
Liqwid is a DeFi (Decentralized Finance) lending protocol building on the Cardano blockchain. The cutting-edge dApp (Decentralized Application) is secure and non-custodial, allowing users to lend and borrow funds while sidestepping the traditional concern of counterparty risk.

- DeFi lending protocol on Cardano
- Secure and non-custodial
- No counterparty risk
- Secure APY
- First-of-its-kind architecture (Agora)

Cardano's ultra-secure smart contract technology is the breakthrough making this possible, and Liqwid takes full advantage. The dApp boasts a first-of-its-kind architecture where lenders can easily and securely earn an APY on their cryptocurrency holdings.

## Liqwid's Story: A Deep Dive

![liqwid finance token on cardano blockchain](/img/library/case-studies/liqwid/LiqwidToken.png)

Cardano is a juggernaut among blockchains. Built by IOG, the chain commands a massive market capitalization and a leading position in the industry. When IOG announced in 2021 that dApp support was just around the corner, the news galvanized entrepreneurs. Project leaders scrambled to build effective teams.

Liqwid, however, was instinctually ahead of the curve. The project began the year before, the team having previously assembled a high-level vision and essential product design. A first mover, Liqwid gained broad support even before IOG's announcement, placing them far ahead of the pack.

## Caught In a Riptide

But being a first mover comes with considerable challenges.

Blockchains rely on cutting-edge software, and Cardano is no exception. The chain borrows heavily from advanced functional programming techniques, and its backbone is built in Haskell.

A powerful, albeit niche, language, Haskell specializes in security and program robustness. Cardano smart contracts rely on Plutus, a DSL built in Haskell. This design decision has clear benefits, but its advanced structure means many teams struggle to execute. Even the Plutus team admits:

<Quote content="Programming in Plutus is difficult and less intuitive than other languages. The Cardano model has a lot of advantages, but it requires a new way of thinking about smart contracts." />

- DeFi first mover on Cardano
- An innovator with the eUTXO model
- Novel governance model (Agora)
- Faced with early limitations
- Cardano can't support DeFi

Naturally, this implies tremendous opportunities as well as distinct obstacles - especially when it comes to sourcing talent. A limited pool of experienced developers meant Liqwid had to hustle to organize a well-rounded and talented team capable of delivering in Plutus.

## Riding the Crest with MLabs

So, how does a pioneering team navigate turbulent waters? Staff augmentation and technical support from MLabs were the obvious answer.

![this is alt text](/img/library/case-studies/liqwid/Liqwid_Crest.png)

Specializing in the technology powering Cardano, MLabs was a key partner of IOG as they introduced smart contract support. MLabs developed several essential tools and developer resources while simultaneously discovering and pioneering best practices.

Alongside MLabs, Liqwid brought their high-level product design into a technical reality, and the team demoed one of the earliest dApp prototypes on Cardano.

- Teamed with MLabs Haskell/Plutus experts
- Partnership smoothed early hiccups
- Brought high-level design into a reality
- Partnership improved Cardano DeFi
- CIPs 31-33

The beginning phase of development is always challenging, and it can be hard for teams to know they have it right. Fortunately, MLabs provided testing frameworks, enhanced compilers, and other first-of-their-kind tools for the initial development and R&D stages.

<Quote content="We are so grateful to have MLabs and the incredible Plutus testing frameworks they create for Cardano developers. On-chain unit testing and resource estimation are crucial for DeFi." author="Dewayne Cameron (Founder, Liqwid Labs)" />

With expertise in hand, the Liqwid team realized the advanced solutions needed for their DeFi application. Even early on, Liqwid innovated a novel governance solution called Agora that has since been adopted by several others. The team also supercharged this solution using Plutarch, a highly efficient compiler developed by MLabs members.

## Services employed

![some mlabs dapp development services](/img/library/case-studies/liqwid/Liqwid_Services.png)

- **Team augmentation** - Liqwid enhanced its team with professional MLabs developers.

- **Technical Specification and Design** - Liqwid employed MLabs to tailor its high-level design into an exact specification.

- **Application R&D** - Liqwid relied on MLabs R&D services to bring their product across the finish line.

