Vega AMA Recap

03 Sep 202003:08

AMA

Vega AMA Recap

Myko (CryptoDiffer)

Hello, everyone!😁

We are glad to meet here:

Barney Mannerings,
Founder & CEO

Barney Mannerings

Hi @mykocryptodiffer! Great to be here! 👋

Myko (CryptoDiffer)

Welcome Barney, thank you for taking your time today!

Barney Mannerings

You’re welcome, excited to spend the time with y’all

Myko (CryptoDiffer)

Super!
Our team has prepared 3 questions for you to start with
Let's begin with introduction
Q1: Can you introduce yourself to our community?

Barney Mannerings

Of course, I’m Barney and I founded Vega with Ramsey back in 2018
I spent much of my career working in the financial services industry, designing and building trading and risk management software for major investment banks and financial institutions (matching engines, etc).
I am a computer scientist as well, and since university have been interested in cryptography and privacy. I first heard about bitcoin in 2010 and started working with it more seriously in 2013. I also got involved with Ethereum before it launched, and have been thinking about the decentralisation of finance for over 5 years now.
And now I work on Vega all the time, I’m a nerd at heart so I love getting deep into the tech and protocol design, but what I do touches many parts of the project 🙂

Myko (CryptoDiffer)

Great, thank you for an answer
Now let's move on to the project
Q2: Can you introduce Vega to us?

Barney Mannerings

With pleasure 🙂 we’re building what we call the “web3 derivatives layer” … in the same way that Ethereum allows for smart contracts, and importantly, tokens and other assets to be issued, and that IPFS is optimised for data storage, etc.., Vega is a blockchain that’s totally optimised for trading and derivatives
Why is this important? Well trading, and derivatives particularly, require high performance and high capital efficiency
When you look at alternatives on Ethereum or other general purpose blockchains, they cannot compete — in a number of ways — with traditional centralised markets.
But we really believe in global, open, decentralised, finance and markets, and so we need to be able to compete for defi to start to take real market share and business from traditional finance.
That’s what Vega is designed to do, by being optimised for that use case
And Vega integrates with other chains — initially Ethereum, but others to come — so you don’t have to get new assets, you can just connect Metamask and start trading on Vega with your existing ERC20s
(You can see this on testnet at https://console.fairground.wtf)

Myko (CryptoDiffer)

Okie! let's now talk about the progress of the project)
Q3: Let`s now talk about the milestones you have achieved so far and about your upcoming plans?

Barney Mannerings

Cool, yeah, so we’ve had a few big milestones—

2018 we made a first prototype, published the whitepaper
2019 we raised a seed round led by Pantera and solved the remaining research problems, spent a lot of time building
2020 was all about testnet, we launched a private testnet at a conference in London in Q2 and opened it to the public towards the end of the year, when we also raised a small strategic round

Then this year things have been really exciting, we launched v3 of the testnet and completed a succesful sale of tokens to the community via Coinlist (over 21,000 new community members 😻) and we’ve just launched the incentivised testnet which helps us really test the protocol before mainnet trading starts.

We’re now in the process that takes us to mainnet, over the next few months you’ll see announcements and launches related to governance and validators, and then there will be an alpha mainnet launch

From there we’ll be focused on stability and iterating the feature set to make sure Vega is the best decentralised trading prrotocol and network out there 💥

Cryptodiffer Community

1. In some other DeFi projects that have the decentralised governance feature, I've noticed that is usually some level of "governance proposal spam" and most times, this is unhealthy for the growth of the project. On Vega protocol, are these plans in place to curb proposal spams?

2. With regards to governance on Vega Protocol, what mechanisms are put in place to prevent vicious acts like "bribery of voters"?

Barney Mannerings

1. we have a few parameters that can be used (by governance) to make it harder to make proposals, or we can hide proposals from the main UI until they get a certain amount of support so proposers have to do some work in the community before their proposals really get picked up and voted on, we will also have the options to place a fee on the proposals (Vega does not have “gas” like Ethereum) and we could increase this to counteract spam too. Finally, we can watch and measure how things go and iterate the protocol if needed

2. we don’t have a lot for this to start with, but we do have the concept of two different groups of voters: the token holders (based on how many tokens they have) and the liquidity providers (based on how much liquidity they supply), and we can use these to balance off against each other, and LPs are committed in the system and could lose money if they vote for bad stuff. But if someone pays off voters off-chain, that is hard to detect and do something about (though our blockchain lead/researcher Klaus has some cool ideas about this stuff!)

Cryptodiffer Community

On other platforms, users are constantly clamoring forimprovements without being heard. How does Vega Protocol deliver power to the players over the project and development within it?

