BlockTalks x YIELD App AMA Transcript!
Hello! BlockTalkers & Blockchain Enthusiastic!
We recently hosted an AMA with YIELD App, on March 31st 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 Tim Frost, CEO,Jan Strandberg, Growth and Marketing Lead at YIELD & Justin Wright, COO. 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 YIELD to our community in layman’s term?
Ans — Jan Strandberg: YIELD App is a simple, and easy-to-use application, much like normal online banking with all the heavy lifting performed by our portfolio team at the backend. In short, YIELD makes DeFi accessible to anyone thanks to our intuitive app and web platform, where users simply deposit crypto or traditional currencies and select the investment plan that suits them best. Operating under a banking license, we offer insured and innovative financial products managed by a team with years of experience in FinTech and cybersecurity. This ensures that our users always feel comfortable earning with us. At the core of our strategy, our YLD token allows for transparent governance, rewards loyal community members, and supports social impact initiatives.
Tim Frost: A question we’ve been asked a lot haha. YIELD App is a licensed and regulated FinTech company that enables anyone to invest in decentralized finance with the touch of a button! Offering an intuitive app and web platform, users around the world can start earning up to 20% APY through our DeFi strategies on the backend, earning returns from DeFi products without having to go through a lengthy, complex, and often costly learning process. We offer transparent governance through our YLD token. Our goal is to go beyond DeFi and provide a more rewarding digital banking experience, where people can easily earn interest on any currency and spend their earnings using our physical debit card, without ever having to think about crypto.
Justin Wright: So in YIELD App, we have built and are continuing to develop a proprietary Portfolio Management System that allows our team of portfolio managers, devs and quants to analyse and access a range of high strategies in real time with programmatic deployments and risk mitigation through triggered alerts at a mempool level allowing us to move faster than our competitors and other individual traders. We are adding layers of sophistication to the PMS as we add new partnerships and chains to remain at the edge of protocol development.
Q2. What are the advantages of YIELD to other alternatives in the Blockchain field?
Ans — Tim Frost: What sets YIELD apart is that we are a regulated licensed bank 🏦 managed by a team with a proven track record in FinTech. That said, we are well-prepared to offer transparent governance through our YLD token. 💪 Our goal is to go beyond DeFi and provide a more rewarding digital banking experience, where people around the world can easily earn interest on any currency and spend their earnings using our physical debit card 💳, without ever having to think about crypto.👌
One major area is our team. We have built very successful companies and financial institutions before. The other is our approach. We are licensed, insured, and are building a platform to offer clients a secure place to allow their money to grow. Unlike many crypto companies which are anonymous or not building companies that are compliant from day 1.
Jan Strandberg: We are eventually building a bank, both Binance and Crypto.com are exchanges. We do not focus on speculative products. We focus on products that will actually make money for both the community and us.
This means that the more community people we get the more we can save with fees, which is good for the whole project.
Justin Wright: We are here for the long term. We are targeting a global audience. Already working with and continuing to build out alliances with other professional actors in the DeFi space. Some of these are technology-led, all of them are knowledge-driven with the aim of constant improvement and to pass the benefits back to our customers, we will be adding different functionalities as the project evolves, alongside with additional products within the platform.
Q3. What are the major milestones YIELD achieved so far & what are in the future pipeline?
Ans — Jan Strandberg: We have our roadmap public to keep us accountable to our community:
Platform and Application
- Increase accessibility and adoption of YIELD App’s platform
- Reach 10,000 monthly active users
- Complete and deliver iOS and Android mobile apps — available in app stores
- Open deposits for BTC, ETH, wBTC, and other stablecoins
- Enable coin and token swaps within the platform
Fund Management
- Continue developing alternative fund management strategies
- Deploy and manage BTC fund
- Deploy and manage ETH fund
Build-out capabilities for $100M+ in assets
Banking Services
- Finalize and open fiat ramps that are cost-effective for our users
- Continue to pursue the best-available partnership for a debit card program
Justin Wright: We will actually release a Q1 summary article very soon so I hope you guys stay tuned on our telegram @yieldapp. In the coming weeks, we hope to launch the second version of our app. More details can be found here: https://www.yield.app/post/yield-app-2-0-is-coming-and-its-bringing-more-for-less. We also have a 2020 summary here: https://www.yield.app/post/yield-app-accelerates-its-mission-toward-defi-banking-in-your-pocket
Q4. Given that YIELD App is secured and regulated and has AML monitoring, how do you ensure security for each users? Do you have any restrictions or requirements before they can use your platform?
Ans — Jan Strandberg: We actually have one of the top Security teams in crypto and also our advisor board is full of smart contract experts. We do KYC for every user and this is to ensure that we can have a platform that is safe and doesn’t produce risk for other users.
