Hedge Against Staking, DeFi and NFT Infrastructure Risks With DSLA Protocol — KuCoin AMA Transcript
Dear KuCoin Users,
Project Introduction
DSLA Protocol is a risk management framework that enables developers and infrastructure operators to reduce their users' exposure to service delays, interruptions, and financial losses, using self-executing service level agreements, bonus-malus insurance policies, and crowdfunded liquidity pools.
Official Website: https://dsla.network
White Paper: https://storage.googleapis.com/stacktical-public/STACKTICAL_DSLA-WHITE-PAPER.pdf
Follow DSLA Protocol on Twitter and Telegram.
Guest:
Wilhem Pujar — Co-Founder and CEO of Stacktical, core developer of DSLA
Wilhem Pujar has a 12-year experience in distributed software architecture, software development, and product management. He previously founded a data analytics startup specialized in social sentiment monitoring. Today he is the co-founder and CEO of Stacktical, the core development team of DSLA Protocol, a risk management framework that democratizes access to third-party risk reduction and hedging instruments.
Q&A from KuCoin
Q: What is DSLA Protocol?
Wilhem: Managing DeFi risk is hard.
Impermanent loss, rug pulls, APR drops…
Due diligence takes time, many events can affect your assets, and there is no intuitive way to offset losses.
We created DSLA Protocol to enable DeFi users to trade third-party risk with each other using Decentralized Service Level Agreements (SLA).
Q: What is a Decentralized SLA?
Wilhem: Well, Decentralized SLAs are peer-to-peer outsourcing contracts.
They can store and release cryptocurrency, based on the performance analytics of DeFi services.
☝️When the analytics of a DeFi service stays within the thresholds of a Decentralized SLA, the DSLA contract creator earns a cryptocurrency reward.
✌️And if a Decentralized SLA is breached, the DSLA contract stakeholders can claim a cryptocurrency reward, to offset losses.
In other words, DSLA Protocol is basically a marketplace for creating, trading and executing Decentralized SLAs, with 0 legal and third-party risk management expertise.
Q: What are the use cases of DSLA Protocol?
Wilhem: Let’s talk about our flagship use case first then!
On one hand, DSLA Protocol’s flagship use case is to enable proof-of-stake delegators to hedge against APR (Annual Percentage Rate) drops, by purchasing APR SLA guarantees.
On the other hand, DSLA Protocol enables liquidity providers and proof-of-stake validators to earn cryptocurrency for protecting their peers and community.
Our core development team is also working on new types of DSLA contracts to reduce the risk of impermanent loss for Uniswap liquidity providers and for NFT collectors.
Beyond our flagship use case, you can add a Decentralized SLA guarantee on top of any DeFi or real-word service, as long as its performance can be monitored.
In the near future, risk management capabilities of DSLA Protocol will provide a wide range of opportunities in various industry verticals, such as the cloud computing, logistics or travel markets.
We are looking forward to helping developers integrate DSLA Protocol to build new, risk-free customer experiences in all areas of our lives.
Q: What is the purpose of the DSLA token?
Wilhem: The DSLA token is the fuel of the DSLA Protocol.
It enables DeFi service providers and liquidity providers to pay for the periodic verification of Decentralized SLA contracts.
And every time a Decentralized SLA is verified, 25% of the DSLA tokens are burned forever, making it a deflationary asset with a supply that shrinks with usage.
Q: What are the characteristics of the DSLA token?
Wilhem: There are currently 6.4B DSLA tokens in circulation, more than 90% of the total supply of 7B DSLA tokens.
The DSLA token total supply shrinks over time, as DSLA Protocol is getting adopted.
The main standard of DSLA is ERC20 (Ethereum token), but expanding to HRC20 and soon BEP20 as part of our multi-chain strategy.
DSLA is a top 350 asset that has grown more 20,000% in the past 12 months,and currently sits at a $120M market capitalization.
We are currently welcoming +1,000 holders every two weeks on average and fast-approaching 50,000 transactions.
Q: How does it work in practice?
Wilhem: DSLA Protocol works like a bonus-malus insurance.
