MahaDAO AMA with Wolf Crypto
We held an AMA with MahaDAO in our public Telegram channel on the 15th of January.
MahaDAO is as a decentralized and autonomous organization consisting of two tokens, MAHA and ARTH. MAHA is a governance and utility token that regulates the MahaDAO platform and ARTH — the world’s first non-depreciating cryptocurrency…a “vaulecoin” as opposed to a “stablecoin”.
ARTH is pegged to an underlying basket of collateral, initially 80% fiat, 15% gold, 5% Bitcoin, and has recently migrated form a MakerDAO CDP model into a Seigniorage Share model, a derivative of Basis Cash. The long term goal of ARTH is for ARTH to be used as a transactional currency and will be initially available on Ethererum, Elrond and Matic.
The ARTH model features -
Epoch interval: 12 hours
Max debt increase per epoch: 3%
Max supply increase per epoch: 6–15%
Target Price: The Global Measurement Unit
Bond Interest Rates: 20–30%
Bond Redemption Fees: 5% paid in $MAHA
The MAHA token is available on Uniswap here —
The ARTH token is available on Uniswap here —
You can also visit the MahaDAO Telegram Group or the MahaDAO Website for further details.
Here’s what MahaDAO Founder’s Pranay Sanghavi and Steven Enamakel had to say in the AMA.*
*This AMA has been edited for clarity.
WC (Wolf Crypto Telegram Member)
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to another edition of Wolf Crypto AMA, this time with MahaDAO!
Joining us from the MahaDAO team are Pranay Sanghavi and Steven Enamakel.
TEAM & TEAM GOALS
WC
Guys, it’s my pleasure to have you here in the channel today, having known you for quite some time now and having followed the project from the very beginning, I’m really excited to chat about money, value and how we keep both more “stable”…
Firstly though, I’d love to hear more about your backgrounds, what brought you into crypto in the first place and how your involvement in MahaDAO came to be?
PS
My name is Pranay Sanghavi, and I’m the CoFounder — handling the business, ecosystem strategy and investment side of things in MahaDAO. A quick background: I started my first company when I was 19 while in college, in telecom & networking space. Setup 9 sites in Mumbai with over 7000+ business customers and exited all of them within a period ~3 years.
I have close to 20 years serial entrepreneurship experience starting, advising and scaling up multi-million dollar enterprise including Fortune 500 Corporate’s in Information and Communications Technology Businesses.
Steven and I have been working on couple blockchain projects already while also simultaneously brewing up on Steven’s dream project — a DAO. since 2–3 years now, that’s how it all started..
SE
I have been a techie for the most part of my life. Blockchain has inspired me from the get-go. The idea of a transparent, trustless & effortless system is one that can & will emulate the non-transparent traditional systems that currently exist.
With that being said, I have had my share of crypto projects as you mentioned with CryptoControl, Vezures & Intellibuzz. All very successful in their respective niches. I have had my share of successes and failures and in no way has this been a highway ride.
And now with MahaDAO, hopefully we will be able to achieve great successes together.
WC
Thanks for your respective backgrounds. Now I know it’s not just the two of you working on the project and you have some pretty cluey economics guys and crypto advisors.
I’d love to hear a bit more on them before we move onto the project itself.
PS
Great, rarely have we been asked about it. Would love to answer this. Our core team contains the economic research division led by -
- Professor Dr. Zoran — the economist who worked with Steven to create the Global Measurement Unit (GMU) from Belgrade, Serbia.
- Nenad- Quant research assisting the economics team
We also have a strong set of Advisors.
- There’s Lester Lim, our go-to guy and usually our first point of contact whom we trouble for any advise!
- Then we have Chirdeep Chabra as our Strategy Advisor. ExFounder at Ocean Protocol.
- Ajit Khurana, the ex-CEO of ZebPay.
- Alex Albano, our marketing advisor who is our go-to person for anything related to community & her in-depth marketing knowledge is a great add.
- Dalpat Prajapati, another design advisor, the design guy at Matic who was at the forefront of all decision making with everything related to branding & designing with a knack of creativity he has shaped & defined MahaDAO’s persona.
- Mr. Karan, guiding us with in legal & regulatory matters (would be pleased to introduce you to him).
