BlockTalks x Shield Finance AMA Transcript!
Hello! BlockTalkers & Blockchain Enthusiastic!
We recently hosted an AMA with Shield Finance, on April 4th 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 Denis Gorbachev, CEO at Shield 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. Could you please introduce Shield Finance to our community in layman’s term?
Ans — Shield is “1inch for insurance” Or “Skyscanner for insurance”. It’s an aggregator — it shows you packages from multiple insurance providers. You will be able to use Shield to buy cheap insurance.
Ideal scenario:
* You open the Shield app
* You select the token that you have
* You type the amount of tokens that you have
* You tap “Search”
* We show you the insurance packages from various providers (Nexus Mutual, Cover Protocol, Tidal Finance and others)
* You select the package
* We generate the transaction
* You buy the package
Q2. What are the advantages of Shield Finance to other alternatives in the Blockchain field?
Ans — I haven’t heard of direct competitors. If you have — please let me know. As for replacements — you can buy insurance on the provider website directly. Similar to tickets — you can buy them directly from the airline, or buy via Skyscanner.
The advantages are:
- More search options
- Filters (e.g. No KYC)
- Cross-chain purchases
e.g. if you are trading on PancakeSwap, you can buy insurance from Nexus Mutual, which is on Ethereum. Of course, this only works for cross-chain tokens, and you need to have some Ethereum. The final advantage is price. You’ll be able to select the cheapest insurance package. There will be more providers in future, so they will start competing on price, and we’ll show cheapest first.
Q3. What are the next milestones for Shield Finance?
Ans — Releasing a web app is our next milestone. We’ll integrate Nexus Mutual and Cover Protocol first, and add other providers later. The real fun will start with integrations. I believe we can monopolize the insurance market by integrating with exchanges, wallets, farms. This will require a lot of partnerships, but with our investors — it’s possible. The integration will look like a button: “Buy insurance for this token”.
* When the user clicks the button, we will display insurance packages.
* When the user chooses a package, we will execute his purchase.
Our button will be displayed within exchange / wallet / farm interfaces. The user won’t need to leave the interface. The user will see the button when he needs it the most — when he is fearful about his purchase of this token.
So Alice comes to Uniswap, wants to buy a token — but she’s afraid of hacks. So she clicks “Buy insurance” within Uniswap interface. And the purchase goes through us. Uniswap will take a fee. But we will, too and it’ll be worth it.
Questions Asked on Twitter For Shield Finance Team!
Q1. Shield Finance is supporting 4 chains, do you plan to adopt more chains in near future? whats the value increasing plans you have?
Ans — Of course, we’re open to supporting other chains as well. Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polkadot, Solana — these are the most popular, so we’ll start with them. If a new competitor arises, we’ll add support for it as well. Regarding “value increasing plans” — the value of the token will depend on the number of integrations (= partnerships).
If we integrate with a lot of insurance providers, it will be easier to sell our integration to exchanges and if we integrate with a lot of exchanges, every new insurance provider will ask us for integration. We’ll become a hub between “sell places” — where users need insurance — and providers. I’m using a “sell place” term to mean exchanges, wallets, farms, IDO platforms — every place where the user experiences fear before buying the token. Through integration, we can sell insurance when the user needs it.
Q2. I read that Shield Finance is a multi-chain DeFi insurance aggregator that allows users to purchase protection against market crashes, so what measures or strategies does Shield Finance have available to offer these insurance packages?
Ans — We’ll sell options as protection against market crashes.
Most people don’t think of options as insurance — but they can be used to protect yourself from price dumps.
Imagine that you buy a put option for ABC token with a strike price of 0.01 ABCUSDT. That means you have a right to sell your ABC token at 0.01 even if the price is already lower. So you can protect yourself from a market crash by buying a put option.
Right now there aren’t many option contracts for altcoins, but I believe they will appear in future — just like on traditional markets, where you have options even for obscure stocks.
