In your friendly financial neighborhood, there’s a new kid on the block(chain): DeFi.

Decentralized Finance (or DeFi) is the upside-down version of today’s centralized financial system where entities like banks, credit unions, and brokers handle our money for us. You know the drill: go to the bank to get a loan and, after putting you through a mountain of paperwork and a colonoscopy, it pulls cash from its other customers’ accounts to lend to you. While you pay interest on your loan, the bank gives a miniscule fraction of interest to its other customers and keeps the vast majority of the profit. And somewhere in the distance, the monocled Monopoly Man smiles.

In contrast, DeFi relies on a little something called “smart contracts” to connect financial participants together. A smart contract is simply a program on a blockchain that executes when conditions are met. For example, if I wanted to get a loan using DeFi instead of a bank, I could use a smart contract to use my crypto assets as collateral. The smart contract would then put a hold on a portion of my funds, lend me the requested funds, and once I’ve paid the loan back in full, the smart contract releases the hold. You can participate on either side of this equation as the borrower or the lender, and in either case, you’ve officially cut out the middleman and your return on investment skyrockets to many times what any bank would dare offer. Collect $200 and pass Go, my friend.

If this sounds too sci-fi for you (I’m thinking Star Trek: The Next DeGeneration maybe?), think of a smart contract like a vending machine. You can put your money in, select the item you’d like and you’re munching within seconds. Or you can play the part of the vendor, using your own money to stock the machine and earn a profit. And much like a vending machine, DeFi is permissionless, meaning that anyone on the planet with an internet connection can participate. But unlike a vending machine, blockchain technology is encrypted and immutable, so you don’t have to worry about your wrinkly dollar getting eaten or your candy bar getting snagged on the way down.

Yet, DeFi is not all puppy dogs and double freaking rainbows. Getting into DeFi requires following numerous complicated steps, coughing up “gas fees” (i.e. the toll charged by the network of computers hosting each blockchain technology), and navigating a complex landscape full of oddly-named projects that could either be a pot of gold or a complete scam. Oh, and if you happen to lose one of your wallets’ 20-word “seed phrase” along the way (or – even worse – inadvertently disclose it to a bad actor), you can kiss your investment goodbye for-ev-er. Top it all off with almost zero regulation, it feels a bit like the wild west.

That’s where Giddy comes in.

Meet Eric Parker, CEO of Giddy, computer science extraordinaire and crypto aficionado. The year was 2021 when DeFi took the stage, skyrocketing from a mere $10 billion of total locked-in value to an astounding $114 billion in a matter of months, and Eric dove headfirst into this wild new frontier. He participated directly in both reaping massive yields and scraping his knees on riskier investments, loving every minute of it. As his enthusiasm frothed and bubbled over, his peers became interested too in how to join in the fun.

Before long, Eric had a long line of friends of friends of friends anxiously begging him for help on how to get a piece of the action and, sheepishly, how to fix their expensive missteps along the treacherous road to DeFi. This had become Eric’s full-time hobby, and he thought, “Maybe we could make an app to safely get anyone staked into DeFi?” Eric enlisted his brother, tech entrepreneur guru Ethan Parker, to lay the groundwork of forming a business and a blueprint for their app.

Their declaration of independence from centralized finance included a number of lofty features in the Giddy app:

• Simply connect a debit or credit card and instantly begin earning yield from DeFi projects with a click of your thumb.
• Save on gas fees and avoid costly missteps that anyone going it alone faces.
• Put up guardrails for those who are new to crypto and DeFi, and have a curated list of the most well-capitalized DeFi projects.
• Use stablecoins to reduce the wild volatility tied to cryptocurrencies.
• Track investment basis, growth of assets, and fees paid along the way to create a financial dashboard that will make your accountant drool.

But perhaps the most ingenious and never-before-seen feature in a consumer app is that Giddy’s users truly own their own crypto wallet. Giddy splits up that all-important seed phrase amongst a password, your phone’s face or thumb ID, email account, and social accounts, and Giddy itself has no custody of your wallet or your funds. The two revolutionary benefits of this non-custodial approach are (1) your assets aren’t at risk even if the company were to get hacked because Giddy doesn’t own your wallet, and (2) for a hacker to access your wallet, they would first have to hack each of your email and social accounts and have your face or thumb. While everyone else shudders and trembles at the scary headlines highlighting the latest crypto company getting hacked and funds getting stolen, you sit tight knowing that’s not your problem. To top it all off, Giddy makes your private key recoverable, so if you lose your phone or access to Facebook, you don’t lose your crypto.

Investors immediately saw the value. Not only is it a simple app that can transport anyone with an internet connection safely into the world of DeFi, but also DeFi is permissionless, meaning that there are no gatekeepers blocking entrance or even requiring an email address to join in the high-yield fun, so massive growth can happen overnight. Giddy raised an $8M seed round, led by Pelion Venture partners and included Galileo CEO Derek White, Traeger CEO Jeremy Andrus, angel investor Scott Paul, Brand Whisperer Shaun Neff, and real estate mogul Brandon Fugal. 

Giddy’s app is set to go live in the coming weeks and users on the rapidly growing waitlist are feeling, well, giddy. Hop on over to giddy.co to join in the fun.