Here’s our 241 AMA recap!
Thank you to the Infinity Chain for participating in Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Ubiquity DAO 27 April, 2022. This guest star,
- Alexander (アレクサンダー.eth) — Director, Associate Developer, and Economics
Introduction
アレクサンダー.eth | U B I Q U I T Y
Hi! my name is Alex, my handle here is Alexander in katakana (japanese!)
I’ve been with ubiquity since day one focusing on the r&d of our flagship product: the ubiquity dollar!
All things technical- be it smart contracts related or economics i’m quite well versed in but we also have hyper specialists on the team such as our lead economist, hristo; and our lead solidity developer, zgo
QUESTIONS MODERATOR
Can you tell us about Ubiquity DAO, the idea, how it started? What mission want to achieve?アレクサンダー.eth | U B I Q U I T Y
Back in 2020 the foundation of the dollar was a culmination of research done on behalf of clients actually.
In the previous cycle i used to run an ico consulting agency and we specialized in the core of projects: which were their whitepapers, pitchdecks, financial models/tokenomics.
Some of the last couple of projects we worked with before the big crash were actually proto stablecoins.
Fast forward to 2020 and the market started picking back up again- defi summer hit and algo stables started popping up all over the place.
I got introduced to a couple of friends of friends that wanted to do a fork of empty set dollar (which was an OG algo stable project).
Long story short we ended up diving in and fixing what we thought were obvious issues with ESD til we ended up diverging enough to make our own project which we ended up calling the ubiquity dollar!
Regarding mission: it started as somewhat of a research project- with a 100% focus on the development of a bespoke, capital efficient, and of course stable stablecoin.
Only about a full year into the project after thorough research and testing did we start to seriously look into turning it into more of a business- figuring out the go-to-market strategy and all that fun startupy stuff.
Since i have an extra moment here, i wanted to slip in that the goal of the ubiquity dao is to become the bank of the metaverse, leveraging its flagship product: the ubiquity dollar. we are jumping in to the industry with a splash by becoming the stablecoin of crypto gaming!
Let’s talk about Ubiquity DAO ecosystem, What are the advantages of Ubiquity DAO? Do you have features/products that can attract users? Can you talk about differences that allow Ubiquity DAO to stay in this market for a long time?アレクサンダー.eth | U B I Q U I T Y
cool, plenty of questions to unpack here!
So whats interesting about our approach is that we realized since day one that a stablecoin in a vacuum is not that useful or interesting. As a consequence we always had an ecosystem-first approach.
For our official launch not only do we have our stablecoin and its associated debt primitives (perhaps we can discuss this more later in the ama) but we also have a beta of what will be a suite of yield aggregator vaults. as of now we call this the “proxy yield aggregator” (beta).
Beyond that we are also doing finishing touches on our olympus dao inspired bonds program to help us and future partners raise liquidity paired against our dollar.
And last but not least, our UbiquiStick NFT — which will allow perks in our ecosystem such as perpetual beta access of future products, as well as access to the gated yield vaults. the yield vaults (proxy yield aggregator is a beta of) are not planned to ever be opened to the public except for UbiquiStick NFT holders!
Regarding sticking around for a long time, I think that its important to focus on real usecases and solving real problems, not just incentivizing users in perpetuity through generic yield farming approaches, or just participating in ponzi games like the curve wars. i think incentives are important at times, particularly when pushing through certain barriers for growth; but its not whats gonna allow a project to stick around for the long run as heavy incentives can be (most of the time) unsustainable.
What is the Ubiquity DAO token? What are the utility in your ecosystem? What are the benefits of holding your token as long term investment?アレクサンダー.eth | U B I Q U I T Y
we actually have several tokens within our ecosystem but I’m assuming you’re asking about the Ubiquity (UBQ) governance token!
In regards to utility i want to highlight the fact that we have specialized tokens for specific purposes in the context of stabilizing our dollar (such as our debt tokens!)
