Recapitulation of PERSISTENCE PROJECT AMA event held at AMA LOVERS CLUB.
Venue: https://t.me/amaloversclub
Date: Wednesday, 7th March, 2021
Time: 14:00 UTC
The PERSISTENCE PROJECT team was represented by @Abhitejsingh who judiciously shared with us detailed knowledge and information about PERSISTENCE PROJECT.
1st Segment: INTRODUCTION
Q1: Can you please introduce yourself and your background, also introduce the team working on Persistence One?
ANS: Hello Everyone,
I am Abhitej Singh and I take care of Strategy and Community at @Persistenceone. My introduction to Crypto was in 2016-2017 while I was travelling across different parts of India and the US. I was very fascinated by the core characteristics of Crypto and Blockchain in general - ownership and transparency. So, after initial introduction I jumped into Crypto completely in late 2018.
Before joining Persistence, I was helping a couple of early stage startups (now backed by Ola and Livspace - unicorns in India). I was also actively involved building communities for Google, facebook and co-founded national hackathon in India called Code2Create.
I met Tushar and Deepanshu (Co-founders) in 2019 at a Blockchain Conference and really liked the vision they had and joined them back in November 2019. Here we are building @PersistenceOne.
I also co-founded Cosmos India with Tushar and Deepanshu.
Learn about our journey so far: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPHOZPsoEnQ
Persistence is a 25 member team now with 16 dedicated developers across Blockchain architecture development, software development, UI/UX, security, DevOps.
Some of the key members behind Persistence are:
Tushar Aggarwal - CEO and Co-founder
♦️Tushar helped set up LuneX Ventures first regulated Crypto VC fund in Southeast Asia (Crypto arm of a ’Traditional’ Singapore VC called Golden
Gate Ventures). Written extensively on Blockchain/Crypto on Tech in Asia and previously host of Decrypt Asia Podcast.
♦️Deepanshu Tripathi - CTO and Co-founder
Deepanshu being part of a three person team to create a unified payment acceptance platform. White labeled to Reliance (invested by Facebook etc.) eventually sold to African Fintech for $9M. He performed world’s first ever Inter Blockchain NFT transfer. Prior to Persistence, even ran an Ethereum mining node from 2016
♦️ Puneet Mahajan - Core Blockchain Developer
Previously associated with Comdex development for 1.5 years and for past one year handling the position of Core BlockChain Developer in Persistence Group.
♦️ Abhinav Kumar - Core Blockchain Developer
Blockchain developer with 3 years of experience. One of the most active contributors to Cosmos Hub and has been a huge force behind Persistence's wins in Game of Stakes and Game of Zones (Cosmos adverserial testnets)
♦️ Abhitej Singh - Strategy and Community
5 years of experience in community development and marketing growth. In past has worked with Google Developers, Facebook Developers and multiple startups. The leading force for Cosmos India.
♦️ Mikhil Pandey - Strategy and BD
Working with Product research and business development in Crypto space for past 2 years. Known face in the validators' space and has took AUDIT.one from $1 to $250 Million in Assets Under Delegation in past 10 months.
Q2: Can you introduce Persistence One, what critical problems does it solve that existing solutions are not solving and what's the competitive advantage?
ANS: Before we start with it is important to know that Persistence is building all three layers:
- Network Layer - Tendermint-based Persistence Chain
- Persistence SDK
- Application Layer - Comdex, pStake, pLend, Asset Mantle
Now let's dive into how Persistence came into existence.
While Crypto ecosystem is growing significantly but the mass adoption and high-value will only flow in if their tangible use to Crypto.
Our approach is to bring high-value real-world assets such as business invoices, ownership documents and allow the traditional businesses to put these as collateral to borrow stablecoins.
How does it help Crypto users?
It provides accessibility to the real-world assets and earn sustainable income. In addition to that participate in the asset-classes that have been operating behind the high walls.
How will it help traditional businesses?
Gain liquidity and financing to operate their businesses.
