[Transcript ] AMA with Annex Finance

On 2 May, 12PM (UTC) we had a great AMA with Annex Finance’s team on our ACryptoS Telegram group. Many users had questions about this new partnership, and the Annex team shared their latest updates on what makes them different from other Lending protocols.

Note: The transcript has been slightly edited for clarity. You can also access the direct link to the AMA on TG here.

David : hello. thank you for hosting us

Abdul : I would like to welcome @danxiaogui86, @danieleconi, @DavidAnnex & @GABRIALF, our friends from Annex Finance. Could one of you briefly give a background on Annex and how all 4 of you are involved?

Gabi : Thanks Abdul 🙏

Hello Everyone 👋

Daniele : Hello guys

David : Annex Finance is a one stop shop DeFi platform with collateralized lending protocol, IDO launchpad, NFT marketplace, and Defi 3.0 profit sharing on cross chain between BSC and Cronos network. Our team wishes to turn the protocol into a one stop shop DeFi hub.

Abdul : Sounds very cool. I’ve used many features of Annex and it seems that the team is constantly innovating.

Honestly, so many defi platforms just seem to be a clone of other defi platforms. What makes Annex Finance different?

David : We are different in many ways. just to give two small examples, we offer our own NFTs called annex Iron wolf (AIW) and also created a Defi 3.0 Vault where users will be able to stake our limited NFTs and earn Annex protocol’s daily income, currently $14,000 in stablecoin are allocated to the vault EACH DAY, allowing our users to earn $5.1m per year in stablecoin

Abdul : Wow, $14000 per day are very nice rewards, that sounds amazing. Can you elaborate?

David: Sure, right now we have the DeFi 3.0 Vault, everyday the protocol is generating money for the platform from either lending/borrowing or from our protocol’s investment. Each day we allocate a set amount of fund to reward our ANN+ NFTS holder, the idea is to ensure user who holds both ANN+ AIW NFTs are properly rewarded from the protocol’s profit

in the near future we will also release at the half of MAY the SpaceStation Vault which allow user to earn with only AIW NFTs without ANN tokens

But first — let’s explain the Annex AIW NFT:

This stands for the Annex Iron Wolf NFT. The total supply of NFTs is 2,000 with approximately 500 already gone from the Treasury, we are controlling their emission very well and we sell only a few new NFTS at time.

Abdul : Interesting. What gives the AIW NFT value?

David : RAIW NFT owners can stake their NFTs in either the Defi 3.0 vault or starting from the half of MAY in the new AIW Space Station Vault. This is how to share in the $5.1 million-dollar usdc/busd per year ($14,000 daily rewarded). This reward will only go up over time because if the protocol will make more money, we will share more money with users.

Abdul : That sounds like a good plan. By creating a steady source of income in stablecoins for ANN holders, your team is essentially eliminating the need for people to sell their ANN to earn a yield

What is the AIW NFT Defi 3.0 vault?

David : it is a vault that reward users who holds both our AIW NFT and our Ann token every day, there is a minimum of $12,000 distributed to Defi 3.0 Vault stakers.

To enter the vault, you must have at least 1 AIW. You can add up to 10 AIW NFTs to the vault.

Why? Because for every AIW you stake, you receive a 20% boost, up to 200% max. In the DeFi 3.0 vault, you stake both ANN tokens and AIW NFTs. Your rewards are paid daily in USDC or BUSD depending on the chain. There is a daily reward based on your ANN and AIW NFTs — the more ANN and AIW you stake, the more you earn — in USD. It is that simple.

Abdul : What will be the value of the AIW NFT in the Space Station Vault?

David : Starting from half of May, Every day there will be a minimum of $2,000 distributed to Space Station Vault stakers. it is created for those who do not wish to stake ANN in the defi 3.0 vault, but have at least 1 AIW, the Space Station allows you to earn USDC or BUSD by simply staking your AIW NFTs. There is a daily reward based on your AIW NFTs — the more you stake, the more you earn — in USD.

