Oasis Labs & Equalizer AMA Recap (June 16th 2021)
The Oasis Network “AMA Session” is a Q&A session, which happens virtually on the Oasis Network Community telegram group. This session has been designed to occasionally bring every community member up to speed on recent developments relating to the Oasis project, and also to create an avenue where every member’s questions and doubts, can be addressed.
On June 16th 2021, the Oasis Protocol, conducted a community AMA session in the Official telegram group to go over the recent collaboration between the Oasis Foundation and Equalizer Finance . The AMA featured Julian Nita, the Project lead at Equalizer, and was hosted by the Oasis Foundation’s Community Manager, Jon Poole.
This article has been divided into two parts. The first part contains questions asked by the host of the AMA session, Jon Poole (Coincidence Jon). The second part contains open questions asked by the community members during the session.
Part 1
Jon — Welcome Julian! Thanks for joining us for this very special AMA. Could you start by introducing yourself and telling us a bit about your background in the blockchain space?
Julian — Thanks for the invitation! I am the project lead of Equalizer Finance. I am a SCRUM Product Owner and a Certified Blockchain Solution Architect for the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure, an ambitious pan-European Network that delivers cross-border public services. My expertise includes the designing and implementation of complex blockchain projects based on Ethereum, Fabric, Steem, Tezos, Algorand, and significant scientific work as a blockchain researcher on new and innovative blockchain protocols. I am also an Ph.d. university lecturer at one of the top technical universities.
I have been in the blockchain space for more than 5 years and I can say I really enjoy it :)
Jon — Can you give us background on Equalizer? How did it get started, and what are the goals of the project?
Julian — We started the project last year, after we discovered the potential of flash loans in the Defi market. That was the trigger that made us build a project dedicated only to flash landing services. Our goal is to build the first decentralized marketplace for flash loans with multi-chain and scalable infrastructure. We see the flash loan market exponentially increasing, up to $1B last month and we believe that this trend will continue, creating a big opportunity to onboard in a completely new market.
Jon — At Oasis, we’re very excited about our recent partnership. Can you tell us a bit more about how you heard about the Oasis Network and why your team was interested in partnering with us?
Julian — We developed Equalizer with a clear focus on the Defi ecosystem and with multi-chain capabilities. That’s why we are in continuous exploration of new expanding markets. Based on our research, Oasis Network is definitely one of the most promising ecosystems, where Equalizer can bring a lot of added value. I strongly believe that this partnership will move the flash lending services to a new level :)
Jon —Wonderful! So what exactly is a flash loan? What makes Equalizer’s flash loans unique?
Julian — Flash Loans are a unique capability available only on blockchain protocols and represent an uncollateralized loan option that has to be returned in the same transaction. Flash Loans enable anyone to borrow instantly and easily any amount, with no collateral needed, but only if that amount is returned to the vault within the same block. If this does not happen, the whole transaction is reversed, and undo all the operations executed until that point. This guarantees the safety of the funds in the vaults. Flash loan use-cases include arbitrage, collateral swapping, rebalance, liquidation, and many others. The flash loan market has exponentially increased over the last 12 months, reaching billion dollars volume last month.
Jon — The Oasis Network is well known for being able to keep data private and its support for confidential compute. What role do you think privacy has in DeFi, and how do you think privacy is important for flash loans?
Julian — I believe that privacy is a very challenging topic in the blockchain space. Offering privacy in a decentralized finance market it’s even more challenging. Adding this privacy at the flash loan level it’s a unique feature, available on Oasis Network. We are very confident that this technological innovation will boost usage, bringing more confidence to all users.
Jon — Great! What’s next Equalizer, do you have any exciting milestones coming up?
Julian — Many things are happening in parallel, but the biggest milestone is definitely the launch of our platform on main-net, which is planned to happen in July-August this year! All our efforts are now concentrating on finalizing the development, testing, audit and release planning. You can already have a quick look at our demo here.
Jon — Great! Thank you for joining us for the AMA. We’re eager to continue working with you and are excited to see what you’ll do next! If folks would like to stay up to date on your project and learn more about Equalizer where should they go?
Julian — Please do follow our social media accounts! We are posting daily about our progress:
Website: https://equalizer.finance/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EqualizerFlash
Telegram: https://t.me/EqualizerFlash
Telegram Announcements: https://t.me/equalizerann
Medium:https://equalizer-finance.medium.com/
Also, a series of 5 flash videos (1 minute each) are available on our Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpBxUlxHtELZepfdlBVGmVw
That’s the fastest way to learn about flash loans and about Equalizer :)
Part 2: Open Community Questions
Question — To be a great platform for both Investors and for it’s users Transparency and security is important. Can you tell us some details about your transparency and your security mechanism. Have you already completed the audit of your platform?
Julian — we have already booked the audit of our smart contracts, that will happen in July. Of course we will release the platform only after a security audit is successful and positive.
Question — The demo looks cool. But why is there no $ROSE in the demo?
Julian — deployment on all the chains will take time, Oasis Network is already on our roadmap.
Question — What do you think would be the differentiating factor between the Aave and Equalizer protocol flash loans? Where is the strength of its develop?
