KuCoin AMA with Sovryn — DeFi for Bitcoin

Dear KuCoin Users,

Time: September 29, 2021, 11:00-12:06 (UTC)

KuCoin hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with The Gimp, Community Lead of Sovryn, in the KuCoin Exchange Group in time for the opening of trading of SOV/USDT in the KuCoin Spot market.

Founded in 2020 and publicly launched on April 13, 2021, Sovryn is a global decentralized, non-custodial, smart-contract-based protocol operating on Rootstock (RSK), an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible Bitcoin sidechain, secured by Bitcoin Proof of Work (PoW). Sovryn provides permissionless lending, borrowing, exchange, and margin trading with no KYC compliance. Sovryn's vision is to ‘create an open, fair, and transparent financial operating system for the world’. Through Sovryn, users can margin trade with up to 5x leverage, borrow and lend crypto, exchange between many crypto assets, provide liquidity to the Automated Market Maker (AMM) and participate in Sovryn's governance by staking SOV, the Sovryn Protocol coordination token. The Sovryn Protocol ensures that 10% of interest payments made by borrowers are collected within the insurance fund, which exists to protect lenders in the case of a loan defaulting. All loans on Sovryn are over-collateralized and are not subject to credit scoring, historical checks, KYC compliance or personally identifiable discrimination of any kind. Security is Sovryn’s number one priority. Sovryn undergoes ongoing security audits from internal and external auditors such as Coinspect, Pessimistic and more. In partnership with Immunefi, Sovryn offers up to $1,000,000 for the detection of bugs and vulnerabilities in the system in an ongoing bug bounty program.

Official Website: https://live.sovryn.app

White Paper: https://docsend.com/view/mbhvi379crhagtwp

Follow Sovryn on Twitter and Telegram.

Guest: The Gimp — Community Lead of Sovryn

Q: Could you please introduce the Sovryn project?

The Gimp: Sovryn is a decentralized, non-custodial, smart-contract-based finance protocol.

The Sovryn protocol operates on RSK, an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible Bitcoin sidechain, secured by Bitcoin Proof of Work.

Sovryn provides permissionless lending, borrowing, exchange, and margin trading with no KYC compliance.

Sovryn's vision is to create an open, fair, and transparent financial operating system for the world. To put it simply, we want to provide every financial activity to people all over the world with no restrictions/KYC/limits on freedoms.

Q: Could you please tell us a little bit about yourself and the Sovryn team?

The Gimp: Sure, I am Mark Kersley - known online as 'The Gimp', from the UK.

Before joining Sovryn, I worked in data analysis and networks. I quit my fiat job at the beginning of this year to join the Sovryn contributor team full-time and have since been contributing primarily to the community-facing aspects of the protocol like the Sovryn Wiki.

The Sovryn team is largely pseudonymous, but many, including myself, have opted for our identities to be publicly known.

The public team so far:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17P01SMweYrCit6zJvHIhbkgOCzMdjNID/view?usp=sharing

Q: Why did Sovryn choose to build on RSK? How could this solution benefit Sovryn?

The Gimp: So Sovryn so far is built on RSK, a Bitcoin side-chain, meaning transactions are mined and secured by Bitcoin miners. Currently, RSK is being merge-mined with around 70% of Bitcoin miners and inherits Bitcoin’s PoW security characteristics, making RSK the 2nd most secure network in the world behind only Bitcoin.

The important part about RSK is that it is EVM compatible, meaning ANYTHING that is possible on Ethereum can be adopted on Bitcoin using Solidity code. Further, the native asset is Bitcoin, fees paid on the network go to Bitcoin miners, increasing the security budget of the largest liquidity pool in crypto. To me, it just makes sense for us to be here.

However, I’d like to highlight that Sovryn is technology agnostic. We will adopt any tech that is promising. The only things we care about when it comes to the underlying tech are:

- Security

- Bitcoin as the fundamental asset

- It needs to be able to work forever (realistically as close to multi-generational assurances as we can get).

