Simple co-founder Shamir Karkal has taken the wraps off his latest project: Sila, a startup offering fintech firms a suite of APIs and developer tools supported by a dollar-pegged stablecoin.
Named for the world's first 'token' - a small bowl used by the Sumerians in 3000 BC to measure a standardised volume of barley - Sila is aiming to overhaul and democratise the financial services world using APIs and distributed ledger technology.
Karkal argues that efforts to innovate in the current financial system have been stymied by a "long chain of middlemen engaged in moving money between a buyer and a seller".
Despite being, until recently, a self-described crypto-sceptic, his answer to the problem is a an API platform and suite of developer tools supported by a new regulatory-compliant, fiat-backed tokenised means of exchange - the Sila Token - that allows developers to rapidly build fintech applications and bring them to market.
The dollar-pegged Sila token will form the base for a fintech API platform that will enable fast, regulatory-compliant payments and other uses of money with minimal reliance on the traditional banking system, cutting out the likes of Swift and Visa.
Karkal has secured seed funding from Jerry Neumann, Taavet Hinrikus, Iyin Aboyeji, Village Global, Mucker Capital, and 99 Tartans for his startup, which plans to launch the alpha of its APIs over the next few months.
The former BBVA head of Open APIs has also put together a team that includes ex-Bank of America global quants chief and current MIT fellow Alexander Lipton as CTO; Digital Assets Holdings veteran Angela Angelovska-Wilson as chief legal officer; and energy sector specialist Isaac Hines as COO.
Initially, the platform will have five APIs:
- ID Verification: an endpoint that allows developers to verify the identity of their users in a regulatorily compliant fashion, and link that verified identity to a user handle and an Ethereum address,
- Account Linking: Once a user’s identity has been verified, developers can use the Account Linking endpoint to securely verify the user’s ownership of a US bank account and add the routing and account numbers to the system
- Issue Sila: this will debit the user’s linked bank account via ACH, and the corresponding amount of Sila will be issued via the Sila smart contract to the user’s Ethereum address
- Redeem Sila: will lead to destruction of the Sila tokens at the user’s Ethereum address, and the corresponding amount of dollars being credited to the user’s linked bank account via ACH
- Transfer Sila: an endpoint that will simply move the associated tokens from the user’s Ethereum address to the target user’s Ethereum address, an action that can also be achieved directly using Ethereum via the smart contract’s functions.