EasyFi AMA with Wolf Crypto
We held an AMA with EasyFi in our public Telegram channel on October 22nd.
EasyFi is a universal layer 2 lending protocol for digital assets. An open and inclusive financial system built upon the most promising layer 2 solution, Matic network.
Considering scalability as the first and most important DNA component of EasyFi ensures faster and cheaper transactions being built into the core of the protocol which enables EasyFi to serve a large number of users and handle millions of transactions.
EasyFi focuses on credit aspects of the protocol, enabling various modules for borrowers to access credit easily and responsibly. EasyFi also enables modules of DeFi based Insurance to protect the capital suppliers from NPAs that might occur in the future as a result of the progression of lending markets.
In Version 1, EasyFi is starting as a Fork of Compound Finance from Ethereum main chain to the Matic network, enabling existing collateral-based secured loans on Layer-2.
EasyFi launched on the 30th of September and quickly grew to over $30m TVL. The $EASY token was listed shortly after on Bitmax —
EasyFi also reduced the short term inflation on the network by reducing the amount of EASY distributed per block in the early stages of the network —
You can learn more about the EasyFi project here —
EasyFi just released details of their Uniswap LP incentivisation program which you can find here —
You can also visit the EasyFi Telegram channel or the EasyFi Website for further details.
Here’s what EasyFi’s CEO Ankitt Gaur had to say in the AMA.*
*This AMA has been edited for clarity.
WC (Wolf Crypto Telegram Member)
INTRODUCTION
WC
Welcome to yet another edition of Wolf Crypto AMA…the second of three for the week…deep breathes…I can DO THIS!
Joining us today is Ankitt Gaur of EasyFi!
TEAM & TEAM GOALS
WC
Ankitt, welcome and it’s our pleasure to have you here today in the channel!
Before we get too far into things, how about you give us some background on your history in the blockchain space…and in general?
AG
Well, to introduce myself, I have been working in the technology space for the last 17 years and in Blockchain for the last 3.5 years to be precise.
I wrote a book on Blockchain for explaining Blockchain to CXO level people in a more non tech manner with an objective of fuelling the adoption of Blockchain as always it’s the CXO layer that drives the mainstream adoption of any tech.
WC
Thanks for the intro, what about some background on some of the EasyFi team members who aren’t joining us today?
AG
At EasyFi we have a team of 12 people, mostly based out of India at different locations due to COVID. This includes two more co-founders at EasyFi other than myself.
Anshul, my co-founder comes from a finance background and he is a Gold Medalist in Finance from XLRI Jamshedpur India (one of the premier Management Institute in India), He also operated as a stock broker along with various instruments for more than 10 years before entering into crypto during the year 2016.
Our CTO, Arif also has more than 20 years of dev exp and 4 years in Blockchain.
Apart from TrustScore, we have our couple products live on Matic already, that launched along with Matic’s Beta Mainnet in Oct 2019.
THE EASYFI NETWORK
WC
With that out of the way, let’s start with what EasyFi is and what you’re trying to achieve with your tech stack?
AG
EasyFi is a layer 2 Lending protocol focused on solving an urgent pain point of exorbitant gas fees.
Along with that, EasyFi is built to strengthen the borrowing side of lending protocols. hence most of our modules are built towards borrowing.
WC
What was the reasoning for using Compound as your reference fork?
AG
We forked Compound as this project is a leader in the lending category. They were the pioneers of smart contract based lending products (that actually worked and had some level of adoption).
There are other projects too and are doing well, but Compound has a very sophisticated code structure and governance models.
We have been following Compound since mid 2019 when it started to get popular.
WC
So you took Compound and mashed it into Matic…that must have been interesting for your devs!
Explain to me the reasoning for doing so? A simple matter of cheaper transactions?
AG
Matic is a side chain to Ethereum and shares the same contract code of Solidity. Hence it is easier to have teams been able to build innovative products rather than trying to deal with the learning curve.
Furthermore, the Matic ecosystem is fabulous and robust among all other non Ethereum blockchains. It already has more than half a million transactions, this reflects the sturdy infrastructure that Matic has created.
WC
So you’ve started off as a fork of Compound, but that’s just your initial launch point right?
How do you expect EasyFi to “fork” away from Compound in time?
And how does being Layer 2 on Matic help with that progression?
AG
Absolutely, EasyFi is going to be enabling various important legos of the lending industry on Layer 2, like micro lending, credit delegation, under-collateralized loans etc. The most important USP of EasyFi is going to be under-collateralized loans at an optimized interest rate level.
To achieve above required transaction efficiency, you need faster transactions which is why Layer 2, especially Matic is a strong contender.