The rest takes care of itself when you build on solid fundamentals.

Q: Security is a concern for many users. As a financial platform, how does Sovryn view security and user privacy?

The Gimp: Sovryn is built for security and reliability - it's our ongoing #1 priority.

We are trying to build something that will last for generations into the future. That’s why we are building on the most robust system: Bitcoin.

We have brought the security-first culture of Bitcoin to DeFi. Every code push or small change is audited. This is a system that individuals, institutions, and even countries can use - that’s the level of reliability Sovryn works to maintain.

Sovryn is non-custodial, meaning when you interact with our platform, in reality, you engage your web3 or hardware wallet directly with smart contracts, which are public open-source code and audited extensively. Sovryn never holds your funds in hot wallets. They are either in YOUR wallet or within smart contracts bound to your wallet address. You keep your keys, you keep your financial freedom.

Also, we do not require KYC to use Sovryn, you just need a wallet address to engage with the contracts and you are free to use every function of the protocol.

And I almost forgot, we have a $1,000,000 bug bounty in partnership with Immunefi - If you have coding/hacking experience and want to find bugs/exploits/anything - PLEASE take a look into helping us keep Sovryn secure https://immunefi.com/bounty/sovryn

Q: What are your key objectives for the next few years?

The Gimp: Our milestones are pretty ambitious but are very achievable given the circumstances. Sovryn’s ethos is that people should be able to conduct financial operations, like simple lending up to more complex liquidity mining, without the need for KYC or middlemen.

Therefore, Sovryn’s primary objective is to offer a vast array of financial functionality to people around the world with no KYC, no middlemen, no restrictions, and no censorship. Building on Bitcoin - the most secure network with the deepest liquidity by far in the space - is what will enable us.

Sovryn is aiming to be THE financial operating system for the world. Will we be the only one? Realistically, no, of course not. And I think competition is a good thing for any market. But we are and will continue to be global and uncensorable. We already have deployment proofs on the Tor network and are exploring other ways of making Sovryn (the contracts and front end implementation) unstoppable, and it already is for the most part.

Within 1-2 years, I would expect us to be integrated with some banks and larger private players, where the Sovryn protocol will be offered to their customers as a service. Since we’re leading DeFi on Bitcoin right now and Bitcoin is by far the largest and most impactful asset in crypto, growth is inevitable. We’re just getting started.

Q: What are the benefits of taking part in your project ecosystem? Do you have liquidity mining or staking?

The Gimp: Sovryn has multiple earning opportunities if that is what you are interested in. You can lend your assets for a percentage yield; some lending pools have SOV token liquidity mining on top of this yield.

We also facilitate trustless non-custodial exchange using an AMM (automated market maker) contract. Anyone can provide funds to this contract in the multiple trading pools in return for trade fees and liquidity mining SOV tokens.

You can also stake SOV tokens to the Sovryn governance system (the Bitocracy) in return for voting rights for deciding the future of the protocol. Staking is not only rewarded with governance powers but is also financially lucrative. Stakers earn a share of the fees generated by the protocol as well as airdrops and favorable token pre-sale allocations from new projects launching in our ecosystem on the Origins platform launchpad.

Q: What is the meaning of the name of the project and why did you name it that way?

The Gimp: The project is named after its own goals - to allow everyone to be sovereign (Sovryn) individuals. We (the contributors and community) believe that financial freedom/sovereignty is a fundamental human right that everybody should have access to - not just those whose governments allow it. We have no KYC, no limits on who can join from what country - simply connect with your own wallet and use everything we offer.

Q: Is your project only for elite investors? What about others with small funds? Is it open to everyone?

The Gimp: The protocol is for everyone - you can lend/swap/trade/stake your tokens no matter how many or few you have - the APY on each pool is the same regardless.

