AMA Recap: CRYPTO MINERS X REEF

Reef chain is an EVM compatible blockchain for DeFi with NPoS/PoC consensus. It is fast, scalable, has low transaction costs and does no wasteful mining. It is built with Substrate Framework and comes with on-chain governance. Reef is fast, scalable, has low transaction costs and does no wasteful mining. Reef chain features next-gen blockchain technology, utilizing Nominated Proof of Stake, extensible EVM, on-chain upgradability, libp2p networking and state of the art cryptography. Reef is a Reliable Extensible Efficient Fast Layer-1 Blockchain for DeFi, NFT & Gaming. Built using Substrate Framework, it provides high scalability, enabling almost instant low-cost transactions, and supports Solidity and EVM, allowing developers to seamlessly migrate their DApps from Ethereum without any change in the codebase. Reef Chain is the most advanced EVM-compatible blockchain. It’s self-upgradable and has on-chain governance. Its infrastructure also allows for EVM extensions which allows for native token bridge, scheduled calls (ie. recurring payments), and smart contract in-place code upgrades. In the near future, it will support additional VMs which will allow developers to write code in multiple programming languages. The network runs on a Nominated Proof-of-Stake (NPoS) consensus mechanism, which offers scalability and low fees. Reef is geared towards cryptocurrency newcomers, alongside existing DeFi users who find it difficult to keep up with maintaining funds and wallets across multiple blockchains. The team has tackled the high gas fees seen on the Ethereum blockchain by building on Substrate, which enable almost instant transactions and low costs, where some claim Ethereum’s fees renders DeFi protocols “unusable.” What makes the Reef chain unique is that any DeFi protocol that has already deployed on Ethereum or an EVM-compatible network can run on Reef with just a few changes to the code. Since Reef Chain straddles this intersection between Ethereum and Polkadot, along with bridges to other blockchains, the Reef ecosystem can be accessed by anyone with a Web3 wallet that is interested in accessing dApps on Reef. Reef uses a Nominated Proof of Stake system to bond to potential validators, nominate potential validators, and to secure the Reef network. This allows for low cost, almost instant transactions with finality achieved in 10 seconds on average. For those without the technical skills to run a Validator node, they can be a Nominator. Nominators secure the Reef Relay Chain by selecting good validators and staking REEF.

We hosted an AMA session with Reef on 23rd August.

Mr. Ramsy was the host from Crypto Miners and Mr. Derek was the guest. He shared with us the features and functions of Reef.
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Segment 1️⃣: Introduction

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Hello everyone 👋 Welcome to Our AMA session With Reef

To help us learn more about Reef, We are lucky to be joined By Mr. Derek Silva

Hey Derek 👋

Derek Silva:
Hey Ramsy! Thanks for hosting this AMA.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
With pleasure ❤️

Derek Silva:
Excited to answer your questions, and ones from the Crypto Miners community

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Thanks for Joining with us today

First of all Can you introduce yourself to us?

Derek Silva:
Of course! My name is Derek E. Silva (there a bunch of other Derek Silva’s online, so I use my middle initial to make sure people know it’s me 😉 ).

I fell down the crypto rabbit hole almost 5 years ago when I met some really cool people at Fireside Conference, including Ethan Buchmann, co-founder of Tendermint and Cosmos.

A little while later I discovered projects like ETHLend (now Aave) and Bloom Protocol. I got my first job in crypto with Bloom as Head of Community Relations, and I’ve been working full-time in the space ever since.

Right now I spend quite a bit of my time helping Reef build out its ecosystem as the Operations Lead. Meetings with big and small teams about deploying their tokens, products and contracts to Reef, helping coordinate marketing and community, helping pick which events we go to, and representing Reef as well at events like ETHDenver and NFT.NYC.

I’m Canadian, but I’ve been all around the world this year, and I’m currently in Portugal for a week. 🇵🇹

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Sure 😃

Let’s start our Project Introduction

1. Make a concise and brief introduction about Reef.
How it is playing its role in Blockchain and DeFi world?

Derek Silva:
Reef is a layer 1 blockchain that’s built on Parity Substrate. That allows it to have a very efficient core, and the Reef team added Ethereum VM support on top before launch.