For example, we are working with Price Oracle’s and by being on Matic, Oracle’s will be able to feed the updated prices sooner to the project, which will help us to trigger liquidation quickly in an unwanted situation.
However, as a result of that, we can still work with lesser transaction buffers which leads to lower collateralization ratios.
WC
So we’ll get more into the actual “how to” later in the AMA, but I wanted to ask, while Matic introduces a lot of benefits to your ecosystem by being layer 2, as someone who’s spent a fair bit of time farming EASY on EasyFi, I found it also introduced a few complications along the way also, moving assets over from ETH was sometimes slow and a bit of a chore.
What’s your thoughts on this and how do you expect to make the user process more “seamless” as tooling on Matic improves?
AG
Oh! Yes, I completely understand the pain.
Being first on Matic blockchain with that much amount of txn load, resulted in a lot of our users to face those challenges. We are working closely with the Matic team to come up with near instant withdrawals and deposits.
Along with that we are working with some exchanges too, which will read directly from Matic blockchain which will enable users to transfer funds directly to exchanges on the Matic blockchain.
Hence the load of withdrawal and deposits moves to the exchange instead of users.
WC
While we’re on the subject, what’s the formal…or informal, relationship EasyFi has with Matic?
AG
We are working together to improve the ecosystem and adoption. We received a grant from Matic for a previous project prior to EasyFi.
While working on that project is when we fell in LOVE with the Matic’s infrastructure and liked the support from their team..
EASYFI & USE CASES
WC
Now we have a bit of the tech stuff out of the way, let’s get into some of the use cases for the network.
Is EasyFi just another lending platform? And if so/if not, what’s the use case for the platform past “lending”?
AG
As mentioned above, we are working very heavily on enabling efficient capital availability as per the needs of the people, powered by DeFi.
We are working on some very interesting initiatives which will be released in due course. However, the primary umbrella of all initiatives will be credit delegation, micro lending, under-collateralized loans and credit insurance using the products like Credit Default swaps.
You can see a full detailed overview of our use cases in this Medium article -
WC
Is there anything unique in these use cases that doesn’t currently exist on other lending platforms?
AG
Yes Micro lending (which are closer to uncollateralized loans) and under collateralized loans are something very very unique.
WC
How many of these use cases are actually active on the platform as of right now?
AG
As we mentioned above, we have just started and setting the foundation properly to build upon these cases. Right now you can do more or less what you can do on Compound. Obviously with way less fees.
At its peak doing a full circle transaction on compound or any dApp for that matter would need approx $100 USD worth of ETH. Whereas on Matic you can get the same done, with only a few cents…AND THAT IS A BIG DIFFERENCE!
FARMING ON EASYFI
WC
So with that background out of the way, let’s get into the more process orientated stuff.
Give me a TLDR on the launch of EasyFi and what happened along the way?
AG
We launched EasyFi with stable coins to begin with, but then we had to plug in a deflationary reward mechanism so people who farmed earlier do not end up losing their earnings. We will re-initiate protocol native farming and various other incentivization mechanisms in near future.
Within one week of launch, we were able to hit a $40m USD TVL which was a good proof of support from the community.
WC
Nice, that’s an impressive amount of TVL for a newly launched platform!
I’ll get into the yield farming program in a sec, but talk me through the token launch first…
It was farm before list right? Why did you choose to launch in such a manner?
AG
It was planned that way to keep it more of a guarded launch. So we do the stuff step by step.
We even kept the decision to be on a centralized exchange, so that people do not fall for any scam tokens which are inevitable for various people to launch and list on Uniswap.
WC
How many EASY tokens were farmed as part of this initial launch period?
AG
Roughly 80K EASY total until we listed.
WC
So shortly after listing on Bitmax, you also implemented a staking program.
What are the details of that?
AG
Yes, we launched a staking program on Bitmax only for people to gain more out of their earned EASY. While launching, anything new takes time and we didn’t want our community to wait, hene enabled them to stake on Bitmax while we were building decentralized staking options.
We are launching our liquidity sourcing program today in roughly an hour after this AMA. Further to that, during the first week of Nov, we will launch dual staking for EASY holders. Hence giving the community more avenues for earning better incentivization.
You can see this link for more details —
https://bitmaxhelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360057461553
WC
How much of the supply is now locked up in your staking program? Do you have the latest figures for me?
AG
On Bitmax its approx 200k $EASY tokens locked. Obviously +/- 7/8%.
WC
With that out of the way, let’s get into the process of farming on EasyFi!
To put it succinctly, how do I?
AG
As of right now, there are no active farming initiatives.
