On February 24th 10:00 PM (GMT+8), ForTube hosted an AMA with the Benchmark Protocol Team in the ForTube Telegram.
During the AMA, Benchmark Protocol Team introduced the Benchmark Protocol to the ForTube users. The AMA recap is as below:
Host: Welcome to ForTube community Benchmark Team! First question: can you give us a brief introduction about Benchmark Protocol?
Benchmark Protocol Team: Benchmark Protocol is a DeFi (Decentralized Finance) protocol that connects traditional financial markets to DeFi markets, built on the Ethereum blockchain. The MARK token is an ERC-20 Utility token and is the native asset in the Benchmark network. This token functions as a rules-based, non-dilutive, supply-elastic collateral utility. Dynamic supply adjustments are accomplished through implementing a supply rebalancing algorithm, which occurs daily at an arbitrary time within a 5-hour window after the CBOE VIX settles following the closure of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) trading.
Host: Next question, how was the development phase of Benchmark Protocol going and how does being partnered with ForTube affect the project in terms of developments?
Benchmark Protocol Team: ForTube and Benchmark were connected a couple of months back via our head of research. We were quite impressed by the progress internally going on at ForTube.
FOR will be featured as one of the tokens to be whitelisted on the Benchmark Marketplace, which is a new peer to peer lending platform that will be released on the Benchmark side. Additionally, ForTube is exploring the addition of the MARK token as a collateral asset to ForTube 3.0.
Host: Awesome, thank you for letting us know about that. Lets now proceed into the Twitter questions.
Q1: There’ve been a few rebase tokens now and people tend to game the rebase function. This can lead to unhealthy trading practices. How do you plan to combat this? Will the rebase be static daily or completely random? (@Jaki73364096)
Benchmark Protocol Team: To limit arbitrage, the rebase is called within a 5 hour window on a daily basis, anywhere from 4:15 PM EST to 9:15 PM EST.
Host: Great! Lets now proceed into the 2nd question.
Q2: Marketing strategy is very important. A product can be established on the market without marketing and promotion, whatever it is good. So what are your plans for this? How will you build strong relationships with communities? (@lelylanhuong)
Benchmark Protocol Team: We’re hard at work growing our community and we’re very happy with the results so for. Most of our outreach has been organic. The DeFi space is very interested in the potential of a successful rebasing token model. Our approach is (we believe) more economically sound and will be the elastic supply denomination platform of the future. That said, we are always making sure our pooling and (soon to be) lending rewards are lucrative enough for people to add liquidity.
AMAs like this are a great start. Reddit, Telegram/Discord and Twitter are all great community building tools, especially for Blockchain. Bounties and contests enable our community to grow through our existing network
Host: Great! Thank you for answering that question. Let’s move to the next question.
Q3: Do you think that the complications of a rebasing token are a significant barrier to entry for a new investor, especially one only wishing to track the growth of crypto market cap in their portfolio, and if so, do you have any plans to address it? (@dtv1907)
Benchmark Protocol Team: Well, first and foremost there is a big education opportunity when it comes to explaining our project. We are in the midst of creating a high caliber explainer video. Barrier to entry? Well, we do get more questions than your average project, but we view this as an opportunity to create a relationship with our community, and the community bond is very strong.
The best way to view our project is as a stablecoin alternative. We have many advantages over stablecoins. Global inflation risk profile versus single currency risk profile. Elastic supply. Consider the following example: A user provides altcoin collateral in exchange for issued or minted stablecoins. BTC crashes and altcoins follow suit due to the high level of correlation. As a result, the stablecoins issued become insolvent as the collateral backing it is now worth less than the stablecoins that were issued. Traders continue to sell out of their altcoin and bitcoin positions into stablecoins, further exacerbating the situation. THE SOLUTION: MARK adjusts the supply to meet this demand so there is never a liquidity crisis. In summary, we reduce trader arbitrage opportunities through random supply adjustment times after daily settlement of CBOE VIX following closure of the NYSE. We mitigate single currency risk by utilizing SDR peg vs. USD, while maintaining periodic inflation adjustments on the underlying SDR basket. We provide accurate rebalance (supply adjustment) by applying the CBOE VIX.
Where there is a barrier there is an opportunity. This is definitely a new frontier, but that suggests tremendous upside as well.
So basically, if MARK closes above the peg, which is our SDR rate, the protocol expands and grows, which creates the ultimate value to holders.
