AMA with The Beefy Finance Cowmoonity & Co-founder Cryptofish
Our sincerest thanks to the Beefy Finance (BIFI) ‘Cowmoonity’ for hosting an AMA on the Beefy Discord. Below is the full transcript of the AMA.
To join future AMAs we recommend join both discord servers:
Beefy Finance: https://discord.gg/tPdAeQ7suB
Trader Joe: https://discord.gg/tmsfpcPpvq
Beefy x TraderJoe AMA — Recap
TraderJoe AMA 03.09.21
frondoto: Welcome everyone to the AMA with TraderJoe team. We are with cryptofish, co-founder of TraderJoe, he is here to tell us about the project, future developments and answer some questions from our Cowmoonity!
Cryptofish: Hey guys!
Frondoto: First of all, welcome cryptofish, I know you just spent a crazy couple of hours… how are you?
Cryptofish: Pretty exhausted ngl! But in general, very happy 😀
Frondoto: Let’s start with an intro, can you tell us a bit about what Traderjoe is?
Cryptofish: Sure, Trader Joe is a one-stop trading platform on Avalanche. We launched the DEX two months ago and will be launching lending in about two weeks, which combine together to offer leveraged trading.
Frondoto: I read a bit about the lending in [y]our medium, and we will get into that later. It’s nice to see that you are continuously developing products 😀
I have some questions from the cowmoonity, they want to know a few things about TraderJoe… are you ready to answer them?
Cryptofish: Sure 😀
Frondoto: The first question is:
What do you feel contributed most to your enormous TVL growth in the past weeks?
Honestly you jumped positions really quickly in Defillama 😀
Cryptofish: The $180m AVAX incentives program opened a wave of new liquidity coming over to Avalanche so that was definitely a huge factor. A lot of the feedback we got was that we offered a much better user experience than our competitors. I think our brand also appeals much more to the defi degen that we typically see over on Ethereum/BSC and this definitely played an important role in capturing the hearts and minds of defi users.
Frondoto: The AvalancheRush incentives made me try Avalanche, so I’m sure it was a big contributing factor. Now I’m an expert on bridges! (kinda) Also the interface looks pretty cute too.
The second question, you can only answer the first one if you are not sure about the 2nd part 😀
What led you to choosing AVAX as the chain to launch on? It looks to have been a great choice!
And what are your thoughts on 2 buck chuck now costing $3? (I’m sure you get this a lot but I can’t let it go by without asking lol)
Cryptofish: Haha, i actually didn’t know about 2 buck chuck but yes we get that a lot!
To answer your question about why Avalanche?
Avalanche strikes a perfect balance of speed, scalability, security and decentralisation with its novel consensus algorithm. Without sounding like an AVAX maxi, we just feel that it’s a blockchain with a very bright future. The ecosystem is also still very nascent so we felt like it was a good opportunity to start here.
Frondoto: You mention “start on avalanche”, is there a possibility to go cross-chain like other dexes? or you are mainly focusing on BUIDLing in Avalanche for now?
Cryptofish: We’re 100% focused on Avalanche for now. Maybe in the future? We’ll see!
Frondoto: I like the focus on AVAX, onto the next question The third one is:
Do you plan some future utilities for $JOE or $XJOE?
Do you want to explain a bit to our users what JOE and XJOE is too?
Cryptofish: Sure, so JOE is our main token and it can be converted to xJOE in our “Stake” page. xJOE is another token that earns 0.05% of all swaps as a fee.
After lending is launched, we will plan for xJOE to be used as collateral as well as for xJOE to receive revenue from borrowing/lending interest and closed liquidations. The goal is for xJOE to always receive [a] share of revenue with each new product we launch.
Frondoto: Sounds promising! I also heard that there might be a Twitter contest to win some $JOE… so everyone reading should keep a close eye (and follow) @traderjoe_xyz and @beefyfinance
Cryptofish: U heard right 😉
Frondoto: Fourth question is:
First of all, congratulations on hitting over 550M tvl within 2 months of your launch! What would you say is the key component on becoming such a staple on Avalanche in this short time frame like you guys have done?
Cryptofish: When we first started, we had a thesis that there was a need for a DEX that was different and served the community first. I think we were overlooked by many in the community because flipping an incumbent DEX was something that had never been done before. We stuck to our thesis however and it’s worked out now. So definitely, having a strong conviction is key. Other than that, I would also add that our ability to build fast and stay active in the community as other key components.
Frondoto: Building fast is key, defi moves so quickly it is really easy to fall behind, so cheers for that. This fifth question they want to know a bit more about the lending. Will it be like traditional DeFI lending?
Are you introducing LENDING feature
What will be the requirements (Any KYC), fees and interest rates?
What if someone fails to repay the loan amount?”
Cryptofish: Yes the protocol we’re forking (with their blessing) is CREAM’s, which itself is a modified fork of Compound. The lending will work in a decentralised manner, so no KYC involved and all loans are overcollateralised. If someone fails to repay the loan amount then they get liquidated!
Frondoto: I would be really surprised if there was some kind of KYC, but [the cowmoonity member] wanted to know… Will there be partial liquidations? What about the interest rates?
also.. WEN?
Cryptofish: Yes there will be partial liquidations and interest rates will be variable
2 weeks give or take!
Frondoto: I will be paying close attention to that date… Also, can we expect to have BIFI as collateral? What are the requirements for a new asset?
Cryptofish: The strict requirement is to have a chainlink price feed for it. Once you have that then I’m sure we can make it work.
Frondoto: Good to know, we have that for BIFI on BSC, probably on other chains soon.
The latest news from your Twitter account says that you received $5M from an investors round, what does that mean for the project and how does it affect $JOE holders?
Cryptofish: It’s massive news. As an anon fair-launched project, we’ve always been battling for legitimacy so it’s extremely humbling that the industry’s greatest investors are willing to put their name behind to help us get to our ultimate goal of pushing boundaries in defi. This is really the step we need to take it from a $100m marketcap project to a $1bn+ marketcap project. For JOE holders, it’s a time to rejoice. I know some people have negative views of VCs, but rest assured that we had lots of interest and picked the ones that we felt would be committed to us long-term.
Seeing some negative emojis here, would love to hear your thoughts
Frondoto: I think [the user] is angry because of the Chainlink message.
We wanted to have BIFI as collateral on MAI Finance too, and they have the same requirement.
It’s expected to secure the protocol.
We will get there soon, when we have the Chainlink Oracle we can discuss this topic again 😀
For my last question, is there a chance to have a BIFI pair listed on the Dex?
BIFI-AVAX can be used to buyback BIFI for the Avax BIFI Maxi (I hope im not saying something too wrong)
Cryptofish: We’re definitely to it! We should discuss about it after this 😀
Frondoto: Love it
Okay, that was really fun! Do you have some closing words cryptofish? It was a pleasure to have you here, we have some big whales that might look into stacking some $xJOE with all the developing you are doing for your protocol!
Cryptofish: Nothing more to add. Just want to welcome more Beefy members to Avalanche! It’s really an exciting time now to be in this ecosystem and hope to see more of you there!
Frondoto: I expect a big growth on Avalanche so I’m pretty sure we will keep in close touch!
Thank you and talk to you soon! Moooo
Cryptofish: Thank you!
Frondoto: Thank you to everyone reading too 😀