UniLend & Mirror Protocol AMA Recap - January 20th

By CryptoTrainee | cryptoTrainee | 30 Jan 2021

Hi Folks!

To discuss the partnership with the Mirror Protocol, UniLend Finance organized an AMA session on January 20. This AMA was held on the UniLend TG channel (https://t.me/UniLendFinance). Check out below the recap of this event.

Segment 1: Introduction and basic questions

UniLend:

Welcome everyone for the AMA with Mirror Protocol! Today we have @AG_1000 and @jeffreykuan with us. Welcome to our community

Jeff Kuan:

Hey guys, great to be here.

Aayush Gupta:

Thanks Ayush and Anmol- glad to be here!

UniLend:

Awesome! So lets jump right into it. Can we start with a brief introduction from you guys?

Jeff Kuan:

Sure, I"m Jeff - I lead business development at Terraform Labs, the co behind Mirror Protocol. In a previous life, I was a consultant, product manager at various startups, and most recently graduated from Wharton with my MBA. Have been in the crypto space since ~2014

Aayush Gupta:

Sure-I am Aayush Gupta-I am the Community Lead and Manager at Terraform Labs. I am a 2013 graduate from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT Delhi) and a CFA & FRM holder. I come with >7 years of experience in Finance and Research, and am also an active investor in stock markets and new age technology startups. Prior to joining Terraform Labs, I was working as an Equity Research Analyst at JP Morgan covering stocks in India Tech & Telecom, and US automotive sectors. As an angel investor in various budding blockchain startups, I remain closely associated with active investments, marketing and community building for early stage blockchain startups.

UniLend:

That's amazing guys! So first of all tell us about Mirror Protocol? What does it do?

Jeff Kuan:

Mirror is a 24*7 live interface for buying/selling synthetic stocks like Tesla and Apple on Google store/ Apple App store and web. Mirror markets are live 24*7, require no KYC and enable everyone to buy stocks in a non-custodial manner. We are currently present on 2 blockchains Terra and Ethereum and will be integrating with Binance Smart Chain soon. We launched just ~6 weeks ago, and the protocol has $218m in TVL on both Terra and Ethereum with 40+ mAsset whitelistings coming shortly.

Aayush Gupta:

And within these 6 weeks, we have travelled a lot of distance and established some great partnerships with Layer 2 protocols like Injective, Harvest Finance and of course Unilend!!

UniLend:

$218 m already, you guys are doing amazing. That is one huge accomplishment.

Aayush Gupta:

Thanks a lot. We believe that this TVL will rise raplidly with our ongoing partnerships. You can think of Mirror Protocol as a Layer 1 protocol with its vast diaspora of stocks like Apple, Tesla etc. Other protocols like Injective are building on top of Mirror as Layer 2. Terra (Layer 0), Mirror (Layer 1), Injective (Layer 2) and Band (oracle provider). And then Unilend of course will definitely put wings to mAssets upon launch! :)

UniLend:

Definitely ;). So the next burning question is whom do you consider as your competitors?

Aayush Gupta:

I would say “Robinhood” is our prime competitor. There are a ton of features that we offer which Robinhood doesn’t! For instance: (a) 24*7 live markets (Robinhood markets open and close in line with timings on NASDAQ/NYSE) (b) Global accessibility (Robinhood is not available for use in many countries including India) (c) No KYC/Non-custodial (When you are holding stocks on Mirror, you hold the stocks; in case of Robinhood, its a third party appointed by Robinhood that holds stock for you) (d) More importantly: Leveraged stocks (Go 5X long TSLA by borrowing UST or USDC on Unilend) (e) Yield on stocks (hold TSLA stocks and lend it on Unilend to earn USD yield) (f) Gift stocks to your buddies: I like the tagline "Stop gifting Amazon gift cards to your friends, gift them Amazon stock with Mirror"

Jeff Kuan:

People often compare us to Synthetix- we believe Mirror is more capital efficient (only 150% is needed for collateral vs 750% in Synthetix), fees are significantly cheaper, oracles are updated every 15 secs (In Synthetix you need to wait for at least 3 mins) and the most important thing is Mirror is live on Mainnet and it offers a full working product (a sleek mobile app, called mirror wallet). We also aspire for mirror to bridge the gap between crypto and traditional fintech, and to make crypto more accessible with normal people with things like mirror wallet.

UniLend:

I am definitely going to try out this one :D

Jeff Kuan:

Haha—you can do this with Mirror mobile wallet app today! :)

UniLend:

Great! we know you two amazing folks are here, who else are the team members behind Mirror Protocol?

