Umoja Leads the Charge in Financial Inclusion Through its Smart Money Protocol
In Brief
Robby Greenfield, CEO of Umoja Labs, discusses the company’s innovative smart money protocol, its unique challenges, and its commitment to fostering user trust and traction.
Introducing Robby Greenfield, the CEO of Umoja Labs, who is leading the world’s first smart money protocol. In this interview, Robby sheds light on the unique challenges and opportunities of operating in the global South, shares insights into Umoja’s groundbreaking products, and discusses the importance of direct engagement with their community. As he gears up for Paris Blockchain Week, Robby emphasises the value of genuine connections over mere investment pitches, reflecting Umoja’s commitment to fostering user trust and traction above all else.
Umoja is the world’s first smart money protocol. Can you elaborate on what smart money protocol is and why you decided to start this business?
Firstly, Umoja is an asset factory. We enable their creation that can protect against risk and optimise yields better than any existing digital assets. We do that by tokenising asset management strategies and making them composable. There are certain things that you can do when you trade that help you protect against risk or that you go long without being liquidated, and we take those and make them into primitives that you can embed into the asset. This way, your token doesn’t just lose value or doesn’t create a little bit of yield. It does a lot more than what money has traditionally done basically for all of human history. That’s what smart money protocol is.
Our vision is to democratise wealth-creating tools for the first time ever, but it’s impossible to give everyone the necessary information to learn how to trade, make, or protect their assets or stay safe in the crypto space. However, automating money itself is a much more reasonable way to create broader wealth.
For an African startup, how is it different to work in this region from other regions?
I would say the biggest difference between Africa and the West is that African use cases of blockchain technology are a lot more pragmatic. They’re focused on first needs rather than speculative ones, such as humanitarian aid, remittances, and loans. In the West, you also have more protocols that do additional things rather than basic needs.
What are some of the key products of Umoja’s smart money protocol?
Our first product was focused on automating digital humanitarian aid, enabling NGOs to send stable coins to wallets without the end-user even knowing that they’re using blockchain technology at all.
The second product that we have is the protocol focused on automating money. Enabling tokens that effectively automate your asset management for you, related to specific strategies. So that’s a kind of structured financial product protocol.
What challenges have you encountered in implementing Umoja’s financial solutions, and how have you addressed them, especially if we are talking about the global south region and the US?
The approach to remain compliant when operating in different regions is universally the same because there are so few options. The only safe jurisdiction in the world to create a crypto-related business or a protocol would be in the Caribbean, the UAE, and Singapore.
The vast majority of countries especially in emerging markets don’t have blockchain sort of frameworks at all, and the ones in the West are pretty backward. For example, the United States is not a shining example of how to move forward with technology. That’s why we have an offshore entity (foundation) that allows us to facilitate both protocol support and token activities.
Could you provide insights into Umoja’s plans for future Web3 products in different regions?
Right now, we have a pretty big launch that we’re announcing on Bitcoin this month, and then obviously, we will be on Mainnet V1 for both Arbitrum and Bitcoin network in May, and then we have an airdrop in June and TGE in June.
Regarding the regions, there are a few big opportunities. Obviously, a lot of our community members come from the CIS region, Southeast Asia, and a few Western counterparts.
So far, what collaborations have you managed to do with other NGOs?
In terms of partners, we are backed by Coinbase Ventures, Blockchain Founders Fund, Orange DAO, Quantstamp, and 500 Global, which used to be 500 Startups, Chainlink and Arbitrum. So, we have a pretty expensive network of partners. Some of them are more on the investor-customer side, while others are on the marketing side.
You have a really strong community in Telegram. Why do you think it’s important for startups to have direct contact with their users?
I think it’s important because people need to be on the project. They need to be able to trust the project, and they need to ask questions so that they can use the protocol. People give great feedback as well; that’s another reason why you want to interact with your community often. It’s also very important for centralised exchanges that you have a real engaged community to get listed by top-tier exchanges.
Your future airdrop will be a chance to attract new people, right?
Yes, that is one of the ways we attract new users. The airdrop campaign goes from now until June 15th, when we have our TGE.
At Paris Blockchain Week, Umoja Labs was listed as one of the top 10 startups. Do you have any plans on how you will attract investors?
You’ll be surprised if I answer like this, but the best pitch you can give is to not care, and that doesn’t mean not caring. Obviously, you should be prepared, but the thing that makes people nervous is always expecting something out of something right when you don’t expect anything. When you’re really just trying to connect with them and use it as an opportunity to gain users rather than money, you’ll have better results.
Once you raise a million dollars or two million dollars, you begin to realise that money is helpful for paying team members, but funds don’t create direct traction that keeps you alive, and that’s the most important thing. We look at it that way, and I would much rather leave the pitch with customers of the protocol than with money.
Do you already know your competitors at PBW?
Thankfully, we don’t have too many direct competitors. There aren’t many protocols that focus on new assets. There are some asset management protocols, though; Yearn Finance and the Edge Protocol are examples.
Indirect competitors would be options protocols because two of our primitives are synthetic options, and I would say the biggest difference there is that we don’t require to provide something that we have, making the project more flexible and affordable.
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About The Author
Viktoriia is a writer on a variety of technology topics including Web3.0, AI and cryptocurrencies. Her extensive experience allows her to write insightful articles for the wider audience.
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Viktoriia is a writer on a variety of technology topics including Web3.0, AI and cryptocurrencies. Her extensive experience allows her to write insightful articles for the wider audience.