We also have some advisors working behind the scenes, like an angel on our shoulders helping us and guiding us.
SE
Economics as you know is important in almost any crypto project out there; so we’ve really thought through twice/thrice on economics of something before we implement it.
So yes, quite a lot of advisors over there, and plenty more to come, including some from the MahaDAO community itself.
THE MAHADAO PROTOCOL
WC
So before we get into the world of fiat, commodities, stable coins and value, how about an elevator pitch on what MahaDAO is and what you’re trying to achieve with the project?
PS
MahaDAO picks up where previous decentralised autonomous organizations left off, introducing the concept of a valuecoin, as opposed to a stablecoin.
With ARTH we have gone far and deep in the stablecoin sector with a timeless concept of a ‘valuecoin’, a totally new class of asset as we like to believe.
Unlike traditional fiat-backed (or dollar pegged) stable coins, which lose their purchasing power to inflation, MahaDAO’s valuecoin appreciates against inflation.
Today we would to talk with wolf crypto gang about ARTH — the first community in fact that we’d be eager to discuss about ARTH, share exciting updates and hear from this great community.
WC
Before we dive deep into ARTH, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the state of fiat in a COVID world where money printer goes brrrr constantly…and that’s in a post gold standard world where the money printing was brrring most of the time anyways…
PS
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating economic effect, but let’s not forget the fact that the global economy has been limping along under an increasing debt burden
In the US, for example, national debt now stands at a staggering $26.7 trillion. This addiction to borrowing is driven by weak economic growth.
Leading central banks to continually squash interest rates and engage in shady practices of monetary financing, also known as printing money out of thin air. (almost like our crypto community? lol).
This causes a currency’s value to depreciate and given the USD’s position as a world reserve, every currency is de facto depreciatory.
It’s an endless cycles of economic crisis, collapse, and chronic inflation (..rinse repeat)
SE
Yeah absolutely, the US govt’s money printer is the exact reason why ARTH was made, to be different, something that could rise in value irrespective of how much toilet paper the US govt keep printing (or any other govt for that matter).
WC
The more things change, the more they stay the same…
Ok, so we have a better understanding as we roll through this AMA, can you give me a TLDR on the two tokens that sit within your ecosystem, MAHA and ARTH?
I’m especially interested in a TLDR as to what a “decentralized algorithmic value-stablecoin” is…it’s quite the mouthful!
SE
The MahaDAO ecosystem features 2 tokens: MAHA and ARTH.
MAHA is a governance coin used to govern ARTH.
ARTH is a stablecoin that is pegged to a basket of assets (which consists of 80% fiat, 15% gold and 5% bitcoin).
PS
The primary responsibility of all MAHA token holders is to ensure the stability of the ARTH valuecoin.
ARTH is a viable successor to stablecoins, the future of stablecoins as we all know whats happening to Tether (and the likes) and the supreme US Dollar by Uncle Sam — lol…(analogous to Maker and DAI).
But very different from DAI as we shall discuss.
WC
You use this terminology in your whitepaper…”Global Measurement Unit”.
What is this, how is it used and how does it related to that basket of assets?
PS
Yes, a picture is worth a thousand words they say, let me share one!
To create an asset that is designed to protect the buying power of it’s holder, we need to come up with an absolute unit of measure of value to understand the buying power of an asset.
As Steve mentioned, Global measurement unit (GMU) consists of several assets some of them are traditional, well known financial assets and some are new age, digital financial assets.
ARTH is pegged to 80% Fiat, 15% Gold and 5% Bitcoin.
WC
Can I ask, what’s the logic behind the 80% Fiat, 15% Gold, 5% Bitcoin and is this fixed?
PS
Citing the simulations from ARTH whitepaper, it is fairly easy noticeable, if you take a look at the at GMU’s historical graphic, that it performs fine when appreciation is in question.
Over the period of 23 months, GMU has gained 202% increase in value, which is good indicator and it clearly shows that GMU can outperform inflation
GMU is designed to outperform inflation, during past 12 months, GMU gained 86% increase in value, significantly more than 2.1, 0.1, 2.8 inflation in US, Euro area and World respectively.
