Plutus DeFi AMA with Arnie Hill and Ali Hararwala at the t.me/amaroom
Eric: Welcome everyone! Hi @CryptoArnie @aharar, Can you first introduce yourselves to the AMA room. Tell us about your role in the project and some background info of how you got involved in crypto
Ali: thanks Eric, and thank you everyone for joining the AMA.
CryptoArnie: Hey, I’m Arnie Hill. Co-founder of PlutusDefi alongside Ali. I’ve been in the crypto space since 2017 working alongside multiple blockchain and crypto products and applications. I have personally invested in over 30 different initial offerings over the past 3 years.
My early background was being an activist in political movements around privacy which has involved into being an activist investor and entrepreneur. Together alongside Ali we have been working and advising blockchain companies since 2017.
Ali: I’m Ali Hararwala, Co-founder and COO, looking after Product Development and company operations. My previous background has been over a decade in Management consulting, across multiple industries.
Eric: Interesting background guys.So what is PlutusDefi in your own words?
Ali: PlutusDeFi is multi-tool DeFi solution; Aggregated Lending is our flagship product
‘Lend & Earn’ — Multiple Protocols. Multiple Currencies. Multiple Wallets — all in a single place
Our vision is highlighted in the article below (7 min read)
Eric: Why are privacy and anonymity important in DEFI?
CryptoArnie: To us, Decentralized Finance (or DEFI) is a belief in absolute freedom. Every other DEFI projects or startups are a half-step towards truly taking control away from corruptible centralized bankers and financial institutions. We are the solution to achieve a total decoupling and true sovereign wealth for everyone with our strong focus on anonymized privacy at the protocol level.
The whole point of this space is to move away from centralised finance which locks out large parts of society across the world, and to redesign a new economic system which refuses to judge, classify and discriminate against economic participants deemed as not valuable enough.
Eric: Love the last part. Such a big problem. What does the PLT token do?
Ali:
Burn: A percentage of the Plutus tokens collected from the network fees are burned. This will reward Plutus holders as adoption grows.
Network Fee: Fees will be collected as a percentage of the smart contract payments executed. Plutus tokens are burned as fees as the protocol is utilised.
Bonding and Governance: Plutus holders have control over the protocol. Plutus is a self-amending network where holders will decide on upgrades and potential fixes. Tokens have to be bonded in order to vote.
Staking: Smart contracts are at the heart of all financial transactions. Business logic and power controls are open source, thus reducing manipulation and increasing transparency.
Also, given that we are looking at developing out platform as a single stop DeFi solution, based on staking we are looking to enable advanced features on to the platform in due course of time
Eric: Where is the team based and how big is it now?
Ali: We have a fully remote working team based across Asia, Europe (UK, Germany, France), and the US
CryptoArnie: Our team is expanding, and has done so since 2019 when we were a small team of 5 people. We now have over 15 people, including our advisors working with us around the clock to develop PlutusDeFi’s full stack.
Community AMA
Q: Plutus has an APR of 15%, while recently has been more and more developing DeFi’s for Lend and Earn, So I’d like to ask, does the 15% APR waver? And what determines the APR % at Plutus?
A: We are an aggregator of existing money-market protocols. The APR provided does vary, some robo-yield providers are achieving interest rates of anything from 15–80% however it’s highly experimental. We do not have our own money market protocol for lending just yet, but it’s something we intend to design and create
Q: I’m interested in knowing more about your first flagship product which is called Payroll? When was it introduced and what are some of it key features to make it distinct from other similar payments Solutions? #plutusama
A: Thank you! We started off looking at a decentralised payment solution, but over 9 months ago, pivoted to lending as the use case made more sense after having spoken with our partners and pilot companies.
The lending solution aggregates rates from lending protocols that are mature and deem low risk so that users can’t get the choice of lending from a single platform.
Q: How does Plutus communicate multiple lending protocols and decentralized exchanges? How would one participate in all with just one account?
