Today, we will talk about technical aspects of DeFi with the CTO of WaykiChain, a cryptocurrency company. Richard Chen has a Masters degree from the Computer Science Department of the National University of Singapore and a Bachelor’s Science Degree in Communication Engineering from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Richard worked for Alibaba and was responsible for the internal and external information security system construction of the entire groups’ Customer Service Department. Richard served as the Senior Vice President for the world's top investment bank, Morgan Stanley, for 3 years and Intel Chief Architect for 8 years. He has received four US patents and won Intel Achievement Award (IAA). Richard has published several global patents in encryption technology, distributed network communication and collaboration, and big data. He was entitled "The Father of Student Computer Anti-theft Technology” for his innovative design for security product technology architecture. His achievements in recent years include the successful leadership of a multi-billion-dollar Internet financial platform construction and technical support, the architecture design and development of a trading-as-mining cryptocurrency exchange and cryptocurrency wallet, as well as the core improvement of the underlying system of WaykiChain.
Q1
A recent hack revealed the importance of multiple price sources and a solid oracle. Can you explain the advantages of our decentralized oracle and the price feeding mechanism? How many sources, on average is our oracle using this year, and how about next year?
Richard:
WaykiChain’s price feeding mechanism allows any of the block producers who have staked in over 210,000 WICC tokens to play as a price feeder. That means the maximum number of price feeders can be the total number of block producers in the whole network, which is 11 by current design and implementation. Second, the current price feeding software provided by the core team can take as many external data sources as necessary. In practice, there are over 5 configurable data sources being actively used. The data sources are mainly where the designated assets are being mostly traded and influential to the overall market price of the assets. Different data sources may have different weights depending on their transaction volume differences. Third, the most innovative approach is to determine the asset price within each block through deriving the median value among all price points recorded within the most recent 11 consecutive blocks.
Q2
What are the differences between our decentralized oracle and the competitor DeFi system oracles such as ChainLink?
Richard:
It’s like an apple-to-orange comparison. ChainLink strives to provide a decentralized and reliable data-feeding solution to any blockchain with smart contract applications that need data service for external data feeding. WaykiChain’s price feeding oracle technology was mainly created to support WaykiChain’s own CDP, DEX, and other smart contract-based applications. ChainLink utilizes a series of statistics means to provide aggregated data based on a collection of data points fed from external data providers (oracles) sources. I believe the median value is one such aggregation method being employed. There are also average value methods….etc. They ensure a sufficient quorum of such data providers through its incentive mechanism. In short, ChainLink provides a universal solution for all smart contract-based DApps that need off-chain data.
Q3
I understand everyone can have their own decentralized exchange. How about volume and liquidity? Will they all share the same liquidity, or will they be separate?
Richard:
WaykiChain DEX allows sharing its own orders to other DEX through its DEX register configuration. It also supports setting the sharing mode on a per-order basis. If the setting does not allow sharing, there’ll be no sharing of the orders belonging to this DEX operator. When shared, one maker order can be matched with one taker order from another DEX operator and the order transaction fees will be paid accordingly to each of the involved DEX operators according to their maker/taker role. WaykiChain DEX#0 is run by the core team and it’s configured to be by-default open or sharable to all other DEX operators. People who want to run their own DEX will be able to do it with the option to keep it open or closed. The new Decentralized exchanges may or may not be connected to the very first exchange, based on what people choose.
Q4
Tell us about the Risk Reserve Funding Pool, and where it is located. Can we see this on a blockchain explorer? As Decentralized Finance is transparent, where can I see the code?
Richard:
Upon the arrival of the genesis block of WaykiChain stablecoin technology release, a global account with no public/private key associated was created within that block. This account has its own RegID as 4109388-1 It has locked over 1 million WUSD coins at the inception with sufficient WICC backed by the foundation to ensure there’ll be always enough value to back overall stablecoin generated from CDP activities. With the continuous usage of stablecoin, it accumulates more and more profits with this account, adding to the Risk Reserve Funding Pool (black swan reserve).
