BlockTalks x PlutusDeFi AMA Transcript!
Hello! BlockTalkers & Blockchain Enthusiastic!
We recently hosted an AMA with PlutusDeFi, on 27th June 1 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 Arnie Hill, CEO at PlutusDeFi & Ali Hararwala, Co-founder at PlutusDeFi. So here we are up with AMA transcript, for those who missed the live session, this blog post will be saver & feeder of knowledge for them.
Introduction Questions Asked By BlockTalks
Q1. Could you please introduce PlutusDeFi to our community in layman’s term?
Ans — PlutusDeFi brings together multiple DeFi usecases on a single platform with key focus on User Experience, Privacy and opening up access to global finance for anyone who doesn’t have basic financial tools in place. Our first product ‘Lend & Earn’ is an aggregator of lending protocols that unifies multiple protocols, multiple currencies and multiple wallets on a single dashboard driven experience.
Q2. What are the advantages of PlutusDeFi to other alternatives in the market?
Ans — We obfuscate the complexity of DeFi tools into an easy to use user experience. Users don’t have to learn how to interact with protocols independently, rather they can get access to it from a single and simplified user interface.
Additionally, users create and sign their own PlutusDeFi wallet where funds are never held in a 3rd party custodian incl. company wallets.
We look at what we do at Plutus uniquely, which means that we have our own USPs, and there is no one directly building exactly what we are doing.
Q3. What are the major milestones PlutusDeFi achieved so far & what are in future pipeline?
Ans — PLease read the article below to get an view of how are we different and what do we have planned for our future roadmap
Also, our current roadmap can be found at: https://about.plutusdefi.com/plutus/roadmap
Questions Asked on Twitter For PlutusDeFi!
Q1. I’m aware that your Decentralized lending protocols let borrowers build leveraged positions by staking digital assets as collateral and paying interest to lenders, who supply the liquidity.
However, in a situation where there is a black swan event such as smart contract vulnerabilities within the money market protocols. Is PlutusDefi Insured against such event or what strategy have you put in place to ensure that users claim their funds back?
Ans — This is a good question, we saw a black swan event with BZX protocol a few months ago. This was essentially an oracle exploitation with an arbitrage attack using flash loans.
This is why we are integrating with insurance providers such as Nexus Mutual, which is almost ready, and others as well. This will allow users to buy insurance cover for their assets deposited. The use case for nexus was interesting as, the attack itself was not covered, but in the interest of the ecosystem and all users, the policy was amended to cover the attacks. The deposits are partially or fully covered by this syndicated insurance model.
As an aggregator, we can simply API into these services, with often better UI/UX and make it one click to purchase insurance cover.
Q2. Congrats on becoming the LARGEST Full Stack DeFi platform. Tell us who your Defi partners are and how do you solve the blockchain trilemma of Privacy, Decentralization and Interoperability in DeFi space?
Ans — Thank you! We are almost there, but we have a lot of work to do stil.
We are currently wrapped up our Beta testing over the last 3 months, where over 120 users participated and based on the feedback we mananged to make significant UX changes to the platform.
It is not possible to solve all the 3 together, but rather look at how each of the 3 — Privacy, Decentralization and Interoperability can be balanced in the way that benefits the ecosystem.
Plutus puts Privacy at the core of everything that we do. For instance, Plutus wallets are entirely signed and owned by you so your funds when operationalised are always in your control. This also makes a firm argument for Decentralisation, as Plutus themselves don’t get involved with holding your funds. We are working on Interoperability, but that is not the highest priority given that the ecosystem around it overall needs to be improved. But effectively, Plutus also has a Dapp layer that can be built for any other blockchain in addition to providing an SDK that can be plugged in to exchanges, OTC desks and crypto instituions where there are liquidity pools.
Q3. Since the project is handling a large amount of personal information of clients and users.This private information can include phone numbers, addresses,names,ages etc. Does Plutus defi conducted a privacy impact assessment (PIA)?
Ans — Users on Plutus don’t register with their name or any personal details. So, there is no impact to users being worried about their privacy being compromised.
ETH Mixers & DeFi Lending- Plutus ETH Bl3nd3r (Blender) — on our roadmap
We know that there are liquidity issues and risks with going into privacy protocols on Ethereum, this is why we are integrating a fusion of options for users to anonymise and protect themselves from potential attacks and privacy snooping.
PlutusDeFi will integrate privacy mixers such as Tornado Cash, and our own PlutusDeFi ETH bl3nd3r, as an optional tool for users on the platform, allowing them to shield and mask their ETH transactions into lending protocols.
By creating our own ETH mixer, users will face reduced transaction costs compared to using stand-alone mixers with lending platforms. Furthermore, with our own native mixer, users will not face risks of seizures by centralised lending platforms and exchanges. Users will need to hold a minimal amount of PLT tokens in their wallets to access the feature.
