Edge - AAVE on Polygon integration

Intro
Edge Services
Edge Features
DeFi without Edge
Borrowing explained in Edge
Screens
Additional screens

Inspiration

Our Mission: Edge empowers users worldwide to interact with the crypto economy by making self-custody intuitive and accessible.

Our Vision: Digital sovereignty for all.

We believe empowering individuals with the necessary tools to control their own private keys and transaction information will lead to better financial security everywhere, for everyone.

This is why we are focused on building on Edge to provide the next billion users being able to access loans with crypto through AAVE on the Polygon chain. This will allow users from countries where financial tools are severely limited or even restricted.

What it does

Edge will build and showcase the world's first AAVE integration into a self-custody wallet which will allow the depositing of BTC as collateral and automatically have borrowed stablecoins deposited in the user's account, all in one step.

Integrating AAVE into Edge in a seamless manner will open up the gates to the masses allowing users to borrow against their crypto. Development has started and designs have been created, to show our simple process of borrowing on AAVE where with just a few taps, a user would be able to take out a loan and have that directly deposited into their wallet or even to their bank account.

This move will be unprecedented. Unprecedented to the users that those behind the scenes that know or have experienced the flow before manually will know that taking out an AAVE loan as it stands now requires a multitude of steps.

Swapping the BTC into WBTC to use as collateral
Approving the deposit of tokens as collateral
Depositing the collateral
Taking out the loan
And finally, depositing the borrowed stablecoin into the wallet or into a bank account

Additionally, we also cover being able to make a payment to a loan or to close out a loan completely. All of this is done behind the scenes with minimal steps.

To someone non-technical, this can be a daunting and incredibly difficult process that presents many pitfalls and cracks where along the way a user might send to the wrong address, wrong chain, or even worse be scammed or expose a key where funds can be permanently lost.

The Edge + AAVE integration on Polygon chain solves this by making it incredibly easy within a few taps to complete the process and will help fuel mainstream adoption by offering the first of its kind where any user anywhere in the world with a mobile device can take out loans with crypto on an incredibly easy-to-use wallet that is ready for the masses. The fees on Polygon also make this a much better user experience whereas on other chains could be very expensive.

How we built it

Edge leverages technologies such as React Native to power its UI front-end and a client-side JavaScript runtime core to deliver an autonomous cryptocurrency experience. The architecture for integrating AAVE into our platform consists of the following components:

A React Native UI layer within our front-end mobile application (Edge - Crypto & Bitcoin Wallet)
A smart-contract integration layer leveraging the web3 ecosystem
And a novel action/event system running on the device and supplemented in part by our push notification/event server.

In order to maintain the focus of privacy and autonomy for our users, we unified our application’s utilities (Edge SDK) together with a custom-built domain-specific action/event runtime to issue pre-determined sequences of transactions for the user in order to render a seamless UX that takes care of the complexities introduced by smart-contract platforms. Furthermore, we implement a mobile push notification server to supplement the runtime by securely acting on behalf of the user’s scheduled actions while user-owned devices may be inactive.

Challenges we ran into

The main challenge was to design an architecture with the constraints inherited from our core values we provide as a business to our users; self-custody, autonomy, and privacy. In order to do this, we had to build a system that may act on pre-computed actions scheduled by the user’s device. This involved creating a system that can unify many of the features integral to the borrowing experience (asset exchange, swap, and smart-contract interactions). Such a system comes with the challenges of managing concurrency across multiple devices and services (servers) and ensuring robustness during state change whether on-chain or with our 3rd-party integrations.

We also ran into problems with a missing 'Done' button that takes the user back to the Dashboard after taking out a loan and requires for now to manually tap back. Additionally, we also were not able to set up in time a swap partner that is able to do the behind-the-scenes exchange of BTC to WBTC on Polygon prior to taking out a loan. A simplified loan is still able to be done with WBTC on Polygon already procured. Lastly, the option to directly deposit into a bank account is functional as long as a bank account is connected already.

However, with that said, the app demo showcases being able to make a deposit of collateral of WBTC on Polygon, take out a loan, and receive stablecoin into a wallet. Also shown is the ability to make a payment toward an existing loan.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Although still very early in the product phase, the loan/borrowing experience powered by AAVE exemplifies what we strive to deliver at Edge; a truly self-custodial DeFi solution without compromise in user experience that is unmatched in our industry.

We are most proud of the ability of our users to choose a native asset class for both collateral and loan without the user interaction overhead in order to take out their loan. A user may pick native BTC as collateral and borrow real fiat direct to their bank. We’re excited at the prospects that this kind of product has to offer, and the obstacles that our team undertakes in order to deliver on the premise of core values in such a seamless product experience is at the core of what we do.

We are also proud to retain our core values focusing on open-source, self-custody, and privacy.

What we learned

We've learned that there isn't anyone else that has done something like this so far. We've talked to many cryptocurrency users and many are surprised that this is even possible and those that are even more struck to learn that a user can talk with someone on the phone with Edge.

We find that this is something very compelling as we refine DeFi lending in a way such that a non-technical user can be able to do so without the current challenges that we see in other applications.

What's next for Edge + AAVE + Polygon

Our immediate next steps are to refine our beta product readying it for a production release. Following this, our roadmap includes expanding our platform integrations enabling even more possibilities in regard to DeFi lending. By expanding our supported asset types, swap integrations, and exchange partnerships, we enable an ever-increasing flow of capital through the AAVE platform and Polygon network; all with a single “slide to confirm”.