Q4: A question about $MARK token, adoption of a token to the ecosystem is one of the good things to increase its usability and spend, so what role does $MARK token play to the ecosystem? (@Nohope49320791)
Benchmark Protocol Team: Various blockchains still exist in silos and are unable to communicate with each other, essentially leading to third party custodial services and taking away from the decentralized ethos of a Blockchain network. Therefore, it is vital to build these cross-chain bridges to solve the custodial and interoperability problems that are prevalent in the DeFi sector. The MARK token is the focal point of adoption. Recently, we have layered in various solutions for interoperability such as getting added to xDai and Binance chain this week.
Getting MARK into the hands of as many users as possible across the chain is crucial from an adoption perspective.
Host: Alright, here comes the last question for this segment.
Q5: What problems is Benchmark Protocol trying to solve to make it easier for Crypto users? Please let us know how evolving the roadmap is right now. What will happen this year and in the future? (@Ontortk)
Benchmark Protocol Team: Well from the marketing side, our job will be complete when crypto users flock to and depend on our platform for their specific needs and use cases. As our market cap continues to grow, we hope to prove ourselves as the most robust supply-elastic stable coin alternative on the market with the most cross-chain utility and security audits. You can view our roadmap on our official site. There are some very exciting milestones up ahead for us.
For starters, understanding DeFi and Yield Farming is a challenge for the less savvy investor. We want to make our investing process as straightforward and turnkey as possible. We’re continuing to make resources for educating our community on use cases, technology, onboarding, etc.
Also will add our Dashboard is making it easier for users to understand everything happened so they are not blindly affected by rebasing.
And our Telegram is a great community to learn more from like minded investors who share a strong passion for our project. For people with a lot of questions, I strongly suggest looking at our FAQs and joining our Telegram.
Host: Great! Thank you for answering those questions. Are you guys ready to answer some community questions? We are about to start our next segment!
Benchmark Protocol Team: Yes! The best part!
Q1 from Gin: Will you also focus more on Asian market as it arbors a very strong base for crypto currency projects?
Benchmark Protocol Team: Absolutely! India, China, Thailand, just to name a few, are all on the forefront of blockchain adoptions. As we are a younger project our initial priority was getting a foothold in the English speaking (especially US) market. However, we are currently developing our China strategy as that market is too big and important to ignore. Stay tuned!
Q2 from Rey Santos Crypto: Does Benchmark Protocol’s have any plans to release a Mobile App in the future?
Benchmark Protocol Team: We were just integrated on Digifox and Argent wallets. We are looking to expand functionality on more mobile apps, and potentially build an in house solution if we see fit.
Q3 from Hangama Kaccha: Tell us a little bit about security? Have you done an audit of the platform? Are the smart contracts error-free? What are the test results?
Benchmark Protocol Team: Our contracts have been audited by Certik and are forks of well proven systems (Ampleforth, SushiSwap). Code security and gas efficiency are our main concerns during contract development.
Q4 from Lofer Lin: I’ve seen a lot of defi projects pop up recently, and die from a lack of liquidity and confidence in the dev. question how do you convince investors because of this problem?
Benchmark Protocol Team: Liquidity is the lifeblood of the project. We have core liquidity pools all offering well in excess of 100% APY; the focal points including MARK-ETH and MARK-USDC. You can check these pools out via “The Press”.
We also have single asset staking where if you Deposit MARK, you earn xMARK, where you can also earn APY.
Q5 from MR_QuyenCao: Every single dap nowadays claims they can tap into the mainstream audience. From seeing their user count it doesn’t seem to be happening. Would you say Coin could be the first viral dap of the crypto space?
Benchmark Protocol Team: We believe we have a strong chance at tapping into the mainstream audience. You can expect a lot more educational content coming from us that will be backed with many use cases, market analytics, and more. In other words, we will be showcasing our protocol working as intended and without any of the problems that the other supply elastic token models are facing or have already succumbed to. It’s not always the first player to the market that wins and our thoughtful approach to the entire model will likely be the status quo in elastic DeFi.
Q6 from Lofer Lin: What makes Benchmark different from other Platforms projects? Could you tell us some Extra-ordinary functions & objectives of Benchmark tokens which attracts more Investors towards Benchmark token?
