Unifi — CryptVerse AMA
Date : 14th October 2020
Guest : Juliun Brabon — CEO of Unifi Protocol
Q: Please briefly introduce yourself and #UniFi to our community?
A: My name is Juliun Brabon, I’m the CEO of Unifi Protocol and Sesameseed.
We launched sesameseed about 2.5 years ago with a focus on community building and decentralized governance, expanding this methodology as a blockchain developer and node operator on many blockchains including ontology, tron and harmony.
Today we’re happy to announce Unifi Protocol live on the Tron and Ontology blockchains, This protocol is a group of non-custodial, interoperable, decentralized, and multi-chain smart contracts providing the building blocks for the next generation of DeFi development, focusing on building a community-driven ecosystem of governance and innovative DeFi products.
Today Unifi has developed from the ground up a series of smart contracts similar to other Defi Exchanges, that allows for Individuals to provide liquidity and earn a share of the protocol fees in a sustainable way. These are live on Tron, and Ontology today with Harmony onboarding later as early as next week and others in the near future.
Q: I find that UNFI Protocol use 2 token in it’s ecosystem : $UP and $UNFI. Can you tell us the difference between these tokens? And what is the uses case of these tokens?
A: UP is the blockchain-specific liquidity mining token of the Unifi Protocol. it’s backed by the native token of whatever blockchain its on (e.g. UPtrx is backed by TRX, UPont is backed by ONTd). It is designed to only increase in redeem value, and it can do so sustainably because it is 100% backed by those native tokens. It’s a long Term, sustainable reward token on each blockchain.
UNFI is the global governance token on all Protocol blockchains. By using UNFI’s global position in the Protocol token economy, liquidity providers can mine UP on one blockchain while still benefiting from the liquidity mining on all the other Protocol blockchains. It is designed to be cross-chain, allow users to participate in Voting, Proposing governance activities, and earn more UNFI as a result of their participation. This token ensures the underlying protocol is constantly evolving along with community sentiment.
Q: UNFI tokens will be able to participate in different governance activities depending on the voluntary actions of the UNFI holder.But what is the main advantage of owning such tokens, and what are the long-term benefits?
A: Sure, UNFI holders earn the right to participate in the governance of the Protocol, so for users of the platform that is a huge benefit to be able to influence the direction and evolution of Unifi across multiple blockchains. The longer you hold UNFI and choose to do those voluntary actions, the more rights you earn.
There are also rewards for participating in those governance decisions. Unifi is a big believer in sustainable incentivization. So not only can you have a say in platform decisions, but you also earn additional UNFI tokens for doing so, which creates a long term positive feedback loop.
Q: One of the product of UNFI is Lending. How will you become an intermediary for users who want to borrow crypto assets? How does the interest rate calculated? Do you require KYC for borrowing?
A: uLend is an interesting product. The Unifi Protocol allows uLend to create loans which require no trust and are governed by smart contracts. There are several features under consideration for uLend and how they will interact with UNFI. uLend removes obstacles to financial opportunities and unlocks the stored value of collateralized tokens.
UP and SEED, two tokens in the Unifi ecosystem, are collateralized tokens. This means they are backed by funds which are verifiable on-chain. uLend can allow unlocking that value for re-use, without giving up the underlying value they represent.
Because these are on chain activities that will occur entirely within smart contract KYC will not be necessary, Furthermore Interest rates can be calculated by the contracts themselves, similar to how price discovery works in the existing dex.
Q: What’s real-world use of UNFI protocol ? Where can we expect the use of UNFI protocol services?
For which types of problems relief is expected from Unifi protocol ecosystem?
A: Unifi provides the tools to build DeFi products. uTrade is one example — a trading platform with liquidity mining. But it doesn’t always have to be trading. There are other ways to solve problems. An example of that would be uLend, like i explained moments ago.
The great thing about Unifi Protocol is that anyone can build these services and DeFi products on our protocol, and UP holders will benefit from that! So anyone can create their own solutions to a wide variety of problems or pain points using our smart contracts.
Imagine earning rewards and participating in the governance of a completely developed DeFi ecosystem, and not just relying on traders and miners. There’s a whole world of opportunities out there.
Q: Tron and Ontology are your flagship blockchains. Why these two blockchains and do you plan to expand to other protocols?
A: These chains were chosen because Sesameseed is already operating nodes on those blockchains and can bring our expertise of tokenization to those chains in a very short period of time. All these chains demonstrate the power of DeFi platforms with fast transactions and very low transaction costs, which is lacking on all the Ethereum platforms. This means more of the total fee paid by traders goes to liquidity miners rather than to network costs.
Of course we are expanding! Don’t forget that we are planning on launching on Harmony, and could be as early as next week. We also just announced a grant proposal to expand Unifi to the amazing ICON community. And we are in talks with quite a few others actually, but I cant discuss that just yet.