However, as mentioned above one is launching today evening which will be driven with liquidity sourcing. Details of the same will be announced today!
WC
I mentioned it briefly before, but one of the challenges I had when I first started farming EasyFi, was the process of moving assets over from ETH to MATIC…
Do you have any easy to follow guide on how to do so, for the less informed?
AG
Yes, we provided a detailed guide for the same, people can refer to the same and try to send assets from ETH to Matic.
Here is a quick link to the guide —
We are working with the Matic team to ensure it’s ready for use when we launch Volatile assets in coming weeks.
WC
I believe there were a few initial issues with Matic and Ledger, have these been resolved now?
AG
Those are resolved for people to withdraw funds. However, I don’t think those are yet fully compatible.
WC
You mentioned that as part of your launch, you adjusted the block rewards for EasyFi and thus the expected APY as a result of farming.
What’s the current APY and why did you make these adjustments?
AG
Farming for $EASY on the platform is halted for reasons as mentioned in the Medium article here. We will be starting the programs again with more volatile assets and diverse products.
For now, we are initiating a liquidity sourcing program. Hence if people want to earn $EASY they can supply liquidity to Uniswap pools and stake their LP tokens to farm easy.
WC
Now these adjustments have been in play for a few weeks, what’s your feeling on the results of them?
Good, bad, in between…and do you expect to make any further changes as the projects progresses?
AG
Yes, it is good for the project and will enable us to devise more innovative incentivization mechanisms instead of vanilla industrial farm mechanics which has already proved otherwise for many projects.
WC
Now I believe that you’ll be adding “dual farming” to the platform in the very near future…what is that and why would it be of interest to your ordinary hard working yield famer?
AG
Dual farming is basically an incentive over incentive program, where users will be able to earn tokens of our partner projects when they will stake $EASY that they have earned from the platform as a result of their hard work during yield farming!
WC
One of the things I’ve loved about farming on EasyFi, APY, Harvest etc platforms is the safety I have as a user in farming with stable coins…
Introducing Matic to the equation, a non stable asset, seems like it will introduce much more risk into the platform for users…what’s your opinion on that?
AG
Stable coins will always be there, however financially and project wise it will make more sense to have both stable coins and more volatile assets.
We are also working on various initiatives where users will be able to supply their derivative tokens and while base underlying tokens might be staked and derivative tokens are earning interest, or they are able to take loans against the derivative staked tokens.
More details on this when we launch this program.
WC
Now I’ve saved potentially the best for last, depending on your perspective, but I saw the most recent announcement today, that you’ll also be introducing EASY farming on ETH too!
What, what what? Please…tell me what the deal is there and why you’ve made that decision?
AG
Ha ha ha, Yes, as mentioned above, the deal is right!
We have initiated this as part of our multi chain staking initiative for liquidity sourcing. People are using Uniswap heavily and we need liquidity there.
Hence its an incentivization for everyone providing liquidity to EASY pools on Uniswap
WC
So the natural followup question to that is, how do I farm EASY on ETH?
AG
Details along with a step by step guide to follow with the announcement at 6:00 PM IST today.
EASY TOKEN UTILITY
WC
We briefly touched upon some of the current EASY token utility in the previous questions, but how about you give me a bullet point summary of the various use cases within the EasyFi ecosystem?
AG
EasyFi native token ‘EASY’ will be used for the following key functions:
Governance: $EASY token will enable users to be able to play part in the protocol’s governance as EasyFi is going to become a DAO and enable the community to control various governance decisions w.r.t. Running the protocol.
Protocol Incentivization: will enable users to earn rewards from time to time and provide them with voting rights in the upkeep of the protocol and continuous development.
Staking Rewards: $EASY token will enable various projects to launch their lending and borrowing markets on the EasyFi network hence will enable them to reward the users to stake $EASY tokens for earning rewards in form of tokens of the respective markets and interact with corresponding markets on the protocol.
Cross Market Interaction: EasyFi is the first protocol in the DeFi space to enable dual token farming, hence enabling various markets being launched on EASYFI to be able to incentivize EASYFi users to interact with those respective markets.
Cross Chain Settlement: $EASY tokens will be used as a cross-chain settlement instrument in the various bridges created to communicate and share the liquidity with various other sidechain and main chains being built over a period of time like Binance Smart Chain, Polkadot, etc.
You can also find out more in our whitepaper —
EASYFI REVENUE MODEL
WC
That’s probably a really good segue into how all these token mechanics work to serve EasyFi itself, past the users of the network.
So what’s the revenue model past the small initial raise you did for EASY tokens and how do the aforementioned token mechanics work into the model?
