ForTube AMA Recap
CryptoDiffer team
Hello, everyone!😁
We are glad to meet here
Ben Yorke (Global Marketing Director at ForTube)
Global Marketing Director at ForTube, Ben Yorke
Hey, thanks for having us!
Pretty late here in Asia but I’m looking forward to trying my best at whatever the group throws at me!
CryptoDiffer team
Q1: Guys, Can you introduce yourself to our community ?
Global Marketing Director at ForTube, Ben Yorke
Sure, although I’m not that interesting. I’m originally from the US but have been working in China for over 10 years now (I’m getting old). I majored in Business with a focus on Information Management Systems, so was always interested in the tech scene. I got into blockchain professionally around 2018, and decided to join FOR, who I’d known for a while, earlier this year to help with growing the brand overseas. I do a lot of writing and researching in my part time and am friends with tons of projects here in Asia. If you want to know about anything going on here, feel free to shoot me a message.
It’s good to finally do an AMA in the famous CryptoDiffer Community!
CryptoDiffer team
Q2: Can you briefly tell us what is ForTube in 3-5 sentences?
Global Marketing Director at ForTube, Ben Yorke
It’s a DeFi lending platform similar to Compound, MakerDao, and all that, which allows users to deposit assets and withdraw loans. Users can, for example, deposit popular tokens such as BNB or LINK and then get a loan which they could buy something else with, or stake somewhere else, or do whatever they want with it. Right now there are over $70million dollars worth of tokens deposited in the smart contracts, which shows how much the ForTube community trusts and values the platform. Of course depositing earns you yields, and borrowing requires you to pay a slight interest to the people supplying the assets. This is DeFi – allowing people to use their cryptocurrencies to work for you by earning yields, or as collateral for more tokens, rather than just sitting on a wallet somewhere hoping the price moons.
Platforms like Aave and Compound have stolen a lot of the headlines this summer, but I believe that ForTube has a big future up ahead
CryptoDiffer team
Q3: Let`s now talk about the milestones you have achieved and about your upcoming plans?
Global Marketing Director at ForTube, Ben Yorke
Great, I’ll keep it simple. Well, we recently broke $100 million Total Value Locked (TVL), before the market dipped a bit and we dropped back down to around $70 million. That’s pretty good progress considering where ForTube was at the beginning of the year.
We also just were picked for the initial five products to launch on Binance Smart Chain, which is quite cool that ForTube is now compatible on multiple blockchains.
Finally, ForTube has an impeccable security record which is vital in this industry. Those are three key milestones, lets move on to upcoming plans
Theres a lot coming towards the end of the year as ForTube tries to fufill their mission of making the platform available to as many users as possible, that means including more assets (tokens, stablecoins, maybe even NFTs ). They will have some good rewards campaigns and possibly support for more blockchain protocols, as well as continuing the most important part which is maintaining the high security standards.
It really is a good platform if you have some assets sitting around but dont want to go diving into yield farming on some two-week old foodcoin fork. I highly recommend trying out the platform on Binance Smart Chain – paying 10 cents for gas fees is truly refreshing
CryptoDiffer team
Awesome, a lot of updates to come out!
Thank you for great answers!
I think it is time to start community questions round!
Cryptodiffer Community
What is the ForTube doing for the mass distribution of DeFi technology?
How easy is it to use ForTube in an existing infrastructure?
Global Marketing Director at ForTube, Ben Yorke
Hey Max, I like your question. DeFi is growing at a really quick pace, mainly because we had all these cryptocurrency tokens sitting around and people finally realized they should be doing more with them. ForTube is a DAPP running on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. That means if you have a Chrome browser running Metamask, or a mobile wallet like IMtoken, you can access for.tube and start using it. The Binance Smart Chain is pretty cool, its like a parallel Ethereum chain so you can configure your existing Ethereum Metamask to run it, only suddenly you burn BNB as gas and gas fees are a fraction of the cost. Making DeFi much more user friendly is a major goal of the team, and its what they keep doing with all the new assets and wallets they support
Cryptodiffer Community
1.Security is really important and valued by users these days. Would you mention Fortube security measures? How is it protected against being hacked, and in case it does, is there insurance for investors?
