AMA TRANSCRIPT — SPYKEFAST x REEF FINANCE
Date : 16 SEP 2020
Host : Hunterr , GemFlair & Groot
Guest : Denko Mancheski , CEO Of Reef Finance
Hello! Spykefastians & Blockchain Enthusiastic!
We recently hosted an AMA with Reef Finance , on 16 SEPTEMBER at 4 PM UTC. So here we are up with AMA transcript, for those who missed the live session, this post will be saver & feeder of knowledge for them.
Round 1 — Introduction Questions Asked By Spykefast
Q1: First of all, I would request you to give a small introduction about yourself, your experience in crypto and idea behind #Reef project.
Ans: Here is my intro: My name is Denko, I am the CEO of Reef. I have a tech background myself. Started development in early high school with C++ (did algorithmic competitions for few years), then moved into the enterprise world where I worked for 2 ERP providers (built some modules and some mobile apps which are still used to this day). Few years later I moved to one of the biggest healthcare platform providers in Europe. Worked there for over 2.5 years and the last 6 months I was leading a team (we were building a complex app for healthcare data modelling around the OpenEHR standard). 5.5 years ago I got into crypto and started blockchain development myself. My first experience was with NXT (then turned into Ardor), and I have also been doing a lot of Solidity (Ethereum), Steem and some EOS. Since I am based on Slovenia, the development community is not so big, so I’ve been working with familiar people. 2 years ago we teamed up and worked on multiple blockchain as well analytics projects together. In January this year we decided to focus on DeFi and started building Reef.
Here is a bit on the origin story and how Reef’s idea was formed: https://medium.com/reef-finance/reef-origin-story-5a16a4f346a8
In short, Reef is a DeFi operating system — a permission-less smart liquidity aggregator and yield engine where
any financial hub can integrate into. Powered by Polkadot, it shares its security model with the ecosystem, and enables cross-chain integrations across top DeFi protocols. Reef gives the retail investor access to the DeFi landscape with a very low technical barrier of entry.
Q2 : What is the Reef finance ? What types of problems Reef finance seeks to solve ?
Ans: Reef is a DeFi operating system — a permission-less smart liquidity aggregator and yield engine where any financial hub can integrate into. Powered by Polkadot, it shares its security model with the
ecosystem, and enables cross-chain integrations across top DeFi protocols. Reef gives the retail investor access to the DeFi landscape with a very low technical barrier of entry.
Basically the way Robinhood app managed to abstract away all the complexities around order books, derivatives and complex options chains, thats what Reef aims to do in the DeFi landscape.
Q3: What are the major innovative contributions that Reef Finance brings to the DeFi ecosystem, and how they
can improve the experience of users in the management of their finances?
Ans: Reef abstracts away the complexities of using order books and learning how different DeFi protocols work. The users do not have to worry in which ecosystem certain activities exists and learn different mechanisms of how to participate. All the integrations are handled in the background by our infrastructure. Just like Robinhood app gives access to the average user to the traditional financial landscape
(derivatives, option chains, etc..), Reef gives access to the DeFi landscape and tokens and additionally augments the decision making process based on user’s risk levels.
Q4: What makes Reef Finance different from the rest and who are your main competitors in cross chain niche?
Ans: Most of the protocols are financial primitives. They are very important and they serve a certain role in the whole ecosystem. Reef’s infrastructure is composing and integrating on top of the ecosystem. Being non-custodial and cross-chain makes Reef unique.
Q5: As Reef introduced Reef yield engine for the yield farming lover , How Reef farming is better than other farming project ? What type of problems do you think farming project have and how reef yield overcome these problems?
Ans: Reef yield engine allows you access to all the currently available yield farming protocols. Since it’s powered by an analytics engine, it can maximize your yield by routing your funds to the highest yielding pools. The problem is that farming protocols and instances have different risk levels. We derive risk levels based on multiple metrics, from social media traction, to on-chain traffic. This way, the users have a better understanding of how they allocate their funds, and can adjust based on their risk tolerance. We will publish our methodology on how the model is grading different DeFi activities on our blog.
