Recap: Tokenlon x OKEx Live AMA Session
January, 12, 2021 — Following the recent listing of Tokenlon Network Token (LON) as a tradable asset on OKEx exchange, Tokenlon hosted an AMA session on OKEx Telegram group. It was indeed a remarkable session of engagement with the community as Tokenlon’s Head of Growth, Lucas Huang provided clear insights to better understand Tokenlon as a decentralized exchange, the utility of Tokenlon’s native token, LON, what the future holds for the DEX platform in 2021 and more!
(Thanks to Dave for the transcript.)
SESSION I
As a way of commencing the first session of the live AMA, Lucas was asked by Okex’s representative and event moderator, Noah, to introduce Tokenlon, elaborate on key features that uniquely distinguishes Tokenlon from other DEXs.
- Noah@OKEx: Alright. Q1: Please tell us about Tokenlon, what makes Tokenlon unique?
Lucas Huang: Sure, Tokenlon is a decentralized exchange and payment settlement protocol based on blockchain technology. It aggregates multiple on-chain liquidity sources to offer best exchange rates to its users. Unlike many other DEX aggregators, in addition to integrating with Uniswap and Curve, Tokenlon has a unique Request for Quotation system with a network of competitive professional market makers. Which provides users an even better liquidity than many other decentralized exchanges. here is our website for your information. — https://tokenlon.im/
- Noah@OKEx: Q2: For the people who are not familiar with decentralized exchange. Could you please briefly tell us what is decentralized exchange and how is it different from centralized exchange?
Lucas Huang: Decentralized exchanges (DEX) are a type of crypto currency exchange which allows direct peer-to-peer cryptocurrency transactions online securely and without the need for an intermediary. Unlike centralized exchanges, users maintain their control of assets at all times and can trade right from their wallet without having to deposit or withdraw funds. Users do not need to worry about exchange hacks. If you are interested, top decentralized exchanges can be found here on this dashboard by DeBank — https://debank.com/ranking/dex. And you will find Tokenlon ranked as #6 today :)
- Noah@OKEx: Q3: Why did the team decide to build Tokenlon? A decentralized exchange, not some other DeFi protocol?
Lucas Huang: Good question. Many people may not know that Tokenlon was incubated by imToken team, who built the largest decentralized mobile wallet that has more than 10 million users. So the team initially wanted to provide token exchange service to imToken wallet users as it is one of the most requested features from imToken users. In order to allow users to continue maintaining self-custody of their fund and trade direct from imToken wallet, the team decided to take a decentralized approach and ventured into the DEX space. The team separated from imToken in 2019 and started to offer token exchange services in other channels in addition to imToken wallet, for example, via website and trading api.
- Noah@OKEx: Q4: Tokenlon has been around since 2018, it’s one of the earliest DEX in the space. What did Tokenlon achieved since its launch?
Lucas Huang: Another good question. Tokenlon was initially launched in March 2018, but the growth accelerated a lot since we launched our Tokenlon v4 with the RFQ system in July 2019. Since then, more than 138k users have traded $5.76B on Tokenlon, which makes Tokenlon one of the top 5 decentralized exchange by trading volume and number of users. Again, our achievements can be found on this DeBank ranking dashboard — https://debank.com/ranking/dex. Or this DuneAnalytics tracker — https://duneanalytics.com/p0s/tokenlon-dex-stats
- Noah@OKEx: Q5 : Since you mentioned about RFQ architecture. Could you tell us more about it? How does it make the user’s experience better?
Lucas Huang: Sure, we adopted a unique Request for Quotation(RFQ) system design which allows off-chain RFQ and on-chain settlement. It allows users to maintain their custody while making the system very friendly to market makers, maximizing the capital efficiency for them. Here is a chart showing the high-level order flow of our RFQ system.
With this RFQ design, we eliminated front-running and maintains an extremely high trading success rate of 99.8% compared to our peers of around 85%. Users get a very competitive exchange rate as the result of competition among our market makers, and of the excellent capital efficiency our system is able to offer. Not to mention that we provide the best mobile decentralized exchange in the space. If you are a mobile first person, make sure you download imToken wallet and use Tokenlon there. We are natively integrated there and did a lot of mobile UX optimization.
- Noah@OKEx: Q6 : Tokenlon launched it’s LON token not long ago, what’s LON token? What can holders do with a LON token?
Lucas Huang: LON is a utility token issued by Tokenlon, which aims to align and incentivize all ecosystem participants to grow Tokenlon together. Let me list out the things LON holders can do with LON in below:
1. Enjoy trading fee discounts on Tokenlon. Can go as low as 0.1%. Details here — https://tokenlon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037260272-Fees
2. Participate in the LON liquidity mining program, we have one currently running on Uniswap LON/ETH pool.
3. Participate in LON staking to receive LON staking reward.
4. Participate in governance, vote on Tokenlon community governance proposals.
65% of all the LON tokens (200m cap) are distributed to the community through Tokenlon LON incentive plan. More information about the distribution structure can be found in our light paper — https://tokenlon.im/files/Tokenlon-litepaper_en-us.pdf
- Noah@OKEx: Q7 : What’s next for Tokenlon? Any exciting news for 2020 Q1?
Lucas Huang: Yes, it’s an important question. For 2021 Q1, we will be laser-focused on building our tokenomics. We are super excited to roll out some of our key mechanisms in the next two months. Let me list them below.
