MG Group x LatteSwap AMA Recap
Happy Sunday Baristas,
I hope you are having a restful weekend. Matcha, our Head of Strategy & Marketing, had a chance to represent LatteSwap in an AMA session with MG Group a couple days ago (October 7th). As usual, we’d like to share you the recap of the session. You can find the transcription of the session below:
Question 1:
Can you please give me a brief description of LatteSwap?
Answer:
LatteSwap is a unique kind of decentralized exchange with a focus on bridging the DeFi and NFT space together with its NFT integrated functionalities. The platform offers three main features to the users: trade, earn, and collect. Users can trade cryptocurrencies with ease, participate in safe and attractive earning opportunities, and collect LatteSwap’s highly exclusive NFTs that possess real tangible utilities.
It is important to note that we are a fair-launch project on the Binance Smartchain(BSC). There was no pre-sale, pre-mine, or investors, and over 87% of the tokens will be allocated to our communities! As we like to say, we built this product for the community and our goal really is to take LatteSwap to the forefront of all DEXes, not only on BSC, but also other chains in the future!
Question 2:
How is it different from other competitors in both DEX area and NFT area?
Answer:
There are 4 key areas where we believe are what differentiate us from the competitors:
1. NFT integrated functionalities — We are the hybrid of both worlds — NFT and DeFi. I think we’re one of the few, if not the only, DEX to have real NFT integrated functionalities. Our NFTs, the OG and the Booster series, have real utility when used on our platform.
1a. OG NFT — Our OG NFT gets a fixed allocation of all $LATTE emissions. As long as you hold the OG NFT, you will receive $LATTE tokens in perpetuity! However, all of our OG NFTs are sold out.
If you are looking to buy one, you can purchase it through a secondary market on Treasureland here: https://treasureland.market/assets?contract=0x7f5daf18a06433c87bd81ea7ea19976e64100a66&chain_id=5
1b. Booster NFT — Our Booster NFT provides a boost on rewards earned from LP if it is staked along with LP tokens on our yield page. For example, we have Whole Milk, who provides a 25% boost on rewards for all LP pools at LatteSwap. If you stake Whole Milk along with your LP position, you can multiply your rewards earned by 1.25x!
Let me give you a brief explanation on how it works: let’s assume you are farming on the LATTE-BUSD pool, which currently provides a 400% APR. If you stake your LP tokens along with Almond Milk, you will get a boosted APR of 500% (as 400% + 25%*400% = 500%)! The sales period for our Booster NFTs has also ended. However, we will continue to release new collections of Booster NFTs. Please follow our social channels to stay up to date on the release date of our next collection!
Similarly, you can purchase Booster NFTs in the secondary market on Treasureland here: https://treasureland.market/assets?contract=0xb5a835b9e4ae76aea930831b84eb74293309e059&chain_id=56
2. Capital efficiencies — As mentioned multiple times in our previous AMAs and medium articles, one of the key competitive advantages of a DEX is its ability to provide the highest level of capital efficiency to the users. At LatteSwap, we believe that we can deliver the best capital efficiency to our users. Some of the things that we have planned/are exploring are:
2a. Multiple earning opportunities for $LATTE holders: We have a two-token setup where $LATTE holders receive $BEAN when they deposit $LATTE into the $LATTE single asset staking vault. Users can then use $BEAN for additional earning opportunities on the LatteSwap platform, allowing them to earn multiple rewards at the same time. Very soon, we will launch a DripBar feature and users will be able to stake $BEAN to earn these rewards.
2b. LUSD — Latte stable-coin: We will allow users to use their LP position as collateral to take out loans — i.e., minting LUSD stable-coin. This feature will greatly improve our users’ capital efficiency, as they can earn rewards from their LP position while taking out loans to increase their leverage. More details on this to be disclosed later.
We will continue to add more features and find ways to help our user’s achieve the highest possible capital efficiency. Right now, we are also exploring the idea of allowing users to use their OG NFTs as collateral to take out loans as well. However, details are still to be finalized, so please stay tuned when we make the official announcement!
3. Team behind the protocol — LatteSwap is run by a team of cryptocurrency veterans who are:
3a. Highly experienced: All of the team members have been in the blockchain, finance, and DeFi space for many years. Each of us brings to the table our own expertise to help build LatteSwap to become the leading DEX.
3b. Highly Motivated: We enjoy working in the DeFi and NFT space and our incentive is aligned with platform long-term success.
4. Security — We are one of the safest protocols on BSC — this is because of all the security measures we’ve put in place:
4a. Audit reports — We have already received 2 audit reports from Peckshield and Inspex even before the launch of the protocol. We will always get an audit on new feature releases. In fact, we’ve just added one audit report from WatchPug on our recent $LATTEv2 contract. You can find all of our audit reports here: https://docs.latteswap.com/latteswap/security/audits
4b. Bug bounty program — We’ve added an additional security layer through our official bug bounty program with Immunefi to help protect the protocol in case any potential vulnerability slips through our intensive code reviews and third party audit process. The program currently pays up to $50K. You can find more details on how to participate here: https://immunefi.com/bounty/latteswap/
4c. Timelock — We also have a 6-hour timelock on our contracts. And once we’ve successfully migrated our $LATTE tokens to $LATTEv2, we will increase the timelock period to 24 hours. With the timelock function in place, users will have plenty of time to withdraw funds in case they no longer feel safe leaving their funds with us.
