BlockTalks x Pledge Finance AMA Transcript!
We recently hosted an AMA with Pledge Finance, on September 26th 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 Douglas Lu-Hill, Senior Product Manager at Pledge Finance. 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. Can you give a brief introduction about yourself and pledge finance?
Ans — I have received my masters of Economics from University of California. And I have worked with a dozen of prominent blockchain companies throughout the years. I am currently the Chief Marketing Officer at Pledge Foundation, leading the global marketing efforts for Pledge.
So Pledge is a Defi project by nature. Offering the lending and borrowing feature like many other defi protocols, and provide lenders with the options to stake their funds into our staking pool, higher APYs, and attract borrowers by providing them with token incentivization mechanisms.
The project concept came up with tony our CEO had a discussion with the co-founder of [DH.VC](http://dh.VC) Kevin back in Feb, and the idea has been sticking with him since. He believes that Pledge is one of the kind defi projects that is going to be able to make it out there to the world, and really bridge the gaps between the traditional finance sector as well as the decentralized finance sector. Allowing the trillion-dollar market from the traditional space to be able to join in this blockchain/crypto movement.
V1 would function exactly like how other defi protocols, lending and borrowing. Starting V2, we will introduce NFT collateralization, which allows you to collateralize NFT in the space.
Q2. Why did Pledge choose the route of fix-rated lending? What is so special about fix-rate lending protocol? What is the Key difference (advantages) against compound/aave/MakerDAO?
Ans — The existing DEFI loan market is dominated by floating rate products. Pledge’s fixed rate products can provide both sides with much needed certainty and work with floating rate counterparties as essential building blocks for more advanced DEFI products such as derivative contracts.
One of Pledge’s product directions is to create innovative structured collateralized loan products to meet a diversified portfolio of risk appetites and level of exposure, therefore, improving capital efficiency and reducing liquidity friction. Borrowers can generally benefit from Pledge products with higher loan/collateral ratio.
The key to fix-rate is not to attract native crypto holders, is to attract traditional finance institutions, providing them with a much more stable and lower--risk alternative.
Q3. We heard rumors that pledge talking with micro-financing providers and institutions? Does that mean Pledge will provide services outside of the crypto rim and enter traditional finance as well?
Ans — Indeed we are talking with local banking institutions across the industry. In fact one of our advisors is Nicole Chang, she is the formal global strategist for East west Bank is actively helping us seeking more regional and cross country partnerships. We will help bridge the lack of liquidity in traditional finance using the liquidity we have in decentralized finance market and attract the traditional investors using a much more managed risk management mechanism and help build on wealth management.
We will be the first of its kind defi product, that actually get out there into the traditional finance route. We are more scaleable than BlockFi.
Q4. We heard that Pledge finance is announcing to do a round of IDO at tokensoft on oct, 5th. And it is starting its own KYC process on sale.pledger.finance, could you please give some details about Token mechanism (token design) and also the IDO details?
Ans — Yeah sure! Please check out The official website for IDO KYC registration: sale.pledger.finance. The public sales registration ends on 9/30 11.45pm EST time.
On the first 15 min, the registration server at Tokensoft is down due to Pledge’s internet traffic. It took three hours for them to resume the service. This affected about 15k users globally.
Pledge is now built on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and utilizes a dual governance token mechanism called PLGR & Master-PLGR(MPLGR) tokens.PLGR tokens are the utility and junior governance vehicle on the Pledge protocol,whereas MPLGR is designed to help handle a set of advanced governance decisions for the platform, which influence the economic policies and incentives structure parameters across the whole ecosystem. PLGR is also a utility token, but it helps balance the ecosystem by being available to more users, thus encouraging users to staking.
Again that as sale.pledger.finance
With an innovative bridged dual token structure in Pledge, one crypto asset can function as a yield farming vehicle while the other can function as a governance vehicle.PLGR(pledger token) is the yield farming and utility token for DeFi applications, first deployed in BSC environment, with Polkadot, Heco, Polygon, Ethereum versions potentially being created down the road. Each environment is expected to have its own token standards, and each version of PLGR token is swappable across different blockchains.