Justin Wright: Yes, we do have a KYC and we are also regulated which means that we have to restrict some countries. At the moment we will not support some users in particular countries — learn more through https://support.yield.app/hc/en-us/articles/360016480678-In-which-countries-is-YIELD-App-available-, but hopefully in the future that will change. We are CeFi and DeFi. its super hard to go full 100% DeFi if you want to reach the masses, and especially in the markets that we want to go into
Tim Frost: YIELD App has already successfully acquired an off-shore banking license to support launch — a big win if I may say. Typically it takes time to reach multiple jurisdictional regulatory approvals, so in that respect, we are setting out our intentions from the start and will continue to add licenses as we go for all of our activities. That being said, for AML, this is a standard and minimum requirement whereby we work with industry leading reg-tech providers to strike a balance between over aggressive and cumbersome KYC and frictionless onboarding for our users. By doing things right, we can grow, outperform our competitors while keeping our customers safe.
Questions Asked on Twitter For YIELD App Team!
Q1. What about fraud or hacking, Having witnessed, experienced and read about other exchanges losing user funds, how does Yield intend to tackle hacking of funds or fraud if any? And who can see my information on the Yield App platform?
Ans — Tim Frost: All assets are protected by the YLD Insurance Fund which you may find in our article: https://yieldapp.medium.com/yield-launching-native-yld-token-5a48f2bb48ac, and our DeFi strategies are curated by an expert team of market analysts and fund managers with years of experience in FinTech. By aggregating the capital of many individual investors, we are able to neutralize risk and offer unprecedented investment opportunities in a secure environment.
Justin Wright: When considering hacking, this can fall into two main categories. It could be at an organizational level, i.e. the technology and data infrastructure, or at a structural level in the DeFi pools and smart contracts themselves.
We have a large team of leading cybersecurity professionals and developers along with leading smart contract auditors as partners and advisors including Zokyo. We interact with many different parties, each of whom is vetted including their contracts, number of audits, who performed tham, their anonymity as just some of the preconditions before even considering adding a new strategy to our sandbox and in time our platform available funds.
Other frauds are often perpetrated by individuals, normally as a result of opportunities created by deficiencies in management, business processes, and organizational controls which is why we as an enterprise employ rigorous business processes, compliance audits and oversight of all functions and people within the organization.
Jan Strandberg: Assets held in custody wallets are segregated and insured $ for $. Allocations into our investment funds are at risk due to the nature of the asset class and risk adjusted returns available to investors.
Q2. You mentioned that team believe 10% of APY will be sustainable in the long run. But have you also considered the inflation rate side? Has 10% been balanced with YLD usecase to support high demand?
Ans — Justin Wright: Yes, we actually get this question a lot as our APY can seem pretty “impossible” at first glance. Total APY will depend on the level of your investment, the token price of YLD and the amount of YLD you hold. The latter puts users in different tiers. You can read more about that here: https://support.yield.app/hc/en-us/articles/360015390438-What-type-of-returns-can-I-expect-from-being-a-user-of-YIELD-App-
Generally speaking, users receive interest on their investment and bonuses on their tokens in three ways:
- ) All stablecoins earn 10% APY, paid in USDT/USDC.
2.) Users receive up to a 10% APY boost on their investment by holding YLD tokens in the app, earned in YLD.
3.) YLD tokens also generate up to a 10% annualized holding reward, paid daily in YLD.
Q3. What do you think about the market in Asia and what are you doing to invite traders in Asia to join your project.
Ans — Jan Strandberg: As a growth hacker, I have a handful of experience in raising Asian market so it is not really new to me. I have learned that there is no shortcut to success. It’s a combination of good marketing, PR, excellent product, high APY, good customer service, and many other things to make a company flourish.
As of now, our main market is the UK and SouthEast Asia. Fortunately, we have an efficient and hardworking team that helps us in growing and strengthening our relationship in Asian countries. Our core strategy is to work with as many communities as possible, listen to customers’ feedback and have an actual product that produces wealth for everyone instead of taking that wealth away from you — our users! We do not focus on the speculative side of crypto, only the wealth opportunity that lies in it.
Q4. I read that YIELDers can now swap their ETH to $YLD on the YIELDApp platform. Can you tell us more about the swaps that currently exist on your platform and which coin are we going to see next?
Ans — Tim Frost: Yes, users can now swap their ETH to $YLD directly on our platform. You may also swap USDT and USDC to $YLD. However, you still cannot swap your $YLD directly to any stablecoins available. Which coin you’ll see next? Stay tuned, it will be huge!
Justin Wright: To put it simply,
- Users can earn 20% APY on their ETH (10% on Ether and up to 10% in YLD)
- There will be no in app swaps with Ether to YLD at this time.