Q3. In the documents I read, you describe Yourself as “a multi-chain DeFi Insurance Collector”. According to this definition, is your main goal limited to uniting insurance companies under the same umbrella? Are you not going to develop your own insurance solutions for the investors who invest in the DeFi sector and are concerned about the safety of these investments?
Ans — Yes, we will focus on integrations first. We won’t compete with insurance providers — we’ll partner with them.
But then who knows, maybe we’ll decide to adopt the same strategy that Binance did — embrace Ethereum, then make a competitor.
Q4. Shield Finance says it allows users to buy protection against multiple major black swan events. How cheap and affordable are these services? Will these insurance covers be available for everyone regardless of whether you are an institutional investors or retail traders?
Ans — As cheap as on the insurance providers’ websites. As an added benefit, we’ll sort packages by price, so you’ll be able to pick the cheapest on the market.
Our fee will come from the insurance provider side — similar to Skyscanner, which doesn’t charge extra to the user.
And yes — our covers will be available to everyone equally.
Q5. In Shield Finance governance, we can change fee structure & other contract parameters. So can you explain how holders or traders be able to change fee structure and other contract parameters? Is it applicable to all $SHIELD holders in your platform?
Ans — We’ll use the same governance process as Uniswap.
And yes, it will be applicable to all $SHIELD holders.
Questions Asked by our BlockTalks Community Members during live Session to Shield Finance Team!!
Q1. Does your team know about regional markets and have marketing studies? For example, how do you approach the ASIA market, in which countries are you active?
Ans — 1. We will sell insurance worldwide.
2. Of course, we will translate our website & documentation into multiple languages
3. We do have dedicated marketing partners for China, South Korea & Vietnam already, looking forward to adding more partners for other countries.
Q2. Projects like Tidal Finance, bridgemutal, Polkacover and the likes are already working on providing insurance for DeFi, so, what innovations will Shield Finance be bringing in to help make it compete successfully with them? What makes your own approach to insurance differs and unique from theirs?
Ans — We’ll aggregate them — we won’t compete with them.
Q3. Will you implement the same program as the BNB and FTT’s take and burn program, or will it be a different program? Why does SHIELD implement this program?
How are the plans to encourage the SHIELD token to stabilize and maintain its emission curve to reward its long-term owners?
Ans —
- We believe it’s a requirement for the token price to be linked with company cash flows. With a buy & burn program the token price changes based on our total fee amount — we use 50% of the fees to buy the token, moving the price. Healthy company = healthy price chart.
- Yes, we’ll implement the same program with one difference — we’ll buy from a decentralized market (e.g. on Uniswap)
- We’ll have 30% APY staking program to reward long-term holders.
Q4. What will ShieldFinance itself do and bring you by following the future to DeFi and ShieldFianance bringing automation of the future to DeFi?
Ans — We’ll make it easier for people to buy insurance — we’ll integrate with exchanges to allow users to buy insurance directly within exchange interface.
Q5. Are you planning to spread awareness about your project in various countries where English is not spoken well? Do you have a local community so they can better understand your project?
Ans — Yes, as answered above, we’ll have translations for multiple languages.
As for community — do you want to host a community in your language? We’ll support you)
Q6. Many DeFi project looks great only on their whitepaper & Roadmap but facing a lot of difficulties when trying to implemented the project mission and endly with failed. How is ShieldFinance overcome every obstacle in its project development?
Are your Team Solid enough?
Ans — I’m a programmer myself — I’ve built multiple startups & have experience with leading a team. I’ll hire the developers whom I’ve worked with on previous projects (as soon as we finish the public sale on Ignition platform — 14 April).
Here are some important links of Shield Finance 👇
🌎 Website: shieldfinance.net
📱Twitter: twitter.com/ShieldFinance
📢 Telegram: t.me/ShieldFinanceHQ
📚 Medium: medium.com/shield-finance-hq
