Here’s our 43th AMA recap!
Thank you to the Infinity Chain for participating in Ask Me Anything (AMA) with LIFTOFF on February 8, 2021. This guest star,
- Professor T. S. C Lowe — Aeronaut Engineer of LIFT
Introduction
Professor T. S. C. Lowe | Aeronaut Engineer @ LIFT,
Yes! I am a Solidity developer of several years with a keen interest in the new developments in DeFi. My greatest concern is the Efficiency of Capital Markets. Today it is hard to buy tokens in new Projects without Fear of losing your money. We need to build decentralized methods to protect our Capital without Government Regulation or Interference. Not only will these new technologies protect Investors, but they will also allow the faster formation of new Projects as new technologies will have to spend less Effort in Proving they are Honest.
Q1. Would you like to give us a simple introduction of LiftOff?
Professor T. S. C. Lowe | Aeronaut Engineer @ LIFT,
LIFTOFF is a fully self-service decentralized launchpad with 3 major features that provide protections to token sale buyers.
☞ Crash Insurance
☞ Gradual Payments
☞ Free Liquidity
Crash Insurance allows token sale buyers to get a full refund at the presale rate, should the price fall below the launch rate. The Insurance covers 100% of the Sale for the first week, and a declining amount thereafter.
Gradual Payments affect how developers are paid. 0 tokens are paid to developers & promoters, so there are no risk of insider dumps. In addition, their ETH payments are made over the course of 10 weeks at 10% a week while Insurance Redemptions from Crash Insurance reduce these payments. This means Soft Exit Scams fail, as a team that fails to deliver does not receive payments.
Free Liquidity generates 10% free liquidity with every sale, meaning the total allocation of ETH is 110% instead of 100%. This additional liquidity comes from XLOCK technology and means a greater amount of Locked Liquidity to guarantee Uniswap trades.
Q2. What is the advantages of LiftOff? How is LiftOff better than other platforms?
Professor T. S. C. Lowe | Aeronaut Engineer @ LIFT,
LIFTOFF’s core advantage is protections to token sale Buyers. Before LIFTOFF, Lid Protocol developed 2 different iterations of the launchpad. Both of these provided better protections than other launchpads at the time, but they had the fatal Vulnerability to Soft Exit Scams. In a Soft Exit, the developers pretend they will build the project then immediately after the sale ends, they dump all their tokens and delete their social media channels. While LIFTOFF can’t provide full protection against Soft Exits or Lazy Developers, it does provide additional protections against the easiest types of these attacks and raise the effort required. When buying Tokens on LIFTOFF, you still must conduct Due Diligence, but you know that if the Developers delete their Channels immediately after the Sale, you are guaranteed your money back.
Q3. What is the relationship between LiftOff and LID Protocol project? What are the benefits for LiftOff?
Professor T. S. C. Lowe | Aeronaut Engineer @ LIFT,
Lid Protocol has provided the development, budgetary, and marketing resources LIFTOFF requires. LIFTOFF is fully run by the Lid Protocol Team and myself. The LID token acts as the liquidity token while LIFT acts as the platform token. More Details are in the Whitepaper, but this is the essence of the connection.
Q4. Let’s discussion economic model about LIFT token. What is LIFT token use case in the LiftOff ecosystem?
Professor T. S. C. Lowe | Aeronaut Engineer @ LIFT,
LIFT allows a community to form around LIFTOFF and rewards LIFTOFF’s community members with Rewards. These include the following:
☞ Airdrops from each LIFTOFF sale (3% total distributed)
☞ Private Channels for discussing LIFTOFF sales
☞ Verification Votes & Reviews of new LIFTOFF Sales.
To join the LIFT community as a Tier 1 Club Member, you must hold 1 LIFT and request whitelisting of your account. If your Balance of LIFT ever falls below 1, you will lose your membership. There’s only 2000 LIFT so the Tier 1 Club will always be quite exclusive!
Q5. Can you tell us about the LiftOff roadmap now and what it wants to achieve in 2021?
Professor T. S. C. Lowe | Aeronaut Engineer @ LIFT,
The first step is the LIFT token sale on the 11th of February at 9pm Pacific Time. LIFTOFF is already a complete & finished functional decentralized & automated platform, so the full Benefits will begin the first week after Launch. Into the Future, we are adding new Improvements to LIFTOFF for UX as well as some new types of ERC20 Tokens.
Additionally, we will be adding cheaper Tiers to the LIFTOFF Club. Tier 1 Members will always get the best Benefits, but we will be adding easier to access Tiers with fewer Benefits as the LIFT price increases.
