Ask Me Anything with Defactor at ICO Speaks: Summary
October 28-th held an Ask Me Anything session at ICO Speaks telegram chat. From the Defactor side there was :
💻 Alejandro Gutierrez | Operations Lead | @AgutierrezDF
My name is Alejandro Gutierrez, Operations Lead Defactor. I have more than 20 years experience in the supply chain management space and lately I have been working in the Trade Tech space and Supply chain finance space.
In 2019 I joined Consolfreight as co-founder and we started a journey to digitise the logistics industry. When we were on that journey discovered that the procurement of liquidity for SMEs was extremely difficult and in September of 2019 decided to launch our financial offering for Trade Finance and Factoring services.
Later that year we partnered with Maker and Centrifuge to be one of the first Real World Asset Originators to use DeFi to fund traditional financial services. The experience we gained from being in the DeFi space for the last 1.5 years gave us the opportunity to understand the needs of the Asset Originators, that is what Defactor is solving.
💻 Bhairav Patel | tech lead | @b1rav
My name is Bhairav Patel, I’m the Tech Lead for Defactor and have been working in the FinTech space for close to a decade
Previously I was the CTO for a number of companies across the globe, including one specialising in supply chain finance that hit the Forbes FinTech 50 list and it was at that company that my blockchain journey began
Back in 2016/7 we were exploring ways that we could finance companies using blockchain tech but unfortunately the market wasn’t mature enough then, it is now and that is one of the reasons we started Defactor
Let’s get started!
Q:Could you please introduce Defactor to our community in layman’s term?
A: Defactor is a platform that brings traditional businesses into the world of decentralised finance. The platform allows companies seeking finance to tokenize their assets, used them as collateral and obtain funding from DeFi liquidity pools.
To put it simply, Defactor is doing what the banks won’t. We are helping small businesses to get funding backed off their assets.
We solve a number of issues but at a macro level we’re giving businesses an alternative to traditional finance, we’re helping nurture new business models that have sprung up from the growth of DeFi and at a micro level we’re building the tools that mean that real world assets can be deployed into DeFi liquidity pools at scale.
Q:What makes Defactor special in the blockchain space?
A: There are a number of things that set us apart from other projects
Our main focus is to support businesses get access to liquidity and so we have a very clear customer base, we aren’t trying to build both a supply side (businesses) and a demand side (investors) – we are working with well known liquidity pools that have the demand side and we are concentrating on building the supply side and making it simpler and quicker for companies to access that liquidity
Another important differentiating factor is that we work across multiple asset classes. There are many projects focusing on NFTs or invoices or loans, at Defactor, we’re broadening the range of assets people can bring to DeFi to open up the space wider but also to offer investors the kinds of deals they wouldn’t usually see
However for me, one of the main things that sets us apart is our team.
We all have a long history in business and have pioneered the funding of real world assets in the DeFi space. We have a lot of experience in the corporate and trade finance space which means we understand the challenges well
and because of our experience we have a network of service providers and vendors that can help ensure that his project is a success
Q:Can you share with us detailed information on the $FACTR tokenomics and it’s usecase?
A: The $FACTR token will be required by real world asset originators to access the Defactor services creating an increasing demand for the token as the demand for the Defactor services rises and more asset originators are onboarded.
It will also act as a governance token. In order to participate in the governance of the Defactor ecosystem, token holders must stake their $FACTR incentivising token holders to participate in the Defactor network. Through community based governance $FACTR holders can influence changes to the tokenomics, the protocol fees and they can even influence the types of asset classes that can be accepted by Defactor.
Q:What is next on the Defactor roadmap?
A: We’re about to announce the launch of Springpad, a place where asset originators can try out the DeFi funding process
This is very exciting and will help us get an insight into the types of companies seeking finance by walking businesses through the DeFi finance life cycle
The dev team currently is focused on completing the onboarding of our first asset originator – Consol Freight, we are hooking everything up so that we can start funding before the end of the year and we are also in parallel working with the second large asset originator to have them ready for funding early next year
We’re also pleased to announce a partnership with The Graph who we’re working with to index DeFi transactions so we can improve our reporting and our partnership with Chainlink to serve out data on our platform to other interested parties as an oracle
After all that our focus will turn to adding new asset classes – the first being luxury goods
Q:With your token launch coming up soon tell us more about it.
A: Indeed, it is a really special event we have been structuring and preparing for few month now.
Our token generation event will be starting out with a Polkabridge launchpad on the 8th of November. We will then have a second launchpad with Mantra Dao Zendit on the 9th of November. The most interesting part of the launch is the Balancer Liquidity Bootstrapping Pool that will be running from the 10th to the 13th of November.
The Balancer is a method used so that the launch is fair. It creates a natural price discovery and prevents bot manipulation. If you want to read more about how it does this you can check out are medium blog post here – https://blog.defactor.com/introducing-the-defactor-balancer-lbp-75df37f9761
Q:What are the advantages of Defactor to the other alternatives in the Blockchain field?
