Armor AMA with Cryptotalkz 8-Dec-21 Transcript

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ArmorFi

11 min readDec 9, 2021

Read all about Armor, the team, products and the latest alpha in this transcript!

Yesterday the Armor Team did a great AMA, hosted by the good people at Cryptotalkz. Below is the full transcript, interesting for both new #ArmorKnights as well as seasoned Armor investors.

It started off with a short introduction segment
Then the team answered a selection of questions that were submitted via Twitter
The chat was opened to all members for a minute during which many dozens of questions were asked :)
The team chose a few, their answers are below as well

[Introduction Segment]

Sal
👋Hello Chat , Welcome to another exclusive Crypto Talkz AMA❤️
Today with us, we have ARMOR FI❤️
Hello and welcome to our community, I’m glad you here to join the AMA today! @Christachio @RusHughes @bikeisbetter @RobertForster
@ekmor :)

Christopher H
Thanks for having us!

Rus Hughes
It’s great to be here guys ❤️

Harry
Hi, thank you!

Christopher H
@RobertForster is having technical difficulties at the moment, we hope to have him pop in

Sal
So, without making a delay…Let’s start our AMA with basic Introduction Segment :)

Romke Jonker Fr
Thanks @couponxdealer

Sal
Could you start by introducing yourself and perhaps regarding the key team behind Armor to us? What kind of backgrounds do you guys have prior to Armor?

Christopher H
Yes, for our linkedin profiles, please see
https://forum.armor.fi/t/meet-the-armor-team/69 for an overview of all team members.

Everyone has been in the Crypto and IT world for years and even decades, with the exception of myself, I have been in a customer service oriented career for the last decade.

Currently we have the following team members in the AMA:
Robert Forster — Co-Founder
Harry Kikstra — Operations Lead
Rus Hughes — Technology Lead
Chris Hearey — Community Manager,
Romke Jonker — Development Manager

Sal
Can you give an overview of Armor as a whole? What’s the project about and what kind of underlying issues do you see within the crypto market, in general, to get into the segment? How do you intend to solve those issues?

Harry
Armor makes investing in DeFi as safe as possible with crypto-native, dynamic smart coverage aggregation. As a decentralized smart brokerage, Armor’s innovations provide on-demand, real-time coverage and non-custodial security solutions for user assets.

Armor’s focus is on building an ecosystem of interoperable protocols and products to secure and scale mass adoption of DeFi both with institutions and individuals.

With innovative products and programs, Armor is a leader in Defi Asset Security.

Sal
May I ask at this point, do you already have some partnerships lined up?

Rus Hughes
We currently have partnerships with Nexus Mutual, Immunefi, EPNS, Umbrella, Gnosis & Zapper and we have recently been whitelisted on C.R.E.A.M. and Bancor.

We also have some strategic backers including Delphi Digital, you can read more about our work with them here https://medium.com/armorfi/armor-fi-announces-strategic-backers-15631e2ab607

Sal
Impressive! :) How important is the community to your project? and How can we collaborate or help share token for the development of the project?

Christopher H
Very important! We (re)design our products based on user feedback, we are starting a Bounty program soon, where the community can help with marketing and promotion. We also just started our DAO voting system and the community will be able to start and vote on proposals.

I, as community manager, am active daily in our telegram and discord, collecting feedback and providing support for our user base. Above all that I see it as important to chat, and get to know them at a personal level 😊. I believe for a decentralized project to succeed, it’s important to support and foster a strong community behind it.

Sal
Could you please provide some progress on your Roadmap and what results Armor has achieved so far?

Romke Jonker Fr
Soon™ we will share our roadmap for 2022, which includes the release of our recently announced RCA product.

In 2021 we accomplished about everything we set out to do, and more!

We launched our token and reward farms, soon followed by the main products arNFT (fixed cover), arCore (flexible cover) and the arNXM vault (yield-generating staking on Nexus Mutual).

We fine-tuned those products during the year, while also launching the Shield Vaults, a referral program and have just launched vArmor, which is our DAO system.

Sal
Thanks for that well detailed introduction about ARMOR FI❤️

Let’s move to our Second Segment — Twitter Questions. :)

[Twitter Segment]

@ebrukaraaa15 -
Regulation is very important, several projects in many countries were closed due to a lack of necessary licensing. How does armor deal with this problem? Are you working on a project that complies with regulations?

Harry
DeFi and even crypto as a whole is still an emerging field. We are all early!

Regulation will come, it just isn’t clear to what extent and in what form. The great thing is that all regulation is mostly aimed to protect the crypto users, which is exactly what we are trying to achieve as well.

So we think that regulators will actively support projects like ours.

On the other hand, currently our products are based on the Nexus Mutual protocols. This is also why we don’t offer ‘insurance’, we offer cover.

Or as Nexus Mutual states it:

“ Not insurance
Nexus Mutual does not offer insurance because it is a discretionary mutual. Smart Contract Cover is not a contract of insurance. It is discretionary cover provided by members of the mutual to each other. Members have full discretion on which claims payments are made. Members are putting trust in the economic incentive model rather than an insurance company.

