AMA Recap: GTON Capital
Date: Sep 6th, 2022
Host: DeFiNaut
Guest: Olya Kosareva, CMO
Hello, Raccoon family and crypto enthusiasts!
We recently hosted an AMA with GTON Capital. 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!
Table Of ContentsINTRODUCTORY QUESTIONSTWITTER QUESTIONSCOMMUNITY QUESTIONSAbout Crypto Raccoons
INTRODUCTORY QUESTIONS
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: Hope you are all ready #raccoonfam! Today we’re having an educational AMA with Olya Kosareva, CMO at GTON CAPITAL!
That’s correct, today we’re finally being honored with her presence! And she’s here today to share us many of the exciting updates and releases.
As you know there will be 2 parts, the muted part where me and Olya will be talking about GTON CAPITAL in general aswell as the latest news and updates! Then we’ll unmute an 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 prizepool of $100 (2 live chat and 2 twitter qs will be winning $25 each).
So Olya, without further ado, can you please briefly tell us who you are and what your role is at GTON CAPITAL? We’ll be having the elevator pitch in a minute!
Also I’m a tiny confused I read in your profile name it says Olga, although your bio says Olya. Which one should I use or is it both the same?
[Olga]: It’s a pleasure to be chatting with you! Thanks for having me here today.
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: It’s our pleasure 🙂
[Olga]: It’s simple — Olya is a diminutive from Olga) It’s me, GTON Capital CMO, no scams ))
So I’m Olya (Olga) and I’m busy with everything related to marketing and comms at GTON Capital.
A little of a background. I’ve been in the crypto space for around 3 years by now and headed the marketing of one of the top 50 protocols back in the days. But before that I was doing marketing for corporate blockchain vendors. It was an interesting experience which exposed me to blockchain in general and led to where I am now — creation and promotion of permissionless decentralised tech.
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: 😁haha ok happy we got that settled! I had to google what diminutive means so I learnt something today Great. Thank you for sharing that. As you know the raccoons are very eager to learn about GTON Capital. So let’s move to the infamous elevator pitch!
What is it all about, and what key unique features are you looking to bring to the web3 space?
[Olga]: Well, we just started and you’ve already learned something new! Good job:)
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: Thanks! I wanted to make sure that I would not upset you by making a mistake.
[Olga]: Sure. Let me be consice at the start and then, with further questions, we’ll elaborate a bit deeper. GTON Capital builds GTON Network, an Ethereum L2 rollup with a multi-collateralized stablecoin GTON Capital Dollar ($GCD) as its native currency, which enables an ecosystem of mutually reinforcing products. Our motto: “Introducing a new generation of programmable money”.
So basically, GTON Capital is the project that creates both products and underlying technology to make digital capital markets more sustainable and infuse them with more opportunities.
That underlying tech I’m talking about is GTON Network — a scalable, fast and EVM-compatible Ethereum rollup with low and predictable fees. By producs I mean DEXs, NFT marketplases, one-sided liquidity provision platform which are already in the works.
Let’s now dive into more details. GTON Capital’s tech and its uniqueness derives from the three main components:
- Stablecoin
GTON Capital Dollar is a multicollateralized stablecoin protocol with an inherent use-case as the native currency for the GTON Network rollup.
GCD is a stablecoin which is soft-pegged algorithmically to the US dollar. It uses tokens from other decentralized cryptocurrencies as collateral to issue new GCDs. Initially, ETH, BTC, PAXG and other liquid currencies can be used as collateral. The design principles are similar to DAI, GHO, MIM, sUSD, LUSD, USDP, and other crypto-collateralized stablecoins.
- Rollup
GTON Network is an Ethereum Optimistic Rollup protocol that uses the GCD stablecoin as its gas currency.
GTONNet is an EVM-compatible network that supports the execution of smart contracts written for Ethereum mainnet and other EVM-based networks. All other tools for users and developers can also be easily connected to GTONNet, such as wallets and development libraries. Users get the same experience as with Arbitrum, Optimism, Metis and Boba, the major difference being the elimination of the volatility of the native token used for paying gas.
