Hi everyone, my name is Ben Sheppard. I’m the co-founder of Silta Finance, which is a protocol that connects DeFi & TradFi with solutions for investing in the $3T real-world infrastructure market. I’ve been having discussions with Jeron and Colin for several months and, more recently, Maex and Philip about how Silta and Centrifuge could work together to finance infrastructure deals. As we are now closing in on completing our first due diligence, it’s time for us to come out of the shadows and present ourselves to the Centrifuge community.
Silta’s mission is to direct funding to sustainable infrastructure to help fill the $350bn annual funding gap. Briefly, this is what Silta does:
- Diligence: Silta conducts due diligence and sustainability impact scoring on borrowers’ debt financing applications.
- Bridge: Silta’s marketplace brings together borrowers with TradFi and DeFi protocols.
- Monitoring & Reward: Silta monitors the borrower’s performance during the construction and operations of real-world assets.
The project is powered by a global community of transaction advisors driven by a passion for building a more sustainable world. Silta is apolitical, with a focus on the merits of each project, no strings attached. We currently have a pipeline of $160M, which we are conducting due diligence on. Our aim is to make these available to DeFi, and we want to make it as simple and efficient as possible for borrowers and financiers to strike deals.
The Silta Score represents the diligence and impact rating given to a borrower’s infrastructure project. Financing needs on deals on the Silta Impact Marketplace can range from a few hundred thousand to hundreds of millions of dollars. Financiers from TradFi and DeFi protocols can express interest on these projects and make loan offers.
Silta takes fees on diligence, loan origination and monitoring. The proceeds will be used to pay our community of due diligence advisors, incentives for the community, token buybacks, and to maintain a sustainable treasury. Staking of Silta tokens is required to access and participate in the protocol features.
During my 12 years in infrastructure development, I led and structured project finance transactions in excess of $9bn in multiple sectors and countries. I’ve been an advisor to governments and the private sector, to organisations such as HSBC, Rockefeller Foundation, and the World Bank. Together with my Silta co-founders, we share decades of experience in engineering, infrastructure, law, finance, and web3. Silta is backed by investors such as Cerulean Ventures, Draft and Coinsilium.
Why Silta and Centrifuge should work together?
As things stand, DeFi struggles to access the infrastructure investments that are in desperate need of funding. Infrastructure finance is too complicated for less mature financiers. Impact-focused financiers need easier access to sustainability investments. DeFi needs more robust lending opportunities to stabilise the market.
The value that Silta offers to Centrifuge is:
- Silta Score standardises the due diligence process.
- Silta Marketplace presents infrastructure projects for any financier that has successfully passed our pre-qualification to participate.
- Brings a new, lower-risk, asset class to the DeFi market.
- Moody’s observed a 10-year cumulative default rate (CDR) of 5.5% (Basel definition of default) for project finance bank loans between 1983 and 2018.
You can expect to see a formal proposal from us in the community soon. In the meantime, if you have any questions, add me on Telegram: @tx_shep Happy to chat!