Mar 19, 2021
Convergence — AMA Summary
Converge the world!
On Tuesday the 9th of March, the DuckDAO community had an AMA with Oscar Yeung, Convergence co-founder.
The Convergence Protocol is an AMM that allows anyone to swap among all types of tokens. Real world assets will be interchangeable in the DeFi space by connecting Wrapped Security Tokens (WSTs) with Utility Tokens (UTs) on a single interface that is easy to use, adopt and composable with other DeFi protocols.
The native token — CONV, gives holders governance rights in the Convergence DAO, a split of transaction fees, and privileged access to new initial WST offerings and pre-sale events.
The protocol consists of a token wrapping module, Convergence AMM Infrastructure, Convergence Pools, and the Convergence DAO.
Token Wrapping Module
This is the key to creating WSTs that will be injected into the Convergence AMM.
Convergence AMM Infrastructure
The Convergence AMM is built on Ethereum and is EMV-compatible with other chains. This will allow 24/7 trading of WSTs and will be able to find the best order routing from aggregated liquidity sources for traders.
Convergence Pools
These will give asset owners the ability to create and manage their own market making strategies. Asset owners will also be able to perform Initial WST offerings alongside providing liquidity for DeFi users.
Convergence DAO
The Convergence DAO will provide greater transparency and decentralization to the protocol. CONV token holders will be given governance rights to vote on various proposals, such as the types of WSTs that will be included in the Convergence AMM, and the Utility Tokens that can be used to swap for these WSTs.
Helpful links
Participants:
Convergence — Oscar Yeung — Co-founder
DuckDAO — Pep — DuckDAO community representative
Please note that the following summary has been edited for clarity.
Pep
Welcome everyone to another DuckDAO AMA.
We are joined today by Oscar Yeung, Convergence’s co-founder.
On behalf of the DuckDAO community, I’d like to welcome you to our channel :)
Pep
👋
Hello Oscar!
Oscar
Hey everyone! My pleasure to be here
Pep
The pleasure is ours. This is a very exciting week for our community and we’re eager to learn more about your project.
We have a prepared list of questions that were asked on Twitter and then we will open the floor to the telegram community at the end
So let’s get started :)
Can we start with an introduction for yourself; what is your background/experience both in the traditional space, and crypto space.
Can you also speak about some of the other key Convergence team members that cannot make the AMA today?
Oscar
Thanks, the Duck community is always very supportive. Hope I can share some useful insights here
My background is in digital assets, tokenization and traditional finance. Alongside Convergence, I am also the co-founder of Liquefy, a leading security token issuance platform in Asia. Prior to entering the blockchain industry, I worked as a Global Markets Analyst at Deutsche Bank across Singapore and Hong Kong. Spending time in both traditional finance and DeFi, I experienced first hand both the innovations and limitations of security tokens as well as now seeing the growth and demand for real world assets in the DeFi.
I am not the only Co-Founder behind Convergence, and I am incredibly lucky to have a great team with me. Ivan, my co-founder, is responsible for technical product growth and development of the protocol. Ivan received his Bachelor of Science in Computing Science from Simon Fraser University. He was previously an Analyst at IBM, working on institutional-grade healthcare solutions. He developed his software product knowledge from his time at an autonomous driving simulation startup, which was the first driving simulator centre in the city.
Of course, we have a strong team covering both strategy and product behind us who also aren’t with us here today and I’m incredibly excited to be working with such talented people.
Pep
This is great background info and we at DuckDAO know it takes a very strong team to pull off great projects.
Ok first question: If Convergence is adding real assets to the blockchain, how will you handle dispute resolution across multiple jurisdictions? Can you speak a little more about this?
Oscar
That’s a great question to start off. Many people have questions on real assets on blockchain across different jurisdictions. Convergence is focusing on real assets that are not actively managed by the asset owners, such as private / pre-IPO companies. Token holders simply gain access to exclusive investment opportunities usually reserved for institutional investors and family officers.
“Token holders simply gain access to exclusive investment opportunities usually reserved for institutional investors and family officers”
Once the underlying real world assets will have a liquidity event, it will trigger token holders’ rights to ‘redeem’ their real world asset exposure, which then the real world asset prices converges with the digital wrapped asset price.
Being in the tokenization space, we have engaged with legal counsel on a proprietary structure that can allow our WST to be traded on our AMM.
Pep
That’s reassuring and I wouldn’t imagine anything less for you guys since you have a strong team. The Pre-IPO companies caught my eye but we can speak about them more in upcoming questions.
How do you see regulatory authorities responding to the popularization of wrapped assets on a platform like convergence, particularly in major markets like the US?
Oscar
It’s well known that total growth of digital assets and tokenization industry is expected to grow very quickly over the next decade. Many institutions have entered this space since the massive adoption of crypto.
Our protocol will be working with reputable tokenization platforms to ensure the origination, issuance and distribution of tokenized securities remain compliant. Once tokenized, Convergence will use our own legal business / corporate structure to bring real world asset exposure to DeFi.
Pep
Do you see regulation as a major obstacle or do you see it more as an opportunity to mainstream tokenized assets?
Oscar
Definitely an opportunity! Regulatory clarity and development of a mature regulatory framework will undoubtedly help bring tokenized assets to the mainstream, especially as institutional involvement can bring in more valuable assets to be tokenized. We see tokenized assets to be the inevitable part of the crypto ecosystem and are excited for the developments ahead.
Pep
That sounds great and I agree with this attracting more mainstream involvement. More opportunity for sure!
Will the wrapped stocks on your platform be backed by real stocks? If so, how do you plan to get these stocks prior to wrapping, and through which platform?