(source: https://medium.com/nexus-mutual/understanding-nexus-mutual-bb2946dad919)”

Our upcoming RCA product doesn’t even charge premiums and should therefore not even fall under any Insurance regulation.

@Fajr_or -
Do you have an ambassador program, local community building work, especially for non-English speaking countries, to grow the ArmorFi? Do you have a referral program for users to bring in new users?

Christopher H
Last month I was hired as Community Manager because the team wanted to emphasize the importance of community focus. In my first month here I have been very busy setting up the #ArmorKnights ambassador program, which will include bounty programs, local community building, memes and much more.

We welcome input from the community, so we can build this together, so please sign up at (note: one of our reward programs is for translation services! We want our content to reach as many eyes as possible):

https://forms.gle/x769k8iTMSEMkfW79 !

I have already started to make use of this program and am currently collaborating with our community on creating an Education Presentation about our coverage products.

@0JeanWayne -
Last month ArmorFi had announced its partnership with Umbrella Network project, which is a decentralized oracle project. How important are oracle services for your products and platform? Can you please discuss to us the added-value of this form partnership with Umbrella Network?

Rus Hughes
Armor Finance recently announced Shield Vaults, an innovative new product that offers coverage-and-yield-bearing tokens, which automatically provide cheaper coverage for yield-bearing tokens without ever needing any maintenance or renewals.

Our Shield vaults require quick and easy access to complex data feeds, which is a problem solved by integrating trusted oracle partners.

These feeds were difficult for other oracles to handle efficiently and in a cost effective manner, which blocked the addition of many new vaults.

Thanks to our partnership with Umbrella Network, Armor Finance is now able to fulfill our Shield Vault data needs and in turn the needs of you guys, our customers, with a comprehensive, low-cost, secure solution.

Please see https://medium.com/armorfi/armor-partners-with-umbrella-network-a-decentralized-layer-2-oracle-service-e4e0e623bf2 for more details. 🙏

@JamesEa43896092 -
While I can understand why the protocol has its smart contract on Ethereum, is there any scope or consideration being given to opening Armor up to different Layer 1 or interoperable chains to gain access to greater numbers of customers?

Rus Hughes
We are aware that the high ETH main net gas fees is a prohibiting factor for many to get their DeFi positions adequately covered. We are currently actively researching the best way to integrate Sidechains and L2’s into the current and future Armor products, to help solve the gas problem as per the Ethereum product roadmap!

We also need to consider functionality of the Armor project and ecosystem on the L2s and alternative L1 chains too, We need a multi chain governance solution, so there’s a lot to think about as well as work ahead for us!

Robert Forster
And to add to that our RCA system is going to absolutely be cross-chain in the future (if not from the start) because it’s important we grab as much TVL as possible, so 100% we’ll be incorporating other chains

@mahdihassn
In how many ways or what are the ways your project generates revenue and how does it benefit both investors and the project itself?

Harry
Actually, all current and future products generate income:

The arNFTs are bought and sold at cost, but once they expire, the Armor receives 10% of the cover cost.
The arCore Smart Cover system adds a 50% markup to the cover price, which is currently divided between the referral system and the treasury
Both deposits as well as withdrawals to/from the Shield Vault system incur a 0.2% cost, which is currently divided between the referral system and the treasury
The arNXM vault generates staking yield which is 100% used to raise the APY for (w)NXM stakers.

But in addition to that, Armor’s staking on Nexus Mutual (we are the largest staker btw, currently 43.4%, see https://nexustracker.io/staking) also generates income due to the Shield Mining program, which currently goes to treasury.

The past few weeks this income alone was more than enough to pay for current operational costs!

If a cover product sale isn’t coming via a referral link, then the Armor Treasury will also receive that share of the fees.
The DAO can make proposals to change all of the above :)

Sal
-Great, thanks and that’s for our twitter question segment :)
-moving forward to our last segment — Live Q&A.

[Live Segment — Unanswered]

(Chat was unmuted for a minute and loads and loads of questions came in! The team picked the following and answered them)

[Live Segment — Answered]

Harry
Woah, great questions :)

We are going through them now and will answer the 5 best ones.

Rus Hughes
These questions are amazing 🙏

Albert EINSTAINE
Do you have a whitepaper? if yes please share it with us and secondly are you working to AUDIT your project, to make its security more secure and reliable?

Rus Hughes
We recently released a Whitepaper for our new RCA Reciprocally-Covered Assets, a peer-to-peer coverage model designed for DeFi assets.

There’s a medium post about the Whitepaper and project here https://medium.com/armorfi/armor-releases-new-whitepaper-for-reciprocally-covered-assets-a9942bf2456a

All new contracts and big changes have internal audits, go through two external auditors then have a sizeable bug bounty on them.

