B.Protocol had an AMA with @CRE8RDAO on the 1st Nov 2021. This summary highlights the main points covered during the AMA session, including the latest updates of @bprotocoleth and which new platforms they are going to integrate with.
@yaron_velner
🔹 Founder / Lead Dev - "Brain, muscles and vision" of B.Protocol
🔹 Was CTO of @KyberNetwork before this
🔹 Started SmartPool with @vutran54 as a semi-academic project, which evolved to become Kyber in 2017
@CRE8RDAO@bprotocoleth@yaron_velner@KyberNetwork@vutran54 🔹 Co-designer of the WBTC protocol with @BitGo team
🔹 Did development work on on-chain market-making tool created for DeFi
🔹 After Kyber in 2020, was consulting with pte companies, building liquidation bots for DeFi and CeFi
🔹 Realised liquidations in DeFi are broken
@CRE8RDAO@bprotocoleth@yaron_velner@KyberNetwork@vutran54@BitGo 🔹 Black Thursday came in March 2020
🔹 Liquidations on DeFi were not working when they were needed the most
🔹 Yaron decided to develop B.Protocol and build a permissionless backstop liquidity protocol for DeFi lending platforms
🔹 Head of Growth and Ecosystem Dev in B.Protocol
🔹 Co-founder of @lazoozorg - decentralized car pooling dapp built on top of $BTC
🔹 In 2017, led a project by Toyota Research Institute and met Yaron
🔹 Joined B.Protocol before it went live
🔹 B stands for Backstop
🔹 Seeks to democratize the liquidation systems in DeFi through a Backstop liquidity protocol to unlock better capital efficiency in the entire DeFi ecosystem
🔹 This has quite a lot to unpack, so what does it all mean?
@CRE8RDAO@bprotocoleth@yaron_velner@KyberNetwork@vutran54@BitGo@EKatchka@lazoozorg 🔸 Democratize liquidation system - everyone can take part and profit
🔸 Backstop Liquidity protocol - lending platforms get a stronger safety net because of a committed pool
🔸 Better capital efficiency - with better liquidation system, higher leverage can be used
🔹 Currently B.Protocol is integrated on top of L1 lending platforms
🔹 Will be working on L2: 🔸@arbitrum 🔸@0xPolygon
🔹 And other chains: 🔸#BSC 🔸@FantomFDN
🔹 Protocol is blockchain agnostic and can work with any EVM compatible chains
🔸 Having a committed backstop pool allows lending platforms to increase collateral factors
🔸 From x3 - x5 to x10 - x20 leverage
🔸 Liquidations will happen even in sub-optimal market conditions
🔸 No gas wars are needed to handle liquidations because there is a dedicated pool for such purposes
🔸 The profit that is otherwise taken by the miners will be passed to the depositors in the pool and shared with users
For backstop pool depositors
🔹 Users deposit into a pool to gain rewards from liquidations
🔹 A liquidity mining program is used to incentivize and reward early depositors
🔹 Liquidations do not happen all the time but idle funds will earn a yield
🔹 Under the hood, integrated platform will give priority to the backstop pool to handle liquidations
🔹 Since liquidation will happen when needed, users can get higher collateral factors and lower liquidation thresholds
🔹 There are benefits for users:
🔹 B.Protocol DAO has funded their first Growth Squad with 25k $BPRO to grow and market the protocol
🔹 Made up of 3 veteran community members
🔹 Active community on all the major social media platforms like Discord, forums, Twitter and Reddit
How does Liquity work?
