Decentralized Asset Management: A Conversation With DeFi Saver’s Nikola Jankovic

The following is an interview we recently had with Nikola Jankovic,  Community Manager for DeFi Saver.

What's your background? How did you get involved in crypto/blockchain?

NJ: I’ve been a community and content manager at a few positions before joining Decenter and DeFi Saver, having studied English language and literature prior to that. I initially joined the team as the community manager for a blockchain game project they were working on at the time, but then stuck for everything else later on as I’ve been captivated by the potential of Ethereum and wider crypto space. 

That was in the summer of 2018 and I haven’t really been much into crypto before that, even though I’ve known of it somewhat, but since then I’ve been going deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. I think it’s really hard to leave this ecosystem once you realize the inherent revolutionary potential.

What value does Defi Saver bring to users? 

NJ: Our goal so far at DeFi Saver has been to provide advanced, complex features packaged into simple to use, accessible tools for managing leveraged positions and debt positions in decentralized finance in general. This mostly involved creating features that do multiple steps in one transaction, where otherwise a user would need 3 or 4 separate transactions. 

Additionally, we currently provide unique automation features for debt and leverage management which allows users, for example, to set up liquidation protection or automatic leveraging of their positions based on market movements. This kind of convenience is still not available with other DeFi projects and we’ve often received comments from users saying they sleep better or they enjoy their holidays more since they have DeFi Saver watching over their positions. Always love hearing that, as that was the goal we had in mind when we first started working on the project in January 2019.

Where do you see DeFi Saver five years from now?

NJ: This is an extremely difficult question to answer, considering how quickly the decentralized finance ecosystem is evolving. Still, I definitely believe that we can be one of the most relevant DeFi management apps even five years from now, mostly because of our team’s ability to recognize what the users need, as well as the fact that we’re always open to feedback and can quickly adapt to any changing conditions.

What are the most common misconceptions you hear about decentralized asset management?

NJ: To be honest, from my experience so far, I would say that all our users, as well as the broader community understand the basic concepts and advantages of decentralized asset management, including how it’s meant to be non-custodial and trustless.

Unfortunately, however, as soon as I turn to people who haven’t actually participated in the ecosystem, I still meet many who believe that crypto in general is only used for ill-doing or that it’s all just speculation with no actual use cases of any kind. Getting the idea across on just what has been built already is pretty difficult.

What’s next for decentralized asset management in 2021?

NJ: One thing that’s grown increasingly popular throughout 2020 were different aggregation projects, be it an aggregator of multiple decentralized exchanges for token swaps (such as Matcha or 1inch) or a yield farming aggregator (such as Yearn), it’ll be interesting to see how far aggregation levels can go in 2021.

In terms of DeFi Saver specifically, the goal is to greatly polish the overall user experience through providing users with additional tools and data, as intuitively as possible. We have a pretty major update coming up some time in March that will allow users a lot more freedom in terms of what they can do in the app, so keep an eye out for that. And then it’s time for more automation options, too.