AMA Recap: Efforce
Date: October 25th, 2022
Host: DeFiNaut
Guests: Paolo Pastore — Managing Director
Hello, Raccoon family and crypto enthusiasts!
We recently hosted an AMA with Efforce. Here’s the AMA transcript for those who missed the live session. We sincerely hope you have as much fun reading it as we did while running the AMA!
Introductory Questions
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: Hope you are all ready #raccoonfam! Today we’re having another educational AMA with our amazing guest Paolo Pastore, Managing Director at Efforce!
Their website: https://efforce.io/
As you know there will be 2 parts, the muted part where me and Paolo will be talking about Efforce in general as well as the latest news and updates! Then we’ll unmute and have the community ask questions and some winners will be chosen. We’ll also choose some Twitter questions while we’re at it. A total prize pool of $100 (2 live chat and 2 Twitter qs will be winning $25 each).
So Paolo, without further ado, can you please briefly tell us who you are and what your respective role at Efforce is? (The elevator pitch comes in a minute)
[P]: So, first of all I want to say hi to all the members of DeFi Raccoons community. Thanks for having me here!
As you probably already know by now I’m the managing director (or COO) of Efforce. I have a technical background, I mostly worked in the Italian tech startup scene
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: We love Italy!
[P]: I joined the company one year ago and I’m the man trying to bring the vision of the founders to reality
So I basically take care of all the operations of the company trying to get the most out of our resources
And being technical I help to define how the platform will work as well
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: ok sounds like we have the right man on the right spot to learn more about Efforce today 😉
So let’s dive right into it! Can you give the raccoons the infamous elevator pitch on what Efforce stands for and what its purpose is in this crypto space?
Can you also talk to us a bit about the role of Steve Wozniak in the project? https://hackernoon.com/apple-co-founder-steve-wozniak-is-developing-energy-efficiency-nfts
Here’s a cool article for interested raccoons to learn more about Efforce!
[P]: Efforce is a web3 company trying to democratize the participation to investments in energy efficiency projects
Which have very high returns and are reserved to an investor niche made by financial institution or private people with very high net worth
The principle behind energy efficiency is usually taking an industrial system, think about a factory for example, and trying to lower its energy consumption
Energy savings will result in savings in money. What we do is we collect money from our community and we design and implement a new efficient system at zero cost for the company. The company will then repay the community using the money saved through energy savings
The nice thing about this is that savings are usually so high that for example if a company has an energy bill of 1000$ it goes to 500$ and we just take 300$ from the savings. So there is an immediate saving of 200$ for them without spending anything and without using credits from banks or traditional financial players
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: That’s great indeed, especially with the bad economy, high inflation and high energy costs this sounds like a good deal!
[P]: Steve was very interested and got immediately on board on this since he has a story of trying to make personal computers more efficient
He felt it was a natural prosecution of his life mission in a sense and he works with us trying to find the best way to build this system
Which has a lot of financial implications as you may guess, since we need to bring money coming from the crypto space in the real world
We are doing a lot of work which is not seen but it is very important for the long run. Having Woz on board helps us a lot on that as well, his network is huge
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: Yes he’s a big name and ofcourse it’s great to have him onboard. ok thank you for sharing!
Can you tell us about the origins of the idea for Efforce? How far back does it go, what inspired you to start building?
[P]: The idea dates back to 2018. Jacopo Visetti, one of the founders, has 15 years of experience in the energy sector. He found out that energy efficiency will be a major driver to lower emissions in order to meet the climate goals we need to reach
Energy efficiency integrates with the carbon credit system, saving energy as you may guess saves CO2 emissions as well
The issue is that capitals required to fund energy efficiency projects are limited. By opening the system to anyone through the blockchain we hope to bring new resources and to help a faster transition to an energy efficient world
That’s the inspiration and the origin of the idea
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: ok I like that 🙂 move away from the stringent and bureaucratic funding processes and move towards a decentralized model where everyone can contribute and participate!
How many of you are working on Efforce at the moment? How big is the team?
I was looking for you on the website btw but couldn’t find you haha!
[P]: The team counts almost 40 people. We have engineers working on projects, people taking care of regulations and the financial side, developers, and we are now focusing on the marketing side
The site needs a big refresh, the decentralized app as well
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: ok that’s quite the sizeable team for sure! And spearheaded by some of the greats.
[P]: We are working on these things to better communicate our vision and mission and to help our community to use the application which at this time is not as easy as it should
We know our flaws but we were focused on the part behind the tech which is very important in order to make the system work
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: ok well all in good time I always say, and Rome wasn’t built in 1 day, as long as we’re on track!
