On December 1, Matic Network hosted an AMA session with our CEO, Denko Mancheski in their telegram channel.
Matic Network is an Ethereum Layer 2 solution service provider that massively scales the Ethereum network by settling transactions through sidechains, providing much faster and much cheaper transactions with finality on the main Ethereum chain.
Matic Network and Reef Finance had recently collaborated to bring life to cross-chain DeFi applications.
SUMMARY
Reef Finance CEO, Denko Mancheski joined the AMA with host, Sumit Shinde from Matic Network. The AMA started with a one-on-one with the host where questions about Reef Finance and its partnership with Matic were answered.
Moving from the first segment, questions from the community were answered. The best questions from the lot were picked and interaction with the community revolved around various aspects of DeFi, liquidity, projects and tokens.
Follow the transcript below to know more.
FIRST SEGMENT — WITH THE HOST
Sumit Shinde — Welcoming Denko Mancheski, CEO at Reef Finance, to the Matic community!
Reef Finance is the first cross-chain DeFi operating system built on Polkadot. With a seamless user interface, Reef offers its users a smart liquidity aggregator and yield engine that enables trading with access to liquidity from both CEXs and DEXs while offering smart lending, borrowing, staking, mining through AI driven personalized Reef Yield Engine.
Visit: https://reef.finance/
@denkomanceski has kindly agreed to join us today to connect with the community and answer your questions about Reef Finance.
Denko Mancheski — yeah, it’s basically the easiest way to get into DeFi while having control over the risk along with access to multiple ecosystems
Sumit Shinde — I like that, the way you called it the “Easiest way to get into DeFi”. So, we’ll start with some introductory questions to provide some background info on Reef Finance, their current focus areas and future plans in general. We will then unmute the chat so you can ask any questions you may have for Denko
To start with the AMA, @denkomanceski can you please provide us with a brief introduction about yourself & your experience with Reef Finance & crypto space in general?
Denko Mancheski — My name is Denko, I am the CEO of Reef Finance. I have a tech background myself. Started programming in early high school with C++ and did algorithmic competitions for a few years. Then I decided to start building commercial software and I joined an ERP provider where I built modules which are still used to this day (warehousing, accounting, etc.). After that I joined into one of the biggest healthcare platform providers in Europe (200m+ valuation now). Worked there for over 2.5 years and I lead a team where we worked on a complex modeling tool for healthcare data.
Around 6 years ago I got into crypto and started blockchain development myself. My first experience was with the NXT blockchain which turned into Ardor. Of course, I did a lot of solidity throughout this time. I also did some Bitshares, Steem as well as EOS.
Since I am based on Slovenia, the development community is not so big, so I’ve been working with familiar people. 2 years ago, we teamed up and worked on multiple blockchain as well analytics projects together. In January, this year we decided to focus on DeFi and started building Reef
Here is a bit on the origin story and how Reef’s idea was formed: https://medium.com/reef-finance/reef-origin-story-5a16a4f346a8
Sumit Shinde — Thanks for the brief introduction. I must say you entered the crypto and blockchain space in the earlier stages.
Denko — yeah, BTC was 700$. yeah, the CMC page looked completely different back then.
Sumit Shinde — Coming to my next question, could you please give some more details about the Reef Finance in Layman’s terms?
Denko Mancheski — Yeah definitely. Basically, the goal is to give the retail investor access to the DeFi landscape with a very low technical barrier of entry while at the same time it augments the decision-making process based on user’s risk levels.
You don’t have to worry about jumping to 5 different websites and making a decision where your funds should flow. Based on your risk levels you will be able to participate with ease and will not have to follow the rapid changes in this landscape yourself. On top of that, you get to stake the Reef token which is farmed through your yields, so you can further compound your gains
This is the easiest explanation of what Reef’s goal is without a lot of technical terms
Or even simpler: A one-stop place where anyone can quickly invest into DeFi taking into account your risk tolerance
Sumit Shinde — This is the problem that many of us here have faced firsthand.
Denko Mancheski — Yeah, and it is becoming a bigger problem as the landscape grows + it keeps fragmenting such as having multiple ecosystems, different wallets, etc.
Sumit Shinde — What differentiates Reef from other DeFi offerings? What are the advantages of Reef Finance to the other alternatives in the Blockchain space?
Denko Mancheski — we are also working on FIAT gateways (just finished the Binance access integration) + Integrations such as Torus which will allow users to just login with facebook and get an address + use their credit card to participate. We want to really make it easy for non-crypto users
Sumit Shinde — Binance access integration is a huge news. Congrats to the whole Reef team and the community
Denko Mancheski — So Reef has 2 important components: The actually basket engine including the chain of smart contracts deployed on multiple ecosystem + the analytics engine powered by the statistical models and machine-learning algos.
