BlockTalks x VALK TECH AMA Transcript!

We recently hosted an AMA with Valk Tech, on April 21st at 2.30 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 Antonie Loth, CEO & Elie Azzi, CPO at Valk Tech. 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 VALK to our community in layman’s terms?

Ans — VALK aims to build better DeFi for everyone. By this, we mean we want to improve accessibility and useability of DeFi for all investors, retail and institutional. Our first project, Merlin, is a portfolio monitoring and tracking system, allowing DeFi investors to view their positions across multiple wallets, protocols and even blockchains. It is ultimately a data indexation service that provides second-to-none accounting and reporting services, fit for institutional investors and fund administrators, but also for retail investors. It is in private beta and will be out in the coming weeks

We are also building a portfolio management system, whereby investors can interact directly with other major protocols from one interface, and trade on different protocols without leaving it. These trades include both simple (lend, borrow, withdraw) transactions, as well as complex (flash loans, arbitrage, leverage boost) transactions. This will be combined with Merlin’s data indexation tools to allow comparison of strategies, back-testing and yield optimisation.

Q2. What are the advantages of VALK to the other alternatives in the Blockchain field?

Ans — 1- The difference between Merlin and alternatives such as Zapper/Debank is that Merlin’s data provision is more dynamic; what this means is that it compares current positions versus past performance. This includes

Overview of all transactions, recent and historical

Profitability of yield earned vs NAV. Merlin is able to track the date at which the investor deposited the staked tokens, the price at that point, the yield earned during that time period and the current price of the token in question. This way, it can calculate whether there has been a profit or loss related to that staking action.

Aggregate transaction fees (particularly important when gas fees are volatile)

Impermanent loss on liquidity pools such as Uniswap, as well as the range and the ratio of the tokens within the liquidity pool to see if the investment has gained or lost money. Additionally, Merlin will very soon allow the investor to claim any fees that they have earned from liquidity provision

Merlin provides analysis of all transactions and investments, allowing an investor to view historical value of APYs and pool behaviour + comparison between them.

2- Whether that is through a chart determining the change in the wallet’s net worth in the last 6 months, or total yield generated from Aave, or which LP has been most successful on Uniswap. We want to provide a product that delivers to investors what fund administrators deliver to their clients in the TradFi space — easy and understanding reporting of key performance metrics such as net asset value, profit vs loss of certain investments, yield optimisation strategies so that users of Merlin, whether they are retail or institutional, have the best chance of making informed decisions about their DeFi trades.

And this is a sneak peak of what Melin can show

And what other platforms today show.

Q3. What are the major milestones VALK achieved so far & what are in the future pipeline?

Ans —- We recently won the FSTech Awards for blockchain project of the year and the Avalanche Summit Hackathon !

- We have integrated with Aave, Compound, Maker, Uniswap V2, Uniswap V3 and Trader Joe

- We have announced a partnership with Trader Joe

- Mobile Application for Merlin is coming very soon

- We are working on many projects at the moment and they will be announced in due time. All I can say without revealing any secrets is that you will be hearing about a lot of new announcements in the days to come with major protocols.

- We will also soon be going beyond pure data and focus on allowing you guys to trade better, without any execution headaches and high fees. This will be revolutionary and you will hopefully soon be able to benefit from it, the best yield and strategies with no effort and time spent

& for the pipeline there is a lot coming but we can’t reveal it all :) !

Questions Asked on Twitter for Valk Tech Team!!

Q1. They report that VALK decided to operate on the Avalanche ecosystem but if their mission is to change the DeFi paradigm with new solutions to existing problems. So, does it mean that they only want to solve DeFi problems occurring in the Avalanche ecosystem or DeFi in general?

Ans — Merlin is blockchain agnostic. This means that we can cater to protocols across all blockchains.

Today we are connected to DeFi protocols on Ethereum and Avalanche

The existing problems that Merlin aims to solve relate to the difficulty in tracking a portfolio and tracking PNL.

On Avalanche, we see huge potential due to its incredible efficiency, throughput and ability to connect with other blockchains. We are also exploring solutions on Avalanche subnets, which we believe will solve many existing DeFi problems related to bringing assets and information that need more security and privacy than currently available on public blockchains, whilst being able to connect to the liquidity on the main Avalanche chain.

Q2. How VALK will bridge TradFi products with DeFi liquidity. is that possible? how will you unlock the potential for all market participants, to facilitate simple portfolio management and tracking, and to ensure access to liquidity across protocols?

