Growth DeFi AMA (23/12/20)
Welcome @SafeGRO ! Thank you for having time for us today.
Then let’s also start right away and not waste time
GrowthDefi was founded by the creators of the two successful projects PowerMine and PowerDefi. Can you explain what GrowthDefi is exactly about, why you and your team decided to start $GRO and what your role is?
GrowthDeFi is meant to be a protocol that covers different areas in DeFi and have GRO as its profit-sharing and governance token.
DeFi has been growing a lot in 2020 and I think we can bring some good things to this space in the coming years, our focus has been towards creating gTokens & PMTs (yield generating tokens) and having a solid foundational base for the DAO but we’ll be expanding into other areas soon too (with the inclusion of rAAVE).
My role within the GrowthDeFi ecosystem is mainly about researching what’s happening in the DeFi ecosystem and coordinating development so that we are always pushing new products and making existing ones more efficient.
That sounds great, I’ve already seen, that you guys did an awesome job so far. But for the community, can you tell us what you’ve accomplished so far?
To have some context, GRO started trading on Uniswap & Mooniswap in late August (there was no ICO/presale or private sale for the token).
Since then roughly 4 months have gone by, in this timeframe we’ve launched three key products on the yield generation area:
1-PMTs
Portfolio Management Tokens or PMTs are going to be critical in the coming months as more automatic strategies are added, they’ll provide an easy way for anyone to mint them and hold them knowing the funds are being used in the most optimal strategies at any given time.
2-gcTokens Type 1
gcTokens are automatic strategy tokens using Compound.finance and maximizing COMP farming, it’s the first strategy we decided to release given its profitability and risk factor, type 1 is because it’s using stablecoins (DAI & USDC).
3-gcTokens type 2
gcTokens type 2 are using other tokens that Compound accepts as collateral such as BTC and ETH and using that collateral to borrow DAI which is then used to maximize profits within the Type 1 strategy.
This strategies have been audited which is a big step for making sure the core structure of PMTs and gTokens is solid.
Additionally we’ve launched stkGRO which is the tokenized representation of staking GRO, stkGRO receives profits from the treasury, the fees the protocol makes and it’s the token used in the DAO
On the other side we’ve also successfully launched the DAO which uses advanced customizable modules that are attached to a standard Gnosis Safe in order to make it governable by stkGRO holders.
Overall this achievements are about setting up a foundational base for what’s to come in the following months.
Oh wow, that sounds great. I will go into more detail on all the information: I see, that you have a variety of different tokens, such as the mentioned $GRO, $stkGRO, multiple gtoken and gctoken. You always hear the terms pools and staking in this context. It might be overwhelming for newcomers. What do you recommend them to start with?
I’ll try to summarize what each token does:
-GRO:
This is the main token of the Growth DeFi and ultimately it’s the one benefitting from everything going on.
-stkGRO:
stkGRO can’t really be considered a token of its own given that it’s non transferrable, it’s a tokenized representation of the GRO you’ve staked within the stkGRO contract and it’s highly recommended to stake your GRO if you’re planning on holding it for several months (stkGRO is always increasing in worth vs GRO and you have the right to vote in the DAO, so it’s a no brainer as long as you’re planning on hold it for a long time period).
Basically, GRO & stkGRO are the tokens you want to have if you believe in the success of the protocol, keep it in GRO if you are going to hold it for a short term period and stake it for stkGRO if you’re planning on holding it for a while.
PMTs and gTokens are meant to generate yields on tokens you were simply holding until now, use PMTs if you’re unsure on how the different strategies work and just want to get yield and have exposure to it.
If you’re a bit more advanced and have more DeFi knowledge then you can look into specific gToken strategies such as gcTokens and create a customizable yielding Portfolio with them.
Throughout 2021 a lot more strategies will be added to PMTs and gTokens giving a wider range of options and making the entire process more efficient for those wanting to use it to generate yield on their tokens.
