The problem Bonzo Finance solves

Bonzo Finance is poised to address the gap in the Hedera DeFi sector by providing a robust decentralized lending and borrowing protocol specifically tailored for HBAR, major assets (wrapped via the HashPort bridge), and Hedera Token Service (HTS)-based projects.

The launch of Bonzo Finance brings a much-needed solution, enabling retail and institutional users within the Hedera ecosystem to reliably lend and borrow Hedera-native assets while leveraging HTS's capabilities. Besides offering standard lending and borrowing features, Bonzo Finance stands out by allowing smart contract developers to implement flash loan contracts, thus expanding financial possibilities within the ecosystem.

This innovation is timely, coinciding with recent service expansions from oracle providers Pyth and Supra to the Hedera network, which have significantly contributed to our ability to establish a comprehensive lending and borrowing protocol on the Hedera network.

Challenges I ran into

When developing this protocol, a few key challenges we're encountered:
• Integrating native Hedera tokens: We needed to ensure the protocol would support Hedera Token Service (HTS) tokens in addition to smart contract-based tokens.
• Matching ERC-20 capabilities: HTS tokens had to offer the same programmability as Ethereum's ERC-20 tokens. We addressed this by taking a "hybrid" approach utilizing both HTS and Hedera's Smart Contract Service.
• Incorporating oracles: We adapted the protocol to leverage Hedera's newly announced oracle services - Pyth and Supra - to bring off-chain data on-chain.
• Contract verification on HashScan: Had a lot of trouble attempting to verify the main LendingPool.sol contract using HashScan contract verification (https://hashscan.io/testnet/contract/0.0.2664875).