Now, instead of promoting fake “theoretical maximum throughput” numbers like other projects, we only promote real numbers. Reef is capable of handling between 400 and 500 TPS in real-world Solidity (Ethereum code) token transfers and contract executions, consistently, at incredibly affordable transaction fees that are lower than any of the L2 rollups currently operating on top of Ethereum.

In fact Reef is so light and easy to run that a $20 VPS from Digital Ocean or Vultr can handle it. These days I would recommend running your own on a computer at home, especially in light of recent news around the industry, but the fact remains it’s very light.

We target some of the heaviest/most expensive transactions in our marketing like DeFi, gaming and NFTs, because these are the current use cases that benefit the most from being on such a fast, inexpensive blockchain.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Thanks Derek for this well start about Reef 👍

Now let’s see our second question from this segment

2. What are the features of Reef chain that makes it superior and special as compared to its competitors?

Derek Silva:
I already shared a few, but I can add more! 😄

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Hah, Cool 😃

Derek Silva:
Reef’s browser extension is one of the best out there. Not only does it offer you access to your wallet and tokens, but allows you to swap, stake, send, etc. all within the browser extension. It started off as a fork of Polkadot.js since Polkadot’s also been on Parity Substrate, but now the browser extension does SO MUCH MORE. It’s beautiful, really.

Reef’s core is so flexible that the team is always working on adding more VM compatibility. Ethereum was the logical choice to be first because of how many people write contracts in Solidity, but as demand grows we can add Vyper language support, WebAssembly support, etc. to make it easy for developers in other ecosystems to deploy their contracts on Reef chain, and access our community of users and supporters, Reefians and Reefers ❤️ !

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Indeed 👏

Derek Silva:
I mentioned the real-world throughput earlier, this really cannot be understated. I won’t name names, but I think we’ve all seen other Ethereum-compatible layer 1s that say they can scale, but really can’t. Once they hit 50 or 60 TPS, the transaction queue starts to grow and grow until you have 8000 transactions in the queue. We promote real numbers, and these numbers are based on testing using heavy transactions that require 200k or 300k gas limits.

We hope one day we’ll need to think about sharding and other scaling tech, but right now Reef can handle a lot of load.

And of course I will mention that we have a great team, and we think very comprehensively about which projects we want to onboard to Reef. DeFi + NFT + GameFi all work well together, and so there will soon be lots of opportunities to learn, play, farm, etc. as soon as a few more projects launch on Reef chain.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Thanks for the honest answer ❤️

3)Tell us about Reef products which are Reef Wallet, Reef Swap, Klever and Sqwid.

Derek Silva:
Always!

Reef Wallet is a lot like the browser extension, but will be a native mobile app. Not only will it have all the features of Reef’s browser extension, but also the ability to manage your Reef Card. 💳 Oh shoot, I forgot to mention https://reefcard.com!

Denko demands an incredibly polished user experience and design, so the mobile app isn’t ready yet but when it launches, it will really shine among other crypto-related mobile apps.

Reef Swap is a Uniswap v2 fork tailored to Reef. We don’t expect it to be the only DEX on Reef chain, but it already exists and is usable. The Reef Swap team has also been toiling away at improving Reef Swap’s user experience, the user interface, adding more features and so on to make sure people have everything they need when deciding what pools to deposit into, when it’s time to withdraw, trade tokens, etc.

The core team’s responsibility is to make sure all the basic needs are handled, then we work with others to make sure they go beyond what we have and excel at their core strengths.

Klever is not a Reef product, but a partner of ours. They helped us launch Reef chain by running a Validator, setting up a bridge, support Reef chain in their wallet app, etc. We continue to work closely with them, but of course we’re not moving into relationships with projects and products that have a wider reach and can help Reef grow more (e.g. picking a tier 1 bridge that can connect Reef to dozens of others and help bring more projects to Reef).

And Sqwid is very exciting. It got started as a Gitcoin Hackathon project last fall, and they did such a great job that we’ve been working closely with them ever since. We have supported Sqwid financially, helping them build a team, provide testing and feedback, find an auditor, etc. Sqwid should be ready to launch in the next few weeks, once they’re done implementing some tester feedback, and we have multiple teams who want to mint their NFT collections on Sqwid right away!

