KuCoin AMA With Oddz — Multi-Chain Derivatives Trading Made Simple and Safe

2021/08/24 09:01:10

Dear KuCoin Users,

Time: August 23, 2021, 11:00-12:21 (UTC)

KuCoin hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with Aishwarya Shivakumar Haroshivanahalli, CEO and Co-Founder of Oddz, in the KuCoin Exchange Group, who talked about the project and its future development.

Project Introduction

Oddz is a multi-chain derivatives trading platform that expedites the execution of call and put options contracts, Perpetual conditional trades, and futures. It employs the synergies of Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and Polkadot to unleash the potential decentralized derivatives market. It focuses on building solutions that can propel the DeFi ecosystem by simplifying derivatives trading and enhancing the user experience.

Official Website: https://oddz.fi

White Paper: https://docsend.com/view/mefxr8h3ymzuhwqk

Follow Oddz on Twitter and Telegram.

Guest:

Aishwarya Shivakumar Haroshivanahalli — CEO & Co-Founder of Oddz

Q&A from KuCoin

Aishwarya: Hello everyone, I hope all of you are doing well.

Thanks for having me here today.

Q: Please briefly introduce yourself to the KuCoin Community.

Aishwarya: Sure, happy to introduce myself and tell you more about how Oddz started.

I worked in a few tech startups as a product and marketing lead in Bangalore. Coming to my experience in crypto, I was a very active trader in both the stock market and crypto market for the last 3 years.

In 2019 I started to explore more about options trading platforms and traded in most of the platforms.

In early 2020, I closely noticed the rise in volume in option and derivatives trading in cryptocurrencies and identified a lot of improvements that can be ported from the stock market to the crypto market in terms of user experience.

That's when Oddz started along with my co-founder, who has 10+ years of experience in web development and 2 years of experience in the blockchain space.

Q: Can you tell us more about the project, the idea, how it started, and especially why it's needed?

Aishwarya: Sure. I have experience trading stocks and cryptocurrencies for about 3 years and have used quite a few stock trading applications like Zerodha (India), Robinhood (US), and so on.

Like these stock trading apps, I couldn't find any derivatives trading platform with end-to-end services like Robinhood. The idea of Oddz started when we struggled to find a one-stop solution for all types of derivatives in the cryptocurrency space. Along with that, I noticed nobody gives a lot of importance to data analytics and user experience in this space.

We did an extensive user research and collected feedback from the active stock market as well DeFi traders who had a good understanding of Options. A lot of problems and mainly Gas fee, Transparent premium calculations, inadequate liquidity, latency are some of the problems we are trying to solve.

Options is not something that everyone understands. An intuitive user experience, easy options (ML- and DS-based recommendations), an interface for any degree of customizations are something that should bring more users into the derivatives space.

Q: The Oddz protocol is gamified in a decentralized manner to provide users with cutting-edge financial innovation to ease their on-chain option trades. Can you tell us about this gamification? How will gamification benefit users?

Aishwarya: Yes, we employ machine learning, present market conditions on a specific day/week along with the user's history to recommend easy options.

That should enable a user without much experience in options trading to get used to it.

For advanced users, we have a customized options section where a high degree of customization is possible.

For people who don't want to spend real money, there will be a virtual trade section.

We also have a social trading section where people can follow fellow traders on our platform and simply follow each other's strategies.

The reason behind this gamification is to ensure we will have a high adoption rate and make options trading very much understandable and accessible.

Q: What stage is the project at? Also, what should we look forward to in the coming months?

Aishwarya: We recently completed our testnet on BSC and got a tremendous response.

Over 20,000+ participants

▪️ Nearly $400 million worth of options traded

▪️ Staking rewards worth $6 million distributed during the program

▪️ Total of 8,329 options contracts purchased

▪️ $25,000 worth of gas fee saved

Currently, Oddz testnet is live on Polygon, so everyone who wishes to participate in our testnet do check out:

Oddz Incentivised Public Testnet Program (Polygon)🔥

Testnet is finally live on Polygon! 🚀

✅ Earn huge rewards

✅ Early experience on the platform

✅ Trade options on Polygon

🎁 Rewards worth $30,000 in $ODDZ and $10,000 in $MATIC Tokens 🎁

🔰Airdrop ☑️

🔰Bug Bounty ☑️

🔰Leaderboard ☑️

🔗 Testnet Link:

📚 Read More: https://bit.ly/3lZMzSk

▪️ How to Participate in the Testnet program?

Fill the form below👇

https://forms.pabbly.com/form/share/XYP2-463651

❗️Report Bugs in this form👇

https://forms.gle/9ypXE8BAbumZQ6bu9

📚 FAQs (Frequently asked questions): https://bit.ly/3ci0Tjm

Detailed explanation about our testnet: https://youtu.be/UzPg7FN1L6Y

Also, we are planning to launch our mainnet on the 2nd week of September.

Q: What is the token use case, and how does it capture the value of the ecosystem you're building?

Aishwarya: The $ODDZ token holders represent an integral part of the Oddz ecosystem, thus voting on various decisive moves and proposals for the protocol's growth. Moreover, the primary motive of Dapps is to fuel the decentralization of authority; thus, the community holds a substantial bar in driving this.

Some of our use cases:

- Transaction fees: Platform users can employ an $ODDZ token to facilitate transactions in a seamless manner.

- Staking: Users can stake $ODDZ tokens on the Oddz protocol in an attempt to earn higher yields, thus maximizing returns. Tech-savvy traders also employ various yield farming strategies to earn greater returns.

- Governance: Users can strongly support or disregard protocol proposals through community votes depending on the rationality of the same.

