Here’s our 238 AMA recap!
Thank you to the Infinity Chain for participating in Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Equilibrium 22 April, 2022. This guest star,
- Alex Melikhov — CEO
Introduction
Alex | Equilibrium
Glad to be here!
I’m Alex Melikhov, the Founder and CEO of Equilibrium and Genshiro. I’m an engineer in applied mathematics. Before blockchain I was focusing on fintech, mostly payment systems and gateways. I became completely involved in crypto after co-founding Changelly in 2016.
My current team has been working together since 2017, when we began building on Ethereum. In April 2019 we launched the first EOS-based stablecoin. Today it is the most liquid decentralized stablecoin and the biggest DeFi project on EOS.
Currently we are working on Polkadot-based Equilibrium and its canary network on Kusama called Genshiro.
Equilibrium and Genshiro are already integrated into Kusama and Polkadot ecosystem.
QUESTIONS MODERATOR
Can you talk about Equilibrium ecosystem? Do you have the features that can attract users and invest, can you talk about your differences that allow you to stay in this market for a long time?Alex | Equilibrium
Absolutely. From the user perspective, Equilibrium is the first interoperable money market that combines all significant DeFi use cases in one easy-to-use interface.
These use cases include pooled lending (like Compound), synthetic asset and decentralized stablecoin generation (like Synthetix and MakerDAO respectively), and trading (like dy/dx).
Equilibrium allows users to stake and earn, lend, borrow, raise liquidity in synthetic assets and decentralized stablecoins — all in one place.
Recently we’ve also launched Epsilon — official implementation of CurveFi on Polkadot. You can now swap your stablecoins with minimum slippage directly on Polkadot. Check this out: https://epsilon.io/en
In general, Genshiro is Equilibrium’s Kusama-based canary network. It is a bolder version of the products that we will later offer on Polkadot. It represents a cross-chain DeFi conglomerate complete with a lending platform and cross-chain DEX (on it’s final stage of development at the moment), both traditional and AMM.
Genshiro inherits an experimental spirit that’s quite common for the Kusama network. There will be more experimental elements, like support for a wider range of synthetic assets that can represent derivatives from the world of traditional finance, like gold and ETFs. We will also offer support for a wide range of ERC-20 based tokens.
Genshiro is already live and in production with around $9 million TVL. Check this out here: https://genshiro.equilibrium.io/gateway/en/portfolio/earn
What are some of the major milestone’s Equilibrium hit so far?Alex | Equilibrium
Sure. As you guys probably know, Equilibrium will be onboarded as the 12th parachain of the Polkadot network. That’s a huge milestone for us and we want to thank our community for their support and involvement. It took us more than two years to become a meaningful part of the ecosystem since we released our whitepaper and started developments on the Substrate framework in February 2020.
We’ve been extensively building during the past few years and this time has come: very soon we will be launching the first orderbook DEX with margin trading on Polkadot. It will allow for trading with high leverage being combined with a money market that applies the lowest collateral requirements ever. We are sure that these innovations will drive liquidity to the ecosystem and attract advanced market makers along with retail investors.
Feel free to check our roadmap here: https://bit.ly/EQ_Victory
Also, let me share it with you here in a moment.
Here it is.
But there’s more. Recently we have launched a Liquidity Bootstrap event in Genshiro. We have managed to gather substantial liquidity both into the market maker pools and into the bailsman pool and we are thankful to each and every member of our community, who participated in the event.
You can join the event and receive up to 140% APR here: https://genshiro.equilibrium.io/gateway/en/liquidity-provider/pools
And if you have any questions on how Genshiro protocol works or how you can earn with it, don’t hesitate to look in our wiki here: https://docs.genshiro.io/genshiro
Who are Equilibrium current partners and backers? What kind of partner is suitable for Equilibrium?Alex | Equilibrium
Sure, let’s move on
Of course. Recently we’ve partnered with AU21 Capital: a leading venture capital firm primarily investing in innovative and revolutionary crypto/blockchain projects. So, let me also cover our revolutionary fluid xDOT staking as well.
In general, xDOT is a special token you get when you contribute your DOTs to parachain auctions via Equilibrium.
Right after that you can use xDOTs inside the Genshiro money market: supply liquidity and earn APY over 35%, borrow liquidity against xDOT, trade on Equilibrium DEX using xDOT as margin. Sell xDOT or provide liquidity by putting them into the corresponding Balancer pool. So you can make use of your DOT and not just leave it for 2 years in the crowdloan module.
We set up a lot of partnerships with the most influential projects: Astar, Acala, Parallel, Clover, Efinity, Composable Finance, Centrifuge, HydraDX, Interlay. Thanks to that, our community were able to vote during their parachain campaigns and receive xDOT along with the crowdloan rewards.
Check our fluid xDOT product and vote for your favorite project here: https://xdot.equilibrium.io/en
Are there any exciting news or updates with regards to Equilibrium, that you would like to share with us here?Alex | Equilibrium
Good question. I think I can share some insights with you guys. First of all we’re proud to announce our collab with Republic Crypto. As you can know there are several hurdles in DeFi at the moment:
1. The most common among them is excessive overcollaterization. Since most lending protocols require heavy over-collateralization there’s a usual situation when users need to pledge $200 in order to borrow $100.
2. The second is liquidations. It is always done via auctions which is risky. Currently 90% of collateral locked on Ethereum is subject to possible auctions. There might be no arbitrageurs willing to buy liquidated assets even at a discount, which puts the solvency of lending protocols at significant risk.
3. The lack of utility. Borrowers can’t utilize their loans directly in lending protocols. Most loans in popular money markets are taken in major stablecoins for new investment opportunities. But users need to switch to other applications as there is no trading functionality on the initial platforms.
