Sifu Resurfaces with New Money Market Protocol

Controversial Entrepreneur Forks Lending Venture From Aave

Few DeFi players are as irrepressible as Sifu. 

Undeterred by his exposure in January as the co-founder of QuadrigaCX, the infamous crypto exchange that lost $190M in customer deposits in 2019, Sifu launched a token last February.

Changed Tokenomics

Now Sifu, whose real name is Michael Patryn, has rolled out a new money market protocol called UwU Lend. The project, which went live on on Sept. 21, was forked from lending giant Aave, and has attracted $55.5M in total value locked (TVL) in the two days since its launch, according to DeFi Llama. 

Sifu sees UwU as different from other lending protocols. “We changed the tokenomics and reward structure, added long tail collaterals and will be implementing vaults as collateral soon,” he told The Defiant. 

Indeed, UwU is accepting collateral not available on other lending protocols like Aave and Compound — users can borrow against tokens like Sifu’s own SIFU, and the over-collateralized stablecoin MIM. 

Borrowing against yield bearing vaults like those that Yearn Finance offers, could allow users to “double dip.” They would be able to borrow assets to earn yield using assets that are already generating yield. 

EXCLUSIVE: Sifu Speaks!

OxSifu has raised $3M for his new venture seven weeks after his dramatic exit from Wonderland.

Sifu also highlighted UwU’s one-click looping feature, which loops a position by depositing the borrowed assets back into the protocol to be lent against again, as a differentiator for the protocol. 

The post introducing the protocol is unequivocal about what kind of organization UwU is. “UwU Lend is not a DAO and therefore not subject to governance friction or slow results,” it says. 

Staking Mechanism

UwU also has a staking mechanism whereby users who provide liquidity to a pair of the project’s native UwU token and ETH earn 80% of revenue generated by the protocol. In order to receive that revenue, liquidity providers (LPs) must stake their UwU tokens for eight weeks at a time. 

UwU tokens are also emitted to both lenders and borrowers. 

To be sure, Sifu has his fair share of detractors. He’s been called a “bad actor,” by the crypto influencer DeFi Ted for his alleged involvement in the Cover and Ruler protocols which led to the protocols shutting down in 2021. 

Controversial Developer

Big names in DeFi like 0xMaki have also come out against the controversial developer and trader for his involvement in QuadrigaCX. 

Still, the trader and developer could have ridden into the sunset with a public wallet that surpassed $100M in value earlier this year. Instead he has continued to labor in DeFi.