Tidal Finance AMA Recap

31 Aug 202023:08

AMA

Tidal Finance AMA Recap

Cryptodiffer Team

Hello, everyone!😁

We are glad to meet here
Chad Liu (@chadliu638), CEO of Tidal Finance

Chad Liu

hello everyone, glad to be here.

Cryptodiffer Team

Welcome Chad, thank you for taking your time today!
Our team has prepared 3 questions for you to start with!
Let`s start with the introduction!
Q1: Can you introduce yourself to our community?

Chad Liu

First of all, thank you for organizing this. A bit background about myself - I have a mathematics, engineering and finance background, came to crypto space in 2017 working in a venture fund, and fell in love with space. The amount of creativity, innovation is definitely ahead of other industries. Earlier last year around April, I started this company by realizing the defi space has a high demand for insurance service.

Cryptodiffer Team

Q2: Can you introduce Tidal Finance to us?

Chad Liu

Of course. - Tidal an insurance marketplace to connect insurance sellers and buyers to cover smart contract hacks. The platform offers the functionalities to create custom insurance plans for one or more assets from multiple protocols. The main objective of the platform is to maximize capital efficiency and return to attract LP’s (insurance sellers), while offering competitive insurance premiums to attract buyers. There are couple other players in the market - nexus mutual, cover. we are solving the problem in the same space

Cryptodiffer Team

We have the last question from our team before we open the chat for the community
Q3: Let`s now talk about the milestones you have achieved so far and about your upcoming plans

Chad Liu

On the product side we finished the architect and design for alpha, we are launching testnet soon in couple week. Actually we just released the new site yesterday, more information with product demo will be up in couple days as well.

On the funding side we had great success on private raise. For future capital bootstrap to be used for the platform. we're currently working on incentive schemes to attract users, drive adoption and ensure retention (liquidity mining, staking). we'll be sharing details of these mechanisms and their respective incentives with the launch of our alpha

Here is the published fund raise link on coindesk: https://www.coindesk.com/polkadot-based-defi-insurance-app-raises-1-95m-led-by-kr1

Cryptodiffer Team

Amazing, thank you for the extensive answers!
It is time to move to the community questions part.

Cryptodiffer Community

👀I've seen that you have recently made a partnership with Reef and that you recently announced one with KONOMI. What can you tell us about these strategic partnerships, why did you choose them, what benefits will Tidal receive from this, what other important partnerships are we going to see soon? And what projects do you want Tidal to collaborate with?

Chad Liu

we are forming partnership with other defi protocols that have potential risks with hacks. include them on tidal platform will give tidal LPs (insurance seller) an opportunity to sell cover for these protocol and earn yield. for protocol team the benefit is obvious, will generate more coverage for them to increase their user safety. we are working on other collaboration points too, e,g, use protocol team native token as an additional coverage in case hack happens. there are more up-coming partnerships very soon- mainly focused on lending, dex, and asset management protocols.

Cryptodiffer Community

I understand that surely it must be a secret discovered by you, but really what is the real problem of hacks and scams in DeFi? And how will Tidal be able to minimize and even eliminate all the possibility of some act of scam?

Chad Liu

tidal's mission is to protect hacks when it happens. in terms of reduce the possibility of such events we have a thorough process to onboard protocols onto tidal platform. team background check, code audit report review, protocol live time been on the market, total locked value monitoring, etc. I can't see we will prevent scams in general in the defi space, but at least for the protocols on our platform we try best to reduce the chances.

Cryptodiffer Community

Any plans in the future to offer not only user level insurance, but also exchange/Institutional level insurance? I'm sure a lot of crypto based companies would prefer to have their assets insured within the crypto sphere for ease & compliance.

Chad Liu

of course. it is already in the process. a lot protocol teams we partner with will purchase cover for themselves. In case hacks they can use that fund to compensate their user. I guess our end goal is to benefit end user, either from protocol teams themselves or end user directly.

Cryptodiffer Community

- Can you tell us about Tidal's Mutual Cover Pools? What does it entails?

-Will Tidal finance obtain a Parachain slot on Polkadot or you plan to integrate with other projects that will obtain a parachain slot?

Chad Liu

tidal mutual cover pool will include a list of protocols. and seller can select multiple protocols to backup at the same time. Buyer can select the protocol they want to be covered and enroll in the coverage plan. It is the place that seller and buyer interact with each other.

We are not participating in the parachain slot at moment since our functionality is on smart contract level. we don't see the need to obtain our own chain as right now. But it doesn't exclude the possibility to own our chain down the road.