Ans — Great question ! Our long term goal is to bridge TradFi products with DeFi liquidity. Before VALK DeFi, we had a tokenization platform that catered to private capital markets. We aim to bring these assets on-chain to interact with DeFi liquidity. However, this will come only once we have the best-in-class portfolio management and tracking solution through Merlin and our aggregator! Then we will be able to build connections with liquidity providers across major DeFi protocols.

Q3. The solution VALK brings could address everyday issues that retail DeFi users may face. With the majority of AMA participants being retail investors, how could VALK be a perfect fit for us? How does it fit our needs and budgets?

Ans — We want Merlin to be available to all investors, retail and institutional. Therefore our packages will accommodate these. For example, retail investors with only one wallet to track on Merlin will be able to use the product for free, and only charge additional wallets on top of these.

Q4. You claim that your solutions enable all market players, from regulated financial institutions to DeFi investors, to realize their full potential. However, could you tell me what the current issue with DeFi and the markets is? What services do you offer to your customers?

Ans — The current issues through Merlin we are aiming to address are:

Being able to understand different DeFi strategies by end users

Implementing the correct way to calculate PNL

We knew that DeFi couldn’t spread or get into the hands of (1) everyday investors or (2) traditional asset managers unless portfolio management was simple and understandable. Yet, there are few products out there that allow an investor to view their portfolio on a dashboard and be able to compare their positions and understand the relative success related to yield, PNL and more. We came from delivering high quality TradFi solutions to asset managers and fund managers, all with high expectations of how portfolio management should be handled. We are building products to last that both provide investors with the necessary information they need about their own trades in a simple and understandable dashboard, whilst giving them the tools to make informed and calculated decisions about future trading strategies.

Q5. One of VALK’s solutions is a DeFi asset management panel that connects investors to all major DeFi protocols. Could you tell me how safe and powerful this panel is? What are the main DeFi protocols that you trust?

Ans — The panel will be our aggregator service that connects investors to major protocols. It is non-custodial so the security of the custody of funds is not an issue, and our smart contracts will of course be audited by leading blockchain security providers before they go live.

At the end of the day we are only connecting a user wallet directly to the DeFi smart contract via connectors.

Questions Asked by our BlockTalks Community Members during live Session to Valk Tech Team!!

Q1. You say that Valk will have a DeFi asset management panel that connects investors with the main DeFi protocols without leaving the interface, but can you really tell us which DeFi protocols will be available? and we will have to link the application with those protocols?

Ans — In the long run we will be integrated with all protocols, for now we start with the major ones Aave, Compound Maker, Uniswap, Trader Joe, Curve etc . But we want to cover all protocols in the long run !

Q2. Is VALK Platform , Can Easily be Used Even by less Proffesional Users , What about your USER INTERFACE , Is it Really User Friendly or Only It is meant for the Experienced Users ?

Ans — The VALK platform will be open to institutional AND everyday investors, and the design is made for it to be as user friendly as possible so that everyone can undersand it without compromise on security and quality of information :)

Q3. DeFi smart wallet Merlin, a product of VALK, caught my attention, but can Merlin read all the information of the investor’s different wallet address regardless of the wallet type? How does Merlin provide data and guide the investor by analyzing?

Ans — Yes Merlin can understand different wallets and give you an overview of your position.

On the data side Merlin will be able to better guide you to compare the ROI of different LP or staking pool to choose a better return for your investment

Q4. You aim to connect DeFi investors with innovative protocols through blockchains to ensure portfolio management, monitoring and access to institutional-grade liquidity. So, can you give me more details about these “innovative protocols”? Currently DeFi investments do not guarantee portfolio management, tracking and access to institutional level liquidity? How will you make my investment really secure through you?

Ans — This is correct, and we take the management and tracking system to the next level with the unique possibility for you to get historical data and reporting about your positions across protocols and get insights that will enable you to trade better and take more sound decisions. Merlin has no risk so far as a reporting tool but when trading will be enabled, we will make sure to have the platform audited by tier 1 institutions, tested to the max and we are also ( to be announced soon) going to add an extra layer of insurance to protect our traders.

Here are some important links of Valk Tech👇🏻

💻 Website: https://defi.valktech.io/

📱Twitter: https://twitter.com/valktech

📱Medium: https://valktech.medium.com

📱Telegram: https://t.me/valkdefi

📱Telegram announcement channel: t.me/valkdefinews

📱Discord: https://discord.gg/tNAAwXWs

📱LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/valktech

📱YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW4yEjxLTMIY9eYlCGbjIMg