There is something constant in SatoshiClub – it’s our non-stop AMA marathon. And today we would like to tell you about the AMA session with our friends from Mantra DAO. The AMA took place on July 22 and our guest were John Patrick Mullin Co-Founder & Council Member at Mantra DAO and Nicholas Krapels (Prof. K 教授) Strategy Consultant at Mantra DAO.
The total reward pool was 300 USDT + $300 in OM and has been splitted in 3 parts.
In this AMA Recap we will try to summarise the most interesting points for you.
Part 1 — introduction and questions from the Telegram&Bitcointalk community
Serg: Hello everyone! MANTRA DAO will be our guests today. @JPMullin , welcome!
Irina Kravchuk: Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of our AMA series
Nice to meet you @JPMullin 😊
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: Hey everyone, thanks so much for having me! Great to be here and share more about MANTRA DAO!
Serg: We are eager to find out 🙂 Please tell us a bit about yourself and how did you start MANTRA DAO
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: Sure thing, happy to share a bit more about myself and the project. I’m originally from the US, but spent nearly the last 10+ years abroad having done my undergraduate studies in España, my first masters in Germany, and my second in Shanghai. After that I worked in traditional finance doing research on FinTech and blockchain for one of largest Chinese investment banks, Guotai Junan Securities. I joined the crypto space fulltime in 2017, but was active since 2015 and bought my first bitcoin (unforutunately just a few) in 2013. I moved to Hong Kong in 2018 and helped set up a crypto exchange and advisory firm, before launching the HK offices of a US licensed brokerage business that has the only SEC license for distributing digital securities. After that I joined the Rio DeFi team as an advisor, and most recently have been focused on building and launching MANTRA DAO. A DeFi DAO focused on Staking, Lending, and Governance. 🙂
that was a lot, but hopefully you can get a sense of my background
Serg: pretty clear 🙂 What country did you like the most? ))
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: Haha that’s a tough question.. for the fun and parties.. gotta say Spain :stuck_out_tongue: But I’ve loved everywhere I’ve lived, and tend to settle into almost any environment I go to!
Irina Kravchuk: Nice. Why did you choose Europe? For your studies?
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: To be honest, I was just obsessed with Spanish culture and language at the time, and it seemed like the thing to do. I wanted to try something a little different!
I can say it worked out well and couldn’t be happier with those (unconventional) choices I made
Serg: Nice introduction 😀 Thanks for sharing it with us. For the first part we have collected questions from the community and selected 6 of them. Are you ready to start?
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: Ready as I’ll ever be
Q1 from Bitcointalk user k.muller
What happens if the community votes for 2 changes which contradict themselves? How would you proceed then? Which one you will choose?
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: Great question – and that’s why our governance process involves a four step process with Council Members
Im just going to rip this from the WP, but will summarize after..
In order to submit a proposal and vote within the MANTRA DAO ecosystem, a member must first hold and stake OM. Each staked OM represents 1 vote within the MANTRA DAO system. In order to propose a topic for voting, users will need to deposit USD $100 worth of OM as collateral. If the proposal should fail, they will lose the OM, but if the proposal passes evaluation from the council, then the vote will proceed. If the proposal receives a simple majority (51%) of the votes from the valid voters (staking OM), then the depositor will receive their OM back as well as an additional amount of KARMA for helping the ecosystem.
The process for voting is as follows:
– 1 week for proposals
– 1 week for evaluation of proposals
– 1 week for the voting of proposals
– 1 week for the implementation of proposals
OM holders who stake OM will be allowed to propose changes to the MANTRA DAO ecosystem including, but not limited to, changes in:
– Interest rates
– OM Inflation level
– Ecosystem grants
– Adding additional staking assets
– Adding additional lending products
– Etc.
The MANTRA DAO Council is currently comprised of 5 Council Members. The Council Members will serve 2-year terms and will help guide the proposal, evaluation, voting, and implementation process for MANTRA DAO. Every two years, there will be a vote for the next MANTRA DAO Council Members, with the maximum number of Council Members being set at 9. The Council will always maintain an odd number of councilors to never allow for a tie during the evaluation of proposals. The maximum number of consecutive council terms by any Council Member is set at 5.