Barney Mannerings

The answer is that this is a balancing act. Users often want contradictory things or things that are based on their short term needs not long term vision, or they may not understand the technical or scecurity implications. So I don’t think any serious project is going to become a complete democracy any time soon if it is still evolving, you need a strong team with the rightk knowledge and skills to navigate these decisions.

That said, it’s super important to take on board feedback and listen to users. Vega has many forums and mechanisms for this, particularly discrod (https://vega.xyz/discord) and our feedback system at https://vega-testnet.nolt.io, and also has a strong governance protocol for user driven changes

Cryptodiffer Community

Can you please tell us how Validators are elected in Vega protocol? What measures are in place to help ensure the network is being operated by honest actors who have the interest of the network at heart? Is there any kind of punishment in place for those who behave dishonesty?

Barney Mannerings

Vega is a delegated proof of stake system, and we’ll be sharing more about the process that will run to select the launch valdiators soon.

So understand how the staking and rewards for valdiators and delegators work, I recommend reading this series of blog posts:
https://blog.vega.xyz/beyond-staking-an-aphoristic-design-to-stakes-and-rewards-501768f21598
https://blog.vega.xyz/beyond-staking-an-aphoristic-design-to-stakes-and-rewards-part-2-delegation-46454a95c7a8
https://blog.vega.xyz/beyond-staking-an-aphoristic-design-to-stakes-and-rewards-part-3-7a69ac94e3dc

Cryptodiffer Community

Q1. My previous experience with new blockchains are quite unpleasant and that's why i still doubt the safety of Vegas protocol. Can you tell us some of the mechanisms you will put in place to help prevent people from taking too much risk while the system is early in it’s life?

Q2. Testing and auditing of code will also go a long way in ensuring the network is secure and functioning as expected. Do you have any plan for this?

Barney Mannerings

1. there will initially be limits, like you can only depsosit maybe a few hundred $ worth of collateral on the system, and things like that, also a system to recover balances if validators decide to stop the network in an emergency. These will be community controlled so the community will be able to vote to increase the liimts as they get more confident

2. we’ll be publishing all our testing and audits as we get them done, initially this won’t have 100% coverage during the early alpha but we’ll be aiming for multiple audits of everything in the long run and even looking into things like formal verification for key parts of the system, and fundig separate “clean room” implementations of the protocol (which will be open source) in different languages. There will be bug bounties etc. too. This process will keep going for months and years to build the trust and reputation in the system that we want.

Cryptodiffer Community

✅ Can the VEGA token be shared and transferred even when locked? How will the token holders who stake as a validator or transfer their stake to a validator be rewarded?

Barney Mannerings

It wouldn’t be locked if it could be transferred, so no, locked tokens cannot be moved from your wallet.

They can be staked and delegated, though. This will be rewarded in VEGA tokens and also through fees on the network.

Cryptodiffer Community

VEGA is a VegaSwap token, a new decentralized exchange that has unique features like dynamic pricing to reduce high gas costs, can you tell us more about this?

Barney Mannerings

VegaSwap is nothing to do with us

Cryptodiffer Community

How can I get involved with the community to help build the great future of Vega and also get to earn rewards in the process?

Barney Mannerings

chaeck out https://fairground.wtf — we will have:

developer bounties
other bounties (content, translation, etc.)
grants scheme (coming soon)
incentivised testnet
community contributor initiatives/model (coming soon)

Cryptodiffer Community

Hello! I was wondering where I might be able to find an overview of the tokenomics?

Barney Mannerings

https://blog.vega.xyz/introducing-the-vega-token-40dac090b5c1

Cryptodiffer Community

Hi!

Do Vega protocol have a testnet where users can have a first look at the features and where developers can join for bounty hunting? Will there be incentives?
@barnabee

Barney Mannerings

https://console.fairground.wtf for the testnet

https://fairground.wtf to read more about it, see the bounties, etc.

Cryptodiffer Community

Users who participate in derivatives markets only require tools that make it easier for them to create the best strategies to operate, will Vega provide them with those tools to make the best strategies and decisions? Or are the founders just looking to decentralize and remove the custody of conventional derivatives platforms?

Barney Mannerings

The first goal is to decentralise the underlying infrastructure and the tech, but the project will be building lots of tools and awarding grants and bounties to help people use and understand Vega and derivatives. We think we can get this started and with our community we can build some awesome tools, but we’re not going to do it all ourselves so we hope some of y’all will join us and help out with developing those things too 🙂

Cryptodiffer Community

1. For the Testnet, will validators be allowed to download and run their own wallet? If yes, can you briefly give a walk through on how to go about it?

