AMA Recap: CRYPTO MINERS X MINTEREST

Minterest is a ground-breaking lending protocol built by industry leaders to service billions in TVL and challenge existing DeFi incumbents. It’s the world’s first lending protocol that captures the value of interest rate, flash loan and liquidation fees which are then passed on to the users. This results in the highest long-term yield in the crypto borrowing/lending sector.

We hosted an AMA session with Minterest on 31st January.

Mr. Ramsy was the host from Crypto Miners and Mr. KYN was the guest. He shared delightful knowledge and unique features of Minterest.

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Segment 1️⃣: Introduction

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Ramsy:
Hello everyone 👋 and welcome to the Crypto Miners AMA session With Minterest

To help us learn more about the featured project of this AMA session, we are lucky to be joined By Mr. Kyn Chaturvedi

Kyn:
Hey there. Excited to be here Ramsy! Btw, I am the COO for Minterest :)

We've got an awesome CEO in Josh Rogers, who I'll bring up more about later

Thank you for welcoming me here. Super happy to get down to business on Minterest.

Ramsy:
Hello there 👋

Wolcome here,
Thanks for bringing Us Minterest❤️

Kyn:
🙌 Appreciate it!

Ramsy:
I'm pretty sure that our AMA participants are very much excited to learn more about Minterest ✌️

So let's get started if you're ready!!

Kyn:
Let’s do it, Ramsy

Ramsy:
First of all Please give us a brief explanation about 'Minterest' .What popped up in your mind to create such a platform in this Space?

Kyn:
Sure, so it all goes back to the fact that roughly 90% of crypto assets are sitting idle in wallets. Often the only utility for these tokens are to trade or perhaps stake. That’s it.

When we look at the banking system we live in today, what built them into an empire was quite simply the basics, which is creating capital efficiency and putting money to work. Those who need capital can borrow from those who have assets sitting idle (lenders) .

Minterest is building the foundational layers of the next generation of blockchain banking through lending and borrrowing

Let me explain a bit more about Minterest and its innovations here

By design, Minterest can capture more financial value than competitors.

It then uses that value to buy back its own token, MNT, on market and distributes it to Minterest users who stake MNT in the governance process. This ensures the fairest approach to DeFi we’ve seen to date.

Minterest’s ability to capture more value comes partly from one of its core innovations

The First Innovation is its auto liquidation engine. It's an absolute world's first in our space.

Traditionally about 40% of the value on lending protocols is lost due to liquidations by third parties. Minterest is its own liquidator and is able to capture this value as a result.

The Second Innovation is its buyback engine, as hinted at above. Minterest is designed to be a major purchaser of its own token, MNT. The more liquidity on Minterest, the greater the fees it can collect, which leads to its ability to buy back more MNT tokens on-market, hence driving up the APY value for MNT stakes. It’s a flywheel engine

Post launch we’re looking at Staking rates of 300-500% if not more. Just as an example.

The Third Innovation is with the Minterest NFTs. These are not simply beautiful-looking NFTs, they have a real use case which increases APY up to 50% for liquidity providers who hold them. There are only 3000 NFTs, and the only way to earn them is to participate in the Minterest public offering, held between February 8-11. Top net-buyers will earn themselves an NFT. The higher the rank on the leaderboard, the greater the APY potential of the NFT earned.

Check out our Calculator to understand how these NFTs can really jack up that APY: https://minterest.com/calculator

I know that was a lengthy intro. But it captures why Minterest is so unique compared to its counterparts for sure. And Done :)

Ramsy:
Thanks Kyn For this great start about Minterest 👌

Kyn:
🙏

Ramsy:
Now let's see our second question from this segment...

Q2) How has the experience and background of your team been effective in the success of your project so far?

Kyn:
I love our team, Ramsy. We have some of the most experience people in the space here and some of the youngest/most ambitious ones too. It’s a great mix

Josh, CEO of Minterest, goes back two decades in technology startups, including being a founding shareholder of Freelancer! Yes, that Freelancer. :)

David Esser is our CPO - as Stanford graduate and was earlier at Cardano.

As for myself, I was previously the CBDO at TomoChain, Vietnam's largest public blockchain. Educationally, I graduated university with dual degrees in both Industrial Engineering and Economics from Georgia Tech and later earned an MBA from the Wharton School of Business.