So let’s dive a bit deeper into your model and ecosystem.
I read about $WOZX, $mWOZ and $cWOZ — what role do each of them play in your ecosystem? What are their utilities?
Here’s the $WOZX on coingecko btw: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/efforce
[P]: $WOZX is our main token
It is the key to have access to our ecosystem
And soon will be the governance token of our DAO
If you want to use our DAPP you need to have $WOZXs in your wallet
The token is multi chain, currently on Ethereum which is the chain we used to mint it and on Polygon which we use to build our ecosystem on in order to have very low gas fees
Polygon pledged to be carbon neutral as well, being a pioneer in the crypto space in removing its carbon footprint, so it was an easy and natural choice for us
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: Yeah we’re big fans of Polygon too!
[P]: $mWOZ is a token pegged to 1 $USDC of energy savings. So 1 $mWOZ will be always equal to 1 $USDC
It’s the token we use to give returns to our NFT holders
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: ok cool, are $mWOZ also traded somewhere? can people cash out?
[P]: And will be always instantly swappable on chain since to mint $mWOZ $USDC are deposited on a contract on chain
It’s a very transparent system and we will publish the contract very soon (we are not distributing rewards yet)
So yes, people can cash out as soon as they want
And they probably will
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: transparency is key, we like it! 🙂
[P]: Still speaking about tokens, to get $mWOZ you need to buy our NFTs which are used to fund energy efficiency projects
Keeping your position liquid in a sense
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: Yeah my next question is actually about the NFTs so let me already write it down 😄
Efforce helps fund selected Energy Efficiency Projects making them available to private contributors through NFTs minted on Polygon. Can you tell us more about how the NFT part works by perhaps showcasing an example of a certain project that was funded? Is there a secondary market for these NFTs and what gives them value?
[P]: Ok perfect
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: haha 😄 I got you!
[P]: So let’s take a $1M project for example
What we do is we divide the amount needed to fund into a defined number of NFTs
Let’s say 10000
So each NFT is going to be priced 100 $USDC and will represent a share or to say it better a contribution to the founding of that specific energy efficiency project
By staking your NFT on an on-chain contract after the project implementation period is over (it takes time to implement projects, from 3months to a year), you will get your shares of returns through $mWOZ
If you don’t stake you don’t get anything so we recommend to stake
The NFT does not grant any return if it is not staked, it’s not a security
Returns are very interesting since you basically get back all the money you spent for the NFT plus 40% (for the current listed projects)
But we plan to have better returns with projects on our pipeline which will be published soon
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: ok that sounds great, we’ll keep track of the socials then to learn about those 😉
[P]: This is not a collectible even if we are using some nice art for the two genesis projects, it is an NFT which will keep a value because of the returns it grants and then, when the project returns are over, will cease to have a function and lose its value
But it will be a nice way to remember you participated to something meaningful in a sense
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: ok it’s like returning back to material shares back when they were not digital, sort of saying 😄
[P]: It’s more like a financial instrument
Closer to loans but with higher returns
And decentralized
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: So I wanted to ask you about the platform that makes this all possible
https://app.efforce.io/ What can users expect? How can they get started?
Also you tell us some big updates are coming right?
[P]: The platform right now allows to mint our two genesis NFTs
Users should buy some $WOZX, lock them in a contract to gain the rights to mint the NFTs
And then mint NFTs by using $USDC and $MATIC for the gas fee
Minting will continue till we sell out or till the project implementation is over, probably around June of the next year
The platform will change a lot. Minting needs to be easier, speaking of UX
And a lot of governance functionalities will be added
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: Great, the more community involvement the better!
[P]: We will add a LP staking to incentivize liquidity on Polygon
And a lot of new projects
Right now we are focused on building and we are trying to understand how the crypto space is reacting to this new opportunity
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: Definitely, that sounds like the right approach to me!
OK Paolo, it’s time for the final question for this prepared part after which we’ll go to community questions 🙂
Can you tell us about the roadmap and what plans do you have for 2022?
[P]: We are about to publish the updated whitepaper. That will cover a lot of the things I spoke about today
It’s a major milestone for us because we changed a lot of things from the original plan (keeping the founding principles untouched of course)
Then LP staking for $WOZX/USDC pool on Uniswap for Polygon
The deployment of the $mWOZ token contract
Redesign of both the website and the platform
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: Sounds like you got a lot of stuff ligned up my good Sir! 😄
[P]: And the launch of our marketing campaign which will include a sort of a monthly AMA/podcast, our blog and a campaign to grow our community both on Twitter and on Discord
Plus more things but I think there is already a lot of meat on the table
Exactly!
