Part I: AMA RAMP DEFI Channel
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:03:43]:
Hi all, welcome to the dual community AMA today with AllianceBlock CEO and founder @Agorajix! Great to have you here Rachid.
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:04:48]:
I have just muted the chat to make this easier haha.
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:05:24]:
We will start with some questions to help our community learn more about AllianceBlock, and then we will jump into community Q&A
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:06:30]:
@Agorajix just to kick things off, can you please give a quick introduction of yourself please to the RAMP community?
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:06:59]:
Hi Lawrence, a pleasure to be here and nice to meet all your lovely community
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:08:22]:
Great to have you here! Can you share more about your background and experience in TradFi with us?
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:09:16]:
My name is Rachid Ajaja and I am the Founder and CEO of AllianceBlock. I worked 10 years in investment banking as A Quantitative Analyst in various investment banks including Barclays and BNP Paribas. I also led the AI research team at VINCI in France. My Co-Founders, Amber and Matthijs, started working on AllianceBlock over two years ago. We’ve been privileged to have joined three of Europe’s leading startup incubators during that time and we are excited to be bringing AllianceBlock to market.
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:10:42]:
Amazing team backgrounds! Definitely a big plus to be backed by leading accelerators in Europe, especially when AllianceBlock is addressing the TradFi to DeFi market.
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:11:11]:
Can you share, from a high level, What is AllianceBlock setting out to do and why is it important?
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:11:19]:
Yes definitely
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:11:56]:
AllianceBlock is building the future of finance. We are creating a protocol that will bridge the decentralized finance (DeFi) and the traditional finance (TradFi) to bring the benefits of both areas to one another. This will enable traditional institutions to save costs by eliminating regulatory and technological inefficiencies they currently face, as well as enable them to take advantage of the new opportunities presented by DeFi and introduce additional products to their clients.
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:12:29]:
Our solution will enable the digitalization of real-world assets such as real estate or commodities to be represented by digital tokens. All digital assets will be investable, bankable, fungible, and accessible to all DeFi and TradFi participants. DeFi and TradFi participants will be able to interact with, transfer, and exchange assets and data in a compliant and straightforward way, promoting capital flow between the two, now distinct, markets.
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:13:09]:
Through this, we will provide a secure and regulatory compliant gateway for billions of dollars present in TradFi to flow towards DeFi and enable DeFi platforms and protocols to be used by a much greater audience. In doing so, we will unlock DeFi for the world.
v, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:14:03]:
Also the fact having Ramp as strategic partner is very important to bring all the benefit if DeFi to the traditional financial world, this is why we are very excited with this amazing collaboration
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:14:52]:
Yeah this is perfect. Crypto is still so early in terms of economic maturity, and DeFi is even earlier in its infancy. Breaking down the barriers from TradFi to DeFi will really be a game changer!
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:15:10]:
Totally agree with you Lawrence
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:15:53 (4 Feb 2021 at 16:16:01)]:
AllianceBlock also have recently have a huge partnership milestone came into fruition. Can you share more around your key strategic partners/technology/capabilities which allow Alliance Block to unlock this gateway between traditional v digital assets?
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:20:07]:
Indeed, as you can see in our End of Year summary, we are having multiple products, each product is a stand alone that can run independentely from others, and hence having its own customers, and revenue, but also all these products can be interconnected.
Our most important partners are of course Ramp specifically because it unlocks liquidity from illiquid capital asset, you can see that we have a product called P2P Lending, investment and NFT which will allow short term financing for traditional financial institutions’ clients and High net worth individuals (HNWI)
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:21:09]:
as you know HNWI are asset rich but cash poor, and giving them the opportunity on having short term financing against their real asset, without having to sell them will have a big impact. And this where our collaboration with Ramp will unleach this potential by leveraging our both technologies.
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:21:25]:
This bring me to our recent milestone which is our agreement with London Stock Exchange
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:22:10]:
Thank you Rachid appreciate and value this partnership with Alliance Block!
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:22:19]:
We have been speaking with the team at the London stock exchange for more than 18 months on a potential collaboration. So we were very happy to finally reach an agreement. Connecting to their partner’s platform is a long term plan to bring DeFi products to Traditional finance actors. All of the institutional clients of the LSEG will be able to view our list of products that are currently in development, specifically those related to decentralized data and short term financing. This includes the products developed with our partners.
