Kriptobi, one of the most active groups in Turkey on cryptocurrencies, hosted international marketing managers Luke and Blake DeCus project on April 08, 2021. In the first phase of our event, the DeCus project was introduced to our community members with group managers’ questions and our guest’s answers. In the second phase, 3 questions collected via Twitter were asked to our guests, and in the third phase, the ‘live Q&A’ section was completed. In the second and third stages, our community members, whose questions were answered, were rewarded with a gift worth 10$ at the time of reward distribution. If you also want to participate in future AMA events and win while being informed, you can join the Kriptobi community.

Stage 1 (Questions of our group managers, answers of our guest)

Question 1. Thank you for accepting our invitation. Please briefly introduce yourself, including your background, role in the company, and your team.
[email protected]: Luke and I are both in charge of international marketing for Decus. We've been in the DeFi space for some time. And the Decus team is made up of many renowned scholars in Computer science, statistics, and cartography.

[email protected]: Yup, our team has a solid background.
[email protected]: here is a quick chart showing the solid background of our team....all A+ scholars in their fields.
[email protected]: The research director, technical director Etc are all from Tsinghua, the Yao class.
[email protected]: Yes, that is one of China’s top universities.
[email protected]: For people who don’t know Tsinghua and Peking University, you can regard them as Stanford and Harvard in China.
[email protected]: Yes, that’s a good way to explain it. And, once we introduce the tech behind this project, you will really understand the geniuses behind the tech.
[email protected]: By looking at the background of our team members, you will know that something excellent will be done by us.

Question 2. Could you give brief information about what DeCus is? What does he aim to do and solve in this sector?
[email protected]: 2020 has seen a huge year for DeFi on Ethereum Network, but Bitcoin, the biggest player, has been shut out. BTC holders can’t access DeFi services, liquidity mining, farming, etc. That’s where Decus comes in. We are a bridge to allow BTC entrance into the ETH DeFI world. We provide a cross-chain custody system that is decentralized and trustless, and that uses a proprietary algorithm that allows for an extremely low collateralization rate. So, your BTC can now enjoy the DeFi world as eBTC with low collateralization and high security through decentralization.

So, just to repeat.......we allow cross-chain custody of assets
[email protected]: Yup, so BTC is kind of left behind for the trend of Defi, that’s one of the reasons for us to start Decus.
[email protected]: So, BTC holders can bring their BTC into the ETH DeFI world, or other chains. Of course, there are some projects doing something similar, but not with the low collateralization rates we do...and not with the higher decentralization rates and higher security that we have.
[email protected]: eBTC will be a good start for us to examine our mechanism and model.
[email protected]: Yes, eBTC will be the first signature product. Users deposit their BTC and can receive eBTC on the Etherum chain so they can access all the DeFi goodies! lol
[email protected]: That’s right, the same mechanism and model can be applied to create eLTC and etc.

[email protected]: eBTC also has much lower collateralization rates than competitors like tBTC and RenBTC.
For RenBTC BTC, you are looking at collateralization rates of 150% up to 300%! But, Decus eBTC has collateralization rates of 30%-50% and sometimes even lower! This blows the competition away.
Yes, we are at the sweet spot of more decentralization and lower collateralization.....sweet spots mean more home runs, of course. I guess this is a Turkish group so maybe the Baseball analogies don't work as well.....so, whatever the same thing would be in soccer as a home run in baseball lol.

Question 3. Which part of the project do you focus on right now? And what marketing strategies do you have to get a big share of the market?
[email protected]: So DeCus is currently focusing on the development of eBTC minting/redeeming system and the optimization of our decentralized custody smart contract. This is the top priority as it is the foundation of the platform. Once that is done, marketing can kick into gear.

But, one of our best marketing resources will be our large network of Bitcoin miners in China who will be supporting us. Plus, we will be collaborating with several large-scale DeFi protocols for the adoption of eBTC. Plus, we already have forged relationships with DODO, dForce, Fortube, and others. We are also cooperating with overseas communities.

Question 4. As it is known, strong investors and partners in the crypto market have always provided good benefits to new projects. At this point, can you tell us about the investors and partners of your project? What benefits do you expect from these partners and investors?

[email protected]: partnerships are definitely important...and we have a lot of good ones already lined up Our seed funding round closed in March and we received funding from several large and influential players: SevenX, FBG, Puzzle Ventures, dForce Labs, DODO, Conflux, Parallel Ventures, MCDEX, etc. So our seed funding round was already very successful and not only brought in cash to push the project forward but allowed us to bring in some very smart partners Our next step will be conducting an IDO so as to bring in a wider group of supporters.
[email protected]: And also, got some support from the blockchain community like Mr. Block.
[email protected]: Yes, Mr. Block, a key crypto KOL is a big supporter of our project.
[email protected]: We are at the stage to get more partners to involve. Will be interesting to see what can be achieved. The market needs a promising project like Decus.

Question 5. Finally, can you give us some information about your roadmap and how Decus has progressed so far? What awaits us in the future?

