ThirdFi is a web3 infrastructure protocol built to empower decentralised finance (DeFi) with emphasis on interoperability, middleware solutions with developer friendly API implementations. With DeFi and digital assets growing exponentially, the need for a more secure, robust and easy-to-use infrastructure has never been greater. This is where ThirdFi comes in.

At ThirdFi, their vision is to provide a scalable and interoperable interface between different infrastructure protocols for DeFi. The solution is a web3 finance middleware with API solutions, a multi-chain relayer, and cross-chain infrastructure. This infrastructure will empower the open-source movement and accelerate the adoption of DeFi, onboarding the next billion people to the world of decentralised finance, by providing “picks and shovels” to empower builders and developers.

The solution for addressing the issues faced by web3 is a multi-chain relayer and cross-chain infrastructure protocol.ThirdFi has developed an advanced implementation of this protocol that is explained in the following sections:

Meta transactions: This allows a third party Dapps, developers or a relayer to execute transactions on behalf of the user. The user only needs to sign a message containing the transaction details, and the relayer executes the transaction details on the desired blockchain, including paying the gas fees. This simplifies the process for users who don’t need to own native tokens, estimate gas, or pay gas fees, as the ThirdFi relayer takes care of everything else.

Cross Chain Transactions: ThirdFi enables meta-transactions on various blockchains and L2s, allowing dApps on these supported networks to offer gasless transactions to their users. The ThirdFi also facilitates the flow of value and messages across different chains in a secure, affordable, decentralised, and interoperable approach. Users can instantly transfer their funds across various chains, communicate and call contracts on other chains, and interact seamlessly with dApps on every chain.

Decentralised Relayer Network: ThirdFi’s decentralised multi-chain relayer network manages and processes meta-transactions, cross-chain transfers, and cross-chain communication. A distributed set of node operators on every supported chain powers the ThirdFi network. This transaction network is inherently multi-chain and serves as the foundation for a seamless multi-chain infrastructure for decentralised finance.

Here are the main features ThirdFi can provide:

Token Swap——Support multi-chain token swap with top DeX protocols for best price;

Liquidity Provider (Earn)——Provides liquidity to DeX pools to earn transaction fees and yield as rewards;

Borrow & Lend——Automated collateral management for automated market making (AMM) pools;

Index Funds (Invest)——Invest into DeFi index products on multi-chain automatically via API;

Staking-as-a-service——Seamlessly invest into multi-chain staking and liquid staking derivatives protocols (upcoming);

On-ramps & off-ramps——Buy and sell between global fiat currencies & cryptocurrencies across 150 countries globally;

Portfolio Management——Multi-chain dashboard for wallet management, risk managements and on-chain analytics;

Notification Support——Support real-time notification with social media messaging integration.Account abstraction with MPC wallet infrastructure—-Leveraging the latest standard erc-4337 smart contract wallet and MPC wallet infrastructure to provide customizable solutions to builders and developers.

Victor Lee is the founder and CEO of ThirdFi, Soon Lai Mah is the co-founder and CTO of ThirdFi, we are honored to have completed an exclusive interview with VictorLee and Soon Lai.

The highlights are below:

1. Team introduction and Please tell us about the opportunity to create ThirdFi? ThirdFi emphasizes on building "picks and shovels", what are the difficulties in making infrastructure for B-side users?

 VictorLee: Hey everyone my name is Victor. I'm the CEO and founder of ThirdFi. Please follow me and join our Discord, we will airdrop to early adopters who actually join us. We have really more than 5000 developers already signed up since our recent rebrand in Mar 2023 and we have a lot of incentive programs and marketing campaigns going on. I met my partner Soon Lai, now the CTO of Thirdfi, in 2018, both of us were already working in the crypto industry at that time, in a startup. We realized that the whole DeFi market struggle was actually due to lack of liquidity and lack of new users. We need to bring in more new users, more new developers, more new fintech and cryptocurrency startups from traditional web2 to web3. Therefore, we need to actually create the Thirdfi. ThirdFi's emphasis on building "picks and shovels" means we want to create the tools for developers, fintech startups and of course financial institutions to easily join DeFi in the future.

Soon Lai: People need to study smart contracts and other blockchain technologies for using some such as token swapping features in the applications, which are very complicated. ThirdFi offers them such an integrated approach, using very common approaches such as API or SDK, simplifying all the processes so they can just interact with the API and SDK and then naturally be able to achieve the same goals.

2.Composability is the key to making web3 products work seamlessly.How does ThirdFi solve the problem of composability of multi-chain transactions?

VictorLee: The definition of composability is actually getting a lot of all these different smart contracts working together, and that's why DeFi is better than traditional banks, traditional investment arm or traditional financial institutions. But to have a multi-chain composability and interoperability is actually very hard to do. So we're actually providing the API and SDK so that developers can actually connect to our API and then they will be able to do all these contract transactions. They can even create different strategies or different needs compatible with our API.  In actuality, hiring a web3 team and hiring engineers is very expensive, and imagine how expensive it would be to scale that cost to all fintech companies or cryptocurrency companies or banks or financial institutions around the world. So the easier way is not to force your engineers to learn web3, but to let them use the normal API and SDK, just by doing so, you can save time and costs for these companies. And this is actually changing the game.