It is also possible within our governance model that the MANTRA DAO Council can create sub-councils that specifically focus on certain topics, such as the MANTRA DAO Financial Council. The overall MANTRA DAO Council holds veto power over any sub-council.
Essentially the Council Members are the gatekeepers to the community voting process, and will have to listen to the community to see which votes should be brought forth for a community vote. I am one of the 5 Council Members.
In order for me to do a good job at this role, it is imperative to be closely involved with the community and listen to their feedback, suggestions, concerns.
Of course if I do a bad job, I can also be voted out and kicked out
I will do my best to make sure that doesn’t happen
Serg: hmm, I see. So, not every proposal can be brought to the voting process
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: That is correct, but the barriers for proposals and voting are much lower than other models we’ve seen and we want to make it as easy and simple to take part in governance as possible. we are aiming to be a mass-market DeFi product, which I’ve yet to truly see
Serg: but the council have to agree to that? 😀 before it goes to the vote
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: We also have limited terms.. similar to the US election.. even if they people want DT outta there.. he’s still got a chance to win re-election this year :stuck_out_tongue: That being said, if there is something truly egregious happening from one of the Council Members, it is our duty to dismiss them and let the community decide
Q2 from Bitcointalk user philicrohit
While
going through your project I found lots of terms Like OM, MANTRA,
KARMA are used which are sanskrit words relates to Hinduism
religion
Why did you decide to unite the cryptographic world
with spirituality? Any particular personal experience you wish to
share with us?
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: Another great question.. 2/2 so far
Irina Kravchuk: Hopefully we’ll have a 6/6 by the end of part 1 😁
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: While I must say, I’m not a very religious person, I do believe I’m a spiritual person, and when we were coming up with our branding concepts, we were trying to think of things that embodied taking control of your financial well-being, concepts that were very Zen and peaceful in nature. We started down this path and then we came to the idea of Mantras which are phrases or sayings meant to bring about a state of inner peace. We believe our product will allow our users to be at peace with their financial future 🙂
Serg: Where have you learned about this? I believe that not in Spain 🙂
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: Hahah, I’ve traveled a lot and met all kinds of people from around the world! Even some in spain like this 😉 haha
Serg: traveling is nice 🙂 I’ve heard about this concept from a friend who travelled at a monastery in Himalayas ))
Q3 from Telgram user @Lady_luck2
What is the main motivation of people to take a loan on the MantraDAO platform, than to take a loan from a bank? Do you have a strategy for attracting people to your platform not from the crypto space?
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: 3/3 haha. Well first and foremost, it’s all about economics. Not only will we be able to offer better economics than a bank, but I can almost guarantee you that 99.9% if not 100% of banks won’t let you take a loan using crypto as your collateral haha. Our lending platform allows for this. We’ve built in an internal reputaion protocol (kind of like a credit rating system) called the KARMA Protocol, that allows users to build up their reputation or credit worthiness through the good things they do within our platform and in the crypto space. This allows us to better assess the riskiness of lending to certain individuals and will open up all kinds of doors such as allowing for undercollateralized loans, better interest rates, etc.
These are just some of the examples of how you can build your karma and be rewarded in a number of different ways
Serg: So, if I successfully close some loans, I will have a better rate next time?
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: That is exactly right, but you can also earn KARMA from many other things that benefit our community
We believe that those with the best KARMA will be our best clients and customers 🙂
Irina Kravchuk: What should people do in the beginning, when their credit history is 0?
Prof K @shanghaipreneur Wanchain.org | FinNexus.io: Stake!
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: Well to be frank, they will have to build it up, just like in any credit situation. But you can start building it as easy as staking our OM token, inviting friends, submitting and voting on proposals, etc.
Prof K @shanghaipreneur Wanchain.org | FinNexus.io: Hi guys, I hope you can see now why I chose to back MantraDAO. What great questions from rhe Satoshi Club! Every time I come in here it gets better and better.
