Dear Community,
Thanks all for participating in our Aegis DeFi AMA. We really appreciate all your support. There were really good and thoughtful questions that were asked. For those who missed our AMA, this blog post is for you .
Introduction!
Mayank – Hello @ChristopherHolm welcome to CryptoNationIN 🥳 We are glad to have you here 🙂
Christopher – thank you
Mayank – Before we start, I request you to tell about yourself and about Aegis DeFi.
Christopher – Hi! This is Christopher Holm, Chief Technology Officer at Aegis DeFi. Graduated from the Department of Computer Science, Imperial College London, I personally possess extensive knowledge and experience performing solution architecture design and development using Service Oriented Architecture principles. With more than 3 years of working experience in Blockchain architecture design and engineering, I have been looking at the specific realm of open finance and started my research on DeFi. And I Co-founded Aegis, a DeFi 2.0 protocol for features more diversified lending services besides over-collateralized lending, such as micro-lending and Unsecured Borrowing as well as derivative issuance such as CDS.
Mayank – Great 👏🏻 Before we start, I would like to ask some Questions regarding Aegis DeFi. Should I proceed with that?
Christopher – Of course
Mayank – There are quite many DeFi projects with similar functionalities and even ideas. So as CTO, what plans do you have for Aegis as a DeFi product?
Christopher – According to Aegis DeFi roadmap, Aegis will first focus on product development. Soon we will launch the MVP and liquidity pools on Aegis. In the near future, we will keep working on the optimization of the product and services that we provide for users. Compared to current lending platforms such as Compound, Aegis features more diversified lending services such as micro-lending and unsecured lending based on the credit lines of each user.
Mayank – I notice that Aegis DeFi will also apply “Yield Farming” or liquidity farming. Can you share with us the mining mechanism of AGS?
Christopher – An “Aegis Score” is then assigned to the individual users, which allows users to unlock corresponding capital loans in the crypto ecosystem. In every block produced during lending & borrowing on Aegis, there will be certain amount of AGS tokens to be distributed to the users, of which half will be granted to the lenders based on the total amount of deposits and the other half will go to the borrowers based on the total amount of loans.
Mayank – What do you think about the extreme incidents such as 3.12? What precautions does Aegis offers to users to hedge such risks?
Christopher – In the tokenomics design of Aegis, with the growth of lending & borrowing business, derivatives issuance and trading volume, it’s the commission/fee income will inevitably increase. In order to effectively hedge extreme market risks, part of the fee in Aegis will continue to be injected into the stabilization fund pool to hedge market risks. On the other hand, Aegis will apply numerous security measures. Aegis will build up a precaution system to remind users of borrowing interest rates which shall not be too high for users. Second, we will provide functionality in our product in the near future which enables users to set certain collateral rates and automatic repay or withdrawal.
Mayank – As we all know that, Ethereum is very jammed for now, but Aegis chose Ethereum to deploy contracts. With the increase of trading volume and TLV, what plans do you have in terms of scalability?
Christopher – Although ETH is currently getting jammed up due to active on-chain transactions, the diversity of Ethereum’s ecological construction, network security, and capital abundance are still far ahead of other public chain platforms. In addition, ETH 2.0 will be launched soon, which will also greatly improve the processing capacity of ETH. We believe that, for now Ethereum is still the smart contract with most applications and mature technologies. In the future, with ETH2.0, the jamming issue will be very much relieved. On the other hand, we will probably consider other public-chains such as EOS or Polkadot to enable cross-chain transactions.
Mayank – What advantages does Aegis have compared to other DeFi projects? What are so special about Aegis? Such as product functions?
Christopher – There are competitors such as MakerDAO, Compound and Aave etc. While, what makes Aegis different is that Aegis is more product-oriented. We provide a DeFi product which will be more user-friendly, easy-to-use, more abundant info display through our Dashboard, helping new users to get involved faster. As for product functions, in the early stage, we will enable collateralized lending & borrowing services first. On the bases of collateralized lending & borrowing, we will further optimize interest-rate models, higher scalability and stronger adaptability. We will also work on product details for perfection. Besides, in the future and also as said in our roadmap, we will make more diversified services available such as micro-lending, unsecured borrowing etc.
Mayank – How do you view the popularity of DeFi lately? Do you believe that it’s just a one-time thing or could be something disruptive for the whole financial industry?
Christopher – DeFi as an open finance model possesses several core advantages of competitiveness that traditional financing lacks. First, users will hold the private keys of their personal wallets, not just nominal numbers given by banks with the fear of losing all the owner rights. Second, cryptocurrencies enable on-chain transactions which rules out any risks of manipulations. Third, it’s open and free, accessible to all users. Unlike the inconvenience in traditional financing, DeFi can offer access to all users. DeFi will bring innovations to traditional financing in terms of service scope, service quality as well as the way of providing services.
Mayank – Please explain the token economics of AGS as the utility token of Aegis DeFi? What are the use cases? How can users get AGS tokens?