Jeff Kuan:

Do Kwon is the founder and CEO of Terraform Labs (terra.money), the company that launched Mirror -he studied computer science at Stanford & was an NLP engineer at Microsoft - also founded a startup called anyfi.io that worked on B2B mesh networking solutions for large enterprises. There are around a dozen devs / product folks at Terra that are working full time on Mirror. Nick Platias is our head of research: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-platias/ . Stanford studied math at princeton, and was formerly at a hedge fund lots of people involved 🙂

Aayush Gupta:

To add to Jeff's description— Do Kwon is Forbes 30 under 30: https://www.forbes.com/profile/do-kwon/?sh=162fcdc81da3

UniLend:

Seems like you guys have the complete package! Strong team indeed.

Aayush Gupta:

Haha -yes. I have joined Terra recently. One of the pleasures I have had at Terra is to meet one of the greatest teams in crypto space and some of the most brilliant minds from Silicon Valley!

Jeff Kuan:

We're also actively hiring, so check out our our job portal: https://terra.breezy.hr/

UniLend:

Can you tell us more about your association of Mirror with UniLend?

Aayush Gupta:

Sure-we are very excited to partner with your (Unilend) team. Unilend’s interest in enabling lending/borrowing on ERC20 assets beyond assets like Ethereum and BTC made them a natural partner for us. I cannot emphasize this enough —Unilend integration with Mirror will be the first case of synthetic equities used for collateral in a DeFi money market protocol. I hope viewers understand how significant this is: 1) Our partnership will enable users to borrow crypto assets like stablecoins, BTC or other crypto assets against their stock holdings (mAssets)
2) People can accrue appealing yields based on borrowing demand in Unilend lending protocol. I feel that there is immense power in bringing capital markets on top of blockchain and this power multiples once you enable lending and borrowing markets for stocks. Why? Because this generates an immense amount of capital efficiencies. This is not true for stock markets today and is only possible via combination of Defi and capital markets.

UniLend:

Very well stated.

Aayush Gupta:

To be frank, I know a ton of my friends/acquaintances at my Investment Bank who who wanted to go long TSLA with a 2X or 5X leverage back when it was 250-300 USD! You will be able to do that once Unilend is live--And there is more- imagine if your Amazon stock not only grows in value but also earns you yields that are higher than your bank deposits!! This is what Mirror + Unilend brings to Defi ecosystem.---Also, liquidity mining on AMMs for stocks like Twitter and Apple make so much sense. Impermanent loss for these assets are extremely small unlike volatile crypto assets. I personally see this partnership as a step change in the way stock trading has been done until today -- combination of trustless lending & borrowing in stock markets is a game changer and will be one of the most powerful use cases of blockchain in real world!🙂

UniLend:

Bridging the gap between traditional finance and decentralized finance.

Jeff Kuan:

Just to echo some of the things that Aayush mentioned - i think it unlocks a ton of opportunity and brings capital efficiencies to the overall ecosystem. We were really impressed with the vision of the Unilend team, and are very excited to partner with you guys to help the entire crypto world take a massive step forward.

Aayush Gupta:

Can't agree more. Its been a pleasure working with Unilend team!!

UniLend:

We are excited too Ayush Grupta. Now for the 1st time users can Lend and Borrow hot shares like Tesla and FAANG and earn from multiple vehicles.

Aayush Gupta:

Absolutely! To an extent I believe, this will be revelation for those in stock markets to even imagine that something like this is possible. I understand that lending and borrowing is sort of underrated in crypto space but it hasnt been done in stocks before. Wait until floodgates open!

UniLend:

Haha, we cant even imagine the possibilities now tbh.

Aayush Gupta:

True

UniLend:

Moving ahead tell us a few things being worked on for Mirror's roadmap?

Jeff Kuan:

There are a ton of things on our roadmap, but let me start by saying MIR, the governance token of Mirror Protocol, was distributed via fair launch from day 1. So our community is very involved in the initiatives that we execute on some of the things on our short-term roadmap include: ETF; Futures; Decentralized fund management vehicles; More stocks; Dividends through Anchor integration. And a BSC integration.

Aayush Gupta:

Longer term we would be partnering with a lot of Layer 2 protocols to improve access to mAssets for Defi users as well as enabling fiat on-off ramps for mainstream users in multiple countries. Further, one of our most critically awaited product "Anchor" will be launched in this quarter. Anchor allows users of Terra stablecoins like UST and KRT to earn a stable yield from staking rewards of major blockchains like Polkadot, Cosmos, Terra, Solana and Ethereum. More information on Anchor is available here: https://anchorprotocol.com/ Anchor has a lot of synergies with Mirror on Terra side.

UniLend:

Interesting 🤔. Cant wait to try that. Now lets move to the next segment of the AMA where we open the floor for our members. Bring on the heat.

Segment 2: Live Questions

Q1. Where do I get information about your team? Why do you prefer to be anonymous? Do you have a plan to identify your team later?

