Sturdy Finance: An Innovative Lending Protocol Making Waves in DeFi

Welcome to the Zealy Blog!

We're excited to have you here with us today, as we sit down with Eva Zhao to discuss the fascinating world of Sturdy Finance.

This innovative lending protocol is making waves in the DeFi space, offering borrowers up to 10x leverage on yield farming projects and allowing lenders to earn APY without any of the associated risks or costs.

So grab a cup of coffee and settle in for an insightful conversation with Eva about her role in Sturdy Finance, her favourite Quests on Zealy, and her predictions for the future of Web3. Let's get started!

Tell us about your Project

Sturdy is the first positive-sum lending protocol where borrowers pay 0%, yet lenders earn APY. It allows borrowers to farm with up to 10x leverage on projects such as Convex, and lenders receive a portion of the yield from borrowers' farming for providing liquidity.

Sturdy’s unique system provides lenders with the benefits of yield farming without the associated time, risk, or gas costs while allowing borrowers to gain outsized positions for yield farming, creating a positive-sum dynamic between the two groups. These mechanics have allowed Sturdy to experience phenomenal growth and accumulated around $30M in TVL and had held the title of largest lending protocol on Ethereum without a token.

Tell us about your role

I have been the Head of Marketing at Sturdy Finance since early 2022 and have been focused on Web3 marketing for a few years.

I became extremely interested in DeFi in 2018 and have since developed expertise ranging from non-custodial wallets to decentralized derivatives protocols, and now, DeFi lending.

I thoroughly enjoy conducting on-chain data analysis and developing growth hacking strategies to drive adoption in Web3.

Why do you like using Zealy?

I am thrilled to have found this all-in-one Web3 community platform. Not only does it provide various social templates, but it also seamlessly integrates with key social platforms like Twitter and Discord.

It also features a leaderboard and contributor profiles, which are precisely what I was looking for in Sturdy's loyalty program. Within the first month, we achieved some successes, with 250 submissions and about 80 contributors continuing to participate in the program.

This includes higher Twitter engagement, KOL-reply guys’ Quest, and high-quality UGC.

The community had a blast! Zealy is a powerful tool that can integrate all kinds of contests and is scalable to adapt to the evolving ecosystem.

I highly recommend it to CMs or crypto marketers looking to try something new and innovative.

What’s your Quest strategy like - and your absolute favourite Quest?

As a DeFi lending protocol, we divide our key performance indicators into two categories: social for awareness and liquidity for total value locked (TVL).

To achieve greater brand recognition, we encourage our members to participate in social Quests, such as spreading the word, meme contests, and sharing their experiences with DeFi key opinion leaders (KOLs). These are effective ways to strengthen our brand awareness.

This creates a positive feedback loop, encouraging users to share intuitive and compelling content with us. We also educate newcomers about Sturdy's unique mechanics through storytelling Quests with trial liquidity on-chain. Additionally, we grant roles to members who are LP/Leverage gods and design Quests to incentivize more liquidity.

What Rewards do you currently offer your community?

We reward our top contributors on the Zealy leaderboard with premium POAPs and invite them to join the exclusive Brick Gang Premium chat. Additionally, we host monthly giveaways that include stablecoins and merch. Premium members also have the opportunity to be featured in Brick Gang highlights or community calls, ensuring they receive the recognition they deserve.

As our protocol continues to develop, we have exciting utilities prepared for those who earn POAPs.

What trends do you see in Web3? What are your predictions for what’s coming up next?

Undoubtedly, crypto marketing has made great progress as the industry develops. Currently, we have blockchain data platforms such as Dune Analytics, Nansen, and Arkham to interpret on-chain transactions into the visualized analysis.

Additionally, we have community management platforms like Galaxy and Zealy that incentivize community contributions as a whole.

These use cases are crypto-native, scalable in Web3, and have the capability to take web3 marketing to the next level.

I believe we will see more advanced platforms emerging in sectors such as web3 browsers, social wallets, and on-chain credit systems.

What other Web3 projects are you also super excited about right now?

I absolutely love ENS and the Phi project built on top of it. In essence, it serves as a platform for creating web3 cities from ENS domains and web3 wallets' on-chain activities.

Phi enables a fully customizable metaverse land system that is focused on delivering personalized experiences, which is similar to visualizing the POAP to individual domains for more fun.

Additionally, various projects can create their own land and add layers on top of it to showcase their uniqueness, which can foster a stronger sense of community and belonging.

Leading DeFi projects like Uniswap, Curve, and Aave, as well as communities like Degenscore, have already used it, and I am confident that we will see more exciting use cases emerge in the future.

Anything else you’d like to tell the world?

Although blockchain is still in its early stages, we have already seen significant adoption and progress over time.

It is thrilling to be a part of this journey, and I am confident that there are many innovative ideas yet to be built that will help create a decentralized and fair future.

Where else can people find your project on social and Zealy?

Thanks for having me! Here's our Discord and our community on Zealy!