Christopher – Aegis Network validators must stake a certain amount of AEGIS tokens as collateral to participate in the validation of on-chain transactions and validation of users’ credit lines and quotas for unsecured loans. Lending, borrowing, trading and asset management activities may incur gas and transaction fees with Aegis Network. Users get a discount on these fees should they choose to pay them in AEGIS tokens. AEGIS tokens may be used as collateral to borrow capital from the Aegis liquidity pool, and is subjected to the same collateralization models provided in the technical design. AEGIS token holders within the community retain the rights to raise proposals and vote on these proposals. The proposals may include the change of staking rewards or updates on the blockchain, and are subject to majority vote requirements and minimum quorum requirements for network proposals. AEGIS tokens are required to be staked by proposal creators and voters.
Twitter Questions
Q1. Aegis recently made a partnership with IOST. What is the purpose of this alliance and how will it benefit Aegis?
Christopher – Well, our collaboration with IOST is more about technology co-working towards co-building a DeFi ecology. Aegis uses a proprietary AI-powered credit scoring algorithm to assess users’ creditworthiness based on the data provided, and assign an “Aegis Score” to each user, which is similar to traditional risk profile assessments. In the near future, with IOST’s technology support and the application of IOST’s “Proof of Believability” PoB Consensus algorithm, it will help optimizing Aegis DeFi’s scalability performance, user data privacy protection, speed of transactions as well as validation of users’ “Aegis Score”.
Q2. What difficulties and chances that Aegis DeFi face right now while crypto / blockchain market is still young and need time to grow?
Christopher – Personally, I believe that the most challenging aspect facing DeDi is mass adoption. For now, what we know about DeFi is that DeFi offers services such as decentralized lending & borrowing, DEX, derivatives etc. Yes, the TLV of DeFi has hit a record high of more than 8 Billion in USD. But the thing is that, the user base or the level of adoption of DeFi are still very limited. Most of DeFi users now are frequent or professional traders who have particular experience and expertise to master the tools and enjoy profits. While, most of crypto traders are still new to DeFi services. That’s what Aegis is dedicated in the change of the situation. Aegis will be able to provides decentralized lending & borrowing services to people who don’t need to be collateralized. They will enjoy DeFi services as easily as opening a credit card in real-world banks.
Q3. You offer lending and unsecured borrowing services to users based on their credit scores. In the case of new users with no loan history, how do you assign “Aegis Score” to such user? Or such user isn’t entitled to borrowing on Aegis platform?
Christopher – Users can identify themselves through establish know-your-customers (KYC) procedures and submit their credit scores to Aegis for credit line assessment. This information shall be encrypted and privately stored on-chain, allowing for data immutability and privacy at the same time.
Aegis uses a proprietary AI-powered credit scoring algorithm to assess users’ creditworthiness based on the data provided, and assign an “Aegis Score” to each user, which is similar to traditional risk profile assessments. The Aegis Score determines the maximum credit that a user is allowed to draw down from the liquidity pool. In the initial stage, the algorithm assigns a relatively more conservative Aegis Score on all users. However, as users’ lending and trading activities take place on-chain within the Aegis Network, the machine learning algorithm takes into account their track record and updates their Aegis Scores on a regular, fair and transparent basis.
Q4. How AEGIS DEFI empower investors, companies, developers, and its users to deliver impactful solutions and bring value to global people?
Christopher – Well. First of all, as a DeFi 2.0 protocol, Aegis is a community driven project as we are supported by more than 20 of the world’s leading crypto communities and influencer groups. This particular feature will help with Aegis’ user growth, brand awareness development as well as business development in the long term. We intend to keep doing so in order to make more people know about our values and services. Second, Aegis is more like a product-oriented project. Our team has been working hard on product development with optimization of algorithms, product functionalities, profitability performance etc. The most foundational values that Aegis could bring will be realized through our cutting-edge product and services.
Q5. Please explain more about the AEGIS MARKETPLACE Where I can Publish and trade my assets?
Christopher – There has been so much anticipation for when and where to buy AGS tokens. So, in order to power the whole Aegis DeFi ecology, we will soon be listing our AGS tokens on Uniswap and probably on a couple of leading CEX exchanges. So, I ask people to be patient.
Q6. As we know, every successful project has some behind the scenes story, what is the story behind AegisDefi success? What was it’s vision when AegisDefi first came as an idea?
Christopher – A very good question! Most of the successful projects all have one thing in common: innovation of idea. When it comes to Aegis, it’s very clear for people that compared to other DeFi platforms Aegis focuses more on diversified lending and borrowing services to make DeFi accessible to all. About where the vision came from in the first place is that the core founders of Aegis are mostly from the traditional financing industry and they realized the need for more popularized DeFi services. With the support from some best Blockchain technicians and engineers, the team decided to take this idea further and that’s where we started Aegis.
Telegram Questions
Q7. What is the biggest challenge you face currently in terms of becoming a successful project or company?