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: Awesome, anything focused on rollups and stablecoins are hot topic nowadays, especially also with the merger for Ethereum very soon and everyone focusing on scalability 🙂
[Olga]: Oh, yes. We’ve seen a lot for the past several months😵💫
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: One question, I don’t see USDC or USDT mentioned, is this on purpose or are they also in there
Oh, yes, they will be bridged to GTONNet if thats’ what you mean.
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: ok thanks for expanding on that
So we’ve already talked a bit about your own background. Can you also please tell us about the team building everything you’ve described above? What kind of talent and experience do each of your team members bring together to make this a success? How many developers are there?
[Olga]: The thing is that GTONNet will have multiple DEXs, single-sisded liquidity platform and other DeFi produsts on it (built from scratch or ported as a multichain expansion of existing big players, can’t say the names now) and USDC/USDT will be some of the main markets there.
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: ok, do you also know if USDC and USDT will be used as collateral for GCD?
I’m guessing no since you said GCD uses other decentralized stablecoins as collateral, and USDC and USDT are centralized I guess
[Olga]: Not for now unless our community through a governance voting decides so.
For the newr future, we have the following assets to be used as collateral:
- GTON — the main utility token of the GTON ecosystem
- ETH — the main utility token of Ethereum (wETH, an ERC20 wrapped version)
- WBTC — an ERC20 wrapped version of the main cryptocurrency
- XAUT- the main and most liquid stablecoin pegged to gold
Correct!
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: ok thank you for confirming!
[Olga]: So let’s get back to the team, right? We’ll do our best to make it a success and we have capabilities for this.💪 Think yourself: You may find it not very polite, but I’ll start with myself hehe
I have a decent experience in the project ownership and marketing in tech industries. I know how traditional businesses work, how the solutions are marketed by big vendors. That’s an advantage cos crypto is still a wild-wild west and we need more people with solid hard skills to join the space and make it more civilized. On the other hand, I’ve been in crypto for a while and launched big products in the space too.
Our developer team counts around 10ppl and they all have various backgrounds: some worked for huge tech companies like Wrike and Google, some have been more into science.
The founder of GTON Capital Alex Pipushev has over 10 years expereience in development, over 4 years in crypto. He is the creator of Neutrino stablecoin (USDN) which is among top 10 stablecoins by market cap.
So the team definitely has some decent backgrownd and we keep enhancing our skills and learning every day while building GTON Capital. We’re deeply integrated with big players in the space — we have many partners, from oracles providers to DeFi platforms which will be deploying their products on GTONNet (you can find the names on our Mirror).
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: Well you know what they say, ladies first so it’s very polite! 😄
[Olga]: We’re also the co-organisers of ETHDubai. GTON Capital core contributors are spread all over the world but the majority of the team are located in Dubai so we’re an active player in the local crypto space. Along with us, ETHDubai is co-organised with Yearn Finance and Metamask team members so we have close connections with those projects as well. Oh, that’s nice☺️
If you like the vibe of the ETHCity series and other big industry events like DevCon or Future Blockchain Summit, you can also meet the team there as normally we give keynotes and speak at the panel discussions. We love participating in events cos we try to be up-to-date with the latest agenda and collaborate with other teams.
The reason I’m teling all this is that you know that we’re aware of what’s actually happening in the space, where all this is going.
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: That’s interesting how the founder is also the creator of Neutrino — I’ve heard about that one a couple of times. Looks to me as GTON Capital has what it takes to get to the next level 😉
Awesome I love that — even though it’s a bearmarket and all that — it’s still important to get out there and connect, see where the space is going and staying up to date with all the latest dates. As we all know, crypto moves very fast and we need to pivot.
[Olga]: Yes. We sold this product to Waves (the underlying blockchain we built USDN on) in 2020. Although we can’t be in charge of how it goes further, it’s a remarcable product.
Absolutely! have you been to some of the summer events in Europe or Asia? The vibe is not bearish at all) That was amazing
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: I haven’t gotten there yet this year but I do plan to visit some of the major hackathons though! It’s definitely something else. Happy to hear the atmosphere and vibes are still bullish! The bear is for building right
So let me ask you about the GTON Network — a community-governed Ethereum Rollup Protocol with a Multi-Collateral Stablecoin as its Native Currency.