The Minterest team’s core office is in Tallinn, Estonia. We staff over 40 people, with two-thirds local, and one-third remote.

It’s also relevant to share that Minterest has been in development for over 1 year and have raised our institutional rounds from some of the biggest and most reputable players in the space, including KR1, DFG, Digistrats, CMS, CMT Digital, NGC, and others.

We also have secured a grant from Moonbeam and are close partners with Chainlink due to the Managing Director of Chainlink being a key strategic advisor to us.

So the pedigree is quite extensive at Minterest

Ramsy:
So moving on...

Q3) We have seen so much news about DeFi protocols getting hacked so what about the security of Minterest to ensure the safety of user funds?

Kyn:
Good question. Minterest is being designed to be as secure as we can possibly make it. Our goal is for liquidity providers to have peace of mind when they come to Minterest.

We have an extensive rolling security audit program that is inculcated as a standard part of the development process to validate our approach to making Minterest safe and secure.

And we’re only working with the top security audit firms in the space, with our first audit happening as we speak.

Additionally, we have an in-house team of data scientists and modelers to help us understand the economic side of Minterest’s functions. We take into account externalities, such as black swan events and potential economic exploits when using other Minterest in conjunction with other protocols.

Finally, Minterest will have reserves set aside to deal with worst-case scenarios. This can be thought of as an insurance fund. Let's just hope we don't have to use those, ever 😃

Ramsy:
Q4) The Minterest NFTs have actual usecases which is unique for the DeFi space. Could you explain how the NFTs provide APY boosts and what other benefits are offered to users?

Kyn:
Let me start with this, when it comes to our NFTs:

We are celebrating the top 100 most influential in Blockchain. But there is so much more than gorgeous PFPs

So the Minterest NFTs are a core part of the Minterest protocol. There are two key benefits to holding a Minterest NFT:

- NFTs provide up to a 50% boost in MNT emissions for providing liquidity on Minterest during its public launch in Q2
- NFTs provide key card access to the Minterest Private Launch in March where there will be limited participants. As a result the ability to yield farm MNT will be massive, in the 300-500% APY range.

The NFTs encourage long-term participation by liquidity providers (LPs) on Minterest.

And, as I mentioned above, the only way to earn them is to participate in the upcoming public offering via an LBP on February 8-11th. We’ll have a leaderboard for net-buys. Based on the user placement an appropriate NFT will be earned.

Coming back to how the NFTs work. For the simple act of lending and borrowing, you earn a steady emissions rate of MNT tokens block by block.

If the LP also holds an NFT, these returns are augmented, increasing the number of MNT earned from 20% to 50% depending on the rarity of the NFT.

There are 3000 NFTs across 12 levels of rarity. The greater the rarity, the greater the APY boost and the lifespan of those NFTs.

And then we found some of the most incredible artists to create fascinating portraits with a beautiful minimalist approach. You can also check out the entire gallery on our website here: https://minterest.com/nft-gallery

Ramsy:
Q5) Minterest is running a community allocation event right now where anyone can whitelist and participate. Can you tell us more?

Kyn:
Absolutely. For the next 60 hours we are running a Community Allocation Event to allow for anyone to receive an allocation of up to 500 USDC in MNT tokens.

The community only needs to go to Minterest.com and click the “Whitelist Now” button at the top.

To provide more context, the Community Allocation Event (CAE) is an extension to the Minterest LBP, our core public offering event held on February 8-11. We decided to hold the CAE due to real challenges retail investors face to participate in LBPs

Issues included
- Gas expensive: LBPs are gas-intensive since the event is held on Ethereum
- When to buy: Since LBPs are a reverse auction process, the price is constantly moving so it can be difficult to understand when to purchase tokens.

Through the Community Allocation Event, Minterest removes gas fees entirely and to provide the best value possible, depositors will get the lowest average price in the LBP itself. This removed the guess work completely.

Ramsy:
Thanks Kyn for this well detailed introduction about Minterest:)

And that's the wrap up of our the first part of the AMA session ✅

Kyn:
Cool. Thank you

Ramsy:
Let’s now proceed to our Twitter Questions section

i hope you're ready for that!!

