Crypto Promised Freedom. Gatekeepers Built Walls. We Provide the Tools to Tear Them Down.
Exchequer didn't start with a whitepaper. It started in the trenches – witnessing projects crushed by broken tokenomics and exploited by costly intermediaries. A painful pattern met a surprising historical echo, revealing the key to sustainable growth for all of Web3.
Crushed from Within, Extorted from Without: The Builder's Dilemma
Guyi Shen saw the war being lost on two fronts. Internally, projects wrestled with broken tokenomics – incentives luring mercenary capital, leading to the inevitable liquidity death spiral. He'd seen this kill countless community projects (Swerve, YFII...).
Externally, they faced the gatekeepers: CEXes demanding huge listing fees, market makers charging fortunes for basic liquidity. Projects were forced to choose: bleed tokens or pay exorbitant tolls. DeFi winter just exposed how broken the entire structure was.
Fighting this battle on yet another project, he met Jan Pevzner.
Japan's Lost Decades: A Blueprint Hidden in Crisis
Guyi described the relentless pressure – the internal token bleed, the external gatekeeper squeeze. Jan listened. He'd seen a version of this before, not just the internal struggle, but the external constraints, two decades earlier in Japan's brutal, multi-decade bear market.
Banks needed capital amidst rising inflation but couldn't offer yield. They were trapped, much like crypto projects squeezed by CEXs and unsustainable APYs. Survival demanded creativity beyond just internal adjustments.
Japanese institutions engineered structured products – clever instruments offering protection and tailored returns, attracting capital despite market hostility and without relying on traditional yield. Jan, a veteran architect of complex global financial instruments, saw the ghost in crypto's machine.
The Problem Was Systemic. The Solution Needed to Be Too.
The parallel was undeniable. Crypto projects, drowning in token inflation and held hostage by intermediaries, faced the same core challenge as those Japanese banks: attract stable capital in a hostile environment.
Crypto's "solutions" – unsustainable APYs, costly MM contracts, CEX listing fees – were failing spectacularly, benefiting middlemen more than builders.
Could those structured finance principles – protect capital, align risk, attract stability – be adapted to bypass both internal failures and external gatekeepers? Could we use crypto's own tools to build instruments for true financial independence?
From Shared Frustration to Foundational Infrastructure
That question built Exchequer. We weren't just patching DeFi; we were applying a proven framework from financial history to crypto's core structural weaknesses – internal and external. We founded Exchequer to translate those battle-tested principles into crypto-native tools, giving all on-chain builders a way to finally break free. Our DNA is this unique fusion: crypto scars meet financial history's solutions.
The Mission Begins Now: Building for Independence
This origin defines our path. It drove us to engineer Liquidity Protection Notes as the first tool for financial self-reliance. It fuels our mission to build lasting infrastructure for all of Web3, powered by a team uniquely equipped for the challenge.