Linear Finance AMA Recap
CryptoDiffer team
Hello, everyone!😁
We are glad to meet here
Kevin TAI ( Co-Founder at Linear)
Drey NG ( Co-Founder at Linear)
Co-Founder at Linear, Drey NG
Hello
Pleasure to be here!
Co-Founder at Linear, Kevin TAI
Hey guys!!! Super happy to be here and thanks for the invitation!!!
CryptoDiffer team
Q1: Can you introduce yourself to our community?
Co-Founder at Linear, Kevin TAI
In terms of my background, I actually come from traditional finance. I started off as an investment banking analyst in Silicon Valley doing M&A transactions for companies like MSFT and Oracle acquiring smaller tech companies.. I subsequently went to business school and then ended up in Asia doing collateralized debt and structured products over the last 13 years. My foray into cryto was as a miner. I mined using FPGAs and was working with the community on bitstreams… I then started investing and have been focused on the DeFi space the last 1.5 years
Co-Founder at Linear, Drey NG
Again, thanks everyone for taking the time to speak with us. My background includes both banking in trade finance and trading floor doing FX and rates, and am leading the product side of one of the largest Security Token Offering companies in Asia called Liquefy. I led multiple tokenization projects with one of the largest real estate families in Asia, hedge funds and semi-government bodies. My vision ever since my transition from banking to blockchain/crypto has been to disrupt the traditional banking system and offer permissionless financial asset access for the mass public. That’s exactly what DeFi is trying to solve and how Kevin and I got started.
Now I lead the product development at Linear and I bring to the table a wealth of experience of banking and finance and creating institutional-ready products with interoperability on blockchains such as Ethereum, Quorum, and NEO, focusing on high throughput, security, and scalability.
CryptoDiffer team
Q2: Can you briefly tell us what is Linear in 3-5 sentences?
Co-Founder at Linear, Kevin TAI
Linear Finance is the first cross-chain compatible, decentralized synthetic asset exchange with creative investable synthetic assets, unlimited liquidity, and no slippage. We use our cross-chain integrations as an imminent L2 solution to scaling/high gas fees and as a result, Linear Finance is fast, easy, cost-effective, safe, and ready to use for ALL users, ranging from new digital asset entrants to experienced crypto traders. So essentially you can come onto Linear Finance, stake your LINA tokens, build LUSD and then use it to buy our synthetic assets!!!
CryptoDiffer team
Q3: Let`s now talk about the milestones you have achieved so far and about your upcoming plans?
Co-Founder at Linear, Drey NG
Over the last two weeks we have gone through and completed our fundraising with our strategic investors such as Alameda Research, CMS, Hashed, Genesis Block, NGC ventures, and Kenetic along with our public supporters… for a total of over +2m USDT. In addition, we have introduced a pre-staking program for our early supporters. This was introduced upon public launch and we have ~180M LINA staked already… For more information on our staking program, please check out our Medium page….
This pretty much explains the near term tech roadmap. Several key points here is,
1. We plan to roll out multi-asset collateral functionality by end of year
2. Governance will be up afterwards so that the community can decide the future of the protocol
3. Exciting partnership with 2 partner chains coming up soon for deep integration
4. On top of the tech roadmap, our financial engineering team is working on listing different assets with a proper oracle set-up
Co-Founder at Linear, Kevin TAI
For staking, please refer to this article https://medium.com/linear-finance/linear-finances-staking-program-with-initial-apy-of-1636-8e90fc6a26f3
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
When talking about DeFi space, people think about specific terms such as lending, derivative, stablecoin, user’s credit score and smart contract-based asset management right away. Which specific DeFi product is $Linear offering or are you offering all of them?
Co-Founder at Linear, Kevin TAI
Yeah, for Linear we are going to be focused on being the most usable and composable synthetic asset exchange. We essentially allow users to stake LINA and eventually other collateral so in this sense we are essentially a multi-collateral MakerDao but our other product offerings will be unique, focusing on offering synthetic assets on creative investment assets, prediction markets, along with portfolio management. We won’t be going into areas such as AMM or lending/borrowing (like COMP, AAVE, or CREAM), that’s not our forte.
Cryptodiffer Community
Essentially, most of the problems you’re solving would be solved when ETH 2.0 launches by end of the year. How do you fear Linear Finance would become redundant then?
Co-Founder at Linear, Drey NG
Thanks Omoluabi, it’s a really good question that we got asked from time to time. Yes ETH 2.0 is going live, however, there are still a lot of uncertainty within. To name a few, the complete implementation will take 3 phrases and the timeline is approx. to be 2022 but it is always a pain to upgrade an existing chain then to create a new one from scratch. Secondly, 2020 ETH 2.0 is more on PoS and data scalaing instead of Smart Contract Scalaing while OVM is still yet to be launched and zk-rollup being a relatively longer term L2 for smart contract, we believe using other chain as L2 is the most practical and workable solution on day 1. Reality is, scalaing problem will never be solved if you are trying to acccomodate the entire DeFi TAM (which is the sum of all asset classes + even more with things like NFT etc).