Serg: Yes, I know you have great choices 😀 FinNexus and MANTRA
Q4 from Telgram user @Baby_Crypto
What will happen to MANTRA DAO if the Polcadot network is not launched? Is MANTRA DAO compatible with other public chains?
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: Well first and foremost I’m very proud to be a Polkadot ambassador, and I can say with 100% certainty that Polkadot network has already become a permissionless blockchain network, and within 28 days DOT will be transferable. I can’t wait for this 🙂
But anyway, MANTRA DAO is built on a separate chain, called Rio Chain, which is a substrate-based chain, that doesn’t rely on Polkadot blockchain for anything (technical wise). We are a believer in Polkadot and Kusama, and are excited to become one of the fasting growing projects in their ecosystem, but we will also be integrating many other blockchain protocols
Rio Chain allows for cross-chain interoperability through a generic asset bridge we’ve been developing, and will give us the functionality to integrate any public chain we deem necessary
a key feature of both our staking and lending is the muti-asset staking and multi-asset collateral
Serg: So, you are related to Polkadot but have an autonomy from it
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: That is right! 🙂
Prof K @shanghaipreneur Wanchain.org | FinNexus.io: Actually no other tokens can ride on Polkadot except DOT
The whole point of Gavin’s project is to have a linkage of many “parachains”
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: Yea, that’s right. I will add though, that we are planning to become a Polkadot parachain as well with the Rio Chain
Prof K @shanghaipreneur Wanchain.org | FinNexus.io: Parachains are rare. Sort of like a team in the English Premier League. If they don’t do well, they get sent down to Kusama Network! 🤪
Serg: That’s nice. I don’t know much about Polkadot that’s why I was asking 🙂
Irina Kravchuk: Could you elaborate more on parachains?
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: https://wiki.polkadot.network/docs/en/learn-parachains
For in depth reading, I would suggest people to go check out the Polka Wiki 🙂
Prof K @shanghaipreneur Wanchain.org | FinNexus.io: No, it’s not exactly like that. There could be many many reasons why a substrate based chain chooses Kusama over Polkadot. But Kusama and Polkadot and Rio Chain are all based on what is called Substrate technology. Which is Parity’s software development kit for spinning up your own chain
Q5 from Telgram user @dominiksss
I’ve read that you had 900k in private investments. Can you tell us who are those investors? Is it public? For what price have they bought and are they locked?
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: Yes, I can share this info, and our seed investor also happens to be watching and in the chat
We were fortunate and lucky to receive seed investment from Calvin Ng, who is the GP of Plutus VC, a $200 million dollar blockchain VC fund out of HK. He paid the same price as all other private investors ($0.025) and will be under the same lock up as well. 6 months, with a monthly waterfall, although Calvin is heavily invested in both MANTRA and Rio Chain, and is certainly in it for the long haul with both of the projects both from a financial and operational/strategic perspective. I’ve known him for nearly 3 years now, and finally got him to invest in a project I’m working on 😉
he’s not easy to get money from haha, we also have some more VC investment announcements coming up in the near future that we will be sharing 🙂
Serg: When do that period start? 6 months lock period
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: Upon token issuance, which will essentially be immediately prior to exchange listing.We will be heavily incentivizing our earliest stakers, so we are confident a lot of our earliest investors will be staking early to grow their stack and not just staking OM, but other assets such as DOT, KSM, etc.
Serg: How much exactly will be the incentive? 🙂
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: I can’t put an exact number on it, but it will be a very competitive APY 🙂
Serg: I see 🙂 I think that you also have to think about the inflation, right?
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: we estiamte just staking without extra incentives in the early days to be anywhere from 10-20% APY depending on the number of stakers, only 10% of the tokens will be circulating upon release. We imagine less than 1/2 will be staked at the onset
Prof K @shanghaipreneur Wanchain.org | FinNexus.io: Initially staking will be Polkadot (DOT), Kusama (KSM) and of course OM… But there will be more chains coming rather soon, I think
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: VERY soon 🙂 this is another community decision process as well
Serg: That’s nice. I will definitely take a look at that when it is ready 🙂
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: of course the team will roll out additional tokens, but if the community wants other DPoS assets to be added, we wil be more than happy to build the node infrastructure
Prof K @shanghaipreneur Wanchain.org | FinNexus.io: So if you have fat stacks of a certain awesome PoS coin… you can suggest we become a validator there so u can delegate to Mantra and EARN MORE OM!
