ARCx

ARCx Credit is a decentralized credit market on the Polygon network that offers dynamic maximum-LTV loans on ETH collateral based on a borrower’s DeFi Credit Score. The DeFi Credit Score provides a credit risk assessment for individual wallet addresses based on historical on-chain borrowing activity. Through these systems, borrowers who use ARCx Credit will build their DeFi Credit Score and progressively unlock greater capital efficiency on their crypto-collateralized loans. Our ultimate aim is to build an accurate and efficient reputation-based credit market in DeFi.

Why does ARCx Credit exist?

A lender’s effective and efficient evaluation of a counter-party’s credit risk, and the subsequent pricing of their overall cost of capital, is the core mechanism at the heart of global credit markets. But despite the important role that reputation plays in mature financial markets, DeFi lending has historically relied on indiscriminate mechanisms of risk management, where all borrowers are treated equally, and given the same terms regardless of the real or historical credit risk they represent. The lack of an identity and reputation layer in the DeFi stack has forced the first generation of crypto credit markets to depend on highly inefficient collateral mechanisms to ensure credit markets remain solvent. These mechanisms require substantial capital buffers due to the high volatility of collateral assets. Market participants gain no advantage over time for being a creditworthy borrower, and are subject to the same onerous collateral requirements and interest rates as those participants with a poor or inexistent track record.

Building accurate and efficient reputation-based credit markets would represent a step-change innovation for the DeFi lending industry, unlocking immense efficiencies. It would offer material improvements in the cost of capital for the majority of borrowers who demonstrate effective risk management behaviors. It would allow the most sound and creditworthy borrowers to increase their capital efficiency over and above that of other participants, providing a significant competitive advantage. It would allow lenders to supply liquidity preferentially based on the credit risk of individual borrowers, leading to the formation of a credit spread between different risk profiles. The development of an effective reputation layer supporting DeFi credit represents the next major frontier for crypto finance.