We’re trying to make the governance token as much of a pure governance token as possible as we want to become as decentralized of a DAO as possible. my personal beliefs are that governance tokens that try to do it all can really muddy up the waters of your tokenomics.
However we do have mechanisms to accrue value back to our governance tokens indirectly through processes like seigniorage (this is when you turn a profit from new dollars being printed for our stablecoin).
We also have an interesting stopgap measure that if our dollar spikes above peg the protocol has a process to be able to buyback-and-LP our governance token paired with our dollar on our currently existing sushiswap market.
We think that focusing on delivering value first (via our flagship product, the dollar) will make the dao and its governance token (UBQ) provide a seat at a table actually worth something.
So in the near future we are placing a huge emphasis on this approach, while capturing value generated within this ecosystem and pushing it back to UBQ holders.
If you believe in our value-first approach and you’re bullish on the future of the Ubiquity DAO, as well as want to contribute to our future policies/strategic direction then you may be interested in holding some of our governance tokens to get a seat at the table.
What are some major milestones achieved Ubiquity DAO since launch and what should we expect in the coming months?アレクサンダー.eth | U B I Q U I T Y
sure, yeah! i’ll elaborate on some of the products i lightly touched on earlier.
Beyond our core protocol (the ubiquity dollar) we have also already started building the ecosystem around the dollar in order to bootstrap its utility. for example, our proxy yield aggregator program (we have a single one in beta, which will be the first of a suite of vaults for users to get yield).
For a bit more context: the original purpose of the proxy yield aggregator is actually a means for the ubiquity dollar protocol to raise collateral in perpetuity in order to help with stabilizing the price of the dollar.
But through the r&d process we realized that we can generalize the deposit contract and essentially stack yield on top of other yield generating protocols. we plan to first go with low risk and eventually, maybe, get over to more riskier yield sources.
A side from that we have an NFT coming up to coincide with our launch. its called the ubiquistick. theres 1024 of these access keys, and a 2–4% random mint of the gold edition (so approx 20–40 gold editions) these will allow perpetual early/beta access to our future products as well as gating access to our future suite of proxy yield aggregator products.
The reason for gating access is that sustainable yield generally is zero sum. the more thats given out, the less yield per user. the access keys will limit these special strategies to ubiquity dao supporters.
The last product to highlight is our bonds program — similar to olympus dao (we actually have been deep in talks with some of the core engineers from olympus to give the ok on our implementation) where for our launch the ubiquity dollar protocol will offer a means to purchase user’s liquidity with our stablecoin paired with other stablecoins.
The first folks with access to the bonds will of course be the holders of the ubiquistick nft. All these launch products are already finished and are pending the official announcement of the close of our strategic capital (fundraising round). Expect this in early may.
QUESTIONS TWITTER
I read that The UbiquiStick NFT is the new early access key to all new UbiquityDAO products. So what is the way I can get access to these novel NFTs? What benefits will I get from being a UbiquiStick NFT holder in its decentralized governance?アレクサンダー.eth | U B I Q U I T Y
Yes so we announce all the details on how to get your hands on the UbiquiStick in late may!
The benefits i’ve mentioned above in this AMA but to mention again- the two main usecases for the UbiquiStick is to allow access to our bespoke yield bearing vaults, as well as perpetual beta access to all future Ubiquity DAO products. generally speaking, many products can offer ways for users to gain yield which means its usually good to get in before everybody else does 🙂
When compared to the underlying base yield, Ubiquity’s Proxy Yield Aggregator will provide your consumers with twice the yield on their cryptoassets. How will such a system accomplish this? Will the yield grow over time?アレクサンダー.eth | U B I Q U I T Y
We have a nifty debt primitive we invented. a quick 101 lesson on it:
If our dollar goes below peg (e.g. 0.99) we want to rapidly shrink the circulating supply of our dollar in order to push back up the price. Users can burn their ubiquity dollars to get these debt tokens plus a premium. When the dollar goes above peg (e.g. $1.01) we need to print more to push it back down.
