Dear DeFiners:

What a year.

2020 will be known for the challenges: The pandemic, economic struggle, and social unrest. Yet in the midst of this, we also saw the rise of a revolutionary technology improving the lives of everyone. Blockchain and crypto are arriving when they are most needed.

While much of the world stopped moving this past year, our industry developed at rapid speed. Each week there have been many things to share. It's easy to lose track of the big picture.

But not in this newsletter.

Today we look back at the whole year, see all the progress we've made, and look ahead to the very bright months ahead with all of you. Your support and participation in the development of DeFiner is what makes it all possible and gives us purpose.

Thank you. 

-Jason Wu, CEO 

😎 Being a "Techstar"⭐

2020 started with a rocket.🚀

We were part of the Techstars accelerator program.

• From January to March, DeFiner co-founders Jason (CEO) and Chyna (COO) developed our company alongside top experts and mentors in the Techstars program.

• April 20 was Techstars Demo Day, where we presented our savings pool to the fintech community and to the world. From here we met investors, continued to develop DeFiner, and received a lot of media attention.

Here's the recap of the Virtual Demo Day 

👏 Investor Partnerships 

In August, we established many relationships with these investment partners: 

• Consensus Lab 
• Signum Capital
• Alphabit
• SNZ Holding
• SPARK Digital Capital•LD Capital

With such a network and support, we proceeded with great speed and confidence, building our products for the fall release.

🔬 Product Development

• In August, we announced our integration of the Chainlink oracle, whose information retrieval improves our savings pool and lending processes.

• Also helping facilitate transactions on DeFiner has been our native token, FIN, which we announced in September. By October, FIN was listed on nine exchanges — 10 today thanks to our latest, Gate.io.

• Then, in November was the big launch: Our savings pool "Taurus" entered the world stage. This non-custodian, trustless savings account supports over 15 crypto assets and stablecoins, including ETH, DAI, USDC, and our native token, FIN.

• All the year's work, the partnerships, the community, and the need — it all came together for this launch. Now, users can enjoy the benefit of depositing their savings instantly, withdrawing at any time, and accruing interest much higher than their traditional bank savings account.

This is the technology for the internet age. 

This is what the struggles of 2020 called out for and media took notice.

📰 Media and Events 

• Each step of the way, media featured our progress: Techstars, new partnerships, and product milestones. Along with these updates, media sought out Jason and Chyna for insights into all the activity in the world of blockchain and DeFi. 

• For our part in the discussion, we published articles in mainstream medias and hosted events (such as Blockchain Week in Shanghai pictured above). We updated our readers and grew our Telegram channel and other social media.

There's been so much to report — and we expect 2021 to be even better.

😀That's all for now, folks!

Looking back on 2020, we can see the compounding effect of progress. We didn't just have many individual accomplishments; all these individual accomplishments added up to something much bigger.

We're eager to carry this momentum into 2021!

The year ahead should see the ease of the pandemic and the improvement of the economy. With blockchain and crypto now entrenched into the world of everyday finance, we look for it to grow rapidly — and DeFiner right along with it. For 2021, we're excited for the many good things in store for DeFiner, our DeFiners, and the world of fintech.

We'll have much more to share in the coming days and weeks. Until next time, stay safe and Happy New Year! 

Sincerely, 

-Team DeFiner