Reef built on top of the DeFi ecosystem. Composing and integrating on top of all the financial primitives and creating a product which will allow the person with just 1 click get in and out of multiple DeFi instruments. You will be basically able to trade a bundle of DeFi instruments if you would want to
Our team has both blockchain engineers as well as data scientists, so merging those fields together can really create something powerful
Sumit Shinde — Reef has interesting tech with an inclusion of multiple ecosystem and the analytics engine, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. So how does the Reef Yield Engine work to maximize the expected yield?
Denko Mancheski — Reef yield engine allows you access to all the currently available yield farming protocols. Since it’s powered by an analytics engine, it can maximize your yield by routing your funds to the highest yielding pools. The problem is that farming protocols and instances have different risk levels. We derive risk levels based on multiple metrics, from social media traction, to on-chain traffic. This way, the users have a better understanding of how they allocate their funds, and can adjust based on their risk tolerance. We will publish our methodology on how the model is grading different DeFi activities on our blog
Sumit Shinde — That’s great. This will enable user to pick up, compare, and choose the right investments basis their risk quotient, capacity and so many other parameters.
Denko Mancheski — yeah, they can also further customize their baskets and eventually allow to share it with other users. Besides this, we are also working on multiple types of baskets eg: Stablecoin yield farming, Volatile, dHEDGE, Kava-specific, etc.
Sumit Shinde — What are the utilities of Reef token in the ecosystem?
Denko Mancheski — Sure, to explain best, besides the utilities I would like to mention the income streams and how the token is really deeply integrated into the ecosystem.
The reef token is a governance token, so the users will be able to vote on different proposals (releasing new features, readjusting certain parameters in the system, etc.). Besides governance, the token is powering our infrastructure, so you can pay the protocols fees with it. It can also be used to stake into the Reef pool and get RPTs (Reef Pool Tokens), but it’s also going to be used in the yield distribution mechanism (customizable payout ratio for the yield that the basket generated), which will allow the user to farm the Reef token and directly stake it into the pool.
Reef currently has 3 income streams: Basket engine, protocol fees and interest paid by power users who borrow tokens from the Reef pool in order to increase their voting power. All the 3 income streams are currently flowing in the Reef pool. In the future, through voting, we plan to introduce Reef Treasury which will be the recipient of the income streams, and the DAO can further decide how to allocate the funds (eg: grants, buybacks, etc.)
Sumit Shinde — Surely this is deeply integrated within the Reef ecosystem. How far you are from the launch of Reef token?
Denko Mancheski — We will be soon announcing the TGE date! This month is a big one for us
Sumit Shinde — Can you tell us a little bit about how the partnership of Reef and Matic will help the DeFi ecosystem?
Denko Mancheski — Yeah sure. As I mentioned we are all about lowering fees + integrating multiple ecosystems. Matic being the best scaling solution on Ethereum is extremely attractive for DeFi. But on top of that, we created more than just a partnership. We’ll be working on a bridge which will connect Matic to the rest of the Polkadot ecosystem. This opens so many doors both for Reef and Matic and that’s why we decided to work on it together
Sumit Shinde — Thanks Denko for answering all my questions. We’ll take some questions from the community now.
SECOND SEGMENT — WITH THE COMMUNITY
PROJECT
Question by Telegram User @sivsu7 –
1 Increasing Token price
2 Make Token Valuable
3 Building Community Trust
Which one the most important for you from the above?
If all of the above are equally important, what will you prioritize?
Denko Mancheski — Third. The community are also our users and that’s the only thing that important long-term
Question by Telegram User @sivsu7 — What is your background and how did you come to the idea to create your project?
Denko Mancheski — Please check my first answers.
Question by Telegram User @bluefacebaby07 — Why the Reef Intelligence Engine is an Off-chain Oracle? There not better option be On-Chain? Why you decided keep It away?
DENKO MANCHESKI — Initially, the intelligence engine will be off-chain because there is a lot of data and a lot of high-frequency processing. The moment we are able to deploy our solution in a decentralized cloud (eg: Crust.network) we will move the whole infrastructure there
Question by Telegram User @luckydraw66 — Why did Reef Finance choose polkadot ecosystem instead of Ethereum? Any reason.
Denko Mancheski — Polkadot’s parachain communication (XCMP) and bridging mechanism, combined with the possibility to run solidity code on parachains such as Plasm, use native Ethereum addresses and huge ecosystem support (Web3, Parity) were the reasons why we chose to build on Polkadot. Reef being cross-chain gives us flexibility, which means we are able to shift our product and features based on where the users are (currently on Ethereum) and what the users want/need in the future.
Question by Telegram User @CRYPTOCOMMUNITY98 — How Reef keep users’ funds safe? Reef use its own chain?
