Thanks a lot for actively participating in the Alpaca Finance AMA held on 24th Aug 2021 at the Game of Bitcoins Channel. We really appreciate all your support. This post is a recap of the entire session held with Alpaca Finance

We have with us Firras

My name is Firras and I am part of Alpaca Finance' Business Development team.

Alpaca Finance is the largest lending protocol allowing leveraged yield farming on Binance Smart Chain. It helps lenders earn safe and stable yields, and offers borrowers undercollateralized loans for leveraged yield farming positions, vastly multiplying their farming principals and resulting profits.‌

So for example, if you had 5,000 USD to farm with somewhere like PancakeSwap, you could borrow up to 5x that much from us and farm with 30,000 USD instead , earning 6x the yields you would on PancakeSwap. In short, we allow you to maximize your profits. 👍🏻

Q1. When it comes to platforms like Alpaca, security is a fundamental pillar. What are the security protocols that you have included in your platform to protect all the assets and products of your main commercial partners and users? How invulnerable are they to malicious attacks?

In short, Alpaca is amongst the safest and most secure projects on BSC and we have just been named as one of the 5 most secure platforms having the highest security score - but let me tell you why:

In terms of security, our code is open-source with every line having been combed through by hundreds of independent developers. We even have an ongoing bug bounty program to offer them high rewards if they spot as little as a minor issue. If you’re a developer, we invite you to have a look through our code yourself on our github.

We’ve also had multiple top security firms provide audits for our code. All our smart contracts have been audited by different auditors and in overall we have 11 audits as of now - I think that’s pretty unique in this space and shows that security is extremely important to us.

Then, besides extensive code reviews having been conducted both internally and externally, there are also built-in safeguards in place. For example, all the contracts we deploy are owned by a Timelock contract. Thus, any changes made by our developers will have a 24-hour lag before becoming effective. That means users will have ample time to withdraw their funds and exit safely in the case of any questionable update to the code. With tens of thousands of users, you can believe that every small change is under constant scrutiny from many participants. At times, it’s a tough job dealing with all their questions, but it’s honest work.

Q2. Will you consider adding more tokens to the Lend section later? Because I saw that you have some recent market partnerships and a lot of projects have been contacting you for cooperation, what are your considerations for selecting partners?

As of now we have added the most important tokens with the highest demand to our lending section.  That does not mean that we won’t consider any other tokens to be added to the lending section - once there is a significant demand for a particular asset which would make sense to be added, we will evaluate and then take it from there. So, to answer this question, as of now, there won’t be any other asset added for lending, but in the future we will need to see.

With regards to partnerships, I think you are referring to our Grazing Range and our Featured Leveraged Pool Program. Yes, we have been onboarding new projects to these sections for a while now. Before getting into the requirements for these, let me just briefly outline the details of these.

On the Grazing Range section, you can stake ibAlpaca to the respective project pool and and receive rewards. In addition, if you stake a minimum 500/5000/50,000 (three tiers) of ibALPACA in a pool from its inception to its end (typically 4 weeks), you will receive something special — an exclusive Alpaca NFT.

We also have partnered with projects which we featured with a leveraged yield farming pool. E.g. PMON-BUSD was the most recent one which we added there and where users can amplify their yields through adding leverage up to 2x.

The requirements for these projects are mostly about having a rewards pool as well as sufficient liquidity either on PancakeSwap or Wault.Finance and certain security parameters need to be in place as well. If projects do have a rewards pool setup, we usually go through a security scorecard which we then share with our community in the announcement article of the collaboration.

Our consideration for partners is that we like to support the projects in the BSC ecosystem which add value to the overall community and which come up with certain unique features or functionalities.This can vary across different projects, let it be NFTs, oracles, yield aggregators, blockchain games etc. - but we evaluate the projects individually. 👍🏻

Q3. How does Alpaca choose which project are added in the new Grazing Range program? Are they all good?

First of all - yes, they are all good :)

As mentioned earlier we are open to any kind of project in the BSC ecosystem. But the basic requirements in terms of security have to be in place - we want to make sure that the partners we chose to feature on our platform have enough security measures in place so that there are no second thoughts - at the end we screen and evaluate the projects on behalf of our community - and we want to keep the herd safe and secure.

That is why we apply the security scorecard to all of our projects like I mentioned before - in case a certain security element is not there while evaluating the project we highlight this and recommend solutions but do refrain from any collaboration until the security risk has been mitigated. Again, through our security screening we make sure that the project has the basic security measures in place - all this information is then passed to our community via our announcement. 👍🏻

Q4. With so many NFTs Alpaca has created, will you be more into the NFT business? While many project competitor is launching their NFT marketplace, what’s Alpaca’s plans about it?

