DefiRaccoons X GrowthDefi
Date: May 27th, 2022
Host: Azeban
Guest: SafeRatios
Hello Raccoon Nation and DeFi Enthusiasts!
We recently hosted an AMA with PIP. So here we are up with the AMA transcript, for those who missed the live session, this post will be a time saver & a feeder of knowledge for everyone.
INTRODUCTORY QUESTIONS
Azeban | Defi Raccoons: Hello everybody, thank you for joining us today for another Defi Raccoons AMA session! Today we’ll be talking with SafeRatios.
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: Hello! happy to be here 😃
Azeban | Defi Raccoons: Welcome to Defi Raccoons, Tell us abit about yourself and your role within Growth Defi.
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: I’m SafeRatios, one of the contributors at Growth DeFi. My role at Growth DeFi is mainly with research and organizing the product side.
Azeban | Defi Raccoons: Can you give us an elevator pitch about Growth Defi? What is it all about? Especially for those that are new to growth defi
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: Growth DeFi’s product line has evolved overtime but in the end the goal has always been to offer the maximum amount of capital efficiency, the way we accomplish this is with different products that enable borrowing, yield optimization, trading derivatives and so on. So in a nutshell Growth DeFi aims to maximize what you can do with your capital.
Azeban | Defi Raccoons: its actually good to see a pure defi project around, most projects just go with the current hype, it’s like defi doesnt exist anymore.
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: There’s an overfocus on the farming side yup. But we’re starting to see many more financial primitives come fully onchain (futures, options, pure vol derivatives and more). So the future is still bright for the industry, even if we don’t know who’ll survive to see it.
Azeban | Defi Raccoons: Lets take a moment to talk about the team that makes Growth Defi possible, how many members do you have in your team and tell us about their background.
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: Currently we’re 9 team members spread across different areas (frontend dev, smart contract dev, communications and so on…)
The current size of the team covers the angles we need so in that sense we’re good to go. Growth DeFi as a project has already been live for almost 2 years so there’s a lot of built in experience accumulated from all this time.
Azeban | Defi Raccoons: Experience definitely is key to make a project work. Are there any notable partnerships or investors that you can disclose? What type of value will they be adding to the project?
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: We are deployed on three chains and on each of them we have one major partner.
On BSC we work with ApeSwap.
On Avalanche we work with TraderJoe.
On Fantom we work with Liquid Driver.
We also work with other projects when the opportunity brings itself but those three are our main points of contact in each chain.
Each brings something unique on the table that can further expand the product line, for example we’re currently working with Liquid Driver to offer leverage on their SpiritSwap shadow farms when they launch.
Azeban | Defi Raccoons: I read that you have overcollateralized stable coins.
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: Yes, one of our main products is MOR. A CDP (Collateralized Debt Position) based overcollateralized stablecoin.
Azeban | Defi Raccoons: now if you remember the incident from UST$ recently what are your thoughts on this issue? and do you have any measures in place that can prevent a similar situation?
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: UST was an algorithmic stablecoin, it had very little external collateral backing it (there was basically less than 20 cents worth of BTC for every 1 UST in circulation), to compensate for this undercollateralization they had to mint their own governance token (LUNA) to cover the rest and that’s what caused the death spiral.
MOR (our stablecoin) has nothing to do with algorithmic stablecoins, you can only mint MOR by either providing enough collateral to back a loan (for example, putting 200$ worth of ETH to mint 100$ worth of the stablecoin) or by giving the protocol other stablecoins such as USDC in exchange for minting MOR. This means that every single MOR in circulation is overcollateralized and the assets of the system are larger than the outstanding MOR in circulation.
For all that it matters if everyone wanted to exit their MOR position tomorrow they would be able to, at peg.
Azeban | Defi Raccoons: wow that explains everything clearly.
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: Algo stables have been really popular because they are very profitable for the governance tokenholders in the beggining, but they quickly end up becoming a liability as we’ve seen with UST and many other collapses.
Azeban | Defi Raccoons: so overcollateralization is actually positive for the peg. This solves alot of issues with stablecoins.
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: Overcollateralization brings stability and peg security to the system. The reason why projects try to figure out the holy grail of undercollateralized stablecoins is because they bring so much short term profit for the token.
Azeban | Defi Raccoons: Ooh! That makes sense now.
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: Managing an overcollateralized CDP stablecoin has lower margins and it’s more of a long term setup. On the other hand an algo stable can quickly profit tons (for example UST burnt 18 Billion $ worth of LUNA since inception). Those 18 Billion $ of short term profit tho then become liabilities, debt. And that’s why you end up with this collapses.
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Azeban | Defi Raccoons: thats crazy! makes sense why projects would opt for a less stable option.
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: Would be the same as if a public company continuously took on more debt in order to buyback and burn their stock. yeh, it’s more opportunistic.