 ## Duckdiving

All in all, partnering with MLabs helped Liqwid dodge some significant setbacks. Originally, smart contract applications like Liqwid faced substantial challenges owing to Cardano's unique design. These issues halted development for many teams, and it seemed uncertain for a time whether DeFi on Cardano could thrive.

Fortunately, Liqwid worked with MLabs and other DeFi teams to identify the core issues obstructing dApp development on the chain.

The quorum launched a campaign to introduce necessary upgrades. The campaign was successful, and a hardfork upgrade in September 2022 integrated its suggestions. Liqwid was a crucial player in this transformation, constantly calling on the features needed for a robust DeFi ecosystem.

## Liqwid's Progress Now

With expert engineering assistance from MLabs, the Liqwid team established itself as a preeminent dApp on Cardano. Over the last year, it has led the way for DeFi on the Cardano chain.

 ![liqwid labs roadmap](/img/library/case-studies/liqwid/Liqwid_Roadmap.png)

Liqwid successfully completed the final stages of testing and feature integration, **launching on Cardano mainnet February 2, 2023**.

- Established DeFi protocol on Cardano
- Over 59K Twitter followers
- Over 23K Discord members
- Successful airdrop early 2022
- Mainnet launch

Owing to its success so far, Liqwid has grown a substantial online community of nearly 60,000 Twitter followers and a Discord server hosting over 23,000 members. The protocol achieved a successful airdrop in early 2022, and the project is full steam ahead.



Cardano dominates the blockchain financial instruments space with security beyond reproach.

DeFi protocols building on the Cardano platform stand to disrupt traditional finance for good, and [Indigo](https://indigoprotocol.io/) provides a prime example. This synthetic asset protocol tokenizes real-world assets, bridging traditional and Web3 economies.

However, nobody handed success to Indigo's founders on a silver platter. They experienced firsthand how developing on Cardano's advanced architecture requires a top-notch engineering team to deliver &mdash; anything less could prove disastrous.

![indigo protocol ecosystem](/img/library/case-studies/indigo/indigo_protocol.png)

After experiencing setbacks elsewhere, the Indigo team recognized MLabs as the winning partner needed to successfully launch their dApp and provide users of the protocol with world-class value.

## Championing DeFi on Cardano

A burgeoning industry, DeFi commanded over USD 170 billion during 2022 highs according to [DeFi LLama](https://defillama.com/). Aficionados often use the phrase "DeFi Legos" to underline how returns compound as the number of like-minded products increases.

The term highlights how DeFi applications are composable and used in combination by savvy investors to increase yield.

![iAsset synthetic assets and $INDY tokens](/img/library/case-studies/indigo/indigo_coins.png)

Here, stablecoins and synthetic assets are essential. Stablecoins are tokens pegged to the value of a fiat currency like the US dollar. Ideally, they are backed by liquidity reserves, while a stablecoin's availability is adjusted to maintain a consistent value.

Synthetic assets, on the other hand, are blockchain's answer to traditional stocks. These derivatives leverage diversified price feeds to track the value of assets &mdash; such as shares in a company.

<Quote content="The take-home point: synthetic assets integrate real-world value into a blockchain ecosystem such as that of Cardano." />

## Cardano DeFi Early Mover

An early mover in Cardano DeFi, Indigo quickly integrated both synthetic assets and a stablecoin. Yet, designing such a cutting-edge protocol would challenge any team, especially given the complicated architecture of Cardano.

Indeed, the Indigo protocol faced challenging roadmap bumps early on.

The Indigo team began building in [2021](https://twitter.com/Indigo_protocol/status/1377804489105752066), making some initial progress with another consultancy. Their partnership soon stagnated as the project reached a turning point.

Like many DeFi protocols on Cardano, Indigo found it necessary to reevaluate initial core design assumptions.

Feeling underserved, Indigo reconfigured its roadmap while reconsidering their choice of development partners. It had become obvious the dApp needed a rock-solid consultancy with experience delivering high-quality DeFi solutions designed for the Cardano blockchain.

![indogo dao on cardano blockchain](/img/library/case-studies/indigo/indigo_timeline.png)

## MLabs Saves the Day

It soon became clear that partnering with MLabs would be a natural choice for the firm. Like many MLabs clients, Indigo has significant in-house talent yet requires support in several key areas specific to blockchain development.