Some of the other problems we are solving:
We believe this is most effective way to drive mass adoption - bridging DeFi and traditional finance
And we started with Comdex - the first application in the Persistence ecosystem.
From there, we saw that our infrastructure and tech stack has the potential to scale exponentially and then journey of creating multiple application begin.
As of today:
Persistence is operating at the confluence of NFTs + DeFi + PoS Staking. We have already developed a full suite of financial products:
♦️Comdex: Institutional-facing commodities trading and trade financing platform. Handled over $55M in transaction volume.
♦️AUDIT.one: Staking-as-a-service infrastructure. Currently over $250M in assets under management.
♦️pStake: Liquid staking product unlocking liquidity of staked assets.
♦️pLend: Stablecoin lending platform backed by real-world assets.
♦️Asset Mantle: Interoperable NFT marketplace framework, enabling the creation of ‘Shopify-style’ NFT marketplaces.
Currently our ecosystem has application on multiple chains and as we launch more products are capabilities will grow.
With current supported chains being - Tendermint-based chains (Cosmos, Kava, Terra, Iris, Injective etc) and Ethereum.
Soon integrating to BSC and Polkadot.
When can we expect this 😍?
ANS: Soon after the pStake launch we will start working on the BSC and Polkadot bridges.
Q3: Can you briefly describe the top milestones you have achieved and your target milestones with timelines, also share your roadmap?
ANS: Some of the key achievements will be:
1. Strong partnerships with leading protocols, networks and walets (listed below)
2. Expanded team to 20+ members
3. ICF awarded grant to Persistence to develop inter-chain NFT standards and we are leading the global working group which includes Polkadot, Kusama, Secret Network, Keep Network, Cosmos etc
4. Launched AUDIT.one [$300 Million in total assets under delegation] and Comdex [$55 Million in total transaction volume]
5. Launched StakeDrop with 7 networks - Cosmos, Polkadot, Tezos, Terra, Kava, Iris and Polygon and already have 3000+ participating who have staked more than $1 Billion worth of assets to earn $XPRT tokens.
6. Onboarded world's best validators securing $5B+ assets collectively including but not limited to stakefish, Dokia Capital, P2P Network, Figment, Sikka
7. Launched tendermint-based token on AscendEX + Mainnet launched with top 16 validators globally + enabled staking from Day 1 for the XPRT holders.
Read about our journey so far [Till January 2021]: https://buff.ly/395mpp2
Next goals:
- Launch pStake and have $200M+ in TVL: May 2021
- Launch Asset Mantle and onboard creators and applications: June 2021
- Introduce our Institutional partners and their DeFi/NFT products: July onwards
- Expand Exchange Lisitings: Q2
- Comdex Mainnet Launch: Q3 2021
- Community Bounties and Grants: Q2 2021
- Bridges with BSC and other chains
- Persistence Ambassador Program: Q2 2021
- Launch of Mainnet-2: Early Q3 2021
- Release of interNFT module for multi-chain integration
You can read all about our plans and achievements here: https://persistence.one/roadmap.
Q4: Can you briefly describe your PARTNERSHIPS so far?
