By Colin Cunningham, Head of BD @ Centrifuge
Centrifuge is building the onchain infrastructure for institutional credit. To populate this ecosystem, our community needs to onboard the best possible assets.
So, how does the Centrifuge DAO choose which assets are onboard Centrifuge? This decision is made by the community with the help of the Centrifuge Credit Group: a team of experienced credit experts who help onboard the best real-world assets to Centrifuge.
These experts provide unbiased and objective reviews of Centrifuge pool onboarding proposals, ensuring the community and partners receive comprehensive assessments. Furthermore, the Credit Group addresses any inquiries related to pool setup, asset evaluation, and risk analysis for both new and existing pools.
Why is the Credit Group important?
The Centrifuge Credit Group plays a vital role in shaping the future of decentralized finance. As Centrifuge scales, the bespoke nature of many credit opportunities requires industry and asset expertise and experience from credit professionals. In turn, this means only high quality assets will be onboarded to Centrifuge.
Given their varied experience, the Credit Group can provide analysis on a wide variety of credit assets, across many industries, with varying degrees of complexity and structure.
With Mark Hergenroeder as facilitator, the Credit Group is currently composed of 9 members. These members have created a framework for risk reports as well as criteria for Pool Onboarding Proposals (POPs). Later in this post, we’ll introduce each member and their background!
How does the Credit Group evaluate different assets?
The Credit Group uses the same framework used to evaluate assets in traditional finance (TradFi). For example: there are basic documents that every Credit Group member will use to evaluate each POP that are standardized across different asset classes and will make up a majority of the evaluation depending on the deal.
These documents include, but are not limited to, financial statements, collateral details, historical performance, cash flows, incorporation docs, and other financing-related loans documents.
Typically credit committees tend to be biased towards specific experiences and strategies based on the member composition of the committee — or the committee as a whole will specialize in a specific asset class. However, sometimes a specialization is not appropriate or relevant to the specific credit situation being evaluated; each credit situation presents unique opportunities and challenges to credit evaluators.
Given that the Centrifuge Credit Group is not in the business of allocating capital and evaluations are done within the DAO framework, the Credit Group members are free to bring in a diversified set of opinions and outlooks to appropriately evaluate each pool onboarding proposal.
In a later blog post, we’ll hear from the Credit Group’s facilitator Mark Hergenroeder on what exactly the steps to a pool onboardin evaluation look like, and how the process for Centrifuge compares to the process in TradFi!
Introducing the Credit Group Members
Mark Hergenroeder
Mark most recently served as a director on the credit and lending team at Abra, a crypto-native banking platform, where he was responsible for deploying and managing the digital asset loan portfolio across various counterparties. Prior to Abra, he spent 2 ½ years as a private credit analyst at Nuveen, an institutional traditional finance asset manger, in which he focused on underwriting and portfolio management for asset-heavy corporate debt, private ABS & project finance related credits.
Mark is excited to expand the value of the Credit Group and bring more real asset yield to crypto rails.
James Chan
James, a Managing Director at Seabury Capital and CEO of their portfolio company Billboard TFX, brings over 20 years of experience in structured finance and commodity markets. With expertise in investment management and derivatives trading, James previously served as the Head of Trade Finance at White Oak.
James finds learning and adapting to new technologies the most interesting aspect of his job, and he embraces the opportunity to make the process of credit evaluation fun and engaging.
David Jeng
David currently serves as CEO and Board Member for Wintec Industries Inc, a global supply chain management and manufacturing company. He also sits on the Board for Graniterock, one of the largest materials and infrastructure construction companies in the San Francisco Bay Area.
David views working on the Credit Group as an opportunity to pioneer new ecosystems at the intersection between TradFi and DeFi, and is excited to work with the wide array of experts in the Credit Group in order to build the field of real-world assets.
Erik Mayo
Erik, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Terra Incognita Capital, has extensive experience in credit investments and DeFi projects. He has previously worked at Fintan Partners and Stanford Management Company, managing portfolios $1B+.
With a background in economics from the Wharton School, Erik is passionate about using the Centrifuge protocol to provide financing solutions for small to medium-sized businesses, particularly those operating internationally.
Sam Paderewski
Sam is a member of MakerDAO's Strategic Finance team, specializing in Real World Assets. With a background in structured credit analysis and trading at Hildene Capital and Citigroup, Sam brings expertise in CLOs (collateral loan obligations) and CDOs (collateralized debt obligations).
Excited about revolutionizing the credit system, Sam joined the Centrifuge Credit Group to leverage blockchain technology and eliminate intermediaries, administrative costs, and opacity for a more streamlined and efficient credit ecosystem.
Sam Paderewski on LinkedIn
Collin Erickson
Collin specializes in digital asset investing and private credit transactions. His role involves conducting due diligence, financial analysis, and managing investments.
Recognizing the growing trend of asset tokenization, Collin sees great potential in merging it with traditional bond markets, and he is eager to contribute to the development and credibility of this evolving ecosystem.
Collin Erickson on LinkedIn
Chris Diamond
Chris is currently involved in Operations and Corporate Strategy at a stealth start-up focusing on single-family rentals in NYC. Previously, he was at Better.com, overseeing their Capital Markets and Financial Products group and managing over $6 billion in corporate debt and warehouse finance.
With a background in portfolio management and a passion for fintech and prop tech, Chris joined the credit group to drive innovation, improve underwriting standards, and promote equitable access to funding and liquidity in the financial sector.
Chris Diamond on LinkedIn
Jeremy Kim
Jeremy is a structured credit specialist with over a decade of experience in various aspects of structured credit, including originations, structuring, portfolio management, and analytics, across a broad range of asset classes. He is currently working as a Vice President at DZ Bank AG.
Jeremy Kim on LinkedIn
Matt Wagoner
Matt is a credit trading expert with more than ten years of experience at RBC Capital Markets, specializing in structuring USD floating rate debt, asset-backed products, and option-oriented products. He is currently working with Endeavor as a venture consultant, where he evaluates and ranks seed to series E stage companies to promote entrepreneurship in developing and underserved markets. Additionally, Matt has launched a Bitcoin mining operation powered by renewable energy and has invested in top digital asset multi-strategy funds such as Pantera and Polychain.
After a decade’s worth of experience in traditional finance, Matt is looking forward to bringing Real-World Assets onchain to improve transparency and democratize borrowing and lending across markets.
Matt Wagoner on LinkedIn
Credit Group Resources
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Check out the Credit Group section of the Centrifuge Forum to catch up on all of the Group’s updates and activities.
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For more information about the scope, governance areas, structure, and governance execution of the credit group, read the Centrifuge Credit Group Charter.