2. Will Vega allow non-validator users to run their own local nodes or their own web portals or applications to provide access to their little corner of the Vega ecosystem?

Barney Mannerings

1. check out https://github.com/vegaprotocol/go-wallet
2. there will be public nodes etc. but it will also be possible to run your own local read node soon

Cryptodiffer Community

1. Is the "Vegapool" Team aware of fake Telegram groups and fake token and pools on Pancake, UniSwap & others parading as Vegapool aiming to scam innocent people of their hard earned money ? What steps are you taking to protect people from these unscrupulous elements ?
2.What problems did Vegaswap solve that existing platforms/ your competitors did not solve that you think might give you an advantage over them? Would this advantage benefit investors ? Km

Barney Mannerings

1. we’re aware of lots of fakes and scams. unfrotunately every high profile project attracts these, and we always try to warn and report and do what we can to stop them but ultimately there’s not a lot we can do - in the end everyone is responsible for their own security and being careful

2. we are not vegaswap

Cryptodiffer Community

What was your Team's biggest challenge/difficulty building a "web3 derived layer"? and is it resolved?

Barney Mannerings

the biggest tech/research challenges have been:
1. fairness / MEV prevention, for which we did completely new research and developed Wendy (https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/885)
2. measuring and valuing liqudiity properly — again we did completely new research for this (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3651085)

As a project the biggest challenge is always going to be security and managing complexity, and that’s something that will take multiple years to get right and prove out, which is why we will launch slowly with limits

Cryptodiffer Community

I wanted to follow your project for the long term. Where i can get all the latest news about your project? Do you have Twitter/Telegram/Discord community? If yes can you share the link here because there is a lot of fake telegram/twitter groups?

Barney Mannerings

We’d love to have you, we’re super excited about the long term. There’s so much we can do together and so much potential to develop Vega — mainnet launch is not the goal/end, it’s the start 🙂

Here are the official channels:
https://twitter.com/vegaprotocol
https://vega.xyz/discord
@vegacommunity

Cryptodiffer Community

Q.What is your top 3 things for priorities in 2021? Could you share some plans for the upcoming year ?

Barney Mannerings

By far number one is to get a release of Vega that’s ready for mainnet. The community sale we’ve just completed was another big one, and making sure we support and nurture our community is the third

Cryptodiffer Community

Can you tell me What makes Vega different from the other platform? And What is special about Vega for users?

Barney Mannerings

Much better leverage/capital efficiency
No gas/fees to place an order
Wendy prevents “MEV” and fornt running
~1 second block time makes Vega feel like a centralised exchange
but it still works with ERC20s

Cryptodiffer Community

Does the community have the opportunity to give your project feedbacks based on their opinions about your project?

Barney Mannerings

Definitely! Feedback is super important

For a discussion I recommend Discord over Telegram - https://vega.xyz/discord
For UI or protocol feedback use Nolt https://vega-testnet.nolt.io/ (the team review everything in here every 1-2 weeks internally)

Cryptodiffer Community

I read that for start Vega trading UI/UX is mainly catered for pro traders. Will Vega team soon after plan for newbie or average traders, to come out a simpler and friendly interface to enter. As I believe long term growth wise, a balanced experience is the way to go for growth and sustainability. Thanks!

Barney Mannerings

There will be either work on these from the project team or community grants/bounties to another team to build these types of UI for sure.

In the long term (2-5 years and beyond) we expect most people using Vega won’t even use a UI that we made but ones built into other apps, wallets, etc.

Cryptodiffer Community

Where do you see Vega 5 years from now?

Barney Mannerings

The goal is for “real world” derivatives to start being traded on Vega. That’s businesses and people who aren’t part of the crypto community and are using Vega because it solves their hedging and other needs better than traditional finance. We’re optimistic that we can get there in 5 years!

Cryptodiffer Community

Q. Projects that are not traded on major exchanges remain unnoticed. What does you think about listing $Vega on the leading exchanges?

Barney Mannerings

We just did a sale on Coinlist and it will probably happen, but nothing to announce right now

Cryptodiffer Community

🟨 For now, Vega has characteristics that make it different from other projects, but how could they face an emerging competition with the same characteristics? Do you think Vega has the potential to retain users and continue to prefer it over the competition? How will you get users to stay interested in Vega?

Barney Mannerings

We’ve done a lot of deep research and building to make a platform that’s optimised for derivatives and trading, and we have a talented team that’s going to be able to iterate quickly. It’ll be hard for someone else to catch up and keep up with us, but we’re sure some will try.

