Flurry Finance Summary Recap with Shin Chan Community

We held a live AMA with CEO, Mike Ting and CTO, Lawrence Wong from Flurry Finance on 11th August 09:00 PM (UTC+8). Here’s the recap for those who missed it.

Introduction

JH | ShinChan: Before the ama start, Can you introduce yourselves and the team background?

Mike: My name is Mike Ting. And I am CEO of Flurry. I graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor Degree in Computer Science and Stanford University with a Master Degree in Management Science and Engineering. I have spent most of my career in equity derivatives trading and worked at banks such as JP Morgan and Societe Generale.

I entered the crypto space in 2018, a bit late compared to other crypto people. But it turned out to be a good time to buy bitcoin at that time. price just collapsed from 20k to 4k. it was a bit lucky. then in 2019, I started a crypto derivatives trading platform C-Trade. In 2020, we started to feel that DeFi is bringing a lot of applications scenario to blockchain

Lawrence: Hi, my name is Lawrence Wong and I am the CTO of Flurry.

I hold a master degree in Software Engineering from Imperial College, London. I have a mixture of tech and trading experience in developing trading systems, pricing and trading fixed income and equity derivatives from various positions held in trading finance institutions such as Barclays Capital, KBC Financial Products and Daiwa Capital Markets. I also founded my own trading company, doing low latency trading in equity derivatives.

I was first exposed to crypto and blockchain in 2017. Didn’t take part in the 2017 BTC rally but I saw the potential in blockchain and I knew it was going to be a game-changer. In 2018, I started exploring the crypto and blockchain space in 2019 and I joined FinFabrik, a startup based in Hong Kong to develop a digital assets platform on R3 Corda, a private blockchain.

I wanted to understand first-hand the challenges to digitise off-chain assets and also explore whether a public chain or a private chain is more suited for tokenizing real-life assets. This is going to be a big deal as the trend is already showing more assets will be digitized and exchanged online.

The explosion of DeFi is really encouraging and opening a lot of opportunities. The success of DeFi shows that gradually, each function in traditional finance is being reinvented in the crypto space. With our tech and trading background, we are in a good position to do something innovative and help contribute to the growth of DeFi and overall in this emerging crypto industry.

Mike: As for our team, most of us come from the traditional banking industry and personally have contacts with a lot of hedge funds and high net worth people who have not entered the crypto space yet. Because of our background and track record in the traditional finance world, we are trying to simplify DeFi products so everyone can get involved. Flurry is our first DeFi product focusing on yield generation for stablecoin owners.

JH | ShinChan: Can you tell us about Flurry Finance in short and please share us if you have any news/update to our community

Mike: Flurry strives to enhance the usability of DeFi products. Despite the blinding speeds of innovation in the DeFi space, advances in technology often outpace the equally crucial improvements in user experience resulting in entry barriers and adoption hurdles. Our team at FLURRY believes that investment opportunities should NOT be reserved only for tech-savvy crypto enthusiasts but for everyone.

We have recently launched the testnet, and the testnet reward campaign has been out. Deadline is on 18th Aug, you can join from here: https://twitter.com/FlurryFi/status/1425292063382413312?s=20

Our team is busy updating & debugging based on our community feedback during this campaign, so we do look forward to having the IDO & the product launched on the very same day, but it will depend on the audit report reply back from Certik.

user interface means a lot to users and we wish to create the best experience for our users, so follow our medium for the product tutorial & walkthrough https://medium.com/flurry-finance/tech-talk/home.

AMA Twitter Section Begin:

Q1: Can you share some details and information about the Governance Token Public Sale of Flurry that will be held this 3rd quarter of this year? How to be whitelisted? What are the benefits of early adopters of Flurry public sale?

Mike: Of course, to give you a little more background on this, our governance token $FLURRY, is also the staking token. At this stage of time, we are finalizing details of our public token sale, expected to be launched in early September.

We will also launch a pre-staking program and other reward staking campaigns to encourage early Flurry adopters and owners to hodl as we are confident to see the mass adoption of our DeFi tech — rhoToken.

It’s foreseeable that everything will happen very quickly, as we plan to announce all the details including the IDO date & IDO launch platform this week, so please stay tuned and follow our community news on Twitter (https://twitter.com/FlurryFi) and Telegram channels (Announcement: https://t.me/FlurryFinance_News Chat: https://t.me/FlurryFinance_Official) for more.

