MATIC NETWORK AMA WITH EASYFI CEO AND FOUNDER — ANKITT GAUR
September 22nd 2020, Matic hosted an AMA with Easyfi Network, the first DeFi lending protocol on Matic! EasyFi’s Founder and CEO Ankitt Gaur joined the Matic telegram group to answer all questions asked regarding the lending protocol.
Arun Phillips, Marketing specialist for Matic Network did the honours of Interviewing Ankitt Gaur.
ARUN PHILLIPS : Without further ado, let me welcome @ankittgaur the CEO of Easyfi.network to the Matic Community. Ankit is a major contributor to the Indian Blockchain ecosystem and has a lot of exciting things to share with us today. Welcome, Ankit! Please do share a little bit about yourself and EasyFi for our community.
ANKITT GAUR : hi Arun, thank you for inviting me.
Well, to introduce myself, i have been working in technology space for last 17 years and in Blockchain for last 3.5 years to be precise. Wrote a Book on Blockchain for explaining Blockchain to CXO level people in more non tech manner with an objective of fuelling the adoption of Blockchain as always it’s the CXO layer that drive the mainstream adoption of any tech. I started Koinfox in 2018 and was then joined by other two partners Anshul (Who is also a co-founder here in EasyFi) and Opinder. After running Koinfox successfully for 1.5–2 years we decided to go deeper into this tech revolution, hence decided to do some protocol level work. Hence started EasyFi a Lending Protocol with Anshul Dhir as Co-Founder and announced the project in August.
ARUN PHILLIPS : That’s a really impressive background, with a stong focus on adoption!
Could you tell us a little bit more about EasyFi, @ankittgaur?
ANKITT GAUR : EasyFi is a layer 2 Lending protocol focused on solving an urgent pain point of exorbitant gas fees. Along with that, EasyFi is built to strengthen the borrowing side of lending protocols. hence most of our modules are built towards borrowing. Like Micro Lending, Credit delegation, etc
ARUN PHILLIPS : That’s really exciting for the Matic family to hear!
I would like to ask you, What is the need of a Layer 2 Lending Protocol, and how is it different from existing protocols on Layer 1?
ANKITT GAUR : I think i covered the answer to this above.
Layer 2: efficient Gas fees, and better speed
USP: Focusing more on Borrowing side, as there is already a surplus supply in market. To take lending protocols and other defi products to adoption, we need to build need based products instead of hype based products.
And that’s what we at easyfi are looking to work on.
ARUN PHILLIPS : That’s good to hear. The collateralization ratios required for borrowing right now are extremely high.
One thing I also noticed is that EasyFi mentions the importance of Communities in DeFi. How are communities incentivized in EasyFi? How will early users be incentivized?
ANKITT GAUR : yes, we already built a product on Matic, called trustscore. We will be integrating that into EasyFi… for optimizing the same.
We have worked on improving farming and staking incentivization layer with support of $MATIC. in form of Dual farming. Details on this are mentioned in the whitepaper also… where people will be able to Farm $EASY and will be able to stake them to farm $MATIC. More specific details will be released post protocol launch
ARUN PHILLIPS : Dual Farming! That sounds quite exciting!
Speaking of building on Matic, How is your experience building on Matic and what is the best thing you like about building on it?
ANKITT GAUR : We chose Matic due to its compatibility with Ethereum code base. This decision has helped us alot, to be able to develop faster as there was almost 0 learning curve. Additionally large availability of Dev pools makes team building $EASY.
And last but not the least, our trust in the Matic team and their accessibility to the whole ecosystem.
ARUN PHILLIPS : That’s really heartening to hear, thank you for your faith in the Matic ecosystem!
ANKITT GAUR : WE are all a big fan of Matic’s tech and ecosystem
ARUN PHILLIPS : So @ankittgaur, we would love to know more about your team which I’m sure is filled with some amazing people. Who are the people behind EasyFi?
ANKITT GAUR : As mentioned above, i come from a product building background with rich experience on understanding user journeys and user experience. Anshul Dhir, my co-founder comes from a finance background. He is a Gold Medalist in Finance from XLRI Jamshedpur India (one of the premier Management Institute in India), Further he operated as a stock broker along with various instruments for more than 10 years before entering into crypto during the year 2016. Our third Co-Founder & CTO, Arif also has more than 20 years of Dev exp and 3.5 years in Blockchain. Apart from TrustScore, we have our couple products Live on Matic already like Docbloc, tradelink etc. Launched along with Matic’s Beta Mainnet in Oct 2019
Over all we are a team of 7–8 people with avg blockchain experience of 3 years and development experience of more than 9 years avged over all the team members.
