Transcript of the Ampleforth office hours on 19.05.2021
Aalavandhan:
As some of you already deduced a test bridge for cross-chain AMPL between ethereum and BSC testnet is live! I’ll be around to answer any questions on how v1 cross chain AMPL will function. The bridge was built in collaboration with Meter Passport, and Xiaohan Zhu, CEO and co-founder of Meter Passport is also here to answer questions.
Xiaohan:
Thank you for the intro. Looking forward to work with the AMPL community. Meter.io is a high performance infrastructure that scales and interconnects heterogeneous blockchain networks. We also have a builtin PoW based metastable coin as gas token. Deep believer of elastic finance as well.
Simon:
For those of you who want to play around with Aalavandhan’s bridge you will need some testnet AMPL (Ropsten). You can get those by asking @Poe Mander @Timo K or @Sen for some in Discord. You will need some testnet ETH- which you can get here: https://faucet.ropsten.be/ and the Ropsten AMPL contract address is: 0xd0e9335817f7b7c2567b784fd55b203697177e2a. Have fun!
Aalavandhan:
You can interact with the testnet bridge either through our UI or Meter passport’s UI
http://bridge.ampleforth.org/
https://passport-test.meter.io/transfer
The nice thing about working with a platform like meter passport is it lets expand to other EVM chains relatively easily
Xiaohan:
Yes, the mainnet for meter passport is at https://passport.meter.io/ , AMPL will be added when it is ready. Currently we have Ethereum, BSC and Meter connected. We will soon add new networks.
Brandon:
We’re also working to boot up more of the governance process. The first new bit is forum.ampleforth.org. AmplTalk is starting to show its age, so this is going to replace it and be a little more targeted. Hopefully this means less spam, easier to moderate, and friendlier for users. It’s based on Discourse, so many people should already be familiar with it. The second is signal.ampleforth.org. This is a snapshot page that can help gather community sentiment in a gas-free, non-binding way. Take a look, kick the tires and let us know what you think!
If you want a 1000 foot view of governance or want to know where FORTH fits in, definitely check out ampleforth.org/governance if you haven’t yet.
For snapshot, there are two sections: Core and Community. The only difference between the two is the Core section is reserved for votes attached to AIPs. Community is open to everyone who meets a min threshold of FORTH holdings. Votes are /currently/ counted by FORTH balance. But once we have an easier delegation tool, it will be by delegated voting power the same way onchain voting will be.
Question 1:
Geysers topped up this time around or nah?
Richy:
Yes, we will have an announcement later today confirming this, all 4 geyser will be topped up and Sushiswap will receive a significant bump
Question 2:
What’s exactly the difference between the bridge and the router? How do they work together?
Xiaohan:
They are the same. Once it connects an NxN blockchain network. I functions more like a router.
Aalavandhan:
We use “n-way bridge” / “router” interchangeably ..
Question 3:
So Matic, Fantom and others could be an option? Estimated effort in adding a new bridge? Days, weeks?
Xiaohan:
Yes, they all can be done very quickly, mainly based on community needs
Question 4:
How do you guys value your governance token, especially after today’s sell off and consistent declines since the Coinbase debut?
Evan:
I tend to think super long-term about AMPL as an asset and corresponding the FORTH governance token that secures it. Secular fluctuations are part and parcel to the space at large, but we’re all excited about getting closer and closer to financial utility. My feeling is that DeFi has the greatest potential impact when markets are moving sideways (as in the case with DeFi summer last year).
The infrastructure we have this year has the potential to make waves. A bit harder to pierce through the noise when memecoins are mooning.
Question 5:
What advantages does AMPL have over other cryptocurrencies being used in contracts during black swan events(like the massive sell off that happened in the past 24 hours)
Evan:
Well, we know that AMPL will eventually return to the dollar, so longer-term contracts denominated in AMPL are far safer and less likely to result in cascading failures. Even in the face of dramatic market moves.
Question 6:
Are there any AMPL derivative products in the works? With the recent black swan in mind, denominating a contract with AMPL and leaving a safety margin will be capitally inefficient.
Richy:
What do you think about something weird like instead of an interest rate swap, a rebase rate swap.
Evan:
100% — there are things in the works here that I’m personally super excited about it and working on actively now. Can’t wait to share more about this, but i’m sworn to secrecy
Question 7:
I think there was some discussion of AMPL adoption into Aave; whats the timeline on that? I think the vote for it passed.