1. Buyback: Fees collected by Tokenlon will be used to buyback LON on the open market, and the LON bought back will be transferred to the treasury and staking reward pool. Fyi, Tokenlon is one of the most profitable DeFi protocols in the space. Here is a chart from tokenterminal.com
2. Staking: LON holders will be able to enjoy fee discounts and governance rights by participating in the LON staking. In return, the stakers will receive LON as staking reward. The staking rewards come from the LON bought back on the open market.
3. Community Treasury: The treasury is designed for the development of the Tokenlon ecosystem. The LON in the treasury comes from LON bought back on the open market.
4. Mining: When the number of LON issued is within the maximum cap, each buyback will trigger LON mint. The number of tokens minted will be equal to the amount bought back at the beginning, and the minted LON will be used to reward ecosystem participants through the Tokenlon Incentive Plan.
If everything goes well, you should see these four mechanisms online by the end of the 2020 Q1 :)
- Noah@OKEx: Q8: What’s the best way for the community to learn more about Tokenlon and to keep updated about Tokenlon?
Lucas Huang: Yes. First, if you are interested in learning more about Tokenlon and LON, I strongly encourage you to read our light paper here — https://tokenlon.im/files/Tokenlon-litepaper_en-us.pdf. If you want to be the first to hear about our upcoming news, you could follow our Twitter here — https://twitter.com/tokenlon. sAnd if you are the kind of person who prefer two-way communication :), then our Discord is the place for you- https://discord.com/invite/ZFf4Cye
SESSION II
The second session was an opportunity for all AMA participants to ask well-thought-out questions. There were tons of salient questions, however, due to the specified AMA guidelines, Lucas only responded to 10 out of all the questions raised. Please see below!
- Q1. What Wrong: What role do ambassadors play within the LON ecosystem? What tasks must ambassadors fulfill and what are the requirements to become a LON ambassador?
Lucas Huang: Good one. As we are expanding the LON community, we are in need of ambassadors who can help us educate users about Tokenlon and spread the words. If you are interested, please join our Discord channel and we can discuss further there after today’s event.
- Q2. Razu: Hi Mr @lucashuang, How does Tokenlon Dex combine with Uniswap and Curve Finance to achieve its purposes in 2021 after going through 4 previous versions, what is the highlight of version 5.0 and how do users who add liquids and hold long-term holdings benefit us?
Lucas Huang: The highlight of Tokenlon v5 is adding the ability to source liquidity from other on-chain sources in addition to the existing RFQ system. We are only adding Uniswap and Curve as our first step, and we will be adding more sources like SushiSwap and Kyber in the coming months. We will incentive users to add liquidity on AMM DEXes to provide liquidity for certain trading pairs. We are releasing these program from time to time. You could follow our Twitter to stay updated.
- Q3. Shabbir Husain: We all know that the Ethereum Network has many problems: scalability issues, high fees, slow speeds, and many more, Why did you choose to build your token on the ERC20 network over the other networks that more fast and scalable?
Lucas Huang: It is because Ethereum is where users and good assets are. We could start or switch to another blockchain that is faster, but it is hard to find many good assets and users there. There is no reason to run Tokenlon on a ghost chain. But we do realize some limitation of Ethereum at the moment, and we are actively researching solutions or walk around.
- Q4. Fadang™ 🦄:With all the yield farming hype, a lot of tokens are offering rediculously high APY on liquidity staking. How does the Your project compare, and why would a investor choose it over other yield farming opportunities?
Lucas Huang: As of now, it is designed to transfer 40% of the LON bought back on the open market to community treasury, Then it is up for the community to decide how to use these LON tokens. Hint: Community could vote to burn these LON tokens in the treasury as well.
- Q5. jenny: In the bad situation of the Covid-19 epidemic, every industry was heavily affected. Does it affect on the growth of your project team and its ?
Lucas Huang: Good question about Covid haha. Not at all, our team is very distributed and many team members are working from home. So no impact for us. We are all healthy and hope you all stay safe as well.
- Q6. Aaliyah Belen (🌿🌺CRYPTO FLOWER🌺🌿): Who are the customers of $lon, currently and in the near future? What incentives drive customers and/or businesses to use lon? @lucashuang
Lucas Huang: LON is a utility token, so all the users who would like to trade on Tokenlon and wanted to benefit from our growth by joining governance is our target audience.
- Q7. zafer metin: Hi Lucas. What is the advantage of UX optimization for mobile decentralized change? What does UX add to decentralized change?
Lucas Huang: Making Tokenlon super mobile friendly can help users trade from anytime and anywhere. Many users chose Tokenlon because Tokenlon is so easy to use and when market fluctuates, they can trade from their smartphone right away!
- Q8. ANDIN†®: token $lon is incubated by imtoken, does this mean that $lon token is the original product of im token itself?
Lucas Huang: No, although Tokenlon is incubated by imToken, it is two separated teams now. But we still work extremely closely and lend a hand to each other if necessary.
- Q9. Green Dragon: How many people are using LON right now? What’s the volume processed through the platform?
Lucas Huang: Yes, we are on CoinMarketCap, but you will need to search Tokenlon instead of LON. — https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tokenlon-network-token
- Q10. Tran Huong: Do you have any REFERRAL PROGRAM to attract most of users toward LON ? I am interested to know more about your REFERRAL PROGRAM?
Lucas Huang: Yes we do! We did run a referral program for the past few months and many referrers earned ridiculous amount of $LON tokens. We are launching another one in the next 1 or 2 month. Join our Discord to stay tuned — https://discord.com/invite/ZFf4C