From the start, MLabs was able to take over the development of Indigo's smart contract suite, redesigning the business logic required to ensure user safety while greatly increasing ease of use. Specifically, this included securing transfers and exposing ergonomic endpoints for external interactions.

MLabs began by bringing the Indigo protocol up to spec. This involved debugging, redesigning, and optimizing the existing code base.

Towards this goal, MLabs led significant R&D efforts to redefine Indigo's structure while simultaneously integrating it with Cardano's unique architecture. This work kept an eye to the future, focusing on the application's scalability, upgradeability, and concurrency.

![building cardano defi ecosystem](/img/library/case-studies/indigo/indigo_building.png)

Decidedly, the solutions developed by Indigo and MLabs have been a huge success. After six months of working with MLabs developers, the Indigo application launched in late 2022, the first of its kind to market.

Moving forward, Indigo teamed with MLabs for unsurpassed DevOps and infrastructure support, ensuring that Indigo protocol users receive the seamless experience they expect.

## Services employed

- **Smart Contract Development**: MLabs encoded Indigo's fundamental business logic to safely manage synthetic assets and their transfer.

- **Transaction Building**: MLabs integrated its **Cardano Transaction Library** to handle off-chain code, so users can easily interact with Indigo using web browsers.

- **On-chain Code Auditing** (separate team): An independent team of MLabs auditors worked separately from the development team, auditing Indigo's main smart contract code to ensure proper function. This included robust testing including integration testing.

- **DevOps**: MLabs organized top-tier infrastructure and hosting solutions which allowed Indigo to scale seamlessly alongside its rapidly growing user base.

<Quote content="The Indigo Labs team has been working alongside MLabs for the development of Indigo Protocol since early 2022. Together we've architected processes and procedures that have enabled our teams to collectively design and ship one of the more robust and complex DeFi protocols on Cardano to date. Throughout our partnership, MLabs has exhibited remarkable agility as our development needs shift over time, whether it be resource allocations for core development, CTL and/or DevOps. MLabs has truly been a catalyst in the development progress and successes we have achieved with Indigo!" author="Eric Coley (Founder & CEO, Indigo Laboratories)" />

## Indigo Today

Indigo now thrives on the Cardano mainnet, responsible for an active DAO and its on-chain governance. More impressive, Indigo experienced a successful airdrop and has commanded significant volume since going live.

![to the moon through indigo skies](/img/library/case-studies/indigo/indigo_abstract.png)

Within its first quarter, the platform's market cap of synthetic assets surpassed USD 6 million. The Indigo protocol also boasts over USD 14 million TVL (Total Value Locked).

Most importantly, however, active participants in the protocol enjoy a very attractive staking APR while also showing high Indigo DAO governance participation.



Ecommerce in India is growing at lightning speed. As consumers and businesses move online at an impressive rate, streamlined payment services are smoothing the transition to a digital India.

Fintech juggernaut Juspay is a leader in the space and a household name. The payment services provider has championed key innovations, like a payments browser and one-click payments.

![Cashless and Carefree: Juspay's Functional Programming Approach to Secure E-commerce in India](/img/library/case-studies/juspay/Juspay_UImobile.png)

In so doing, the company quickly came to a realization. Functional programming languages such as Haskell and PureScript are imperative for robust, secure solutions.

## Ecommerce in India

India has long been a cash-driven society. However, in an age of growing smartphone penetration, the government's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has paved the way for the widespread digitization of the economy.

Briefly, UPI is a real-time payment system for use on mobile platforms. The incorporation of a Virtual Payment Address identifier allows consumers to orchestrate several bank accounts as they organize push-and-pull transactions among merchants.

- India: historically cash-driven
- UPI (Unified Payments Interface)
- RBI: Covid spearheaded electronic payments - "war on cash"
- Digital payments: 60% CAGR
- Juspay: simple merchant infrastructure

While UPI implies opportunities, systems are required to maintain consumer privacy and security while avoiding costly downtime.

### Cue Juspay

The 2012 startup specializes in the intermediary solutions needed by such a widely-scoped project.

![juspay fintech infrast](/img/library/case-studies/juspay/Juspay_hero.png)

As Juspay CEO Vimal Kumar explains, these types of solutions help consumers realize their 10x potential.

## Juspay, Haskell, and PureScript

Naturally, security is paramount for a payment processor like Juspay. Minor mistakes and buggy implementations lead to unduly blocked purchases or, even worse, millions of dollars lost instantly to fraud. 