A: Hey Ross, We communicate via API’s directly to protocols like Compound, Dydx and others. It’s done through a unique proxy wrapper we have created, effectively a DeFi plutus wallet which is connected to only you. This one smart contract that you create can connect to any and all protocols
Q: What do you think is the biggest problem Plutus DeFi will solve that no other project is solving now, and why is the problem important to solve?
A: DeFi, as it grows, will become fragmented and the nature of it being decentralised requires it’s own level of trust and governance. PlutusDeFi looks at becoming that one place where multiple DeFi solutions can be aggregates through unified user experiences. This will help build trust within the community and increase user adoption.
Q: What is PlutusDeFI ETH Bl3nd3r and what significance does it have on the future and ecosystem of PlutusDEFI?
A: ETH Bl3nd3r is our own native ETH mixer, similar to Tornado Cash. We are agnostic to other solutions like the latter but by increasing liquidity pools in the space, we can provide better stealth and privacy. We feel that it’s significant as more and more companies opt for less decentralisation in exchange for selling users data, or regulatory oversight that may infringe on DEFI tech
Q: Eric sent a file earlier where Isaw Plutus is going to have its own Debit cards,cards has been a big controversy since its only been limited to EU, what plans do you have for International?
A: We plan on initiating a Defi debit card, similarly to Mistertango with a provider in eastern europe. Providers have their limitations to certain jurisdictions. For example if we wanted a card in asia we would need to find a card provider in Asia. If there is a suitable partner to work with in other jurisdictions, and we feel comfortable with them we will certainly look into the possibility
Q: Can you monitor all transactions on the DeFi infrastructure and outside the chain?Can the transactions of the users be monitored on the network? How do you ensure privacy and anonymity?
#plutusama
A: We monitor transactions that go through your custom PlutusDeFi Wallet, and any DeFi transactions through this we shall know off. But, again, it’s all anonymous and controlled by you as PlutusDeFi never holds key to your PlutusDeFi wallet
Q: Plutus Defi had an AMA at AMAroom last year explaining their idea and project. So my question lays in What have you achieved at PlutusDefi over the past year since the last AMA here?
A: We did have a AMA last year. In the space between September 2019 and now, we have come close to finalising the insurance integration with Nexus Mutual, and will be the only DEFI platform offering maintenance and support for insurance cover on lending assets.
We have also integrated analytics into the platform and are close to finishing an enterprise grade SDK for exchanges and other partners to directly plug into our lending solution.
Our article today, outlines our roadmap for the next year; https://medium.com/plutusdefi/plutusdefi-releases-year-long-campaign-to-become-the-largest-full-stack-defi-platform-84b154a8b240
Q: Is your aim, to become the number one (leader) in the Platform leading DeFi protocols? and if so what will you say is your biggest strength to achieve it?
A: This is a great question, and its why we have decided to incorporate other DEFI functionality and features into a (de)central location at PlutusDeFi. By acting as the Swiss army knife of DeFi, for example having ETH mixers, ability to insure, ability to access privacy focused protocol layers, depositing and withdrawing assets, all in one place and in mobile, will be our key strength versus other products which are siloed to single functionality
Q: How Plutus machines manage the off-chain transactions and how they keep the balance between the off-chain and on-chain data?
A: We only do transactions on-chain transactions. However, we are evaluating the use of ChainLink and Band Protocol for various DeFi and CeFi rates as our product roadmap matures
Q: Could the community be useful in any way regarding marketing, or somehow spreading the word around to potential clients/businesses that would benefit from Plutus DeFi ? #plutusama
A: Yes, ofcourse, decentralised projects are fueled by the support of communities and members such as yourself. We have our Panda Bot program, where our community participants can earn PandaPoints for activities and redeem these for tokens.
More information can be found here: https://t.me/plutusdefi
Q: https://twitter.com/agus_senger/status/1276012030135169025?s=19
When talking about DeFi space, people think about specific terms such as lending, derivative, stablecoin, user’s credit score and smart contract-based asset management right away. Which specific DeFi product is $plutus offering or are you offering all of them?