Oscar
We will be focusing on wrapped private companies shares, so more illiquid assets in the real world, rather than stocks. All our wrapped security tokens are backed and ‘redeemable’ upon the liquidity event of the real world asset. For example, if you’re holding a wrapped security token of a private company, upon the ‘real world’ liquidity event of the company (i.e. it goes IPO) you would be able to exchange your WST exposure for the proceeds of the IPO.
To source our real world assets (private companies, unicorns, real world assets), we are working with strategic institutional partners and leading family offices for a pipeline of high quality assets.
Pep
Nice… so not your average stock but something that a normal person wouldn’t be able to find on their own. This is very attractive as it gives more opportunity to your average Joe.
Oscar
Yes precisely! Just think if you can invest in uber or airbnb before they went ipo
Pep
Fantastic! This is very similar to Duck philosophy and you guys are taking it a step further into real world assets. Amazing!
Will smaller assets such as vehicle ownership, robo taxi subscriptions, insurance of real world secured or traded on the platform?
Oscar
The Convergence vision hopes to include all types of real world investment opportunities and these are all very niche but attractive investments. Robo taxi subscription is something I personally think has huge potential returns.
However, as a new protocol we will be prioritizing exotic, more attractive assets with foreseeable liquidity events — such as pre ipo shares, or unicorn crypto-companies. Companies that are easily recognized by investors.
Pep
“Unicorn crypto-companies” ❤️❤️❤️
You know everyone’s ears just perked up
Oscar
Coinbase going IPO is just the first of many!
Pep
100% agree. More to come and it’s good to be connected with someone who’s specifically watching for these opportunities.
Are WSTs interchangeable across multiple blockchains or restricted to the chain they were created on? If restricted, would Convergence eventually utilise blockchain interoperability like that offered by Quant?
Oscar
For now, WSTs are ERC 20 standard. But as a decentralized interchangeable asset protocol, cross-chain compatibility is indeed on our roadmap. The main consideration the team will focus on is the community and product needs in considering cross chain compatibility
Pep
Is convergence also focusing on projects that currently have security tokens but want to ‘wrap them’ for the more beneficial secondary trading markets?
Oscar
We are focusing on any project that our community would want to invest in. After all, it is about offering products and exposure that are attractive to investors. Some members of the community who is a fan of fortnight suggested getting Epic games shares before which I think is a great idea.
Of course, if there are good projects that currently have security tokens issued, we would welcome them to work on wrapping and trading on our AMM.
Pep
Ooh epic games would be amazing! I actually have a subscription to them 😉. But that’s very cool that you would be listening to the community.
I recently read on medium a concept of your project that caught my attention, “Holders of the token may also receive exclusive participation access to new initial WST offerings and pre-sale events”. Could you please talk a little more about how an.. IWSTO? offering would work?
Oscar
Users will be able to access initial WST offerings similar to Polkastarter or DuckStarter.
Holders of the CONV token will be able to subscribe to new pools opened by real world asset owners; some allocation will be determined based on the amount of CONV tokens held.
Pep
We’ve seen how successful both Polka and duckstarter are so again, this is just more opportunity in a different asset class.
Ok let’s get to the last question before opening it up to the TG community
The Convergence DAO will be composed of the token holders of the project, but what is the minimum amount of tokens that must be holded to be part of this court?
Also, does Convergence have any mechanism to prevent monopolization and excessive power by users with many tokens?
Oscar
Currently there is no required minimum amount to vote in the Convergence DAO. Every token counts! We will continue to decentralize the Convergence DAO to improve the product and its offering. If there are certain excessive and destructive users monopolizing the platform, we will vote on a new mechanism to resolve the issue.
Pep
Sounds great Oscar. Before opening up to the TG community, if there’s anything else you would like the community to know that we didn’t cover in the questions please feel free to speak.
Oscar
Those are all in depth questions that truly show the knowledge of this group. If there are any specific assets people want to invest in, feel free to reach out to our team in the Convergence Finance telegram.
Pep
Ok I know you guys have an incredibly busy week so I will open the floor for a few questions and feel free to scroll through.
Duck (user @Idee01)
- Community support is one of the major factors to the long term success of any projects. Did you take into account community feedback when building this project? Do you have an ambassadorial program?
- Several new crypto projects just have a whitepaper to show, without any working product. Can you tell us about your products and the role they play in the Convergence Ecosystem?
Oscar
Community support is the key driver of DeFi and we will launch a number of initiatives to build adoptions. Anyone interested can reach out to admins on our telegram channels.
In terms of product, our team is working day and night to get the testnet out as soon as possible. The products included in the Convergence Protocol are, 1) Token Wrapped Module, 2) Convergence Pool, 3) Convergence AMM, and 4) ConvergenceDAO. More information about how it accrues value to the ecosystem can be found in the Litepaper.
Duck (user @TranAnh01)
What’s your motivation in making CONV Token, and what we will see in future? How can token holders benefit with CONV tokens?
Oscar
The CONV token serves several important features in the Convergence Protocol. The functions include 1) Governance Rights, 2) Split of Transaction Fees and 3) Privileged Access to New Deals.
Pep
I think Convergence Finance exemplifies the saying “it’s not what you know but who you know”….in this case learning about your project early on is going to be very beneficial to those paying attention at this great opportunity.
Thank you so much Oscar for taking your valuable time out and addressing our community. 🙏🏽
Oscar
Thanks for having me here and I hope this AMA gives better insight into the Convergence vision. Be sure to check out our announcement channel as we will be giving our next big update there shortly
Pep
We will. Best of luck and so glad the Ducks found you guys early on 😌
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