But also we already have a specific list of clients that we will be introduced to directly by the LSEG once the products are live.
As for the community, well this is validation for their support and trust for the past two years. We have other big news in the pipeline so stay tuned!
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:23:39]:
This is amazing not only for us but for Ramp and all the Ramp community, as we will be able to deploy our product on LSEG infrastructure and thus instituional clients will have access to not only our product but also our partners product. You can imagine how intersting is to unlock liquidity for illiquid asset specifically for HNWI and the potential we have here
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:24:14]:
This is perfect. It’s really a big step forward from here for TradFi recognition and acceptance. TradFi moves slow, but once the channel is bridged, the size and capital that we can bring into DeFi would be enormous :)
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:24:38]:
Indeed, I can t agree more :)
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:25:22]:
Im really excited at how things can really start to move and progress upwards from here. When would Alliance block’s system be launched and who would be able to use it?
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:27:22]:
We are currently developing our different products and more precisely the P2P lending, investment and NFT protocol. We are looking to release the full product on Q2 with already first application on institutional clients. We are looking forward to integrate our both technologies so we can unleash the huge potential of DeFi and finally bridge the two worlds
Here it s the map of our first 7 products, that will build the foundation of the future of finance
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:28:49]:
We are having some excting releases coming in Q1 and specifically the Single Sided Liquidity Mining, and also later on, bringing traditional players depositing cash and earning yield higher than traditional remittance accounts
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:29:15]:
We will have a long journey with you guys, and really super excited
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:30:08]:
Awesome! Thank you @Agorajix! Amazing infrastructure and foundation you are building there with AllianceBlock, and we are looking forward to working with your team to deliver complementary solutions for tradfi institutions.
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:30:12]:
I’ll open the floor now for a couple questions from the community, and then we can move over to @allianceblock for part 2 of the AMA :)
Community Questions RAMP DEFI Channel
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:33:35]:
🍬 Smurfs 🍬 fud fighter, smart farmer, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:31:46]:
@Agorajix any particular sector u are targeting?
hey @Smurfies221 , our focus is in compliant investment and lending , new products leveraging defi for traditional finance. Our clients will be mainly, private banks, wealth managers, asset managers, investment banks but also many DeFi companies that can leverage our product. We target also derivatives, we will release a pricing engine. Basically and simply put each of our product you can see it as a department in a investment banks. Data of course is super important.
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:34:39]:
🍬 Smurfs 🍬 fud fighter, smart farmer, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:32:18]:
Real estate? Bonds? Stocks?
Equity, FX, Bonds, but also illiquid asset such as Collectible cars, Illiquid wine fund, Arts, … NFT will make endless possibilities to build structured product on these asset and with ramp we can unleash the liquidity for the asset holders,
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:37:22]:
Femi Oyinloye, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:33:28]:
Can You brief us on the importance and the benefits your partnership with other projects will bring to your platform and its users?
as you can see we are building an ecosystem, each partners is done for a specific reason and use case.
For example Ramp as we said is to unleash the liquidity for illiquid asset and thank to our protocol we will be able to transform passif asset to actif asset that will bring extra revenue to their holders.
Ocean protocol we are building with them our Data Tunnel which will be the hub where all oracles can connect and also the traditional data providers and we will expose a predictable and easy to use data sets on decentralized data layers, there will be amazing possibilities for Developers to build on top of this technologie.
I invite you to see more here: https://allianceblock.medium.com/allianceblock-2020-year-end-review-a-look-back-and-a-look-forward-6d4813d816dc
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:38:13]:
Jimmy G, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:36:52]:
At what point do you expect a homeowner will be able to put their home as collateral to participate in crypto?
this is absolutely possible, the only thing is that real estate is heavily regulated and it will depend on the jurisidction. This is why we are building a compliant bridge between tradefi and defi, and our collaboration will make this happen :)
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:38:43]:
Nigey, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:37:40]:
Would the HNWI have to interact with crypto or will the front end just be fiat?
they don t need , they will do it in traditional way without having to have any private key or public key :)
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:38:47 (4 Feb 2021 at 16:38:52)]:
more to come, stay tuned ;)
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:38:55]:
Thanks @Agorajix ! Appreciate your time here with the RAMP community. We are moving over to the @allianceblock community now for part 2 of the AMA covering RAMP, see you guys there!
