A Summary of the AMA session between Reef DeFi and Kava Labs
I’m Godswill and in this article, I will be giving you a rundown of the AMA session done between Darshan, Marketing Lead — Reef Finance, Denko Mancheski, CEO Reef Finance and Aaron Choi , Head of Business Development — Kava Labs
This is the first of my AMA session recaps for Reef DeFi…
The session was hosted by Darshan from the Reef Finance Marketing Team and few questions were thrown to both Denko Mancheski, CEO Reef Finance and Aaron Choi , CEO Kava Labs all related to Kava & Reef Finance.
The conversation went as thus:
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Darshan | Reef Finance: Hello Denko Mancheski and Aaron Choi
Aaron Choi |Kava Labs: Hello Darshan
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Darshan | Reef Finance: Glad to have you here for AMA, pretty excited for it. So before we start the AMA, please tell us a little about yourself. What is your background and how did you join Kava?
Aaron Choi |Kava Labs: sure! my name is Aaron Choi. I’m the VP Global BD for Kava. previously I was the VP international of BTCC one of the earliest exchanges in china before selling it in early 2018. I was also the CEO of gj.com exchange. Before jumping full time into BTC I was in advertising. but I’ve been personally in crypto since 2012. I joined Kava a little more than a year ago. I met Brian in Shanghai during a conference. I had sold my exchange and was playing around with some DeFi products and was really interested in DeFi. It was a great fit to join Kava
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Darshan | Reef Finance: Wow, you’ve been in the space from almost 9 years. That’s great!
Aaron Choi |Kava Labs: haha it’s been a long time. amazing to see the growth of this space. the price appreciation of btc also helps a bi
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Darshan | Reef Finance: Nice, good to know about you! Thanks for the brief introduction!
Q2: How would you describe Kava to the Reef Community and what sets Kava apart from the existing projects in DeFi?
Aaron Choi |Kava Labs: Sure! Kava is a layer 1 blockchain built using the Cosmos SDK. We focus on providing DeFi products and services to our users, namely lending/borrowing as well as a stablecoin service. We have 2 products out at the moment, one is our Kava CDP, which is similar to MakerDAO. the other is HARD protocol, which is a money market. our stablecoin, USDX, is backed by over 100% in cryptoassets. And we have over $90M in assets locked on our platform.
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Denko | Reef Finance: Really nice growth over the past few weeks
Aaron Choi |Kava Labs: Thanks!! we’re working hard to integrate more assets and chains. our cross-chain focus sets us apart. as we try to focus on the assets that don’t have great access to DeFi on their native chains
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Darshan| Reef Finance: Whao! That’s pretty high number and I’m sure that this number will keep growing
Q3: Kava is powered by Cosmos. Why did you choose Cosmos and how is it propelling Kava’s development?
Aaron Choi |Kava Labs: Yup! kava is powered by Cosmos! We chose Cosmos because it provided us with flexibility in creating our own chain with our own validator set that would be incentivized to secure and grow Kava’s network. We were close with some of the core team members at the time. some even came on as advisors.
Denko| Reef Finance: I love tendermint
Aaron Choi |Kava Labs: We also have the same focus of building for cross-chain interoperability and really look forward to the release of IBC. We love tendermint as well. such a beautiful POS consensus system or I should say dpos. Cosmos makes is super simple and their team is very responsive when working together
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Darshan| Reef Finance: Nice! Yeah, Cosmos is super cool!
Q4: Kava recently launched hard.kava.io — the world’s first cross-chain money market. Please enlighten our community about Kava’s initiative with Hard Protocol.
Aaron Choi |Kava Labs: Sure! so I mentioned about HARD protocol earlier, which is a money market. Users will be able to use HARD to lend and borrow their assets. this way you’ll be able to earn a return for providing liquidity to specific pools, or you can borrow those assets at competitive rates. You will still be required to put enough assets into the pools which will act as collateral if you want to borrow. Also, the HARD token is provided as incentive via a yield farming mechanism. Currently, we’ve only opened the lending pools. our next update soon in early next year will open borrowing functions.