GRO & stkGRO -> Investing in the success of the protocol.
PMTs & gTokens -> Taking existing tokens you have like WBTC, DAI, ETH or LINK and generating yield on it.
Great, thank you very much for your great explanation. It should now be clear for everyone how to best get started with this ingenious project. I was also informed that there will soon be a farmable rAAVE token. People love farming ;). What can you tell us about it?
It’s very important for anyone getting involved to know what rAAVE is and which functions it fills that GRO can’t.
rAAVE as its name says It’s a elastic token that rebases around AAVE (using a TWAP oracle on the AAVE/rAAVE Uniswap pool to be more precise).
The purpose of rAAVE is not to be a token pegged to AAVE, it focuses on increasing the portfolio worth of the rAAVE treasury during expansionary cycles (when the marketcap of the token is going up rapidly and distancing itself from the worth of the rAAVE treasury), this is done by allocating a % of the newly minted rAAVE during positive rebases to the treasury to build up a diversified portfolio.
During contractionary periods (the marketcap falling drastically) it’s the treasury’s job to take advantage of the opportunity and buy the dips along the way (this means that the treasury is increasing when the token prices are high and it’s using its funds plus profits to support the ecosystem when it’s being heavily undervalued and dismissed by the market.
The entire monetary policy is meant to take advantage of the fact that the crypto and DeFi markets are far from rational and thus create extreme periods of overpriced and underpriced opportunities.
The way the profits the treasury makes are completely different from the standard methods, it’s meant to reward those providing Liquidity to the incentivized Uniswap pools (the three initial pools will be GRO, AAVE and ETH), this LPs are farming rAAVE, this tokens they receive are compensated by the profits the treasury generates overtime, the reason for giving profits back to LPs instead of having a staking contract is so that there’s a lot of entry and exit Liquidity, which also helps the rAAVE treasury when it’s rebalancing its portfolio.
The rAAVE treasury is governed by the 7 signers selected by the stkGRO DAO, having stkGRO as the governance token, just like the GRO treasury it can invest into anything imaginable within the Ethereum chain, a couple examples would be ofc gTokens and PMTs (great synergy with GRO) , stkGRO, LPing many tokens and a lot more things (the options are pretty much endless).
rAAVE will be launched in the coming weeks and it’ll be possible to farm it with the three LPs I mentioned before, compounding rAAVE tokens into more LP tokens is the key for long term holding and there’ll be a gToken coming out for it, to automatize the entire process.
The pools are:
AAVE/rAAVE
GRO/rAAVE
ETH/rAAVE
If there any other questions regarding rAAVE feel free to DM me or join our telegram channel @growthdefi and ask there, there’s a lot more to it than what I just explained but I don’t want to make it too long
Just to clarify, the reason for rebasing around AAVE and not the $ like others have is so that it’s linked within the Uniswap LP to AAVE’s price increase which IMHO it’s a no brainer long term blue chip.
Oh wow, thats really exciting. I think it’s great news for every farmer here ;). Can’t wait for the launch. We’re running out of time, unfortunately. Do you have a little more time, like 30 more minutes? The AMA is great, your answers highly qualified and I still have some questions. I think the community would be excited about this
Sure
Awesome. In one of your first comments you meant that the protocols were audited. Audits are extremely important these days because bugs and backdoors in the contract allow hackers and scammers to drain all the money and ultimately kill the project. You have been audited by ConsenSys (who also audited the big players like Uniswap, 0x, Aave, Bancor, Balancer, mstable) and you run a bug bounty program where you offer up to $100k depending on the severity of the bug uncovered. What I’m interested in here, have any major bugs been found so far?
No big issues have been found so far, there were a couple reported in the Consensys audit but they can’t put user’s funds at risk (it’s more about optimization), this are great news.
I have to say that our main smart contract developer has been doing an amazing job and all this couldn’t have been accomplished without him
This is really great news. Shows us that your devs are highly qualified ;).
