BlockTalks x Equilibrium AMA Transcript!
We recently hosted an AMA with Equilibrium, on May 23rd at 12 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 Alex Melikhov, CEO at Equilibrium. 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 Equilibrium to our community in layman’s terms?
Ans — Basically 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.
So, in layman’s terms Equilibriums is DeFi 2.0 with high leverage. It’s a one-stop platform to earn, borrow and trade at max efficiency….
Q2. What are the advantages of Equilibrium to the other alternatives in the Blockchain field?
Ans — I will drop 5 advantages which are distinguish Equilibrium as truly DeFi 2.0:
1. Cross-chain all-in-one DeFi platform — basically as I said above, all DeFi instruments in one place. If you want to utilize DeFi with max efficiency, that’s obligatory nowadays.
2. Own parachains on Polkadot & Kusama are already live — Equilibrium and Genshiro (our canary network on Kusama) are already part of the Dotsama ecosystem.
3. The first orderbook-based DEX on Polkadot with leverage up to 20X — can’t say more here. We are the first project in Dotsama who developed fully on-chain orderbook!
4. A money market with critical collateralization is as low as 105% — this will allow traders to perform risky, yet profitable trades.
5. Features: pooled lending, trading on margin, native decentralized stablecoin, synths, perpetuals.
Long story short, that’s it. That’s our advantages and as you can see, they are pretty cool…
Q3. What are the major milestones Equilibrium achieved so far & what are in the future pipeline?
Ans — First, let me share with you our roadmap
As you guys already know, Equilibrium has won a parachain slot and will be onboarded on Polkadot as the 12th parachain. This was one of our greatest milestones and we did it thanks for our wonderful community.
The next milestone, as I mentioned previously, is our DEX. We proudly announce the launch of our orderbook DEX! This is the premiere orderbook-based decentralized exchange (DEX) launched on the Dotsama ecosystem.
And the third one, is our fluid xDOT staking. Using it, you can vote for your favorite projects in Dotsama ecosystem. But you are not locking your DOT tokens for 2 years. With xDOT you are making it work for you. I will share a insights on how it works in details a bit later. However, let me share a link here: https://equilibrium.io/en/xdot
Our future goal, is to launch Equilibrium app in production as soon as possible. As you can see here, we are aiming on June🦾
Questions Asked on Twitter for Equilibrium Team!!
Q1. Last month, the transfer of xDOT allocations to participants in the Equilibrium group loan took place. What exactly was the objective of this financial strategy and what have been the results so far? What benefits has this brought to your users?
Ans — Great question. As I mentioned above, our users can stake their DOT for their favorite Polkadot parachain and get xDOT in return. xDOT offers a substantial amount of use cases on Genshiro, our Kusama-based canary network, that includes trading, staking, and collateralizing to take loans. As such, you won’t get stuck with your DOT locked for the two-year parachain lease period and without a guarantee that a project performs well or DOT doesn’t drop in value.
Lot’s of our users already have received their xDOT and leveraging it in Genshiro app: https://genshiro.equilibrium.io/gateway/en/portfolio/earn/pools
Also, let me share a video with you on how xDOT staking works
Q2. Republic Crypto is one of your most recent and important partnerships with which you have plans to solve problems that are prevalent in the DeFi space. So, can you tell us what would be these possible problems to solve and what solutions do they propose?
Ans — 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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oh, let me share the links to our whitelist and a special giveaway!
This one is for the waitlist: https://equilibrium.io/en/republic-offering
Also, 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 / June 2022. We allocated 720 millions EQ tokens for an event, which is 6% of total EQ allocation.
Q3. I understand that his mission is to unlock the full potential of the DeFi market and offer users all the DeFi primitives in one place. But what potential impacts can Genshiro’s integration lend to Equilibrium? How will it bring benefits to investors and the community?
Ans — Glad that someone asked! Genshiro is currently up and running and you can start staking, borrowing and trading there now. Let me share a link: https://genshiro.equilibrium.io/gateway/en/portfolio/earn/pools
And I will also cover it a bit. 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 (in 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.