A: Put simply, we make it simple for businesses to access finance via the DeFi space
We are allowing them to access crypto liquidity without having to run their own blockchain infrastructure or know much about crypto
The tools and services we provide are those that will help traditional businesses get financing – at scale –
on top of that, unlike other projects in this space we are open to a wide range of asset classes, invoices, NFTs, real estate, luxury goods – so we are open to all types of businesses seeking funding
but more than that we also work with a range of liquidity providers so unlike most other blockchain projects where you can only access one source of funding, we will be able to provide businesses a range of options so that they can choose their best terms
Q:Can you tell us about the partnerships you have secured ?
A: As one of pioneers in the RWA space, we have a valuable partnership with Centrifuge. Centrifuge is a liquidity provider that finances real world assets, and it is at the front foot of RWA. The idea is to keep strengthening the relationship with them and collaborating to increase the volume in Defi.
We have partnerships with The Graph and Chainlink. These will be valuable for creating risk assessment scoring on asset originators and allowing future developers to access and use this information.
At the moment we are partnering with companies such as LendWise, Accelerated Payments, iHuddle and Black Manta that add a lot of value to our ecosystem.
Finally, we have Consol Freight, they will be our 1st Asset Originator, and they have tremendous expertise in the RWA space, being one of the pioneers of using Defi liquidity to fund traditional financial operations.
Q:Since NFT is popular nowadays, is there a plan for NFT integration?
A: Our platform uses NFTs as key feature. The use we give to NFTs is financial, as we create a digital representation of a physical and lock it in liquidity pool to extract liquidity. Every single asset we take in our platform needs to be digitised, meaning that an NFT is created
Q:Where can I buy your tokens now, what are your current contracts address and how can I buy them and what are the benefits?
A: The tokens public yet.
Our token generation event will be starting out with a Polkabridge launchpad on the 8th of November. We will then have a second launchpad with Mantra Dao Zendit on the 9th of November. The most interesting part of the launch is the Balancer Liquidity Bootstrapping Pool that will be running from the 10th to the 13th of November. The Balancer is a method used so that the launch is fair. It creates a natural price discovery and prevents bot manipulation. If you want to read more about how it does this you can check out are medium blog post here – https://blog.defactor.com/introducing-the-defactor-balancer-lbp-75df37f9761
Q:I read that Defactor will do due diligence on the asset originators themselves and their practices thanks to asset tokenization and flow regulation to pools. But how do you maintain proper funding history and make sure limits are adhered to?
A: This is a great question, thanks for this
As part of the platform all transactions that flow through the platform will be stored on chain – one of the reasons we’ve partnered and obtained a grant with the Graph is for us to index those transactions and present them back to potential investors and those interested in the platform to show what funding has taken place and the performance of the asset originators i.e. were funds repaid on time, was there dilution, delinquency etc
In addition to this the platform maintains covenants for each of the liquidity pools that it works with. Each pool will have its own set of limits – could be limits on the value of a single asset, concentration limits for industry, debtors etc.
The rules will be set within the platform when the pool is launched and then maintained automatically by the platform to ensure that limits are not breached
Q:How can users stay updated with this project? Are there channels, including local communities where users can get the latest updates??
A: We have plenty of new announcements coming up, you can connect with Defactor on the following channels:
Q:Do you have a Token Burning plan to increase Token value and attract Investors to invest?
A: We believe that token burning actually has no positive influence on the value of a tokens ecosystem. The people who burn tokens are usually the ones minting more tokens. The buy-back and burn system is outdated. We have a buy-back and make model, where revenue generated from the platform is used to buy tokens and they are used to encourage positive actors in the ecosystem.
Q:How many team members do you have? Do they have enough experience in the blockchain field? Do they have any experience on working in crypto and non-crypto project?
A: There have been a few questions regarding the team so I can answer them here
The core team has been working in the DeFi space for the past 18 months and were the first to bring real world assets to Maker and Centrifuge, we’ve been through the challenges of bringing a traditional business to DeFi and obtaining funding and then scaling that funding – this is why we built Defactor, to help other companies from the lessons we’ve learnt
We also all have extensive experience in trade and SME finance, I personally have worked in the space for over a decade and have built multiple platforms that provide funding to companies
We have a unique combination of crypto and non-crypto experience which really sets us apart
Q:In your opinion, will Defactor development direction be most attractive to financial institutions and large organizations? To do that, how has Defactor team tried and succeeded?
A: We definitely feel that the project will be interesting to financial institutions and large organisations
As I mentioned, the aim is for us to be able to bring in traditional businesses into the DeFi space and we are already talking to large asset originators that are looking for a consistent flow of funding and are turning to the DeFi space
When it comes to financial institutions you can already see large banks as well as the likes of Mastercard starting to enter the space
DeFi is here to stay and we are looking to leverage our experience to build a platform that can grow as DeFi gains in popularity
Q:Do you have any NFT plans and its integration ahead in the roadmap? Also do you have any passive income options and incentivization reward for a long term hoder?
A: Yes, NFTs are one of the asset classes we are looking at bringing on board the platform, though this is a little further down the roadmap
Staking will be available to token holders at launch – we see this as a long term project and want holders to stay with us for the long run
ICOSpeaks hosted an AMA Session with the Defactor Team. That’s all for today.
Thanks to all users who participated.
Thanks, Defactor for being with us
Thanks, all and see you soon😉
Cheers 🥂
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