Abdul : Wow, this truly is unique, and I am sitting here thinking about getting in. How do I do that?

David : All auction NFTs are coming directly from the Annex Official Treasury on our official market place here at https://nft.annex.finance

Of course, third parties can list and sell their AIW NFTs in the official Annex NFT Marketplace at any time.

To participate in the Official Treasury auction, simply go to Annex NFT Marketplace and click on the auction tab. From there, it is self-explanatory. On BSC you will need WBNB while on CRONOS you will need WCRO, you can wrap your BNB and CRO using directly Annex DEX. For now our marketplace supports only metamask, but soon we will also add support for other wallets.

btw, anyone can list any NFT there as well

Daniele : BSC https://nft.annex.finance

CRONOS https://cronft.annex.finance

Abdul : Cool, maybe we can list our ACS/ACSI NFTs there as well

David : that’s an interesting proposal :)

Halon : Ah, btw, annex and tectonic are the same kind of service?

David : no, tectonic is strictly lending/borrowing, they do not have any other utilizes beside being a lending platform

Daniele : We offers a lot more features and better APY, you can easily see also with the new Acryptos vault

Abdul : So, I earn USD for staking my NFTs but there is also a lottery. How do I enter the AIW NFT Lottery?

David : To celebrate the future launch of our new Space Station Vault we are doing a marketing promotion of 100 AIW NFTs sales before its launch.

There is no entry. Daily winners of the Official Annex Treasury live auction are automatically entered into our lottery on an ongoing basis.

For every 10 AIW NFTs sold, 1 FREE AIW NFT will be awarded to past lottery winners — lucky draw.

For every 100 AIW NFTs sold, 1 lucky winner will receive an additional 9 FREE AIW NFTs! This winner can now maximize the AIW Boost reward by staking in the Defi 3.0 Vault or Space Station.

Abdul : Vaults are great, but what about other features like lending? How do you manage to have such high apy? Can you share with us some of the best strategies that users use to make money with your protocol?

David : Yes of course, our APY is high because unlike other protocols, we give only native token rewards on the supply side, the rewards are paid by users that take loans

Borrower are rewarded in ANN token for borrowing. In this way we have almost all positive borrow rate, where ANN rewards cover all interest of the loans, moreover we are increasing TLV because to get loans you need first a collateral on supply.

Our users like this a lot and adopt several strategies to make money with Annex. The easiest is to just supply tokens in lending. We also have our great new Annex CRONOS vaults to leverage earnings from BTC, CRO, USDT, USDC and ETH. We also plan to add similar vaults for Annex BSC.

We are also proud to announce that almost all loans have a positive interest rate. YES, we pay users with ANN rewards to take loans, so people earn double using us for open SHORT or LONG positions.

lets give an example in say….shorting BTC. To use annex platform to short BTC user can do the following:

step 1: Supply stablecoin, like USDC
step 2: Take BTC loans
Step 3: Swap BTC to USDC
Step 4: Again, repeat by supplying USDC on Annex and repeat again and get over 3x leverage position and earn 3x ANN rewards on the BTC loans
Step 5: When BTC price go down, use the USDC in supply to buyback it, repay the loans and keep the difference as profit

Daniele : plus the ANN rewards

David : and if user is favor in long position, say user want to open a long position on BTC while staying in DeFi.

step 1: Supply BTC
Step 2: Take stablecoin loans, like USDC
Step 3: Swap USDC to BTC
step 4: Again, repeat by supplying BTC on Annex and repeat again and get over 3x leverage position and earn 3x ANN rewards on the USDC loans
step 5: When BTC price go up, use the BTC in supply to buy USDC, repay the loans and keep the difference as profit

Today, in a few hours, we will offer to our users another great strategy to earn money in a very safe way thanks to the listing of aUST tokens with 80% collateral factor and loans disabled. The ibTokens that users get when deposit UST on Anchor protocol at 20% APY on Terra chain.