Ultimately there are many options the GRO & rAAVE treasuries bring such as providing in-house insurance by the treasury. The options are endless ;)
Hehe, yes I see the enormous potential. Plenty of room to develop. You always hear and read about the term DAO, it was also mentioned it in several of your comments. Can you explain what DAO means and how it relates to $GRO?
The approach GRO has followed in terms of creating a DAO and aiming towards decentralization is different to what others have done so I’ll try to summarize it quickly, the components of the stkGRO DAO are:
stkGRO has the “delegate” function included within the token’s contract, this was taken from COMP’s governance audited code and useful when connecting to the DAO, token holders can use this function to delegate to their favorite candidate which can then become a signer and part of the multisig if it has enough stkGRO delegated to him/her.
There’s a contract which is an advanced module connected to a Gnosis Safe multisig (the Gnosis Safe multisig code has been heavily audited too), it basically reads how much stkGRO each ETH address has been delegated and turns the top 7 into the signers of the multisig (in order for a transaction to happen in the multisig 4/7 signers have to approve it).
This means that stkGRO holders can replace signers at their will, making it a very flexible protocol setup for long term growth.
You can check out the current signers and candidates at governance.growthdefi.com
Most protocols are using a straight fork of COMP’s governance model which is really slow, taking 2 days or so to make a tx pass and be effective, whilst in GRO’s case signers can organize and move things in minutes, making it a lot more competitive. It avoids the bureaucracy as much as possible whilst keeping the decentralization of DAOs. This 7 signers control both the rAAVE treasury and the GRO treasury, that’s why the DAO is a critical piece of the ecosystem
Ah yeah, I read about the current progress in your telegram group. So anyone can participate?
Anyone can run for candidate and if they have enough support they can become a signer, correct. And any stkGRO holder can use its holdings to delegate to their favorite candidate/signer
That’s cool, and they can run at any time?
Yes, anyone can run for candidate, there are no entry barriers
If stkGRO holders think you should have a say then you’ll have a say.
That’s good to know! That’s why it’s important to hold stkGRO if you want to participate or contribute to the future of GRO.
Absolutely
Okey so I’ve 3–4 more questions: An important topic is always sustainability. Most crypto projects fail at some point because they run out of money. How do you ensure a continuous inflow of funds and make it sustainable?
Well, we’re mostly seeing a yield farming trend with new DeFi tokens out there, they’re heavily overpaying users to use their protocol but when those incentives end so does their TVL and ultimately it’s not sustainable whatsoever.
Instead of following this approach GRO has allocated 50% of the total supply (500k GRO) to the stkGRO DAO to manage accordingly, this funds can be used for many purposes including funding ongoing operations, additionally GRO already has a working product generating revenue and profits with many more to come in the future.
As a little side note both the rAAVE and the GRO treasury can take advantage of this new DeFi Protocols with heavy yield farming subsidizes to farm them and bring the profits back into the GRO & rAAVE ecosystem, very different approach from the current one most are following.
Hell yeah, thats fantastic. You obviously have a project here in GrowthDeFi that is very innovative with the financial products you’ve already produced.. Seeing how you have improved the efficiency and APY of existing protocols, and implemented your DAO ahead of schedule, it seems like it’s only a matter of time until your marketcap catches up to the quality of the project. Do you see yourself as a 100MM marketcap project and how long in your estimation before you reach the same levels as far as volume and valuation as projects like YFI, and AAVE
I see GrowthDeFi as a long term build up protocol, what this means is that previously launched products help out the new ones.
The best example I can give is the synergy between gTokens/PMTs and rAAVE, if the rAAVE treasury used other yield aggregation protocols such as YFI they’d be wasting in fees somewhere between 3–5% per year, by having gTokens/PMTs in the ecosystem the entire process is being optimized to save every penny.
