On its website, the AllianceBlock Protocol describes itself as “a decentralized, blockchain-agnostic layer 2 that bridges traditional and decentralized finance and automates the process of converting any digital or crypto asset into a bankable product.” In other words, AllianceBlock is a layer 2 trying to provide the tools to bring DeFi products to the world of CeFi, and vice versa. This is one of the ultimate value propositions for DeFi, as one of the main potentials of DeFi is to at least partially replace CeFi. For them to connect is a natural first step, and the teams that achieve movement in this direction have the potential to acquire quite a bit of value in their protocols.
Team and Founding
AllianceBlock was founded by Rachid Ajaja, I.N. Amber Ghaddar, PhD, and Matthijs de Vries. Together, they have extensive experience in data science, business, and software development that one would look for in a team trying to develop an ambitious protocol such as this.
On their website, Rachid Ajaja is described as “A serial entrepreneur with an obsession for modelling, analytics development, quantitative analysis and data science.” He was formerly a quantitative analyst at Barclays Bank and developed a deep learning model of computer vision.
Amber Ghaddar is a former fixed income trader and J.P. Morgan and Global Investment Researcher at Goldman Sachs. At J.P. Morgan, she also worked on their Cross Asset Solution team, gaining experience in commodities, options, equities, credit, and rates. She has a Masters in International Risk Management from HEC and a PhD in Molecular Medicine from Vita-Salute in Italy.
Matthijs de Vries rounds out the team with his programming and software experience, having managed product development at the Dutch Company PostNL. He has led the development of several AI products and has an extensive background personally developing software products.
Overall, this team brings exactly the type of experience that a product like this would require.
Decentralized Capital Markets
Alliance Block aims to connect Traditional Finance, Decentralized Finance, FinTech, and to do all this in a clear legal and compliant way. In achieving this goal, trillions of dollars of capital would be unlocked to move freely between DeFi and CeFi. Imagine a world where Traditional Finance is able to make common use of Chainlink Oracles, or where there is a DeFi exchange for trading traditional stocks. This is the world that AllianceBlock intends to build, and it’s hard to imagine the limits of the possibilities in this endeavour.
Some of the unique use cases of AlllianceBlock include making cross border transactions easier, regulated digital asset offerings, compliant decentralized finance solutions, regulated digitized derivatives, and compliant P2P lending for institutional clients. Some of these use cases are live right now, however digitized derivatives and p2p lending are coming soon.
Data Tunnel
One of AllianceBlock’s biggest upcoming products is its ‘Data Tunnel’, which it has built-in partnership with Ocean Protocol, a decentralized data marketplace. The aim of the Data Tunnel is to bridge TradFi into Defi’s data marketplace, so they may both buy and sell data in an open marketplace with ease. This use case is unique, because there isn’t really quite an equivalent for open data marketplaces in traditional finance, though the potential for such a market is compelling. Data has become an important asset and will become even bigger in the future with the rise of machine learning. It is natural that better forms of buying and selling should arise.
The AllianceBlock (ALBT) Coin
The ALBT Token is the core token of AllianceBlock. It is designed as a medium of exchange between assets, a PoS asset for nodes, a means of reward for stakers, and as gas for the AllianceBlock Network. This all gives it clear utility should the protocol succeed.
The ALBT Coin was created with a supply of 1,000,000,000. 100,000,000 were sold at seed stage, and 40,000,000 in a private sale. 150,000,000 went to nodes, 90,000,000 to the team, 50,000,000 to partners, 50,000,000 to the protocol fund, and 10,000,000 to facilitate initial liquidity. It is cross-chain, also mainly existing as an ERC-20 token.
Other Partnerships
AllianceBlock has cultivated many major partnerships in both DeFi and traditional finance. These include big names like Chainlink, Orion, Quant, the London Stock exchange, FinLab Portugal and TopJuan Tech Corporation.
Its partnership with DeFi protocols mostly involves committed efforts to bring the services of these protocols to CeFi, while its partnerships with centralized entities involve access to resources, business relationships, and openings to bring these protocols to them.
For example, with Chainlink, AllianceBlock is not simply just using the Chainlink oracles, which anyone can do, it is bringing Chainlink into its own ecosystem so that centralized entities may use their oracles, and they may be bridged with traditional finance financial vehicles.
Another prominent partnership worth noting is the London Stock Exchange, which is notable for its direct tie to what AllianceBlock is trying to accomplish. By joining London Stock Exchange’s partner platform, all other members may use AllianceBlock’s compliant financial products, and AllianceBlock’s potential user base expands greatly. The London Stock Exchange is not a small entity!
Conclusion
AllianceBlock‘s promise is fascinating, and to the degree, it’s successful it has massive potential, to the point where it would change the face of finance if it was truly adopted. There is reason to believe it will have success, as it’s a near certainty that something like it will. As DeFi expands and its uses become clear, it is only natural that it eventually integrates with TradFi, the only question is how. AllianceBlock provides a compelling platform for this to happen and is already making huge moves in the right direction with its developments and large partnerships.