ANS: Partnerships:
Ecosystem:
1. Terra: https://medium.com/persistence-blog/terra-and-persistence-announce-partnership-to-drive-adoption-via-a-token-swap-and-community-677df3d0f6e0
2. Interchain Foundation: https://medium.com/persistence-blog/persistence-one-first-to-implement-interchain-native-nft-transfer-bags-icf-grant-cdb6c3856c25
3. Razor Network: https://medium.com/persistence-blog/persistence-partners-with-razor-network-to-strengthen-both-parties-e92e538ad4b4
4. Kava: https://twitter.com/kava_labs/status/1357630049906794496?s=20
AUDIT.one:
1. Tendermint: https://medium.com/persistence-blog/tendermint-to-delegate-595-000-atoms-to-persistences-audit-one-97ddb47e01db
2. Polygon (Previously Matic Network): https://blog.matic.network/matic-network-validator-advisory-board-overseeing-the-advancement-of-a-secure-and-healthy-network/
3. Skale: https://skale.network/blog/validator-list-for-skale/
4. Injective: https://buff.ly/2ZtasW4
5. Marlin: https://twitter.com/PersistenceOne/status/1339917327194857473
StakeDrop/Staking and Wallets:
1. Trust Wallet: https://community.trustwallet.com/t/persistence-one-1000-in-xrpt-giveaway/85990
2. Cosmostation: https://medium.com/persistence-blog/cosmostation-wallet-adds-3-step-registration-for-persistence-stakedrop-a1223703c490
3. StakingReawrds: https://medium.com/persistence-blog/additional-20-000-xprt-is-up-for-grabs-as-persistence-partners-with-the-staking-rewards-team-d1b21aa092ac
Institution:
Tavis Digital (Digital arm of a billion dollar swiss asset management firm): https://www.coindesk.com/staking-as-an-asset-class-this-swiss-institutional-fund-is-jumping-in
Token:
AscendEX: https://bitmax.io/en/marketing/xprt
[Huge announcements coming with respect to token 👀]
The latest one on the product front: https://twitter.com/PersistenceOne/status/1379420707847823366?s=20
Please note: These are only publicly communicated partnerships, we will be releasing a lot of partnerships in coming two weeks.
Q5: Can you give an overview of your Tokenomics, and the UTILITY of the $XRPT Token?
ANS: Absolutely. I am sure a lot of AMA participants have been eagerly waiting for this.
The token plays 3 keys roles:
1. Staking token (similar to other Tendermint based chains like Band, Kava, Terra, Iris)
2. Governance of the chain (not app)
3. Work token (stakers and delegators receive cashflows from the pStake and Comdex dApp as well as other dApps in the future)
The biggest advantage is as the Persistence ecosystem grows (we are already working on shipping multiple projects) the value of $XPRT will grow. Hence providing immense ROI for the XPRT holders.
If the community members are aware with Terra (Luna), Persistence's token utility and ecosystem is very similar to Terra where the XPRT holders will gain incentives from the financial activity in the ecosystem.
The token release schedule with considerably high lockups for the team, advisors, seed investors and validators.
Anyone can read more about the token economics and utility here: https://medium.com/persistence-blog/xprt-tokenomics-and-utility-powering-the-persistence-ecosystem-70fc49e10362
2nd Segment: LIVE Questions
Q1: Where and how can we stake our $XPRT and what's the APR we stand to earn for Staking?
Is there a specific wallet we need to hold tokens on and when will your mainnert be live for all to use?
ANS: This is a great question.
You can stake your $XPRT tokens using the following wallets:
1. Native wallet: wallet.persistence.one
2. Cosmostation: https://twitter.com/PersistenceOne/status/1379794443054764037?s=20
To create Persistence wallet, please follow this guide: https://medium.com/persistence-blog/persistence-xprt-wallet-guide-dbf5e27100f3
To learn how to stake $XPRT, please follow this guide: https://medium.com/persistence-blog/persistence-xprt-staking-guide-4504cf9a19df
Persistence mainnet went live on March 30th and staking has been active since then: https://twitter.com/PersistenceOne/status/1377172490712010754?s=20
Current Staking Stats:
APY: 100%+
No. of validator in active set: 25
Target inflation rate: 35%
Current Staked: 56%+.
Q2: Because persistence decides to incorporate institutions for its Staking, how does the holder of its Tokens benefit from this Staking called Pstake?
ANS: pStake is undoubtedly one of the most sophisticated Liquid Staking dapp which not only provides liquidity but also replicates the underlying network’s governance. To emphasise more on why pStake will positively impact the (common) staking ecosystem:
Decreasing the barriers to Staking: Most of the PoS assets are not staked today due to issues such as liquidity but pStake’s redemption model provides instant liquidity without impacting the network security
Enabling cross-chain ecosystem: Through pStake token holders of different PoS assets will be able to bring their assets to Ethereum, this will significantly grow the adoption of PoS ecosystem.