One important thing I like to point out is that you do not even NEED SOV to use the protocol. Fees are paid in Bitcoin, not SOV. Many other DeFi projects make you pay fees in their own token to pump their price - this is ok but not something that aligns with the freedom-focused ethos of Sovryn.

Q: Many people want to learn about your project but they have problems with English, so do you plan to spread awareness about your project in different countries where English is not good? Do you have a marketing strategy aimed at developing many different communities such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Korea, Iran about your project so that they can easily communicate and understand the project?

The Gimp: We have the dapp translated into a few languages already and we are looking to expand this further. Our Wiki (wiki.sovryn.app) is mostly translated into many languages to try and give as many people access to our free system as possible. We actually welcome community contributors to translate our pages/blogposts/whatever to help more people use and encourage everyone to contact us through our social channels to begin contributing.

Also, we've recently begun a lot of Asian marketing and preparation for translations for the Asian audience to spread Sovryn further.

Q: Smart contracts are susceptible to failure and many projects fall victim to this, costing users money and discrediting the project. How reliable and secure is your smart contract? Have you tested it through any of the parties?

The Gimp: Every code change is audited internally and by third-party external auditors. As I said earlier, our code is open-source and ANYONE can look through and verify our contract quality/robustness.

Also, as I said earlier, we have a HUGE (unclaimed) bug bounty, up to 1 million dollars in rewards to give people for finding bugs/exploits in our code. We take security very seriously. If we get hacked and lose user funds, that is extremely damaging, and we take thorough steps in testing and auditing to keep our record clean.

Q: I saw your website, it looks really amusing! Do you guys have your own NFTs? And are you guys planning on adding an NFT marketplace?

The Gimp: We have actually started offering some NFTs recently. There were some NFTs offered to early SOV sale participants at the start of this year, but we have since been developing a more thorough NFT area for RSK/Sovryn - including our NFT giveaway to celebrate El Salvador's Bitcoinization: https://twitter.com/SovrynBTC/status/1435167445011111936

We have some really cool ideas that are just starting to be developed for release, but I can't say much more about that!

Q: Tell us about the difficulties experienced by your platform. Can you tell us about the challenges you faced when developing your project? How did you manage to solve it?

The Gimp: Nice question. In the early days, we struggled offering all the functionality in a manner that was as smooth as competitors. For example, there would be high slippage on trades and very volatile APY percentages. This is because we did not have adequate liquidity in the protocol contracts and needed more funds to come into the project through people providing to the lending and AMM pools. Since then, we have grown very well and have nearly $100m TVL in the lending and AMM pools and can now offer very stable services to thousands of people.

Q: What is the best way to follow all your upcoming news and updates? What are your plans for the coming future?

The Gimp: The best thing to do to stay informed is:

Join the Discord - https://discord.gg/EdSAs5qzEm

Join our Telegram - https://t.me/SovrynBitcoin

Follow on Twitter - https://twitter.com/SovrynBTC

We are very active on all of these channels and you can generally get my and other developers/contributors’ attention best in the Discord and Telegram channels directly.

We welcome everyone, and if anybody wants to contribute to the project in any way they think they can, I want to hear from you!

Q: Is there anything else you would like to share or you want us to know?

The Gimp: For anyone who is new to crypto/Bitcoin and wants to learn - THE resource to use is a book created by Anita Posch earlier this year, sponsored by Sovryn. We want to spread the knowledge of the evolution and downfall of fiat money, how Bitcoin is the next evolution of money, and how YOU can be self-Sovryn and custody your keys and financial privacy/freedom.

Available at learnbitcoin.link

Thank you all!

KuCoin and Sovryn have prepared a total of 100 SOV to give away to AMA participants.

1. Free-ask section: 5 SOV

2. AMA activity: 95 SOV

Activity 1 — Quiz: 75 SOV

Activity 2 — Price Guess: 15 SOV

Participation Rewards: 5 SOV

. . .

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