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: For sure, and when there’s a good plan in place, that’s the start!
ok Paolo, thank you so much for giving us this breef intro on Efforce and a glimpse of what’s to come
Let’s move to the community questions
Twitter Questions
[P]: Thanks for your questions!
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]:
Q1:
On the web medium it says “MegaWOZ credits are created when a Megawatt-hour of energy is saved because of the project’s intervention.” My question is How do you measure megawatts saved and How can smart meters measure something when it’s not there, because it was saved?
[P]: So I like to answer to this one in order to clarify a little bit.
The original plan was to install smart meters connected to the blockchain. But this is not the way we will use. We will look at energy bills. This is an indirect way of measuring the efficiency of the system. $mWOZ are not created using megawatt but now are pegged to 1$USDC of energy savings, the unit of measure is in money saved, not in energy saved (which would be a less convenient way to get returns for the contributor)
Q2:
As #Efforce, do you have any agreements with other environmental projects? If yes, can you tell us about the environmental projects and activities you plan to do together?
[P]: We are working on agreements and on partnerships. But at the moment we can’t say much about this. It’s something we will do and we will update our community as soon as we have something signed and official.
Q3:
I read that Efforce is moving tokens from “Ethereum To Polygon Network”.
Why choose to tokenize assets on the Polygon blockchain, given Ethereum’s higher level of security and scalability? What’s your favorite part of building on top of the Polygon network?
[P]: It’s mostly because Ethereum gas fees are high. Minting a lot of NFTs on Ethereum would waste a lot of potential contributions on energy efficiency (it doesn’t look efficient in our opinion!). Polygon is an Ethereum L2 solution made to scale the L1 chain, so we are keeping the same development environment. After the POS update we don’t see many differences in security between Ethereum and Polygon
Q4:
Why is the contribution in Efforce with NFTs? Usually this is done with project tokens, and depending on the price I decide whether to sell or not, however, wouldn’t this model be less versatile for the investor? If the price starts to go down how do we protect ourselves?
[P]: We feel using NFTs backed by $USDC is a lot better for an investment which has implication IRL. A project token tend to have a value which is not predictable. It can be a major advantage during bull runs but a real issue during bear markets such as this one we are witnessing. Moreover the NFT allows our investors to sell their position whenever they want and given the returns expected the minimum value of it is very predictable and easy to calculate.
Community Questions
Q1: You say that we will be able to access contributions for energy efficiency projects, but really, what guarantee will we have that these projects offered in Efforce will not be scam projects? Will they have any mechanism that protects my capital in case these projects do Rug Pull?
[P]: Efforce commits the whole amount required to fund the project before opening contributions to the community. There are risks, like any “financial” product has, but we try to lower them as much as possible auditing the company we are going to help become more efficient. Moreover we will own and lease a lot of the machinery and instruments required to implement the improvements, so, worst case scenario, the company fails but we still keep some value. You should think about compliance procedures a bank would do if a company asks for a loan. It’s way safer than the usual crypto/web3 project.
Q2: Though the NFT space has continue to experience a tremendous increase in size and volume, unfortunately, NFT holders still couldn’t earn passive income through their NFTs and this has remain a major pain points which needs to be addressed. How does your project intend to solve this.
[P]: We don’t provide passive returns as well. If you keep the NFT in your wallet you won’t earn rewards. The NFT staking contract distributes $mWOZ, the NFT is the key to have access to that.
Q3: Where can I buy your $WOZX Tokens right now what is your current contract and how can I buy them??
You can buy $WOZX on Uniswap or on a couple of CEXs: Huobi and Gate.io are our most important exchanges and we are listed on Bithumb as well. You can check our token contract on our Coinmarketcap or Coingecko page
[P]: You can buy $WOZX on Uniswap or on a couple of CEXs: Huobi and Gate.io are our most important exchanges and we are listed on Bithumb as well. You can check our token contract on our Coinmarketcap or Coingecko page
Q4: Burning tokens is the best way to keep the price of the token under control and reduce the quantity. So, what are your plans for burning tokens???
[P]: Thanks! The new whitepaper will treat this as well. We will start burning tokens very soon.
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: Thank you so much for being with us today! I hope you’ll be joining us again in the near term!
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