BlockTalks x RAMP DEFI AMA Transcript!
Hello! BlockTalkers & Blockchain Enthusiastic!
We recently hosted an AMA with RAMP DEFI, on 27th August 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 Zheng Rong, Marketing Lead of RAMP DEFI & Lawrence, Project Lead of RAMP DEFI. 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
Zheng Rong : I’m zr, Marketing Lead and co-founder of RAMP Defi . Previously Managing Partner of Merkle Ventures, a consulting and investing blockchain firm focused on layer 1, layer 2 and DeFi. Co-founded NOX, which developed on-chain custody utilizing cloud HSM.
Lawrence : My name is Lawrence and. I’m the project lead for RAMP DEFI. I am from Singapore and spent my first five years in traditional finance — private banking and corporate M&A. I then joined IOST, a layer 1 project, as their international lead for 2 years through pre-testnet to mainnet to a full ecosystem of staking and nodes.
Now I’m launching RAMP DEFI with my cofounders.
Introduction Questions Asked By BlockTalks
Q1. Could you please introduce RAMP DEFI to our community in layman’s term?
Ans — Simply put, RAMP DEFI collateralize your staked assets into a stable coin and project it to Ethereum, where you can use it to borrow fiat-backed capital such as USDT.
This way u get access to liquid capital and at the same time, you can retain staking rewards, and retain ownership of your staked portfolio.
Q2. What are the advantages of RAMP DEFI to other alternatives in the Blockchain field?
Ans — RAMP DEFI is actually very different from other DeFi projects. Many liquidity powered solutions are competing each other for the same dollar of liquidity in Total Value Locked (TVL).
However RAMP DEFI is unlocking liquid capital from assets that are already locked (staked), hence we are actually releasing liquidity and capital back into the ecosystem.
In this respect, we measure ourselves by Total Value Unlocked (TVU).
Q3. What are the major milestones RAMP DEFI achieved so far & what are in the future pipeline?
We have moved ver quickly in a very short time, and notable achievements include completing our private fundraise in less than 7 days with very prominent international investors such as Alameda Research, ParaFi Capital, Arrington XRP Capital, Signum Capital and more.
We have also partnered with many leading PoS blockchain foundation partners to launch RAMP For their users, with two already being announced — IOST and Elrond.
More will be announced over the next few weeks.
Smart contracts are already under development and we expect stake farming as an activity to start very soon in a month or so.
The public sale is coming soon within the next two weeks, and we hope for more community participation.
We want to be shipping code and products as quickly as possible after that, and let users farm more RAMP Tokens, and start experiencing the benefits of RAMP as soon as possible.
Questions Asked on Twitter For RAMP DEFI!
Q1. By reading Litepaper, I found that staked capital be retained and used on other investment while have an active staking on ramp platform. My question is, how RAMP DEFI made it possible? What is the process behind this?
Ans — Your assets will pass through a smart contract layer that is non-custodial, and these assets go into a staking pool. In return, you get a “receipt” that gives you a claim on the underlying asset. As long as you bring this receipt back to the smart contract, you can get back the underlying asset.
Staking rewards will also be distributed back to the holder of the receipt, which allows you to continue receiving staking rewards.
Your receipt can then be collateralized into a stablecoin, and wrapped to ethereum, where there is a marketplace to borrow USDT, USDC. This is the “liquidity on-ramp” process.
Q2. What are those features of rSwap v1.0 in Ramp DeFi that have not yet been fully explored by the community after its recent integration into the ecosystem?
Ans — rSwap right now is undergoing an upgrade to integrate with rPool that will allow rPool to be the “OTC” buyer and seller of assets for users who want to move across chains.
Q3. You have major investors like XRP Capital, IOST, Signum Capital, and major partnerships like Elrond. How do you see the contribution of your partners and investors to the development and brand value of your project?
Ans — Its extremely important as these leading VCs help us open the doors to initiate cooperation with leading PoS blockchain foundations such as Elrond. So there’s a network here which we had been able to access, as a result of having these investors/partners on board. This effectively will make RAMP DEFI bigger and better, and make us more credible for users, which will lead to more user trust and widespread adoption.
Q4. RAMP DEFI proposes that the capital at stake be collateralized in a stablecoin, “rUSD”, but what advantages does this offer as it is also from the Ethereum blocking chain? Are there problems in the delay of transactions?
