On September 1st our friends from POFID were invited to conduct an AMA session at Satoshi Club. This time we had many rewards, including a $500 pool for users who joined the POFID telegram group. Our guest was Dane Elliot (head community organizer).
The total reward pool was $1000, it was splitted into three parts and the special task .
In this AMA Recap we will try to summarize some of the most interesting points for you.
PART 1, INTRODUCTION AND COMMUNITY QUESTIONS
Serg | Satoshi Club: Hello dear community! Our guests today are from @pofid. Welcome to Satoshi Club!
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: Hi everyone, and a warm welcome to @d41145.
Dane Elliott: Hi all! Glad to be here and talk to you all!
Serg | Satoshi Club: Please tell us a bit about yourself, how did you get into crypto?
Dane Elliott: Sure thing. So hi everyone at Satoshi Club! I’m Dane. I’m head community organizer for POFID and I’ve been working in blockchain since 2017. I first came to know about POFID sometime towards the end of 2019 and since then have been really fascinated by the project and the potential it presents. Right now, DeFi projects are extremely hot and have become almost the buzzword of choice as of late, but I think it is important to distinguish POFID from some of the other projects out there. POFID is a DeFi infrastructure project with privacy protection that supports advanced financial applications and general tools on the SERO network. We believe DeFi is the real Finance 2.0 and POFID DAO is an extremely important piece of infrastructure that underlies that revolution.
Serg | Satoshi Club: You hoped in during the ICO hype. 🙂
Dane Elliott: Haha, yes, that’s essentially correct!
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: DeFi is on fire for sure.
Serg | Satoshi Club: I feel like in the ICO bubble to be honest 😁 I hope I am wrong.
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: (To Dane Elliot)What did you do before crypto-life?
Dane Elliott: Before crypto I was working in tech and later finance. Crypto seems like the perfect step up from the two of those, combining the two and adding so much more value on top. DeFi obviously goes even further, but we are only just now starting to see it take off! So very exciting times ahead!
Serg | Satoshi Club: Thanks for the introduction, Dane! We’ve collected some questions from the community. Ready to dive in and take a look at them?
Dane Elliott: By the way, before we talk about project specifics, here is our group link for anyone looking to learn more about us and join in on this revolution! https://t.me/pofid
Yes, absolutely, let’s go!
Q1 from Bitcointalk User zygote59
Based on some available data, POFID DAO uses Decentralized Mortgage Warehouse (DMW) as your primary smart contract. Can you explain DMW in simple terms, how it works and what it uses in your network?
Dane Elliott: So let’s start by talking a little about pledged lending and stable coins. This is a concept that is often confused. Logically speaking, lending activities require a certificate, but the generated certificate itself is not a loan. For example, the DAI generated on Maker is nothing more than a debit note. The loan only occurs when you use the debit note in an exchange for other assets. The so-called stable currency is the debt (if any) that occurs under this IOU. The amount of debt is anchored to the value of some other asset (such as legal currency or USDT). But this does not change the essence of what it is as IOU – if you don’t use it, there will be no debt. From the perspective of infrastructure, Maker can be regarded as such, but it is almost limited to the function of printing IOUs.
In view of this recognition, you can think of POFID as a container that manages a set of assets, a “Decentralized Mortgage Warehouse (DMW)” that accepts and relies on various deposited input assets that map onto (or are issued onto) “Assets on the Chain” (AOC), according to certain rules. Making use of stable coins in the case of POFID means that the collateral in the container must have an observable value that can be measured by the anchored object. The ratio between the number of AOCs is then fixed by the amount of collateral and mapping (or issuance), according to this value. If a user who issued this AOC exchanged it for USDT or a certain fiat currency (that is, the anchored object), then the loan of the anchored object has been completed. At this time, this AOC is not only a kind of IOU (since the user exchanged the anchor object to complete the loan) but also a kind of stable currency as the user who receives this AOC can use it to make payment.
Q2 from Bitcointalk User george.bend
With POFID, anyone can issue their own cryptocurrency using digital assets as a pledge. Explain the process. Is it like creating a token on Ethereum?
Dane Elliott: Essentially, yes! The process is very simple and, as you mentioned, is basically the same as creating a token on Ethereum, like almost all DeFi projects. If you’re interested in exact details and learning about some of the mechanism behind it, please feel free to consult our white paper: https://github.com/pofid-dao/pofid-docs/blob/master/POFID_ENG.pdf
Serg | Satoshi Club: So, if I would like to create it, why not creating directly on ETH? Why would I choose to use your tools? What would be the advantages?
Dane Elliott: So Ethereum is a great project. It’s supported by some of the most talented people in the industry. But the the problems that it faces today is deeply rooted in its fundamental design.