Debt holders are first in line for the money printer. they cash in their debt tokens and sell to push the price down and make a profit while helping stablize our dollar. Now, with all this said; the debt token is interoperable with other protocols (its a normal erc20 token!). Meaning money legos.
Our protocol is able to print these debt tokens as a reward for certain behaviors in our ecosystem, such as by using our proxy yield aggregator.
We have it set up to a max of 2x off the underlying yield as an experiment but technically speaking we are able to increase/decrease the amount. generally speaking we don’t want to give away too many debts all willy-nilly so we figured 2x would be a solid start.
Beyond that we could certainly offer incentives in our governance token as well to further boost rewards but we currently do not have plans to do this.
Why do you use Ubiquity’s debt system? How does UbiquityDAO avoid building massive debt? Does UbiquityDAO have a strategy to address this issue and attract the largest number of users?アレクサンダー.eth | U B I Q U I T Y
haha awesome segue into this question as we’re already talking about the debt system.
So other than being cognizant of how much debt incentives we provide in our ecosystem the final, sort of failsafe measure we have built in is the ability for debts to depreciate in redeemability value over time.
So basically if you hold debts for a long time they become redeemable for less dollars as time goes on.
We have several different flavors of our debt tokens — including one that expires on a hard date based on ethereum blockheight; and then we have normal erc20 tokens that simply are used to convert into dollars through a specific smart contract that has an ever increasing exchange rate/price over time (again, based on the ethereum blockheight).
If the protocol is burdened with debt and is struggling to stay afloat, this stopgap measure should help alleviate most of the pressure as a result from being over indebted.
A major problem facing #GameFi today is the high volatility of token prices, which causes players to lose confidence. My question is, What are the tools and solutions Ubiquity DAO has proposed to solve this problem for #GameFi users?アレクサンダー.eth | U B I Q U I T Y
Yea! so we’re incentivized to solve gamefi partners’ problems via products and financial primitives that we build, but we’re also exploring bespoke consulting approaches in order to give certain strategic partners more of a white-glove treatment; which would include the likes of us coming in and implementing smart contracts leveraging our team’s years of research on how to stabilize a token (aka a stablecoin).
One of the first products we will be rolling out the gates with for our launch is our bonds program which, to start, will be used to grow our dollar’s liquidity against other stablecoins. soon after this liquidity is developed, we plan to roll this out on behalf of our partners, very similar to how olympus pro did it.
The big difference being that we will grow deep liquidity of partners’ tokens against our stablecoin.
PARTNERS are the most important that strengthen the ecosystems of all projects. Could you tell us about your project partners and the partnership strategy it has adopted?アレクサンダー.eth | U B I Q U I T Y
Yes so as i mentioned above we just finished up our strategic fundraising round in order to get a ton of huge partnerships from gamefi funds/guilds/daos and of course games.
Last i recall we have over 10 partners on the cap table! (i don’t have the list in front of me at the moment).
We’re planning to announce all the details of this fundraising round and the associated partners in early may so stay tuned on our official channels, like our t.me/UbiquityDAO telegram and twitter.com/UbiquityDAO twitter.
We definitely are in the camp of growing the utility of our dollar and theres no better way to do so than by working with partners to use our products.
We’re being very aggressive on growing our network for this reason!
QUESTIONS TELEGRAM
Do you do buy back or token burn to increase the value and drive scarcity. If not, do you have plans for such in the future??アレクサンダー.eth | U B I Q U I T Y
yes actually the dollar has an interesting mechanism as sort of a system “blow off valve” where if the price of our dollar spikes to high above peg, the protocol will piggy-back off of people’s sell orders (helping push the price back to peg) rewarding them with extra dollars (its like a margin sell order) as well as conducting a buyback-and-LP of our governance tokens paired with our dollar on our sushiswap market.
