Builder Spotlight: Intain Brings Securitized Finance to a Subnet

Avalanche

There are trillions of dollars in the securitized finance market, but transparency, liquidity, and efficiency are holding it back from even greater potential according to Siddhartha, the founder and CEO of Intain who is on a mission to overhaul this market for good.

Intain has recently launched IntainMARKETS, a digital marketplace for tokenized asset-backed securities (ABS) on a new Avalanche Subnet.

IntainMARKETS complements IntainADMIN, Intain’s data platform already administering $6B in assets. IntainMARKETS combines tokenized issuance of ABS with the IntainADMIN arm, utilizing Avalanche to build a better issuer and investor experience. We chatted with Siddhartha about IntainMARKETS, how he uses AI, and where he sees securitized finance going.

Ava Labs: What inspired you to launch a digital marketplace for asset-backed securities on Avalanche?

Siddhartha: Anybody who has seen The Big Short knows how badly things can go wrong with our financial system, especially structured finance. Blockchain provided the first opportunity to get the system’s multiple entities — the issuer, the custodian, the rating agency, the servicer, trustee, investor — on a common platform. That was my thought for starting Intain.

Ava Labs: What makes Avalanche the best chain for IntainMARKETS?

Siddhartha: With Avalanche Subnets, you can create a permissioned environment on a public blockchain. That was a prerequisite for us. All of the validators and participants on the platform are known and permissioned. We also had the ability to ensure that all the Subnet validator nodes were US-hosted, which no other public blockchain can assure.

Ava Labs: Were there other reasons you chose Avalanche?

Siddhartha: Yes, there are the hard facts that differentiate Avalanche as a blockchain. But we were also attracted to the Ava Labs team, which blends computer science and finance. Ava Labs has a great institutional finance team who “get it.”

Ava Labs: Are you using any other nascent technologies?

Siddhartha: Yes, AI. When I started Intain in 2018, I had a broad sense that we could combine blockchain for data and the process flow and AI for automation, creating an integrated, seamless product for structured finance.

Ava Labs: How exactly does Intain use AI?

Siddhartha: Our AI-powered software reads through loan contracts to verify them and then brings them on-chain for certification by a financial institution before creating an NFT. This lets anyone know that each NFT actually represents a loan, one that has been approved by an AI engine and certified by a financial institution.

Ava Labs: How do AI and blockchain help you meet Intain’s mission?

Siddhartha: The three pillars for Intain’s strategy are efficiency, transparency, and trust. These are also the three areas where structured finance has been lacking. To achieve those pillars, we needed integrated and automated processes with as little human intervention as possible. And in order to build these systems, we needed blockchain and AI.

Ava Labs: With the launch of IntainMarkets, you’ve added a tokenization platform to your data platform. Intain has completed two parts of its three-part roadmap. Can you please walk us through each part?

Siddhartha: Intain will complete its full journey in three phases. The first, bringing data for assets and securities onto a blockchain, was completed with IntainADMIN. The second, creating digital versions of these assets and securities and issuing them as tokens, is what we’re doing with Avalanche now. Part three will be an exchange where these tokens are freely tradable on the secondary market.

Completing the first part took four years. We’ve just built the second part on Avalanche. Now, it’ll be 6–12 months before we can make assets tradable, but it will most likely be through integration with partners.

Ava Labs: Who will issue and buy digital securitized assets on IntainMARKETS?

Siddhartha: Any asset lender looking to raise capital could use our platform. We’ve spoken to traditional lenders, like mortgage lenders, and also alternative asset issuers like neo-lenders that haven’t been able to access traditional asset securitization.

With Intain, these asset lenders can bring a portfolio of loans that would typically be too small for a traditional structured offering. Our platform opens the doors to a wider range of issuers. That leads to the second part: investors.

Investors are institutions who would be interested in asset-backed securitizations, but who perhaps have been priced out because of the ticket size being too high. With the efficiencies of a digital marketplace, Intain can support smaller ticket sizes.

That’s the target on the buy side: Any institution that would buy asset-backed securities on a digital marketplace where deal sizes can be smaller, transactions faster and more efficient, and where buyers can have confidence in the transparent underlying data.

Ava Labs: That’s very exciting. Congrats again on your Subnet launch!

Siddhartha: Thank you!

Ava Labs: Looking ahead, where do you think Intain and structured finance markets will be in the future?

Siddhartha: By the end of 2024, doing deals on blockchains like Avalanche will be mainstream. Even for the bigger deals, these digital markets will no longer be a niche. Our goal is that, with the help of Avalanche, Intain will become the default platform.

To learn even more about this pioneering project, register to attend Intain and Ava Labs’ joint webinar on Tuesday, March 14 at 11 a.m. EST.

Request an IntainMARKETS demo. Contact the Intain team.

This post is based on materials provided by Intain. For more information, visit Intain’s website. Also, please read this important notice.

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About Intain

Intain is building blockchain-enabled digital platforms for transparency and efficiency in capital market transactions, with initial focus on structured finance. Founded by financial services business and technology veterans, Intain understands the impact — benefits and risk — of technology in financial services. Intain is committed to diversity in fintech and more than 50% of its employees are women. For more information visit www.intainft.com

About Avalanche

Avalanche is a smart contracts platform built to scale infinitely and finalize transactions in under a second. Its novel consensus protocol, Subnet infrastructure, and HyperSDK toolkit enable businesses to easily launch powerful, custom blockchain solutions. Build anything you want, any way you want, on the eco-friendly blockchain designed for both Web3 devs and businesses.