As we are entering the age of Inter-chain (just like the previous generation entering to Inter-net), there will be COUPLE of winners in terms of base layer blockchain, due to different reasons (e.g. poltical, geographical etc). Being a cross chain protocol can ensure that we are always within the picture and grow with the winners in the long run.
Cryptodiffer Community
How To Stack LINA? What is the minimum Amount of Stacking?
Co-Founder at Linear, Drey NG
Right now you can go to https://staking.linear.finance/ for pre-staking program! There is no threshold for LINA staking, you can even stake 1 if you want 🙂
Cryptodiffer Community
With all the yield farming hype, a lot of tokens are offering rediculously high APY on liquidity staking. How does the Linear Finance compare, and why would a investor choose it over other yield farming opportunities?
Co-Founder at Linear, Kevin TAI
I think what we see now in the marketplace in terms of yield is NOT surprising. Food/meme coins and their respective LP tokens that offer high yield also have both inherent smart contract risk but also team/project risk. You simply get rewarded a high yield for taking this risk… For projects that are deemed to be less risky or ones who have gone through rounds of due diligence with well know backers and investors, I believe the yields should definitely be lower. For ourselves, we are currently offering these high yield opportunities as a way to attract users to eventually collateralize our debt pool and we view is as a cost of user acquisition.
Cryptodiffer Community
How easy is it to use Linear Finance in an existing infrastructure? When will Linear Finance be mass launched?
Co-Founder at Linear, Drey NG
The first implementation that we will have is with BSC. BSC allows exactly the same wallet tooling i.e. Metamask for user to interact with. As such, the marginal knowledge you need to use Linear is almost 0. All you need to do is to add BSC’s RPC network on metamask and you are good to go!
We are also looking into other major Ethereum Contender like Nervos and Polkadot. We will ensure user with the best user experience with performance and low fees.
Cryptodiffer Community
What plans do you have in place to penetrate the Chinese DeFi Markets?
Co-Founder at Linear, Kevin TAI
China is one of our target markets but the DeFi market there is just up an coming and being rapidly built out so we are currently pushing ourselves to build the Linear brand recognition and user base within the China community. We have established our Chinese social media channels and and have been actively out there through a number of local crypto media outlets. We have also partnered with Nervos who will give us some captive users when their DeFi Dapps launch. Lastly, our product team is working on developing certain yield products for the Chinese markets.
Cryptodiffer Community
Can you give an overview of $LINA Token tokenomics?
Will the design of the token rise and fall with the success of the platform, does it include any scarce paths, such as equity, storage or burning?
Co-Founder at Linear, Drey NG
Certainly. Let me start from the beginning.
A staker who would love to enjoy the staking rewards and split of txn fee can purchase LINA and stake it into the Linear collateral pool. By staking user will build LUSD which is the synthetic USD of Linear that can be freely transferred to say AMM pool to have extra yield or used to gain other Liquids (synthetic asset) exposure.
Traders in Linear can also be stakers as mentioned above while they will enjoy trading fees rebate in LINA from time to time. This is subject to governance protocol later on.
Marketmaker can also help with the entire protocol by balancing the debt pool and gain extra LINA reward.
What’s more, being a LINA holder can decide on the future of the protocol as we never want to make Linear a centralized one. Parameters like txn fee burn ratio, split ratio, rebate campaign, extra yield campaign and even asset listing can be deteremined by the community later on.
Cryptodiffer Community
Community is the key to the success of projects, so besides organizing AMAs, what strategy does Linear have to reach out and exploit new investorsWhat is the main Difference between Linear Finance & Sybthetix?
What makes you unique & different?
Co-Founder at Linear, Kevin TAI
Yes, the idea of the community. When Drey and I began building Linear and started doing our AMA’s, we always want to remind everyone that we are building Linear for YOU and to be used by YOU so we really want to invite everyone to come join our TG and Discord groups and tell us what you would like to see in terms of product features or synthetic assets…Come take part in helping us build this product out as we are a few months away from our Mainnet launch!! In terms of our difference with SNX, we differ in a number of ways. We offer a complete solution to the scaling/gas fee issues that users face and more importantly, we are optimized for faster chains along with cross-chain composability meaning that you can start your journey on the ETH chain and end up on BSC or as you wish… This allows you to continue to build your Defi legos
Cryptodiffer Community
What is currently the biggest challenge/challenges that you are facing in terms of becoming a successful project or company and what would you consider as your main advantages on the market over your competitors?