Now, lots of people are looking forward to Ethereum 2.0. When that will be launched and what advantages it will provide is beyond my scope of knowledge, but what I can say is, in the current situation, I think the technical limitations and high costs of using Ethereum make it unsustainable and unpractical for real world enterprises. Incidentally, POFID does not run on Ethereum, but rather on SERO, the world’s first anonymous public blockchain platform.
We don’t face the same problem as Ethereum. One SERO token (currently about 13 cents) can sustain 100,000 transactions. With SERO 2.0 we will see even more beneficial innovations: some of the highest TPS and a structure that can be infinitely expanded.
One more thing. Besides avoiding the problem of high gas fees and congestion, we fully support privacy protections.
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: Could you elaborate please what “support privacy protections means”?
Dane Elliott: Of course! This is really the main focus of the POFID project. Financial activities cannot be separated from data privacy protection, so decentralized finance cannot avoid this problem. On this issue, there is no room for compromise.
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: Yeah, sounds important.
Dane Elliott: Although this is not necessarily a key regulatory element, it is an underlying element that is essential for competition and survival in the business world. Let me give you some basic examples.
In the real, work if you take out a loan from the bank will the entire public be able to see this? Of course not!
How embarrassing would that be if all your financial transactions were available for everyone to see. Now, for individuals this might just seem like a pain, but the privacy of financial transactions is essential for real world businesses. The business world would not exist without privacy.
But with platforms like Ethereum, EVERYTHING is public and accessible for all too see. Whatever way you slice it, it can be concluded with certainty that when DeFi is recognized by global regulation, data privacy protection will inevitably be one of its key characteristics. By putting a focus on this aspect, POFID is preparing itself for DeFi’s future disruption of traditional finance.
Serg | Satoshi Club: Thanks for explaining. 🙂
Dane Elliott: One quick note. We keep a very close relationship to the SERO team, but we are completely independent.
Q3 from Telegram User @kosmonavto
Share with us more details about the tokenomics. 51% from 2 million will be shared among hodlers for 20 years. Please explain the details of this distribution. Also, who holds the rest 49%?
Dane Elliott: Sure. Let me break the tokenomics down very quick. 51% is mined and given to the community. The remaining 49% goes toward the ecosystem – 34% is given to various, for example the liquidation committee, the investment committee, as detailed in the white paper. The remaining 15% goes to the public and private sale.
We are still screening private equity and there is no clear private equity institution that we have chosen yet. We are considering joining some international organizations, such as the Korea Trade Promotion Association, the blockchain research institution under the Ministry of Information Industry.
Just a quick note, the tokenomics should all be outlined in our white paper, and specific details will be released to the public in the coming days as we launch on Uniswap and centralized exchanges.
Serg | Satoshi Club: Why Korea? are you based there?
Dane Elliott: No, we’re not based in Korea. We are definitely a very decentralized team, with some of us in Europe, some in China, some in Indonesia, some in Vietnam, some in North America etc. With that said, we have a very active Korean community and very strong links to real-world Korean businesses, including the Port of Busan (the largest port in Korea).
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: What centralized exchanges will you be listed on? Can you share this info with us?
Dane Elliott: Unfortunately, I can’t elaborate on the specifics of the exchanges, but I can say we have quite a few surprises in stall in the next few weeks.
One thing I can say… Out initial focus is on Uniswap (which we will achieve through Ethereum contract obviously) for initial exposure, and honestly, to join in on all the Uniswap fun. But after that our focus will be on centralized exchanges.
Serg | Satoshi Club: Btw, we have a tradition 😁 every guest is sharing a secret with us. A secret revealed in premiere here, in Satoshi Club.
Dane Elliott: Haha, ok I”ll try reveal a couple secrets here then. We will focus on one or two core crypto-crypto exchanges first. There are many good candidates that we are in talks with, including top 10 exchanges. But after that our focus will be with regional, mostly fiat exchanges.
Why fiat exchanges? Well, our product is dealing with people in the real world. Real world businesses haven’t really come to the realization of crypto yet. It’s a big step up for them and a huge learning curve. However, with fiat exchanges in certain regional markets (Indonesia, Turkey, Korea, etc.) they will be able to adopt our technology and utilize our services much more easily and without the huge learning curve!
Q4 from Telegram User @daviessss
I have read the description of your wallet but didn’t quite understand what do you mean by digitizing more complex non-homogeneous assets and pledged for currency issuance. (Sorry for my lack of knowledge) Please explain in simpler terms this.
Dane Elliott: This is a great question, like the talk about privacy earlier really lies at the heart of the POFID project. So let me try elaborate in some detail! In the real world, there are fantastic assets that cannot be effectively or efficiently tapped. For example, supply-chain finance, real estate, art products, etc.