Aayush Gupta:

We are not anonymous. Please refer to questions asked during the AMA for team details. Mirror team:
- Do Kwon (Terra's CEO) profile https://www.forbes.com/profile/do-kwon/?sh=162fcdc81da3 Do is founder for Mirror.finance and terra.money -studied computer science at Stanford & was an NLP engineer at Microsoft - also founded a startup called anyfi.io that worked on B2B mesh networking solutions for large enterprises. There's around a dozen devs / product folks at Terra that are working full time on Mirror. -
-@Sihyeok studied math at princeton and is a trading / finance whiz - also speaks like 6 languages fluently. https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-platias/ Head of research at Terra ^ Stanford math award winner.
- @simcheolhwan, Sim is the boss (front end developer) that built out all the Mirror related web apps.
- Jeff Kuan: Jeff is lead business development at Terra. In a previous life, he was a consultant, product manager at various startups, and most recently graduated from Wharton with his MBA. I personally am the Community Lead and Manager at Terraform Labs- joined Terra recently. I am a 2013 graduate from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT Delhi) and a CFA & FRM holder. I come with >7 years of experience in Finance and Research, and am also an active investor in stock markets and new age technology startups. Prior to joining Terraform Labs, I was working as an Equity Research Analyst at JP Morgan covering stocks in India Tech & Telecom, and US automotive sectors.

Q2. Could you please elaborate more about your tokenomics? What’s the total supply and what kind of plans do you have regarding the token unlocks in the future?

Aayush Gupta:

You can see token release schedule for MIR tokens here: https://docs.mirror.finance/protocol/mirror-token-mir#cumulative-distribution-schedule-in-millions

Q3. Community support is one of the biggest aspects of a project’s success. Most projects have programs that interact with their users. Does you have any special plans to attract and expand the community and improve the user experience?

Jeff Kuan:

MIR has a community fund, that we'll be using to fund initiatives to grow and reward our community for their support. If you're interseted in participating, I would encourage you to check out the Mirror governance forum!

Q4. Too many projects promise magic but never release any working product or prove any revenue, Within a short/long time of release. Is your project also like this? If not can u tell us, What makes your project different from other projects?

Aayush Gupta:

We have a product which is already live. Check terra.mirror.finance or eth.mirror.finance TVL of $218 mn in 6 weeks is no small feat!

Q5. What is role of $MIR token in your ecosystem ? usecase & Utilities of $MIR Token ? What can we do with $MIR Token?

Aayush Gupta:

Mirror token (MIR) is Mirror Protocol’s fairly distributed governance token. The MIR token has two main features: Captures CDP closure fees: When Mirror CDPs are closed, a 1.5% fee is charged on the collateral. The fees are aggregated daily and used to purchase MIR tokens on Terraswap
Protocol governance: The Mirror token can be used to change major parameters in the protocol, such as the trading fee take rate and the position fee. It can also be used to make spend proposals against the on-chain community pool holding MIR tokens, which can be used to fund developer grants and add incentives to the protocol. MIR is also used to incentivize users to farm yields by staking LP tokens which were minted by providing liquidity for MIR and mAssets. Yield is paid to the users from MIRs that are newly minted through annual inflation, which gradually increases the total supply of MIR until the end of 4th year. In future iterations of Mirror, MIR will serve further purposes for the protocol that increase its utility and value.

Q6. We all know that the Ethereum Network has many problems: scalability issues, high fees, slow speeds, and many more,
Why did Mirror Protocol choose to build its own token on the ERC20 network over the other networks that more fast and scalable?

Jeff Kuan:

Mirror is actually on both the Terra blockchain, as well as on Ethereum. We chose to expand to Ethereum because that's where the majority of users are, but the experience is significantly faster / cheaper on Terra: https://terra.mirror.finance/

Q7. How secured is your smart contracts code, did you ever audit it via any third party? What has been the biggest challenge you have faced in Mirror Protocol development?

Aayush Gupta:

Answered already in a Q before: Our development team has worked with the Cyber Unit team and third-party consultants to create a safe and trustworthy protocol. See the Mirror Smart Contract audit by Cyberunit here (Link: https://docsend.com/view/p4es2dgvwadamgqg). All contract code and balances can be publicly verified (Link: https://github.com/mirror-protocol).

Q8. Can you please talk about the choice to have such a low total supply of tokens in the context of yield farming/Defi? What are the pros and cons of this particular tokenomic model? With such a low supply, how does this affect long term sustainability? What happens after 3 years?

Aayush Gupta:

Check token schedule: https://docs.mirror.finance/protocol/mirror-token-mir#cumulative-distribution-schedule-in-millions

Q9. As a passionate Mirror Protocol community member, I'm interested in contributing positively towards the growth of the project, how can i achieve this?

Jeff Kuan:

get involved in mirror governance here! https://terra.mirror.finance/gov

Q10. Southeast Asia is a very vibrant market and many project developed here so with # MIRROR PROTOCOL . what do you think about Southeast Asia and do you have any plan to develop here?