I’ve read a couple of times that rollups are the way to go for achieving real scalability on the Ethereum Network (Even Vitalik has been quoted a few times on this I believe). Is this part of GTON Network’s mission? Can you explain to us in layman’s terms what a rollup is and what it does and why we need it?
[Olga]: Yes, it is. It’s a good time to stop looking at the charts all the time, accept the downmarket and concentrate on building.
Indeed, GTON Capital acts as a DAO that is building an L2 Ethereum rollup. And we do believe that the Ethereum expansion onto rollups is the only way this space will be evolving in the short- and middle terms. But we go beyond the scalability issue solving. We aim to make this space more predictable, stable and reliable.
GTONNet L2 is special with its use of a stablecoin GCD for gas fees.
Thus GCD has a real usecase and a native currency of GTON Net. It will be used by traders, investors and builder on the every-day basis. This approach gives real, tangible utility to the asset making it not only speculative and additionally giving it solid backing.
Speaking about more high-level mission, GTON Capital’s ultimate goal is to empower millions of users to invent and explore new experiences in decentralized digital capital markets. We believe that GTON Net with its feature will engourage more people build and explore the space.
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: beautiful. I like how GCD has indeed a real usecase — ant it’s not like some projects shoehorn a token into their model just to get a token in there
[Olga]: Exactly. We did a lot of research in a pursuit of finding a more reliable stablecoin model.
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: ok and adding to that, how far along are you with building the GTON Network? Is there currently a main or testnet live? I see there’s a testnet explorer that can be accessed via the website? Can you tell us more what we can see here? https://explorer.testnet.gton.network/
[Olga]: It’s on testnet and can be utilised by anyone. You shared the right link:)
The mainnet is also up and raning and showing stability. But we don’t invite anyone to join it now, cos we’re doing an audit by Hacken at the moment. Once it’s done, we’ll be doing a capmaign to attract builders and projects on GTON Net.
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: ok cool. I also found GTON on coingecko, but that’s not the same token as GCD right
[Olga]: You’re right. We have a dual-token sistem in a way. GTON is the initial token of the ecosystem which will be used as a collateral as well. It will also be one of the main markets for other assets in the GTON Ecosystem on tom of GTON Net. It is and will be volatile and be attractive for traders. A I previously said, we have plans to launch AMMs and single-sided liquidity applications and GTON will be used as a primary reward token there.
However, GTON is at the core of staking (which is already up and running on Ethereum). GTON Staking is a mechanism for protocol contributors to capture the value from the ecosystem of products built on GCD and GTONNet.
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: ok great 🙂 Here it is for those wondering: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/gton-capital
So let’s dive a bit deeper on the stablecoin topic.
I read that the GTON Dollar is a Multi-Collateralized Stablecoin Protocol. Some time ago there was a lot of talk about centralized vs decentralized stablecoins — especially with the collapse of UST and then some regulatory scrutiny on USDC which then gave some question marks to how $DAI by MakerDAO is stable. Can you tell us more about GTON’s approach of its stablecoin and its use as native currency for the GTON Network rollup?
Btw when the campaign is live, do share it with the community!
[Olga]: Oh yeah, we will! Invite us for another AMA to tell you more about our mainnet, please😉
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: Consider it done!
[Olga]: Sure. That’s one of the hottest topics.
There’s no doubt that stablecoins are the main pillars of DeFi. Moreover the recent events with the censorship proved the need for more reliable decentralised stablecoins. Terra’s crush discouraged many retail investors from and even project creators from stablecoins.
Nevertherless it’s good to see that many trusted and skilled teams are still elaborating on this path like Curve and AAVe who will present their stablecoins in the near future. This just proves that stablecoins will remain the driving power in the space for a while.
[Olga]: We at GTON Capital, combine these two trends and build a scalable L2 with a decentralised multi-collateralised stablecoin. This will help to solve several most annoying issues at once :) One is the speed, scalability and compatibility (you know that Optimistic L2s are EVM-compatible) and second is pursuit of a more reliable stablecoin model.
