Across each of these protocols, we will be implementing our novel PID control system, with several flavors of the Cod3x CDP currently being implemented across Chapter protocols. The debut of Cod3x lend is planned for later this year.
Cod3x Foundation will also foster positive-sum relationships with teams across the industry who are equally committed to growing the DeFi market and developing secure financial protocols. We are beginning the process of open-sourcing more than 200 code repositories that we’ve developed over the years and will work to assist teams in implementing our technology in their own software.
The Future of Finance, Tomorrow
In the coming few months, we will seek to onboard strategic liquidity partners and crypto firms while we publish research papers illuminating our work from these past few years. We will also begin shipping different pieces of the new Cod3x application to begin testing our agentic interfaces and data visualization leading into the full launch later this year.
Throughout this same time period, our team will run a brief airdrop campaign to build up social proof for Cod3x and its Chapter protocols. After this campaign, we will launch the CDX token on Ethereum.
Stakers of the CDX token will earn yield accrued from Cod3x Chapters. This system is designed to ensure Cod3x can continuously grow with the DeFi market. As more Chapters are deployed, CDX will transform into the ultimate omni-chain DeFi index, eventually with dozens of streams of yield.
Cod3x staking will be powered by our time-weighted staking system, Reliquary. Governance will also be weighted this way, and allow stakers to decide where Chapter protocols are deployed and which features are prioritized within the Cod3x app.
For the foreseeable future, our main focus will be on improving the agentic interfaces that power the Cod3x application, as well as the data that drives them. Chapter protocols will be managed by their own foundation, research and development will continue in earnest, and we will keep scouring the earth for the best talent possible.
A Quick Thanks
Being bootstrapped and navigating our first bear market was tremendously challenging, but we’ve come out on the other end with a truly killer team of passionate DeFi builders. The launch of Cod3x marks the beginning of a new journey, which we all believe will play a significant role in shaping the future of this industry.
To those who have supported our team in the past, we give a humble thanks. To anyone who craves financial freedom, we hope that Cod3x will inspire and empower you. To everyone else, I’d be extremely impressed if you read this far, but you should consider giving DeFi a shot.
Make sure you join the new Cod3x Discord and give the Twitter account a follow. We’ll be communicating lots of stuff about the airdrop and upcoming releases over the next few weeks.