Additional rewards: The users will be able to earn LP Rewards or other DeFi incentives in addition to their staking rewards.
What value will it provide to XPRT holders?
1. Having liquidity with liquid staking for $XPRT on pStake
2. Earn cash flows from the activity on pStake.
Q3: I know Persistence has been working on NFTs since 2019 before the NFTs became a popular and hot topic. But what will Persistence do with NFTs beyond art and collectibles? And what is your vision for the NFT space?
ANS: Currently Persistence has two-pronged approach for NFTs in Asset Tokenisation:
Real-world: Comdex and some more to be released in Q3 2021
Crypto-native: Art, Collectible, Domains etc
The real-world assets that we are tokenising currently are invoices, business documents and ownership documents. These assets are brought on chain by extracting the most relevant and critical information (such as invoice number, amount, dates etc) and digitally represented using NFTs.
What purpose does it solve?
- Accessibility: The assets that have been accessible to only limited audience/lobbies now can be created for global access (based on use-case)
- Rase of Exchange: Currently exchanging assets in real-world is very complicated and tedious. NFTs make it much more easier as the ownership transfer is logged on chain and is immutable
- Creating Liquidity: These real-world assets can be used as a collateral to tap into the abundant liquidity in Crypto for gaining liquidity to operate (providing high-returns for crypto holders)
On the other hand:
Asset Mantle use case can be understood with reference to Shopify.
Opensea is an aggregator for NFTs while Asset Mantle is a framework which enable the following:
- Create Market-specific chains: Asset Mantle allows anyone to build their own NFT marketplace on a dedicated chain with integration to Asset Mantle native marketplace
- Interoperability: Have interoperability with multiple chains (unlike ERC-721 where assets can only reside in Ethereum)
- Highly composable NFT and Metadata
In simplest terms it's Shopify of NFTs while Opensea is ebay.
Comparing to Opensea
So yes, NFTs in Persistence are much more than art, collectible and domains.
Will be sharing regular updates related to Asset Mantle here moving forward: https://twitter.com/AssetMantle
We are also working with the leading projects globally to develop interchain NFT and Metadata standards.
Some of the projects from our interNFT working group.
You can learn more about our work withinterchain NFT standards here: interNFT.org.
Q4: Can you show or show the features that Persistence likes the most about the platform, so that it can compete with other competitors? And what do you most believe about your platform? Do you have a plan to get users to choose your platform?
@abhitejsingh
ANS: As I mentioned, the greatest advantage for Persistence over the competition is the unique position of operating at the confluence of PoS + NFTs + PoS staking.
We have already built 4 products, namely:
- Comdex - Decentralised Commodity Trading Marketplace with more than $55 Million in Transaction volume
- AUDIT.one - Validator arm of Persistence.one with more than $125 Million worth of assets under delegation
- pSTake - Liquid Staking platform with best returns and user experience for the PoS stakers
- Asset Mantle: NFT Marketplace framework which will allow any user to spin up their own NFT marketplace - Shopify of NFTs
Some of the other advantages are:
- One of the best validator set in the industry
- Strong partnerships with leading crypto foundations, protocols, networks as well as large traditional institutions.
- Persistence is building all layers - network, SDK and application layer which cut down on any external dependencies
- The token utility rewards all the $XPRT holders from the cash flow from all the applications in the ecosystem
Mentioning about how we will attract users:
Let break it into two parts:
- Value Creation [Both for users and the businesses]
- Growth and Adoption
Value creation:
As highlighted before the journey of Persistence started by addressing some of the existing issues in both traditional Finance and DeFi.
The ability to create application-specific chains such as Comdex allowed us to attract the businesses and projects looking for very custom and scalable solution.
The other biggest advantage Persistence has is that we are trying to provide the Web 3.0 robustness with Web2.0 interface which fits in our dedication to usability-focused approach.