80% — Collection of Fiat currencies; (This includes USD, GBP, INR, JPY, CNY, CHF, CAD)
15% — Gold: As gold is often considered a safe-haven asset
5% — Bitcoin: As Bitcoin has also started to show properties of being a safe have asset as of recent.
Although fixed for now, GMU can change too by incorporating feedback from the market.
SE
This chart shows what happens when you have 80% fiat, 15% gold and 5%. Bitcoin.
WC
Ok so the GMU isn’t something that’s governed on the platform, it’s decided by your team of economic advisors?
SE
Yes our economists have studied through this very carefully and have taken over 10+ years of data to come up with this metric, so ARTH will be a coin that’ll even survive the worst financial crises; 2008, corona crisis etc…
PS
Yeah, aside from a nuclear fallout, GMU has been tested during extremely challenging time, highly unstable and unpredictable economic and social circumstances across the World due to COVID-19 pandemic, research has proved that GMU can be trusted as stable asset.
Hopefully we don’t get to such a testing scenario!
WC
So I’d love to know your thoughts on what you’ve learned from other stable coin projects along the way, and why you’ve designed your project in such a way as a result?
From my understanding, your original reference model was based on MKR however I noticed you recently released an update that changes the ARTH launch model from an MKR model to a Seigniorage Share model…
Why have you changed from the tried and tested MKR model and can you give us any more detail on how this change affects the launch for ARTH?
SE
Yes there are many learning’s from ESD, DSD, DAI, Basis Cash etc.. that we’ve studied carefully.
The major change from CDP (collaterilzied debt positions) to elastic model (Seigniorage Shares) was because CDPs don’t scale to meet the demand for the coin, however going the elastic route has it’s own set of challenges; most elastic coins today are not every stable (ESD, DSD, Basis etc..), and the reason for that is -
- there’s not much natural demand for the coin other than just that coming from yield farmers
- contracting the supply (which is what most of these coins do when purchasing bonds/coupon) has a weak effect on appreciating the price of the coin
ARTH solves this in two ways
- having actual utility as far other coins: ARTH is not pegged to 1 USD; but to a basket of assets (which contains gold); so it makes sense to use ARTH as a hedge against the fiat market
- ARTH issues bond tokens to people who buyback on Uniswap; Which means the only way to get ARTH bonds is to actually purchase ARTH from uniswap and then convert that into bond tokens. This gives a much stronger impact on the price of ARTH tha from other coins.
This is a sample of how that process works on our platform.
PS
ARTH has evolved. it has come a long way to stand the test of time and in line with the needs of the world. ARTH now uses the Seigniorage Shares model to maintain its stability as opposed to collateral backed system.
Seignorage shares are a cutting edge concept that will revolutionize how stablecoins operate.
WC
For those who may not understand the Basis Cash and other seigniorage share model coins, can you give us a quick TLDR on how these work and what it will mean for MAHA token holders interacting with this new model?
SE
Absolutely, it kinda works like this.
The coin works in two ways —
- If the coin is trading above it’s target price; then new coins are minted: say if ARTH is trading at 1.05$ and is supposed to be 1$; then 5% of new coins are minted to bring the price down by 5%
- and likewise when the coin is trading below it’s target price; new coins are burnt (and in return bonds are issued);
So if ARTH is trading at 0.95$ and is supposed to be 1$; then 5% of old coins are burnt (and converted into bonds) to bring the price up by 5%.
WC
So what are the main differences between the Basis Cash model and your new model?
SE
There are two main differences —
- In basis cash; you don’t buyback from uniswap when purchasing bonds; hence a weak effect on the price; in ARTH. you buyback from uniswap
- And this is something very new again, there is a stability fee that is charged when a person tries to redeem a bond
WC
What happens with this fee? What’s it there for and where does it go?
SE
Stability fees are paid in MAHA and are used to dampen bond redemption.
Stability fees are paid in MAHA and is burnt once it is collected, which means MAHA’s (the governance token of MahaDAO) circulating supply will keep on decreasing as more and more people start using ARTH.
It’s kept there; simply to slow down how quickly people sell their bonds.
WC
What’s the current supply of MAHA for reference?
SE
Currently MahaDAO has a circulating supply of 6–7%, 600k tokens out of 10m tokens which will be distributed over a period of 10 years.