Indeed, bugs can be catastrophically expensive. Complexity is often the source of errors and must therefore be limited. Vimal Kumar explains why PureScript and Haskell were important to Juspay early on:

<Quote content="There are a lot of workflow systems that try to model business logic, but they are not composable across systems like with Haskell. The whole approach of composing your business model from reusable building blocks is not at all solved in our industry. There is a lot of fragmentation across application architectures. Yet, a lot of what we see in terms of frontend, backend, persistence, services integrations, and analytics can be unified with very few primitives." author="Vimal Kumar (Founder & CEO, Juspay)" />

And this is where functional programming — and flow monads* in particular — shine.

*A flow monad is a specific design pattern used to represent control flow in a program. It allows developers to chain a series of steps that need to be executed in a specific order while handling errors and exceptions that may occur in the process.

## Gaining 10x with MLabs

In fintech applications, data is often communicated across disparate pieces of infrastructure (website, payment gateway, merchant processor, etc.) using an encoding scheme like JSON. Ergonomic and efficient encoding reduces a system's complexity and helps guarantee safe usage.

![this is alt text](/img/library/case-studies/juspay/Juspay_10x.png)

With security top of mind, Juspay turned to MLabs to develop its crucial application architecture.

In only two months, the MLabs team was able to specify, design, and implement Medea, a JSON schema language streamlined for payment processing. The simple and efficient library is self-contained. It ensures payment data is correctly typed so that transactions are securely validated and processed.

Yet, a scalable and robust system design is required for Medea to provide real-life results. MLabs also designed a framework for payment gateway provider services. This involved interacting with several data stores (Postgres, Kafka, and more) and transpiring massive amounts of PureScript into Haskell.

## Services employed

![this is alt text](/img/library/case-studies/juspay/Juspay_WithMLabs.png)

**Database Framework Design** — Juspay leveraged MLabs to design crucial architecture and to reimplement numerous services.

**Technical Specification** — MLabs designed a technical specification for both the Haskell and Purescript implementation of the Medea library.

**Product Integration** — MLabs integrated Medea and a redesigned architecture into Juspay's services for massive speed improvements.

## MLabs and Juspay Partnership Milestone

- Medea: MVP ~2 months
- Ported ~65k lines of JS to Haskell
- Redesigned database framework
- Dramatic speed and reliability improvements
- One of the most significant Haskell use cases to date

## Juspay Today

Today, Juspay is a crucial payment services provider as India introduces residents to online finance. Juspay processes over 20 million transactions daily on over 250 million mobile devices.

- 20 million daily transactions
- 250 million mobile devices
- Several raises after working with MLabs
- 2020: $21.6 million Series B
- 2021: $60 million Series C

![this is alt text](/img/library/case-studies/juspay/Juspay_partner.png)

Working with MLabs, Juspay secured its position as an industry leader in a rapidly modernizing payments ecosystem. It is trusted by Amazon, Axis Bank, Yes Bank, PharmEasy, and several other major firms.




Invoicing is an essential, everyday operation for companies across the globe. Two is a payments services provider that offers BNPL (Buy-Now-Pay-Later) services to merchants.

Sure enough, in an interconnected online environment, businesses can spend excessive time onboarding customers and tracking down overdue payments.

![two inc dapp ui](/img/library/case-studies/two/Two_UIGraphic.png)

Two Checkout addresses this common headache by providing a frictionless checkout process. This means business owners can focus on delivering quality and not stressing over the minutiae of every invoice.

### Benefits of Two Checkout:

- Two Checkout: easy B2B invoicing
- Merchant BNPL
- Simple admin
- 14-90 day payment terms
- Credit for buyers

## Saving the Trees

Visa processes about 597 million transactions a day. In Europe alone, 101.6 billion non-cash payments occur annually. These are impressive figures, so you'd be forgiven for thinking electronic invoicing was as straightforward as possible.

But you'd be wrong.

<Quote content="Product implementation always brings unique challenges, and Two Checkout was no exception." />

As Two points out on their [website](https://www.two.inc/), unneeded difficulties with the typical approach to invoicing leave business owners scratching their heads as they sift through piles of paperwork and misplaced receipts.