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:39:18]:
Many thanks for having me, really enjoyed it and looking forward to the next steps :)
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:40:06]:
Good things to come!
Part II: AMA AllianceBlock Channel
Johannes | Will never pm you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:41:33]:
Hi Lawrence,
a pleasure to have you in our community. Tell us more about your background and how you came to start RAMP?
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:41:43]:
Good to have you with us @LawrenceLHZ :)
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:42:20]:
Thanks @johannes_AB and @Agorajix for having me here today in the Alliance Block community! A pleasure to be here.
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:43:13]:
Definitely happy to share. I started my career in traditional finance in private banking and M&A, before moving to crypto with a layer 1 project call IOST. I was leading international growth for them for 2 years, and help to grow the project from pre mainnet to a full ecosystem.
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:43:54]:
I started RAMP with my cofounders as we realized that staked assets have low capital efficiency, typically its 5–10% on a fluctuating asset, and we want to change that.
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:44:21]:
The staking market cap is $300 billion right now, so theres a lot of inefficient capital needing a solution :)
Johannes | Will never pm you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:44:55]:
Impressive! Please give an overview of what is RAMP DEFI and the participants backing the project.
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:46:40]:
Sure! What RAMP does is essentially YFI + Maker 2.0. Users deposit assets into our smart contracts, which deploys these assets into yield farming or staking to earn rewards (YFI style). At the same time, we collateralize the value of these yield bearing assets into a stablecoin, rUSD, which functions like DAI, and can be deployed for additional yield, or exchanged into other stablecoins like USDT or USDC.
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:46:59]:
Some of our key participants include Alameda Research, ParaFi Capital, Arrington XRP Capital, among others
Johannes | Will never pm you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:48:11 (4 Feb 2021 at 16:48:32)]:
How would a Partnership with AllianceBlock benefit users?
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:49:25]:
We are really excited about this partnership with Alliance Block! The key for RAMP is to onboard yield bearing assets. Doing this within staking is definitely big, but TradFi also offers significant opportunities with trillions of capital, which is what AllianceBlock can offer.
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:50:27]:
Essentially we can really be creating a new source of capital, backed by real world assets onboarded into the AllianceBlock ecosystem, and have this capital source moving within the crypto ecosystem. This can be a gamechanger and really grow the entire size of DeFi :)
Johannes | Will never pm you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:51:48]:
Fully agreed! How does RAMP DEFI collateralize assets and would that be different for NFTs?
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:54:09]:
Great question. The mechanics will be as follow: We will allow the assets to be over collateralized and mint rUSD stablecoin via RAMP’s protocol. The same can be done with NFTs, as long as there is a guarantor, which is where AllianceBlock will still play a key role to ensure value retention via regulated channels. Once these parameters are established, the stablecoin, which is really backed by a mix of real world assets and crypto assets, can be fluid to move within the global DeFi ecosystem :)
Johannes | Will never pm you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:55:00]:
What new features can we expect from RAMP DEFI in the current and next quarter?
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 16:59:50 (4 Feb 2021 at 17:00:04)]:
So after months of development, happy to share that the code for rUSD minting and assets onboarding are close to completion and pending audit, so within Feb/Mar users will be able to start collateralizing a range of assets, whether its single assets or even LP tokens, into rUSD. Users can also become rUSD-USDC liquidity providers to earn rewards and contribute to the growth and utility of the rUSD token. From then on its really open skies, as we have a scalable way to onboard assets quickly, with yield strategies to redeploy these assets for income. We will also develop a receptor for assets coming through AllianceBlock, which can also allow the onboarding of these assets from TradFi directly into DeFi in a seamless, and swift manner for users. We are very excited about how this will work with AllianceBlock and expecting a huge capital influx from here. So there’s lots of exciting things happening coming up!
