OpenDeFi AMA Recap
CryptoDiffer team
Hello, everyone!😁
We are glad to meet here
Mohit Madan(Co-Founder and CEO of OpenDeFi)
Tarusha Mittal (Co-Founder and COO of OpenDeFi)
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
Hi Everyone,
Glad to be here.
I am Tarusha, cofounder and COO of OpenDeFi.
CMO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Migule Leite
Hey @makscryptodiffer
Thank you for this wonderful opportunity to interact with one of the most active and amazing crypto communities.
CryptoDiffer team
Q1: Can you introduce yourself to our community ?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
Hi,
I am Tarusha, the cofounder and COO of OpenDefi.
OpenDeFi aims to create a bridge between real world assets and DeFi.
About me – I have been an entrepreneur for a decade now and been in crypto space since 2013-14, tinkered with minung et al. This is my 2nd crypto startup – i was also on the founding team of one of the first ethereum exchanges of India. I also host a podcast in this space 🙂
CMO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Migule Leite
Hey everyone,
I’m Mohit Madan, CEO & Co-Founder of OpenDeFi.
I have been in the crypto space since late 2013, and have gone through the journey of mining, trading, and building.
We launched one of India’s first Ethereum Exchange.
We’re now bridging the gap between traditional finance and DeFi with OpenDeFi
CryptoDiffer team
Q2: Can you briefly tell us what is OpenDeFi in 3-5 sentences?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
OpenDeFi is simply an enabler for “big money” to participate in the DeFi space.
Right now institutional funds are not able to participate in the space due to lack of financial instruments, asset classes and compliance.
We solve this problem for them by tokenizing real world assets and building financial services on top of it. The open nature of OpenDefi allows on-chain KYC to be plugged in that solves the KYC and AML problems.
To sum up in a sentence – OpenDeFi is an enabler.
CryptoDiffer team
Q3: Let`s now talk about the milestones you have achieved so far and about your upcoming plans?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
With an amazing team split across 4 continents, we have successfully completed our MVP by tokenizing Gold and Silver.
We have also launched global fiat ramp, instant swap and mobile apps for both android and ios. (https://onelink.to/oropocket)
We’re now on track to do our testnet launch(alpha) in Nov and audited launch in Dec.
Q1 & Q2 2021 will purely be focused on tokenising more asset classes and enabling developers to build complex financial services.
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
How exactly is Open DeFi advancing the collaboration of DeFi projects across borders and blockchains? Which products are you working on to make it an itch free experience?
CMO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Migule Leite
DeFi is right now limited by several problems that’s stopping big money from flowing in – compliance, ease of use, limited asset classes etc.
We solve the problem by tokenising real world assets, and building financial services on top of it.
To make sure that it is easy and convenient for everyone to participate with OpenDeFi, we have launched a mobile app that basically allows you to invest, send, receive instantly.
Cryptodiffer Community
What tools does OroPocket offer for portfolio diversification by investing in multiple assets?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
We are going to add multiple asset classes on the platform like art, premium real estate, stocks and commodities.
Cryptodiffer Community
Open DeFi claims to be “instant exchange. No price slippage”. Since this can only be achieved through liquidity (people are willing to invest capital), how do you plan to achieve this goal?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
Interesting question, since we’re tokenising real world assets, essentially each token is backed by the underlying physical asset. So liquidity is only capped at the amount of asset available.
There are no counterparties or orderbooks. Users interact directly with the smart contract. The price is derived from Oracles. Here’s a pictorial representation
Cryptodiffer Community
I read the beginning I like to tokenize assets and how do you maintain asset security properly #OpenDefi?
CMO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Migule Leite
Security of the physical asset is one of the most important factor to attract institutional capital:
– All the underlying assets are 100% insured against stealing, war, natural calamity etc.
– The assets are not under the control of OpenDeFi/OroPocket, but instead are held by custodians so that tokens can represent the right to the asset.