Kyn:
Oh boy

Let’s get this party started hehe

Segment 2️⃣: Twitter Questions

Ramsy:
1)You mention that one of the innovations of Minterest is its automatic settlement engine and its buyback engine, can you tell us about how they work and the benefits and improvements it brings to the protocol?

Kyn:
Sure. So the Minterest Auto-liquidation feature is a world’s first.

What happens for other lending protocols is that about 40% of the value is lost. They're lost due to liquidations. And the liquidators are third parties. They're whales who are participating to liquidate users who become undercollateralized due to market price movement (typically). All of that value leaves the system.

For Minterest, we have built a liquidation feature into the protocol. It is able to capture all of the liquidation value. And then, it uses that value along with other fees it collects from Interest Rates and Flash loans to power the Buyback Engine (the second part of the question)

So the Buyback engine uses all value accrued in Minterest from Autoliquidations, interest rate fees, and flash loan fees. It then uses that and buys the MNT token back on market automatically.

If you hold MNT, and you are staking it in the governance process, you will get a share of every MNT that is bought back. In fact you can compound your returns automatically

Here is an illustration for that

Ramsy:
2) Can you explain me how to participate in “Lottery NFT”? And as mentioned The lottery has 85 NFTs, so all 85 NFTs are same cost and same utility? How it will be different from each other. Can you explain briefly on this?

Kyn:
Sure! The NFTs can only be earned from the LBP, and it’s based on net-buys.

However, we want to ensure our community can get access to so we're holding lotteries for them.

To participate, you need to earn lottery tickets.
- Simply Whitelist at Minterest.com.
- Click on the "Whitelist Now!" button.
- Refer a friend. For every friend referred you and they get 1 lottery ticket
- Make sure you place a deposit of up to 500 USDC during the Community Allocation Event and you have a chance to win some awesome NFTS

We are actually giving away much more than 85, and have already gifted out 50+!

Ramsy:
3)What is your "Minterest" strongest advantage that you think will make your team leading the market?What is the most ambitious goal of your project? Could share with us any Upcoming Updates?

Kyn:
We’re building Minterest to be the most efficient lending protocol out there.

We are tying the MNT token value to what the protocol does, accrue value. As more liquidity comes to Minterest, it has the ability to buy back more MNT tokens on market, thus driving up APYs. Greater APY increases demand for the MNT tokens. Thus, it creates what we call a flywheel effect

It's very hard for existing incumbents to copy Minterest's design. And even once they do we have a bunch of new innovations being planned moving forward.

That includes cross chain features, stable yield lending, and a more which we'll share as the year progresses.

Ramsy:
4)As an investor, I want to know how strong is your project security system? and what benefits will a user have in the years to come when I decide to join the project you are working on right now?

Kyn:
Sure. So I did address this above.

We are working nonstop to ensure that Minterest is as secure as it can be through a series of security audits from the biggest players in the space. In fact we're concluding our first major one in the next two weeks :)

From there we have an in-house data modelling team to help us understand the economic impacts external factors can have on Minterest

Finally, there are reserves that will be used as a form of insurance in the worst case scenario

Ramsy:
Let's hear our last question from this segment...

5)Collaborations and partnerships are some of the most important cornerstones to help improve adoption. Could you please tell us about the current partners, plans for partnerships and what everybody stands to gain from these partnerships?

Kyn:
Sure. So we have signed a major partnership with Chainlink already. We have also earned a Grant from the Moonbeam foundation. Great starts to begin with considering Minterest hasn’t even launched.

We're currently in discussions with various ecosystem projects on Moonbeam for integrations, including major DEXs.

In the background our BD team is working to onboard major liquidity providers to lend/borrow on Minterest

There is plenty more to come in the months ahead!

Ramsy:
Thanks for Your Valuable Answers❣
And that's the end of our twitter question segment

Kyn:
Sounds great.

Great questions by the community

Ramsy:
Now Moving on to our last segment - Live Q&A

Shall We Go?

Kyn:
I’ll follow your lead Ramsy! Let’s go go

I can sense the pending rush...

Ramsy:
Let’s do it

Segment 3️⃣: Live QnA
(In this segment group was opened for 60 seconds and Miners sent hundreds of questions. Guest choose some best to answer)

1)J Mags:
Some considers Moonbeam, Kusama and Polkadot the same networks in terms of features. However, Minterest decided to choose Moonbeam over the two. Why did you picked Moonbeam as to where your project be deployed?