I don’t know when GRO will reach a 100 MM + marketcap target but I think if we continue launching new products and improving existing ones it should be just a matter of time.
Time is definitely on our side ;)
Yes, I absolutely agree with you that it’s just a matter of time. You are doing a great job here! That’s why we called your project our latest gem. Since we are already over time and still need time to answer the community’s questions, I’ll come to my last question. You might have guessed: what’s in the pipeline and what can we expect from $GRO in the future?
In the short term you can expect the rAAVE launch bringing more Liquidity and utility to GRO, in the coming months there’ll also be optimizations done to gTokens and PMTs on top of adding many more strategies to the existing ones.
Last but not least we’ll start seeing how the DAO and the two treasuries perform (GRO & rAAVE), the idea is to start creating a wide portfolio, mainly covering yield producing DeFi tokens and start building up a solid balance sheet.
Awesome! IMHO the future is bright for GrowthDeFi. I’m absolutely excited about the rAAVE launch
In a couple months we’ll really see that diversification kicking it, holding either rAAVE or GRO will also mean having direct exposure to many projects such as AAVE or SNX whilst not having to spend a lot in gas trying to do it manually.
Yeah thats great to hear
It’s also a much more efficient approach than doing a index such as DPI (DeFi Pulse Index) because they’re missing a lot of yield potential on those holdings plus they’re including some tokens which are only farmed and dumped
Totally agree
The stkGRO DAO can fully leverage the potential of SNX staking and using the sUSD minted to generate returns, something which an index can’t really do
It’s all about capital efficiency
I think, the community agrees with me, that this project will have a great future. It was a great AMA. Thanks for your time Safe! I will now open the chat for the community.
Community Questions:
1️. Where can I buy #GRO token ? 2️. Also, what are the benefits in the long-term for stakeholders? Why should we invest in $GRO ?
1- You can buy it on Uniswap: https://info.uniswap.org/pair/0x208bd5dc470eba21571ddb439801a614ed346376
2-If you believe in GRO in the long run you should stake it, convert it to stkGRO at app.growthdefi.com , you’ll get profit sharing from the protocol and treasury profits plus the appreciation of GRO itself.
#GRO tokens include farm tokens ,,,,, When it comes to farm tokens ,,,, As we know most farm token experience a high APY and continue to print new tokens ,,,, then most tokens fail ,,,,, But Failure is only on Metrics token ….. Then How do you compensate for selling pressure ???? And how do you limit your gas costs ??
GRO itself isn’t a farming token so it doesn’t have that sell pressure, rAAVE does has that sell pressure but it’s just its model to reward LPs and share the profits the treasury generates (so it’s compensated in the long run by a growing treasury).
When it comes to using gTokens on protocols which offer farming incentives you’re right, that’s why we have PMTs, they basically automatize the entire process and switch to a more profitable protocol to farm when the incentives are no longer there.
To limit gas costs in PMTs we have it so that the big gas costly txs only happen during rebalances so only a few txs have to pay for that, it’s something that we’ll working in the future too.
1. What is total supply ? Are your plans to focus on market or to grow community? 2. Is Your project a Global project ? Is any of the local communities restricted from contributing to the project ?
1-The starting total supply of GRO was 1 Million but over 3.7k GRO has already being burnt (GRO is deflationary, which combines perfectly with a growing treasury).
Both are important, community and growing market share and portfolio overtime.
2-This is DeFi, we can’t restrict anyone by location, use at your own risk and consult an independent lawyer if you have doubts.
Investor dont want to lose an asset from a security breach. Safety are very important factors for each investor. What steps have GROWTHDeFi user taken to ensure that the risk of security breaches is significantly reduced? What security mechanisms are used?
Well, the contracts are ofc tested and reviewed many times before deploying, the contracts have also been audited by Consensys and we’ll be looking into possible insurance options going forward (either something like Cover or offering in-house insurance).