Moreover, the global reserve account’s token balances can only be updated through WaykiChain’s core code execution instead of any individuals, which makes its governance purely decentralized. WaykiChain’s source code can be found from https://github.com/WaykiChain/WaykiChain where you can find its CDP/stablecoin features implemented in its current release version.
Q5
How much WICC do your projections show to be locked in two years and how about the debt ceiling?
Richard:
If you are referring to CDP collateral that locks WICC within an individual's account, by our project, we shall be able to lock from 50 to 100 million of WICC coins within two years. The debt ceiling is 25% but can be updated through the decentralized governance feature introduced in the upcoming 3.0 release.
Q6
How long do you think it will take for WGRT supply to decrease about 10 percent and what will be the reason, liquidation, or the one-year duration for getting the collateral back?
Richard:
WGRT is a quite independent token in terms of its own value or market price but WICC stablecoin activities help to bring profits to WGRT token holders through buying back WGRT tokens and burn them right away. It is still a bit far to project the deflation rate since WaykiChain’s stablecoin product is still at its early time. One important thing is to make sure we can get more people to borrow through collateralizing and the core team is working on that effort.
Q7
As governance coins should be used for governing and not trading, it is understandable if WGRT will not be on a lot of exchanges, but it should be decentralized as well. So, how hard will you push for WGRT to be on large exchanges such as Huobi?
Richard:
We are about to list WGRT on top exchanges. Stay tuned!
WGRT is regarded as governance coin mainly from the stablecoin’s perspective since stablecoin requires timely adjustment of system parameters (E..g interest rate parameters, collateralization ratios)
Q8
Can you explain the interest rate and how the formula was designed? What is the benefit of having a lower interest rate with more WUSD borrowed?
Richard:
You can find a detailed description in our WUSD whitepaper
With a higher amount of WUSD coins borrowed from the system, you get a lower amount of interest. This is to encourage people to collateralize more WICC at one time instead of multiple times. This way it helps drive up the total amount of WICC coins into the CDPs.
Q9
Do you think reputation-based borrowing using blockchain is a possibility where I can build up my credit universally yet retain my privacy?
Richard:
WaykiChain’s CDP is a collateral-based borrowing mechanism. For reputation-based or credit-based borrowing, it will become way more complicated and blockchain would serve mainly as a payment and recording logging tool to let various business parties exchange their services.
About the privacy issue associated with the credit-based borrowing system, your KYC data would mainly be managed/stored at off-chain environments being governed by trusted parties. But blockchain can keep the hash of your combined KYC data points with signatures from the authorities to prove that you as the customer have been properly KYC processed.
If you are referring to credit points for individuals, there's no magic with blockchain but you would have to work with some credit source providers to get the credit information of the target individuals. In China, Alibaba has Taobao e-commerce platform and thus has its so-called sesame points which are computed based on the user's e-commerce consumption behavior model. Or you can also get his or her credits through associated banking systems or Telecom service providers, government bureaus... Technology alone can't solve the puzzle.
Q10
What is in the future for WaykiChain DeFi?
Richard:
Only with the new release of WaykiChain’s v3.0, will WaykiChain’s technical power be fully unleashed for DeFi. You can issue any asset of your own or mirror Bitcoin/Ethereum’s tokens over to WaykiChain. Then you can use the onchain assets for lending through CDP or trading through DEX. You could easily run your own DEX as long as you can get users to trade on your DEX app with a backend server (to be open-sourced by WaykiChain) that plays as an interface between the users and WaykiChain node.
Besides, WaykiChain’s v3.0 release introduces decentralized governance capability through a proposal and approval process. That means almost every part of WaykiChain can be refined through upgrading their existing parameter settings.
Last but not least, WaykiChain’s v3.0 will formally introduce WASM VM to allow powerful smart contract execution. As a showcase but also flagship customer-facing product, a very smart-contract heavy platform with onchain auction, collateralizing, and trading activities and airdrops for users will be released in July. Stay tuned!
Interview by Prof. Vincent J. Lionheart
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