Apr 12, 2022
zkLend X JediSwap AMA Recap 05/04/2022
Early last week, zkLend co-founders Jane and Brian joined Rohit Goyal, Founder of JediSwap on Twitter Spaces. Many interesting topics were discussed, including the likes of zkLend’s ZEND token, rewards and utilities, not so decentralised blockchains, and on-chain compliance, among many others.
Full Recording:
Listen to the full recording on our Spotify now.
TLDR:
- Rohit | JediSwap: Can you shed a small light on how the blockchains you’ve analysed compared in terms of security, decentralisation, and cost? And how did that lead to the zkLend team to build on StarkNet?
Jane | zkLend: Sure, what stood out to me for example was that BSC only had 21 validator nodes with super high requirements. We noticed that certain chains weren’t as secure as we wanted them to be. That is why we decided to go with ZK Rollups since everything is backed by mathematical proofs that are then sent to L1 Ethereum by Starkware.
- Rohit | JediSwap: Can you tell us what kind of users you are targeting?
Brian | zkLend: For Artemis, there is no boundary to what demographic we are targeting. We are targeting ALL DeFi users since it will be permissionless.
For Apollo, we have 3 main target groups:
- Crypto native investment houses, including even some of the VCs that have backed us;
- TradFi institutions, which we’ll be a bit harder since they have the resources to build something of their own, but they lack the decentralisation factor;
- Family offices and treasuries of companies, we can provide them more use cases for their crypto holdings and ways to earn an extra yield.
- Rohit | JediSwap: For Apollo, how will you take care of the compliance?
Brian | zkLend: We will have both on-chain and off-chain KYC layers. For off-chain we will be working with the existing service providers for AML and for on-chain we will be working with Hex Trust with these whitelisting custodians so we can actually monitor the money flow on-chain.
We are also working with a protocol that is building a credit rating score on-chain in the form of an NFT, this way we can look into undercollateralised lending, and users will be able to use this NFT on other DeFi protocols who have a need for a credit score such as other money market or AMM projects.
- Rohit | JediSwap: Are both protocols completely different/independent from each other?
Brian | zkLend: They will be very similar. The main difference will come with Apollo where there will be the traditional form of overcollateralised lending, but we will also be exploring undercollateralised lending and allowing users to have better capital efficiency.
- Rohit | JediSwap: Can I assume that Artemis technical specifications are somewhat similar to Compound or Aave on Ethereum?
Jane | zkLend: Yeah, of course, we are all money market protocols. But we believe zkLend will offer a few key differentiators. We are the native money market protocol on StarkNet so we are focusing on building tools that can take the most advantage of the StarkNet ecosystem. Our focus is not on getting into as many chains as possible, we want to focus on the user experience on StarkNet. Lastly, we want to have a very good UI/UX, so both DeFi and new users can easily use the protocol.
- Rohit | JediSwap: That’s great. Is there anything I have missed or that you want to add?
Jane | zkLend: In terms of roadmap, we just want to let the community know that Artemis will be launching first. We are aiming for early Q3 and hopefully, that will coincide with StarkNet’s launch, but will still have to wait and see about that. In parallel, we’ll be working on Apollo configuration, since the strategy will be different as we will identify customers first and then build a protocol that works for them.
- Rohit | JediSwap: What will be the initial assets at launch? Blue chips like Ethereum, wBTC, or will you go with more native StarkNet tokens?
Brian | zkLend: V0 will support mostly blue chips like ETH, wBTC, and stablecoins in the beginning. Once we have the features hammered out we will move into V1 around late Q3 or early Q4 then we will add more tokens, similar to the ones found in Aave or Compound, and also start looking into StarkNet native tokens of course.
- Rohit | JediSwap: What synergies do you see between JediSwap and zkLend from both user and builder perspectives?
Jane | zkLend: To begin with, education for the community and getting the word out to people that don’t know about StarkNet and grow a community together. Technically, we talk about composability of the different assets, so there could be a liquidity pool that is extremely safe, such as a stablecoin LP, we could potentially look into listing these LP tokens as deposits for example.
- Rohit | JediSwap: Can you share some more details on zkLend’s native token, ZEND?
Jane | zkLend: Sure, first of all, we will be incentivising users to participate in the borrow and lending pools by rewarding them with ZEND tokens.
In terms of utility, we have a few but don’t quote me on them just yet as we haven’t officially launched and we haven’t announced specific plans yet. Staking rewards to honour our most loyal ZEND holders, maybe with a portion of fees, a booster rate, or offer them an NFT. These are all options we are exploring.
- Rohit | JediSwap: You recently announced your investment round with some of the top investors in the space, can you share more on this?
Brian | zkLend: We were looking for investors that could guide us and give us advice along the way in terms of structure, tokenomics, emission and find people that we want to work with long term. We have constant dialogue with them and discuss marketing strategies, get introductions across the space which is really helpful to get a first-mover advantage and build a strong network and receive feedback on important events such as TGE for example.
To everyone that joined the call, thank you! Some really good questions were brought up by the community, unfortunately, we couldn’t post all of them on this summary. You can find the full AMA recording here.
About zkLend
zkLend is an L2 money-market protocol built on StarkNet, combining zk-rollup scalability, superior transaction speed, and cost-savings with Ethereum’s security. The protocol offers a dual solution: a permissioned and compliance-focused solution for institutional clients, and a permissionless service for DeFi users — all without sacrificing decentralisation.