Q6 from Telgram user @kenny_vermaelen
I have seen that you are giving grants for the community/developers. What are the conditions to access those?
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: Great question, but simple answer! We will be giving grants (also possible through community proposals and voting) to businesses, individuals, etc. who are furthering the utility of OM or further decentralizing our DAO. We have not limited ourselves to any specific idea or type of project here.For example, the Kusama treasury, which has similarities to our grants, recently funded a small movie project specifically related to Kusama. But we’d also be more than happy to fund development courses or educational training regarding financial literacy / blockchain in the developing world, literally anything is possible.
Prof K @shanghaipreneur Wanchain.org | FinNexus.io: Once there is a solid base of community users and diverse assets in the DAO, the sky’s the limit on what kind of product we can build! The first product we’ve outlined in the white paper is a MakerDAO type Vault dapp that generates its own stablecoin.The second product is really up to the OM stakers.
Irina Kravchuk: Are the applications open? For this grants?
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: Nothing official yet, but I’m always happy to chat with anyone who has ideas, and we can start making things happen!
We’ll have an official webpage and form to fill later on, but in the early stages just talk to me or Prof K, or one of our other team members if you have a cool idea
Serg: We might apply as well 🙂 So, was it 6/6 or not? 😁
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: haha that was definitely 6/6
Prof K @shanghaipreneur Wanchain.org | FinNexus.io: nice work Satoshi Club, you did not dissapoint
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: Prof K was certainly right when he recommended your community
Part 2 — live questions from the Telegram community
Q1 from Telgram user @CryptoLove97
Staking
is The Most Popular Trend in Crypto Industry & its helpful
encourage investors to hold token long term!
Does MANTRADAO
Project Also support Staking? If yes, then What are Benefits of it
?
What’s The are Incentives for Users Running Validator node &
APY ?
Prof K @shanghaipreneur Wanchain.org | FinNexus.io: MantraDAO’s core is staking assets!
Q2 from Telgram user @AndrySTP
I noticed that your name contains DAO. What are the similarities between MANTRA DAO and Maker Dao in a number of products?
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: I’ll start here. We are certainly similar to Maker in a few ways eg. crypto collateralized stablecoin loans, governance token, etc. And we are big big fans of Maker.. Maker was DeFi before DeFi was a thing. But we have many other features not included in Maker including staking, MANTRA POOL (our internal platform lottery game), cross chain compatibility, etc.
Q3 from Telgram user @Jasonchloe
As I know, Mantra DAO has more centralized competitions than decentralized. How you will acquire most of the market with centralized
Prof K @shanghaipreneur Wanchain.org | FinNexus.io: Great question! CeFi has some cool entries here. But 1) they are custodial, in that you have to trust them that they will not spend your coins while you are staking with them. Although we may have some custodial services, our first priority is non-custodial staking and lending. 2) CeFi probably will not accept as diverse a collateral base as we plan on. 3) With our KARMA Protocol, we will incentivize users to stake and keep staking! Continue to participate in the ecosystem to earn more OM and get better deals on financial services!
Q4 from Telgram user @BabyGaLLerie
Which exchange does your coin listed?
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: This is an important question for everyone to know – we are not currently listed anywhere, as our IMO (initial membership offering) hasn’t concluded yet, but we have confirmed two very reputable exchanges, and have one in the final confirmation stages!
I think even Prof K is proud of our initial exhchanges we will be launching on
Prof K @shanghaipreneur Wanchain.org | FinNexus.io: Yes, we will definitely be making a big bang if everything we’ve lined up comes out like I think it will!
Q5 from Telgram user @vnmb35
Most of investor just focus on the price of token in short term instead of real value of project. Can you tell us the motivation and benefits for investors to long term?
