Summer of 2020. The DeFi buzzword began to cause mania within the crypto industry. Something that was much needed after the ICO craze and its subsequent meltdown post-2019. However, “DeFi Summer” as it was later dubbed, was a much larger game changer for the industry than these ICO’s we all had all become accustomed to. This DeFi gold rush was what Vitalik Buterin had always envisioned with his original concept of the Ethereum blockchain, and in 2020 it finally came.

Two causalities had been required for DeFi to lament itself into everyday finance and vocabulary. Vitalik’s Ethereum blockchain; and the countless ICO’s of 2019. Following the collapse of the ICO bull market that ended in the winter, crypto markets had gone largely silent, and so too did projects that had promised its investors DApps (decentralized applications) that would democratize finance. In reality the bear market that followed consequently made a positive impact to the industry. It allowed real projects, with real teams to begin delivering these so-called DApps that would in turn disrupt the traditional financial system. Mega platforms followed, from loan protocols and insurance to crypto tokens pegged to fiat currencies such as the US dollar. A colossal shift away from an infant industry that only had centralised exchanges for the everyday person to trade their speculative cryptocurrencies on. You could now loan crypto assets online, purchase items using a stable cryptocurrency, or trade on a decentralized exchange whilst retaining custody of your crypto assets.

As only a handful succeeded, thousands of projects failed to deliver. This was due to several factors; some were fairy-tale projects that could never be developed. Most teams abandoned their projects after acquiring millions in their ICO raise. Other instances found that teams or founders either gave up or were simply incompetent. The rest were copycats that could never find themselves in a position to compete with protocols who raced to the finish line first. The final batch consisted of many brilliantly designed “Ponzi schemes” duping investors into pseudo ideas to give away their savings.

By 2021 DeFi had become mainstream and NFT’s began their momentum as “the next big thing”. It was at this time the ukiyo Protocol was envisioned. Talks began and stalled countless times between private investors and developers. This was due to certain constraints and bottlenecks. The concept of a Venture Capital (VC) protocol did not exist and on paper seemed easily viable to create on the blockchain. Legal and regulatory issues stood at the top of this pile followed by the actual ukiyo business model and its architecture. Exactly how should a VC/PE protocol work on the blockchain that would radically depart from the traditional financial model? Many blueprints and concepts were laid out and most of these now belong in the abyss. By the first quarter of 2022 a breakthrough occurred; an alignment of regulation, business model, and technical framework was developed by the team that was approved higher up in the chain. Fast forward to 2024 with the boom of web3 infrastructure tools, now is the time to begin building ukiyo’s Ventures platform.

However, being slow to enter the market had meant that some projects had already built themselves quite a reputation by this point in time by delivering crowdfunding and venture capital platforms to DeFi enthusiasts. But upon further examination of these platforms or protocols, the ukiyo team noticed key elements were missing in their business models and technical architecture that didn’t follow what we term the “four rules of DeFi”.

The Four Rules of DeFi:

1. Non-custodial: users retain ownership over their funds, there are no investment managers who carry the capacity to run away with investor funds.

2. Decentralized: Create a permissionless, environment for financial activities.

3. Social and Transparent: Protocol should have a direct line of communication with users

4. Verifiable: All transactions are recorded on the blockchain as transparent and immutable transactions

Current VC or crowdfunding types of platforms do not mutually ‘not follow’ these all these five rules. Some are designed as DAO’s, whereas the some you will find are custodial and managed with elements of community voting. Given the time to assess these protocols, ukiyo has been able to benefit in its pursuit of delivering a Venture Capital platform.

And it isn’t simply the four rules of DeFi that has impacted the ukiyo project positively. Entering the industry late has allowed certain web3 infrastructure tools to be developed in the shape of governance and legal systems. By implementing more and more of these tools into ukiyo, the platform’s blueprint has a much more fluid technical design.

This allows ukiyo to produce a better business model for VC to work seamlessly on DeFi. Current models involve the community either pooling their assets together and voting where to allocate their funds (mostly on-chain blockchain projects) or individually creating pools in the hope that friends and family may invest in your ideas and eventually gain traction.

ukiyo’s Ventures platform differs radically. The team is on the cusp of merging the digital world with the physical. Users and the community are encouraged to connect their wallets to the platform in a non-custodial fashion to participate in VC Investing which in the traditional world is difficult for individuals without the right social network or status. ukiyo’s Ventures platform breaks these walls to allow web3 users to deploy assets into curated real-world companies and projects seeking funding during their seed round phase. The goal is to make users crypto assets work, not remain in cold wallets until the next bull run.

So what is ukiyo? It is a an ecosystem designed to allow users to fund and become investors using the Ventures platform in not only web3 and blockchain projects, but so too become investors and builders of emerging industries as well as providers of liquidity to established real world companies in return for incentives in the shape of equity and dividends.

All powered by smart contracts and multiple engines running on several chains, bringing user portfolio updates and news, to ROIs (return on investments) in the shape of crypto payments. In effect aggregating everything everything from Investing, to Legal and Compliance into one platform. Ventures.

Welcome to the ukiyo community.