A: We primarily act as an aggregator and integrator. Mostly the pace at which we work is determined by the pace of our partnered projects and others in the space. We have come to realise that we are able to develop and code features a lot quicker than some other projects in the space, so we have decided to also start building our own native functionality into the platform, and that includes lending , derivatives, smart contract based management, and privacy/anonymity features wrapped around this.
Q: What makes Plutus an interesting option for developers over other Defi blockchains? How will Plutus avoid the large stability fee that Maker currently has?
A: We aren’t a competitor to Maker or Comp, we are an aggregator that focuses on usability and access, making it pleasant to use DeFi features
Q: What are the main purpose of the Plutus project? How does Plutus plan on getting the word out about the project to the community #plutusAMA
A: PlutusDeFi looks to bring DeFi solutions on a single platform. ‘Lend & Earn’ is our flagship product that is live on the website where DeFi lending options are aggregated for a unified user experience.
Q: What are the ways for Plutus Defi project to generate revenue in the long run?
A: All our fees from the platform go back towards the token. The fees are currently going to be split into 3: ; re-auditing fund, buy and burn, and staking incentives.
Our company is completely aligned to the token succeeding long term and we are one of the only DeFi platforms with a 100% token utility and value capture system.
Q: How far have you developed decentralization? Do you have interesting things that you can share? How is the performance of the team with the 2020 target?
A: Our architecture is fully decentralised.
Users connect their wallets, and create their own PlutusDeFi wallets (that they own the keys too). Any interest generated is paid directly back to the users.
Our ambitions for 2020 are high, our intentions are documented in the article below:
https://medium.com/plutusdefi/plutusdefi-releases-year-long-campaign-to-become-the-largest-full-stack-defi-platform-84b154a8b240
Q: How secure Plutus fully on and off-chain privacy & What is the main reason to partnership with DAI and USDC? can you briefly explain.
A: These are decentralised currencies, hence we don’t need an exclusive partnership with them, instead we integrate them directly on our platform to give users a variety of lending currency options
Q: What are some milestones Plutus DeFi is looking forward to? What will be the largest challenges in the future and how do you plan to address them?
A: We maintain a live roadmap on https://about.plutusdefi.com/plutus/roadmap
This is reviewed every quarter based on how we see the product develop, and priorities from where the market is moving
Q: Many defi projects are now popping up, what is the advantage of plutusdefi over other defi competitors? are there any plans to list on the best exchange such as coinbase, binance or mxc?
A: Different DeFi projects have different value propositions, PlutusDeFi’s value proposition is to ensure we provide a single place of user interaction for users DeFi needs
Q: It’s great seeing that Plutus Defi prioritizes anonymity which many other projects don’t. regulations are tough for Anonymity, do you have any plans if regulators try to force remove it? #plutusama
A: Right now, only companies facing regulatory threats are those based in the United Stats, so potentially compound and DYDX. If there are regulatory changes then the biggest protocols in the space will face existential threats, however since we are privacy focused we will always maintain privacy throughout our products from the beginning. The risks to users are low, given we are based offshore and also do not comply with requests from authorities, nor is there any regulation asking us to
Q: How does Plutus DeFi plan to successfully attract investors and traders? What is Plutus DeFi strategy for that?
A: We are planning to have a bonding curve sale with the remaining allocation of the private sale. This is the first time we have mentioned our bonding curve plans :)
Q: Many projects Came after 2017 Bull run just to get Loads of Money & went away after that, This confuses Many NEW investors where to Invest, Can You tell me 3 three reason to invest in Plutus defi for Long term?
A:
- Our total raise is 1m, which is 75% filled.
- We have been operating for well over a year now, with barely any funds — We are not here to exit scam for a few hundred thousand USD.
- With the tiny amount of funds we have raised before, we have competed and excelled beyond projects which raised over 20M USD
Conclusion
Eric: Ok. what a great AMA. really interesting and much needed use case. Token utility looks good too.
CryptoArnie: We have an aggressive deflationary model with plans to burn our token throughout the year, so it’s worth checking on this
If you have anymore questions you can come over to — https://t.me/plutusdefi
Eric : Thanks @CryptoArnie and @aharar!!
Thanks everyone for dropping in.
Please visit plutusdefi.com for more info