AG
Our primary revenue will come from under-collateralized loans and micro lending space as those are niche products.
There are some protocol revenues built into the borrowing and supply rates difference as well.
COMPETITORS
WC
I wanted to talk a little about competitors in the space, as there’s a few niches/vectors you operate across from the use cases you supplied earlier in the AMA.
Compound would be the obvious starting point…why would a user choose EasyFi over Compound?
AG
Coz, Easy starts where Compound ends. :)
Well, EasyFi offers much more diverse products and not to mention again at much cheaper costs that you would end up paying on compound or any layer 1 solution in form of gas fees.
PARTNERSHIPS & BACKERS
WC
So on the flipside of competitors, let’s talk about supporters and backers of the project…
You’ve obviously recently been through a private fund raise, who have you raised funds from and what value have they added, and will continue to add, as the project develops?
AG
We raised a very humble amount from various DeFi and CeFi angels and more friends and family.
The main benefit we have got from these groups is the guidance and connections they have brought to the table. The result is reflective in the TVL.
Its all support from the community and these angels that we were able to take off this project and clock some of the TVL’s the biggest projects in the industry aspire for.
EASY TOKEN SALE & SUPPLY
WC
So let’s talk about the fundraising you went through to bootstrap the project.
As I just mentioned, from my understanding, the private raise was a VERY small round right?
AG
Yes, it was a very humble raise of $300K USD.
Details about the sale and fundraise were made public and can be read here —
WC
So how many of these tokens hit the market on day one?
Can you supply me with a token release and distribution schedule?
AG
On day one our circulating market cap was approx 4%
Further details are already mentioned in the article mentioned above.
WC
Can I ask what your logic was regarding doing such a small raise and not doing any public sale or the like?
AG
We didn’t want to make it a big raise, as that brings in a lot of responsibility on and further, we wanted the community to be part of the project instead of making it a heavy VC play.
Hence, just raised enough to bootstrap the project to get into real shape.
WC
What were the farming rewards initially and what have they been reduced down to?
AG
Initially it was approx 10 368 EASY tokens hitting the market daily. By the end of the deflation period, it became 0.
As of right now it’s 0. However, with the Uniswap LP program starting today, there will be some inflation. As I mentioned, details of this will be released in a few hours time.
WC
What effect has this reduction on inflation had to the overall token distribution? What comes next after inflation reduction?
AG
It gave us space and flexibility to bring more innovative incentivization.
We are building some very interesting farming mechanisms for the users, which are directly linked with project objectives too, instead of just another traditional industrial farm.
WC
What impact will the addition of Dual Farming and ETH based farming have to this overall token distribution?
AG
Uniswap farming will continue and have a specific amount of tokens from ecosystem funds allocated towards this.
We furthermore, will have partner project tokens being distributed for EASY holders as part of dual farming.
With more volatile assets coming in incentivization will again kick in for the users.
DUE DILIGENCE CHECKS
WC
Does EasyFI have a Github?
AG
It’s not live yet but it will be released in a few weeks time.
WC
Where are you guys based?
AG
Most of our teams are based out of India.
WC
Where is EasyFi incorporated?
AG
EasyFi is incorporated in BVI
WC
Do you have a legal opinion that your EASY token isn’t a security?
AG
Yes, already had it furnished to the exchange before listing. That is a mandatory document for listing these days.
WC
What’s the contract address of the EASY token?
AG
https://etherscan.io/address/0x913D8ADf7CE6986a8CbFee5A54725D9Eea4F0729
WC
Has the EASY smart contract been audited and can we see the results?
AG
The current version of our contracts are exact replicas of Compound. Hence our contracts are as audited as Compound.
Our future developments and V2 which will have EasyFi modules will certainly be audited with global companies before launch for users.
WC
How about the smart contacts for the application itself?
AG
Most of the contracts are on Matic Blockchain. Those will be listed on websites with updated docs soon.
People interested to integrate with our app, can either wait for the announcement or reach out to us directly…There is already two applications are integrating with EasyFi.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
WC
Nice, well that’s all I have for today!
Thanks so much for your time today Ankitt, I know you have a big evening ahead of you with the big ANN!
AG
Thank you sir and I appreciate the time and lovely questions!
EasyFi Resources
Website: https://easyfi.network
Telegram: https://t.me/easyfiNetwork
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EasyfiNetwork
Medium: https://medium.com/@easyfinetwork
Whitepaper: https://easyfi.network/easyfi-whitepaper.html
App: https://app.easyfi.network/
Wolf Crypto Resources
Public Group: https://t.me/WolfCryptoPub
News Channel: https://t.me/WolfCryptoAnnounce
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WolfCryptoGroup
