Genesis Shards AMA Recap — 23rd — 25th March ‘21
Genesis Shards conducted AMAs with three major crypto communities from 23rd — 25th March
- Mandy [ t.me/mandysicoresearch || t.me/getrichwithmandygroupchat || https://twitter.com/mandyb2437 ]
- The GOODFELLAS [ t.me/GFCrypto || https://twitter.com/GF_Cryptopicks ]
- EncryptClub Global [ https://encrypt.club/#/ || t.me/encryptclubglobal || https://twitter.com/EncryptClub ]
Genesis Shards Co-founder Nilotpal Mukherjee was present during the AMA sessions to respond to questions from the community members. Below is a recap of these 3 AMAs. Note that some responses have been updated to reflect our project’s latest status.
Segment 1: Introduction and Basic Questions
Q1(Mandy) We will start with greetings then later personal introduction about the host
Hey Mandy, a pleasure to be here. Yours is one of the few communities that has survived and seen the full crypto cycle from bull — bear and then back to bull. Pretty sure this group would be a powerhouse of experience. Glad to kick-off our AMA series with you awesome set of folks.
Sure. My first step in Crypto was back in 2015. Being an investment banker with Deutsche Bank working on deal structuring, valuation and IPO processes, and later a strategic consultant at Accenture with a deep love for economics, it didn’t take me long to fall in love with the dynamics of the crypto space. 2016 and 2017 were quite eventful wherein I consulted and invested in a lot of local projects alongside building my network. Over time I became a key player in the Asian blockchain ecosystem, advising and backing projects along the way. In 2018 I joined Marlin Protocol (a 1.7Bn$ project atm) and headed the Business there till 2020. I was instrumental in early growth of the company, where my expertise around business growth, crypto-economics and strategy helped lay a strong foundation for the brand. Later in 2020, I co-founded Genesis Shards with Garlam Won (who has also been in the ecosystem since 2015, and previously headed Marketing at Harmony before starting his venture — Momentum 6).
As part of the Core team, we also have Jae, who is our superstar blockchain engineer and is heading the development team at Genesis. He became known in the space through the EOS.IO mainnet launch as a gifted developer, with his abilities eclipsing those of his experienced peers. Jae is often invited to speak at prominent conferences and can be found discussing the benefits/pitfalls of blockchain technology during interviews.
Q2(Mandy) How did you come up with the concept of Genesis and what problems are you solving
Sure. The DeFi ecosystem as we all know has leapfrogged in the last few years specially in 2020–21 with IDO or Initial DEX Offering fast becoming the method of choice for token distribution and capital raises. With the conclusion of an IDO event we have seen an influx of liquidity into the token. However the Pre-IDO space is still riddled with several liquidity issues — while on one hand there are very few avenues for pre-IDO trading by the community it is also a big pain point for projects as they have limited community participation, and little sense of price discovery in the early stages. For most of these pre-IDO transactions, they are currently being executed in OTC (over the counter) ‘platforms’ or ‘forums’ which are scattered and hard to find for the average investor. The biggest problem, however, is the highly inconsistent OTC trade practices for pre-IDO tokens where these trades are often conducted by two parties in an uncertain environment with a high risk of default. In short, there are hardly any trustless and permissionless platforms that allow for fair and easy trading of illiquid pre-IDO tokens. These problems faced by projects and their corresponding communities is what inspired us to create Genesis Shards.
GS was created to usher in a new paradigm for DeFi aimed at NFT-ying the OTC market — transforming NFTs into a liquidity vehicle for pre-IDO tokens. By wrapping time-locked fungible tokens into NFTs, Genesis Shards is creating a new marketplace for previously illiquid tokens. This opens up a whole new universe of possibilities !
- For Investors — they will no longer have to worry about shady OTC deals with high default risk : they can simply utilize the safe, trustless pre-IDO liquidity provided by Genesis NFTs.
- For DeFi projects — they can leverage the early liquidity of their tokens offered by the platform and build a strong community support early on in their journey. They can also get a sense of early price discovery helping with quicker course corrections.