Q6: Let's move on to the most common question for any project.
What are the utilities of Reef token in your ecosystem ?
Ans: The reef token is a governance token, so the users will be able to vote on different proposals (releasing new features, readjusting certain parameters in the system, etc.). Besides governance, the token is powering our infrastructure, so you can pay the protocols fees with it. It can also be used to stake into the Reef pool and get RPTs (Reef Pool Tokens), but it’s also going to be used in the yield distribution mechanism (customizable payout ratio for the yield that the basket generated), which will allow the user to farm the Reef token and directly stake it into the pool.
Q7: How is your roadmap looks like for 2020? What future event or feature on your roadmap are you most
excited ?
Ans: We are currently finalizing the fundraising, and we are working on initial simulation around Reef’s governance structure and the Reef pool, and in Q4 (October) we plan TGE and exchange listings, but more importantly, also in October, we plan to launch the initial version of the product. My most exiciting moment would be when we are able to provide a way for the Ethereum users to access different ecosystems without having to do anything at all.
Q8: Why did Reef Finance choosed polkadot ecosystem instead of Ethereum ? Any reason.
Ans: Polkadot’s interoperability layer allows us to communicate with all the blockchains and still achieve high throughput. Additionally, we inherit their security model, which means we get to be highly resilient, can do forkless upgrades while still being able to maintain stable on-chain governance. We are fully compatible with Ethereum and the current DeFi ecosystem, but we believe in order to innovate and take the landscape to the next level, we have to take it cross-chain, and through Polkadot we are able to achieve that.
Round 2 — Questions Asked on Twitter & Telegram For Reef Finance
Q1: By Tukang Short — How does Reef use cross-chain technology? What advantages does Reef have over Cosmos, Oracle, etc?
Ans: Polkadot’s parachain communication (XCMP) and bridging mechanism, combined with the possibility to run solidity code on parachains such as Plasm, the ability to use native Ethereum addresses and huge ecosystem support (Web3, Parity) were the reasons why we chose to build on Polkadot. Reef being cross-chain gives us flexibility, which means we are able to shift our product and features based on where the users are (currently on Ethereum) and what the users want/need in the future.
Q2: By Rick H — How secured and safe is the ReefDeFi’s platform for the users? Have you done constant security audits by a third party? How about the transparency regarding the team behind the platform?
Ans: Reef is completely non-custodial, so everything can be tracked and seen on the blockchain (we will provide tools which will allow easy monitoring). We are currently in the process of being audited by multiple companies. The team will be officially announced in the upcoming weeks. Currently it is known only to the investors. The reason behind the team not being (fully) public at this very moment is the demand for high quality developers as well as constant requests for allocations.
Q3: By Savage — What kind of terms & conditions are there registering on ReefDeFi’s platform? Do you require KYC for trading and for the withdrawals or are you a DEX?
Ans: You will always be able to use Reef just with just a metamask wallet. The moment we integrate CEX liquidity, if the user wants to have access to it, certain KYC procedures will have to happen. We will not be storing user’s data at any point in time. The KYC procedure regarding CEX liquidity will flow from the user’s machine directly to the prime broker. So basically you can choose to use it with or without KYC.
Q4: By Nikola Crypto — Adoption is one of the key factors that any blockchain project will focus on to become attractive to investors and users. I would like to ask what is ReefDeFi’s plan to apply for more adoption on the market?
Ans: Since Reef is cross-chain, we got the flexibility to integrate with multiple ecosystems. Since most of the DeFi activities are currently on Ethereum, we will be supporting all the major Ethereum protocols, but as other landscapes mature (Polkadot, Solana), since we are interoperable, we are able to have the first mover advantage and give the users access to all the new instruments in different ecosystems. Additionally, through our strategic partners, we have access to big communities in different geographical regions, which means we will be able to onboard a lot of users (our product will be multi-lingual from day 1).
Q5 : By James — Could you please elaborate more about the profit/revenue model that ReefDeFi aims to have? How do you plan to maintain it and how can it benefit all the parties in the projects - investors, partners and the project itself?
