The Ones in the Arena: Mellow Protocol

“The Mellow team believes in synergy between protocols and focuses on composability to provide new tools both to users and other teams.” — Nick S, Product lead, Mellow Protocol

Ask any dev what gets them most excited about DeFi, and the word “composability” is likely to come out of their mouth almost immediately. But while many projects leverage composability, not every project can actually act as a “money LEGO.”

Mellow Protocol, however, is focused on providing tools that other teams and protocols can use. As they prepare for their upcoming Code4rena audit contest, we asked Mellow’s head of product, Nick S, to tell us more about what they have planned, and what he’d like to see more of in the DeFi ecosystem.

What are you building, and what sets it apart from similar offerings in the space?

A permissionless vaults ecosystem for capital efficiency — we’re creating the future of optimal cross-protocol liquidity allocation.

What’s your vision for your project? What are you building towards in the longer view?

We research math models and implement them via smart contracts to create a practical set of tools for the DeFi ecosystem. Our goal is to eliminate market inefficiency and increase the composability of DeFi.

The Mellow team believes in synergy between protocols and focuses on composability to provide new tools both to users and other teams.

What’s the most innovative idea in your protocol?

Our robust, open-to-public Vaults ecosystem, and effective liquidity management strategies.

“The speed of DeFi evolution and development, permissionless protocols, and composability features… bring extraordinary capabilities to developers and builders.”

Security has become an increasingly vital topic in DeFi. How do you think the ecosystem needs to evolve in order to rise to the challenge?

Prioritize security of users’ funds over timings; conduct team security sessions and keep an eye on recent hacks; use timelocks, multisigs and non-upgradable contracts everywhere where it’s possible.

What gets you most excited about DeFi?

The speed of DeFi evolution and development, permissionless protocols, and composability features compared with tradFi heavyweight inefficient monstrous monoliths. These features bring extraordinary capabilities to developers and builders.

Complete the following sentence: “I wish more DeFi projects would…”

build effective governance, be truly open and focus more on bringing ecosystem value.

What DeFi project name do you wish you’d thought of first?

Mellow Protocol 😊

What do you geek out about, beyond DeFi?

Cool and complex math models, meeting smart people, and hanging out with crypto frens at the conferences.

Learn more about Mellow Protocol:

Mellow Protocol’s $50K security audit contest opens December 2, 2021, and runs for 7 days. Details at code4rena.com.

The Ones in the Arena spotlights emerging and established DeFi projects and their founders, with an eye to celebrating and learning from them. The series’ name is inspired in part by Teddy Roosevelt’s famous quote, which has a central place in Code4rena’s philosophy.