Slope Finance & Larix AMA Recap
On Nov 2nd, Slope Finance was glad to invite Larix CMO Dimz to have an AMA in Slope Finance Telegram community https://t.me/Slope_community.
Q : Can you give us a short introduction, please?
A : I am Dimz, CMO at Larix. I come from a background in Economics and Investment Management. After having been in the industry from a strict investment and asset perspective and when second-generation blockchains and DeFi started to get hype, I had to find out for myself what the hype is all about, so I got into contact with an existing experienced team. That is when we started Larix. A quick introduction of Larix. Larix is the lending protocol where users can participate as suppliers or borrowers on the Solana chain. We are the first lending protocol on Solana that accomplished basic lending/borrowing functions in conjunction with a platform token distribution function. For now, we have 15k mainnet users and had 47k testnet users prior. Larix adopted a dynamic interest rate model and created capital-efficient risk management pools, as such a broad selection of collateral types that can be fully utilized in a safe way. Furthermore, the LARIX token, based on a delicately designed token economy, enables continuous incentive allocation to boost real demands.
Q: Among those many chains, why Solana?
A : Solana yes. That is an important question. Solana now is on its way to becoming a very popular public chain for the Defi world due to its lower trading fees and faster transaction speeds. At the heart of Solana’s ascendancy is the Proof of History algorithm leveraging SHA256, which enables a throughput of higher than 50,000 TPS, averaging 400–600ms block time, having 900+ nodes globally, with an extremely low transaction fee of ~$0.00025. For now, Solana has already built a strong ecosystem occupying a range of projects: Defi, Cross-chain assets, Gaming, and NFTs. Solana was a good choice, it's new, young, fast, and cheap.
Q : What kind of assets are you supporting on the Larix protocol? I mean, Solana is a fast chain, but yet, SPL assets are in their early stages, am I right?
A : The supported assets, yes. SPL assets, native to Solana. I will break it up into our 3 phases of our roadmap. Right now, we are in phase1. We only accept the most popular cross-chain assets with large market caps, At the moment, we support BTC, ETH, SOL, USDT, USDC, FTT, RAY, and Serum. The reason is for the safety of the users and to mitigate any potential liquidity risks on the platform. Hence, stability, security, and longevity are our core focus. After that, as we move into Phase2. Larix will move on to accept synthetic assets like indexes, gold, and stocks. Indexes are a good way to give users an added layer of guarantee, to collaborate cross-chain assets with SPL tokens, for example, ‘BTC-SOL-RAY-USDC’ index. An amazing project building this at the moment is Symmetry, and we looking forward to collaborating with them on this. And finally, in phase3. Larix will begin to accept NFTs as P2P lending. NFT now is a huge market and has locked a large amount of token value. We want to give NFT holders the chance to collateralize their appreciating collectibles and be able to borrow against that value.
Q : A good project needs to provide this service. Can you tell us more about what do you mean by the safety of users?
A : You see, if you support tokens that have a market cap of only $10m for example, it raises the risk of manipulation and radical price fluctuations. When that kind of token is collateralized on the Larix protocol and suffers a fatal drop in price, you have to bear the liquidation loss. That’s why we only accept big large-cap assets, which are safer to integrate into an over-collateralized liquidity pool.
Q : Do you have any other ways to guarantee user safety?
A : Security is at the core of Larix. Here are some examples of how the Larix protocol ensures user assets: Firstly, an isolated liquidity pool avoids relevant risks in response to multiple flash-loan attacks and malicious market manipulations. Secondly, our dynamic interest rate model manages liquidity to avoid a “Bank Run” when depositors need to withdraw assets from the pool. Hence, the interest rate is determined by the utilization rate of the liquidity pool which changes every 0.4s, made possible by the Solana Blockchain.
Thirdly, and to emphasize secured collateral, assets are supplied to the liquidity pool and additionally selected for collateral to borrow against. Therefore, assets NOT selected for collateral can NEVER be “liquidated”. The control is 100% in the users’ hands. And lastly, that of instant liquidation, Larix also provides an 8% liquidation bonus to liquidators, to facilitate fast liquidation times.
Q : Can you tell us more about your mining function embedded in your lending/borrowing protocol?