MPLGR (master pledger token) is the master governance token that is initially based on ERC20 token standard, with future BSC standards to launch. MPLGR is used to make governance decisions for the entire Pledge ecosystem, and update any key parameters and token economics as needed.
Oh btw, I am the lead developer for the smart contract of the decentralized dual token swap bridge! Please visit sale.pledger.finance right now to claim your spot.
Q5. The term financial NFT is very interesting, and seems like something that can revolutionize the future of finance. What is the nature of the design of Pledge’s financial NFT? How does this become applicable in a real life use case?
Ans — The technology is more innovative and different. We use NFT as the infrastructure. Pledge leverages the latest blockchain technology, especially with ERC 1155 to enable the creation of Financial NFTs to represent each loan, bond, insurance as well as other assets. Pledge’s Financial NFT supports configurable asset token type, which can have its own terms, metadata, supply and other derivative attributes. A single deployed contract includes a combination of many fungible tokens, non-fungible tokens or other configurations. Financial NFT protocols support game and finance developers with interoperability such as transfer, hedge and trade, and hence are expected to remove the barriers to entry for almost all financial market participants.
Pledge financial NFT allows developers and traders to create their own financial tokens in Pledge. Not just one pair in a pool, it can have thousands of tokens in one pool. This builds up huge liquidity, from billions to trillions.
Please also visit our website to find out more at pledger.finance.
https://t.me/BlockTalksDiscussion/134166
I will share a deck of Pledge shortly as well, to better help you understand what Pledge and what is financial NFT.
Q6. Under the leadership of Stanford professors and researchers, Pledge protocol may very well become the third biggest byproduct in the blockchain industry, why is that?
Ans — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aExojLGTQpA
Pledge distinguishes itself as the most aggressive pioneer that pushes the limit of financial innovation. The Pledge team has more than 100 years of combined leadership experience in fintech, structured finance, financial engineering and algorithm optimization. As a decentralized engine for all world’s debt instruments, fixed rate lending, fixed yield, refinancing, financial NFTs, structured debt products, interest rate swap, monoline obligation insurance and entry point for TradFi into Defi, all converge at Pledge.
The existing DEFI loan market is dominated by floating rate products. Pledge’s fixed rate products can provide both sides with much needed certainty and work with floating rate counterparties as essential building blocks for more advanced DEFI products such as derivative contracts.
Pledge’s innovative privacy preserving KYC and compliance tools widely open the door for institutional investors to participate in the DEFI without worrying about the regulation, helping boost this market to a trillion dollar sized one.
Don’t believe me? Here is a quick video of Professor Gary L, one of the first professor teaching blockchain innovations at Stanford and UC BEREKELY.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWW0abGzR_o
Questions Asked on Twitter For Pledge Finance Team!
Q1. There are a few things that are quite unique about the Pledge Finance platform: Financial NFT, Tackling the Trillion Dollar Market. What unique characteristics does the financial NFT have, addressing the trillion dollar market? What advantages do they offer?
Ans — We will use our own AMM machines to generate interdimensional liquidity markets. Allowing users to be able to stake in various pools for different tokens instead of just binary liquidity pools.
Pledge’s innovation also helps create a multi billion dollar monoline insurance market where speculators can provide insurance for risky loans, of course, for a fee.
Pledge aims to satisfy lenders/borrowers/liquidity providers of all kinds within one protocol, which calls for a super nimble and elastic asset pooling mechanism that can meet needs of all kinds such as fixed borrowing term, fixed yield, early liquidity pullout (converting to fixed borrowing term), liquidity mapping etc. Again, every role player is dealing against a highly algorithm driven asset pool rather than pairing supply and demand of the present. The structured products created by Pledge and its ecosystem can serve a much in-depth market - along the supply chain of financial markets.
Q2. Pledge offers cross-chain interoperability, which brings more utility of DeFi in the real world. But I was wondering, when users use this feature to communicate with different blockchains, are their assets completely safe? Is there a possibility that they may lose their assets?