Finally, we are exploring Layer 2 Solutions for LIFTOFF to decrease the Gas Fees. There are some deep complexities due to the Integration of LIFTOFF with Uniswap which operates on Layer 1 so this fundamental Research has no guarantee of success.
TWITTER QUESTIONS
Q1. The LiftOff token LIFT is launched by the LID protocol. Will all the tokens in the sale be distributed by the LID Protocol? Are there any requirements to take part in the LIFT presale? And if the hardcap target is not reached where will the tokens be allocated?
Professor T. S. C. Lowe | Aeronaut Engineer @ LIFT,
LIFT will be launched on LIFTOFF as a demonstration of the working dapp. All Tokens will be automatically and Fairly distributed by the Liftoff Smart Contracts. LIFTOFF is fully decentralized so the Lid Protocol Team does not control the distribution.
There are no requirements or Limits for joining the LIFT sale.
If the Hardcap is not reached, the excess Tokens will be proportionately Distributed to the LIFT sale buyers.
The Reason for the lack of Limits has to do with the design of LIFTOFF. Normally Sales have Limits to prevent dumps by Whales. With LIFTOFF and its Crash Insurance, these are not required.
Q2. What is the relationship between the XLOCK and LiftOff platforms? And about in the LiftOff whitepaper explaining ERC-31337, so what makes it unique / advantages compared ERC20?
Professor T. S. C. Lowe | Aeronaut Engineer @ LIFT,
Ah I see there is a bit of a confusion in this Question, that is easily Clarified.
The ERC20 tokens that Liftoff Launches, such as LIFT, are not derived from ERC-31337. Rather they are a standard ERC20 token with the addition of Checkpoints for easier airdrops.
ERC-31337 was modified for XLOCK, so XLOCK itself does not use ERC-31337 either. However, XLOCK operates on the same conceptual basis as ERC-31337.
All LIFTOFF sales are in xETH, not ETH, and the Uniswap pairs are in xETH instead of WETH. This is what allows the 10% Free Liquidity. The math is somewhat complex but is fully outlined in the Whitepaper.
Q3. LIFT has an integration with Ethereum, ETH network is one of the biggest in terms of liquidity but as we saw some of the problems with ETH are huge costs, How do you plan on dealing with them? How do you handle small investors to have an LIFT ?
Professor T. S. C. Lowe | Aeronaut Engineer @ LIFT,
Unfortunately Uniswap lies on Layer 1. Uniswap as the DEX with the greatest Liquidity can not be avoided for a Liquidity Locking Solution such as LIFTOFF. This greatly limits our ability to develop and build on top of Layer 2 solutions.
That said, we are working closely to address this issue with PenguinParty, the team behind PenguinSwap. Already, PenguinSwap provides a superior front end to Uniswap. We are discussing with them how it might be possible to build a layer 2 router for Uniswap and integrate LIFTOFF into said router. However, there are great challenges faced and it may be ultimately impossible until ETH 2.0 allows sharding.
This is a summary of the current state of Research. We are actively monitoring projects such as Moonbeam on Polkadot, but there are severe technical limitations that would degrade the user experience of LIFTOFF and generate high financial risks due to the time delays involved in moving assets across chains.
Q4. Can you tell us about LIFTOFF smart contracts which consist of LiftoffSettings, LiftoffEngine, LiftoffInsurance, and LIFTOFF Registration? Who audits all LIFTOFF contracts? How Secure is your smart contact?
Professor T. S. C. Lowe | Aeronaut Engineer @ LIFT,
As I mentioned, Halborn provided our Security Audits for all the LIFTOFF contracts. They complimented the deep level of automated testing we use.
The Details on the function of each of the Contracts is outlined in the Whitepaper. In brief:
LiftoffEngine is the core of LIFTOFF and is the primary contract interacted with in most circumstance.
LiftoffInsurance provides the Crash Insurance for LIFTOFF as well as the Gradual Payments.
LiftoffSettings stores the variables common between the other contracts.
LiftoffRegistration stores non-critical information about the Sale such as the IPFS hash of the sale’s configuration with offchain details like the project’s logo, description, and links.
Q5. Southeast Asia is a very dynamic market & most projects compete with campaigns here to attract users & grow to a large extent. Do you have plans to expand your business in SEA or partner with the local community?? Do you have an Ambassador program?
Professor T. S. C. Lowe | Aeronaut Engineer @ LIFT,
Southeast Asia, or SEA, is a critical community for LIFTOFF and LID. People from the Phillipines, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia amoung others have provided enormous support to LID and now LIFT for a long time. Several of Lid Protocol’s Team Members are from this region as well as Australia, North America, East Asia, and Europe.