You can learn more about Genshiro here: https://docs.genshiro.io/genshiro/
Q4. If I choose to use “EQD Stablecoin” of equilibrium what are the benifit I will get over a period of time than that of any other Stablecoin prevailing in the market such as BUSD, USDT, USDC. What are the unique features of “EQD Stablecoin” to attract new users.
Ans —First of all, EQD is a colalteral backed stable coin. With collateral backed stablecoin the bankrupts are not possible. Also, you can use EQD directly on the Genshiro now and start earning up to 25% APR. But there’s more — only by using EQD you can participate in our Market Making campaign.
Basically you need to deposit your EQD (which you can mint on Genshiro) to our Market Making pool and wait till we get a $4 millions threshold. Once the threshold will met, we will distribute additional 100% APR on your EQD.
MM pool link: https://genshiro.equilibrium.io/gateway/en/portfolio/earn/pools
Q5. I read that Equilibrium has added support for SubwalletApp in its Genshiro parachain based on Kusama. What advantages will this new acquisition bring to your ecosystem and how will it help Equilibrium grow? Will you add more wallets to support in the future?
Ans — Exactly. Recently we added 2 more wallets to Equilibrium and Genshiro: Talisman wallet and SubWallet.
This collaboration and partnership will help us to attract more users to the Dotsama ecosystem as well as to Genshiro and Equilibrium. Let be frank — not everyone in Dotsama ecosystem prefer to use Polkadot.js. It’s a powerful tool, but can be a bit complicated sometimes for a new users.
That’s why we added SubWallet and Talisman support recently. This will definitely help us to increase the number of our active users.
And by the way
More wallets is more fun😎
Questions Asked by our BlockTalks Community Members during live Session to Equilibrium Team!!
Q1. What is the the term and conditions of Equilibrium lending model? How to use the lending service and who can use the lending platforms?
Ans — That’s a good one. Instead of lending protocol, we implemented Bailsman mechanics.
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.
And by doing that, they actually receiving 25% APR now. So, this is like lending, but with insurance and bigger APR. You can read more about it here: https://docs.genshiro.io/genshiro/mechanics/bailsman-mechanics
Q2. Where can I buy your tokens right now what is your current contract and how can I buy them??
Ans — Currently the only way of getting EQ tokens is to participate in our Republic campaign. It’s not to late to join the waitlist: https://equilibrium.io/en/republic-offering
And don’t forget about our special giveaway! All you have to do, is to complete several tasks via our Gleam campaign and hope that you will be the one, who will receive EQ drop: https://bit.ly/EQGleamGiveaway1
Let me share it one more time: https://bit.ly/EQGleamGiveaway1
Q3. What is a Programmatic Interest Rate (PIR) and how do you determine it? Can you explain how the Equilibrium project (PIR) product benefits its users, is it useful for (PIR) borrowers or useful for lenders?
Ans — Our system uses programmatic interest rates, which means that users have a say in determining their interest rates, based on their collateralization ratio.
Equilibrium starts with a low c-ratio (at a minimum of 105%) which gives users flexibility as opposed to most other projects, but if they want better interest rates, they should opt for solid collateralization. These inverse relationships are determined by our risk algorithm, which monitors aggregated system liquidity based on individual users’ portfolios.
Q4. You have Said that It is “One-stop platform to earn, borrow, trade at max efficiency” , So Can I know Why You have Said it as One Stop Platform , Does it Fulfil Users all Needs ?
Ans — Basically because nowadays is essential to have all your DeFi instruments in one place. Currently, when you are suing popular DeFi you can’t utilize your liquidity on 100% — because of the lack of DeFi instrument on the platform, you need to transfer your liquidity form one platform to another.
We, at Equilibrium, think that this is inconvenient way of utilizing your liquidity. That’s why we are aim to implement as much DeFi instruments as we can in one platform.
Q5. As a community-oriented project, How can I support both #Equilibrium & #Genshiro? Do you run a Global Ambassador Program or a Referral Rewards System?
Ans — Yes, we are currently running an awesome Ambassador program. Oh, and participating in it, is your chance of getting EQ tokens as well. By helping us in spreading the word of Equilibrium you can earn some EQ.
You are welcome to join here: https://twitter.com/equilibriumdefi/status/1515001947010514947?s=21&t=2CqYRjdPwsXipUxxiOw-sw
