Ampleforth runs a Bi-Weekly “office hours” session (AMA) on Discord in which we try to answer any questions put forward by AMPL holders.
Today, office hours were held by Brandon Iles, founder of Ampleforth, alongside Simon Manka, Head of Growth.
If you have any questions that you would like to put forward to the team for the next AMA session, feel free to submit them through this form.
The following is a quick summary of all the important questions covered in this AMA.
Let’s get started!
Question 1:
Negative correlation with btc is one of the aim of ampl or not. I wonder.
Answer (from Simon):
A common misconception is that AMPL aims to be negatively correlated- that is not true. Negative correlation (or inversely correlated) would be something that moves in the exact opposite direction. AMPL is not designed to move in the opposite direction- but rather AMPL has the potential to be "un"correlated - meaning it has its own unique movement pattern
Question 2:
Is the team confident that it can avoid the hacks that have impacted other balancer pools with ampl?
Answer (from Brandon):
We are about as confident on Balancer as you can be for any smart contract platform. We've had an ETH/AMPL test pool running for a few months now with no issues. As part of the joint Balancer/Ample smart pool work (coming soon) we also got audits from Trail of Bits (samczsun) specifically about ample in Balancer to make sure we wouldn't have similar issues to STA. Remember though, that not every pool is explicitly supported!
More info on that here: https://www.ampltalk.org/app/forum/technology-development-17/topic/supported-dex-pools-61/ Make sure to read that before becoming an LP there
Question 3:
Thoughts on recent volatility? at what point, price-wise, or timeline, do you hope to see AMPL volatility decrease. Makes it unusable in the real-world when the asset is $2 then $.70. Thoughts?
Answer (from Brandon):
I think only time will tell. The market is still very much learning how to deal with AMPL, and the space itself is in so much flux as well. I think it's interesting to look at where stability from traditional fiat currencies comes from. The supply of the USD, for example, could change drastically before you see any changes in prices. A lot of its stability comes naturally from the nominal rigidity you get from denominating contracts, debt, wages, goods, services, etc. But I'd caution to index too much on stability. A lot of the early value of ampl doesn't come from being "a stablecoin".
Additional Answer(from Zack Adam - Community Member):
Question 4:
Was a liquidity provider/market maker hired to get us to that $600mil mcap last month, or was that organic?
Answer (from Brandon):
The activity during that time period surprised all of us. All organic, as far as I know
Question 5:
Why are you releasing the next beehive whilst the existing hive is still running? - Why not just extend the program duration?
Answer (from Brandon):
The geysers are meant to be an open participation model of distribution that also supports the overall health of the ecosystem. A big part of that is making sure it's as easy as possible for new people to enter into the community. If we extended the same geyser indefinitely, then it becomes increasingly difficult for new users to complete with existing ones.
It would be very difficult to get any share as a newbie, based on "staking-token-seconds" So we expect to have rotating geysers going forward, with some overlap to avoid market disturbances. There's no rush to leave Beehive 1, if you don't want to!
*NUTELLA VS PEANUT BUTTER*
Question 6:
Strange question but I haven't found it anywhere why did you guys call the project Ampleforth? Why not the Ducat?
Answer (from Brandon):
Ampleforth is the name of a character in Orwell's 1984. He's a character who is supposed to translate literature into Newspeak. Ultimately, he refuses to replace a word in a poem. We admired that respect for truth. (Though don't read too far into that analogy) Also, it's a combination of "Ample" meaning abundance, and "Forth" meaning forward. That sounded right to us. Ducat is cool too, but is used in many places already
Question 7:
When all tokens will be circulated?
Answer (from Brandon):
https://miro.medium.com/max/2000/1*ylyXwfrVafH85zdLv7bzAQ.png
Question 8:
oh what do you think of liberty dollars Brandon? Do you think Ampleforth may face similar problems?
Answer (from Brandon):
Funny you bring that up, it's one of the things that made me very bearish on Bitcoin in the early days, but never turned out to be a problem. Partly, because Bitcoin is so difficult the hamper, and partly because it doesn't directly compete with the US Dollar the way Liberty Dollar did. For ample to succeed it needs that first part, at least. I also think Ample is different enough from existing fiat currencies that there's room for both to exist
That’s all folks!