We have a lot of ideas and a long roadmap to stay out front, though, so they will have a lot of work if they want to compete 🙂

Cryptodiffer Community

Is this mean Vega is addopt cross-chain mechanism?

How does the Vega fix cross-chain issues such as scalability problem?

Barney Mannerings

Yes, Vega works cross-chain. We don’t have any particular scalability problems with it now - the biggest scalablity issue is Ethereum itself but once you deposit assets with Vega you don’t have to do anything on the Ethereum chanin while trading so we can do thousands of tx/sec with low fees and no gas on orders, with your ERC20 assets

Cryptodiffer Community

1. I saw a token on DEX parading as vegaprotocol token, I want to ask if the vegaprotocol token up has already been launch without our awareness ? If not, have u seen the fake vegaprotocol on Dex ?

2.What are the methods of revenue/profit generation through which $VEGA generates for project and platform maintenance? How can this model be mutually beneficial to both investors and your project?

Barney Mannerings

There are no unlcoked $VEGA tokens, anything you see on a dex is a scam.

Vega generates value for participants thorugh fees - these go to liquidity providers, validators, delegators (token holders), and can also go to the on chain treasury and be awarded for future developement (to the Vega team or anyone else) or as incentives for liquidity/trade mining, etc. — this is voted for through governance. The project also holds a small treasury of tokens for now.

Cryptodiffer Community

The Vega Network, as well as its token, will work with ETH assets, so that the commissions of said network must be assumed. Do you think ETH 2.0 solves these problems? If not, will Vega implement a second layer solution or similar to reduce commissions?

Barney Mannerings

We’ll wait and see, but we might use an Ethereum L2 in future to help with gas fees if it makes sense, we’ll also add other chains like Terra, Polkadot, bitcoin...

Cryptodiffer Community

One of the problems with derivatives on Dex, is that the fees are considerably high, but now that it will be decentralized and focused on ETH it will be even more, right? Therefore, how will Vega reduce or control these gas rates so that operations are more attractive and less expensive than even in Cex derivatives themselves?

Barney Mannerings

Vega has no gas. The network is faster and more scalbile than Ethereum as we can eventually shard to add more markets. We expect fees as good or better than cexs

Cryptodiffer Community

I could read that Vega developed its own independent network, but that in turn, it did not have a native token, but that its tokens were part of the ERC20 network, but really why develop that token in another chain instead of its own? Could it be that their network has not yet been developed and that is why they start in eth?

Barney Mannerings

If you look at the testnet you will see that there is a network and it’s connected to Ethereum Ropsten testnet. It makes sense to use an ERC20 because every exchange and wallet supports these, so it is helpful for users and makes it easier for people to get the tokens - plus we already built the bridge so people can trade Ethereum assets so makes sense to use it.

There’s also a security benefit. If there was a bug in Vega and someone takes over the network, they still cannot steal your staked/delegated tokens unless they take over all of Ethereum too. This is very helpful.

Cryptodiffer Community

How can i receive my alpha XYZ? I did all required steps and posted a twitter but still not in leaderboard

Barney Mannerings

There are some bugs, sorry. You probably missed out for the first trading game but there will be many more incentives and games to participate in, don’t worry 🙂

Cryptodiffer Community

How can Vega solve the current problems of the Oracles? And in being able to do so, could any project partner with Vega to improve their oracles?

Barney Mannerings

Vega has a nice framework for oracles so it will be possible to inegrate almost any oracle with Vega when your create markets and products.

Cryptodiffer Community

I'm aware that token holders can also participate in the Vega governance protocol by voting with their tokens, so does this implies that anyone could vote regardless of the amount of token they are holding or there's a minimum requirement to hold in order to be eligible?

Barney Mannerings

Should be able to vote with any number

Cryptodiffer Community

Where do you see the actual benefits of the Vega token in the future, in contrary to using for example ETH for everything?

Barney Mannerings

The token secures the proof of stake network and received fee revenue from it. It would be very dangerous to use Ethereum because then the incentives of the holders of the ETH would not necessarily be aligned with the success and security of the network.

Cryptodiffer Community

As we well know, the ETH network is the one that has the best Dex products, and also, this was the pioneer in decentralization, but really for what reason did it choose the ETH network that will require high gas rates, instead of the BSC or Solana network that will be much faster, safer and with lower gas rates?

Barney Mannerings

ETH has L2 and ETH2 that should help with fees and scaling, and as you say it’s where the assets are. We can add more chains too, Vega is not limited to Ethereum — we’re looking at Terra, Polkadot, Cosmos, bitcoin…

As for BSC, I have no interest in a blockchain run by a centralsied exchange. It goes against the ethos of decentralisation and is bad for users in the long term IMO. That said, if the community wanted to build an integration, we couldn’t stop them - that’s the power of open source and decentralisation.