We are BSC’s largest lending and leveraged yield farming protocol and that is our core business. But I can definitely say that we are obviously observing what’s happening in the market and we have been successfully participating in NFT-related things for months now and will continue this, as long as it makes sense with our strategy.

However, to further answer your question, We’re an NFT creator of exclusive, high-quality works. 

Our primary focus with NFTs is engagement. Yes, there is a collectible aspect to all our NFTs because people speculate on their value. In fact, I know some of our NFTs have been sold for hundreds of dollars, and I’ve heard of deals ongoing for over a thousand, and for the most part, the vast majority of holders seem unwilling to sell right now. However, the collectible aspect is really only the tip of the iceberg with our approach to NFTs.

When we decided to create NFT campaigns and to integrate NFTs into our protocol, we weren’t thinking, “How can we create some trendy collectibles?” We were thinking, “How can we build engagement, a brand, a universe?” That’s why our NFT animated series exists, because there is a story behind the designs, an entire world of lore to explore, and each episode reveals a little more of that and we are approaching the 4th and last episode of Little Al.

By the end of the fourth episode, people will begin to see the bigger picture. After that, this world will continue unfolding more and more in front of their eyes. And it’ll be something they can continue to explore not only through this animated series, but also other forms of media we have planned that will add additional dimensions to the Alpaca world.

This last part is hard but it makes the integration more meaningful, and we’ve started coming up with solutions. For example, lots of people ask for more leverage, but the max leverage is set to protect new users from exposing themselves to too much risk. For experienced users, it’s probably okay to offer them more leverage, but how can we tell who’s experienced and who isn’t?

Well, one way is if they own some particular NFTs. That would mean they’ve been using Alpaca for a while, long enough that they should understand the finer points. Even if they buy the NFTs on a marketplace, it shows they at least have more advanced knowledge of NFTs, BSC, and DeFi, and the drive to pay for such an item, suggesting that they should be more responsible in how they interact with leverage. In this case, you could say this NFT is like a license.

Of course, this is only one example. More information will come out gradually. Even though we’ve already done some unique things such as the first NFT animated series with a story, event-oriented airdrops for AMA, and introduced NFT farming, it’s important to realize that there will be further developments with regards to NFTs which we might be participating in. 👍🏻

Q5. What is your top priorities in the end of 2021 and the coming 2022, so Could you share some plans for the upcoming year?Which part of the project are you most focused on right now?

We’re planning such things as multi-chain expansion, a stablecoin, adding utility to our NFTs, and growing the platform through new features and products, such as a line of structured products for institutions.

We have an extensive and detailed roadmap for the remainder of 2021 which can be viewed here: https://docs.alpacafinance.org/our-protocol-1/future-development-plan

For 2022, we already have some ideas and plans in place, but we cannot share them as of now - but make sure you follow us to get all the new updates. 👍🏻

Q6. There was a flash loan attack on Pancake Bunny few months back which crashed its token value. How secure is Alpaca against such an attack.

We dont support flash loans - so this wont apply to Alpaca Finance.

Q7. Can you explain how is your Tokenomics Distribution? How many tokens Will be minted ? And How many tokens Will be locked by the team?

Our max supply is 188 000 000 - all of the information about our tokens you can find in our docs

https://docs.alpacafinance.org/tokenomics/alpaca-tokens

Q8. What are your marketing strategies and how will you have a global expansion and adoption for your project where English is not spoken?What are your next upcoming priorities? What is in your roadmap ?

good question - we actually have released multi-language support for our platform, now you can pick your language in the drop-down menu. 

just go to our website and next to your wallet address you can find the drop down list.

Q9. Do you have AUDIT credentials or are you working to AUDIT your project, to make it more secure and reliable?

we have conducted 11 audits by external parties, you can find all of the reports here

https://docs.alpacafinance.org/transparency

Q10. What is the ultimate vision your project is trying to achieve in the cryptocurrency market? Obviously the entire space will experience tremendous growth in the next few years, but what role do you want your project to play in it?

As for our vision, we want to create a more capital efficient DeFi ecosystem, allowing users to earn the highest yields with the given capital available to them. By doing this in a safe way, we believe Alpaca is playing an important role in helping spread DeFi, bringing the power of finance to each and every person's fingertips, and every alpaca's paw…