Interview With CEO Igor Stadnyk

PembRock Finance is a DeFi protocol built on NEAR’s blockchain and it introduces leveraged yield farming. It’s designed to allow users to borrow additional liquidity for the purpose of farming. The app is soon to be released and users will also be able to provide liquidity, stake, make governance decisions, farm with leverage, and others.

In this interview, the project’s founder and CEO, Igor Stadnyk, shares more details about PembRock, its ties to NEAR, and what can users expect in the future.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? How did you get into crypto? 

My name’s Igor Stadnyk and I’m the founder and CEO of PembRock Finance. My journey in blockchain started back in 2016. At the time, I was mostly into mining Bitcoin and Ethereum. I saw the market need for a mining pool, which is why I met some like-minded people who would later become part of my blockchain development company, INC4. We created our multi-coin mining pool in 2017 and it became popular among miners worldwide. Once it was up and running, I began to dig deeper into new crypto and blockchain developments, such as DeFi and yield farming strategies.

Seeing the tremendous growth of DeFi, NFTs, and decentralized systems as a whole, our cool team of blockchain developers at INC4 began to create new dapps on Ethereum. Later, I was introduced to NEAR Protocol and was really impressed by its tech capabilities and the fast-growing community. This was the foundation for developing PembRock, the NEAR ecosystem’s first leveraged yield farming platform.

Can you explain what PembRock Finance is in simple terms? 

PembRock is simply a NEAR-native leveraged yield farming protocol. Leveraged yield farming allows users to borrow external liquidity for the purposes of farming.  In the PembRock app that’s very soon to be released, users will be able to provide liquidity, farm with leverage, stake, and make governance decisions to secure the smooth running of the platform on NEAR’s fast, secure and low-fee blockchain. My team and I created PembRock to bridge the gap between those who wish to lend and those who want to farm with leverage for great returns.  To me, PembRock represents the type of product that benefits the whole ecosystem — it attracts great chunks of liquidity and helps DeFi flourish.

I see PembRock as a leveraged yield platform that can bring in new users with little experience in farming, for the reason that the app puts users first and is easy to work with. We also work on releasing a whole bunch of articles, blogs, and so on to educate participants about leveraged yield farming.

We are planning for PembRock to become the standard in terms of security, UX, and design for the NEAR community and other similar blockchain projects.

With leverage, there’s always a risk of liquidation – how does that work with yield farming? 

As with any investment, there is always a certain degree of risk — for leveraged yield farmers, a prominent one is the automatic liquidation of positions.

Even though PembRock offers up to 3x leverage, users decide to take the highest offer at their own risk. In order to minimize the risk of being liquidated, users can always monitor and adjust their positions and take advantage of our documents on all things yield farming, giving themselves the knowledge to make managed risks in their financial decisions.

Why did you choose NEAR Protocol as the layer-1 blockchain for your application? 

Our team’s connection to NEAR is close — I and other team members have been long-time active members of the NEAR community. In fact, INC4 is one of the NEAR Guilds.

I like NEAR. It is a fast-growing L1 solution with a remarkable transaction speed per second, a user-centered wallet design, and a super-active community.  With user-friendly tools for both DeFi users and builders and the recent introduction of a bridge to Ethereum, NEAR blockchain has expanded a lot; but still has room to grow!

Despite its vast ecosystem, NEAR lacked a leveraged yield farming product and that’s where PembRock comes in. I am excited to release PembRock in the coming weeks, as it will unlock another avenue for investment, adding to the growing ecosystem of services that are being built on the blockchain.

Have you received any grants from the NEAR Foundation?

We are grateful for all the support we’ve got from the NEAR community. The NEAR Foundation deemed our efforts worthy of a $75,000 grant. That, combined with the enthusiasm from the community means we are working hard to fast-forward PembRock’s launch.

Moreover, through our integration with Ref Finance and Jumbo, users will add to the platform’s liquidity, helping NEAR to mature and spur further development.

What can users expect from PembRock in the near to mid-term future? 

We have recently surpassed Milestone 3 of our tech roadmap, having developed an application simple front end, basic yield farming, borrowing and lending mechanics, and liquidation of positions mechanics. In May, we successfully completed our IDO on Skyward and a fundraiser on Meta Yield.

We have also just been listed on the top NEAR-based DEXes, such as Ref Finance and Jumbo, and our PEM liquidity pool incentivization program went live on June 2nd.

We plan on partnering with more NEAR-native projects to further embed PembRock in the ecosystem. Here is what we have in progress: developing reinvesting mechanics, rolling out the final leveraged yield farming mechanics, designing the front-end with complete functionality, and deploying the smart contracts to the testnet. The mainnet launch is planned for June 2022, so stay tuned!