The barrier here is the infrastructure of traditional finance. We’ve seen huge changes in traditional finance in the internet era, but essentially these changes are all superficial. The infrastructure underlying traditional financial systems has essentially not changed in DECADES, if not even longer!
One reason DeFi is so revolutionary is it’s providing a new infrastructure for finance. If DeFi wants to shake off the image of speculators’ playground, it MUST adopt to the real world and show that it can do what traditional finance cannot. But at the same time, it needs to approach the level of complexity of traditional finance and integrate itself within existing systems from an INFRASTRUCTURE level.
POFID is working to provide that infrastructure. Two key characteristics of POFID’s infrastructure are 1) privacy protection (as mentioned earlier) and 2) support for diverse asset structures. In simple, without privacy there can be no finance. And without data complexity, there’s really no real business to speak of!
We believe we are in a position to combine real world assets with pure crypto assets to offer lines of products that represent a new direction of digital finance. For the specifics of how we do this, please scroll up to my answer about DMWs.
Q5 from Telegram User @stekbyte
As known POFID supports transaction privacy, the transaction or payment information sent between accounts and accounts themselves also cannot be publicly accessible. Could this create difficulties when listing on exchanges? How does it happen with Monero?
Dane Elliott: So I’m not sure I understood the question entirely, and I certainly can’t speak for Monero, but the private nature of POFID poses no issues for listing at all. One thing I should mention to clear things up. Being private doesn’t mean you have to remain private all the time.
We provide a mechanism for allowing transactions to be accessible to others if they have access to the key. So this is just like in the real world. As I mentioned earlier, if you take out a loan from a bank, well generally only you and your bank know about this. But that doesn’t mean only you two should know about it.
You might want to share this information with others. And you have the right to. We run a very similar system. I think he wanted to say that some privacy coins have issues listing because exchanges don’t know where are the deposited funds coming from.
Serg | Satoshi Club: That’s good. It is great of you can choose whenever to share or keep the data of the transfer.
Dane Elliott: Yeah, I think it’s really important for the real world. Crypto can be very extreme at times. Either something has to be 100% transparent or 100% private. The real world doesn’t really work like this. There are situations were privacy is ideal and others were transparency are ideal. We allow users to adapt to both scenarios where appropriate, but with private as the default, just like the real world.
Q6 from Telegram User @Aleurich
When making a contract in Pofid DAO, an 8% service fee is charged, of which 80% is sent as a reward to PFID holders, but what is the destination of the other 20%? How are the profits distributed to the holders?
Dane Elliott: The fee is AOC or PFID. POFID collects AOC is the fee and distributes part of the proceeds (80%) to the holders of PFID, and the other part (20%) buys back PFID from the market and destroys it.
Serg | Satoshi Club: So, you have a burning system as well?
Dane Elliott: Yeah that’s right. This system is a little complex and there are quite a few facets involved. Probably a bit beyond the scope of this AMA, but all the details are in the white paper.
Serg | Satoshi Club: Thanks for sharing, Dane. 🙂
PART 2, TELEGRAM COMMUNITY LIVE QUESTIONS
The chat was open for 80 seconds; a lot of questions were posted by Satoshi Club community. Our guests chose some of them.
Q1 from Telegram User @ngoccam
What does POFID stand for?
Dane Elliott: POFID DAO stands for Privacy-Oriented Financial Instrument Distribution Framework & DAO. I’ve heard that in some languages where ‘V’ is pronounced as ‘F’, POFID sounds like the brother of Covid-19. 😂 And in fact, many people in their questions wrote ‘POVID‘ 😂 I can assure you, this is just a coincidence haha.
The name was chosen to put the focus on the core main features of POFID: privacy and its DAO governance structure. If I was to explain the project in just one sentence, I would say POFID is a comprehensive DeFi infrastructure based on blockchain technology that provides a decentralized way of managing assets on the chain. Thanks for the question, Stay Up Late!
Q2 from Telegram User @Concutrangxoa
Are you planning to promote your project in different countries, where English is not good? Do you have a local community for them to better understand your project?
Dane Elliott: This is a good question that we are asked a lot. Let me tackle it. As a global project, we are of course looking to expand globally.
We are a project with real-world use cases, so obviously we have to target specific markets as well. Now, besides Korea and China, which I spoke about a little earlier, we have many other very important target markets outside of the English-speaking world. We very recently launched an Indonesian community and we are looking to really expand that market and engage with local business leaders moving forward.
In the next few weeks, we will be opening up a Vietnamese community as well and doing great things there. In addition to the existing communities we have (English, Russian, Korean, Chinese etc), we will also be expanding into some core markets like Turkey, Italy and Latin America in the next few months.
Serg | Satoshi Club: We have a good Spanish and Russian community btw.