[email protected]: Keepers in the Custodian Network are responsible for the custody of bitcoins, and they need to deposit collateral in case of misbehavior. They will be selected by Dutch Auction at the early stage of this project. And in order to offer a better auction experience, several rounds of test auctions will be held on the Ethereum test network before the mainnet auction.
[email protected]: Yes, so building the keeper network is very important to building the backbone of the platform.
[email protected]: One good news to share is that our first round of Keeper Auction Test wrapped up on March 30th, which has attracted over 4000 addresses. The next round of testing will launch next week. Again, if you are interested in following that, please join our telegram group @decus_official. please stay tuned. In addition, Keeper Auction on the mainnet is expected to start at the end of April which will last for about 30 days and followed by the bootstrap of the system. eBTC will be available shortly after that.
[email protected]: if anyone is interested in becoming a keeper, or wants to keep up on how that network is being built, you can follow it in our telegram channel: @decus_official

Stage 2 (Twitter users' questions, our guest’s answers)

Twitter Question 1.
Adoption & Awareness about the platform is very important for any creator as well as users! So, what are your plans to attract more users as well as creators with non-crypto users too? (from @RobertBSAR)

[email protected]: Because eBTC offers such low collateralization rates compared to its competitors, we are sure that it will be a big hit from the start. Plus, we are already at work getting our eBTC adopted by many of the most important DeFi platforms so everyone will be seeing it in use around the crypto world. Once that is on solid footing, we will expand to other chains, such as BSC, HECO, Conflux, etc. In fact, we are really looking forward to launching on BSC, given the much cheaper gas fees, which is definitely an obstacle to DeFi expansion. Plus, as a high capital efficiency custody system, DeCus can also be used to bridge other assets and the DeFi ecosystem, like LTC, NFT, etc. Please always remember that DeCus is more than a better solution for tokenized bitcoins.
[email protected]: For the majority of the non-crypto users, BTC always steps one for them.
[email protected]: Ya, that’s why this system is so important.....BTC holders want to get into the DeFi world.
[email protected]: The cross-chain solution from Decus will give them a chance to adapt to the Decentralized world quicker.
[email protected]: Yes. Right now, BTC holders are missing out on the DeFi world.

Twitter Question 2.
Smart contracts are vulnerable to bugs, and even recently three big new DeFi projects were victims of this, costing users funds. How efficient and secured is your smart contract, and did you ever audit it via any external party? (from @Kom980)

[email protected]: Security is always the top priority at DeCus. Our core code is being audited by an industry-leading company. Once completed, the audit report will be published on our website. Don’t forget to join our Telegram group as well.

DeCus is also working widely with several professional teams to test the financial infrastructure of the protocol, resilience to attacks by corrupted keepers, as well as incentives for honest participants. But we understand that there may still be undiscovered vulnerabilities, and so we encourage the community to audit the contracts and security.
[email protected]: We also have our Github at github.com/decus-io
[email protected]: By looking at our code, you will get to know the progress of Decus as well.
[email protected]: Yes, we are totally transparent.

Twitter Question 3.
Nowadays so many rug pulls and exit scams happening. How Users can trust your project and how you are different from others? (from @Mdfaysa32472178)

[email protected]: Ok, let me tackle that one. I think if people understand the Decus network and how it works, it will put their minds at ease eBTC uses a system of 'Custodian Network' to accomplish the tokenization of bitcoin. All keepers in the Custodian Network are organized under overlapping group assignments in a 100% decentralized way and Keepers are permission-less to join or leave the network at will.

Let me show you how that works in a chart.

[email protected]: That’s the research result from our research leader.
[email protected]: So, basically, signatures for accessing tokens/funds are distributed so that the groups that could have access it are so small that whatever they might gain from rugging would be smaller than what has been staked. This is where Dr. Yang’s algorithm comes in. The allows us to optimize the lowest number of sigs for confirmation among the keepers.

Stage 3 (Live questions of community members, our guest’s answers)

Live Question 1. What’s the reason to create this project and what undo you want to achieve ?
[email protected]: Always good to start with the story behind. In a gathering of several whale bitcoin minders last year, they told us how the growth of BTC was really astonishing to them and that they wished they could participate. This started us thinking about the best way to help them access DeFi protocols. At around the same time, we discovered Dr. Yang Guang’s cryptography IP regarding cross-chain custody could be used to solve this problem. We saw a market problem and a good solution and started working to put them together.

Live Question 2. Is your platform suitable for crypto beginners? Or does it only appeal to professional users?
[email protected]: Let me try this one... I think there are two sides to the project: the more advanced side for people who want to serve as keepers and who can run a node, or who can stake collateral for the eBTC. Then there are people who want to be involved in the governance of the project just by holding the tokens...

Live Question 3. Currently, most investors only care about profits at the moment but ignore the long-term benefits. So can you give them some advice on why they should buy and hold this token in the long term?
[email protected]: So that’s more like the tokenomics of our project. The governance token of DeCus is named DCS. The total supply of DCS is 1 billion, of which 45% will be given as incentives for mint mining, liquidity mining, etc. We are still finalizing the final version of our tokenomics deck. We also have an IDO planned soon. So, please watch for that.

Live Question 4. Which network will this project deploy and how strong will it support the NFT marketplace?
[email protected]: Initially we will deploy on ETH, but intend to also expand to BSC, HECO, Conflux. etc. Plus, the platform is also well suited to working with NFTs.

Live Question 5. Has your project been fully decentralized? And will there be any risk of centralization in the future?
[email protected]: Yes, the project is fully decentralized.

Live Question 6. Are you planning to add more use cases on top of the current Decus token?
[email protected]: Yup, the use case is also what we are working on at the moment. We are looking for some cooperation as well. We are getting in touch with Curve and some other projects. We will work it out and will be updated.

Live Question 7. Do the token holders have the right to participate in the governance of the project? On what kind of decisions can they vote on about the project?
[email protected]: Yes, token holders will be able to participate in the governance of the platform and decide on key facets of the platform, perhaps something like in the case of Maker DAO. The details are still being worked out and will be fully announced before the IDO. But, definitely we want the community to run the show at Decus.

After this answer, we came to the end of the 3rd stage and the whole event. We thank our guests for not breaking our kind offer and for joining our community.