Johannes | Will never pm you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 17:01:06]:
A lot in the pipeline as we can see. Let’s move to the open question round- chat will be unmuted so everyone is free to ask questions
Community Questions RAMP DEFI Channel
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 17:04:00]:
Fabio Giens, [4 Feb 2021 at 17:02:13]:
How can a NFT stablelise a stablecoin like rUSD?
The NFT is a representation of an illiquid, yield bearing asset. In tradfi, this asset can have certain underwriting value, typically also known as loan to value ratios, which institutions are willing to underwrite at. So as long as there is a regulated function to ensure that the value is retained, the value backing rUSD will therefore also be retained :)
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 17:05:21]:
O Cornel, [4 Feb 2021 at 17:02:54]:
How do you see the future of NFT’s being adopted. Is there proof of real demand?
As @Agorajix has shared in the RAMP group, which I think is a really valid point, is that a lot of wealth is tied up in illiquid capital assets. Most participants or asset owners would want to extract a measure of lqiudity from these assets however in tradfi, it is really slow, full of paperwork and onerous requirements.
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 17:06:36 (4 Feb 2021 at 17:10:29)]:
DeFi can offer an alternative to make it happen in a painless seamless manner. In fact, recently a prominent crypto engineer has refinance his home mortgage, using DeFi, and cut the red tape out in the process ;)
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 17:09:03]:
Nicole, [4 Feb 2021 at 17:04:12]:
In the intro article I read: ““The partnership aims to develop a liquidity solution that enables regulated institutions to digitize illiquid real-world assets into NFTs, and subsequently transform these into liquid funds for short-term financing.”Are you already in contact with such institutions?
AllianceBlock would play the pivotal role in bridging TradFi with DeFi. There’s a lot of requirements on the TradFi side, which would not be performed by us, but by leading specialists at AllianceBlock. What RAMP would subsequently do would after AllianceBlock has onboarded these assets and capital, we will help to provide the complementary solutions for capital deployment.
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 17:09:52]:
So far AllianceBlock has proven to be a front runner and leading the race to connect TradFi and DeFi, so we are extremely excited to be partnering with AllianceBlock to make this vision a reality :)
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 17:12:17]:
The Mask, [4 Feb 2021 at 17:05:21]:
With this partnership do you plan on development a stable coin? aUSD for AllianceBlock
We will want to also onboard $ALBT and the liquidity mining tokens such as $ALBT-ETH as yield collaterals into rUSD, and ALBT users can also participate in rUSD, and redeploying rUSD for yield, while still earning your ALBT rewards, and still owning your ALBT portfolio :)
Rachid Ajaja | Will never PM you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 17:12:43]:
You have some sneak peak @LawrenceLHZ , more to come guys stay tuned
Johannes | Will never pm you first, [4 Feb 2021 at 17:12:48]:
Thanks for all the answers! 👍
Lawrence | RAMP DEFI, [4 Feb 2021 at 17:14:13]:
Thanks for setting up the AMA Johannes and Rachid, was amazing being here and appreciate everyone’s time on the AMA!
About RAMP DEFI
Backed by world-class participants, RAMP DEFI is a global decentralized finance solution that focuses on unlocking liquid capital from staked digital assets. Using the RAMP solution, users with staked assets can continue to receive staking rewards, retain capital appreciation potential on their staked portfolio, and unlock liquid capital to participate in new opportunities at the same time.
The addressable market for staked assets today is upwards of USD25bn, and as the industry-leading solution, RAMP DEFI has a vision of unlocking USD1bn or more in “Total Value Unlocked (TVU)” for users by the end of 2021.
About AllianceBlock
AllianceBlock is building the first globally compliant decentralized capital market. The AllianceBlock Protocol is a decentralized, blockchain-agnostic layer 2 that automates the process of converting any digital or crypto asset into a bankable product.
Incubated by three of Europe’s most prestigious incubators: Station F, L39, and Kickstart Innovation in Zurich, and led by a heavily experienced team of ex-JP Morgan, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs investment bankers, and quants, AllianceBlock is on the path to disrupt the $100 trillion securities market with its state-of-the-art and globally compliant decentralized capital market.
Website | Telegram | Discord | CoinGecko | White Paper | Green Paper | Token Economics Paper
