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Hello there! 👋

Glad to have you as a part of the Safient family. Welcome to our newsletter. At Safient we prioritize community growth through product growth, making us a reliable and trustless protocol. Our ecosystem offers every individual the opportunity to be a contributor by simply joining our community, tap on the discord server link https://discord.safient.io to join us today!

We are going to make the next 4-5 minutes worth your while by covering topics centered around trending topics in the crypto space, as well as educating you through the “self-custody gyaan” section.

If you loved the newsletter, let us know! If you hated the newsletter, let us know! We're always looking for a fresh perspective on things to cover and feedback to make your experience better!

- Team Safient.

What we're covering this week:

1. Updates from Safient.💥

2. DeFi Forex to Cut Cost By 80% According To Research

3. A Year Of Self-Custody, With Safient.

SAFIENT WEEKLY INSIDE

Let us update you on what we are up to at Safient this week.

It is no news that the Safient Voucher has been fully launched on Mainnet where you can gift BNB, Matic, and Ether on the Binance chain, Polygon, and Ethereum network respectively. What is the Safient Voucher? This is a decentralized and self-custodial way of gifting crypto where users can now send crypto in the form of gifts to a recipient without having to request a wallet address.

Fascinating facts about the Safient Voucher

The Safient voucher has several features such as expiry dates that make it possible for the voucher to be revoked if certain conditions are not met. Obeying the gifting concept, it also does not reveal in detail the exact amount being gifted to the recipient until fully redeemed. Also, the recipient does not have to create a sign-up before he or she can claim a voucher. And in all, everything about the Safient Voucher is fully decentralized and Self-custodial.

At this time, the Safient team is rewarding those who would want to complete little tasks with $20 worth of vouchers. Stand a chance to be among the first five lucky winners when you complete the task in the tweet below, Good luck! 🤝

A WEEK IN CRYPTO

DeFi Forex To Cut Cost By 80% According To Research

A joint research paper published by Circle and Uniswap has projected that utilizing decentralized finance better known as DeFi protocols in the foreign exchange market could potentially decrease the cost of transfer of funds by up to 80%.

The research paper, titled “On-chain Foreign Exchange and Cross-border Payments”, had a deep check-in into the activity of Circle’s USDC and EUROC on Uniswap from a period of July 2022 to January 2023. It was discovered that the cryptocurrency had a total transaction volume of $128 million, with trading activity going as high as $8 million on certain days.

Further checks made by the research showed that during the period studied, USDC and EUROC traded at rates very close to exchange rates discovered in the large-scale forex market for the USD and EUR pair respectively. There is a high belief by the authors that the DeFi currency exchange provides a credible alternative to conventional forex, with competitive pricing and price efficiency, even though its trading activity is still relatively small. Looking into the potential cost reductions that could be realized, the researchers discovered that Uniswap could be a major key player in this role. To do this, they compared the costs associated with the conventional correspondent banking system of forex versus those related to DeFi forex using data from the World Bank to calculate the cost of a $500 remittance conducted via the international banking system. They then contrasted this price to purchasing a stablecoin such as USDC or EUROC on an exchange, using Uniswap to exchange it for the other coin, transferring it to another individual, and having that person swap it back for the original currency on an exchange.

From the research made, the researchers concluded that the DeFi model does involve various fees such as network fees, exchange fees, DeFi trading fees, and costs associated with sending and receiving money from an exchange. It was realized that all of these fees combined according to the World Bank estimates, these fees are still significantly lower, up to 80% of the average cost incurred by the usual large-scale forex exchange.

Without a doubt, DeFi is playing a key role in redefining our views about traditional financial systems. With the use of blockchain technology and smart contracts, DeFi protocols can now offer varieties of financial services without the help of any centralized intermediaries. With high rapid growth and prioritizing self-custody, we believe it is only a matter of time, before the vast mass adoption of what cryptocurrencies stand for DeFi.

SELF-CUSTODY GYAAN

For this week on self-custody gyaan, let us have a chat about self-custody and what prospects it offers in 2023.

A Year Of Self-custody With Safient.

It is already a wrap for the first month of the first quarter of the year, and a new month is now upon us! But we cannot move on without reflecting on what the previous year offered to us all.

The year 2022 was a turbulent one for the world of cryptocurrency in general as reports of hacks and bankruptcy were the theme of the year. Sadly, we had to deal with all of these in a very bearish crypto market. But let us pause for a second and reflect on some major events that took space by storm. Sorry, I have to remind you of these events one more time, but here they are The Luna crash, the Celcius Network saga, and to crown them all, the FTX debacle. Did you notice, all mentioned are non-custodial and centralized entities? Interestingly, this points in one direction, centralized entities can and would never provide lasting solutions to the needs of the cryptocurrency world in general. While centralization has been in control of affairs for some time now, decentralization and self-custody have great perks which can indeed give us the assurance we need to say we are in good hands though with so much work to be done.

What is Self-custody? In simple terms, self-custody can be explained as having sole control over one’s assets. Why is this important? The famous words “Not Your Keys Not Your Crypto'' can never be overemphasized. The truth remains that if users had total control over their assets, the sad events mentioned above would have never happened. But as we all know, we have no control over what has already happened but can take proactive steps to avoid recurrences. And that is why we have put so much trust and value in self-custody. We believe that with the mass adoption of decentralization, solutions such as smart contract wallets, account abstraction, being able to gift crypto in the form of vouchers, and DeFi trading, being put into maximum use, then we would be having in our hands a better crypto ecosystem where users and enthusiasts would be safe and feel comfortable. We at Safient are a very generic crypto asset recovery protocol and the solutions we offer such as the Safient Voucher, Safient Wallet, and Safient Safe, hold onto self-custody as its mandate.

With the crypto market beginning to look lively in recent days and all hands on deck this year, we believe that decentralization and self-custody would save us all!

We wish y'all a happy new month. Cheers! 🙂