DeFi, Staking and Yield Farming are hot topics right now in our Crypto Space, My question is, did you make this project only for the short term because of these hot topics? Do you have a long term plan for this project?
The perspective of this project is long term, we’ve already been active in the Ethereum DeFi space for 4 months, developing things regardless of the price action and there’s no plan on stopping, the DAO transition also makes it so that the community itself can run the project and the team is there to support everything and help in developing things.
Tell us about your plans for 2021, what are you currently working on, and are you going to expand the list of big exchanges? Which area are you focusing on at the moment? (DeFi, Stake,Dapps..) and what is your goals in this year ?
The focus in the short term is launching rAAVE, mid to long term it’s about adding more strategies to the protocol, optimizing the entire process and managing wisely the treasuries to ensure it’s properly diversified and hedged.
When it comes to listing on exchanges we’re focusing on onchain Liquidity first (the Uniswap Liquidity is almost 1 MM $ whilst the marketcap is only 3 MM $, there’s big Liquidity for its marketcap).
We’ve seen many DeFi tokens get automatically listed on exchanges such as Binance and FTX as soon as they reach a certain marketcap because CEXs want those fees, so the approach we’ll follow is grow the project and let exchanges list for free afterwards.
What problems is GrowthDefi trying to solve to make it easier for Crypto users? Please let us know how evolving the roadmap is right now. What will happen this year and in the future?
It’s addressing the market of earning yield on assets (which will increase substantially in the next bull run) and the roadmap is what I’ve explained before: rAAVE + treasury growth + more strategies + more optimization
Could you please explain the use cases for $GRO token to me? Will be used for voting and community management, what will be the conditions for the rates, maybe you are planning to introduce lending and staking? I didn’t get it on my mind.
You can use it for farming rAAVE in the GRO/rAAVE LP, additionally you can stake it to get stkGRO and have voting rights within the DAO plus receive profits of everything which is going on
Can you indicate a feature or feature that you like best about the platform so that it can compete with other competitors? What are you most confident about for your platform? Do you have plans to get users to choose your platform?
GrowthDeFi is all about capital efficiency, even if gTokens/PMTs weren’t used by regular users it’d still make a lot of returns to both treasuries and save up a ton in fees (somewhere between 300–500k$ in fees saved annually for every 10 MM $ AUM by having gTokens & PMTs as an in-house option)
We all know that the Ethereum Network has many problems: scalability issues, high fees, slow speeds, and many more. Why did GrowthDefi choose to build its own token on the ERC20 network over the other networks that more fast and scalable?
Speed and tx fees aren’t everything, Ethereum has a lot of existing projects we can use to generate yield and it has the majority of the DeFi users, it’s a no brainer in terms of capital efficiency.
Additionally this is a long term project and we’ll want to still be around when ETH 2.0 incorporates the ETH 1.0 mainnet as one of its shards.
Recently, there have been so many scam Cryptocurrency projects, taking investors money & some project core team members left project, which impact negative effect on the crypto project ! So, How can we trust GrowthDefi ? What make you not scam & long term working projects?
The biggest proof is just going and reading to the code tbh, seeing first hand that it’s not something forked (copy pasta) and by simply participating in the chat conversations you’ll see that we’re not that short term sighted, there are so many things that can be done to be dumb enough to leave.
What are the benefits of holding and staking $GRO tokens? And What plans do you have to help drive demand and scarcity for GRO tokens?
Profit-sharing and voting rights in the DAO. The plan to increase the value is very clear, generate profits through the treasury and the products offered. Pure cashflow model.
As we know, every successful project has a few stories behind the scene, what’s the story behind your project success? Are there any special prototypes or upcoming updates that you want to show/share with us?
We started out on IOST with a smaller project called Powermine, with a token called PMINE, between the core team and some community members that have been there from the start we grew PMINE’s worth by a lot (over 50x if compounded) and decided that moving into Ethereum DeFi was the next logical step for expanding.