Cryptodiffer Community
What is your most ambitious goal of your project? We would appreciate it if you could share with us any Upcoming Updates?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
We have a target to get $100 million of AUM in the first year. 🙂
I have shared the roadmap here, in one of my earlier messages.
Cryptodiffer Community
Can you list 3-4 deadly features that make OPENDEFI project stand out from its competitors? What competitive advantage does your platform have that make you feel the most confident in yourself?
CMO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Migule Leite
Earning a rental on so called dead assets.
Cross chain value creation by enabling easy movement of assets
No price slippage
Flash loans
Cryptodiffer Community
What are the plans to educate and raise awareness and adoption among the community to make more people understand about the project easily?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
Apart from text, video, audio content, we’re working on raising awareness by building a strong ambassador program and a community.
You can apply to become an ambassador and help us in our journey: https://blog.oropocket.com/announcement/announcing-the-opendefi-ambassador-program/
You can also join our Telegram community @oropocket to stay up to date with the latest updates.
Cryptodiffer Community
What’s the end goal of OpenDefi ?
And How are you mitigating risk?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
The end goal is to have an open, inclusive, 24/7 operational and decentralized Nasdaq. The capital should flow freely without any discrimination.
Cryptodiffer Community
What kind of interest is associated with the loaning? And are some discounts offered for the OpenDeFi token holders & stakers?
CMO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Migule Leite
Essentially the risk on loan depends completely on you. For example – get a 40% loan against your collateral is far safer than getting a 90% loan. This way you can prevent yourself from getting liquidated in case of wild price movements.
$ORO holders enjoy lower interest rates: https://www.notion.so/bfc5f1d4eeab485d8820cc12f5c7f2da?v=9d656250cb2f4bdebc4e4c69b5a3532e
Cryptodiffer Community
A few days ago OpenDeFi announced its partnership with Dfinance. How will this help the growth of your project? What technological aspects will Dfinance provide to you?
CMO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Migule Leite
DFinance & OpenDeFi are a match made in heaven. Their High Level Language(HLL) will allows users to instantly deploy complex financial instruments on OpenDeFi.
You can read more about it here: https://blog.oropocket.com/announcement/opendefi-announces-new-partnership-with-dfinance/
Cryptodiffer Community
Do we need OpenDeFi to do the staking program ? and what are the returns against.
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
With OpenDeFi, you can actually earn a yield on your real world assets (Like Gold, Silver etc) by staking them. Regarding returns, you can check this out: https://openfinance.oropocket.com/yield-farming
Cryptodiffer Community
Do you plan to build partnerships with local cryptocurrency developers and local project in each country to make the use of OpenDefi more global?
CMO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Migule Leite
Absolutely! We have a lovely am assador program. https://blog.oropocket.com/announcement/announcing-the-opendefi-ambassador-program/
Cryptodiffer Community
How is OpenFinance bridging assets and asset chains and how plug and play solutions are implemented? How important is cross-chain support to your infrastructure?
CMO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Migule Leite
Cross chain support is an important and integral part of the project. Right now the fees on Ethereum network is so high that complex financial instruments cannot be deployed on it.
On the other hand we have great chains like Matic, Tezos, Algo but they don’t have great user adoption yet, because they don’t have enough assets on them. It’s a chicken and egg problem. We solve it by enabling a free and seamless movement of assets between chains.
Here’s a pictorial representation of USDC being moved from ETH to TEZOS chain, in a completely decentralized manner.
Cryptodiffer Community
Open DeFi allow to the users change their Cryptocurrencies for real assets held by a custodian, so can you tell who is this custodial? And Why we should Trust on It?
CMO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Migule Leite
We only partner with the best. Right now the Gold, & Silver that we have tokenized is being held by Galmarley Ltd, which managed about $3billion AUM.
Cryptodiffer Community
As You know, Many people judge a Project By the Token price, What do you have to Say to investors? What’s the plan to increase the Token Demand?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
I think token price is just a by-product. If the project has a great team and amazing community & user base, it automatically performs well.