Christopher – The most challenging thing will be the integration of Blockchain with AI algothrim. The smart contract needs very solid work on it. Second, the services that Aegis offers are more complicated than our competitors. For example, no one does Unsecured Borrowing before. And we need an economic model to make it secure.
Q8. Your metamorphosis is a laudable one, how have you been able to survive this longest bear market and continue building and developing cos many projects have died out in this time period?What’s your greatest threats going forward and what plans are in place to overcome them?
Christopher – Personally, I do believe that DeFi services are very promising in terms of application and future development. Open finance platforms such as Aegis will definitely bring new values and innovations to the industry. So no matter bear or bull, people will definitely need lending & borrowing services in order to earn more interest. So I don’t think the market circumstances will be a big issue for us. Aegis is set for long-term development, with most optimized product and most user-friendly services.
Q9. Community is the key to success of projects, so besides organizing AMAs, what strategy does Aegis DeFi have to reach out and exploit new and potential investors?
Christopher – As a community-driven DeFi project, Aegis sees community as the most important component of its development. Aegis is supported by numerous of world’s leading influencers, community leaders in the crypto realm. I think that there are some groud principals when reaching out to the community and investors: transparency, communications and mutual-support. Aegis will create a product making DeFi accessible for all. So, I believe that we will be a project which is user-friendly and continues to be community-driven.
Q10. I’m a white hat hacker in internet, do you think your system is secure enough from hackers? Does your project have a program that rewards individual vulnerability detection of the system?
Christopher – Aegis is designed by experienced protocol infrastructure architects and business professionals who have contributed to the growth of the blockchain industry since the early days of Ethereum development. In addition to the team’s deep experience, Aegis will that ensure that the network is secure through code and smart contract audits with globally leading blockchain audit firms. Users can expect Aegis Network to be built with the highest level of financial security.
Q11. What mechanism has AEGIS put in place to help create continuously growing demands for AEGIS tokens in the open market? Are there possibilities of having a buy back or token burn?
Christopher – AEGIS token’s utility lies in its double feature as both collateral and as an entrance requirement to the Aegis DeFi Ecosystem. Each use of the Aegis protocol starts with the deposit and lock-up of digital assets and the issuance of credit and other collateral backed derivatives by engaging the Aegis Protocol, which demands AEGIS tokens. Product-driven business growth of AEGIS lending & borrowing services as well as lending-based derivatives will create continuously growing demands for AEGIS tokens in the open market as participants will need to purchase or borrow the tokens to meet their operational demands for lowering down the collateral ratio. Fees will be partially burned, and partially extracted to the Aegis Collateral Pool to hedge the market and security risks. Also, AEGIS tokens will apply a deflationary mechanism to better secure the values of AEGIS.
Q12. Why do you choose to make partner with IOST?What are the benefits when Aegis works with IOST?
Christopher – IOST is a world-leading public Blockchain platform developed for online service providers, empowered by its unique, next-generation Proof of Believability consensus. In this case, by working with IOST, it will definitely bring more technical support to Aegis in terms of scalability and higher speed of transactions. To apply PoB consensus, Aegis will work with IOST to build a validation network applying the underlying technologies provided by IOST in order to validate and grant users’ their “Aegis Score”.
Q13. Please explain more about the UTILITY of Aegis DeFi the real life use case and application.
Christopher – Similar to what people usually do with traditional financing or banking, people are enjoy more diversified lending and borrowing services at Aegis. When users use Aegis services, they will not be required to present their credit scores prior to banking, there may be risks associated with identity verifications and credit defaults in the market. Identity verifications need to be robust, to ensure that the protocol is accepting users with good credit worthiness into the ecosystem.
Q14. Trust is very important in business, what makes investors, customers and users feel safe when working with AEGIS DeFi?
Christopher – We are doing some internal code-auditing, which guarantees that there will not be any loophole left before we submit them to the auditors. Also, We already entrusted one top-tier auditor which has the best team and are already working on the code auditing. Once we complete the auditing, we will update in GitHub as we take extreme vigilance on this.
Q15. Safety and security are always the issues that users are most concerned about. As the Defi network that links liquidity between cash and the Defi system, what solution does Aegis offer to ensure user safety?
Christopher – Aegis will apply numerous security measures. Aegis will build up a precaution system to remind users of borrowing interest rates which shall not be too high for users. Second, we will provide functionality in our product in the near future which enables users to set certain collateral rates and automatic repay or withdrawal.
Q16. DeFi is one of the hottest topic in the blockchain space right now. Can “Aegis DeFi” share your opinions on DeFi with us? Do you think that DeFi will disrupt the existing financial system?
Christopher – The reason why Aegis was founded was that the core team members found out the true values of DeFi as a “go-to” solution to the issues facing traditional financing, including lack of transparency, low efficiency, high costs, etc. So, definitely we believe the future of DeFi as it will bring new values and innovations to people’s daily lives as everyone is engaged with financial services. Yes, I think that DeFi will be disruptive to the existing financial system.
Thank you to Christopher Holm, and Community for participating in the AMA. Have a nice day