Prof K @shanghaipreneur Wanchain.org | FinNexus.io: Building up your OM stack and improving your KARMA score should incentivize you to stay with MantraDAO and protect & grow your wealth!
Q6 from Telgram user @CryptoZaratustra
Am I correct in understanding that you want to combine the functionality of Compound + Maker DAO and Pool Together into one MANTRA DAO project? Why did you choose this unique combination of products and offers for the client?
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: Yes, that is very correct. We also have some other unique features that tie together to make a very comprehensive DeFi ecosystem with multiple products, and many ways to attract users! That being said, we can do this all with cross-chain interoperability, which is currently majorly lacking in Ethereum-based DeFi projects, and part of the reason why we decided to build within the Polkadot ecosystem!
Q7 from Telgram user @Car1a
Staking
and DeFi are very popular in cryptospace…
are there any idea
to implement DeFi and staking program in #Mandtradao
Ecosystem???
Prof K @shanghaipreneur Wanchain.org | FinNexus.io: MantraDAO IS Staking + DeFi + Stablecoin! 🤩
Q8 from Telgram user @vnmb35
You
organized an AMA session very rewarding and received a lot of
questions related to utilities and technology, future vision, …
So
now I want to ask what do you want to receive from the community?
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: Love this question! Community is everything in crypto, and all I ask is that you take some time to get to know our project, ask us questions, help us improve, and if you like what we are doing, come join us and be a part of our community-govenered DeFi DAO 🙂 if you haven’t already, please join our TG and feel free to ask more questions there – https://t.me/MANTRADAO
Q9 from Telgram user @Fedor_Fanat
Please explain more about MANTRA DAO Credit System? If I deposit my cryptocurrencies as collateral and I get instant access to stable currency loans? What place in the modern financial system will Defi take? What fundamental problem does MantraDAO solve in the modern financial system?
Prof K @shanghaipreneur Wanchain.org | FinNexus.io: The fundamental problem that MantraDAO is attempting to solve (and all of DeFi really, if it’s a good project) is giving increase access to life-changing investments that people otherwise would be shut out of. Our initial roadmap outlines an incentivized savings system, but future products could well include more complex financial products. But it will always align with this vision. Giving the little guy a chance to do better for his or herself!
Q10 from Telgram user @Cristal1501
users who use your staking platform need to verify kyc?
JP Mullin | MΛNTRΛ DΛO: Our staking will be non-custodial, so users won’t even need to deposit their assets with us if they wish to stake on our platform. All they need to do is delegate / nomiate our nodes and take part in our staking services to earn staking rewards in your native token and in OM. No KYC is needed for this, and neither for our lending, although your KARMA score is tied to a specific account. If you want to make a liquid version of your staked assets however, you will have to “bond” your assets with us.
Q11 from Telgram user @Nguyendufb
Can I stake OM ?
Prof K @shanghaipreneur Wanchain.org | FinNexus.io: Yes, absolutely! You can stake OM to earn discounts on services and earn more OM. Initially, you’ll also be able to stake DOT and KSM to earn OM with more assets being added probably weekly.
Part 3 – Quiz Results
In the final part we would like you to check your knowledge in terms of Mantra DAO. They’ve prepared 4 questions for this part.
Q1
What can OM Tokens be used for?
d. Staking, Collateral for loans, Voting and MANTRA POOL
Q2
When will MantraDAO’s public IMO offering begin?
b. 1st August 2020
Q3
How many tiers are there within the KARMA protocol?
d. 10
Q4
What is the greatest increase in interest rates for staking OM under the KARMA protocol?
d. 100%
For more information and future AMAs, join our Social Media channels:
English Telegram group: https://t.me/Satoshi_club
Russian Telegram group: https://t.me/satoshi_club_ru
Spanish Telegram group:
https://t.me/satoshi_club_spanish
Telegram
Channel: https://t.me/satoshi_club_channel
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/realsatoshiclub
Website:
https://esatoshi.club/
Our partners:
Mantra DAO Community: https://t.me/MANTRADAO