Q4. Can you explain more about Compound and dYdX which are the 2 Lending Protocols the solution currently support and do you have any plan of introducing more Lending Protocols in the future?
Ans — Hey, we certainly do have more protocols, in-fact we did integrate BZX but after the hack we did not push the changes live. Our architecture is built in such a way that it’s just a few lines of code for us to add a new protocol, with some front-end changes. We plan on integrating more as the UI/UX experience on the front end develops. Obviously, as we grow protocols on the platform, the design needs adjusting slightly.
Curve.Fi, Aave and others will be added shortly.
Q5. Your new Blockchain product $plu be launching, And I’ve heard about this project since last year. Why did it take so LONG to launch the project?Are there any lingering issues with helis ?Have you included more developments?
Ans — We have made very good progress with the seed funds that we raised last year. Managing the team and making personal sacrifices in the process. We wanted to launch something that is production ready and we are almost there, the last bit of the jigsaw is completing the audits on the smart contracts.
The additional developments have come in the form of us having done the following:
1. Beta testing feedback resulting in UX changes
2. Analytics
3. Integration with insurance product (work in progress)
4. SDK (work in progress)
Questions Asked by our BlockTalks Community Members during live Session for PlutusDeFi team!
Q1. What your plans in place for global expansion, are Plutus Defi focusing on only market at this time? Or focus on building and developing or getting customers and users, or partnerships? Can you explain this?
Ans — We are looking at marketing our product in China and East Asia. But we have plans to release a token based product for mobile credits in Africa
It’s an ambitious plan, but this should bring in a lot of unbanked people to take advantage of yield farming.
Q2. From the Greek Mythology
PLUTOS is the “god of wealth”
i love your project name
now talking about Wealth I heard that you want to Decentralize Wealth.
What do you think is the positive effect of making Wealth Decentralized?
In relation with DeFi
What are the benefits of Decentralized Wealth will bring to DeFi?
Ans — There are many advantages to DeFi. To us, the whole point of blockchain and crypto is to allow users to be sovereign over their wealth, private and anonymous. Leaving the old institutions behind which often stop and hinder people at the bottom of the social ladder and inhibiting them from accessing capital
You can see more articles on privacy here;
https://medium.com/plutusdefi/why-privacy-matters-in-defi-u-k-7b188a5899a6
https://medium.com/plutusdefi/defi-needs-privacy-heres-why-d5844fb0d07b
Q3. Decentralized finance, which sounds good until you see everything on Ethereum, I wonder if Plutus plans to expand to other chains, such as Binance, Wanchain, Matic, etc?
Ans — Our initial plan was to use Ethereum for settlement, Binance Chain for Liquidity and Libra for expanding into business and SMEs.
We are also looking at Cardano and if the project can build on top of it. It really depends on if the other chains have compatible EVMs.
Q4. Which area does Plutus DeFi focus on at the moment? (DeFi, Dapps) and which products/projects are you developing to support it?
Ans — We are firstly an aggregator of existing DeFi solutions, for example integrating lending protocols like compound and dydx however recently we have found that we are able to code a lot faster than other defi projects and with a smaller budget. So we have moved to also developing native functionality like ethereum mixers for DefI lending.
Our platform aims to be a ‘full stack’ defi platform with multiple products and functionality, either through integrating existing projects or building our own. More here: https://medium.com/plutusdefi/plutusdefi-releases-year-long-campaign-to-become-the-largest-full-stack-defi-platform-84b154a8b240?source=collection_detail----127e0052f0f4-----1-----------------------
Q5. Can you monitor all transactions on the DeFi infrastructure and outside the chain?Can the transactions of the users be monitored on the network? How do you ensure privacy and anonymity?
Ans — That is true, which is why we will have a “privacy tunnel” on the blockchain, similar to a VPN, we use encryption protocols like Aztec Protocol, developed by Aztec and backed by consensys here in london. This allows users to enter encrypted privacy liquidity networks which used cryptographic formula’s to make sure that users and owners are hidden permanently. The only vulnerability at the moment is the on-ramp into the network, as ETH and blockchain can record your IP and MAC access.
Q6. How does Plutus report on several credit protocols and decentralized exchanges? How can I participate in all with one account?
Ans — Just go to plutsudefi.com, and ‘Start Lending’.
It will guide you through deposit function, where it will create your own plutus wallet that will facilitate with your lending.
Q7. What is business model of Plutus , How it works ?
Who are your potential customers and which markets are you targeting on?