Dane Elliott: Yeah I saw that! That’s fantastic! I’m going to have to check those out. 😊
Q3 from Telegram User @Luisz2210
Once this year ends, what is your next step on your roadmap to fulfill in 2021?
Dane Elliott: I think this is the question that has been asked the most today, so I would be remiss not to answer this one. 2020 has been a tough year for most people!
Serg | Satoshi Club: A good year for crypto though. 🙂
Dane Elliott: With that said, it’s been a bit of a boon for crypto, and of course DeFi in particular.
Haha absolutely. The focus on most (good) crypto projects is the real world though, so ignoring that aspect of reality can be deceiving! Our focus is also on the real world. Helping businesses in the real world and disrupting traditional finance.
Now with that all said, and despite all the stuff going on in the world right now, we have HUGE plans for the rest of the year!
Our initial focus for the next couple months is mostly on getting the word out and raising exposure, as well as listing on relevant exchanges, paving the way for easy adoption by real world businesses moving forward. As I mentioned before, we will be listing on Uniswap in the next week!
Then the focus will be on certain key centralized exchanges. We will list on at least one very large, well-known crypto-crypto exchange and then fiat, regional exchanges in countries like Indonesia, Turkey, Korea and Latin America so that we can fully engage with local businesses and users there.
Serg | Satoshi Club: What is the starting price?
Dane Elliott: We will be announcing that and many other exciting things in the next two days in our group! https://t.me/pofid
Q4 from Telegram User @Hyynyom12
How important is the community to Pofid? and how can we collaborate or help share token for the development of the project?
Dane Elliott: Community is the backbone of every crypto project and we’re no exception. By our DAO nature, we are very much community-driven.
Q5 from Telegram User @abowhasebe
What’s the competitive advantages of POVID project?
Dane Elliott: In short: privacy and the ability to deal with heterogeneous assets (multiple assets in one basket) at once, making us a much better fit for the real-world than most DeFi projects out there right now.
Q6 from Telegram User @thaiquoc
How can you monitor all products, DApps, ecosystem and others at same times?
Dane Elliott: It can be daunting for any one person to monitor all things at any time, especially in a large ecosystem. That is why we have gone with a DAO governance model – things are monitored by the ENTIRE DAO community.
Q7 from Telegram User @jakatinkaro1
COVID 19 has slowed many economies around the world but as a crypto business has it affected you negatively or positively? Secondly, are you still on track to achieve your targets as the road map says?
Dane Elliott: As a project with links to the real world, it would be a lie to claim that we have not been affected by COVID 19. I think all crypto projects (even those with no links to real businesses) have been affected, if not for the fact that most conferences, exhibits, meetups, offline events have been cancelled/disrupted. With that said, we have changed our strategic focus for the next few months, so essentially we are not that affected now.
Q8 from Telegram User @jakatinkaro1
Presently as at today, can we possibly use your token in real life for payment?
Dane Elliott: At present, no, since we haven’t listed on any exchanges yet. But in addition to crypto-crypto exchanges, we will be listing on many fiat exchanges, so you will be able to buy and sell our tokens in a very convenient way moving forward. Watch this space!
Q9 from Telegram User @Adnan_Shakib
How does the Layer 2 algorithm designed by POFID work? Also, why did you decide to base the project on SERO public chain? Thank you!
Dane Elliott: We chose SERO for its privacy protection. Privacy is essential for any DeFi project to adapt to the real world and disrupt traditional finance. The details of our algorithm are quite involved but are all mentioned in our detailed white paper!
Q10 from Telegram User @Vutkamalo
DeFi is one of the hottest topics in the blockchain field. Can you share your opinion about DeFi with us? Do you think DeFi will destroy the existing financial system? What’s your project Approach towards DeFi?
Dane Elliott: For the final question, I thought I should pick something that really gets people excited and talks about the topic of the times – DeFi!
So, it’s clear that the current DeFi boom was triggered by yield farming. But I believe yield farming is just one very small, very limited aspect of DeFi and it doesn’t come close to fulfilling the potential of DeFi. Does yield farming embody the promise of DeFi? Is it something that is replacing traditional finance? Absolutely not!
DeFi is far more than just yield farming. And if it is to be something that disrupts traditional finance, if it is to be the real Finance 2.0 that is so talked about, then there needs to be fundamental changes from the infrastructure up. This is something that POFID is working to achieve.
That’s all, thanks everyone! Had a great time!!
Serg | Satoshi Club: Thanks again for joining. We had a great time as well.
PART 3, QUIZ AND INFO
As usual, for the third part, Satoshi Club Team asked the chat 4 questions about POFID. A link to a Quiz form were sent into the chat. Participants had 10 minutes to answer. 300$ were distributed among winners.
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