Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has become one of the most popular uses of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, providing users around the world with access to financial services and new means to generate gains on their assets.
Cook Protocol is making DeFi more accessible, and simple to understand (PDF).
For many, DeFi continues to be a difficult concept to understand for new users who are not familiar with financial terms and strategies, which creates an entry barrier that results in the benefits of DeFi not being as accessible as intended.
Cook Protocol: A Better Way Forward
This lack of accessibility is not only detrimental to the ecosystem due to its incoherence with DeFi principles but also due to the difficulties it generates at the time of boosting mass adoption and, in turn, reducing the potential of the whole ecosystem by preventing the addition of liquidity and demand.
The high sophistication and technical nature of DeFi solutions are not the only issues experimented by users of most DeFi platforms, however.
Most often than not, these platforms lack the necessary tools for professional fund managers to execute their strategies in the crypto market, missing another important group that could adopt them.
The total value locked in all DeFi projects exceeded$1 billion as of February 2020 and grew more than 16 times the value by the end of the year, reaching $16 billion. This is a level of growth unheard of in other markets, which creates a unique opportunity for people of all backgrounds to take advantage of the growing sector.
Cook protocol was created to solve these problems experienced by the DeFi niche by providing easy access to asset management for everyone without compromising the quality of the tools professionals can benefit from.
Accelerating the Adoption of Decentralized Finance
Cook protocol is a cross-chain decentralized asset management platform aimed to provide investors of all levels of experience with professional asset management services that are easy and intuitive to use.
The platform allows ordinary investors to access these services by selecting their desired investment strategies and sending their crypto the appropriate smart contract, automating the process by using the platform’s native token (ckTokens).
Fund managers, on the other hand, can create funds and configure their investment strategists in any way they wish to, allowing them to attract investors by increasing the trust provided by smart contracts and blockchain technology.
The decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), smart contract, and token economics, that make part of the platform allow high degrees of transparency and security to investments, as well as efficiency by using automation and fast settling transactions.
While there are other projects with a similar vision to Cook Protocol (like Set Protocol and Enzyme Finance), they usually have really high gas prices due to their use of the Ethereum network and requirements for becoming a fund manager.
These platforms are also missing some advanced features that would allow fund managers to expand their range of strategies to the benefit of their investors.
Cook addresses these issues by being a cross-chain solution, currently looking into alternative blockchains like Huobi Eco Chain and Polkadot, and providing fund managers with an expanded toolbox and more control over their funds.
Cook Protocol aims to provide multiple benefits over other DeFi projects by focusing on creating features and infrastructure that allows for composability, high liquidity, gas-saving, no counter-party risk, and high capital efficiency, all without sacrificing usability.
A Project is Only as Strong as The Team Behind It
Trust in the platform and the underlying technology is everything when it comes to the cryptocurrency ecosystem, which is not different for the DeFi niche. Due to the financial nature of this use case, errors in the design or implementation can result in disaster for users and developers alike.
As so, Cook Protocol’s development and executive team is composed of experts in their respective fields not only with years of experience in it but also in the crypto space.
The Chief Executive Officer of Cook Protocol is Adrian Peng, a UC Berkeley graduate with 4 years o experience in crypto projects and participation in projects like Etheruem, Polkadot, and Filecoin. He also worked as a tech lead for Google and Oracle, some of the biggest tech companies in the world.
Rahul Rodrigues is the Chief Architect behind the project and has over 15 years of experience in software development.
He specializes in distributed systems and has worked for several fintech companies including Fidelity Investments, which allows him to focus on the smart contract architecture design for the protocol and other technical matters.
Blockchain development is in the hands of Antonio Wong, a senior developer from Wayfair who graduated from Cornell University. He is a crypto enthusiast since 2013 and has ample experience in blockchain ever since.
Other officers in the company and developers also have an ample trajectory in the industry but are too many for us to mention. However, each of them has something different to offer the project in terms of experience and skills.
COOK and ckTokens: The Heart and Soul of the Protocol
Cook protocol uses two different tokens to power its ecosystem and offers its functionality to its users. These tokens are the COOK token and the ckToken
ckTokens are the representation of users’ funds in the platform. These tokens are minted when a user supplies assets to a fund and can be later redeemed for the assets it represents.
The COOK token, on the other hand, is the native governance token of the protocol. It allows its holders to partake in the governance of the protocol by creating and voting on proposals.
COOK can also be used to pay for fees on the platform, which are incurred when investing in or initializing a fund, as well as for fund managers claiming management fees.
Community-Driven Governance in Two Levels
The project has a dedicated developer team who initially created the project and continues to develop it, however, the governance of the protocol is far from centralized as the designers of the project were aware of the benefits of a protocol governed by its community.
The Cook Protoco ecosystem has two different levels of governance: protocol and fund governance. The protocol itself is governed by all COOK token holders while funds are governed by their fund manager and investors (ckToken holders).
The governance of the protocol uses governance forums which are then transformed into on-chain COOK Improvement Proposals (CIPs). COOK holers have governance over cook protocol governance, platform fees, and COOK community treasure, which they can use by creating proposals and voting on them.
Fund managers and ckTokens, on the other hand, control the operations of their particular funds by recommending adjustments plans which then can be voted on by all investors to approve and execute automatically if the vote passes.
By using the token to vote on proposals, holders can modify the governance model of the protocol and allocations to the community treasure, update the DeFi whitelist, change pricing oracle, adjust platform fees, launch funds, and many others.
Planning on the Long Term While Providing Functionality Early
While Cook Protocol is a young project launched in the second quarter of 2020, its team members have plenty of experience in the industry and have worked on a fully functional platform by the name of Binves.
The development of COOK token’s smart contract was completed back in January of 2021, around the same time when the Uniswap Liquidity Mining and COOK token price-based unlocking smart contracts were completed, creating the necessary infrastructure to start working on other functionalities
The COOK token smart contract was audited by CertiK early in February, with no vulnerabilities or major concerns being found by the auditor. At this time, the team also completed the first version of Cook Leverage, and 80% of the platform’s demo.
The roadmap for the project aspects the protocol architecture and UI design to be released in the first quarter of 2021, as well as the listing in the popular Decentralized Exchange Uniswap and the release of Cook leverage.
The plans for the second quarter of 2021 include the release of Cook DeFi Indes, a complete third-party audit of cook protocol, and the release of the Columbus version on the Ethereum mainnet.
While Cook protocol is still in the early stages of development, its team has proved itself able to stick to the intended timeline and plan in advance, which has resulted in increasing popularity among crypto enthusiasts looking forward to its future.
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