Sharay Crypto
I noticed on your website that you have a #referral mechanism implemented in your ecosystem, could you explain a little more to the community how this mechanism works? and what are the benefits that can be obtained by bringing other users to the platform?

Harry
Thanks for your question! We launched a very innovative wallet-based Referral program a few months ago, please see all details here on our blog: https://medium.com/armorfi/make-defi-safer-join-the-armor-referral-program-988219f132e4

You only need to connect your wallet to our site on armor.fi/referrals and you’ll be assigned a referral link. No need to sign up with email!

You can also contact us to apply for a vanity link, we’ll have a form to apply for that on the new website that is getting created.

The referrer will get part of the fees, see my previous answer ^ and the blog posts for more details :)

Leah
I read in your medium that you recently added a new member to your team: Romke Jonker .. Congratulations. So you plan to continue adding experienced members to your team in the near future? If so, what requirements do you need to meet?

Romke Jonker Fr
Thank you Leah! I’m super happy to be part of this great team.
That’s correct, we’re in the process of interviewing experienced candidates to grow the team further. We aim to onboard at least one more Solidity developer and one more React developer on short term. These will be people that we trust and that have prior experience and a heart for the product and the community.

Rus Hughes
https://medium.com/armorfi/armor-job-board-front-end-web-developer-312ddd753a3d?source=collection_home---6------2-----------------------

https://medium.com/armorfi/armor-job-board-solidity-web-developer-3eb05dc31f91 for anyone interested 😉

Itz Abhi
Can you list 1–3 killer features of this project, that makes it ahead of its competitors? What is the competitive advantage your project has that you feel most confident about?

Robert Forster
Armor’s working on truly disrupting the current DeFi coverage models, so there are many killer features about our upcoming products.

UX: The user experience of a coverage-bearing token (a token that represents an underlying token and coverage for the token’s value) that never needs to be updated, renewed, or maintained is leagues ahead of purchasing policies separate from other protocols;
Cost: Our new RCA (reciprocally-covered asset) model has the potential to bring coverage costs down to 1/10 what they are currently, really encouraging new people to enter;
Safety: RCAs are much less likely to become insolvent than other defi coverage protocols because they are much higher collateralized than others

Sharay Crypto
I realized that within the #Armor ecosystem there are 2 tokens: $ARMOR and $ArNXM , so could you explain to the community the differences between them and what is their usefulness within Armor? Also, what benefits can we obtain from each one? Is staking available on your platform?

Christopher H
$Armor is our governance token. User’s are able to stake it here (https://armor.fi/govern) to receive vArmor, a voting token that is used for our DAO proposals, which you vote on through our front end on tally (https://www.withtally.com/governance/armor). Users who single stake also receive rewards, indicated by the increasing value of 1vARMOR to Armor!

arNXM is a yield bearing token that is a replacement for wNXM. Normally for users to deposit into the Nexus Mutual ecosystem, it requires a person to become a member, which has KYC requirements attached to it.

The arNXM vault (https://armor.fi/arnxm-vault) allows users to deposit wNXM and receive arNXM in return. The wNXM is then able to be used in the NXM ecosystem by us, in the users stead.

This allows the user to bypass those KYC requirements, and still receive rewards on their wNXM, represented by the yield arNXM generates over time.

Sal
Its time for Wrapping Up, any last words you would like to say to the community?

Rus Hughes
Happy Christmas 🎄

DeFi Safely 🚀

Romke Jonker Fr
Thanks for tuning in!

Robert Forster
Thank you guys!

Rus Hughes
Thank you for listening, you’ve been a great audience 🙏

Christopher H
Appreciate the questions ya’ll this was a lot of fun! Harry will have a few links to share

Harry
Thank you all very much for your great questions and thanks to Crypto Talkz for hosting this AMA. This was actually our first official AMA and it was fun and interesting!

Please become an #ArmorKnight by joining our social channels; you can Ask Armor Anything Anytime there as well.

Armor Twitter : https://twitter.com/armorfi
Armor Telegram : http://t.me/ArmorFi
Telegram Announcements: http://t.me/armor_ann
Armor Telegram Trader’s channel: https://t.me/joinchat/OrKTJCcoyZQyMTIx
Armor Discord: https://discord.gg/8HuTB22
Armor Website: https://armor.fi
Armor Blog: https://armor.fi/blog
Armor Forum: https://forum.armor.fi

#ArmorKnights #DeFiSafely #CoverYourAssets

Harry
DONE :)

Sal:
Thank you so much for spending time with our community & all the very best for “ARMOR FI” 🚀🚀🚀

You can ask more questions by joining the ARMORFI Telegram Group!! 👉
https://t.me/armorfi

Sharay Crypto:
Great AMA🚀🚀so interesting project

About Armor Finance

Armor makes investing in DeFi as safe as possible with crypto-native, dynamic smart coverage aggregation. As a decentralized smart brokerage, Armor’s innovations provide on-demand, real-time coverage and non-custodial security solutions for user assets.