Ans: Reef currently has 3 income streams: Basket engine, protocol fees and interest paid by powerusers who borrow tokens from the Reef pool in order to increase their voting power. All the 3 income streams are currently flowing in the Reef pool. In the future, through voting, we plan to introduce Reef Treasury which will be the recipient of the income streams, and the DAO can further decide how to allocate the funds (eg: grants, buybacks, etc.)
Q6 : By Pavan — since different defi protocols have different interest rates and you guys are trying to aggregate the liquidity. How do you guys manage the different interest rates?
Ans: Through our Analytics Engine, we scan the whole landscape and we determine the best allocation based on the user’s risk levels. Then, we route your funds to the appropriate protocols.
Q7 : By John — Could you please elaborate more about your tokenomics (portions to be sold in private/public sale) & about the planned unlocks after them? What’s the total supply?
Ans: We are raising ~3.5m$ in private in 3 rounds (seed, strategic and private) + additional 0.5m$ in public sale (mechanism/date TBD). All the private rounds have lockup periods (20%, 25%, 30%). The total supply is 20B tokens. The supply at TGE will be ~6%.
Round 3 — Open Telegram Chat questions
Q1: By Avangator — Can you please tell us some of your partners at ReefDeFi and with which kind of partners are you planning to collaborate with in the near future?
Ans: We will announce our investors and our partnerships soon. Some of them are already announced on our telegram group and Medium blog. Will send links to those shortly.
Q2: By Tukang — The Demands of Yield Farming are booming these day, many there are many project come to join the yield farming race. What are Reef movement on this chance?
Ans: Reef would be the only thing you need in order to participate in all the yield farming races. We give you access from a single point to all the latest and greatest farming activities.
Q3: By Poltu — Security & scalability are the two main aspects that are very important at the enterprise level, how Reef handle these issues?
Ans: Polkadot’s high throughput allows us to use it for both bridging and side-processing. We are already using it for metadata processing, buffering and other things which are slow and expensive on ethereum.
Q4: By John — What is currently the biggest challenge/challenges that you are facing in terms of becoming a successful project or company and what would you consider as your main advantages on the market over your competitors?
Ans: The biggest effort would be to go through the pile of projects and show our value proposition in actionable form (ship a high quality product with good UX). Also, setting up the feedback loop and listen to what our userbase wants, and be able to iterate fast is the biggest challenge in the startup world.
Q5: Reef is a smart liquidity aggregator and yield engine that enables trading with access to liquidity from both CEXes and DEXes. So as the number of users increases rapidly, What will be your plan to ensure sufficient liquidity ? And how effective it will be?
Ans: After the CEX liquidity integration (through prime brokerages), we will basically have access to liquidity from the whole crypto landscape.
Q6: By Putri — Do you have any plans to attract non-crypto investors to Reef? What are the plans to increase awareness about Reef around in non-crypto space? And which region is in your mind?
Ans: Yes, as I mentioned a bit earlier, we plan to add a fiat gateway soon. Our vision is to onboard a user with a credit card and with 1 click give him access to multiple ecosystems through a single basket.
Closing Remarks :
Hunterr : It’s a proud moment for our group to welcome one of the hyped upcoming DEFI project to our TG group.It was a pleasure having discussions with you.
Gem Flair : Thank you very much for being here and sharing overall insight about what you are trying to achieve.
All the best for timely achievement of every milestone you have set in the roadmap.
Groot : Thank you very much for sharing your valuable time with our community .
Denko Mancheski : Thank you as well!
Join our telegram group and subscribe on https://reef.finance, and you will be fully up to date with the latest developments
Pleasure talking to you all! 🚀🚀
Important Links:
1) Reef Finance website: https://reef.finance/
2) Twitter : https://twitter.com/ReefDeFi
3) Telegram : https://t.me/reefdefi
4) Medium : https://medium.com/@reefdefi
5) Spykefast TG :https://t.me/spykefastofficial
Contact Spykefast Group (TG Members — @realsch & @Gem_Flair) for promotions and AMA!!