- The platform now accepts deposits of USDC, USDT, YLD, and ETH
We hope to add BTC soon and will evaluate new crypto and fiat throughout the year
Q5. Collaboration and partnerships are one of the to making DeFi more widespread, Can YLD share some of the partnerships you have formed with existing blockchain foundations recently?
Ans — Tim Frost: We really like the partnership with Avalanche for all the reasons that Ethereum is simple to congested, and hasn’t scalled. We see major promise in Avalanche, and other protcols. Some partnerships we are working on now are insurance protocols, oracle projects, and many yield farming protocols where we can deploy capital and pass yields on to our clients.
Jan Strandberg: Just recently, we formed a partnership with Constellation. We will provide treasury management solutions for L_0 applications and token projects built on Constellation’s Hypergraph. This will enable developers to easily manage their funds and focus on constructing hyper-scalable applications on the Hypergraph, a ledger based on Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) architecture. We will also contribute liquidity to liquidity pools on Lattice Exchange — A global cross-chain liquidity platform to launch in 2021. We believe that this partnership will benefit both parties in helping the growth of the crypto industry! You may learn more about it here: https://yieldapp.medium.com/yield-app-teams-up-with-constellation-for-cross-chain-capability-7a7fd62409c5
Questions Asked by our BlockTalks Community Members during live Session to YIELD App Team!!
Q1. What problems is your project trying to solve to make it easier for Crypto users? Please let us know how evolving the roadmap is right now. What will happen this year and in the future?
Ans — Complexity, gas fees and latency are major issues in DeFi. We solve these by aggregating funds from many individual investors and using batched transactions, which considerably lowers fees that we then absorb on our end.
This also allows us to achieve superior returns, and offer a more intuitive, secure, and efficient user experience.
Q2. The design criteria of yield app estipulate that yield app is capable to support market that suffer high volatility, so how Yield app is able to make this?
Ans — This is exactly what YIELD App is for, to minimize that risk for the end-user. We manage that risk for you, and guarantee you a minimum 10% return. We guarantee a minimum APY of 10% and up to 20%. We aim for the best returns coupled with the lowest risk for consistent, low volatility performance.
This 10% APY doesn’t include our YLD token gains so if the token goes up it is just a pure +
We do not participate in risky DeFi opportunities and we take diversified positions. We are building a long term sustainable platform that anyone can safely leave money on our platform and earn solid yields.
Q3. Can you give us some use cases?How YIELD App will capitalize the opportunities in the implementation of Avalanche’s DeFi ecosystem?
Ans — YIELD solves the gas problem for small-time farmers who want to take advantage of yield farming. We do this by accounting for everything on our own secure database, and we pass the savings along to you. We guarantee the 12%. YIELD makes it so, that nobody needs to learn how to trade in order to take advantage of trading fees from decentralized exchanges.
We also avoid those projects with insanely high APR that we don’t believe are safe to put our customer’s money into. We spend a lot of time self-auditing protocols and making sure that we’re only investing in high-class, high-value projects.”
Q4. When will you open for sale? How many minimum and maximum can each person buy? Do I need KYC to make purchases?
Ans — You can sign up for an account now to convert your crypto to YLD: https://on.yield.app/blocktalks
The minimum amount for initial deposit into your account is set at US$100, and the minimum investment threshold for allocating assets from your account into YIELD App’s managed portfolio is also equal to US$100.
The higher the amount of funds you have in your account and the longer you remain invested in YIELD App’s fund, the more YLD tokens you will earn through the Loyalty & Rewards program.
Completing KYC level 1 allows you to withdraw up to 100,000 USD in stablecoins, 50 ETH, and 100,000 YLD per week.
Completing KYC level 2 increases your weekly withdrawal limit to 1,000,000 USD in stablecoins, 500 ETH, and 1,000,000 YLD.
Q5. Can you tell us the motivation and benefits for investors to keep the $ YLD token long-term? Do you have a plan to help boost token demand and scarcity?
Ans — We are building a platform we want millions of users to use. This is our vision and we have already done similar ventures with Wirex and Paxful.
DEFI is super expensive and its very hard to participate for the micro users. We want to focus on normal people and especially on microtransactions side. everyone should have the possibility to get yield from their hard earnings without having to pay so big fees
Rather than focusing on our tokens, we aim to be DeFi for everyone. To make it easy put your fiat or crypto on our platform and invest. We handle all the security, portfolio management, smart contract audits, gas fees, etc. The YLD token is one aspect of YIELD App, you simply check your account and see how much money your making on your yield.app account.
Here are some important links of YIELD App 👇
🌎 Website: www.yield.app
📱Twitter: twitter.com/YIELDapp
📢 Telegram: t.me/yieldapp
📚 Medium: yieldapp.medium.com