4. The last, but not the least is no cross-chain functionality. DeFi liquidity is fragmented across multiple networks. Due to the lack of seamless cross-chain transfers in major DeFi protocols, a big part of the ecosystem remains underutilized.
That’s where Equilibrium shines. We are the first DeFi 2.0 protocol on Polkadot with novel on-chain approach to risk and pricing for asset portfolios. It enables borrowing with minimum collateralization as low as 105% and margin trading with up to 20X leverage.
Our Republic campaign will help us to attract a lot of liquidity into the ecosystem in general and to the Equilibrium in particular. And I also want to share some exclusive news for you — we are ready to announce the waitlist next week. There will be some incentives for waitlist subscribers, so don’t miss an opportunity. We aim to launch our Republic campaign in May 2022. We allocated 720 millions EQ tokens for an event, which is 6% of total EQ allocation.
By the way we are also offering special conditions for influential communities and industry media. So, feel free to contact us in any of our channels, if you are eligible and interested.
But there’s more for you folks. On April 28 we will host the annual PolkaDeFiance conference. We are waiting for you there if you are aiming to be on the cutting-edge of innovations in the rapidly changing DeFi universe and you need to constantly pick out certain signals from the noise.
The famous industry speakers will cover the dead latest on what’s actually going on in the Polkadot DeFi ecosystem and why it matters. We are looking forward to see all you guys here, along with our guests: Kenny Li of Manta, Eric Wang of Parity Technologies, Alexei Zamyatin of Interlay, Tyrone Pan of Bifrost.Finance and many more!
Register for PolkaDeFiance here: https://polkadefiance.com/
QUESTIONS TWITTER
I understand that Equilibrium is a project developed on the Polkadot blockchain, but why did they decide to use Polkadot instead of other more powerful blockchains like Ethereum or BSC? With winning the parachain slot, how will this help Equilibrium grow strongly in the future?Alex | Equilibrium
Sure. Since Polkadot in particular and Substrate in general offers a great interoperability between the blockchains, we’ve decided to choose this amazing tech for our fintech products.
Interoperability and cross-chain is vital nowadays. Equilibrium is designed as a superapp that merges the most popular DeFi use cases. It offers borrowing and trading digital assets cross-chain with high leverage.
Having said, Equilibrium combines an orderbook DEX with margin trading capabilities and an innovative money market with minimum collateralization requirements as low as 105%.
With that being said, this functionality combined improves user experience, solves the problem of liquidity fragmentation across blockchain networks, attracts more liquidity to the Equilibrium’s parachain and Polakdot overall.
I read that ParityTech is your event partner at Polka DeFiance. Regarding this topic, why have you chosen this team as your partner, and what are the strategies you are developing to create events that are attractive to the community and to new users?Alex | Equilibrium
Indeed. We’ve invited a lot of amazing speakers. The annual Polka DeFiance online conference will be held on April 28 at 4 PM UTC. You are all welcome to join guys. Don’t miss to know the dead latest on what’s actually going on in the Polkadot DeFi ecosystem and why it matters.
Let me shed you a light on some of our speakers: Parity Technologies, DFG, Manta Network, Centrifuge, Bifrost, Polkadex and more!
👉 Register here: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/polkadefiance2022
It caught my attention that Equilibirum offers to its users something called “Insurance via bailouts”, can you give us more details about it? How does this Insurance system exactly work and what does it cover? On what kind of situations can it be used? How can it benefit users?Alex | Equilibrium
Good question. Equilibrium’s bailout mechanism is an effective new approach for managing debt and risk within a DeFi protocol. Our system design introduces the role of a “bailsman.”
Bailsmen are users who pledge liquidity in advance of a market decline or black swan event, and they play a pivotal role in keeping Equilibrium and Genshiro running smoothly.
There’s no need to quickly gather liquidity when the bad debt mounts up because our bailsmen have supplied this liquidity in the form of other crypto assets. It’s immediately available when we need it.
QUESTIONS TELEGRAM
How can users stay updated with this project? Are there channels, including local communities where users can get the latest updates?thanks!!Alex | Equilibrium
Sure. We are welcome all newcomers. Feel free to join us in our social media channels as well as on Medium. We are constantly pushing our updates there.
👉 Equilibrium Twitter: https://twitter.com/EquilibriumDeFi
👉 Genshiro Twitter: https://twitter.com/GenshiroDeFi
👉 Our Medium: https://medium.com/equilibrium-eosdt
👉 Publish0x: https://www.publish0x.com/@EquilibriumEOSDT
👉 Telegram community: https://t.me/equilibrium_eosdt_official
👉 Telegram News Feed: https://t.me/equilibrium_news_feed
👉 Genshiro community: https://t.me/genshiro_official
👉 Genshiro News Feed: https://t.me/genshiro_news_feed
Unlike other DeFi Lending platforms, Equilibrium presents a pricing solution “that depends on the risk of the borrower’s portfolio and the portfolio’s collateral level”. Can you explain how it works and what is the advantage of this system when pricing a loan?Alex | Equilibrium
This is how our platform works. Depends on how many assets you as the collateral as well as the type of that assets, you may end up of having bigger or smaller APR as a borrower. Your annual rate is also depends on your assets volatility.
Do you allow suggestions and feedback from the community? Are we allowed in decision making, do you put community into consideration ?Alex | Equilibrium
Sure. We’ve already implemented governance mechanics in Genshiro. This functionality will be implemented in Equilibrium as well. Community governance is one of the key elements in our ecosystem.
Telegram Chat | Telegram Channel | Twitter | Website | Github | Medium
Thank you for trusting Infinity Chain as the organizer of the event today, hopefully everyone can understand about Equilibrium.
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