The main feature of GCD is it’s real usecase as fuel for the network. For the bankrun to happen we need all the products to stop operating on the chain at once, along with the chain itself to stop function and this is an unlikely scenario. So we make stablecoin demanded not just as a trading asset but as a utility asset.
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: Yea I really do believe we need a decentralized stablecoin. The path towards this goal however remains still unknown.
Let’s talk about governance. I read that it’s a community-goverened rollup and there’s a voting section on the website. Can you explain how this process works and if there are any requirements for token holders to be able to submit a proposal — like do you need to hold a certain amount?
[Olga]: We, at GTON Capital are experimention of course. Just like Curve and AAVE. But nothing ventured nothing gained. And we’ve been too long in the space to see how unsustaineble some models can be. So now what we do is definitely a more sustainable path, at least, we alreday know what NOT to to.
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: That’s the right approach and mindset! Same goes for hardforks on major blockchains like ethereum, it’s like upgrading the car while it’s driving 😄
[Olga]: Ahah, good point )) GTON Capital has a multi-level system of governance.
The community can raise questions and put forward suggestions in the forum. Anyone can initiate and participate in the discussions.
If a topic generates enough feedback and a decision needs to be made, it is posted on the forum as a governance proposal. However, anyone can publish and discuss a proposal.
After a discussion period of 2 to 7 days, the proposal is voted on via Snapshot. Only GTON token holders can participate in the voting.
The infrastructure of GTON Capital is developed by the core team.
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: ok this is where $GTON comes in aswell
The I’m curious about some of your partnerships you’ve established. As we all know, if you wanna go fast go alone, if you wanna go far, go together!
(I hope that saying is right xD)
What partnerships do you currently have, and what value do they bring to the project both short-term and long-term? Have you gone through any pre-seed or series A fund raising yet?
[Olga]: Oh, we’re probably the greatest networkers :) We sincerely believe that building another Ethereum killer is doomed at being a failure. We think that we all need to collaborate to make this space better and attract more users from the web2 world. This applies to our biz dev strategy: we want to collaborate, share our users, give them wider opportunities through partnerships.
As I previously said, we have multiple partners including infrastructure solutions providers like Ankr or Chainlink, Denet, Band, and DeFi platforms and products which will be ported onto GTON Net. I can’t say the names now but we’re preparing to launch our partnership machine once the mainnet is live.
However, we’re in discussion with a dozen (or so) of projects which reached out to us themselves and are exploring the opportunity to deploy their solutions on GTONNet.
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: Beautiful. I’ll be keeping an eye out for any partnership announcements 😉
OK let’s move to the last question before we have the community segment!
Can you tell us about the roadmap and what plans do you have for 2022?
[Olga]: Our panf righ now is to
- launch the mainnet,
- optimize the operations to free up the resources for the growth,
- and the growth itself.
We’ve been just discussing it with our community on the forum. The very latest community voting was exactly on the priorities for the mid-term. The decision states that we will set up a smarter operational structure and start working on bringing more GameFi, SocialFi and RWA (real worls assets) onto the chain.
To put it symply, the roadmap is focused on the ecosystem expansion with new products.
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: Community votings can be checked here everyone!
ok thank you, that’s it for the muted part @olyakosareva are you ready for the community part?
I suggest we first move to the twitter section and afterwards we’ll open the chat for the live chat questions
I’ll post 4 twitter questions and I would ask that you select 2 which you answer, and those will be the 2 winners for today that go home with $25 each!
Is that ok?
[Olga]: yes, go ahead!
TWITTER QUESTIONS
Q1:
Fundraising and agreements with strategic partners and investors are more feasible for infrastructure-oriented projects. Is it because of this that GTON moved the development of GTON Chain (L2) from Q4 to Q2 and made it a top priority?
[Olga]: Q1. Fair enough. However we’re entering an application era now. Such platforma like 1inch, AAVe, Curve and others are building their own ecosystems and are pretty succefull there. We chose this path because we just want to bring something fundamentally new and in our case it needs to be done on the blockchain level.
Q2:
[Olga]: I have seen that GTON has a POL (liquidity ownership protocol).