Ans — rUSD is a representation of value from the combined portfolio of staked assets on PoS chains. When it is projected to Ethereum, it can be used to borrow true liquid capital in the form of USDT and USDC. Users holding USDT and USDC will lend to a rUSD holder because they know that there is real intrinsic value underlying rUSD.
There is no problem with cross-chain as Ethereum bridges are common these days, although Ethereum congestion is a real issue.
Then again Ethereum congestion is also an indication of the large market demand for DeFi, so it should be considered a happy problem.
Q5. Onboarding initial liquidity for farming pools seems like a major issue for most DeFi projects, what’s your own approach to addressing this issue? Also, I’m interested in participating in your Yield farming, when will this go live?
Ans — We dont have to onboard liquidity, and are instead unlocking liquidity from assets that are already illiquid. So that makes RAMP a little bit more special haha. We are building a product to solve an existing pain point that had existed for some time.
First launch of yield farming should be in September if everything goes well and clear with some of our early blockchain partners.
Questions Asked by our BlockTalks Community Members during live Session for the RAMP DEFI team!
Q1. The yield farming with RAMP DEFI is quite UNIQUE because there are 3 farming pool — Alpha Beta and Delta Pool. Please explain how each works and which is better for an investor like me?
Ans — Yup thats right. The key is to incentivize participation. The different pools are based on different activities. For example, if you participate in staking and collateralization, you farm from Alpha Pool. If you participate in providing liquidity, you farm from Beta Pool. If you participate in lending and borrowing, you farm from Delta Pool. If you participate in all activities, you stake your yield by farming from all pools. So the more you participate, the more you earn.
Q2. I go through your website and i saw lots of partnerships you work with, How did you work your major partnerships? As we all know, its not that easy to gain the trust to be part of each team. It takes a good reputation to build it. What’s your secret for that?
Why did you choose ERC-20? Having networks with a lower fee in transactions such as bep2, TRC-20. What benefits does ERC-20 have that the others don’t?
Ans — We work directly with blockchain foundations to implement solutions. This help to gain trust. Our partners also have existing user bases who can immediately participate in RAMP farming. So adoption will be fast when it is pushed by a trusted partner like IOST or Elrond (Binance launchpad project).
We go with ERC-20 because thats where liquid capital in the form on USDT, USDC can be found.
Q3. Investors are the KEY to the REVENUE that will power the platform’s future development and success. What is your BUSINESS MODEL that highly beneficial for your users is able to generate revenue and what are your strategies for RAMP token to be listed on many exchanges?
Ans — The revenue model for RAMP is development around the rPool product. A % of all staking rewards and interest fees generated accrue into this rPool which acts as a shared interest pool. At regular intervals, rPool distributes income to stakers of RAMP tokens. So there’s a real revenue model behind it.
Our advisors are from the exchanges and we already are in discussions to have listings done shortly after our public sale.
Q4. What are the digital assets needed to stake in RAMP DEFI? and what minimum digital asset is required for staking?
Ans — The digital assets available to stake via the RAMP solution depends on the blockchains that are willing to partner up with us, so if you have certain assets, you can ping the foundation to get in touch with RAMP and work with us.
The amount of digital assets require to stake depends on how the staking program is structured by the blockchain foundation itself. RAMP operates as a layer above the existin staking program.
Q5. RAMP DEFI seems to be the first DeFi project I know that focuses on Total Value Unlocked (TVU) instead of Total Value locked (TVL). Could you tell us why you think there is a need to unlock staking liquidity? Is this an opportunity to increase capital efficiency?
Ans — It’s important because if you have a dollar and stake it, that’s one dollar locked up. It is therefore, finite. What RAMP do is that it helps you to extract another dollar out from our assets. So now you can be investing $2 using a capital base of $1. This increases the amount of capital within the entire crypto ecosystem.
Q6. How will RAMP tokens be used? What will be benefits from holding it tokens?
Ans — RAMP tokens will be used for governance, receiving distributions from rPool, and for increased farming efficiency. Stake your assets, farm RAMP, stake RAMP, earn dividends from rPool, and farm even more RAMP as a result. It's a positive cycle for everyone to participate in.
Here are some important links of RAMP DEFI 👇
Website: https://rampdefi.com
Telegram: https://t.me/rampdefiofficial
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RampDefi