Ans — We are fully aligned to our users, which is why we are only raising 1M, therefore being an aggressive microcap project. With using the bridge model on the seed round and bonding curve on the private sale, we are encouraging maximum liquidation and fees incurred by seed investors. Our aim is that the supply of our token will be drastically reduced within the first few months. Aiming for around 30% of total supply to be permanently burned. The team has enough runway with the current fundraise for the next 5 years but we also have tokens, which should be worth a lot more given that we are raising only 1m, and initial circulating supply can be found here: https://medium.com/plutusdefi/plutusdefi-first-ever-microcap-hybrid-bridge-bonding-curve-listing-8b3367aeee12
In the event that we need to access liquidity, we can do this from the token side.
Q8. Which one of your milestones do you think was difficult to achieve and what motivated you to achieve it?
Ans — Two of the most important features we are product of are:
1. Getting the UX just right to enable adoption
2. Enable users to control their wallets dynamically so that no 3rd party holds their funds when lending and they solely have full control of it
Q9. What are your next projected expenses of Plutus DeFi for the next 2–3 years, what areas would require most of the funds? also Is there any forecast for Plutus DeFi for year 1–5?
Ans — Please read the article below to get an view of how arewe different and what do we have planned for our future roadmap
Also, our current roadmap can be found at: https://about.plutusdefi.com/plutus/roadmap
Q10. One quality I always look for before using any Lending Platform is the ability to have control over my fund through out the entire process. Is there a possibility of PlutusDefi freezing or maliciously confiscate users funds? I would love to know the strategies you’ve put in place to ensure users are in total Control of Funds?
Ans — This is something that we’ve considered carefully. We use the concept of counter-instantiated wallets where users use their own wallets to sign in, which in turn triggers the creation of a new wallet, which is the users Plutus Wallet. The effect of this design is that the users from day 1 always are in possessions and in control of their funds.
Q11. Higher DeFi Interest Rates Come With Unstated Risks Attached, Vitalik Buterin Said . So how do you think about that ? And plutus’s plan ?
Ans — Auditing the smart contracts, economic design of the monetary ecosystems are very important factors to ensure that DeFi doesn’t lead into a black swan event.
PlutusDeFi only works with qualified protocols that have been audited and where there is sufficient governance in place. Only these protocols are and will be listed so that we eliminate risk.
Q12. Plutus DeFi partners with Formatic.
What’s the Plutus DeFi Advantage of Partnership with Formatic?
Ans — Formatic allows users to have defi accounts with their mobile, it’s a new form of web3 wallet which people are unfamiliar with, but mobile based login is having some growth and pick up in the traditional business world.
Q13. There are many DeFi stable coins such as Terra, Reserve, Ampleforth, Paxo..so why does Plutus choose DAI and USDC for lending and do you have plan to expand more stablecoin?
Ans — Right now, other stable coins do not have as much liquidity, for us, we have to choose our development priorities between integrations, new features and new products. There are certainly other stable coins which you mention which are worthy of being integrated, but they need indepth looks regarding risk, accounting and transparency.
Q14. PLUTUS DEFI looks good but it confuses me that there are so many other Blockchain projects. What should I pay attention in PLUTUS DEFI to give it the importance it deserves? What are your planning to achieve with your project?
Ans — Every project has it’s own benefit and it comes down to individual due diligence. However, with Plutus our mission is clear — we want to focus on building multiple DeFi solutions on a single platform, with User experience and Privacy at it’s centre.
Q15. I’m intrested in knowing more about your first flagship product which is called Payroll? When was it introduced and what are some of it key features to make it distinct from other similar payments Solutions?
Ans — Our payroll product was an initial MVP to see if companies in the blockchain space would consider using it. It’s no longer a continued product by PlutusDeFi but it’s an interesting proposal. Most companies hadn’t evolved enough to use an automated smart contract system and still wanted to hire a person to do this.
Q16. Plutus DeFi is currently announcing a partnership with DAI and USDC? Now, what positive results can we expect from this partnership?
Ans — We don’t have an official partnership — DAI and USDC are open smart contracts, hence once we audited and did our due diligence we integrated them on our platform.
Q17. As Defi’s blockchain. Do Plutus Defi think there are major problems with enterprise-level customer adoption? Because in some ways- “blockchain” and “utility” are two completely different issues.
Ans — Enterprise level adoption will take time. Blockchain and DeFi are ground-up movements where we want to move in a direction that may or may agree with monetary policies of governments. Hence, it is our chance to design our own financial future.
Q18. No one can achieve anything valuable on its own, please tell us about your current and future partnerships that will lead you to success in this highly cramped crypto space?
Ans — We are speaking with exchanges and OTC partners to see how we can get adoption for our SDK
Also, we are constantly evaluating other protocols and projects that we can integrate it, so as and when they happen these will be announced.