Jeff Kuan:

We're excited about providing access to mirrored assets globally. Users in SE Asia can already access Mirror through our web app: https://terra.mirror.finance/ or by downloading Mirror wallet on the Apple store or Google Play.

Q11. Collaboration and partnerships are one of the cornerstones to making DeFi more widespread, Can you share some of the partnerships you have formed with existing blockchain foundations recently #Mirror Protocol?

Aayush Gupta:

We are partners with Unilend, Harvest, Injective protocol, Mask and many more are yet to be announced! Check Luna Announcements channel: https://t.me/Luna_Terra_Lounge

Q12. Can you tutor us the procedure how to lend money through miror-unilend completely?

Aayush Gupta:

Yes, we can put up a guide once this goes live.

Q13. Marketing strategy is very important. A product can be established on the market without marketing and promotion, whatever it is good. So what are your plans for this? How will you build strong relationships with communities?

Aayush Gupta:

Yes we are very upbeat on our marketing compaign as well. Interestingly, Mirror community plays a role in marketing of MIR as well. They actively pass governance proposals and ensure that any funds used are used judiciously. TFL of course is doing is best with its global suite of talent and organising stuff like trading competitions and referral compaign to increase visibility for Mirror.

Q14. How do you make users believe that MIRROR PROTOCOL is a high-quality, long-term project? Please share 3 main points to convince me and other angel investors to invest in MIRROR PROTOCOL long term?

Aayush Gupta:

Its simple—we are better than Robinhood.
24*7 live markets (Robinhood markets open and close in line with timings on NASDAQ/NYSE)
Global accessibility (Robinhood is not available for use in many countries including India)
No KYC/Non-custodial stock ownership (When you are holding stocks on Mirror, you hold the stocks; in case of Robinhood, its a third party appointed by Robinhood that holds stock for you)
Leveraged stocks (Go 5X long TSLA by borrowing UST or USDC on Unilend)
Yield on stocks -- hold TSLA stocks and lend it on Unilend to earn USD yield.
Gift stocks to your buddies:Stop gifting Amazon gift cards to your friends, gift them Amazon stock with Mirror.

Q15. Staking is the new trend. What staking options are available for $MIR token? Are there any incentives for staking? What are the various ways to earn token and are there any limits to amount of $MIR I can earn?

Jeff Kuan:

You can stake on Terra side here: https://terra.mirror.finance/stake or on Ethereum side here: https://eth.mirror.finance/.

Aayush Gupta:

Staking on MIR and mAssets is extremely attractive. You just need to visit terra.mirror.finance and eth.mirror.finance to know! Drop in your TG group and we can help you in a lot more ways.

Q16. As a crypto project did you have meet any difficulty when you start up to become a successful project now? How did covid19 affect to your project?

Aayush Gupta:

We launched post COVID in Dec 2020- so its not too applicable for Mirror. But for Terra (LUNA), absent COVID we would have been in 4 geographies instead of 2 currently. Having said that this gave us time to work on Defi ecosystem with Dapps like Mirror and Anchor—and to an extent made us even stronger than before.

Q17. There are 3 core issues prevalent in crypto and blockchain: Security, Interoperability, and Scalability. How does Mirror Protocol plan to overcome these issues?

Aayush Gupta:

Terra is pretty scalable (we are based on Cosmos SDK)—block times of 6s—we have a pretty decentralized network run by over 62 global validators. We are tacking interoprability in a very innovative way. Infact, interoperability is going to another one of our key strengths.

Jeff Kuan:

Regarding security: the protocol is decentralized and has been audited by several firms. Regarding interoperability: wer'e live on Terra, Ethereum, and Binance Smart Chain soon. More chains to come. Regarding scalability: Mirror is as scalable as the chain the app is on. For Terra side, block times are 6s

Q18. As You know, Many people judge a Project By the Token price, What do you have to Say to investors? What's the plan to increase the Token Demand?

Aayush Gupta:

Our superior product and product market fit appeals to strong investors. We are builders first before anything else.

Q19. Does the Mirror Protocol team have a training and guidance system for newcomers to cryptocurrency? How do you attract and reach them?

Aayush Gupta:

Defi users are already well versed. For mainstream users, our Mirror mobile wallet app on Plystore/Appstore gives an experience similar to top quality apps you use on mobiles. So blockchain is completely abstracted from the main user.

Q20. On what platforms are mirrors available? Can I use Mirror on my phone?

Aayush Gupta:

Yes you can use Mirror on both android and iphones. Mirror is currently on 2 blockchains Terra and Ethereum. BSC integration will be done soon (before end of this month).

UniLend:

This was a great AMA, giving a very deep info about the project and future perspective to our community. It was great to have you @AG_1000 and @jeffreykuan. Our community is always excited to know more about our partners.