Further, the liquidity marketplace of Genesis Shards by nature also opens up a launchpad like environment for its partner projects offering a one-stop environment for great projects to meet great partners, providing DeFi projects with the best support possible early on through its widely spread out access, ecosystem and mentor networks.
Q3(Goodfellas) Can you give us a very high level description of what Genesis Shards is about for our members who are unfamiliar?
GenShards is a whole new marketplace for pre-IDO tokens on NFTs powered by Polkadot. GS was created to usher in a new paradigm for DeFi transforming NFTs into a liquidity vehicle for pre-IDO tokens, and to introduce a whole new suite of DeFi products across multiple blockchains. By wrapping time-locked fungible tokens into NFTs, Genesis Shards is creating a new marketplace for previously illiquid tokens. This opens up a whole new universe of possibilities !
Q4(Encrypt)Why does Genesis Shards focus on addressing NFTs pre-IDO liquidity issue? What is the estimated value of this marketplace?
The DeFi ecosystem as we all know has leapfrogged in the last few years specially in 2020–21 with IDO or Initial DEX Offering fast becoming the method of choice for token distribution and capital raises. With the conclusion of an IDO event we have seen an influx of liquidity into the token.
However the Pre-IDO space within DeFi is still riddled with several liquidity issues — while on one hand there are very few avenues for pre-IDO trading by the community it is also a big pain point for projects as they have limited community participation, and little sense of price discovery in the early stages.
For most of these pre-IDO transactions, they are currently being executed in OTC (over the counter) ‘platforms’ or ‘forums’ which are scattered and hard to find for the average investor. The biggest problem, however, is the highly inconsistent OTC trade practices for pre-IDO tokens where these trades are often conducted by two parties in an uncertain environment with a high risk of default.
In short, there are hardly any trustless and permissionless platforms that allow for fair and easy trading of illiquid pre-IDO tokens. These problems faced by projects and their corresponding communities is what inspired us to create a solution for pre-IDO liquidity.And we just happened to find the right solution in NFTs!
Q5(Mandy) Interesting. NFT’ying the OTC market. Can you help elaborate on that? How does the architecture work?
Genesis Shards architecture has 4 main building blocks:
1) The $GS token — It is the native utility token of the ecosystem. It is an ERC20 token issued on Ethereum and can be swapped for elements such as Gen Access. It also plays a significant role in governance of the Genesis network.
2) Gen Access cards — Gen Access cards are the ‘entry passes’ into the Genesis Shards ecosystem. They allow holders to acquire Gen Tickets. Different NFT cards grant different access rights — ranging from Gen ticket size to governance influence.
3) Gen Tickets — Each ‘Gen Ticket’ will have a varying amount of Pre-IDO tokens that are inside. The tickets themselves can be traded on NFTX — or they can be swapped for tokens after the IDO, at the time of the token generation event.
4) Gen NFTX — It is a marketplace for DeFi products that come out of the Genesis Shards ecosystem. It has the ability to shard NFTs for fractional swaps. Pre-IDO tokens are wrapped into Gen Tickets, which are NFT contracts that can be traded on the NFT AMM dex (Gen NFTX).
Gen tickets are accessed through Gen access cards bought with GS tokens and are redeemable for post-TGE (Token Generation Event) tokens once its vesting cliff period is over.
Q6(Encrypt)Why governance token is required for Genesis Shards? What does the governance token do?
To understand the Governance aspects of GS token, it’s important to understand the nature in which Genesis Shards ecosystem works.
The liquidity marketplace of Genesis Shards by very nature opens up an incubator/launchpad like environment for its partner projects; offering a one-stop environment for great projects to meet great partners. Our community on the other hand by virtue of holding Genesis NFt’sed Access cards, get access to these projects quite early in their journey.