Reef is completely non-custodial, so everything can be tracked and seen on the blockchain (we will provide tools which will allow easy monitoring). We are currently in the process of being audited by multiple companies.
Question by Telegram User @Joshblaze — How do I earn $REEF for free?
Denko Mancheski — You can invest through Reef!
PERFORMANCE
Question by Telegram User @Aiircon — Smart contracts are vulnerable to bugs, and even recently three big new DeFi projects were victims of this costing users of funds. How efficient and secured is your smart contract, and was it ever audited via any external party?
Denko Mancheski — We are currently being audited by multiple companies but on top of that we are introducing programmatic limits and emergency switches. The limits will gradually increase overtime instead of drastically which if any security exploit happens, we have to make sure it’s not fatal.
Question by Telegram User @Winterkom — With Reef’s Smart Assets Management, my assets are automatically redirected to where they get the most return or should the user determine where he wants to put his money?
Denko Mancheski — They can further customize the baskets and put their money where they want to. If not, they can just leverage the pre-made baskets generated by our analytics engine
Question by Telegram User @sniper009005 — If Reef Finance obtains liquidity from CEXES and DEXES, can the project be defined as a hybrid or is it considered by the team as FULLY decentralized? On the other hand, what does Reef offer DeFi?
Denko Mancheski — Actually, we do not hold your API keys or any kind of data, what-so-ever. We access CEX liquidity through integrations such as Binance Access and Prime brokers. It’s a fully non-custodial
Question by Telegram User @Nickkiii — It is known that DEX platforms are really complex to use, how much more will you manipulate a platform that combines CEX and DEX and integrates all the chains? Does it really have a practical and simple interface?
Denko Mancheski — Actually, we wanted to completely abstract away the interaction with order books, so our liquidity aggregator in the initial version is an infrastructural component which is consumed by the basket engine. It means you don’t have to worry about it -> just choose your type of basket, risk level and amount and you are ready to go
Question by Telegram User @Winterkom — With Reef’s Smart Assets Management, my assets are automatically redirected to where they get the most return or should the user determine where he wants to put his money?
Denko Mancheski — They can further customize the baskets and put their money where they want to. If not, they can just leverage the pre-made baskets generated by our analytics engine
Question by Telegram User @Aiircon — At this point, do you think you need exchanges as a Binance to keep growing? Or is it better to forget those things and focus on other activities?
Denko Mancheski — I think success is requires multiple things -> not only focus on building. It’s also gaining reputation and getting on Binance adds additional stamp to it. It’s not a requirement, but definitely good to have
PARTNERSHIPS
Question by Telegram User @geldf — Did you have any new partnership recently? What are the advantages of this partnership to the project?
Denko Mancheski — Yes. We are partnering both with Ethereum and Polkadot ecosystem projects. We are all about composability and integrating on top of the ecosystem, so the way we are positioned we will be partnering with many projects. You can see more about it in our announcement channel as well as medium:
https://t.me/reefannouncements
Question by Telegram User @JoxesXIII — I am a Jarvis Network lover. Can you tell us your impressions of this Jarvis x Reef partnership? Why do you think Jarvis can be useful to Reef Finance?
Denko Mancheski — You can read our article about Jarvias Partnership with Reef Finance.https://reefdefi.medium.com/reef-finance-partners-with-jarvis-network-to-bring-jarvis-synthetic-assets-pools-to-reef-users-128faebd7420
CHALLENGES
Question by Telegram User @BJosefina61 — What are the difficult points, challenges that cross-chains and particularly Reef Finance face?
Denko Mancheski — The currently available bridging infrastructure. It will take some time and multiple iterations until we can possibly launch the best version of Reef. Until then, we will be abstracting away the lack of those layers with other means (such as multi-ecosystem wallet, etc.)
Question by Telegram User @ineed688btc — The biggest barrier for newcomers in crypto is buying and withdraw with Fiat Currency, how secure and robust is your FIAT Gateway and what currencies are currently available locally?
Denko Mancheski — Yes, this is one of our bigger goals. We already integrating one FIAT gateway (Binance Access), so we will be able to start onboarding non-crypto users right away. Besides the easy onboarding, we will provide proper education so they get to understand how this landscape works and what are the risks around it
FUTURE PLANS
Question by Telegram User @Lanre_Akorede — How does your roadmap look like for 2020? What future event or feature on your roadmap are you most excited about?
Denko Mancheski — You can see our live roadmap here: https://reef.finance/roadmap. I am most excited about getting FIAT gateways in as well as adding multi-ecosystem support in a single basket
That was the end of the AMA. We hope it was an informative one. We would like to thank our community for their participation. More such AMAs in store for you.