Q2: What is the most important advantage of rhoTokens over other competitors in yield farming? How much additional income will rhoTokens holders get from the rewards they will earn in Yield farming?

Lawrence: One of the most significant features of Flurry is its Rebasing Mechanism. Flurry has a different interest distribution mechanism from existing yield aggregators.

In other DeFi products, users get back deposit tokens (a proof of the deposit) which have a changing value because of the interest earned. Due to this changing value, the deposit tokens are not “usable” and therefore their funds are locked.

But in Flurry, we will issue a deposit token called rhoToken (rhoUSDC, rhoUSDT, rhoBUSD), which is backed 1:1 by the corresponding stablecoin (USDC, USDT, BUSD)

How does it work? For example, let’s say a user has 100 USDC in their wallet and he converts that to 100rhoUSDC. Let’s say he earns 5% interest. Flurry will automatically pay him by minting 5 more rhoUSDC. In this way, the rebasing mechanism ensures that 1 rhoToken is always equivalent to 1 stablecoin that the user has put in. As a result, the rhoUSDC becomes usable and can act as a medium of exchange. In other words, if you own rhotokens, your funds won’t be locked!

Q3: FLURRY is targeting cross chain functionality as a yield aggregator to look for the best yield after cost on different Defi Protocol cross chain. Which blockchains are included in this plan of FLURRY, and how expensive would be its use?

Lawrence: I am glad that you brought this up. The first version of mainnet launch will be on Ethereum and Binanace Smart Chain. On the Cross Chain plan, we already are looking into connecting Aave on Matic and also we are working on bridging the rhoToken cross chains to MATIC, SOLANA and BSC.

The rebasing mechanism works cross-chain which means you can hold rhoUSDT on MATIC but still earning interest from Compound on Ethereum. Since the speed and transaction costs are better on these new blockchains or L2 solutions, it makes a lot of sense to use the rhoToken as a stablecoin on MATIC as a payment currency! You no longer have to pay $10 to send $10! So costs will be much lower in the long run when we have our cross chain feature implemented.

Q4: Partnership always give big contribution to make project bigger and have great benefit for your developing project and user who participate in your platform. So your first partner is Soul Capital may I know what the reason of choosing partnership with them?

Mike: We definitely understand the importance of partnership, and we are inspired by our partnerships, which is how we can bring rhoTokens to mass adoption and Flurry to success.

Soul Capital is one of the partnerships we strike. They came from the traditional finance world, invested in a lot of tech startups which have the need for safe and stable income on their operating capital sitting in their treasury. They will be one of the first groups of rhoTokens users.

Our partnership aim at how to grow a versatile ecosystem therefore, we will be partnering with different wallets providers like as previously announced — Coinunited which offers ATM services in Asia. On the tech side, we will be working with ChainLink Keepers, Kyber network in developing a deeper strategic relationship in later product development.

We will partner with other networks to develop as the first cross chain yield aggregator. We believe that working with different projects in the DeFi space and growing together is the best way to achieve our vision.

Q5: It catches my attention that in Q4 they will do the “Integration with more performance strategies”, but could you give us some detail of what these new “performance strategies” will be? Will they be completely innovative or taken from other projects through partnerships?

Mike: Lawrence and I started our career in finance as structurers. The role was to come up with different innovative financial products to suit the needs of different types of investors. We structured financial products with different risk profiles using options, yield products, stock, etc.

There are actually a lot of strategies that we can bring from the traditional financial world to the DeFi space. For example, we can calculate an optimal allocation based on the transaction cost, yield level, risk factors of yield product, in order to generate the best risk adjusted yield outcome for all users. There is a lot of optimization that can be done and our team has the expertise and experience in accomplishing that.

Telegram Live AMA Begin:

Q6: i read from your website one of the advantage of Flurry Finance is cross chain interoperability. Can you name some of the blockchains that you will interoperable in the future?

Lawrence: Solana, BSC, MATIC, Cardano :P

Q7: Is the infrastructure easy to use for every user? Or do I need to be a tech-savvy people in order to use your platform?