WC
How many of these coins are currently locked in your staking campaigns?
PS
WC
Speaking of the ARTH, a nice simple one for you…I know you’re in beta now, but when actual launch?
PS
SE
To ensure that ARTH is given in a fair and easy way; we are distributing the first 500k ARTH to token holders from various communities who stake on arthcoin.com from tomorrow.
The communities include; MAHA, YFI, ESD, DSD, BAS, MKR, RSR (lol), Winston coin and others.
We keep poking the RSR guys!
WC
Winston coin is an exit scam/rug pull, don’t invest!
I actually have a question on RSR…
I note your baskets for ARTH are very similar to what RSR are doing with some of the later versions of their model…
What inspiration have you taken from that project and how do you feel MahaDAO differs from RSR/RSV?
SE
Honestly we really like the RSR concept; but somehow they are not there where we would want to see them today.
RSV is supposed to be meant a stablecoin used to protect yourself against inflation but is today a USD stablecoin… why??
Our goal is to not be a USD stablecoin from day 0 and be pegged to a basket from day 0.
PS
Yes if you had heard our pitch during our private sale days — and you did, lol — Maker and Reserve are kinda marked MahaDAO competitors, but no longer in a direct way now. ARTH has evolved…
Reserve has a pretty interesting model, but we feel its restricted and dated in many ways — esp in the way they are approaching it
Steven and the economic team did an in depth research on many of the aspects around Reserve and after a lot of brainstorming, experimentation's, modeling and simulations, including feedback from experts like yourself, MahaDAO has designed ARTH that is very different, practically applicable and a win-win-win for the investors, community and MahaDAO project.
WC
Ok so just to step it back for a second…”the first 500k ARTH”…this is the bootstrap period?
What happens after the first 500K?
SE
After the first 500k ARTH; the protocol will then decide, either to issue more ARTH (if ARTH is trading above it’s target price), or to buyback ARTH (if ARTH is trading below it’s target price).
WC
So just to be clear, 500K to those pools over the first 5 days, then bonds kick in and ARTH starts expanding or contracting right?
SE
Yes.
WC
Do you have any expected APY’s for the various pools, or how many ARTH coins are allocated to each?
SE
APY’s are pretty decent 🙂 and the allocation of ARTH is more towards Maha token holders. So if you’re looking to get a good chunk of ARTH, then your best bet is to get the most is to be staking in your MAHA tokens.
WC
You mentioned before a lot of MAHA tokens are tied up in your staking campaigns…are they left out or do they somehow get ARTH as well?
SE
They too will get ARTH coins as well yes, once you’re in the Maha community, long term hodlers will always get rewarded.
WC
Amazing, I’m sure a few were panicking they’d stake their coins already and might be left out of all of this!
So lets talk a little more about ARTH and the baskets…Can you give me some real world examples of baskets and how they’ll be created, stored and rebalanced over time?
SE
This is how our basket looks, this is what ARTH will be pegged to. It’ll be fully synthetic and will rebalance once every quarter or so…
PS
Global commodities, in the first quartile of 2020, the world oil and gas sectors is facing deep recession due to falling demand caused by pandemic, but a
also from failure of OPEC+ countries to agree on production and export levels.
And now our favorites: Gold and Bitcoin!
According to research, Bitcoin has far fewer characteristics as a hedge and safe haven in comparing with gold and also, it is not the best instrument to hedge structural crude oil price shocks (compared to gold).
(Bitcoin is also not a proper currency, on a separate note).
Cryptocurrencies have largely correlated with riskier assets and follow them over these period 2020 (Bloomberg, 2020).
This is in accordance with the thesis that Bitcoin as the highly volatile asset, with the extreme price dynamics and price clustering.
The index of these assets takes into account numerous macroeconomic indicators after researching from more than 190 countries to create the most accurate measure of value that exists in the world today. (plus the other assets as mentioned)
WC
Can you explain this part in more details, dumb it down for me, you peg the basket to the synthetic values of these assets? There are no physical assets involved right?
SE
Yes no physical asset being locked in, it is using a price peg to represent the assets.