🔹 Uses a stability pool that functions like a backstop pool for liquidations
🔹 Users deposit $LUSD into the pool and funds from the pool will be used to liquidate unsafe Liquity Troves
🔹 Automatic rebalancing of the liquidation in Liquity, using B.AMM
🔹 $ETH collateral will automatically be sold back to $LUSD and deposited back to the pool
🔹 Users will optimise $LQTY rewards - saves effort and gas
🔹 2nd liquidity mining program is running to offer incentives for users of B.Protocol
🔹 Partnered with @UMAprotocol for UMA KPI options program
🔸 B.Protocol DAO deposits 90k $BRPO unto UMA KPI option contract
🔸 Mints 30k uBRPO
KeeperDAO
🔹 KCompound has a similar logic to v1, something that B.Protocol is doing for MakerDAO and Compound 6 months before they launch
🔹 Knew that they slashed their rewards. Why?
🔸 Reached a ceiling?
🔸 No value add
🔸 Too much dev work needed
🔹 No active backstop protocols currently
🔹 KCompound (mentioned earlier) has a similar product to their v1
🔹 Other protocols are building products to avoid liquidations but these do not solve capital efficiency problem in DeFi
🔹 Fully decentralised since launch
🔹 Controlled and owned by users
🔹 6 months after mainnet launch, users voted to tokenize the governance
🔹 Now B.Protocol is governed by $BPRO holders
🔹 Challenge is to show that their solution works even during severe market conditions
🔹 B.Protocol can cater to the full spectrum of DeFi users in the space
🔹 Still trying to raise awareness about the benefits of the protocol as liquidation is complex
Blockchain + Web3 is revolutionary, but what is limiting their potential to change the world are the challenges involved in indexing and accessing data on the blockchain itself. @ZettaBlockHQ aims to address this issue.
• Has a #Web3 startup team that operates globally
• The team is led by two experienced co-founders, Scott Shi and Chi Zhang
🔸Scott Shi (@scottshics)
• Has over a decade of expertise in engineering
• Worked at companies like @Uber, @salesforce & EA
🔸 Chi Zhang
• Was a product manager at @databricks
• Holds a PhD from @UCBerkeley
• Experience in building data and #AI products
• Proven track record of supporting data-driven
organizations
He discusses anthropology, Web3 and other subcultures, and many other interesting topics with @chaserchapman in this episode of On The Other Side 👇
Background
🔹 An anthropologist
🔹 Is an artist
🔹 A DAO contributor
🔹 Has a Substack, but it’s not really a newsletter, but a cultural report
Substack
🔹 It’s more an anthropological collection of a subculture
🔹 Trying to record the why and the what behind the different projects
🔹 Important to have a bird’s eye view to see the connections
🔹 Is an obsessively curious person. Have always been searching for cool stuff
Today, I'll be sharing the book highlights of @peterthiel's Zero to One. Peter Thiel is a serial entrepreneur who helped to start up many companies, like @PayPal and @PalantirTech, and invested in Facebook.
If he has something to say about startups, I want to know. Read on 👇
There are 2 kinds of progress:
• Horizontal (1 to n)
• Vertically (0 to 1)
E.g. Horizontal progress is about getting existing products distributed to more places (globalization), while vertical progress is about coming up with new products (tech).
From the book's title, you should be able to deduce which is the better kind of progress. Going from zero to one will be hard, but the rewards will be way better than going from 1 to many.
👉 Look for companies that go from 0 to 1 instead of 1 to n.
🔹 People remember the year for all the terrible stuff that happened
🔹 Important to remember the positive events too (e.g. the merge)
🔹 The merge is a transaction inclusion time decrease
🔹 Have multiple zk-EVM implementations that will have a mainnet launch in 2023
🔹 @signinwitheth has seen massive gains in adoption
🔹 Cryptocurrency payments worked during the invasion of Ukraine
🔹 Have always recommended @KeePassXC or @Bitwarden:
🔸 KeePassXC: A completely offline tool. Reserved for extreme scenarios
🔸 Bitwarden: A secure password manager that synchronizes your password database across multiple devices
Now
🔹 Online password managers have advanced quite a bit
🔹 Every reputable password manager encrypts everything on your machine before it goes into the database
🔹 Does not recommend LastPass, 1Password, Dashlane
🔹 For people new to password managers, he recommends Bitwarden