2. What is the role of the community in the governance of the Fortube ecosystem? how big can be the influence of the community in the decisions that drive the project?
Global Marketing Director at ForTube, Ben Yorke
I’m going to answer the first part, because its insanely important in the DeFi space. One mistake can be brand suicide in this industry. For ForTube, you can see that some of the biggest names international blockchain code auditing (SlowMist, Certik, and Peckshield) have inspected the various parts of the platform. More importantly we just announced a partnership with CertiK to run 24/7 smart contract code auditing using their security oracle. They give us a real time security score so we can know instantly if something is off. Right now CertiK is giving away $1000 in FOR tokens over on their Twitter account, so if you want to learn more and get a chance to win, check it out: https://twitter.com/certikorg/status/1308471179787862023
Cryptodiffer Community
So I’ve observed many newer DeFi projects offer similar services, basically lending. Now, how can you innovatively improve and offer something better?
Global Marketing Director at ForTube, Ben Yorke
Great question. The DeFi is space is full of innovators. We are glad to be among them. Right now, each platform has certain differences that make them unique. ForTube has a few things that differentiates from the rest: Mainly, the number of assets they support on the platform, its currently much higher than some of the other big platforms in the space. Secondly, we have a really tough stance on security, which sadly a lot of the DeFi newcomers can’t say the same about. Thirdly, the yield rewards are quite competitive. You can get some really high APY by depositing on ForTube. At the end of the day, all the competition is good, because one platform can’t cover all the bases. Each user will have their own style of investing, assets, risk threshold, etc
Cryptodiffer Community
What does ForTube see as the biggest barrier preventing DeFi assets in particular from gaining widespread adoption?
Global Marketing Director at ForTube, Ben Yorke
Hm, not sure about ForTube, but I can give you my personal answer. One, is about education. It can be really confusing to hear about new protocols and all the complex terms. One of the things I believe in is we in the DeFi space need to make things more simple. Of course advanced tools can still be there for advanced users, but thats part of having a fully flushed out DeFi ecosystem.
The second part is about building trust with users. If you look at platforms like YAM, it made DeFi look really bad when millions in governance tokens are suddenly worthless because the team didn’t bother to do security audits. A new person isnt going to differentiate between projects like Yam and the rest of DeFi.
The third is about sustainability. Adoption isnt going to come over night, and if the governance model and business development model isn’t sustainable, none of us will be around in 3 years when users are finally ready to make the next step towards mass adoption. One of the things I like about ForTube is that they are doing all the things I mentioned, which helps out not just for us, but for the whole DeFi ecosystem
Cryptodiffer Community
Does the liquidity mining incentive plan calculate mining rewards based on the proportion of users’ net assets invested?
Global Marketing Director at ForTube, Ben Yorke
Well Dalmasca, you asked quite a few questions, I guess I can answer one. Liquidity mining on ForTube is the process of depositing tokens into the ForTube smart contracts, so people can withdraw them as loans. These deposits earn rewards in the form of FOR tokens, which you can trade on big exchanges like Bittrex, Huobi, or Uniswap. And yes, to answer your question, it is calculated dynamically. The team assigns a higher weight to certain assets that the team wants to encourage deposits of: that way a balance between incoming deposits and outgoing loans can be maintained. Then your share of the pool (I believe its like 85 million FOR on Ethereum and 100 million on BSC) is determined by your percentage of the overall deposited total. The point is, theres a method to this all that makes sure the platform is running at optimal levels
Cryptodiffer Community
What is your business model? Which market are you targeting for 2020? Will Covid19 have any effect on your 2020 plan and beyond ?
Global Marketing Director at ForTube, Ben Yorke
Hi Yak. Business model is simple, more users, more funds on the platform, more lending fees, everyone wins. The team was founded and is now headquartered in Beijing, where the p2p lending scene was huge even before blockchain came around. For that reason, they were very early, and started back in 2018. They have a huge market share out here in Asia, which has allowed them to amass such large numbers on $ deposited with very little fanfare. Moving forward, the team is looking for more balance, with a more concerted focus on the global market. The team believes the technology is as good or better than anything on the market right now, and they offer a lot of value to the user. So we are hoping some of you today will be intrigued and go try it out
Cryptodiffer Community
Can you tell us the roadmap of fortube ? and what have been achieved and what are you trying to achieve? as well as obstacles in achieving it?