Julian — we focus only on flash lending service, this give us a flexibly to adapt to market conditions that AAVE doesn’t have. Just to mention a few advantages: we will have listed much more tokens than AAVE has. Also our gas fees and flash loan fees are much smaller for a full comparison you can check here:
Question —Flash loans are currently mainly being made use of in slower blockchains like Ethereum. Do you think the general user will be unable to participate in flash loans once its readily available in faster blockchains like Oasis’? I have a feeling bots will take over the space because of how quickly flash loans have to be settled (ie. within the same block)..?
Julian — That’s why we design Equalizer as being multi-chain compatible
Our goal is to follow the market trend and to deploy Equalizer on all promising chains, to take benefit of all the advantages like speed and privacy.
Question — Partners are very important for every project today, may I know which partners you have now? and which partners in the future you will be heading to ?
Julian — The list of partners is continuously expanding . Here are all our partners, so far, only from the last two months
Question — What do you think is the biggest problem Equalizer will solve which is not solved by other projects, and why is the problem important to solve?
Julian — A dedicated flash lending service! This is what is missing in the Defi market, not only to make more resilient, but also to get profit out of making it more resilient.
Question — To survive in tough crypto market conditions is difficult, and we see that many projects are far from the targets. What is your project strategy to survive in this long blockchain marathon? Is everything going according to the roadmap?
Julian — We are working in a Agile SCRUM framework, all the team members are Agile SCRUM practitioners. We have the experience to handle complex project and all to take into account all the market risks. So I am very confident that our platform will be deliver in time and with great usage.
Question — When can we expect more CEX listing of $EQZ since it is listed only on KuCoin?
What is the listing status? I think a project like this should be listed on all top exchanges.
Julian — Other CEX listings are on the roadmap , we will announce all our listing on our official channel https://t.me/equalizerann
Question — What are the Equalizer Finance Team’s biggest expectations after moving to mainnet?
Julian — generate usage, by adding liquidity in all the vaults and by showcasing the arbitrage use case that will generate profit for traders.
Question — Whom do you think your Biggest competitor is in the Market?
Julian — AAVE, but we have also our competitive advantages . Here is a detailed comparison of our main competitors:
Question — So many projects just like to speak about the “long term vision and mission” but what are your short term objectives? What are you focusing on right now?
Julian — great question!!! Here are our short term objectives. As you can see, we focus now to finish the development, audit, testing and main-net deployment.
Question — Community support is one of the biggest aspects of a project’s success, Most projects have programs that interact with their users. Doe you have any special plans to attract and expand the community and improve the user experience?
Julian — we are designing two dedicated marketing campaigns, with clear target audience:
1. Liquidity providers for all the vaults/tokens that will be listed on the Equalizer platform
2. Borrowers — arbitrageurs — that will make use of the flash lending services for any listed token to get profit from the many arbitrage opportunities available in the Defi market.
Question — Do you think year 2021 will be ground breaking for your Token? We see that you are signing great partnerships, working on some “secret” service that soon you will announce. But all this will be fully implemented in Q1–2021. Do you think then we will start to see the full potential of your token regarding price and token as a heart of your tech?
Julian — Difficult to speculate on the price of the token :) Of course we will do everything possible have a great launch of the platform.
Question — Do the token holders have the right to participate in the governance of the project? What kind of decisions can they vote on about the project?
Julian — $EQZ is a governance token. The holders of the governance token will vote on at least one of the following parameters;
- How many token vaults will be allowed for yield farming
- What are the tokens accepted for yield farming
- The flash loan fees for each individual token vault
- What is the maximum accepted liquidity in each Token Vault
- What is the split for the fees obtained from offering the flash loans
- How to spend the funds from the Equalizer Treasury
- Pause the flash loan for a specific token vault (default none)
- Different decisions for the evolution of the platform
Question —What do you think about the competition with other DEFI projects? What are the points in which competitors in the market cannot beat Equalizer?
Julian — we are the first and the only one dedicated flash lending marketplace, but our main ingredient is innovation — we have in our team two Ph.D’s that are using each of their neurons to build the most innovative service in the Defi market :)
Question — Since your project has a Defi focus, I wonder, in addition to having two key elements to develop, such as technology and security integrity, what about low liquidity problems that could occur? Can you carry out some kind of liquidity program to solve this problem?
Julian — we are designing a very innovative yield farming program that will incentivize long term liquidity providers in the best possible way.
Question — How many wallets can support your platform now? Also do you have any plan to build your own wallet?
Julian — we will start with the most used one, Metamask, and will add other wallets based on user’s request.
Question — Liquidity mining & yield farming have been a very popular concept and a strategy for DeFi projects to bootstrap, does your network have similar planning to incentivize protocol adoption?
Julian — yes, we do! and I can tell you that our engineers have designed the most innovative yield farming system in the Defi market. You will have a big positive surprise to see it in practice :)
Question — You Say That Equalizer Is A Pioneer In DeFi’s Flash Loan Marketplace Today, What Are The Other Advantages in Equalizer If There Are Competitors In The Same Business Model Who Apply Fixed Fees And Are Cheaper Than Equalizer?
Julian — we can add:
- multi-chain capabilities
- the widest selection of the tokens
- extensive documentation and examples
- integration friendly — target B2B platforms as well
- dedicated governance model
This concludes the AMA.
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