ARUN PHILLIPS :Incredible! That looks likes a star-studded team behind an awesome product 😄
ANKITT GAUR : thank you.. but that’s a bit too far fetched … we are all learners still.. especially with the pace at which blockchain space is growing
ARUN PHILLIPS : And a humble team too 🙂
Finally, before we head on to some questions I’m sure the community has for you, any closing thoughts and what’s the best way to stay in touch with EasyFi updates?
ANKITT GAUR : Join EasyFi official telegram group: https://t.me/easyfiNetwork. All founders are most of the times available along with other members of the team in the group to answer any burning questions. People should also join @easyfiAnn for important announcements.
ARUN PHILLIPS : Awesome Ankitt! Lets head to some questions from our community, do send in your questions 🙂
COMMUNITY MEMBER: Asides increased transaction speeds and decreased fees due to a layer 2 solution. What makes EasyFi so unique that will make me waant to leave well known DeFi solutions as compound, CurveFinance, Aave and the rest?
ANKITT GAUR : Lower gas fees and faster transactions for apetizers, More advanced borrowing modules, lower collateralization ratio, micro lending for maincourse, and Credit Default swaps which acts like insurance against the loans issued on the lending protocol as deserts.
I think that’s a good menu to start with.
COMMUNITY MEMBER : Can you explain the EasyFi yield farming and how will it be different from existing yield farming?
ANKITT GAUR : i appreciate your perseverance, you asked this question couple time, hence would take it first. Well Farming in Easyfi have two parts 1. Native farming similar to compound where you are incentivized for interacting with protocol.
2. Dual farming where you get native blockchain tokens when you stake $Easy tokens
COMMUNITY MEMBER : How will micr-loans be approved. What will the criteria be for borrowers.
ANKITT GAUR : Based on Trustscore, which is a credit rating on blockchain.
COMMUNITY MEMBER : When participating in DeFi products on EasyFi what interaction will still be necessary with Eth 1.0?
ANKITT GAUR : to move your assets from ETH to matic blockchain. That’s it
COMMUNITY MEMBER : DeFi BOOMING. Some consider it a great bubble. Can you share your opinion with us about DeFi? What do you think will be the next trend after the DeFi hype? Do you have any plans to go to DeFi?
ANKITT GAUR : EasyFi is a part of Defi ecosystem and industry. Defi is an industry and is just getting shape and acceptance. there is a long way to go. As a next logical trend will be NFT + Defi. For example when you will be able to get houses registered as NFT’s you will be able to get a realtime liquid credit against that NFT value. or Finance’s to buy/enhance and other stuff with Defi. and many more opportunities
COMMUNITY MEMBER : How will micro-lenders who have no financial history be able to get loans?
ANKITT GAUR : Yes, but restricted amount as per the protocol reserve policy. Details on this will be released when this module will be LIVe.
COMMUNITY MEMBER: Many yield farming protocols are not sustainable — how will EasyFi combat this trend to achieve sustainability
ANKITT GAUR : We have implemented sustainable farming economic policies, details on this is going to be released in next couple days
COMMUNITY MEMBER : house registered ad NFT… so what is the difference from banks?
ANKITT GAUR : banks will co-exist
COMMUNITY MEMBER : If you base Credit score on house registered why people should use you instead than a bank? Plus, are you aware that houses registered as NFT is very long term goal?
ANKITT GAUR : We only discussed long term trend when we talking about NFT+Defi
COMMUNITY MEMBER : Don’t see that happening in the near future or at least don’t see that having an adoption at least in this generation
ANKITT GAUR : for Credit Score, there are more applications beyond NFT sir
COMMUNITY MEMBER : Can you give more insight into the governance of easyfi?
ANKITT GAUR : Governance will be made open to token holders, once the roadmap is completed.
COMMUNITY MEMBER : Don’t see that happening in the near future or at least don’t see that having an adoption at least in this generation
ANKITT GAUR : We can only anticipate. rest trends do change. While i do agree, it’s something not changing tomorrow.
COMMUNITY MEMBER : What is the timeline for the roadmap ?
ANKITT GAUR : we are launching this week as LIVe mainnet, but modules will be added over next 12–15 month
COMMUNITY MEMBER : Which products will launch first?
ANKITT GAUR : you will be able to get this info in the roadmap along with economic paper releasing this week
COMMUNITY MEMBER : What is the TVL in easyfi atm and what is the aim for the first year and how will you achieve that?
ANKITT GAUR : We are launching this week LIVE. will see how the TVL turns out. we have a strong community support and would request the same from Matic community too
ARUN PHILLIPS : Thank you so much Ankitt!
ANKITT GAUR : thank you Arun.
ARUN PHILLIPS : We wish you all the best with EasyFi, and I’m sure our community is eager to start using EasyFi.
ANKITT GAUR : sure! Thank you all and all the best.
