Reddit AMA highlights

9 min readJun 25, 2021

In case you missed our AMA here is all the info you need!

Q1: What can we as a community do to help Ankr?

A: Spread the word. Tell other people about what we are doing. Within the community be both helpful to newcomers and positive generally. If people come to take a look and see a welcoming, vibrant and helpful community they’ll feel there’s something worth hanging around for. We try to be engaging there ourselves but it is way more powerful when other community members do this too. Another part the community can play is a major one through Governance. Do you know you can raise a governance proposal to make any changes across our entire platform? If your proposal receives a winning vote, we will implement it. That is massive! So bring your own concepts to the table and become a real part of what we are doing!

Q2:Other projects have public roadmaps but I don’t see one for Ankr. Is this something that we can expect in the future?

A: Yes, 100%. We’ll be maintaining a public roadmap (as well as community suggestions) on our website.

•Some of the things on the roadmap for the rest of the year:

•Avalanche Bond Listing (staking avalanche)

•Polkadot & Kusama Bond Listing

•ETH2 Bond Listing

•Ankr Token Bridge

•Ankr Academy (tutorials, and sample dAPP projects)

•Connect Ankr Enterprise Solutions to StakeFi to enable Institutional investors to get exposure to Internet Bonds

•Enhancing developer tools

But probably the biggest of all is launching our “multi-chain node protocol” that underpins developer solutions and StakeFI. This is going to be a significant milestone for Ankr.

Q3: How will Ankr be able to control the price point for services and still hold the value in the token for the average investors?

A: If a “crypto” company is only a service provider and only accepts payment of its service in fiat, there is not a true need for a token. At that point, you might as well go raise money from a VC firm and not have a token. We see ourselves as a protocol that provides a service. But for us to have true utility as a multi-chain node protocol, we have to tie the ANKR token into the “calls” that run through our API. So our focus now is on making the Ankr token absolutely fundamental to our services and our model.

This brings together the entire vision of:

First Layer: Decentralized Data Center Network (Compute Power)

Second Layer: Developer Nodes / Staking Nodes

Third Layer: API Service (runs on developer nodes), StakeFI (runs on staking nodes)

So how will the ANKR token be utilized?

API Service:

Exclusive API usage in ANKR tokens. Developers are incentivized to hold a wallet and consume the ANKR in that wallet as they read/write to the blockchain.

StakeFI:

Ankr bridge (uses Ankr token to bridge internet bonds between DEXs, buy on DEX A, sell on DEX B for profit by going through the Ankr token). Additional incentives obtained by holding certain threshold amounts of Ankr.

ANKR Roadmap:

Governance

Q4:Do you anticipate a coin burn in the future?

A: We are considering a Buyback program and locking mechanism rather than token burning. A Buyback provides more flexibility, but this does not exclude completely the possibility of a burn. For instance, we provide farming rewards for aETHc/ETH liquidity providers on Curve Finance and many of our employees receive Ankr tokens vested for 6 months as part of their compensation. Other options are possible as long as it does not involve buying Ankr token to sell it right after. However, a locking mechanism seems more attractive to us than the only Buyback and/or Burn at the moment as we can integrate token locking to some products that we are developing.

Q5: What are the use cases of the Ankr Token?

A: If you look at ETH, some people buy ETH to use it and pay gas fees on Ethereum. Some people buy ETH to operate as a validator and get staking rewards. And some other people buy ETH because they believe that Ethereum will be widely used and take over traditional finance. I imagine that a very low amount of users invest in ETH only to pay gas fees and nothing else.

For Ankr StakeFi, it is key to understand the disruptive nature of Internet Bonds and we created several articles about that. We will also release videos on the topic.

Not everyone is expected to effectively use Ankr token within Ankr StakeFi to exploit trading arbitrage opportunities because it requires some advanced knowledge and/or experience as a DeFi trader.

However, we definitely want everyone to understand what is an Internet Bond and how big it can become — https://medium.com/ankr-network/stakefi-internet-bonds-explained-50609b253f8b

Our marketing focus will be on making most people understand the benefit of Internet Bonds and we are aware that the medium article above can still be technical, which is why we are working on the Ankr Academy concept.

In simple words, we want people to realize “why do I hold ETH or DOT and get not rewards when I can hold ETH or DOT bonds generating staking rewards and I can get those bonds as easily as buying ETH or DOT”.

Q6: What uses does this token have in the short term?

A: Governance. For example, anyone with 1m ANKR tokens can submit a governance proposal to change the node provider fee for ETH2 bonds.

For Ankr StakeFi, we will enable three premium features that will be accessible only to Ankr token holders:

Instant liquidity pools (=no lock-up period when unstaking)
Ankr Bridge (to move Internet Bonds among ETH-BSC-Polygon and exploit arbitrage opportunities if Internet Bonds are not traded at the same price)
Ankr ETH2 Switcher (to switch aETHc to aETHb and vice-versa at fair value, which is another tool to exploit arbitrage opportunities from Internet Bonds)

Q7: How exactly does the company make money off of the StakeFi platform? If 15% of rewards go to providers and 85% to stakers. Is the monthly provider fee of $15 able to fund this?

A: Generating revenues with StakeFi is not the main priority as the more Internet Bonds and TVL is present on Ankr StakeFi, the more opportunities we have to create utility to Ankr token with advanced functionalities (e.g. instant liquidity pool, Ankr Bridge, Ankr ETH2 Switcher).