If a DeFi provider promises you a 10% APR over a certain period of time, but you get 9% APR instead, DSLA Protocol will offset your loss.
Your loss can be offset with a leverage, meaning that if you stake 25 USDC, you will be entitled to a 100 USDC compensation in case of breach, at a 4x leverage.
Conversely, if you earn 11% APR instead of the promised 10%, your service provider earns some of your insurance premium to reward his performance.
Hence why it is a “bonus-malus” solution. It goes both ways.
Q: Can I stake DSLA token?
Wilhem: On DSLA Protocol, the purpose of staking is to add liquidity to a Decentralized SLA, as a DeFi service or liquidity provider, and to deposit an insurance premium, as a DeFi service user.
In other words, in order to sell or buy an APR insurance, you need to stake DSLA, DAI or USDC to a Decentralized SLA contract available on the DSLA.network marketplace.
It’s a new form of staking experience with the specific utility of Managing DeFi and other third-party risk.
As you can see in this diagram, DSLA Protocol staking rewards are contingent on the outcome of Decentralized SLA verifications.
Much like a Risk Prediction Market.
Q: Is DSLA Protocol its own blockchain network?
Wilhem: Similar to Chainlink at the strategic level, DSLA Protocol is not a blockchain network but a protocol and developer tool, running on the most popular blockchain networks with smart contract capabilities.
Available today on the Ethereum mainnet, DSLA Protocol will be ported to networks popular among developers this year, including Harmony, Avalanche, Tezos and Elrond.
A L2 Ethereum alternative will also be available soon.
Porting DSLA Protocol to other blockchain networks is part of the DSLA Maxima initiative.
Q: Can you tell us more about your partners?
Wilhem: Sure, they’re a mission-critical part of the equation.
Within the framework of the DSLA Maxima initiative, we have teamed up with the Harmony, Elrond, Tezos, Avalanche and Oasis core development teams, and will empower their respective developers and communities with the risk management capabilities of DSLA Protocol.
To secure the DSLA Protocol experience, release after release, we have partnered with leading security auditing firm CertiK, German security experts Chainsulting, and white hack community Immunefi.
Chainlink is our decentralized Oracle partner, and currently empowers the DSLA Protocol mainnet on Ethereum.
We’re also exploring creative ways for developers to use the Oracle technology of their choice, to empower their use case.
Q: What are the next major events and milestones for DSLA Protocol this year?
Wilhem:
In April:
⁃ Availability of DSLA Protocol for Harmony
⁃ Support for $AVAX Staking & Delegation (APR SLA Guarantees)
In May:
⁃ Availability of DSLA Protocol for Avalanche
⁃ Support for $DOT Staking & Delegation (APR SLA Guarantees)
In June:
⁃ Availability of DSLA Developers Tools
⁃ Support for $ATOM Staking & Delegation (APR SLA Guarantees)
In Q3:
⁃ Availability of DSLA Protocol for Tezos
In Q4:
⁃ Availability of DSLA Protocol for Elrond
Along with new listings on major centralized and decentralized exchanges, we also have a growing list of partnership announcements to make throughout this year, and secret dapps in preparation.
It’s definitely going to be a year full of surprises.
Free-Ask from KuCoin Community
Q: Can you please explain the difference between the DSLA protocol from DSLA Network? How does it work differently and independently with the network?
Wilhem: This is my first pick, as an important distinction to make. Thanks a ton for asking!
DSLA Network is the first dapp to integrate DSLA Protocol. It’s focusing on demonstrating the DeFi use cases of the protocol, and acts as a way to showcase what developers can do with the technology.
Q: When the user and the provider of the service set an agreement, how is the procedure to ensure the legal matters for both sides?
Wilhem: Great question. As of today, smart contracts do not really hold legal value in general. Although I am convinced that this will change in the future, we need to see today’s DeFi products and decentralized solutions as ways to enforce fair exchanges between stakeholders without resorting to legal means.
That’s the spirit of code is law.
Q: With NFTs in vogue what can we expect from #DSLA for the coming months?