Question 3:
That’s dope! The product looks amazing. Can you share with us what is LatteSwap is working on? Like features, etc.
Answer:
Of course, we actually have many things planned. If you haven’t got a chance to check out our roadmap article, which we released last week, I’d encourage you to do so.
But to summarize, we are launching two major features in the next six months. I believe these two features will equip LatteSwap with better weapons to compete in the market with other players.
The first of which is our NFT marketplace, which is scheduled to launch this quarter. The NFT marketplace will support buying, selling, and auctioning of NFTs. We will also be implementing some special mechanics to differentiate our product with those available in the market. Please stay tuned for more details.
The other major feature that we have that is coming up is the launch of our very own stablecoin, the LUSD. Given that we are a DEX, it is our goal to provide the best capital efficiency to our users. With this feature, we believe we can take what we can already offer to our users up a notch.
I’ve attached the Roadmap article here for your reference: https://medium.com/latteswap/journey-to-become-a-global-cafe-latteswap-roadmap-324e8f3c1aad
In addition to these two main features I mentioned earlier, we are also launching our DripBar this month. With DripBar launched, $LATTE token holders will be able to stake $BEAN tokens (which they can get by staking their $LATTE in the $LATTE single asset staking vault) to earn rewards in our partner protocol tokens.
Question 4:
Wow! Seems like you guys have quite a packed 6 months down the road. We noticed that you guys published an announcement on LATTE v2 earlier this week. Could you please elaborate on that?
Answer:
Yes, gladly! Basically, we are doing a migration of LATTE tokens to LATTEv2 because the current LATTE token contract is too restrictive for what we plan for the future.
As you know, LatteSwap does not plan to be just another DEX. As per our Roadmap, we want to expand into other segments: DeFi, NFT, and potentially GameFi. However, as the team recently sat down to detail out the execution plan, we realized that there is a limitation imposed on us by our very own LATTE token contract.
With the current contract structure, our MasterBarista contract is the only contract that is allowed to mint LATTE, limiting the type of incentives to only token staking. While this is a typical structure for many DEXes — i.e., stake LP tokens to earn rewards, the model only works if the incentive structure is used strictly for LPs and the current contract structure will not allow us to develop incentive mechanisms to bootstrap activities in those areas.
For example, if we want to reward users for engaging in activities on our planned NFT marketplace, such as buying or selling their NFTs, we will not be able to do so. This greatly limits the development of any potential innovative model, and will not allow LatteSwap to achieve our aspiration of being an established pioneer of the DeFi & NFT space.
As a result, we made the decision to start the migration of our LATTE token contract to LATTEv2. For more information on this, please visit the article we published earlier this week: https://medium.com/latteswap/announcing-lattev2-preparing-for-our-bright-future-b75d1709ebdd
Question 5:
Can you share to us your tokenomics? How much is the total and circulation supply of your tokens? Will there be buy back system or token burning in the future?
Answer:
$LATTE has a similar model as PCS where there is no maximum supply. However, there are multiple deflationary mechanisms to help ensure that we burn more tokens than we mint and to protect our $LATTE from price inflations.
Our existing sources of buyback and burn come from:
- 20% of BNB income on OG NFTs
- 25% of BNB income on Booster NFTs
- 0.04% of every trade made on LatteSwap
In the future, as we add more features such as our own NFT Marketplace, Lending, Lotto, and many other ideas we are exploring, there will be more sources of revenue for our buyback and burn program.
Our buyback and burn took place on Oct. 3. For this one, we burnt a total of 706,000 $LATTE. We still have a large portion of the funds from our NFT sales dedicated to our buyback and burn program. The fund will be used for the purpose for the coming weeks.
Question 6:
Do the token holders have right to participate in the governance of the project? On what kind of decisions can they vote on about the project?
Answer:
Yes — definitely. As I like to say, we built LatteSwap for the community, and governance is one of the essential ingredients for that. We plan to start implementing governance in Q4 of this year, and just like many other protocols, the amount of $LATTE you hold will determine your voting power.
The community will be able to vote on key decisions such as protocol parameters or $LATTE emission rate. As mentioned earlier, $LATTE has no maximum supply cap, so if the community feels that the current emission is too high, they will be able to vote to reduce $LATTE emission through governance.
Question 7:
I find these NFTs adorable. So where is the idea to do such NFT collections?
Answer:
Great question.
So we have to types of NFTs — the OGs and the Boosters.
The OGs are all designed as cups of espresso, because OG of Latte is espresso (since you add Milk to Espresso to create Latte).
As for the booster, we made the design based on anything that can be added to coffee to make it taste better, just like how Boosters NFTs can help you get boosted rewards on your LP positions!
Currently, we have Soy Milk, Almond Milk, and Whole Milk as the first collection of our Booster NFTs. We will release a couple more in the near future. Each of our NFT has a backstory, so if you have time, I’d encourage to check them out!
Link to backstories: https://docs.latteswap.com/latteswap/product/nft-integration/meet-the-nfts