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
4)Now tell us about the native token $REEF, what are its usecases and utilities in Reef ecosystem? Also provide us with the tokenomics

Derek Silva:
Reef is the name of the token, and REEF is the native coin. 🙂 It’s used to pay for gas fees, we anticipate you’ll be able to use it to buy NFTs and physical products in the near future, and it’s also a core part of the NPoS (Nominated Proof of Stake) consensus layer.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Looking forward for that 🚀

Derek Silva:
Reef is not a proof of work chain, that’s incredibly wasteful. Instead it runs on a system of Validators who stake their REEF in order to help secure the blockchain. People who don’t have the technical know how to run a Validator, or don’t want the responsibility, can instead nominate a Validator on their behalf (similar to delegating).

There are 64 nomination slots per Validator, so hundreds of people can benefit by staking or nominating their REEF, which helps secure the network. In any PoS system you want more than 50% of the circulating coins or tokens to be staked, which secures the network and prevents anything resembling a 51% attack from occurring. In Reef’s case we are ate 56.8% staked! So we’re in a really good position.

REEF started off as ERC-20 and BEP-20 tokens before the chain launched, so there appears to be duplicate supply out there, but the numbers bear our correctly once calculated. The current total supply is just shy of 20 billion REEF. All transactions burn the REEF used for gas, so we anticipate that number growing more slowly soon, or perhaps even being reduced depending on how much on-chain activity there is.

You can see the tokenomics on Reef’s website — https://reef.io/tokenomics/

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Now let’s move to our last question from this segment

5. What Reef achieved so far and what important updates and developments we’ll get in coming months in Reef ecosystem?

Derek Silva:
So far we have:

- Launched all the live products I mentioned earlier
- Achieved well over 50% of REEF staked
- Had many terrific teams apply for the Reef Developer Grant Fund
- Issued grants to some amazing teams
- Built an incredible team of business development, marketing, developers, and community people
- Had very productive and positive meetings with some of the top projects in the space
- Launched our own Reef-branded MasterCard
- Got REEF and Reef chain support added to a bunch of tier 1 exchanges

And we have much more to come including more dApps going live, the mobile app, native Reef chain support across Reef card, more exchanges, major tokens, etc. Reef is in growth mode despite the current market conditions or other teams laying people off or pulling back on funds.

Sqwid is launching soon, we announced Jungle Race is coming to Reef, major stablecoins are likely to launch on Reef in the near future, a major bridge provider will be locked in and launched, etc.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Thanks Derek for this well detailed introduction about Reef:)

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

Let’s now proceed to our Twitter Questions section

i hope you’re ready for that!!

So let’s go 🥂

Segment 2️⃣: Twitter Questions

1: The key ingredient for users and institutions and sellers is deep liquidity, and steadily growing volumes. Reef_Chain what associations is it building, to increase its liquidity? What factors will be done to increase the depth of the market in a compatible way?

Derek Silva:
Great question Vulang14.

Reef has great relationships with tier 1 centralized exchanges, and we stay on top of what’s happening there to try and make sure there’s liquidity. Binance adding Reef chain support solved a lot of that. You can see in the tokenomics that 22% of REEF is set aside for liquidity/ecosystem bootstrapping, and a big part of that is making sure that we incentivize bringing those ERC-20 and BEP-20 representations over to Reef chain over the coming years, prioritizing on-chain transactions and usage. That, in turn, burns REEF, reducing the supply overall.

We have also committed to supporting tokens that launch on ReefSwap with good liquidity on REEF pairs. So, let’s say, USDT launches on Reef. The core team will ensure there’s good liquidity on a REEF/USDT pair on ReefSwap, and likely some sort of incentive for people to bridge more REEF to the chain, stake it in the pool, and so on.

As more opportunities like these appears, we take time to evaluate them and can put the coins and incentives behind them to help further Reef’s goals.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
2: How will u grow Reef user base. These other blockchains have already hudreds of dapps, huge user base and big names behind them.
Do you think it will naturally grow when more dapps join ? What is your plan?