Kyn:
Good question. The Moonbeam Foundation launched Moonbeam on Polkadot and Moonriver on Kusama (Polkadot’s canary network). We choose to only focus on Moonbeam for a simpel reason: Focus

It's hard to build one protocol and have it succeed, forget two at the same time :)

That isn't to say we aren't considering launches beyond Moonbeam down the road, and that could include doing a launch on Moonriver. But for now, strategically it makes sense to build on the strongest network we can

And the Moonbeam team has been so supportive. We share a common vision and vibe. So it’s been a wonderful experience thus far.

2) BuyNoEvil:
Many DeFi lending projects offer highly complex user interfaces which makes it very difficult to assess risk and evaluate positions. Someone with little experience or knowledge of liquidation processes, is vulnerable to market forces, and this lack of transparency may discourage them from staking. What will make Minterest’s UI different and unique?

Kyn:
True. We have to build for both those familiar with DeFi (read: whales) and yet innovate to make the experience better for those not accustomed to lending protocols. It’s a challenging design to get right and we have spent 9 months now working on this, having worked with two design agencies alongside our CPO, David Esser, to put together something we believe can work

I think one of the coolest aspects of the design is that we are including information to help our users understand their risk profiles. The user dashboard provides insight into your current debt position, and what you might consider doing if you're getting on the risky side towards liquidations.

We are also building in notification options so that if you are in risk, you'll be pinged on Telegram, email, etc about that.

It’s just another way in which we’re thinking about how to make lives easier for our users

3) MR.Anandhu:
A common problem is that nowadays most investors are only interested in initial profits and ignore long-term benefits! So can you give them some reasons why they should buy and hold your tokens in the long term?

Kyn:
Absolutely. MNT holds are going to start by getting major APY returns in the 300-500% range for staking. From there Minterest has a built in loyalty rewards program, which actually provides additional MNT rewards to users the longer they stake for.

Finally, as the buyback engine kicks with growing liquidity coming to Minterest, those APYs will go up. So it is only to your advantage to hold MNT and stake it. Let it compound and grow!

4) Mrs. Novita Zheyng:
Without an working products any idea has zero value. We see many projects are on paper only and no product. So, kindly ensure us that your project is just not an idea and it's already has an working products or practical usecases?

Kyn:
I absolutely understand the concern here. However, for the Minterest tean, we have been building for over a year. Our product is in its final phases of development for the MVP launch. Launch is expected to take place at the end of March. We’re looking forward to showcasing it in the weeks ahead. Can’t wait to share

5) 👑🇪🇬👑 grandson of pharaohs 👑🇪🇬👑:
Dao Governance Model has four major pillars: Decentralization, accessibility, Transparency, Trust and confidentiality. With that being said, how will you assure all users that all major criteria will be ensured within its governance system?

Kyn:
Yes so the DAO is something of importance to us. We’ll be testing this out during the Private Launch of Minterest. The idea is that we want to find key members and an administrator to take decisions for the benefit of the protocol. This process may take some time, but it’s the direction we want to go with to ensure there is movement towards decentralized governance down the road.

However, it is important for the Minterest team to be heavily involved for the foreseeable future in order for the protocol to reach a stage where it can take on a life of its own :)

*This segment ends here*

Ramsy:
Thankyou so much Kyn For your valuable answers and information about Minterest,
It Was Pleasure Hosting An Ama With You

Is there anything else you would like to share or you want us to know ?

Kyn:
Thank you for taking out your time Ramsy and to the Community, to participate here

And yes I would love to share our socials here.

Also remember that the Community Allocation Event is on for another 60 hours. Each community member can claim up to 500 USDC of MNT. Just go to Minterest.com and click on "Whitelist Now" to get started

And go enjoy a nice drink, my friend. You deserve it :)

Ramsy:
Thanks Man ❤️

Kyn:
🙌

Ramsy:
Time To Conclude Our AMA Session
Best of luck for the next

If you want to learn more about Minterest, here are some important links for you;

📌 Website: https://minterest.com/

📌 Blog: https://minterest.com/blog
📌 Twitter: https://twitter.com/Minterest
📌 Discord: https://discord.gg/PZYmtJKA
📌 Telegram: https://t.me/MinterestFinanceChat
📌 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/minterest/mycompany/