P2P (peer-to-peer) sounds familiar. Everyone says it, including us.
✅ But to be more precise, 8lends is P2B (peer-to-business). Because private investors lend money not to other private individuals, but to a real business with collateral, a legal structure, and clear cash flow.
P2B isn't a Web3 invention, though. It's one of the oldest ways to borrow and lend money in human history 👇
🔘 Back in Mesopotamia, around 3000 BC, individuals lent grain and silver to merchants at interest. The Code of Hammurabi regulated the maximum rate (33% per annum on grain).
As evidence, even a specific cuneiform tablet from 1800 BC has survived:
"3⅓ silver shekels (sigloi), at an interest of 1/6 shekel and 6 grains per shekel, has Amurritum, servant of Ikun-pi-Istar, received on loan from Ilum-nasir. In the third month, she shall pay the silver."
🔘 In medieval Venice, there was a colleganza contract, and it worked like this: an investor provided capital to a merchant who set out on a sea voyage. The merchant traded, returned, and shared the profits with the investor.
In 17th-century Holland, private investors directly financed the East India Company's trading expeditions before the VOC became the first public company in the world.
People have been trading, lending, and borrowing for thousands of years! Banks are just intermediaries that have been standing between a lender and a borrower for centuries.
🤩 8lends removes this intermediary and returns this relationship between borrowers and lenders to its roots, using the power of blockchain and smart contracts.
We say P2P because it sounds familiar, but P2B is what 8lends truly is.