Mike: Yes, as we said, Flurry strives to enhance the usability of DeFi. so easy to use is an important feature of Furry. All our users have to do is to convert their stablecoin to rhoTokens. Then wallet balance of rhoTokens will grow automatically. There is nothing else the user has to do. In the long run, after we implement the cross chain feature, users can even earn interest from other chains without the tedious process of transfering their funds to other chains because we take care of everything for you!

Q8: Flurry Finance intends to make a wrapper for each coin. Why was there a decision to do this? Can you tell us some of the coins that have already been wrapped and in what ratio can they be redeemed?

Lawrence: We wrap each stable coins individually because we want to keep the risk profile very clear. If you already believe in USDC, by minting rhoUSDC you are only exposed to USDC risk. This means that at any moment you can redeem and get back your USDC at any time. This is different from other protocols where a basket of stable coins are supported. While this might sound very convenient you have no control of what stable coins you receive when you redeem. If the basket contains a stable where there is a confidence issue, the price might deviate from 1:1 peg, and you have no control over the protocol.

Also the rhoToken is a wrapper that could be applied to any stablecoin. Should a more popular or dominant stable emerges we can immediately wrap that coin and add the interest bearing capability!

Q9: Apart from the rhoTokens, you have the governance token ,$FLURRY which will be used for paying fees, making decisions, voting, e.t.c. You also point out about habing rhoTokens on different chains, will $FLURRY also be available on different chain? The tokenomics of these tokens; the $flurry and rhoTokens are not well defined. Kindly please tell us more about that?

Mike: Sure. Let me clarify on the tokens at Flurry. We have two tokens: 1) rhoTokens and 2) Flurry Tokens.

rhoToken is the cross chain stablecoin with continuous yield farming capability. rhoToken owners enjoy the flexibility, stability and passive income on rhoTokens.

Flurry token is our governance token. Flurry tokens owners will be entitled to vote on the yield generation strategies addition / removal in the long run. Flurry token owners can also stake to enjoy the management fee income generated by the Flurry protocol.

In the beginning, Flurry token will be on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. In the long run, we will have Flurry tokens on all the main chains like Polygon, Cardano, Solana, etc.

Q10: Do you have a Token Burning plan to increase Token value and attract Investors to invest???

Mike: Yes, we have a buy and distribute model. What we will do is that we will use the management fee income to buy back Flurry tokens from the market and put them back in the staking pool. This mechanism supports the token price in 2 perspectives:

1) The buy back itself provides a support to the token price by reducing the circulating supply

2) The distribute part encourages users to hold on to their Flurry tokens, resulting in less selling pressure in the market

Q11: I saw Mainnet Flurry launched on Ethereum, which everyone knows the gas costs on this network are very high. Can I know why you are using the Ethereum network, and how do you plan on lowering gas costs, as this will affect the user experience?

Lawrence: We launch on Ethereum, mainly because currently there is still a significant portion of defi TVL is still held by major defi protocols on Ethereum that have significant TVL and a decent rate of return. As long as Ethereum remains the biggest source of yield, users funds would have to stay in Ethereum to earn that yield. If the gas issue on eth remains unsolved, we foresee big DeFi players like Aave & Compound will migrate to other chains and we will follow them. Flurry does not need to migrate, but instead, we can have smart contracts deployed in every chain in order to get the best return for our users. And when that happens the gas costs will come down naturally.

We have yield generators that run on each chain and the vault contract manage users funds as the same pool of money. This way the users don’t have to worry about setting up a new wallet or moving their funds across different chains, we take care of that for you. Simply hold the rhoToken on Ethereum and earn interest from BSC, Matic or even non-EVM based chains like Solana! That saves a lot of gas!

Q12: There is a way to get long term investors such as staking mechanism, did provide any staking mechanism?
Did It open for Public to participate?

Mike: 1) Stake FLURRY to earn more FLURRY
2) Stake LP Tokens to earn FLURRY (if you provide liquidity on AMM pools such as Uniswap that involve either FLURRY or RhoTokens in the trading pair). You can stake that LP token to earn more FLURRY
3) Simply hold RhoTokens and we will give you FLURRY

All these are supposed to incentivise adoption of the rhoToken and get the ecosystem going. We have planned fantastic rewards for early adopters so be sure to keep an eye out for our announcements!!

Q13: There are people who don’t know anything about crypto and afraid of it. How can Flurry Finance make people understand what is crypto?