Cryptodiffer Community

How will the price of coverage change as DeFi grows and the demand for insurance increases? What happens when demand is low?

Chad Liu

the pricing formula and guideline will be control by DAO over time. We have a set of parameters reflecting the current market. supply and demand is definitely a factor impacting the insurance pricing. Over time it will depend on DAO how to set parameters to attract buyer and sellers. like you mentioned, if more hack happens, intuitively, the price should go up since risk will go up.

Cryptodiffer Community

How can you minimize insolvency risk for pool creators and also increase capital efficiency?

Chad Liu

we have several solutions for insolvency risk. 1. the cover period is shorten from year to weeks at a time, which reduces the chance of multiple protocols get hacked under same cover period. 2. our own staking pool and partnered protocol team's native token pool will also be used to compensate the losses.

Cryptodiffer Community

What is the major focus of Tidal finance now?
Token value or project development? 😊

Chad Liu

both. 🙂 and these two goes hand in hand. we are launching testnet soon to support our token value. once launch, by measuring how much cover we could add into defi space with tidal platform would be an important metric to determine insurance platform's value.

Cryptodiffer Community

How much time will it take for Tidal Finance to get into mainstream adoption and execute all the plans set for this project?

Chad Liu

we are doing a lot business development, educating our own community, partnership's community to increase their defi safety awareness. so far it seems to be a good approach for user growth. outside defi we are working with traditional insurance companies like Marsh for potential opportunities. but as right now defi space is our main focus.

Cryptodiffer Community

Your project looks good but it confuses me that there are so many other good Blockchain project. Why should I pay attention in Your project to give it the importance it deserves? What are your planning to achieve with your project?

Chad Liu

a good way to compare us is to compare the existing solutions on the market. right now nexus mutual and cover are two protocols on the market. we all have each uniqueness.

Cryptodiffer Community

Currently "Staking" is a very popular topic. can you please explain the details about the token staking plan and the benefits of adding "staking"?

Chad Liu

tidal staking pool will offer additional reward for stakers. the propose of this pool is to further protect the defi hacks in the space. In case of capital pool insolvency, certain amount of staked token may get paid out. But for the long term benefit it will be a great vehicle to support platform's user adoption and growth.

Cryptodiffer Community

How flexible is V1's design to choose multiple backup protocols? When will the additional features be launched to enable different pools to be offered?

Chad Liu

yes. our v1 will launch few pools with different rules for seller to choose the number of protocols to backup. the parameters are flexible in each pool and will be managed by DAO over time. launching new pools will also be available.

Cryptodiffer Community

Southeast Asia is a very vibrant market and many project developed here so with your project what do you think about Southeast Asia and do you have any plan to develop here?

Chad Liu

of course. our core team is in US but we are pretty decentralized in general. have people in Europe and Asia. Finding good talent in smart contract space especially defi is a challenge right now. We are always looking out for the best.

Cryptodiffer Community

What is the system and structure of this project, is it decentralized or open where everyone can contribute especially the fans of each team? If so, how is it managed?

Chad Liu

yes. everyone can participate, it is a decentralized protocol. like aave, uniswap. connect wallet and you are good to go. no KYC required.

Cryptodiffer Community

Are those coverage plans that you have published on your website already final or can they be modified later by the community?

Chad Liu

can be modified by community. The insurance market is a dynamic space. hack incident frequency, hacked amount, these could impact how insurance seller and buyer's habit. The protocol will set up a guideline and offer enough flexibility for itself to evolve. The goal is to attract seller and buyer as a platform.
so many good questions. I will pick one more here🙂🙏

Cryptodiffer Community

Please share with us what do you think about the real philosophy behind DeFi?Where Do You See This Revolution After 4 or 5 years?

Chad Liu

In my opinion defi is a very strong user case for financial industry. and it comes down to the blockchain's fundamental - solving the trust issue. that's why you see protocols like aave (a bank), uniswap(an exchange), yearn (a mutual fund). are sprouting in the space. I believe more and more will come in next couple years. in term of long long term, it will be interesting to see how government get involved especially strong economy counties like US, China. because finance is a strong tool for government to use for their counties economy. And fully decentralized kind of goes against that. I think that will be interesting to see how our own society evolves. 👍
@makscryptodiffer There are so many good questions, I need to hop on another call soon though. could we wrap this up. 🙂

Cryptodiffer Team

Thank you for your time Chad!
Great answers, enjoyed reading

Chad Liu

Thanks a lot for this great community. hope I gave enough answers to let you guys getting to know tidal.