We are quite fortunate to have such a huge base of support from many regions.
Most of our SEA community is extremely well educated and skilled in English, so we have not had the need to set up channels in other languages as of today. This may change in the future, however.
TELEGRAM QUESTIONS
Q1. From @tutib1
How does LiftOff handle government regulations and boundaries?
Professor T. S. C. Lowe | Aeronaut Engineer @ LIFT,
Currently there are two ways launchpads handle regulations. First there are platforms like Bounce, that have few protections & limitations but are protected from regulation by their decentralization. Second there are platforms which are not decentralized but provide greater protections to investors with the vulnerabilities that result from such a decision. Out of Respect I do not wish to mention which Projects are in the latter category, but a careful analysis can lead anyone to realize which have these Legal vulnerabilities. If there is a central Team or Individual who controls the Sales, they are a risk.
LIFTOFF is fully decentralized just like Bounce and does not have legal risks. Even if the entire LID team were to disappear, the smart contracts and ENS sites on IPFS would continue to operate. But it provides strong protections like those normally reserved to centralized launchpads.
Q2. From @Tripty1
Although ETH 2.0 is delayed again, but it will solve all exist problem of ETH and become the best choise for dApps in future, so do you think this is a threat for Liftoff project and how could you overcome this barrier?
Professor T. S. C. Lowe | Aeronaut Engineer @ LIFT,
ETH 2.0 will not solve all problems but will be a huge step forward. Conceptually the issue for LIFTOFF on Layer 2 is that all transactions must be immediately verified across the network. This is possible with ETH 2.0’s sharding, but is not possible with Layer 2 solutions on ETH 1.0. As ETH 2.0 is released and adoption grows, gas problems will arise again but it will at least provide a few years of lower rates and democratic use.
Q3. From @washinchaab
For a project development first of all main priority is having enough fund. Does your team financially capable to run this project? Do you have enough fund for it’s developement Can you tell us that how Liftoff project generate the profit?
Professor T. S. C. Lowe | Aeronaut Engineer @ LIFT,
This is an Insightful Question and shows the individual has carefully reviewed the ETH distribution for LIFT. None of the ETH raised will be used to fill the Lid Protocol’s treasury or pay the Lid Team! Instead, 10% is set to compensate marketing partners while 90% goes to Liquidity and LIFT buybacks. How is this possible you might ask?
Well, the Lid Presale Platform although it only lasted for 6 months before becoming obsolete had excellent returns. Rather than Wasting the Funds, the Lid Team carefully used its revenue to develop LIFTOFF. Currently the Lid Protocol Team has enough funds to operate for the next year even without any revenue.
Q4. From @Impotent37
Many investors hit and run in the sell and sell session after listing on the first exchange, How did Your project prevent early investors from selling their tokens and what benefits would Your project give them?
Professor T. S. C. Lowe | Aeronaut Engineer @ LIFT,
Flippers are an important issue that Plagues all launchpad platforms. We are working on additional features integrating the LIFT community to encourage long term holdings. Additionally, we are working to integrate AskoLend after it launches to allow token buyers to have a way to borrow against their tokens instead of selling.
Currently, the biggest protection against Dumps is the Crash Insurance. If the price on Uniswap falls below the Presale Price, anyone can buy Tokens on Uniswap to increase the price then redeem them for Crash Insurance at a profit. As everyone knows this, any intelligent buyer will redeem instead of Sell should the price fall too low. This makes the Presale Price a soft floor that is challenging to break.
Q5. From @Ketz23
Defi & NFT is very interesting and is starting to be in great demand,
Can you share $LIFT opinion on Defi & NFT ? What steps are already being taken towards the future progress of $LIFT ?
Professor T. S. C. Lowe | Aeronaut Engineer @ LIFT,
We are currently developing NFT works to distribute to LIFT’s early supporters. NFTs have a strong future in DeFi as they can help users signal their support and history with certain projects. Lid Protocol is fortunate to have access to excellent Artists, and while none of the works are quite ready to share, I must tell you the Works so far have been absolutely gorgeous.
- Telegram : https://t.me/LiftoffETH
- Twitter : https://twitter.com/LiftoffEth
- Website : https://liftoff.eth.link
- Medium : https://liftoffeth.medium.com/
- Whitepaper : https://whitepaper.liftoff.eth/
- Discord : https://discord.gg/K4tZaJR557
Thank you for trusting Infinity Chain as the organizer of the event today, hopefully everyone can understand about LIFTOFF.
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