So, Can you explain more about POL? What are the main concepts and functions of POL? And How does the POL Proportion determine the level of control a DAO has when trying to reach the stake?
[Olga]: What is the biggest liquidity issue at the moment?
Anyone can, for instance, create a pool for their token on SushiSwap. However, once a pool has been created, the token’s issuer has to make sure that users bring sufficient liquidity to that pool. Clearly, insufficient liquidity translates into high transaction fees, which, in turn, result in poor user experience.
Therefore, token issues incentivize users to participates in their pools by rewarding them with tokens. As a result, a “race to the bottom” starts between pools, meaning that they have to offer yet higher rewards to liquidity providers, issuing more and more tokens and thereby diluting the protocols’ value.
Plus, this model is not exactly sustainable, as users can easily take liquidity from one pool to another that offers higher rewards.
What could be done to solve this issue?
One possible approach is control over liquidity through the treasury of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). DAOs can mitigate many issues, as they facilitate the creation of sustainable governance tools and processes.
DAOs cannot replace algorithmic systems, but what they do is set and enforce rules for systems of that kind. Algorithmic systems needed, for instance, for market making of protocols’ tokens or liquidity management, need to operate fully automatedly, but with an option for customization and updates through DAOs.
In managing protocol liquidity, the concept of protocol owned liquidity (POL), can make a difference. According to POL, tokens provided by users form the protocol’s treasury and, in turn, can be provided to DEXes to earn additional revenue for the protocol. So bacically the decisions on where to direct the liquidity are still made by the community (through votings) but the treasury is used as the main source of it and the liquidity is provided by the core team.
COMMUNITY QUESTIONS
[Olga]: Wow, realy nice ones. That’s for reseach that you’ve made to come up with these questions. I liked many of them. But let me pick two, as required.
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: Yes we’re very proud of our raccoonfamily
Q1: How is Gton Capital gonna hedge against those risks? I know that that hack was on the app side but we’re gonna onboard projects into the network, how can we ensure that they are safe?
[Olga]: This one is very nice and like the way yu think about it. The thing is that since the inception, GTON core team has been through several audit (I don’t even think about our previous experience).
We’ve worked by the best teams in the space. However, we see that even the best teams make mistakes sometimes or focus on minor things rather than searching for the actual vulnerabilities. We have proficient devs, some of them focus on security specifically. Once the mainnet is launched, we’re planning to build up an audit devision with some of the current team members and provide our own audit service for the projects that want to build on GTON Net.
You probably know, that an audit from a good company costs a lot. Like really, A LOT. Sometimes it’s unaffordable for the starting projects. In our case the discount will be very decent.
Q2: Do you allow suggestions and feedback from the community? Are we allowed in decision making, do you put community into consideration ?
[Olga]: And this one.
The answer is yes, absolutely. We want to be transparent and encourage any participation in the project either voting, suggestions on the forum or contribution in the chats on social media.
We have already had several cases of the community members becoming the core contributors. So if you share your opinion (if it’s bad, you’re helping us to look from another agle, if it’s good you’re proving that we’re on the right path) we appreciate that.
[DeFiNaut 🦝 | founder @DeFiRaccoons]: awesome! that marks the end of the session thank you so much @olyakosareva it was our pleasure to host you and I do hope you’ll stop by again in the near term to update us with the latest. Congratulations to the winning raccoons, and obviously we’ll make sure our raccoon rules are respected as for the winners!!!! yaay
[Olga]: I was a pleasure to be chatting with you! Amazing community you have!
About Crypto Raccoons
A community for everything related to DeFi, NFT, IDO, Blockchain, and much more. We share our analysis, fundamentals and hold AMAs with all sorts of projects!
That’s all we have time for today, until next time, consider joining our socials underneath to join our DeFi Discussion!
🦝 Join DeFi Raccoons Community
🦝 Get the latest Raccoons News
🦝 Drop a follow on Medium
🦝 Follow us on Twitter
🦝 Our AMA Calendar
Now for a disclaimer — I’m not a financial advisor, anything you read on my Medium isn’t financial advice, it’s a log of myself doing due diligence on and talking to projects, please verify any and all information presented (error reporting welcome) and make your own decisions.