Now as one can interpret, the various ecosystem pieces of Genesis requires community consensus at several points:
1) Be it the percentages of allocation set for each access card or
2) The projects that should be brought into the network or even,
3) Inclusion/Exclusion of ecosystem partners depending on the value they add to the community.
- The Governance aspect of $GS tokens gives governance rights to its members to vote on several such decisions within the ecosystem. We shall be releasing more on this in our upcoming blogs.
Q7(Mandy) Who are your competitors in crypto and what’s the strategy to outperform them
Well, Genesis Shards can be looked at from 3 different angles:
1) Pre-IDO liquidity platform: the very fact that Genesis Shards is creating an entirely new market by introducing liquidity to Pre-IDO tokens through its NFT swap architecture, it has a first mover advantage in that space.
2) NFT marketplace: Yet, from a marketplace perspective we are more like Opensea — but for Defi Options. 3) Further, given the very nature of GS, it can also be looked at as a launchpad, where there are some existing platforms like Polkastarter, DaoMaker, Duckdao, Poolz etc. However, the best part about GS is that we don’t compete with any of them, rather intend to have a strategic tie-up with all, where projects launching on Genesis Pre-IDO platform can be funneled into these ecosystems further upstream for an IDO.
We would be releasing our extensive list of ecosystem partners in the coming days, Do keep a watch on this space: genesis-shards.medium.com
Q8(Goodfellas) Can you tell us more about the Genesis Ecosystem?
The ultimate vision of Genesis Shards is to be a self-sustaining ecosystem where projects can get the best possible early stage support to navigate through the DeFi waters. A DeFi project today faces a multitude of challenges on its journey to maturity. This includes but is not limited to community growth and participation, exposure, partner networks, etc. — all of which need to be brought together quickly and effectively in order to scale.
These issues are further accentuated by the current state of the market, which is moving at an ever accelerating pace — giving projects very little time to settle and put these pieces together.
To achieve that vision, we have decided to bring on a group of strategic partners who will help the Genesis ecosystem function effectively and sustainably at scale. Genesis Shards has built a 3 tier value network within its community, consisting of
- Genesis Access partners — primarily VCs and strategic investors to help expand its ‘field of vision’.
- Genesis Ecosystem partners — channel partners within its community to provide the best possible support to projects in terms of engagement, social media reach out, etc and
- Mentor partners — industry angels to help and guide projects with product-market fit, formulating sales pitches, tokenomics, partnerships, building business models within the GS ecosystem
The 3-tier value network keeps the interests of community, projects and investors aligned within the GS ecosystem, with each of them benefitting the other to create a completely self-sustainable ecosystem.
Q9(Encrypt) What is the advantage of Genesis Shards when compared with other NFTs platforms? How will you increase the market liquidity?
The crypto season of 2021 is witnessing a quantum leap in the value recognition of “NFTs” or non-fungible tokens. NFTs are soon becoming a rapidly popular asset class. However, few, if any, NFTs have any added utility apart from their collectible value.
The very idea of NFTs being re-defined as Defi Options by Genesis Shards opens up endless possibilities for a whole new suite of option based DeFi products that can be traded on our platform. Such a market wasn’t earlier possible there in other existing platforms like Opeansea, and the likes.
Q10(Goodfellas) How are projects selected to be part of the Genesis Shards Ecosystem?
In the early days, new projects within the GS ecosystem would be selected by a committee based on an independent review. Once the ecosystem matures, we would ideally want to make the process more decentralized but definitely not at the cost of quality. So we expect the transition to be gradual there.
Q11(Encrypt) Genesis Shards supports NFTs trading across multiple blockchains, may I know how will Genesis Shards guarantee the security of the multi-chain assets on it
While the Genesis Shards native architecture has been built ground up with security in mind, we also intend to work with pre-established Polka bridges to accommodate cross chain liquidity, without really reinventing the wheel there.
This would help ensure the security of the multi-chain assets on it are best optimized.
Q12(Mandy) You say you are powered by Polkadot and provide cross chain liquidity. Can you elaborate?
