Texture Finance: Beyond a Digital Pawnshop - Oleg Ravnushkin Vision for NFT Liquidity
Join us as Oleg Ravnushkin, co-founder of Texture Finance, unveils his ambitious vision for the platform, transcending its current role as a digital pawnshop for NFTs and aiming for a broader impact.
Welcome to another episode of Founder's Funnel, where we delve into the innovative world of Texture Finance with its co-founder, Oleg Ravnushkin.
Join us as Oleg takes us beyond the concept of Texture Finance as just a digital pawnshop for NFTs. He shares his vision of revolutionizing the DeFi space, leveraging the Solana ecosystem, and redefining how we perceive and utilize NFTs.
From his unique journey transitioning from traditional finance to the forefront of crypto innovation to his insights on the future of digital asset liquidity, this episode offers a thoughtful look into the strategic thinking behind Texture's growth.
Understanding Texture
Can you break down Texture's mission in layman's terms? How does it aim to revolutionize the Solana NFT lending space?
If you paid money to buy something on blockchain, chances are someone else might also find it valuable and can lend you money against it. We believe that a lot of digital assets store value that can be unlocked by putting borrowers and lenders together. Lending is a timeless narrative that is very native to most people, we are on a mission to make digital lending easy, fun and transparent.
Technical Aspects
What makes Texture's UI stand out in terms of user experience compared to other lending platforms?
We believe that every product should serve a single purpose and be intuitive, simple and fun for users, our UI is easy to navigate and simple to use, while remaining informative and detailed.
Business Model and Partnerships
Can you talk about your partnerships with major Solana lenders like Sharky, Citrus, and Rain? What value do they bring to Texture?
We integrated with all major Solana lenders to provide a unified UX for Solana NFT borrowers. Every lender has a unique value proposition and product design, we are here to make the user journey intuitive and fun.
Challenges and Solutions
What were the biggest technical challenges you faced while building Texture, and how did you overcome them?
Integrating with multiple lenders’ smart contracts was challenging as every lender has its specific architecture. Making sure that we represent all lenders’ offers in an honest, informative way was a product design challenge.
How do you handle the risk of loan defaults, given that you're dealing with NFTs as collateral?
The beauty of p2p lending is the fact that the platform does not engage with collateral risks, there is no liquidation, the lender either gets paid back with interest or gets collateral in case of default.
Future Developments
What's next on the roadmap for Texture? Can you share any upcoming features or partnerships?
Aggregating NFT borrow traffic was our go-to market. We are launching a new NFT lending primitive where NFT holders will be able to lend their NFTs to borrowers who can trade, stake or use them and return any NFT from the same collection at the end of the loan duration. Alongside traditional NFT lending, this should unlock a bunch of NFT trading strategies.
How do you plan to scale Texture to accommodate the growing NFT market on Solana?
Our plan is to bring the p2p lending primitives to broader markets, also capturing DeFi instruments, as we believe that traditional pool lending models better suit EVM chains, where a number of transactions and execution speed are concerns, which make p2p and orderbook mechanics less viable.
Industry Insights
Where do you see the NFT lending space heading in the next few years?
We see the space evolving side by side with NFT trading, the more quality assets launch on Solana, the more new users get onboarded on the chain.
Are we moving away from the PFP culture?
Probably new NFT classes will be launched, which will carry new user applications, use cases, trading and lending patterns. We just have to build the right tools and make the product easy and fun for the new users. Potential avenues of growth are gaming, media, social, and RWA.
Personal Journey and Advice
What inspired you to create Texture? Can you share the origin story?
We have been always inspired by how blockchain and defi can be used as a new means of distributing risks and rewards as well as transferring and storing value. We are always motivated to discover a new product narrative that has not been introduced in traditional financial markets before.
What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs in the crypto space?
Innovate, experiment, improve UX, minimize time to market, test ideas as early as possible, pivot often, don’t get too emotionally attached to the original vision, flow with the market
Was Ryze a good investor to team up with? Why?
Yes, Ryze believed in the team, they are smart risk-takers – the perfect partner in this turbulent and innovative space.