Co-Founder at Linear, Drey NG
The first and foremost one is definitely the existence of other bad actors in the industry. We are seeing a lot of “Food Farms” cloning some of the OG version and did rug pull that hurt the DeFi community. Quick profit from the theme is making people focusing on these farms without really exploring the potential of DeFi. Right now the market is still a bit fragile after a couple of hacks and market downturn due to some incidents. Secondly, most of the cross chain projects is still under way so the cross chain composability with other DeFi component will still take months. But as we observe that, one of the best applications of blockchain and crypto is defintely finance. Unlike ICO, DeFi is not going anywhere but it will only get stronger.
Cryptodiffer Community
What mechanism does Linear Finance use to provide unlimited liquidity?
How is Linear.Buildr different from Linear.Exchange?
Co-Founder at Linear, Drey NG
Stakers of LINA will accumulate a pool which always take the other side of the trade of users/traders according to price oracle. As such, as long as there is a pool, there will be a counterparty to trade against with, hence the “unlimited liquidity”.
Buildr is a platform for stakers to put in LINA and other collateral in the future to build LUSD, claim staking reward and convert tokens across different blockchains, while exchange is for traders to exchange exposure of different asset classes. A trader needs not to be a staker as a trader can obtain LUSD from AMM/DEX to get started.
Cryptodiffer Community
DOES your plan for Linear Finance token include token burning or token buyback? I believe you need funds to develop your project. How will Linear Finance generate revenue?
Co-Founder at Linear, Kevin TAI
Currently based on the amount that we have raised, it gives us a comfortable run rate for us to develop, launch, and really build out our Linear Exchange. We have set aside approximately 40% of our token supply for staking rewards and will use to continue and drive adoption. There are currently 1.5bn in Reserves that are to be decided by our LinearDAO which we expect to have set up in Q1 of next year. There are already discussions with the community about potentially burning this Reserve but I am hoping that we can all find a way to possibly invest these funds into our partners or projects that can bring some synergies to Linear Finance.. Nevertheless, this will be discussed and debated soon.
Cryptodiffer Community
In your wesite Notice that Linear also have a LinearDAO, can you explain more about Lineardao?
Co-Founder at Linear, Kevin TAI
Yes, as I have mentioned before, LinearDAO will be our governance structure which we will soon introduce.. As a LINA holder, you will be able to make proposals and vote on topics such as the collateralization ratio, the amount of exchange fees to give to the stakers, the type of assets that we put into our pool as well as collateral split amongst other issue that will be community driven.
Cryptodiffer Community
When it comes to stable coins in DeFi, DAI always comes to mind. How can LUSD compete and get real utility?
Co-Founder at Linear, Drey NG
that’s a good question. In token economy, it is always key to accrue value to the network so that there is demand on that token. In stablecoin case, other than the smart contract, it is more about adoption and composability. The more use case LUSD is involved with, the more demand there will be. We are now working very closely with not only Ethereum but also other prominent chains’ DeFi player in including the use of LUSD and LINA. Stay tuned for more partnership and use case 🙂
Cryptodiffer Community
What is your view on non crypto users?
Do you have any plans to attract non-crypto investors to Linear finance and how? What are the actions to increase awareness around LInear finance in non-crypto spacE?
Co-Founder at Linear, Drey NG
Divya this is actually a really good question. Linear’s long term goal is not only to serve crypto users. The best application always reduces friction or barrier to entry. For example, when email was first invented, I believe only developer knows how to send emails. But now what? Your grandparents can send an email by just saying “Hey Siri!” or “Hey Bixby!” This is exactly the end goal that we are targetting – a decentralized synthetic asset exchange with seamless user experience that even mom and pop can use it
Cryptodiffer Community
What is the role of ℓUSD in Linear Finance Ecosystem? What kind of new synthetic assets can I mint with ℓUSD?
Co-Founder at Linear, Kevin TAI
With LUSD, you will be able to buy on our exchange, a slew of existing digital assets, popular commodities, forex, traditional market indexes, and we will be building out a number of “Digital Traded Funds” DTF that will revolve around certain digital thematics. In the roadmap going forward we will have prediction market products which can revolve around things like e-sports.
Cryptodiffer Community
.Defi is greatly admired now. How Currently attracting real users and mass adoption is a problem for Blockchain projects. How to solve this problem?
Co-Founder at Linear, Drey NG
The key here is to bring in a usable platform with functions other than borrowing and lending & yieldfarming so the composable DeFi world can really happen instead of yield chasing. We all know that the yield in crypto world is high but what we saw over the past 2 months were definitely abnormal and not sustainable.
Co-Founder at Linear, Drey NG
Kevin and I are super excited for the journey ahead and we are building Linear Finance for YOU and for you to use. We would love to have you be involved in the development of our project so would be great to see you all in our Discord or TG channels to give suggestions on how we can build the best synthetic asset protocol for you!
Cryptodiffer TEAM
Thank you Drey and Kevin for your time! Great answers:)
Thank you everyone who joined us today!
Great questions