WC
You mentioned rebalancing before…You also mention in the whitepaper that as part of the rebalancing period, 50% of an appreciated asset will be sold off…
Is this still the case?
PS
That was the old model where the rebalancing was supposed to happen on the assets being collateralised.
Now is an elastic model .. the dynamics of the protocol has changed.. an updated whitepaper is being drafted.
SE
No, this will have to be updated, so many things moving so fast, we are working on v2 of our whitepaper.
WC
So you gave me a list of assets before, but are there any limitations as to what assets can be used as part of the baskets on MahaDAO?
You mentioned high market capitalisation and “negative beta” in the whitepaper, but what does this actually mean?
SE
There are no limitations; and MAHA token holders can decide on what goes into the basket and out after a certain point in time.
Basically the assets we choose need to work in such a way that if 50% of the assets depreciate in value; the other 50% of the assets should appreciate (ie.. have a negative beta).
This is what makes the ARTH coin a valuecoin, because irrespective of which direction the market move, ARTH’s value will always be fixed.
WC
So with the above in mind, can you explain to me how the GMU and baskets tie into an actual price for the ARTH token…most of these Seigniorage Share have a target price of $1…what’s the target price for ARTH?
SE
The target price for 1 ARTH will start at 1$ but after a week it could go to 1.05$ or 0.90$ depending on how the GMU (the price peg) performs.
If we see BTC keeping on smashing ATH then 1 ARTH’s target price will be more in a week’s time like maybe 1.02$ or 1.05$.
PS
One of the biggest differentiators of $ARTH, when compared to other stablecoins, is that its target price is NOT going to be always fixed/pegged to 1 US Dollar.
ARTH is designed to be a currency that protects the wealth of its holders. The asset price feeds come off an oracle that integrates into the ARTH seignorage shares model.
All this works flawlessly in lockstep with the mission of product
WC
So in the grand scheme of things, you get your baskets up and running and have ARTH working and pegged using the GMU to a certain value…
Where do you see the ARTH coin sitting in the overall crypto ecosystem and where will it be available?
PS
Unlike Ampleforth, Celo and Terra, MahaDAO has an ARTH Vault, orginally inspired by MakerDAO, but evolved over the months of research to something even more innovative, stabler and scalable than the aforementioned projects.
We have improved the protocols design, dynamics over Basis Cash/ESD/DSD.
SE
ARTH will be crypto and DeFi first; and we will be seeing it listed on couple of exchanges and Dapps, and it will hopefully grow bigger than other non-USD stablecoins out there!
WC
Let’s talk more about MAHA now and the idea of decentralised governance.
Obviously this is what the token will be used for, but what’s your plan when it comes to decentralised governance, how will it be rolled out and what will the MAHA token be used for across the various stages of governance?
SE
Our governance portal is being launched out pretty soon and there is a large chunk of MAHA tokens that’ll be used by the community to grow itself.
We are just getting started and there’ll be a lot more new updates coming along that way.
PS
The primary responsibility of all MAHA token holders is to ensure the stability of the ARTH valuecoin to vote on savings rate, stability fees, and other governance proposals like GMU proportion, etc.
A shiny new governance portal shall be launched on our website on which users would be able to vote, comment and discuss on issues including long-form brainstorming.
We are very much interested in users who are interested in governance as MahaDAO’s mission is to be fully decentralised.
SE
It’s already built; and will be made public pretty soon!
WC
Now I know MAHA is an ERC20 token, but you have partnerships in place with both Matic and Elrond.
Does this mean MAHA AND ARTH will be available on all chains or is this just a way of gaining more exposure, utility and usage of the ARTH token across various chains?
PS
As the technology grows, we’re seeing new and improved blockchains such as, Matic, Tezos, Algorand, Polkadot, etc that offer great flexibility and negligible fees.
However, one of the biggest challenges in adoption is the lack of assets on the chain.
Simultaneously, one of the objectives of MahaDAO is to expand our ecosystem and bring the value to different chains. This we shall achieve by way of tapping cross-chain liquidity. We have partnered with Matic as the first blockchain & recently Elrond (and others in pipeline), so that the vast communities of those chains are now empowered to partake in the benefits of ARTH valuecoin.