Q: The Unifi Protocol team recently announced the inclusion of Wing Finance in uTrade. What are your expectations of this new partnership? What are the goals of the two projects together?
A: I think we can do a lot with WING actually,
They’re attracting a lot of new users to their platform from other blockchains. so this creates an opportunity for those users to join liquidity pools with their tokens obtained through Wing.
Q: Could you give us an overview of UP tokenomics? Is the token designed to rise and fall with the success of the platform, and does it include any scarcity paths such as stake, store, or burn?
A: UP token is designed to be burned actually, every trade mints some amount of UP for the liquidity providers of that pair. a portion of the trading fee is reserved from every trade to increase the redeemable value of UP.
Since UP is a 100% reserver token, Meaning it is actually backed in smart contract by an amount of ONTd (which increases with every trade) if users burn it they receive the ONTd that is backing it, which further increases the rate at which the redeem value increases. Its a sustainable cycle.
Q: How do you guarantee the safety of users with the ledger you developed and where several people can access their own token? Is it possible that this ledger suffers from some sibylline attack?
A: So, we actually use the shared ledger of the blockchain we’re on.
(Tron, Ontology, Harmony etc )
The risk is the same as that of the blockchain itself.
Q: Where I Can Buy tokens UNFI?
A: Actually we have not yet opened UNFI to the public, this will be coming in the near future so stay tuned.
Q: How difficult is it to fulfill legal requirements from governments to be able to trade with fiat currencies? Are there countries where UNIFI DEFI cannot be used yet due to those regulations?
A: Its actually very difficult actually, but we do not deal with Fiat Currencies, we exist entirely as an on chain utility, and 100% of the transactions are managed by the blockchain itself within the smart contracts that are deployed.
There is not centralized server for the technology, it is entirely on chain.
Q: It is heard that” SesameseedOrg submitted a grant proposal for expansion of Unifi Protocol to @helloICONworld”. So What benefit will this bring it to the Unifi Protocol ecosystem.
A: oh yes we did,
And we’re looking forward to potentially expanding the Unifi Ecosystem to ICON.
This would improve the cross chain interoperability of the protocol.
Q: A few days ago we both heard a news headline entitled ‘hacking’, how do Unifi DeFi think about it ? well, the most important thing is how Unifi DeFi prevents and protects assets from similar incidents?
A: Great one, and actually relevant to the last.
We’ve seen a lot of projects hacked. Mostly regarding the Minting / token holdings of the platform.
fortunately, we do not Mint up and we don’t hold a massive supply. In fact Unifi is not involved in the distribution of UP token at all. Rather this is entirely managed by the smart contracts themselves, really giving us a huge leg up in terms of protection.
Q: As of now that so many blockchains conquering DEFI like Binance.
Do you intend to have a partnership with other blockhain? Because we all know in term of fees,services and promos that Binance smartchain giving to holders,stakers are the most cheaper than Etherium.
A: We do actually, and we intend to continue expanding onto new chains in the future.
Q: 2020 is the year of DeFi and Yield Farming, does UP predict that in 2021 it will still be a trend?
A: Ultimately we’ve designed up to be sustainable and to really capture value into the token itself.
I do believe that defi has made its mark on the industry and it will continue to have an impact. UP itself is designed to be sustainable into the future.
Q: What your plans in place for global expansion, Is UNIFI focusing on only market at this time? Or focus on building and developing or getting customers and users, or partnerships?
A:Our focus is entirely on awareness.
Getting users into our platform, building our our ecosystem, expanding to new networks are key.
Q: Can You talk about your Governance Model? As Staking has become very Popular, Whats your view?
A: Can speak to this a little,
Basically, we’re going to be encouraging cross chain participation, I’ll share a diagram below.
Q: The Unifi Protocol was introduced by Sesameseed on August 16. What is Unifi Protocol’s secret to achieving such rapid community growth in such a short time?
A: This is actually something we’ve been working on for a long time. A lot of preparation went into developing these contracts and ensuring they were properly audited.
ultimately we’re a team, with all development happening in house. we’re simply able to move faster as a result of good planning and a good team.
Q: What is the relationship between uTrade and Unifi? How closely related both projects are?
A: So Unifi Is the protocol itself, it sets all of the Core contracts, uTrade is simply the expression of the dex contracts publicly. as a result things like ulend in the future will be built on top of Unifi Protocol.
Q: Do you also plan to partner with popular DEX like KyberSwap and UniSwap to increase userbase?
A:I’m sure we’ll see some interaction with Uniswap as an example when we fully integrate with Ethereum.
Unifi Protocol’s website can be found at https://www.unifiprotocol.com/ . You can also connect to the Unifi community on Telegram , Twitter , or Medium . Developers — check out our bounty list to develop on the Unifi Protocol at https: //gitcoin.co/issue/sesame-seed/Quest/1/100023698
Join Cryptoverse!
Join the community chat on Telegram.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe us on Youtube.