- Referral bonus: If the user extends the platform's support by spreading the word, they are entitled to referral bonuses.

Q: Are there any existing crypto projects doing anything similar, and what sets Oddz Finance apart from its competitors?

Aishwarya: Yes, there are quite a few options trading platforms, but we want to build a one-stop solution for all the derivatives.

Innovation - We are planning to leverage layer 2 technologies along with Relayer networks to execute our options trades that would help our users to trade at a lowered gas fee.

The protocol transaction fee that we collect from users will be used to compensate the gas fee, distribute rewards for staking users, and hedge the liquidity providers for our AMM pool that eliminates the need for option writers.

Emphasis on both retail investors as well as institutional investors - Intuitive UI along with Easy options wizard should help users to buy option calls and puts within a matter of a few clicks.

Future looking roadmap - We are well prepared to test our protocol on Polkadot and fully leverage the power of Polkadot, and better the trading experience.

The high degree of expansion - Options trading for new tokens can be added with just a click of a button. Our inbuilt oracle IVR feeds for new tokens will help us achieve this.

Q: What is the long-term vision for Oddz, in your opinion?

Aishwarya: Vision is to be a Robinhood (popular American stock trading platform) for cryptocurrencies.

We want to see ourselves as the platform for users to come and spend time through our educational content, various option interfaces, then move the focus to conditional tokens, futures, and other derivatives.

Q: Can you talk to us a little bit about the products and some of the features that you plan to roll out?

Aishwarya: We have completed our protocol for options along with multiple levels of options trading. For example, virtual trading (beginners), easy options (users with a little bit of understanding of options), advanced options (for experts), along with an ability to provide liquidity into our AMM pool.

The key features promoting DeFi users to utilize on-chain option trading platforms effortlessly includes:

- Fraction trades

- Transparent Premium Calculation

- Zero gas fees

- Adequate Liquidity

- Customized Option Writers

Here is the detailed explanation about Oddz features: https://medium.com/oddz-finance/exploring-on-chain-option-trading-through-oddz-unique-features-48a4cfed3fe8

Q: From the webpage, the zero gas fees caught my eye. How can Oddz achieve zero gas fees?

Aishwarya: As we are already aware, the transaction gas fee on Binance Smart Chain is way cheaper, especially with relayers it becomes even cheaper.

Like all the centralized exchanges, there will be a small protocol transaction fee that we collect from users when they trade. So we will use this protocol transaction fee to compensate the user's gas fee.

Here is the detailed explanation: https://medium.com/oddz-finance/oddz-protocol-introduces-zero-gas-fees-transactions-to-drive-widespread-defi-adoption-21eb7bae5e33

Q: Do you have a roadmap or long-term plan that you can share with the audience today?

Aishwarya: Sure, here is our updated roadmap:

Q3 2021

Perp - testnet

Options v2 - testnet

Polygon testnet integration

Polkadot integration - testnet

Polygon mainnet integration

Q4 2021

Perp - mainnet

Futures - testnet

Options v2 - mainnet

Polkadot integration - mainnet

Heco chain - testnet integration

Cardano - integration testnet

Dex-Oddz integration

Q1 2022

Oddz governance

Cardano mainnet integration

Heco chain - mainnet integration

Conditional markets - testnet

Oddz oracle

Free-Ask from KuCoin Community

Q: Revenue is an important aspect for all projects to survive and maintain the project. How have you been able to build a complete project, and what is the way to generate profit? What is the income model of this project?

Aishwarya: As per our calculations and testing, the transaction fee is more than enough for the gas fee. All the fees we collect will be used for various purposes like staking rewards for our liquidity providers who provide liquidity into our AMM pool, and some portion will be taken as a development fund.

Even at 100 users to begin with and an incremental of 30 users every month, we can be profitable by mid-2022.

Our relayer network partners have agreed to take care of the gas fee for the first 6 months.

Q: Your project name seems to be very interesting. Does it have any story behind it? Can you share with us the inspiration for approaching this name?

Aishwarya: Oddz is the definition of opportunities and growth.

Since options and derivatives are more of opportunities for growing one's portfolio by either speculation or hedging their positions, we named it Oddz.

Q: What is the most ambitious goal of your project? What is the ultimate vision that your project is trying to achieve within the cryptocurrencies market? I would appreciate it if you could share with us any upcoming updates?

Aishwarya: When it comes to DeFI and derivatives, we want to be the Robinhood, meaning we want to make sure we build the software for users ranging from novice to experienced, both in terms of innovation and user experience, covering both the retail and institutional users.

Q: Do you have audit credentials, or are you working on auditing your project to make it more secure and reliable?

Aishwarya: Oddz completes its auditing from two leading security firms PeckShield and Slowmist.

For an audit report by PeckShied, read here: https://bit.ly/3g4pUkf

For an audit report by Slowmist, read here: https://bit.ly/3AuGJfV

Q: How can a user provide liquidity? How does Oddz Finance Liquidity Pool work to earn profits for the users?

Aishwarya: https://oddz-finance.medium.com/oddz-protocol-understanding-how-the-liquidity-pool-works-ed53e569a053

Q: Unlike other projects that use solutions like Chainlink, Oddz will implement and develop its oracle systems, so what made you take that decision?

Aishwarya: We integrated Chainlink's market-leading oracle network. Oddz Finance will have access to tamper-proof, dynamic IV data, allowing users to create options contracts backed by transparent, robust, and up-to-date IV calculations.

📖 Read more about our Chainlink IV Data Feed integration here: https://oddz-finance.medium.com/oddz-to-integrate-chainlink-implied-volatility-data-feeds-7371155ee23