However, StakeFi does have the ability to generate revenues. Avalanche Bonds will start with a 2% fee on staking rewards for instance. Fees from staking revenues can be used to buy back Ankr tokens, which creates buying pressure for Ankr tokens.

Also, the more products are available on Ankr StakeFi, the more possibilities are available to make vote proposals using Ankr governance (e.g. proposal to change fees on staking rewards on Avalanche bond, change node provider fee on ETH2 bonds, etc.).

Q8: Why did it take over a month to get the lack of node problems fixed?

A: We reached capacity due to a massive surge in demand for our services and this coincided with a worldwide increased demand on cloud-based compute-power, so locating additional capacity took longer than it would normally have done. On the positive side, we didn’t just increase it a little — we did so massively, and applied strong capacity management practices around our systems too, to ensure this situation will not occur again in the future.

Q9: What problem will you be solving in the crypto world over the next few years?

A: A lot of other chains and projects are competing to solve temporary problems in the space (high gas fees, scaling…etc). From our perspective as a multi-chain provider, we are neutral on who wins that race. As the web3 proof-of-stake ecosystem grows, we grow as we provide the node infrastructure that underpins all projects and use cases. You literally cannot interact with any part of the blockchain without going through a node. Every exchange, wallet app, data aggregator, DeFI swap provider, need a large amount of developer and/or staking nodes. We are vertically integrating services on our developer and staking nodes to scale the service and improve the customer experience with enhanced features, reliability, and performance. We see a big opportunity here as use cases start to need multi-chain support.

Q10: What other Internet Bond concepts are you going to introduce?

A: For Polkadot, you need to wait 28 days to “unbond” DOT tokens. We will create Internet Bonds futures for Internet Bond holders that redeem Polkadot bonds (=unstake/unbond DOT) so that the user holds an Internet Bond futures with a maturity in 28 days to be able to sell it and get liquidity in Auction marketplaces such as Bounce Finance. We are also working on the concept of Parachain Bonds for Polkadot. During Polkadot Parachain Crowdloans, users will lend DOT to support project participants in Parachain Slot Auctions, and those projects reward users in their own tokens. We are working on the concept of issuing Polkadot Parachain Bonds representing locked DOT tokens of winning Parachain slot auctions, embedding in the bond the distribution of the rewards of the project, which can be seen as the coupon of the Parachain Bond. Those Parachain bonds then could be used in DeFi (trade in a DEX, lending, get additional farming rewards, etc.)

Q11: What has been the node growth rate this year?

A: We’re over 1000% growth YoY

Q12: What is the purpose of the remaining supply that is not in circulation?

A: The plan is to use the remaining tokens to incentivize developer and staking usage. They will be released via a smart contract on a monthly basis.

Q13: Have any features or developments been abandoned? What are they?

A: In the early days of Ankr, you could run a WordPress site (or any docker image) on the decentralized cloud computing network. Now from the compute-side, we’re exclusively focused on enabling blockchain-as-a-service.

We also built our own chain, mainnet, and wallet app but eventually decided just to use ERC20.

The culture at Ankr is very entrepreneurial. We build a lot of working prototypes to figure out where the opportunities are in the space. For example, our team built a DEX, parachain wallet app…etc. We want to understand how all emerging use cases can benefit from Ankr’s core services.

Q14: What are the marketing plans?

A: Specifically, in the short-term, marketing is focused on:

Community, social, and tutorials/content
Key partnerships (ANKR was just listed on Gemini this week)
Community/ambassador programs
Influencers and press

Q15: What is the objective for web3 infrastructure?

A: Improve the developer experience and usher in millions of web 2.0 developers into the web 3.0 ecosystem.

Q16: What key hires are you making?

A: Ankr is growing rapidly across all dimensions and we’re currently hiring across every function. Take a look at our current openings here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ankr/jobs/

Q17: What roles have been hired recently?

A: We’ve recently assembled the Ankr leadership team across product, marketing, and sales to build out those core functions. We now have a team of over 80 people worldwide, working around the clock to deliver our solutions and realize our vision.

Q18: Why can’t we stake Ankr on StakeFi? When will we be able to do this?

A: If we supported Ankr staking on StakeFI, the Ankr token supply would increase as rewards were generated, causing supply to go up. This can put downward pressure on the Ankr token price.

What we are focused on is embedding our tokenomics to incentivize the adoption and utilization of Ankr products.

From a practical point of view, the adoption of Ankr services would burn Ankr tokens, causing supply to decrease, putting upward pressure on the price.

Q19: How is Ankr funded?

A: Primarily a combination of revenue from enterprise customers and strategic investments.

Q20: Why is the Ankr token price falling?

A: Ankr does not speculate on the price or movement of our own token. As many of you already know, it’s better to look at our market capitalization rank against other tokens on tools like Coin Market Cap or Coin Gecko.

What’s our theory on Ankr’s price though?

Ankr’s price stayed consistent with being ranked ~#180 for the first two years of our company history. Recently we got some traction with StakeFI as well as our validators that caused a revaluation event in early 2021 that pushed it ~#100. We’ve stayed within +/- 10% or so since then.

Thank you to everyone who joined our AMA!

Follow Ankr here