Yeah sure. While Genesis as a pre-IDO platform will have its own liquidity engine, we see huge value in partnering with the existing cross-chain architecture of Polkadot for inter-chain communication. The solidity compatible Polkadot parachains will enable Genesis Shards ecosystem to take pre-IDO tokens from various low liquidity blockchains, wrap them into Gen NFTs and be traded on Genesis enabled liquidity pools. This will also allow the projects to take full advantage of the liquidity internal and external to their native chains. We would also be utilizing Moonbeam for our relays. Moonbeam is a smart contract ‘parachain’ on Polkadot, for ERC-1155 tokens which enables compatibility with Ethereum smart contracts. On top of the cross-chain communication, Polkadot and Moonbeam will enable faster transactions while reducing gas costs on the Genesis exchange.
Q13(Goodfellas) Can you explain the benefit of “redefining NFT’s as DeFi options”
The crypto season of 2021 is witnessing a quantum leap in the value recognition of “NFTs” or non-fungible tokens. NFTs are soon becoming a rapidly popular asset class. However, few, if any, NFTs have any added utility apart from their collectible value ?
The idea of NFTs being re-defined as Defi Options opens up possibilities of a whole new suite of DeFi applications that weren’t previously explored.
As the first use case of Genesis ecosystem, by wrapping time-locked fungible tokens (in this case PreIDO tokens) into NFTs (in this case the GenTickets), the NFTs start behaving like a DeFi option. Just like regular options, these Gen Tickets will have some value derived from the underlying assets (pre-IDO tokens), and some value derived from time sensitivity (token unlock points). When the last post-IDO token tranche is unlocked by the project, that is when the time value would collapse to zero — and only the underlying asset value would remain.
As one case sense, the very derivative nature of Genesis products can open up endless possibilities for NFTs in the DeFi space subject to one’s exploration and interpretation.
Q14(Encrypt) NFTs is a new section in the field of linking real world and blockchain. What do you think of NFTs’development space in the future?
NFTs are completely shaking up a lot of traditional industries including, notably, art.
The highlight for NFTs so far has been the Beeple artwork selling for more than $60 million!
We like to look at NFTs as building a new liquid IP ( intellectual property ) marketplace for any form of digital content. This is a market with innumerable number of units that can be tokenized — the potential is truly limitless. We really are just seeing the tip of the iceberg here.
Let’s look at the progress of the NFT space so far, from 2017 through 2020
31 -> 180 -> 211 -> 365 (USD millions)
( Data from : https://nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020 )
The numbers clearly show an upward trajectory — and the NFT space has never come into the public spotlight like we are seeing currently.
With continued growth of the NFT space — the market will find newer and more exciting uses for these instruments. We believe with our DeFi options on NFTs, we are playing a key role in expanding the lens for how people view NFTs.
Q15(Mandy) Can GS work with other blockchains ?
Yes, GS can work with projects of multiple blockchains. The solidity compatible Polkadot parachains will enable Genesis Shards ecosystem to take pre-IDO tokens from various low liquidity blockchains, wrap them into Gen NFTs and be traded on Genesis enabled liquidity pools. This will also allow the projects to take full advantage of the liquidity internal and external to their native chains.
Q16(Goodfellas) The GS Ecosystem will specialize in providing guidance in:
-Access Shards
-Ecosystem Shards
-Mentor Shards
Is this something that Genesis Shards will be helping in house, or will you be partnering with other projects that specialize in these areas?
We are creating a massive ecosystem around GS with participation from experts from all corners. so yeah it would have partners from outside as well
Q17(Mandy) How far are you on the Tech journey ?
We have made significant progress on the tech side and are well positioned on our roadmap. The tech team has already shipped codes for — Landing page design, Gen Tickets Web Frontend Mockups, Gen Tickets NFTs Design, GEN Access Cards NFTs Design, GenFactory & GenTicket contracts (on testnet), GenFactory smart contract v1 + tests, (on testnet) GenTickets smart contract v1 + tests (on testnet), GenAccess cards smart contract + tests and Gen token contract + tests (on testnet) We would be sharing a detailed roadmap for the project with a complete snapshot on the tech progress in the coming weeks.
