CREAM Finance — A Newcomers Review

Crypto Rules Everything Around Me (CREAM) is a blockchain agnostic, smart contract run DeFi protocol available on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. CREAM uses peer to peer lending where select Crypto coins can be linked from your wallet as assets generating APY, and supplied as collateral to borrow a range of cryptocurrencies in a few clicks. No KYC is required.

The platform also offers a selection of services such as asset tokenisation, payment, exchange (swapping), liquidity pools with a reward program for staking.

As a Defi and mirroring articles on founder Jeffrey Huangs vision; CREAM aims to be open, transparent, inclusive, accessible and limit the frustrating red tape found in traditional financial institutions.

Sounds pretty awesome?

Using this platform for the first time with a wallet brimming with crypto this was my experience.

I thought I would try and use the draw-card feature of lending. I connected my wallet, with the lending page being the initial offering on this delightfully presented pastel platform. My goal seemed simple enough — offer some of my crypto as an asset to be used as collateral and lend some SUSHI.

While there was a range of cypto I could link, of course the coins I held had the worst APY. Most of the other features favoured stable coins like USDT and USDC so I swapped over some Eth for USDC in case I wanted to use the other features in the future.

Now what?

The site looks simple enough. Very enticing to a child or teenager with its kawaii feel, but with no instructions or guide. Looking around online there was a lot of talk on the simplicity and how easy lending is but nothing really on the actual process.

At this stage I wanted to play with it, rather than offer some serious $$ and see how easy it was to borrow.

I learned over the next hour that this was a rookie mistake.

My linked wallet came across with how much crypto I held for each coin. Not familiar with the process I tried selecting lend but the coins were not linked for this function. Clicking Borrow just returned “Insufficient Funds”.

The website guides also showed a Collateral Toggle adjacent to each coin. This was missing on my screen. Clicking on a coin loaded a popup where I could “Enable” my wallet. My wallet amounts were already listed on the platform and selecting Enable generated a gas price request from my wallet. I chose 89 USDC to test out, with a gas price of $27. Pricey, but sure let’s test it out.

Brilliant, I’m all good? Not quite. I still didn’t have a collateral toggle. Maybe this was just an old feature? Nothing was appearing in my Borrow Balance. I tried again to Borrow SUSHI. Again Insufficient Funds.

Unsure of my next steps, I went to a forum to seek advice from someone who has previously used the platform. They let me know that I needed to Select the connected coin on the Supply Side, enter an amount then hit Supply. They also suggested lowering the gas price. I already spent $27 to connect my wallet, it seemed like good advice.

Following his steps I supplied 80 USDC. Again I was hit with a transaction fee of around $85 on a gas gwei of 1,000. This is already more than I was supplying, but I wanted to test this out. I hit Supply and waited.

.. and waited

…after 30 minutes I decided this was too slow so I paid the $20 to speed up the transaction.

Finally the Collateral button appeared!

I hit that button hard. I was so close to borrowing my sweet sweet SUSHI. I could now borrow, and settled on 3 SUSHI. To no one else, but my surprise I was hit with another transaction fee which seemed to incrementally increase with each button pushed. This one was $245. I’d already committed over $100, and had yet to reach my goal. Let’s just do this.

Overall my goal of borrowing 3 SUSHI cost $375 in gas fees. I understand this isn’t paid to CREAM, however I also questioned why this information was missing from any ”documentation” or “guides” as it is information that may stop low end investors from using the platform. 3 transactions are required prior to being able to Borrow.

There are some very real benefits using the CREAM platform for investors looking to drop at least 10k, but any benefit for low end investors is swallowed in gas fees. The platform also appeared to be set up for people already familiar with this process rather than a newcomer like me. While being DeFi, it is open to anyone being able to connect a wallet irrelevant of location and without the need for KYC I would only suggest the platform for those with at least 10k to invest who do not need to access this money for a length of time and have a seasoned understanding of cryptocurrency trading.