A : Sure. Our mining capability embedded within the lending protocol has added tremendous value to our users. Users who provide liquidity and interact with the platform are rewarded as a way to distribute $LARIX tokens to our wider community. The current daily distribution amounts to 840,000 tokens per day, which is valued at roughly $54,000 at the time of writing. This is subject to decrease over time, set forth by our tokeneconomic structure within the roadmap.
Q : If we are talking about current situation, what are some highlights of Larix?
A : Highlights yes. Recapping what Larix has accomplished in the last month and how we are anchored in the Solana ecosystem to take advantage of what is coming for our industry: Total Value locked in Larix reached $500 million. We have strategically formed partnerships with Raydium, Marinade, Tulip Finance, Orca, and next is Symmetry. We have integrated with Sonar Watch, DeFi Llama, Math wallet, C98 wallet, and of course users are able to use Slope Wallet to connect to the protocol. Listed on MEXC, Bitmart, Gate and LBank, Raydium, Step, Dexlab, and more coming. Section 2 — Twitter Questions
Q : What plans do you have for the future or the following three months? What more does Larix have in store for us, like any technical breakthrough?
A : 3 months in DeFi is long. To put it briefly, enhance the utility and increase the services to users. For example, in a yield-backed stable coin model, we plan to cover margin loans, AMM liquidity, and wider collateral types (stocks and commodities).
Q : Do you have any plans for NFT since it’s hot now, like staking & NFT?
A : NFTs alright. The emergence of Oracles has added tremendous value to smart contracts which in fact is the exact reason how asset prices from the outside world can interact with the cyber world. NFT is a very young concept and there are teams working hard in the space to guide it through the process of price discovery. We will support NFTs as collateral on Larix and open an NFT p2p lending market direct on the protocol. We are very careful how we will implement NFT as collateral on our platform. We want to be absolutely certain about our parameters. The time is inching closer for use to move to our Phase 2. Users are virtually ready with their NFTs waiting to put them up as collateral in this industry. It is going to be exciting. But like we mentioned before, security comes first. So that will determine when we support it. We are confident, soon.
Q : Can you share with us more about accelerated mining? with an APY 6% in 30 minutes? How did you achieve that?
A : In essence, accelerated mining refers to an act of increasing the daily distribution of the LARIX rewards within the protocol. We rotated this throughout a few assets to increase rewards to the users. We are able to do this as our tokeneconomic structure delegates a big portion to the users interacting with the protocol. The innovation is secured smart contracts governing the asset pools. The extra added utility is the rewards to the users.
Q : In fact, there are really some of the big questions like security that Staking users are facing, so what kind of strategy is Larix going to offer to help users solve these issues?
A : I believe this question refers to users using their LARIX tokens to participate in the Fusion pool pairs for LARIX-USDC, for example. If so, Security is no problem at Larix. Additionally, the staking opportunities at Raydium and ORCA, for example, take pride in their security standards as well. We are going to offer single staking for LARIX in the near future as well. We are excited about that.
Q : I have noticed that Larix has Vietnamese and Indonesia version, is that your attempts to explore in local market? have you got any achievements at present?
A : Jurisdictions yes. Because Solana is so user-friendly, cheap, fast, and we are in the ecosystem. We want to promote Larix and build communities everywhere. All languages and markets. Bahasa Indonesia(🇮🇮) (http://t.me/ProjectLarixIndonesia) | 中文(🇮🇮) (http://t.me/projectlarixChina) | 日本 語(🇮🇮) (http://t.me/projectlarixJapan) | 한국인(🇮🇮) (http://t.me/projectlarixKorea) | Tiếng Việt(🇮🇮) (https://t.me/ProjectLarixVietnam) | русский(🇮🇮) (http://t.me/projectlarixRussia) |Türk(🇮🇮) (https://t.me/projectlarixTurkey) We are going to increase the arsenal of languages as we go. We are bringing more regions too.
About Larix
Larix (projectlarix.com) is the ultimate lending gateway on Solana, which adopted a dynamic interest rate model, and created more capital-efficient risk management pools, as such a broad selection of collateral types can be fully utilized in a safe way. Furthermore, the rewarding system based on a delicately designed token economy enables continuous incentive allocation to boost demands.