Mike: We do have plans of attracting traditional investors. Actually, we believe our team is well positioned to achieve that because:

1) Our team comes from the traditional banking industry and personally have contacts with a lot of hedge funds and high net worth people who have not entered the crypto space yet. Because of our background and track record in the traditional finance world, we are confident that we can convince them to try out DeFi products.

2) Flurry focuses on making the DeFi yield generation process as easy as possible. Its simplicity makes it the perfect first product for non crypto people to look at. We cannot think of any products simpler than Flurry to be honest. haha

Q14: You claim that Flurry Finance users can create performance by allocating coins to DeFi protocols like Compound, Aave, Curve, Cream. So I wonder is this the only protocol Flurry has access to or do you have access to others?

Lawrence: Since DeFi protocol have no permissioning and open to everyone, Flurry has access to all of them. What we aim to do is to be connected to ALL of them, in order to monitor the whole market and get the best return for our users!

Q15: When Flurry Finance launches rhoTokens, will these be the only stablecoins “rhoUSDT, rhoUSDC and rhoBUSD” they can develop? Do you have plans to expand the range of stablecoins and develop other stablecoins for the future?

Mike: Absolutely not. In the future, we will add more as long as the stable coin is safe. liquid and popular. That is the beauty of Flurry. We can wrap around any stablecoin and give the stablecoin the superpower of generating interest for their owners. That is how we design Flurry for.

We are not trying to create a new stablecoin or bet on which stablecoin will emerge to dominate the stablecoin space. Unlike other algorithmic stablecoin which usually are backed by a basket of stablecoins, they have to decide on the composition of their basket and adjust the weights according to the popularity of individual stablecoin, Flurry does not have to do the same as we are wrapping around a single stablecoin. We would like to give back the control of the choice of stablecoin to the user. We also remove the risk of breaking the peg when one of the stablecoin in the basket collapse due to hacks, etc.

Q16: How can we as users store rhoTokens in Ethereum and harvest high interest yields from Aave on Matic or from CREAM on BSC?

Lawrence: The rebase mechanism works cross chain. For example, when interest is earned from a protocol on Ethereum, our smart contract rebases to issue more rhoTokens. We have our own bridge which connects our vault smart contracts between different chains. When the global supply of rhoTokens increases, the effect is applied to all connected chains. This means that if a user is holding rhoTokens on another chain like BSC, they will also see the balance grow automatically in their wallet, without having to pay any gas or submit any transactions to claim!

Q17: With new users constantly being added to crypto, will FLURRY facilitate the entire yield generation process for these new entrants, or is the FLURRY FINANCE team only targeting professional or large funded crypto users?

Mike: No, as we said, DeFi should be for everyone. We will make use of the strengths of different chains and combine all the strengths together. for example, we will have rhoTokens deployed on chain with lowest fee and fastest transaction time to make rhoTokens a medium of exchange and be used in daily transactions, whereas on the back, the stablecoin are transferred to the chain with the best yield to generate interest. So even people will small sizes will find it cost justified to use and enjoy the yield

Q18: The Yield aggregators are something that have been existing for while, so can you explain us what make you unique or different from other yield aggregators ?

Lawrence: Yes indeed, yield aggregators have been existing for a while. But we are the first yield aggregator to work CROSS CHAIN! You can earn interest on BSC while the yield return is generated on Etheruem, MATIC or any other chain! Also for existing yield generators, when you yield farm your money is locked up (and you have to redeem to spend your stablecoins). With the RhoToken, since it is pegged to the underlying stablecoins on a 1:1 basis, there is NO LOCKUP, and you can spend rhoToken, just like stablecoin!

So in essence, the rhoToken is interest generation capability, built into a stable coin! The moment you receive rhoToken from anyone, you immdiately starts receiving DeFi yield!

Q19: What is the reason you didn’t decide to start on ETH at the first place? Why did you choose BSC? In the future, do you have plan to bridge over other networks including ETH, Polygon?

Mike: Let us clarify. We actually will launch on both ETH and BSC in our first version. We do have plans of implementing more chains as we mentioned earlier. All the main chains like Polygon, Cardano and Solana are in our plan. In the long run, users dun have to think about which chain they have to be on anymore. we will do all the switching for you and earn the best return for users.

- End -