Episode 6 - New Protection for DeFi Assets Through Trustless Options Built on Ethereum with Alexis Gauba

The Ethereal Podcast

In Episode 6 of the Ethereal Podcast, DeFi Dad interviews CoFounder of Opyn, Alexis Gauba.
Alexis and her team launched the first DeFi platform on Ethereum for buying and selling put options for DeFi assets like DAI lent on Compound as well as the first on-chain put options for ETH. It's been a huge leap forward for the Ethereum and DeFi community to be able to essentially use these on-chain put options as insurance against technical (smart contract bugs) and financial risks while also hedging against the volatility of ETH. At the time of our interview, they were only a month post-launch from ETH Denver, where coincidentally bZx suffered from a flash loan attack, helping further bring to light the need for Opyn to protect DeFi assets deposited in Ethereum smart contracts.
Alexis and her two CoFounders all met at UC Berkeley as members of Blockchain at Berkeley, where they came up with the idea for Opyn. During the interview, she explains how anyone, regardless of having zero knowledge about options, can use this popular instrument in legacy finance, cleverly rebranded by Opyn as "protection" to prevent losses in case of smart contract failure or some unforeseen financial risk causing a DeFi apps like Compound to ever fail in the future. They also discuss an even bigger addressable market in offering trustless put options on ETH to protect against a volatile drawdown in the price, especially after we had all recently lived through a near 50% drawdown across the entire crypto market on Black Thursday, March 12, 2020.
Alexis is the CoFounder of she256, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing diversity and breaking down barriers to entry in the blockchain space, with nearly 1000 global members. She talked with DeFi Dad about being a female founder in the crypto space and how she's trying to encourage more women and more diversity to work in Ethereum and crypto in general.
You can see Alexis speak at the Ethereal Virtual Summit on May 7-8th, 2020 by registering for free at etherealsummit.com/register.
To learn more about Opyn, visit opyn.co and follow the @opyn_ team on Twitter.
Ask questions in the Opyn Discord at discord.gg/2NFdXaE.
Follow Alexis on Twitter at @AlexisGauba.