Global Marketing Director at ForTube, Ben Yorke
I like Viki’s question, nice to have some Nigerian DeFi users as well! I already talked a bit about the roadmap, but I wanted to mention something I hadn’t already, about a product called Qian. Qian is a stablecoin from The Force Protocol (the initators behind ForTube). The difference is, unlike fiat-backed stablecoins like tether, its backed by cryptocurrency assets
For those familiar with DAI, it is similar to that, although it has some key differences in how it is generated
Whereas people who mint DAI have to pay a fee, with QIAN, they avoid that making it more sustainable for users to hold and use it. Finally, its price is pegged to the value of the Chinese Yuan, which makes it more attractive in Asian markets. We believe this will do the entire DeFi industry a favor by increasing adoption out here in China, and making DeFi more localized
Thats on the roadmap for October, but I dont think I can give much more away than that.
Cryptodiffer Community
Why does Fortube choose Binance Smart Chain (BSC) for it Liquidity Incentivizer Plan? What benefits does BSC offer you?
Global Marketing Director at ForTube, Ben Yorke
Hah, well for starters, Binance is one of the biggest names in the industry, and we have confidence in their tech team and resources to support the development of their DeFi ecosystem. I think CZ recently announced $100 million fund to projects that are looking to launch there. Since many of our users use Binance already, it made sense, especially considering the outlandish gas fees on Ethereum. But BSC probably wont be the last blockchain we support, that’s something we will keep exploring!
Cryptodiffer Community
What collateral assets are currently supported on Fortube Ecosystem and what is your relationship with CertiK foundation?
When is your next liquidity bonus campaign and how can I participate? What incentives will be available?
Global Marketing Director at ForTube, Ben Yorke
Three good questions from our dear friend Para Bellum. For the list of assets, theres a ton over on For.tube, including big ones like ETH, LINK, USDT, but also more hard to find DeFi tokens like LEND, NEST, YFII, SNX, and a bunch more. THere are a ton you can be depositing and earning yields on!
As for liquidity bonus campaigns, theres one going on right now, so grab your wallet and head on over
Cryptodiffer Community
1. It is huge being one of the first 5 projects chosen by binance smart chain! Congrats! Which features of Fortube do you think make it outstand that much and will help ypu reach more users with the exposure given by this? How do you think Fortube ecosystem will change after binance smartchain launching?
2. I have seen many projects trying to empower DeFi lately, all are good ideas but probably most of them will fade away. What does Fortube have to offer, that doesn’t exist yet and would make this project last long term?
Global Marketing Director at ForTube, Ben Yorke
I think I’ll take this one from Ross – I’ll answer the second part. I think most of the people in the DeFi space have a very strong opinion on the future of the industry. In other words, they think it has a long way to go. Instead of fading away, they are confident that the amount of funds deposited and borrowed will continute to climb, especially if platforms work together to make this happen. Right now there are so many partners working with ForTube – such as Chainlink for oracles, CertiK for security, Binance Smart Chain for intrastructure, Debank for wallets, and so much so much more. Its hard to imagine a project in the middle of all this just fading away. We think the future is very bright for DeFi, and with ForTube uniting Asian markets with global markets, we are expecting to have a lot of liquidity and users on the platform
Global Marketing Director at ForTube, Ben Yorke
well, its now exactly 10pm – so i’ll wrap up here by saying that we hope you all will continue this conversation, either on here, or in our own Telegram group, or on Twitter – because so much is going to be happening in the space. We don’t want you to be just a casual observer as well, get your metamask linked up and go try out the platform.
You can find us over at:
▲Telegram: https://t.me/theforceprotocol666
▲Announcement channel: https://t.me/the_force_announcement
▲ForTube website: https://www.for.tube/home
▲Twitter: https://twitter.com/ForTubeFi
Global Marketing Director at ForTube, Ben Yorke
And definitely definitely thanks to all the questions and especially the admins @makscryptodiffer for making all this happen!
Cryptodiffer TEAM
Great, thank you so much Ben!
Great answers:)
Thank you everyone who took part today, thanks for your questions!