Benchmark Protocol Team: What really sets us apart from current rebase competition on Ethereum is our ability to bridge to other chains. Through the invention of xMARK (a non-rebase ERC20 Token representing shares in a dedicated MARK pool) we are able to easily bring the Benchmark Ecosystem on other platforms and chains that would otherwise not natively support rebase tokens.
Q7 from Kun Ngok: In your opinion, which is more important for the Benchmark and why? Community, Investors, Market or Exchange.
Benchmark Protocol Team: All of these are equally important. Without our community and feedback we would not be in such a position as we are today. All of these things go hand in hand in ensuring success.
Q8 from Aurelia: Projects that are not traded on major exchanges remain unnoticed. What do you think about listing the token on the leading exchanges?
Benchmark Protocol Team: Well, only certain CEX’s are capable of handling rebase tokens. We are currently looking at one exchange that is capable of handling the MARK token. xMARK is also a viable solution for future CEX integrations, as xMARK does not rebase itself, but instead represents an underlying amount of MARK.
Q9 from Hangama Kaccha: Where do I get information about your team? Why do you prefer to be anonymous? Do you have a plan to identify your team later?
Benchmark Protocol Team: You can find out about the team on the Team section of the website. Each team member has a twitter or linkedin account. Most of the team come from traditional finance markets and work in the professional industry around this, along with experience in blockchain for many years.
Q10 from Jessica: Can you indicate a feature or feature that you like best about the platform so that it can compete with other competitors? What are you most confident about for your platform? Do you have plans to get users to choose your platform?
Benchmark Protocol Team: This questions also relates to xMARK mentioned previously 👍
Q11 from Jonas Becker: So it sounds like what AMPLeforth is doing but pegged to SDR? Am I correct?
Benchmark Protocol Team: What sets us differently is that yes we peg to the SDR and not just the USD but we also use the CBOE VIX in our protocol. More info is in the Litepaper and whitepaper on how this works.
Q12 from Laboni kazi: Has your project been completely decentralized, and will there be any risk of centralization in the future?
Benchmark Protocol Team: We are currently in discussions with several oracle providers and aim to continuously increase decentralization — reaching full decentralization in the future. This is also reflected by our venture into decentralized governance through the utilization of xMARK on Snapshot.
Q13 from Xiu May: Where can I buy $MARK? Also, what are the benefits in the long-term for stakeholders? Why should we invest in $MARK?
Benchmark Protocol Team: Currently you can purchase using Uniswap with WBTC, ETH or USDC. We are working to secure additional avenues for buying MARK. Once such news is available on the Binance Smart Chain 🙂
Q14 from Xiu May: A good project always has competition and duplication of ideas. What does Benchmark think about this issue? What is the long-term vision of Benchmark in the blockchain market to keep up with the trends with technology, community and related issues?
Benchmark Protocol Team: Good point. There’s definitely no playbook we can follow here so our approach is to lead by example. As our market cap grows, we will be showcasing all the different use cases we bring to the DeFi table and the hope is people will notice that we are reliable, secure, and our protocol is very considerate of not only the crypto market but also retail markets — by design.
Q15 from Jessica: Can you indicate a feature or feature that you like best about the platform so that it can compete with other competitors? What are you most confident about for your platform? Do you have plans to get users to choose your platform?
Benchmark Protocol Team: Hi Jessica. Good question. We set out initially as a fork of AMPL but in time much more is realised. Not only as a much better rebase token that pegs to the SDR and not USD, we use the cboe VIX as an indicator. We also have daily rebases and not only NYSE trading days. We also have XMARK which is a representation of MARK that does not rebase.
Q16 from A. Ivanov: I have a question about Benchmark’s formation: This project is one of the more sophisticated in the space, as is the economic philosophy underneath it. How did the team come together?
Benchmark Protocol Team: We are an international team, handpicked and brought together by the Founder David Mass.
Host: Thank you Benchmark Protocol Team for being with us here today and sharing your wonderful project. It has been a great session, hope you guys have enjoyed it.
Everyone, if you would like to know more about Benchmark Protocol. Feel free to follow/visit them here👇
🔸Website: https://benchmarkprotocol.finance/
🔸Twitter: https://twitter.com/benchmark_defi?s=21
🔸Telegram: https://t.me/benchmark_protocol
🔸Discord: https://discord.com/invite/HcxAEaHG3X
🔸Medium: https://medium.com/benchmarkprotocol
Benchmark Protocol Team: Thank you for having us. It’s been great to speak with the community here.