AMA Recap丨Former Google & Microsoft Engineer Shared Story Behind Watermelon (Xigua Finance)
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Xigua Finance is a third-party platform built on IOST network. The content in this article aims to provide more information about Xigua Finance to the community and does not constitute any investment advice. Please research and contact Xigua Finance team directly for more information.
Recently, the founder of Xigua Finance, Pu, was invited to speak as a guest at BigONE AMA to share the story behind Xigua Finance. The following is a recap with the content being more organized.
Today’s guest:
Pu is the core developer of Xigua Finance. He used to work for Google and Microsoft and other international first-line technology companies. He has been an entrepreneur in the blockchain field for many years and is an expert in the development of distributed systems. He has independently developed many popular games and DeFi applications.
1. BigONE: DeFi brings huge opportunities to the blockchain industry and Xigua Finance is one of the projects in the first batch of IOST DeFi DApps. What is your opinion about the industry Pu?
Pu: After its best moment in history in 2017, the blockchain industry entered a two-year-long bear market. At that time, the industry was always looking for opportunities for blockchain technology to land and be implemented in the real world. Some people thought security tokens would be the key, others thought blockchain games would be, some others thought about blockchain for industrial use cases, and so on. But, sadly, none of the above succeeded. In my opinion, DeFi is currently the application field with the greatest opportunity.
On the one hand, finance is an industry that moves trillions and still has enough space for more participants. At the current stage, we (the blockchain industry) don’t need much but a little share to feed the whole industry. On the other hand, the concept of decentralization has indeed brought new creative ways of accessing the financial industry.
At present, the DeFi field is still in its early stage and the main areas include decentralized transactions, blockchain lending, blockchain insurance, synthetic assets, stablecoins, etc. Although it is far from the complexity of the real financial world, I believe that with the development of the industry, one day, DeFi will do more.
In one sentence, DeFi is still something new, but there is enough room for creativity and it should be the first stop of the blockchain industry.
2. BigONE: Some time ago, yield farming brought DeFi into everyone’s sight. I believe that many small investors benefited from farming, but it is only a small part of DeFi. Many public chains have now incorporated the concept of DeFi. As a developer of the IOST Ecosystem, can you talk about your views on the current status of the IOST ecosystem?
Pu: IOST is an all-star domestic public chain from 2017–2018. After the mainnet launch, it was regarded by us Chinese as one of the four major public chains. In terms of market value, IOST may not be considered a “Big Four”, but from a developer’s point of view, the DApp Ecosystem of IOST is indeed second only to ETH, EOS, and TRX.
At present, there are at least 4 DEX, multiple mining pools, and at least 10 game/entertainment DApps that used to have many users on the IOST chain, alongside long-term cooperation with dozens of overseas KOLs is a good choice for developers and the promotion of our projects.
So, after seeing the competition among the other three public chains intensified, we saw the opportunities on the IOST main chain and decided to build Xigua on IOST.
BigONE: BigONE is also very supportive of IOST ecosystem projects.
3. May I ask why you decided to build Xigua?
Pu: Xigua Finance currently has the following core functions:
- A Uniswap-like decentralized exchange based on AMM algorithm
- A stablecoin based on over-collateralization
- Mining and wealth management based on liquidity tokens
I personally think that Uniswap is the core of this round of the DeFi boom in the Ethereum Ecosystem. Without Uniswap, there would be no liquidity mining, nor would there be a series of star projects such as YAM, Sushiswap, and so on.
We saw that there was no similar product on the IOST blockchain at the time, so we felt that there was a great opportunity here. So, with Xigua as the starting point, I took the opportunity and did the above three functions in one go. Xigua is approximately equal to Uniswap + MakerDAO + YFI on the IOST blockchain.
4. BigONE: How is Xigua Finance doing at the moment?
Pu: At present, we have around 500 weekly active users, about 200 daily active users, and a daily transaction volume of between thousands to tens of thousands USD.
Of course, this is small compared to centralized exchanges, but it is decent in the DeFi world. In fact, this performance is better than many famous DeFi projects on Ethereum and just a little bit worse than Justswap from Justin Sun.
However, we also face some challenges. On the one hand, the IOST Ecosystem is indeed smaller than the other three public chains. On the other hand, how to keep the project alive after the end of liquidity mining is also a problem that all DeFi projects need to solve. However, we will continue to work hard.
Xigua has been live for about 25 days, and the price of XG tokens has been quite stable. It is about 1 RMB for the opening of the market, with an ATH at 3RMB, and is currently around 2 RMB.
Note: The renminbi, abbreviated RMB (code: CNY) is the official currency of China.
5. BigONE: What are your thoughts on the future business plan of Xigua Finance?
Pu: Xigua will open up the asset mapping between IOST and ETH and EOS chains in mid-December, allowing users to convert the assets of the other two chains into tokens on IOST.
This function is very attractive to ETH and EOS, after all, it gives them one more chain for the circulation of their assets. For Xigua, the introduction of new assets also gives our users more investment and mining options.
We plan to implement a decentralized leveraged trading function in mid-January 2021, which simply means to allow users to go long and short various assets in Watermelon. Simply put, it allows users to go long and short on various assets in Xigua. With decentralized leverage trading, we avoid instant pumps and dumps, we pay lower handling fees, and have a more reliable system. Also, I believe it will solve the needs of some users.
6. BigONE: What is the market outlook for Xigua in 3 years?
Pu: First of all, we are very optimistic about the development of the IOST ecosystem. As I said, IOST is one of the domestic public chains with the highest quality, and China’s market is vast. We believe that more projects will build projects on the IOST public chain in the future. As part of the infrastructure on the IOST chain, we will definitely benefit from this process.
Secondly, we will also do work on cross-chain. Our cross-chain solution will be a point-to-point cross-chain process based on cryptographic principles, which not only guarantees a certain degree of security but is also relatively easy to use. Specific details will be released in mid-December.
In the future, we expect that more types of assets will appear on the blockchain to empower the real economy. This way, DeFi can truly serve society and not just stay as a speculation game for a small group of people.
We believe this day will come. On the one hand, it relies on the further legal compliance of digital assets. On the other hand, we are optimistic about more innovative projects to introduce more assets into the blockchain through asset synthesis.
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