Cryptodiffer Community

The vast majority of crypto users do not have sufficient knowledge of crypto-related technical issues. How will you affect this large audience that does not have enough knowledge about cryptocurrencies, How will you add them to your project?

Barney Mannerings

Most people don’t know how their web browser gets a page from a server, etc. but they can use it just fine. Over time we as a community will refien the UX for crypto, integrate it into other systems, and it will disappear… people won’t need to know they are using crypto. This is a little way off but getting better all the time.

Cryptodiffer Community

Which jurisdictions is VERA planning to launch at first? Surely because your plans are so ambitious with decentralized and traditional finance, it can offer some regulative issues in some jurisdictions. Are you looking to expand your solutions globally?

Barney Mannerings

Vega is decentralised. The project team won’t launch anything - we just build software, like the Ethereum or Bitcoin nodes. This will be run by a global network of validators who have no connection to us. It will be up to validators and users to check their local rules and regulations.

Cryptodiffer Community

You mention that VEGA coin can be wagered and transferred even when locked, and also that all members of the VEGA community can participate from the first day of a live network. How will VEGA Token holders benefit by joining this live network, what is your aim with this feature?

Barney Mannerings

It cannot be wagered or transferred when locked. It can be staked only.

There will be rewards/yield for staking and delegation. More details will come in the next weeks and months.

Cryptodiffer Community

The gas fee on Ethereum blockchain is crazy high. Why did you decided to build your project on ETH? Any plan to incorporate with other Blockchainchain such as BSC?

Barney Mannerings

BSC is evil, sorry, no 😼

Seriously though, you only need gas to deposit assets to Vega (like putting them on an L2) then there’s no Ethereum fees to pay. We will also add other chains that are more scalable based on demand, we should have some partnership announcements soon but I can’t confirm any yet

Cryptodiffer Community

Does holding the project's tokens give our users the right to govern in the project's ecosystem? What can we decide?

Barney Mannerings

Yes! Token holders can decide many things - check out the network parameters on testnet already at https://console.fairground.wtf, token holders can also create new markets and change market configurations, and will vote on future upgrades etc. too as well as fees and rewards and how treasury funds are used

Cryptodiffer Community

Currently from where i can buy $Vega? Is it possible that I can get $Vega only by holding it?

Barney Mannerings

The Coinlist sale closed a couple of weeks ago. There’s nowhere to buy it now but the token launches and will be more generally available/tradable on 3rd september

Cryptodiffer Community

✅ You mention that you have a bounty for those who helped and helped develop the Vega testnet. So how will users be able to join and test Vega? Also, how will you reward participants?

Barney Mannerings

https://fairground.wtf

Cryptodiffer Community

Where do I get information about Vega's team? Why do you prefer to be anonymous? Do you have a plan to identify your team later?

Barney Mannerings

Not very anonymous https://vega.xyz/who#team
Also some more details on the Coinlist page at https://coinlist.co/vega

Cryptodiffer Community

How do you plan to spread awareness about your project in different countries/regions where English is not spoken well like in Asia which has a large population and has the potential to be your users?

Barney Mannerings

We have quite a few local communities and groups, we’ll be doing more of that and paying people to run some of those communities as well as creating local events and offering bounties for translations. Vega is a protocol for the whole world 🌎

Cryptodiffer Community

Creating a system like this requires more than great programmers. Do have have mathematicians on the team?

Barney Mannerings

Yes - David Siska is our lead quant and he looks after the risk and quantitiative modelling/research and design

Cryptodiffer Community

Can you give us some details about the problems solved by Vega ?

Barney Mannerings

Vega solves:
- high gas fees: there is no gas, only fees when your order trades
- front running / MEV: the Wendy protocol prevents front running and makes the Vega chain fair
- performance: Vega has a 1 second block time and thousands of transactions per second
- capital efficiency: Vega uses much less margin that other decentralised derivatives (aka offers more leverage) and also needs much less capital to provide liquidity because of the innovative liqudiity mechanism and the decentralised order book
happy to take a few more questions if people still have some

Myko (CryptoDiffer)

You’ve answered a lot of questions! I bet community will value that impact;)

Barney Mannerings

Thanks everyone for the questions! Some great questions and I hope it was useful 😻

Myko (CryptoDiffer)

Thank you for the Ama
it was a pleasure for us!
Chat is unmuted!

Barney Mannerings

Thanks everyone 😎