Growth and Adoption:
- Interoperability: Creating ways in which we can build applications that can be integrated with other applications [for eg. Comdex with pLend, AUDIT with pStake, Asset Mantle with Asset dapp (marketplace). ]
- Token utility: Creating an economics that benefits not only the users of the applications but the contributors of the overall eosystem.
- Liquidity and Accessibility: Creating ways in which the users can gain access to not so accessible assest currently and creating liquidity for growing the toplines of the users/businesses.
And that will make users to come to Persistence and adopt our dapps.
And we are not only attracting retails investors but also institutional investors with our products.
One of the examples: https://www.coindesk.com/staking-as-an-asset-class-this-swiss-institutional-fund-is-jumping-in.
Q5: The vast majority of crypto users do not have sufficient knowledge of crypto-related technical issues. How will you affect this large audience that does not have enough knowledge about cryptocurrencies, how will you add them to your project?
ANS: This is a very genuine question:
And Persistence is known for solving the complications with Crypto for the Web2.0 users.
We have abstracted the complexities of public chain in our institutional product, Comdex.
By creating a Web2.0 interface with security of Web3.0.
That means the governance, validation and all other bLockchain related operations happen in the background. Users use the application much like any other internet application.
It is majorly because of our architecture as well.
And just this is the reason why we have built on Cosmos.
The Cosmos SDK not only allows Persistence the ability to take advantage of the ‘Inter-blockchain Communication Module’ (IBC) launched by Cosmos, but also allows for Persistence to create its own ecosystem of application specific chains which leads to an exponentially higher level of scalability.
Through the use of the Cosmos IBC module, stablecoins from various networks integrated with the Cosmos IBC can be inter-operably transacted on the Persistence App where these assets can be deployed to finance real world commodity trades.
In addition, the Cosmos Hub/Zone structure allows for applications built on Persistence to have their own chain (zone) for application specific transactions while transactions pertaining to the native Persistence token occur on the hub.
CONCLUSION:
Introduction to the Persistence product ecosystem by our CEO, Tushar Aggarwal 🎙
🦾 In the next segment of our ‘Conversations with the CEO’ series, Tushar provides an overview of the Persistence product ecosystem, which spans verticals ranging from NFTs to DeFi and beyond.
🌐 Watch here: https://buff.ly/3sOGIjl
♦️Comdex: Institutional-facing commodities trading and trade financing platform. Handled over $55M in transaction volume.
♦️AUDIT.one: Staking-as-a-service infrastructure. Currently over $220M in assets under management.
♦️pStake: Liquid staking product unlocking liquidity of staked assets.
♦️Asset Mantle: Interoperable NFT marketplace framework, enabling the creation of ‘Shopify-style’ NFT marketplaces.
♦️pLend: Stablecoin lending platform backed by real-world assets.
ℹ️ Learn more about our mission and product ecosystem here: https://buff.ly/2NWnFE3
🚀 Our current product suite is a drop in the ocean compared to what Persistence has in store. We will continue to build out our product ecosystem to provide new opportunities for both institutional and crypto-native users.
🤝 Thank you for pioneering new financial frontiers with us as we BUIDL Persistence. Strap in for a very exciting year ahead!
🗣 Retweet: https://twitter.com/PersistenceOne/status/1377961788696825856
Join our community for more exciting updates and community initiatives:
📌TG Community: https://t.me/PersistenceOneChat
📌Announcements: https://t.me/PersistenceOne
📌Website: https://persistence.one/
📌Medium: https://medium.com/persistence-blog
📌Twitter: https://twitter.com/PersistenceOne
📌 YouTube: https://youtube.com/PersistenceOne
📌Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/PersistenceOne/
📌Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/persistenceone/
To learn more about Persistence One, our achievements and plans going forward you can access the following resources:
- Whitepaper: https://persistence.one/static/media/whitepaper.aa159390.pdf
- Github repo: http://github.com/persistenceOne
- Roadmap: https://persistence.one/roadmap
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