3.For financial institutions with no experience in web3 development, in what way does ThirdFi help them to integrate web3 & crypto in their existing applications? 

 VictorLee: The real bottleneck is actually compliance and of course, the uncertainty of regulations. So this is a matter of timing, and as more tools and infrastructure become more mature and global governments give more compliance, then more financial institutions will come in and adopt. It's not a question of if they will come in, it's a question of when they will come in. There will be a lot of financial institutions using blockchain technology to enable their business in the future. So we want to be one of the providers of these technologies.

4.Request For Builders (RFB) program is for developers who aspire to build web3 and DeFi. What are the requirements of the RFB program for these developers? What kind of assistance is available to developers after they are selected by the RFB program?

Soon Lai: RFB is for those developers who are aspiring to build web3 and DeFi to join our program, use DeFi’s ecosystem and technology to build the different applications and so on, we actually require them to do some brainstorming, selected candidates have to build using ThirdFi's API as the core technology. We will also provide them with some help, such as support for marketing methods, some infrastructure support, and some technical support.

5.The Token Swap supported by ThirdFi allows users to swap tokens between many blockchain networks in applications of financial institutions-even gasless.What kind of approach does ThirdFi use to save gas fee or even no gas fee?Does DeX charge transaction fees during this process?

 Soon Lai: The gas fee is still needed but it's sponsored by ThirdFi currently, it is just an early marketing strategy but it's not a long term strategy. We’ve also built out some infrastructure to provide account accession features, we allow the protocol owners, the project owners themselves to sponsor the gas fee when they give tokens to their user. That is an upcoming feature that we're building right now and we will share more information on that as well once we're ready.

6.ThirdFi offers two tokenized crypto index funds，MWI and LCI, investing in the crypto asset market is quite volatile compared to traditional investment assets, in what way does the tokenized crypto index fund offered by ThirdFi reduce risk to gain returns?

 Soon Lai: We leverage these funds, like MWI and LCI, to help users diversify their token asset into different kinds of tokens. ThirdFi provides easy and seamless investment vehicles with major crypto assets by removing complicated processes and entry barriers to Decentralized Finance. This strategy aims to give exposure to the top cryptocurrencies and auto-compounding WAVAX rewards on top of it as extra profit. This index fund is a secure way to earn profit with top cryptocurrencies.

7.ThirdFi offers Fiat-to-Crypto (On-ramp) payment services with REST API. What areas are covered by this service? Currently, ThirdFi does not charge any additional transaction fees for the on-ramp services, will it be considered to become a fee-based model subsequently?

 Soon Lai: We now need to find more partners to cover more areas. We already support more than 150 countries, including some major countries like the U.S., UK, Japan, etc. We also provide  different payment methods in different countries, and we enable users to use different payment methods such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc. The limits are different in different countries, as well as different currencies. We are actually not planning to go with a fee-based model because it doesn't fit the definition of the infrastructure, so we don't charge from the end users, we charge subscription fees from the protocol owners and the project owners.

8.Some DeFi projects have been regulated before due to compliance issues, how can ThirdFi help DeFi to be compliant and secure the assets of its users?

 Soon Lai: I think it's actually more of a compliance issue as I mentioned. We're actually trying to actually apply for some compliance licenses and also get some support from the creators in the next 2 to 5 years. We'll try to do testing, we'll do security assessments, and we'll try to meet the ISO requirements as well. We're actually trying to emphasize more on the compliance side, and of course it's been a long journey for us. So back to the product side, we also want to use something like a security feature to provide some protection for our users.

9. Any plans in the next 3-6 months? In addition, For ordinary C-side users, how can they participate in the ThirdFi project? Can you introduce the role of tokens? 

Soon Lai: For the product side, we're actually looking for more partners, especially for those blockchains. Secondly, we want to build more infrastructure and we want to automate all the interactions with smart contracts.

VictorLee: There's been a lot of progress since our rebrand in March 2023. We are now integrated with more than 10 different public blockchain networks from Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Optimism, OKC, Kucoin Chain, Cronos, Conflux and more coming soon. We are also looking to connect with more chains such as zkSync, Hedera Hashgraph, Nautilus Chain, Polkadot, Kusama and more. We have made so much progress right in one month, and we'll continue to do so. We have more than 10,000 people signed up on our platform so far and more are signing up every day. 

ThirdFi will be launching INFRA proof of stake (PoS) token in the near future. The INFRA token use-cases include validator for transactions, governance for ThirdFi DAO, access to premium benefits including fees sharing, anti-MEV bot, gasless transactions and more. The ThirdFi team will announce more detailed INFRA tokenomics in the near future and we realize that if you rush it, then the market is not timing right, then it's just not impactful. People who actually join us and become part of us will get more benefits if they actually manage to successfully become our token holders and stick to holding it. So we're doing a lot of things right in terms of marketing, partnerships, and products.