There are so few good projects in the market that capital finds its way to the best performing one with the most solid community.
Cryptodiffer Community
Do you have any plans to attract non-crypto investors to #your project Because it is the success of a project to get more investors who are still not in the crypto world. What are the plans to increase awareness around your in non-crypto space?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
Each one of our clients brings a bunch of awareness for BetProtocol. So our continuing sales efforts will be great for our awareness
TKN for example has a tens of thousands of registered users and they all know the site is Built on BetProtocol. They also have the Mining by Betting feature. Win or lose, as long as you bet you can earn TKNT token! (We built that for them of course)
Cryptodiffer Community
I am already using another app bank calls Revolout but the fee is high. almost 3 presents to buy gold.
how much is the fee on your project for buying gold?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
Right now the fee is 0.25%, however, soon this will become dynamic (varying between 0.1-1%) based on volume & liquidity.
Cryptodiffer Community
What advantages will users have and how will they be encouraged to invest in real-world assets with on-chain synthetic assets?
CMO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Migule Leite
There are several advantages:
– Micro-transactions
– Deploying complex financial instruments which were earlier out of your reach
– Instant low cost loans
– No price slippage
– Earning a yield on your assets.
– Inclusive, and Global.
– etc
Cryptodiffer Community
Does OpenDefi store members’ cryptocurrencies? What can the OpenDefi platform guarantee or promise when it comes to the security and privacy of its users?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
Nope, OpenDeFi does not store your cryptocurrency. You’d be able to interact with it using non-custodial wallets like Metamask.
However to make the adoption easy, we have created a hosted wallet, that also offers fiat ramp called OroPocket (https://onelink.to/oropocket)
Cryptodiffer Community
If you guys were me … where would you buy Open defi tokens and how much?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
TBH, if I were you, I’d try to identify what I like/dislike about the project and see what value I can add to it – whether in the form of development, building community, educating user etc.
Once I was confident enough to give it my time, investing money comes naturally with it.
Cryptodiffer Community
Opendefi claims create a Bridge between the Defi and the physical assets, but Which types of real assets are you referring? Just Gold? What about other precious metals
CMO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Migule Leite
Right now we support Gold and Silver. We’re working on adding more assets and asset classes including Stocks, ETFs, Real Estate, Art, etc
Cryptodiffer Community
How to be motivated to use OpenDeFi? What are the benefits of using?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
Right now the Gold that you have in your bank locker – no one is paying you to keep it there, instead you have to spend more to insure & protect it.
However with OpenDeFi, all underying assets are secured and protected and on top of it, you can earn a yield/rental by simply staking it
Cryptodiffer Community
Are you planning to raise institutional funds for your platform? What is OpenDeFi’s long term vision for institutional investors?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
We have already raised funds from some of the top institutional investors, funds and operators. You can read more about it here: https://blog.oropocket.com/announcement/defi-startup-opendefi-announces-1-million-usd-funding-round/
Cryptodiffer Community
How do you plan to spread your understanding of the project in different countries where spoken English is not good like me?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
We’re creating an army of ambassadors that believe deeply in the project and are working on educating users about OpenDeFi. They help us cross the language barrier.
You can find more about it here:https://blog.oropocket.com/announcement/announcing-the-opendefi-ambassador-program/
Cryptodiffer Community
Why are you using DIA and Bluzelle startups as your oracle, and not experienced Chainlink or Band? How will you ensure a decentralized and open process?
CMO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Migule Leite
We are using multiple oracles for multiple assets. Please be patient, we have some superb announcements coming up!