Azeban | Defi Raccoons: The next question that I have for you is with regards to yield optimization for vaults. how does yield optimization work for vaults?
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: As I mentioned before one of the main ways that MOR comes into circulation is when users provide collateral in a vault and then borrow/mint MOR against it.
What we also do is have native yield aggregation, that means that if your collateral can be earning yield then we’ll make sure it’s routed so you benefit from it.
MOR vaults are a combination of both yield aggregation and a cheap source for leverage.
Azeban | Defi Raccoons: When users take back their funds that they collateralized Mor gets burnt correct?
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: They need to repay their debt, aka burn MOR in order to recover their collateral, correct. Since it’s always overcollateralized the incentive is always to repay rather than to let your positions be liquidated.
Azeban | Defi Raccoons: That makes total sense, especially why its so secure. lets talk about your token and its utilities.
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: The utility of GRO has evolved overtime, currently it’s the ultimate end receiver of any profits generated by the platform.
Users can lock their GRO into veGRO in order to participate in governance (governing key parameters in MOR) and they also get rewarded in GRO, cLQDR and MOR for doing so. Overtime we’ve turned more towards a light emissions approach and the idea is to end up with on emissions whatsoever.
Azeban | Defi Raccoons: We like to finish this part of the AMA by looking at what is happening in the near term. Could you please share with us the first milestones on the roadmap?
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: Sure, so we already have vaults deployed across three chains (BSC, Fantom and Avalanche) and we recently also deployed the first liquidity AMO on Beethoven. Our next steps will be working towards MOR Futures which will be the first connection to new financial derivatives.
Azeban | Defi Raccoons: Tell us more about the MOR futures.
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: It’s the new product that we’re working on, taking Synthetix Futures as a starting point the idea is to further monetize MOR and its surplus (cash reserves) by allowing users to long/short different assets with up to 10x leverage and without any slippage (you get quoted market price, always, with no slippage)
Azeban | Defi Raccoons: wow tbh i trade futures and your product sounds very tempting to use. Sometimes the slippage can be an issue. Like CRO for instance the slippage is huge.
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: Yes, so this would enable trading many of this products on alt L1s like BSC.
Azeban | Defi Raccoons: Which assets will you enable trading for and when will this product be out?
SafeRatios| GrowthDefi: Launch date is yet to be announced, so stay tuned for that.
Regarding the asset selection we can support a wide range of options as long as they have a Chainlink oracle.
TWITTER QUESTIONS
Q1. As a decentralized lending platform, who will the MOR platform target? Can you tell us what are the main differences between the MOR platform and other lending platforms? What innovations are you bringing to make it a highly adaptable platform?@themiracleboy0
MOR aims to onboard yielding and more exotic collaterals, so not what you’d typically find in a money market like AAVE, very often our vaults are for collaterals that:1-We can maximize the yield for and compound those returns for the user
2-They aren’t supported as collateral anywhere else, or if they are it’s not yield optimized.Q2. MOR by GrowthDefi is a decentralized lending platform. I think security should be the top priority, so what advanced measures and technologies does MOR have to protect the security of user assets? How does MOR provide assurance that user assets will increase? @VINITSH50269612
MOR in itself is a fork of Maker DAO’s architecture and we’ve tried to keep the codebase as similar as possible to not introduce new attack vectors. We also have different audits from Consensys Dilligence and Certik.Q3. You mentioned that There are two ways users can mint MOR, minting MOR with a stablecoin at a fixed rate or Creating a MOR Vault. Can you explain further what is the mechanism for minting MOR, which one is more profitable and easier for users to access? @langitberwarna
It really depends on what the user wants to do, if you’re just looking to get MOR to farm with it then minting it is a pretty straightforward way to do it. If you want a cheap source of borrow power then putting some collateral in a vault and minting against it would be the way to go.Q4. The MOR has been audited by the team behind MetaMask’s top tier company “ConsenSys Diligence”. Can you explain to us about the Audit process? How do you provide total security? And do you have any plans to file audits with other top Audit platforms like Certik in the near future?@AlunaNadaIndah
We already have an audit with Certik, and yes the plan is to continue doing more audits going forward.To summarize how audits go, a team of developers from the audit company will review the code from the audit’s scope and suggest improvements and alert of any bugs that they may find.
Q5. What I know is that there are many DeFi protocol projects, this makes the competition tougher. What sets MorGrowth apart from similar projects? What advantages does MorGrowth have that similar projects don’t? How did MorGrowth become the top project in the market? @vfumieko
There aren’t that actually that many projects which have the level of optimization in some aspects that we do, so that’s a big plus. Obviously even if your product is slightly better than the alternative it doesn’t mean that you’ll get the most TVL, there are other factors at play. But it’s a good position to start from.
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