MahaDAO has plans to enable Maha & ARTH the world’s first valuecoin to be deployed on various blockchains. ARTH is elastic so it will be infinite in supply basis the demand & supply mechanics.
However MAHA is limited and as per the tokenomics, a maximum of 10m MAHA coins are ever gonna be minted across a period of 10 years (post which a 2% inflation rate will kick in).
SE
Yes, after our current launch which is on ETH, we will be implementing on Matic, Elrond, etc…
WC
Will there be some sort of block explorer or statistics page that shows the various metrics of all the various aspects of the MahaDAO network?
ARTH mining/burning, collateral in the various baskets, transactions of the ARTH coin across the various networks, TVL locked into the platform…
There’s a lot to keep track of!
SE
It’ll go live in less than 5 days!
IDO & TOKEN SUPPLY
WC
So I wanted to take a step back in time for a second and go through your raise and launch.
How much was raised (USD) in the private and public sales?
PS
Seed — 125k
Private sale — 650k
IDO — 125k
WC
Damn you guys have done well and built a lot off a small raise!
PS
Yes we had raised pretty low — Steven was pretty sure of the tokenomics design, low cap, low raise, low supply…but HIGH demand and HIGH value delivery.
Most importantly, we keep our costs in control, operate as a lean and mean machine.
WC
Do you have a link to your full token metrics for reference?
PS
Slightly dated, but shall answer all the basic questions, (need to be slightly updated — shall do that soon).
WC
I note you have 70% of all tokens allocated for “Community Members”.
Can you explain to me what community members means in this context and how these tokens will be distributed over time?
PS
That will be again based on the governance and proposals. There would be many programs and schemes that will start launching. The community distribution plan will entail activities around members doing governance, promotion , ecosystem growth, content.
EXCHANGES
WC
Post Polkastarter, you launched on Uniswap right away. How much liquidity and trade volume has occurred there since launch and how many users now hold MAHA?
PS
I think there are more than 4000 MAHA holders. At one time the volume of MAHA was so high, it was 6th largest and was compared to USDT, DAI.
Other statuses are clearly visible in Uniswap and Etherscan.
WC
Did you guys supply liquidity to Uniswap and if so, how much and is it locked?
SE
Yes, 80%+ is locked.
WC
Are you incentivising MAHA holders to provide liquidity on Uniswap also?
SE
Those who provide liquidity on Uniswap and stake their MAHA-ETH LP tokens can get additional ARTH Seigniorage!
WC
Do you have any plans for additional exchange listings past Uniswap?
PS
Yes certainly.
Some of the decentralised exchanges (and some small CEX) listed us unofficially already moreover, we’re in talks with a few centralised tier1 exchanges
Past that, we plan to list ARTH on many CEX, MAHA may be on few but ARTH on many.
DUE DILIGENCE CHECKS
WC
Ok I have some quickfire DD questions to finish my questions off for the AMA…Does MahaDAO have a Github?
SE
Bam!
WC
Where are you guys based?
PS
Steven — Kuwait
Pranay — Mumbai
Harish — London
Gaff — India
Prof Zoran — Belgrade
Nenad — Belgrade
WC
What’s the contract address for the MAHA token?
PS
https://etherscan.io/token/0xb4d930279552397bba2ee473229f89ec245bc365
WC
Has the MAHA token smart contract been audited and can we see the results?
PS
Under auditing, announcement to be out next week with the results.
WC
How about the ARTH token?
PS
https://etherscan.io/token/0x0E3cC2c4FB9252d17d07C67135E48536071735D9
CLOSING THOUGHTS
WC
Guys, thanks so much for your time today and I’m super excited about the ARTH launch tomrorow!
SE
Thanks Winston for your awesome community and also for your support!
PS
Thanks a lot — it was great to be here!
MahaDAO Resources
Website: https://mahadao.com
Telegram: https://t.me/MahaDAO
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheMahaDAO
Medium: https://medium.com/mahadao
Whitepaper: https://mahadao.com/ARTH%20Whitepaper%20-%201.1.0%20Draft.pdf
Wolf Crypto Resources
Public Group: https://t.me/WolfCryptoPub
News Channel: https://t.me/WolfCryptoAnnounce
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WolfCryptoGroup