Q18(Goodfellas) Would you be able to tell us a little about what kind of partnerships you have secured?
(response updated to reflect new partnerships as on date of publishing)
Project partners for Genesis Shards
We are also in talks with several top tier projects exploring integration with them at different levels, the details of which would be shared in our upcoming blogs.
Some of the project partnerships already in place are :
GS x Polygon
Genesis Shards has partnered with Polygon (formerly Matic) to increase the scalability of Gen Tickets (NFTs) on the Genesis platform through Polygon’s L2 solution
GS x PolkaFoundry
Genesis Shards has partnered with PolkaFoundry to help bring a much wider range of DeFi projects building on Polkadot, into the Genesis ecosystem and to provide them with Pre-IDO liquidity solutions
GS x Kylin
Genesis Shards has partnered with Kylin to access oracle services and integrate price data feeds through Kylin’s Oracle network
GS x dART
Genesis Shards and dART will collaborate to enable insurance access for Gen Ticket NFTs
Strategic partners for the Genesis Shards ecosystem
We have nearly 75+ Access, Ecosystem and Mentor partners at the moment supporting the network.
The following strategic partners for the GenShards ecosystem are already in place :
Access Partners
Solidity Ventures, PNYX Ventures, LD Capital, AU21 Capital, 3Commas, Spark Capital, GBV Capital, Lotus Capital
Mentor Partners
- Rachid Ajaja, CEO AllianceBlock
- Chandresh Aharwar, CEO Unilend
Q19(Goodfellas) How does the project generate revenue? Are you collecting fees from the pre-IDO Projects?
To begin with the GS platform would earn a share of revenue from the swap fees applicable on NFTX marketplace. However, with maturity we would have many other revenue streams within the ecosystem.
Segment 2: Questions From Community Members
Q(Mandy ) About your Gen Tickets- I have two questions: why is the amount of pre-IDO tokens they have inside variable? And what functionality do these Tokens have ? I could see that you have 3 tokens ,Gs token ,pre-IDO token and post-IDO token, these really confuse me.
Pre- IDO tokens — are the other partner project tokens wrapped in NFTs and availed as tickets on gen Pre-IDO platform. Once the IDO takes place, the pre-IDO tokens get converted to post IDO tokens to be traded in the open market. On your first question, the gen tickets have variable assets underlying, depending on the access tier it’s been offered to. The higher the access tier the more the number of tokens/tickets.
Q(Mandy) I read in your whitepaper that security is a priority for you.Your code is open sourced but is your platform audited and secure?
Yes security is our first priority. While the code is open sourced, we are currently in talks with reputed audit firms in the space for a full audit. We would soon have more details to share with our community on the same.
Q(Goodfellas) What is the structure of the company, is it a decentralised, open sourced protocol where everybody can contribute? If so, how does the governance plan on being handled?
Genesis Shards is a decentralized network.
$GS tokens would provide governance rights to its members where they can vote on different decisions on various parameters of the project. The number of tokens held would be a representation of voting power within the network.
Q(Goodfellas) I would like to have a long term investment with your project but at the moment I have doubts, how can you convince me that this project is very promising?
Many new projects made a good impression at first but were suddenly abandoned. My question is, how will you manage the project and token to gain a place in the market and become the best token in the blockchain world?
That’s an interesting one. We think we have almost everything aligned in the team that’s required for token success:
Tech:
We have Jae leading our dev.
He became known in the space through the EOS.IO mainnet launch as a gifted developer, with his abilities eclipsing those of his experienced peers, and comes with years of Blockchain experience.
Marketing:
We do believe we have a very competent team from a marketing perspective.
In fact our Co-Founder Garlam Won headed marketing at Harmony, and has consulted several top-tier DeFi projects in this area including Kava, Band, Mantra Dao etc.