Ans — Absolutely, cross chain means we will still use DEX, we will still use aggregators, we will still have monitorization and we will do the best we possibly could to provide a safe environment for our users.
Q3. As I understand Pledge Finance is a lending platform. So does that mean Pledge Finance will implement collateral on its borrow-lending services? What is the process of borrowing and lending in Pledge? What are the requirements to be eligible to borrow? Does it need KYC?
Ans — Yes we do, and here is a picture to demonstrate that in the simplest terms:
Q4. I read on the website, The $PLGR token sale will run from october 5 - october 18. Can you elaborate one by one the requirement that needed for participate in the token sale? Also tell us about the minimum and maximum buy and the currency that accepted for purchase $PLGR token?
Ans — Absolutely! The sale registration site is: sale.pledger.finance
And I will share exactly how you can do KYC and make token purchase, step by step: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8ToTgT04MM&t=5s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV5izPPzeRE
Tokens allocated: 60,000,000 and 90,000,000 PLGR
% of total supply: 3.00%
Price per token: $0.05 per PLGR
Unlock schedule: 20% on Token Generation Event(TGE), and unlock 25% each quarter
Minimum contribution: $300
Maximum contribution: $25,000-$50,000
Q5. As you plan to launch a Product V2 in which it is set for p2p lending with NFT as collateral. Can you share some advance idea about how would be P2P lending with NFT as collateral will work and be implemented in your platform?Aside from NFT,what other collateral can be consider?
Ans — The technology is more innovative and different. We use NFT as the infrastructure. Pledge leverages the latest blockchain technology, especially with ERC 1155 to enable the creation of Financial NFTs to represent each loan, bond, insurance as well as other assets. Pledge’s Financial NFT supports configurable asset token type, which can have its own terms, metadata, supply and other derivative attributes. A single deployed contract includes a combination of many fungible tokens, non-fungible tokens or other configurations. Financial NFT protocols support game and finance developers with interoperability such as transfer, hedge and trade, and hence are expected to remove the barriers to entry for almost all financial market participants.
Pledge financial NFT allows developers and traders to create their own financial tokens in Pledge. Not just one pair in a pool, it can have thousands of tokens in one pool. This builds up huge liquidity, from billions to trillions.
As a decentralized engine for all world’s debt instruments, fixed rate lending, fixed yield, refinancing, financial NFTs, structured debt products, interest rate swap, monoline obligation insurance and entry point for TradFi into Defi, all converge at Pledge.
One of Pledge’s product directions is to create innovative structured collateralized loan products to meet a diversified portfolio of risk appetites and level of exposure, therefore, improving capital efficiency and reducing liquidity friction. Borrowers can generally benefit from Pledge products with higher loan/collateral ratio.
Questions Asked by our BlockTalks Community Members during live Session to Pledge Finance Team!!
Q1. To run a project smoothIy, funding is very important. Where does Pledge Finance’s CapitaI/revenue come from?
Ans — Very much like other defi lending protocol, our funding comes from a community proposition, which would ultimately enable us from getting 0.005% of the transaction fee, however, this fee will eventually be given out to the community members that help support building the project as well.
Q2. The number of security incidents in this market keeps increasing , like frauds, hacks and so forth. How could investors ensure the safety of their cryptocurrencies while using your app?
Ans — Don’t take our word for it, we recently partnered with CertiK, one of the most reputable auditing firm in the blockchain space: https://medium.com/@pledge_finance/pledge-finance-smart-contract-audited-successfully-by-certik-2b9723d19df1
Q3. What are your major goals to achieve in the next 3-4 years? Where can we Pledge Finance ecosystem in this period? What are your plans to expand and gain more adoption?
Ans — I think I see it becoming the biggest project on BSC, as well as one of the most utilized financial tool for the world. Here is a real use case for you to think about, now imagine A shipping company can borrow money from a construction company to build ships, without going through a third-party intermediary.
Getting it into the eyes of the traditional finance, that is what we, blockchain people always strive for.