Can you give an overview of your Tokenomics, and the UTILITY of Token?アレクサンダー.eth | U B I Q U I T Y
yes we have a ton of docs but I’d like to highlight this page as it goes into a ton of detail on how exactly the dollar works! https://dao.ubq.fi/uad-token
What is the focus of your project right now? To attract new investors? Increase token value?or New collaborations and partnerships? thanks!アレクサンダー.eth | U B I Q U I T Y
we just finished our strategic financing round in order to launch with a bang with amazing partners! for the next several months we’re focusing on growing the liquidity of our dollar through our bonds program and other incentives; however we plan to continually expand our partnerships network basically in perpetuity. we have a dedicated arm of the team focused on this, and i believe that its something we should never stop doing!
Can I buy your token right now? What is the main role and usage of your token? Where can we see your tokonemic list?アレクサンダー.eth | U B I Q U I T Y
If you’re asking about our governance token, yes, we have a tiny market for testing purposes available on sushiswap. the easiest way is to find this button on our dashboard (https://uad.ubq.fi/)
All the tokens’ literature can be found in our docs (https://dao.ubq.fi/docs)
Do you have plan to list on CEX or just DEX listing is your main focus?アレクサンダー.eth | U B I Q U I T Y
as a decentralized project our focus for the foreseeable future is to cater towards the defi ecosystem, meaning that we’re only really interested in decentralized exchange listings. that said, we’ve spoken with chainlink about setting up some oracles and they requested that we jump through several hoops including listing on centralized exchanges. as a result of this, we have dipped our toes in cex land, such as a small UBQ market on azbit.
I imagine that once swap volume gets high enough, cex operators will be incentivized to list us in order to capture fees. besides that, if theres some specific strategic benefits to listing on cex (such as the chainlink example i provided) then we may consider pushing for more cex listings. but generally speaking, the strategy will always be to focus on the decentralized ecosystem.
important question: 👇👇👇👇👇👇👇
✅Can👉 you list 1–3 killer features of this project that makes it ahead of its competitors? What is the competitive advantage your project has that you feel most confident about???アレクサンダー.eth | U B I Q U I T Y
The adaptability (we call it a polymorphic stablecoin!) more than half of the research efforts really went into thinking about all the possible levers we MAY want to pull in order to evolve and adapt the protocol for future destabilization vectors/threats.
Other than being able to swap out any of the 20+ smart contracts that make up the core protocol of our dollar, we also have an interesting means to piggy back custom logic on any token transfer of our dollar (this includes modifying swap behavior mid transaction on a dex!).
We call these our transfer hooks- i wrote a little thread on it some months back i’ll link here in a moment https://twitter.com/0x4007/status/1472797782666891268
The philosophy we followed here is that “we don’t know what we don’t know” and even if our assumptions while designing the monetary & fiscal policies of our stablecoin were perfectly accurate; things change. as a result we believe that the most resilient stablecoins will be those which can adapt the most efficiently to future destabilization vectors.
Trust is very important in business, what makes investors, customers and users feel safe when working with your project ?アレクサンダー.eth | U B I Q U I T Y
I think our focus on research and innovation is apparent in all of our literature present on our website. i invite anybody with a liking for economics to dive deep and i’d love to have conversations around it. i’m always available in our discord so please do reach out there!
Beyond the literature we’ve also recieved compliments on the quality of our engineering. zgo, our lead dev has been coding in solidity since less than half a year after it came out. we’ve an incredible amount of tests as well as technical documentation which further demostrates our r&d teams’ attention to detail.
We also received an external security assesment and plan to have them on a rolling basis as we continue to release products — particularly when they are in public beta testing (available only to ubiquistick nft holders).
How many team members do you have? Do they have enough experience in the blockchain field? Do they have any experience on working in crypto and non-crypto project?アレクサンダー.eth | U B I Q U I T Y
We’ve approx 14 active contributors and are rapidly scaling up the team now that we secured our financing from this strategic capital round!
Yes i’m quite certain that everybody on our team has experience working outside of crypto as well as within crypto ecosystems. i know that the officers/executives on the team (those i directly interface with) all definitely check those boxes!
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