Cryptodiffer Community
What are the advantages of tokenized gold than from a real asset purchased from a bank? What additional earning opportunities do I have when buying a tokenized asset?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
There are several advantages of having tokenized Gold instead of purchasing it from a bank:
1. You can buy tokenized Gold for as little as 1 cent.
2. You can instantly send Tokenized Gold to any user globally.
3. You don’t have to worry about the security of physical asset as Gold on OpenDeFi is 100% insured and protected.
4. You can instantly sell your tokenized Gold with a click of a button.
5. You can get instant very low cost loans against your asset.
6. You can earn a yield on your asset by staking it.
etc. 🙂
Cryptodiffer Community
The financial markets, cryptos market … all fell due to the covid-19 epidemic. Does this affect your project development plan?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
Covid did not affect the project in negative way. We’re a remote first company and have team members in India, Pakistan, Egypt, Hungary, UK, US etc. This was even before the COVID, so transactioning for us was natural
Cryptodiffer Community
Obviously, DeFi will not replace traditional financial systems, so what kind of ecosystem can OpenDeFi create so that centralized and decentralized markets can interact together?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
I do believe that in the next 10 years about 5-10% of traditional finance will adopt blockchain in one form or another. We’re simply being the enablers.
Right now the entire crypto market is < 400Billion dollars, a giant like Fidelity can just gobble us up. By tokenizing real world assets, we’re expanding the market and ecosystem itself.
Cryptodiffer Community
How does Yield Staking different from other staking types?
Is there a limitation for staking our assets and can we use the interest rewards earned as we wish?
CMO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Migule Leite
Yield staking on OpenDeFi is different because there is no market exposure of your assets when they are staked, so you don’t risk losing them if there is sharp movement in the market.
There is no limitation on the yield that you can earn. If you’d like to understand the economics behind it, please check this link: https://openfinance.oropocket.com/yield-farming
Cryptodiffer Community
How will OpenDeFi solve the scaling problem? And what can OpenDeFi offer to overcome the threat of centralization?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
We’re solving the scaling problem by building on layer 2 solutions like Matic that offer high throughput of 7200 TPS.
The cross chain support of OpenDeFi allows the best features of the chains to be used effectively.
Cryptodiffer Community
How does OpenDeFi consider developing the protocol on other smart-contract enabled chains and why did $ORO ultimately settle on Ethereum?
CMO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Migule Leite
As Charlie Munger said “Fish where there as Fish”. Since Ethereum currently has the most asset and users we choose it, howevever we’re building on Matic, Tezos as well and support cross chain transfers.
Cryptodiffer Community
Could you tell the Fees Structure of OroPocket Platform on Buy or sell of Digital Gold or silver? What % Fees is charged by OroPocket platform for Buying or selling Digital metals?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
Right now we charge 0.25% on all transactions. Moving forward this fee will become dynamic between 0.1 and 1 % based on quantum and volume.
Cryptodiffer Community
What are the requirements for adding an underlying asset to OpenDeFi? Does the community make a decision to include and remove these assets?
CMO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Migule Leite
$ORO is a governance token. $ORO holders will be able to vote on which asset needs to be added next, and will also be able to provide initial liquidity for it.
Cryptodiffer Community
A lot of DEFI users use mobile phones. Are you planning to release your own application on Android and IOS? Are you considering partnering with the DEFI mobile aggregator Frontier?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
Yes, we have our own app as well: https://onelink.to/oropocket
You can download it from the above link
Cryptodiffer Community
Who are Opendefi partners nowadays? Can you appreciate the importance of what partners have supported opendefi in protocol development and development?
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
We have closed several partnerships recently:
– Matic
– Tezos
– Frontier
– DFinance
– Unilend etc
COO and Co-Founder at Bet Protocol, Justin Wu
Thank you @makscryptodiffer For giving us this wonderful opportunity. Before we end this AMA we have a special gift for this community.
It was lovely being a part of AMA with CryptoDiffer. Special thanks to Maks and other admins and moderators for their hard work in building such a refined community.
Cryptodiffer TEAM
Thank you for you answers, it was an insighfull session
Thank you everyone who participated, great questions as always!