How to earn using aUST STRATEGY:
1) on Binance buy UST and send to Terra chain
2) stake on Anchor at 20% Apy and get aUST
3) move aUST using wormhole bridge from Terra chain to Bsc chain
4) supply aUST on Annex
5) take a stablecoin loans with positive apy, like BUSD
6) send to Binance and buy again UST
7) restart the loop

In this way you will be able to leverage the APY from 20% to over 60% and you will also earn ANN rewards from the stablecoin loans, because we have positive apy interest (again we pay users to take loans).

We regularly share new strategies with our users in our telegram group because our goal is to make our users make more money.

So, join us here: https://t.me/Annex_finance_group

Abdul : Wow, that sounds like a really good strategy. Some cross-chain work is involved, but you can potentially make a lot of money on stables with this. Nice!

Gabi : This will be a WIN WIN situation for both conservative investors who are supplying stable coins in Annex + degens for using this strategy.

Abdul : Yeah, earning degen yields on stablecoins is the dream lol. What about your ANN token, why should users consider buying it?

David : ANN is our governance token, we use it to vote on the AIP (Annex Improve Protocol). Ann also has other functionality that makes it a really good investment. For example:

1/ ANN can be supplied via lending. This will earn more ANN and even allow using your ANN collateral at 50% of total ANN value

2/ ANN can be left in the wallet to get epoch rewards. 0.2% daily fixed rewards ar earned The only requirement is not to remove ANN from your wallet until after 30 days from entry, to claim rewards.

3/ ANN can be use in our farm to provide liquidity to our LP and earn over 2,000% APY in ANN rewards

4/ ANN can be use in our DeFi 3.0 vault together with a minimum of 1 AIW NFTS to earn a portion of the total $14,000 DAILY REWARDS paid in usdc/busd (100% APY)

5/ ANN can be use in our NFT marketplace to buy or sell NFTs

6/ ANN will be use to buy lottery tickets in the future — stay tuned.

Most importantly, owning ANN is valuable as it is strongly linked to the daily incomes of our protocol, because everyday we use a part of this money to buy back ANN from markets and increase lp liquidity.

as of just last month or so we have already bought back over 1.5M ANN. The protocol goal is to buy back more ANN than the daily emission that now is 300K ANN. This way, the ANN price can only go up.

Just to give you some numbers, our protocol is making over $400K each month. We are sharing with users daily in the vaults and use to do buybacks of ANN.

The best place for investors to buy ANN is in the ANNEX DEX. You can buy ANN with BUSD and BNB on BSC and with USDC and CRO on CRONOS.

We are also partnering with a dex aggregator to soon offer the possibility to swap all platform profit directly from our dashboard. ANN is still a low cap tokens, but our potential to grow is huge as we already have over $65M in TLV and we will reach 100M $ at the end of this month, if not sooner. We always say to our users, the more money on protocol leads to more daily income. This leads to more benefits for ANN holders as we share all with our great community.

Abdul : Wow, looks like some really good buybacks. Where are these bought back ANN distributed/kept?

David : on our treasury wallet https://debank.com/profile/0xd4a852c62a9511b4dfcc45fa3fe0b6e8260a866a

Daniele : We use to increase ANN liquidity lp. Here you can see all stats because debank doesn’t show lp — https://app.annex.finance/stats

Abdul : True, that’s a pretty good idea to deepen liquidity for ANN. It’s important, considering that its a market on your lending market, and having deep liquidity keeps all other bigger assets safe from price exploits

About ANN team allocations, are you selling ANN, do you sell in the future?

David : we actually locked all of team’s allocations in public smart contract. Compare to other projects like ripple where team has and does sell a significant amount of XRP on an ongoing basic. OPur team had not sold any ANN to this day for operation. Because we don’t need to sell ANN as the protocol makes money everyday and the result is a rising asset value. We are hodlers!