Capital:
All I can say for now is we do have adequate backing with respect to capital — the fundraise article should give good insights around it.
Business:
I myself come with a strong business and strategy background and previously headed the Business at Marlin Labs.
Q(Mandy ) Due to the crazy Ethereum gas fees, are you planning to move Genesis Shards ERC20 to Binance Smart Chain? Because BSC has very low transaction fees.
We are integrating polkadot and moonbeam into our architecture. On top of the cross-chain communication, Polkadot and Moonbeam will enable faster transactions while reducing gas costs on the Genesis exchange.
Q(Goodfellas)Too many projects promise magic but never release any working product or prove any revenue, within a short/long time of release. Is your project also like this? If not, can you tell us what makes your project different from other projects?
I can definitely understand your concern, let me share some information regarding our current status.
The tech team has already shipped codes for -
Landing design, Gen Tickets Web Frontends, Gen Tickets NFTs, Access Cards Designs, GenFactory & GenTicket & Gen access contracts (on testnet) and more.
We would be sharing a detailed roadmap for the project with a complete snapshot on the tech progress in the coming weeks.
All I can assure you is being there in the ecosystem since 2015, we are well above paper hype. 😄
Q(Mandy) If you were to explain Genesis Shards to a layman who has virtually no experience about crypto what would you say?
Haha. That’s an interesting one. I would say we are creating a new road for the uncharted. In this case, the new road — is the time-locked gen ticket architecture and genesis platform and uncharted- is the secure and efficient pre-IDO market where illiquid tokens can be traded even before they are officially launched.
Q(Goodfellas) Most crypto users do not understand much about technical issues. I looked through Gen Tickets, but it seemed a little confusing to me. Can you simply explain how I can obtain and benefit from Gen Tickets?
(updated to reflect status at time of publishing article)
At the most basic level, Gen tickets are NFT contracts that represent a varying amount of pre-IDO tokens. These NFTs can be traded on our Gen NFTX exchange or can be exchanged for the IDO tokens at the time of token generation events.
A gen ticket is a kind of ‘DeFi option’. Options are derivative instruments that derive their value from an underlying asset; in this case, the underlying is the Pre-IDO tokens.
By wrapping time-locked fungible tokens (in this case PreIDO tokens) into NFTs (in this case the GenTickets), the NFTs start behaving like a DeFi option.
Read more about gen tickets here :
https://medium.com/genesis-shard/introducing-gen-tickets-50e0b0a060ec
We have recently made an important update regarding our GenTicket launch :
Q(Goodfellas) What are the requirements for communities that want to become Genesis Shards Ecosystem Partners? Are you planning to cooperate with local communities or crypto developers on this issue?
All those details around community participation have been shared on our blogs.
https://medium.com/genesis-shard/introducing-access-shards-69716b784bb3
https://medium.com/genesis-shard/introducing-genesis-shards-ecosystem-partners-178e57728862
https://medium.com/genesis-shard/introducing-genesis-shards-deal-flow-partners-322b346a64
Q(Mandy) Everyone knows, if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, you go with your partners, so with your project which partners will promote and help your project achieve its goals?
Very rightly said — it’s not very easy to walk any path alone, especially one as ambitious as we envision. A — We do have a strong lineup of strategic partners with whom we have clear synergies — and we believe this will surely help propel us faster towards our goals. Announcements regarding partnerships will be made soon, again — follow us on Medium genesis-shards.medium.com B — In addition to strategic partners for Genesis itself, we have a lineup of strategic partners for projects that are part of the Genesis ecosystem.
Q(Goodfellas) I couldn’t find any information about your team and your roadmap, could you please share your team and roadmap with us?
Hi we have the details of our team on the website. You can check us out at
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About Genesis Shards
Genesis Shards is a decentralized ecosystem powered by Polkadot redefining NFTs as DeFi options, creating a permissionless environment of interchain liquidity for pre-IDO tokens.
The next major steps in Genesis’s journey will be announced soon ! Keep an eye on this space for updates.
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