Transcript of the Ampleforth office hours on 07.04.2021
Question 1:
A lot of us really want to see Aave come to fruition. What is the best move for the community to make this happen, and will there be a further push from Ampl either from a marketing or financial perspective to get this proposal through?
Evan:
Us too, whether people realize it or not yet, it’s a big deal.
The delegation is looking pretty good from our perspective — I think we really need the community to come alive once the voting begins, because that actually has a time-consideration that comes along with it.
Question 2:
Any plans for AMPL on layer 2s in the future? Do layer 2s cause any particular problems for the protocol?
Aalavandhan:
In theory there should be NO problem to integrate with any layer 2 or another chain provided a programmable bridge exists, which is able to transfer data to and from Ethereum, to another chain or layer 2.
Our current cross-chain implementation is generic enough to work with any EVM chain or layer 2 (we just need to implement a simple adapter contract for every new type of bridge, which should be relatively straight forward).
Extending to non-EVM chains which support smart-contracts should also not be very hard (we just need to rewrite the cross-chain ample contracts in the native language of the new chain)
Question 3:
What are your thoughts on FEI? Do you think it is a viable solution?
Evan:
Our initial design had bonds and a fractional algorithmic reserve. 1) Bonds can’t sustain themselves by free-market forces and 2) An automatic reserve can only buy-back as much circulating supply as it has capital in reserve. This capital is still vulnerable to the volatility of underlying collateral assets.
Generally our trajectory followed a process of removing components when we were able to prove they wouldn’t work. That’s how we got to AMPL. Now it seems the broader community is confirming our original beliefs. I think the best approach moving forward is to “refine” assets like AMPL intro derivatives that can be used as collateral (this is one of Manny’s great revelations btw).
Question 4:
“I think the best approach moving forward is to “refine” assets like AMPL intro derivatives that can be used as collateral.” Is that actually crating a safe asset though or just shuffling the risk?
Evan:
I think you cannot extract a safe asset without shuffling (or stratifying) the risk. The key is allowing folks to price that risk and making it crystal clear. more to come on this in the future.
Question 5:
I think at this point is is safe to say DAI has a very strong network effect, meaning it will be hard for a new decentralized stablecoin to compete with it based on tech alone, what do you think the advantages are of using a stable AMPL derivative as collateral instead of just DAI?
Evan:
Good question, I tend to assume there’s virtually zero unmet demand for a decentralized stablecoin because most of the market’s needs are currently fulfilled by USDT and USDC. Safe-asset could have a yield btw … also more on this later, don’t want to spill the beans.
Question 6:
The way I look at things the demand for stablecoin far exceeds the supply, why else would you be able to earn 10+% yield on stablecoins like DAI or USDC?
Evan:
For sure there’s demand for stablecoins, just not a lot of “unmet” demand — USDT has now scaled to a $43B market cap!
Question 7:
I’ll add I think the market realizes decentralization is valuable, that’s why DAI yield is much higher than USDT.
Evan:
I think the market knows that decentralization is important — I sure do. In a flash crash I’m happy with USDC, if there’s regulatory uncertainty I’m glad things like DAI exist. I’m not a big fan of DAI overall tho as I think it literally straddles a sliding scale between censorship resistance and reliability. They can add more USDC to increase reliability, but overtly at the expense of censorship resistance, and vice versa.
Question 8:
Will we be able to buy pizza with AMPL?
Evan:
I think it’s kinda like how you can’t just strike oil in the ground and put petroleum in your gas tank. You first needs to refine it into gasoline (through a process). I think one day you’ll be able to buy pizza with a 2-step process-refined derivative of AMPL.
Question 9:
Dear Evan, first of all I appreciate your work, but what’s your opinion of current AMPL position vs other coins? Shouldn’t we step up during this Bull market a little bit?
Evan:
Haha … we are definitely stepping things up.
Question 10:
What are the plans to get more awareness and adoption for AMPL? The spotlight is on crypto right now and we don’t know how much longer the bull run will last. Will there be an office hours on Youtube soon?
Evan:
Yes to Youtube office hours, we really wanted to hit that this week, but there’s just so much going on internally right now
Question 11:
Is there or will there be a relationship between AMPL and MIST? Or is Alchemist a completely separate project?
Aalavandhan:
@thegostep the lead engineer on Geyser v2, launched Alchemist. It’s now its own thing with a vibrant community. It’s been amazing to watch it grow to what it is right now in such a short period of time.
Question 12:
What is the most technically difficult part of the multichain development?
Aalavandhan:
The biggest consuming factor around cross chain is just the sheer effort to line up reputed 3rd party validators and the operational overhead of running our own bridge. If there was a n-way bridge solution out there which was plug and play we’d be live by now :/.
Question 13:
I think this messaging (the Venn diagram) is confusing the market. It’s not stable like a stablecoin and it’s not immediately clear that it’s like BTC, due to the rebase. I think a more benefit-oriented message might be something that could help people “get it” quickly. As someone who thinks about communication a lot, I think it’s important to continually refine the message.
BTC: Digital gold
ETH: Defi Engine
AMPL: ?
What’s the basic, three word statement that helps the market understand AMPL’s core benefit?
Evan:
We do have a whitepaper in the works actually. It refines the building block argument quite a bit.
Question 14:
What’s the 3–5 word value proposition message for AMPL? What makes it absolutely fantastic? I have my thoughts, but would love to hear it from the creators of the protocol.
Evan:
AMPL is like Bitcoin — except it can be used to denominate stable contracts. if they don’t get that it’s like Bitcoin, then I tend to get into why it IS like Bitcoin — kinda gotta hold the line there.
Question 15:
What’s a “stable contract”? Where do they exist right now? I’ve been noodling on that “stable contract’ message and I am having a hard time figuring out how to operationalize that in the context of AMPL as a rebasing asset. It’s stable over XX time period, but what does that mean?
Evan:
No worries — Aave will be a big help here (seeing is believing). And the whitepaper will also help, as it overtly defines these terms.