Brandon:
Can’t say too much right now except “when it’s ready”. It’s really difficult for us to put a timeline on anything that’s not directly under our control. Integration work is always like that. I can say that there’s a lot of demand though and it’s going as it needs to.
Aalavandhan:
If it counts for anything.. I can say the last pass I took over the aAMPL code I was pretty satisfied.
Question 8:
I’ve been trying to understand the benefits of a rebasing token. In the past I think you commented how 2 token algo stables (where you have one that absorbs volatility) cant maintain peg. But if AMPL were to be used to denominate debt in smart contract, would it be essentially passing volatility to the lender because the amount of their borrowed AMPL would change?
Aalavandhan:
Why rebasing? — http://thinking.farm/essays/2020-12-29-designing-money/ What is a stablecoin? — http://thinking.farm/essays/2021-01-14-stablecoin-by-any-other-name/
Brandon:
That’s pretty accurate. In a lot of ways I think of risk like energy — it can’t be destroyed, but you can move it around. Ideally, if risk is reassigned it’s done in a simple, fair, and transparent way. That’s one think I like a lot about AMPL. When you look at any system, the first question I ask is where the risk goes.
In the lending case that you mention… When you borrow something, it’s usually to put it to work. So an AMPL borrower will likely use it to buy something else, or sell to short. For this reason, almost all borrow activity is on stablecoins — borrowing ETH would give you price exposure of a 3rd intermediate assets.
AMPL borrows a lot like a stablecoin. You also have the option to borrow-long AMPL like floating price assets if you wanted to, but I don’t view that as the main value proposition.
Question 9:
One of the major obstacles for AMPL adoption i’m seeing is the exorbitant gas fees on the ETH network. The Cardano chain has recently come out with an “ERC20” converter that allows tokens to easily be applied to the cardano chain with a matter of clicks (so no heavy dev effort). I’m wondering if this is of interest at all to the team? I think it could be a huge win-win considering how loyal the cardano community is and how useful AMPL could be as a lending mechanism for their efforts in Africa project. Aside from Cardano, it seems like the Polygon/MATIC chain is also starting to ramp which could help reduce the impact of gas fees. I’m not sure how much dev resources is required for this, but I am curious whether this is something of interest also?
Evan:
Yes THE GAS is too damn high! Bridging to additional chains will help with this, and it’s mostly a matter of ordering our efforts.
Aalavandhan:
Yea BSC should help. I’ve looked into Matic (which has a native bridge which supports L1 L2 message passing). In theory we can deploy on any such chain by implementing a simple adapter contract. Once the cross chain code is public, anyone could write this adapter and help deploy AMPL on other chains
I had an old image which might help:
Question 10:
In regards of rebase rate swap: I’d definitely be curious to see it tried. My main worry is that it’s a very asymetrical trade if we consider how AMPL suddenly grows, so it wouldn’t see much use. Rebase insurance also isn’t possible as it effects everyone equally, although I guess you could hedge into Bitcoin and take advantage of the low correlation there.
Aalavandhan:
Supplying AMPL to a lending protocol does do that somewhat. However it is important to note that “Risk cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transmuted, precipitated, and stratified.” There are cool ways you could use rebasing tokens to stratify risk. This will really open up the design space for what you could build with rebasing tokens.
Question 11:
How do you plan to handle the mint and burn required for rebasing across chain?
Xiaohan:
Aalavandhan has more details, but the router actually doesn’t take custody of the AMPL coins, instead it helps the AMPL contract to pass information across various blockchains. Rebasing instruction is one of the information Meter Passport helping to pass to all the blockchains from Ethereum.
Question 12:
How does the team feel AMPL is performing as an uncorrelated asset? Especially given the volatility we’ve seen today and over the last few weeks? I haven’t checked the dashboard, but I’ve noticed tighter correlation to ETH for example than I’ve seen in the past.
Brandon:
I haven’t looked at it directly recently, but we do have the correlations dashboard that should be up to date. Correlations is an emergent property that can only really be looked at after-the-fact.
Some things to keep in mind though — There’s a common saying that in times of crisis “all correlations go to one”. So these values will naturally fluctuate. I do think that if AMPL actually provides anything unique to the market, then it should naturally reflect in the numbers over time.
Evan:
Agreed (with Brandon), there’s a difference between being a safe-haven asset, and an uncorrelated risk-asset.