Derek Silva:
We’re doing all the things I already mentioned:

- A Reef Grant Developer Fund that is still fully ready to deploy, and has been deploying funds
- A business development team that is out there scouring the world for the best dApps, both new and established, and working to bring them over to Reef (whether exclusively or not)
- The incentives above for bridging REEF back to Reef chain
- Reef Card, making it easier for people to use their coins and tokens in the real world
- Continuing to improve developer tooling and giving them more solutions, like OpenFabric and OnFinality

Overall we’re recognizing all the things a blockchain/ecosystem needs to survive and thrive, and working to bring them over. I’m confident some of the most well known tokens will launch on Reef over the coming months.

And sorry I took so long to write that one. My cousin’s wife was consulting me about my food preferences and setting up lunch plans. 😂

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Cool ❤️

Moving on…

3: How does Reef Finance evaluate the importance of user community? In near future, does #Reef_Finance have any special plans to attract & expand the community?

Derek Silva:
Thanks for the question, Vicky.

When it comes down to it, the user community is one of the most important things we have in crypto. No users, or at least fans who want to use something, no projects will consider building on it. No projects, no major exchange support. No major exchange support, no institutional interest or interest from already existing, major projects.

So yeah, it really all comes down to the community. Thankfully we have a large cohort of Reefians, Reefers, and our Reef Divers (ambassadors) who are incredibly passionate about Reef and its future, and so we’re in a good position. But it’s not something we take for granted, and I think the incentives mentioned earlier help illustrate that.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
4:Marketing is a central element of every project, so that everyone knows that the potential that a project can bring is vital for goal setting. What is your strategy for attracting new users and investors to your platform and keeping them long-term?

Derek Silva:
1. Great partnerships and integrations, and marketing the heck out of those

2. BD team reaching out to top projects, and formalizing relationships that result in ⬆️

3. Going all the way down the funnel to core building blocks that enable 2 and 1 (e.g. getting major custodial solutions to support Reef chain)

4. As per the old adage, using every part of the cow. Blog posts, Twitter Spaces, tweets, Reddit, Instagram, LinkedIn, videos, AMAs, whatever works depending on the situation. And then continuing to find other parts of the relationship to highlight at different times, or remind people of the relationship when the timing is right, and so on. We’ve been to live events, virtual events, we have multiple people on the team who can speak on Reef’s behalf, and more.

5. Everything else I’ve mentioned before, including the Reef Divers program. Everything is marketing, it all involves putting our best foot forward at every opportunity.

For example, our presence at ETHDenver was very pivotal for starting 2022 off well

https://medium.com/reef-finance/reef-at-ethdenver-recap-27510a483c16

And same with recap videos like this

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
5) 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?

Here is our last question from Twitter

Derek Silva:
Hey bobby, thanks for the question.

I mentioned earlier a couple of key components:

1. Parity Substrate has proven to be incredibly secure as a core component so far across Polkadot, Reef, and other layer 1s built on top of it.

2. Over 56% of REEF are staked across Validators and their Nominators, very important for security.

3. We take security auditing very seriously whether it’s Reef’s core system, when evaluating Reef Developer Grant Fund applicants, and so on. In fact, one of the reasons Sqwid hasn’t launched yet is because they were waiting for the results of their security audit, and since we’re working so closely with them, people associate Sqwid with Reef.

4. Reef browser extension is also built with all these core tenets in mind.

Besides that, I would point to all the things happening now and what we anticipate seeing launched on Reef chain in the future for what benefits Reef users will see by being part of the ecosystem. Even for those people who can’t be a Validator or Nominator, we have the Reef Community Staking Bond that’s providing huge yield, and you can also stake REEF within Binance!

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
That’s the wind up of our twitter segment

Now Moving on to our last segment — Live Q&A

Shall we Derek?

Derek Silva:
We shall!

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
lets go then

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) Itz Abhi ⚡️ :
If I have a existing Solidity Project but not on REEF CHAIN but on other chains. So, Is it possible to port our existing Solidity project to Reef Chain? also How can we make a new DeFi App on REEF?

Derek Silva:
Good question, Itz.

Yes, it’s possible to deploy your Solidity smart contract to Reef without any changes. In fact Reef also provides native GraphQL capabilities, so you can write queries and get data from the blockchain very easily and quickly, and transform or display that data in your dApp.

You should be able to get all the information you need at https://docs.reef.io. If you run into issues, we have a Developer Relations team ready to assist you and help overcome any barriers. 🙂 Also happy to help promote good projects as well.