Upcoming product release is rAAVE, currently being tested on rinkeby.
What are the ways that #GrowthDefi generates profits/revenue to maintain your project and what is its revenue model ? How can it make benefit win-win to both invester and your project ?
Two major profit sources:
1-Fees collected from gTokens/PMTs
2-Profits collected by the treasury, this can vary a lot but can range from LP fees generated to just holding appreciating assets or anything else.
Many investors hit and run in the sell and sell session after listing on the first exchange, How did $GRO prevent early investors from selling their tokens and what benefits would $GRO give them?
There wasn’t any ICO/token sale or presale for GRO and the token has been trading for 4 months, if someone wants to sell they can do so freely, this is meant to be a long term project.
Collaboration and partnerships are one of the cornerstones to making DeFi more widespread, Can you share some of the partnerships you have formed with existing blockchain foundations recently GrowthDefi ?
We’re working on establishing the foundational part first, the DAO is a good example of this, since it’s DeFi we can integrate any protocol we want, there are no restrictions.
How secured is your smart contracts code, did you ever audit it via any third party? What has been the biggest challenge you have faced in GrowthDefi development?
We’ve been audited by Consensys, feel free to check out the report: https://consensys.net/diligence/audits/2020/12/growth-defi-v1/
The biggest challenge has probably been dealing with impatient token holders who wanted things to be released as soon as possible, we just ignored it and carried on because safety and proper testing is more important than rushing out something for a quick pump in the price.
1: Where did you get the inspiration for this unique project idea of GrowthDefi? And did you face any challenges while starting? 2: $GRO token supports DEX liquidity and transaction growth, so what strategies do you use to turn it into a stable token with a higher value than competitors?
1- Seeing the growth of DeFi during 2020 we think we can do better than many of the existing options, that’s why GRO was started.
2- The strategy for making GRO appreciate is the same one we’re following right now, just keep on building up and implementing more things to benefit token holders, the treasury will be our biggest edge vs other competitors because we can simply invest in them, there doesn’t need to be competition, we can simply slowly increase ownership in other good DeFi projects.
I’m a developer, and I’m interested in contributing to Growth Defi alongsides earning, Do you have any Bug Bounty to check for vulnerabilities?
We do, https://growthdefi.medium.com/gtokens-bug-bounty-up-to-100-000-caa914fb765b
1. here are countless DeFi projects out there. What differentiates your project from the already established competitors and what makes you unique/better? 2. Approximately 44% of the $GRO supply in circulation is stacked. That is a remarkably high number. What do you interpret from this?
1- Imho we’re better prepared for the long term, with not having reliance on issuing GRO for farming and externalizing profit sources.
2- As time has passed by we’ve seen an increase in % ownership from those that believe in the project long run, this is reflected by the number of GRO in stkGRO
Over the past months we have seen many yield farming projects that are just clones or copies with a few changes to Yam or sushiswap. What is your plan to attract liquidity from the mainstream yield farms that have launched to date?
rAAVE will have yield farming so that’ll being some TVL and traffic to the ecosystem, we’re also going to benefit heavily from this projects which are overpaying in farming as explained already. We could’ve exited a long time ago if we wanted, also, you don’t really spend time developing things and auditing them if you’re planning on ruggin, GRO itself has been trading for 4 months.
A big problem for a lot of Defi projects seems to be that when farming starts, the price goes down because people unload to put liquidity into the farm. Will there be an incentive to hold and not just farm and dump?
GRO doesn’t have farming sell pressure. rAAVE has farming sell pressure but it’s compensated with treasury profits.
What is the three layer proactive system solvency protection that you’re utilizing within your ecosystem? How does it make the ecosystem safer — does it ensure 100% safety ? What is the biggest challenge you face currently in terms of becoming a successful project or company?
When it comes to financial solvency it’s all open source code, you can check it yourself that what we claim is real, for software security we try to make it as secure as possible through audits tho software always carries some risk