Needless to say, many questions need to be answered:

"Why are payments still mailed by paper checks in the US?

Why do almost no European businesses issue their employees with credit cards?

Why do buyers waste so much time finding the tiny subset of suppliers that accept purchases on invoices?

Why do retailers have to finance their business customers' purchases with cash from their balance sheets?

Why does a retailer need to hire credit analysts?"

### Traditional Challenges

- E-commerce and e-payments common
- Invoicing is still a pain
- Paper checks in the US
- Retailers forced to finance business customer - purchases


![invoice and get paid with two](/img/library/case-studies/two/Two_With.png)

## Preventing Payment Pitfalls

Two CEO Andreas Mjelde realized ahead of the curve that B2B transactions should be as painless as C2B transactions.

However, any solution had to be reliable and secure if supporting major transactions was to be an option. Needless to say, skimmer implants, backdoors, and other exploits - all too common with non-deterministic tech stacks - had to be avoided.

With a powerful type system, Haskell is the go-to technology for building scalable, reliable, and bug-free systems. Haskell is celebrated by industry-leading enterprises for the concise and expressive codebases it underpins.

Financial firms rely on the language to supercharge their high-frequency trading algorithms. Meanwhile, mobile banking platforms and payment providers sleep easy at night knowing Haskell offers several battle-tested features.

- On-going headache for businesses
- Security risks: skimmers, backdoors, etc.
- Haskell: natural choice
- Finacial firms, mobile banking platforms, payment providers choosing Haskell
- MLabs: largest Haskell consultancy

MLabs is the largest Haskell consultancy in the world, with an army of over one hundred developers and counting. The consultancy is an experienced innovator within the blockchain space and a leading fintech R&D firm. Boasting an impressive track record, the UK-based corporation was an obvious choice to help build Two Checkout.

## Services Employed

**Product Design and Technical Specification** - MLabs composed a detailed technical plan ensuring an industry-grade implementation

**Team Augmentation** - MLabs engineers worked closely with the Two management team to build an MVP in exceptional time

**Technical Recruitment** - MLabs helped Two build a technical team to maintain and develop their invoicing platform once deployed

![mlabs services used by two inc](/img/library/case-studies/two/Two_WithMLabs.png)

## Collaborating with MLabs

Like with any major release, Two needed a robust design and implementation. MLabs worked closely with the team to establish a secure framework, built to spec and capable of the necessary features.

Product implementation always brings unique challenges, and Two Checkout was no exception. Nevertheless, MLabs engineers ensured the invoicing product provided Two's customers with the reliable service they required.

### Partnership Milestones

- Initial consultation to MVP: 4 months
- €2.5M Sequoia investment - a 1st in Norway
- Consistent customer growth
- Recognition for addressing slow corporate payments

Two and MLabs turned out to be a winning combination. Soon after launch, the Covid pandemic began, and many businesses were caught flat-footed. Almost overnight, e-commerce solutions were no longer a nice-to-have but a necessity to keep merchants afloat. This meant a sudden surge in demand for Two's services, and a reliable product built together with MLabs meant Two quickly realized their ROI.

## Development Milestones

- MLabs and Two went from initial consultation to MVP in 4 months
- In 2021, MLabs and Two's work caught the eye of Sequoia - a Silicon Valley CV firm expanding into Europe. The firm provided €2.5 million in backing, marking its first investment in Norway.
- The Two Checkout product successfully tackled and received recognition for addressing  slow corporate payments, an outstanding problem for businesses around the globe.

## Continuing Progress

These days, Two's growth is robust as they continue acquiring customers across Europe. The fintech startup is helping businesses streamline operations domestically and abroad - and in so doing garnishing headline attention from the likes of TechCrunch and Bloomberg.

![to the moon with mlabs](/img/library/case-studies/two/Two_BarChart.png)

Thanks to targeted and expert assistance from MLabs, the company could take advantage of the BNPL model, expanding it beyond Gen Z consumers to include merchants. Sure enough, Two has streamlined the B2B sales process, which had been an unnecessary headache for far too long.


MLabs Helps Liqwid Finance Become a Leading Cardano Application

MLabs Helps Indigo Synthesize Real-World Assets on Cardano

MLabs Functional Programmers Help Juspay Secure India Ecommerce

MLabs Helps Fintech Company Two Streamline Business Transactions