BlockTalks x Apricot AMA Transcript!

Hello! BlockTalkers & Blockchain Enthusiastic!

We recently hosted an AMA with Apricot, on June 7th at 1.00 PM UTC. Many of you might have participated or many of not. But we make sure no one missed out from the knowledge shared by Ace Tsui, Co-Founder of Apricot. So here we are up with the AMA transcript, for those who missed the live session, this blog post will be a saver & feeder of knowledge for them.

Introduction Questions Asked By Team BlockTalks!

Q1. Could you please introduce Apricot to our community in layman’s term?

Ans — Apricot Finance is a comprehensive DeFi solution built on the Solana ecosystem. We will provide users with services such as floating rate collateralized lending, fixed-rate collateralized lending and DeFi FinTech modules etc... The project will launch initially with an over-collateralized loan protocol that differentiates itself by giving borrowers best-in-class borrowing power and low liquidation penalties with high predictability in outcome. As the platform expands,
Apricot may tap into the concept of securitization in traditional finance to help manage a bad debt collateral pool accumulated through Apricots 2-hour liquidation guarantee program. Apricot’s ultimate goal is to become a leading platform in the DeFi industry by building a secure, efficient and innovative one-stop DeFi service platform that provides personalized DeFi solutions for all users.

Q2. What are the advantages of Apricot to other alternatives in the Blockchain field?

Ans — As we all know, Compound and AAVE have big name in lending protocol. However, Compound and AAVE are both based on Ethereum, but with the explosive growth rate of DeFi’s total locked positions and its enormous number of investors, the performance and functionality of the public chain represented by Ethereum is no longer sufficient for maintenance and further development of the project. A large number of products and trading strategies that persist in traditional finance cannot be implemented in the DeFi projects on Ethereum. For example, the development of "asset-backed securitization" and "high-frequency trading" products to be launched on the Apricot platform requires the entire public chain to maintain a stable, efficient and swift Time-to-Finality capability at all times, but the current performance and functionality of Ethereum is insufficient to develop such products. Therefore, the originality of our products developed based on Solana public chain technology gives us a biggest advantage than other lending projects on Ethereum.

Q3. What are the major milestones Apricot achieved so far & what are in the future pipeline?

Ans — Financial-wise, we just closed our seed round of $800k over last weekend, Our investors include Chris McCann (who is an early seed investor in Solana and FTX), Genblock Capital, NGC Ventures, DFG, CMS Holdings,Double Peak Group, CryptoJ Capital, Coinsights Ventures, and many others. And now we are at our private round fundraising.
Technical-wise, our basic lending agreement (Apricot Lend) and Apricot Assist has completed its initial development. Meanwhile, we will also launch fixed-rate lending, unsecured lending and FinTech modules this year. And everything is on track now.
We will keep our investors and users informed of our development progress through social media and our official website. Kindly follow us on social media to get more first-hand information.

Questions Asked on Twitter For Apricot Team!

Q1. Partners are very important for every project today, may I know which partners you have now? and which partners in the future you will be heading to?

Ans — As earlier, we have reached strategic cooperation with top investment institutions around the world, including NGC Ventures, DFG, CMS Holdings, Genblock Capital, CryptoJ, Conisights Ventures, Double Peak Group, etc. These institutions will give us project assistance in terms of products, financing, and markets. In the future, we will look for cooperation opportunities with multicoin capital, coinbase, Polychain Capital, etc.

Q2. What is the security of your platform have you done any internal audit or testing as of now and when you plan to go for an external audit?

Ans — At present, the code of our main products has been completed, and many rounds of stress testing have been carried out internally. Limited by the fact that only a few external audit companies can audit the rust language, we are actively working on that. But it is expected that the results of our code audit will be released in mid-July at the latest.

Q3. What are Apricot's most popular services and what makes them popular?

Ans — We believe that our asset securitization bad debt processing product COT token pool may become our most popular and innovative product. The reason is that the purchase of COT can lower the capital threshold for users to participate in the platform’s bad debt processing, and it also allows all users to share the benefits of the platform’s bad debt processing.

Q4. As a smart investor, I choose a project with promising potential seen from tokenomic,good experienced team,clear roadmap,project that makes sense. my question is do you have all of them, and where can I find details about it?
Ans — You can learn more about our project through social media such as our official website and telegram group. There are our team introduction, roadmap and other details you want to know.
Website: https://apricot.one
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/ApricotFinance
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ApricotFinance/
Telegram Announcement: https://t.me/apricotfinanceann
Telegram: https://t.me/Apricotfinancechat

Q5. Apricot has 2 tokens APR, COT. what are the differences between these two tokens, are they supposed to be use separated or together and why did you decide to create both at the same time?Why didn't you just create one that could make fulfill all the needs you are trying to cover?

Ans — Apricot has two tokens. The main token, APR’s role includes community governance, reserves, user incentives, collateralized mining, etc.. and COT token is a special token only for bad debt management. The roles of the two are completely different.

Questions Asked by our BlockTalks Community Members during live Session to Apricot Team!!

Q1. What is the reason you’ve choosed Solana?

Ans — Solana supports much faster transactions with a very minimum fee, that would enhance Apricot’s service agenda to provide a better borrowing power with low collateral as well as liquidation penalty.

Q2. Share with us about your plans for 2021. what are you currently, focus on.and are you going, to expand the list, of major exchanges.

Ans — Our test network will be launched at the end of this month, and the launch date of the main network is expected to be next month. At the same time, we will be developing unsecured lending, fixed rate lending, and DeFi fintech modules this year.

Q3. Researching on the APRICOT project, I was able to see the loan tools, Apricot Assist and Apricot Rescue. Can you explain how they work and the uses that these APRICOT features offer to the community and how they benefit it?

Ans — The entire Apricot Lend product will offer borrowers lower collateral and liqduiation ratio than market. Apricot Assit allows users to self-configure a liquidation threshold such that they won’t be charged any liquidaiton penalties (as compared to 8% or higher on other platforms), if such unfortunate liquidation events happen. Apricot Rescue is the 2h liquidation guarantee program in case there is no liquidity on the market for liquidation under extreme market conditions. Existing platforms has no clarity, consistency and predictability when such situation happens.

Q4. You say that your lending platform is borrower friendly and not against the lender’s protection, but can you explain to us what are the advantages between lender and borrower?

Ans — For borrowers, the minimum collateral ratio can be as low as 110%, which means they can borrow more with less collateral. Also, our liquidation penalty is 1%, so in the unfortunate case of an actual liquidation, loss to borrower is quite minimal. For lenders, we have a liquidation guarantee mechanism called Apricot Rescue, which makes sure that liquidation of accounts can complete in time and before the collateral ratio of accounts in question fall below 100%. In short, Apricot could offer borrowers more options and less collaterial&risks. at the same time we could guarantee lenders a more-than-100% liquidation ratio.

Q5. You mention that "Apricot Rescue" gives borrowers peace of mind at any time, but could you really explain to us how this 2h payback guarantee that it provides will work? really why this time of 2h and no more?

Ans — Apricot will first rely on third-party liquidators to clear liquidations, which due to Solana’s high throughput and lower transaction fees, should be more efficient first of all. Apricot Rescue steps in only when one of the happens (or whichever one that happens first) (1) when the collateral threshold hits 103% or below or (2) the liquidation is still outstanding after 2 hours. 2 hours can be lowered and decided by our Apricot community.

Here are some important links of Apricot👇

🌎 Website: apricot.one
📱 Twitter: twitter.com/ApricotFinance
📢 Telegram: t.me/Apricotfinancechat
📚 Medium: apricotfinance.medium.com