Denko| Reef Finance: Looking forward to this
Aaron Choi |Kava Labs: Thanks! we’ve got lots planned for the next Kava-5 update
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Darshan| Reef Finance: Nice, this so cool! Great usecase for all liquidity providers I’d say. Eagerly waiting for next update on borrowing function.
Q5: Can you tell us about your most recent development and how do you plan to conclude year 2020? Anything the Reef Community keep a look out for?
Aaron Choi |Kava Labs: Sure we’ve recently listed on Huobi Global, a top global exchange. and will work with them in helping integrate our products into their offerings, allowing DeFi+CeFi type hybrid products possible. we really think this will drive adoption of DeFi even faster. We’re also working with many other initiatives to grow our stablecoin business so keep on the lookout for that! I also want to shill our partnership a bit between Reef and Kava. Keep an eye on the collaborations we are working on!
Denko| Reef Finance: Haha big things are coming! Cant wait to see the rapid evolution of DeFi throughout 2021. Its definitely going to be the best year for this landscape
Aaron Choi |Kava Labs: Me neither. things are gonna change so quickly. can’t wait to see the next couple generations of products haha. I completely agree
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Darshan| Reef Finance: Q6: Reef’s partnership with Kava opens so many opportunities for Reef Users. What more do you see yourself accomplishing from this partnership? Do you have any plans to expand it?
Denko| Reef Finance: We are starting with allowing users to participate into the yield farming mechanisms throughout the Kava ecosystem — this will allow us to have a Kava-specific basket — again proposed by our analytics engine. Shortly after we plan to include the borrowing/landing mechanisms into multihop strategies. After that we will be adding the full support in the multi-ecosystem wallet that we are building which will allow seamless experience .. also really looking forward to the IBC (especially the Polkadot pallet) which will expand the possibilities on what we can do infinitely 🚀
Aaron Choi |Kava Labs: I think accomplishing this integration will show the untapped potential that exists between Polkadot and Cosmos projects. This might be one of the first few partnerships that exist cross-chain across Polka and Cosmos. I’m excited to see where we can go from here. I see so much opportunity within the Polkadot ecosystem
Darshan| Reef Finance: Impressive!
Denko| Reef Finance: Yeah. I think with all the progres on cross-chain communication, in 2021 we (as a defi landscape in general) will achieve complete defragmentation and seamless UX -> ready to onboard non-crypto users massively
Aaron Choi |Kava Labs: This will be an amazing experience for all our users, both Reef and Kava’s.
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Darshan| Reef Finance: After reading this, I gotta admit that future of both project is lookin VERY bright to me. Looking forward to see all devlopment updates of both projects! Let’s move onto our Final Question before opening the floor for Community’s Questions.
Q7: From the official announcement, “Reef’s machine learning and AI powered DeFi Smart Yield Farming engine will allow users to gain access to the highly attractive yield opportunities that are available on Kava’s platform”, can you explain more on how it will actually work? — Denko
Denko| Reef Finance: Yeah sure! Basically by adding support for multiple ecosystems (either by deploying our existing infra to another EVM instance or through another implementation on another runtime) we will be able to give the users access to different types of baskets. Our analytics engine will index the new DeFi instruments running on Kava, and will be able to propose a composition based on the user’s risk level. Also, the wallet will allow for a seamless user experience so the whole multi-ecosystem address generation and bridge-crossing will be completely invisible. Eventually we will include multi-ecosystem defi instruments in the main Reef basket, so with 1 click you will be able to invest/divest in multiple ecosystems
Aaron Choi |Kava Labs: Sounds like it will be super simple for users to get the best yields available to them just by using Reef. that’s great!
Denko| Reef Finance: Yeah + adding FIAT gateways, we will be able to easily onboard new users and give them exposure to the Kava ecosystem’s returns with just a few clicks
Darshan| Reef Finance: Great! Sounds very simple as Aaron mentioned. Looking forward to this. Thank you to both of you for answering al questions, now it’s time for Community’s Questions.
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The AMA session was one of the best as attendees were satisfied with the answers gotten during the AMA session. All answers to question was satisfactory showing that both projects has a lot to offer to the DeFi community.
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For More Information about Reef Finance:
Website: https://reef.finance/
Telegram Group: https://t.me/reefdefi
Twitter: https://twitter.com/reefdefi
Medium: https://medium.com/reef-finance