Abdul : Awesome, that shows a lot of conviction from the team in the project. Very impressive!

We have now reached the end of our AMA. Although I think you guys have already covered most of the questions people had about Annex, the floor is still open to a couple of community questions

David : hopefully we can partner with acryptos to create more vault so your users can easily benefit from both of our platform at the same time

Abdul : So, how does the Annex treasury operate? I believe your treasury invests in other projects as well?

Daniele : yes. This is easy, we have a very good oracle price and we set low collateral factor for the less liquidit market

About investment of the treasury, because now we have still few money we are doing more risk investment but with high profits return, for example we have invested in MSHARE last months and we have already recovered all our investment only with the daily rewards that we have used to buy more ANN and increase liquidity

But when we will have a big amount of money we will start to do less risk investment like the aUST strategy. With some milions we will be able to earn a lot with low risk

Abdul : Also, what is the risk mechanism for adding assets on Annex? As they say, a lending protocol is only as strong as the weakest asset that it has added to its market. How would you prevent a situation like what happened with Venus in May 2021?

David : the incident to what happened with Venus last year was because Venus team decided to allow xvs as collateral and borrow with 80% collateral factor, user were taking advantage of that and exploit the protocol.

we have a very simple solution to prevent that exploit….we set a very low collateral factor for ANN and no borrow

Abdul : Sounds good guys! I saw that you guys met some success in expanding cross-chain from BNB Chain to Cronos. Do you have plans to target more chains in the future?

Daniele : Yes, but first we need to finish to develop well our current 2 chains

David : we also monitor spike in price change, any massive jump in ANN price will be ignore on price oracle update until it is stablized

Abdul : It is very good that you guys have already catered to this possibility

David : to prevent similiar exploit, we try to limit our token listing to only those with fairly high liquidity

Abdul : Lastly, our samurais are always curious about the security situation of partners we work with. Could you share any relevant audits or security reports here that users could check out to feel more confident in depositing in Annex vaults?

Daniele : Our lending was fully audit by Certik, now we are starting with Hacken another round of security audit, like you have done, I see you have both audit in your site

Abdul : Yeah that’s correct. We’re audited by Certik and Hacken

Daniele : So then we will have the same security of your site

David : yes, we are audited by Certik when we first launched, but since our launch we had also develop alot of new technology and utilities for ANN token

currently we are also asking other audit firm such as hacken to provide additional audit for all the new utilities

user can review our certik audit here https://www.certik.com/projects/annex

Abdul : Great, and the Certik audit is linked within your docs?

Daniele : Yes, but on their site you will see that they have not update with the major risk that we have already fix with the launch of the Governace on BSC

Basically we have solved all issues of that report launching the Governance, in fact now we need to do Aip to change every single setting in the protocol and ANN users of course can vote

David : certik kinda stopped updating after we pay them for the audit even tho we fixed all the assessment they point out…we are a little disappointed at the professional level at handling our audit

Abdul : It’s good to have active governance, as I think it helps to keep token holders involved and bring meaning to DeFi

Daniele : Yes, but we have already fix all, so protocol is Safe

David : on certik audit…they have listed 7 major issues….and all of them are related to ownership…..which we renounced when we released our DAO in September of last year

Abdul : Sounds great!

Thanks a lot guys @danxiaogui86, @danieleconi, @DavidAnnex & @GABRIALF, for dropping by and doing an AMA with us. We’re over the 1 hour mark now lol, but very productive discussion.

There has been a lot of interest in Annex vaults recently, and I’m glad you guys have addressed some of the most common questions regarding high yields & security

We’re really glad to have Annex Finance team onboard as our partners. I’m really excited about the collaborations that we’re working on, and hope that they come to fruition soon. Let’s grow together! 🚀

You can also share your social links here so people can check them out!

David : thanks for hosting us, it was a good time talking with you guys

Daniele : Thanks to you for hosting us

Gabi : Thank you Abdul and Team 🙏