2) Reza:
Do you have any plans for integrating with metamask so more people on EVM chains and dapps know reef chain?

Derek Silva:
Yes, absolutely. MetaMask actually requires some customizations to a chain’s RPC, so we have to implement those in order for MetaMask to support Reef. We’re also in discussions with other, major wallet app makers to get Reef chain support enabled there. Reef browser extension is terrific, but we don’t want to force people to use it if we don’t have to.

3) Jibson:
Did $REEF team considered community feedback requests during the creation of the project in order to explore on fresh ideas?

Derek Silva:
Of course! The original idea of a cross-chain liquidity aggregator had a lot of fans, but when we went out to speak to people about building on Reef, all they really cared about was a fast, inexpensive, EVM-compatible layer 1. That’s what they wanted, and the team realized this made Reef far more relevant and ability to survive over the long term because it didn’t rely on one type of activity (DeFi) to survive. So we pivoted, made Reef chain a standalone layer 1, and accommodated their requests.

4) Munna Bhaiya:
Can you introduce us to Reef chain? The main problems of chains are they are slow , more transaction costs, and wasteful mining, non-scalable. So, Can I solve these problems using Reef Chain? What are the other benefits for using Reef Chain?

Derek Silva:
This is a good question, and I think the answer is that they both need to exist.

CEXs are important for onboarding fiat to blockchains, and offboarding again for the foreseeable future. As a result, I’m getting very tired of having to KYC/AML multiple times across paltforms. I’m a big fan of the idea to complete KYC once, at a CEX or other fiat on-ramp, and that’s it. If regulatory bodies can decide that works and is sufficient, and I think it does, it opens things up to be much easier than they are now (e.g. launchpads).

DEXs are just as important, and maybe slightly more important, because they offer access to a variety of tokens that CEXs can’t, don’t, or won’t verify and add to their platforms. That’s totally fine, in my opinion, because an on-chain alternative exists.

There needs to be strong liquidity in DEXs, but properly structured pools and incentives can ensure that happens. Then, if you need the funds off-chain, you can use your preferred CEX to offboard again.

So it’s not a either/or scenario, both need to co-exist for now and play important roles.

5) What about burning of Reef?
Also tell us about Reef card.

Derek Silva:
Yes, I touched on the REEF burning mechanism earlier. The REEF spent on gas/transaction fees are all burnt.

Reef Card is currently available to everyone in the European Economic Area, and we’re working closely with Baanx to point them to where our community is most active, and therefore which parts of the world they should focus on next. We have a large community in Turkey, for example, so we’re hopeful Baanx can quickly accomplish any licensing or other regulatory requirements in Turkey and expand Reef Card access to that community in the near future.

I think Africa is leading the way for crypto adoption in many ways, and I’m very bullish on the continent’s future, as a whole. 🙂

*This segment ends here*

Derek Silva:
All these questions about how to get Reef Card can be answered at reefcard.com, so I’m not choosing one of them to answer directly.

Similarly for becoming a Validator. Please head over to https://docs.reef.io to get the documentation needed. 🙂

A lot of the other basic questions can be answered by exploring the website.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Thankyou so much Derek For your valuable answers and information about Reef 💜

It Was Pleasure Hosting An Ama With You

Derek Silva:
Thanks for hosting, and to everyone for participating.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Time To Conclude Our AMA Section

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

Derek Silva:
Head over to reef.io, follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/reef_chain, or if you prefer Reddit you can find us on https://reefdefi.reddit.com.

You can also find us on Telegram at @reefchain or Discord at https://discord.com/invite/reefchain

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
We Wish all the very best for Reef And The Entire team behind the project❤️🤝

Derek Silva:
Thanks for hosting Ramsy 🙂

Same to you and the Crypto Miners community!

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Welcome mate

Have a nice day 👍

Derek Silva:
Same to you 🙂

Community, if you would like to learn more about Reef, here are some useful links for you:

Website: https://reef.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Reef_Chain
Telegram: https://t.me/reefchain
Discord: https://discord.gg/reefchain
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reef.io/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ReefDeFi/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ReefFinance
Medium: https://medium.com/reef-finance