Wilhem: Decentralized SLAs are key to NFT adoption, see https://blog.stacktical.com/mainnet/nft/2021/02/16/stacktical-dsla-protocol-itsm-sla-contract-types-nft-impermanent-loss-fintech-legaltech-insurtech-defi.html for our work in the space, and an idea of what we’re building around NFTs.
Along with adding core utility for NFT to DSLA Protocol, we see NFT as a new marketing opportunity that could help further consolidate our bonds with our community, the DSLA champions.
We’ve been working with some of the best designers we know on launching a series of collectibles. You’ll hear much more about it very soon!
Q: I have a question on DSLA Protocol's use-cases. Right now, I can see that DSLA is providing hedging against validator nodes' performance. In the future, are you planning to provide hedging against rug-pulling because this is quite common and a big problem for crypto holders. For instance, not specifically dodgy projects but a project gone bad all of a sudden because investors pulled their funding or testnet/mainnet failure etc.
Q: Your project is really impressive. Could you please share with us a goal that you consider important on your roadmap?
Wilhem: Thanks! At a personal level, I like to see our DSLA family growing.
For the sake of the product itself, on top of having as many holders as possible, product-market fit is what matters the most to the core team.
We are doing our best to build a product solving a real problem for our users. Getting the right formula is a massive challenge that requires continuous feedback.
We’ll feel like we’ve hit a major milestone when the DSLA.network product will have high usage and retention, and the DSLA Protocol is fully able to onboard developers from around the world.
Q: Have you thought about partnering with a financial institution in Latin America? It could be an excellent project because it is a huge community.
Wilhem: Claro que si. As a French-Caribbean founder, I consider all parts of the world to be equally interesting when it comes to third-party risk management and connecting with local communities. Scaling our operations globally will take some time, though. But we’re getting there!
Q: What is the minimum DSLA amount for staking @pujarw ?
Wilhem: There is no minimum but the maximum stake is capped by the leverage. For example, at 4x leverage, the Provider pool must be 4x bigger than the user pool.
Q: I found something interesting!
Regarding your words, "And if a Decentralized SLA is breached, the SLA contract stakeholders can claim a cryptocurrency reward, to offset losses."
How do we claim it if we hold DSLA tokens on KuCoin, whether we have to use certain Dapps or have to log in via a particular web?
Or as a user of KuCoin, can we immediately claim it in the KuCoin app?
Wilhem: If KuCoin developers are willing to integrate DSLA Protocol to the KuCoin experience, we’ll be happy to help make it happen.
Q: What are the great achievements that your project has achieved so far? What difficulties and risks did you encounter during project implementation and what factors helped motivate you to overcome difficulties?
Wilhem: We’re proud to have a protocol and a dapp up and running. Too many projects skip the part where they need to ship, improve and solve real problems for their users.
My co-founder and I have rather modest backgrounds. We’re used to hard work, have tough skin, and never hesitate to get out of our comfort zone to push what we do to the next level.
Q: Your project has great features. There must be an experienced team behind. Can you tell some about your team and their experiences in the market?
Wilhem: I hold a MSc in Computer Science. I have a 12-year experience in distributed software architecture, software development and product management. I previously founded Tag&See, a Big Data startup specialized in social media monitoring and sentiment analysis. I started getting involved with cryptocurrencies in 2015, by experimenting with chaincode development in IBM Bluemix, one of the original components of what is known today as the Hyperledger consortium.
Our CTO Jean-Daniel holds a MSc in Computer Science. He is a Google and Kubernetes Certified Architect with 12 years experience in System Administration, IaaS, Performance Management and Cloud Architecture
He has been one of the first OpenStack and Kubernetes administrators in Asia. He started getting involved with cryptocurrencies in 2014, when he applied DevOps automation principles to the deployment of Litecoin nodes.
Matias is a Blockchain engineer that worked for some of the top projects in the space (Celo, previously). His work is to design governance principles, hedging logic, oracles integration, services decentralization, TDD, smart contracts optimization and infrastructure deployment.
Yosra is an Entrepreneur and Blockchain engineer with a passion for decentralized software architecture. Yosra has hands-on development and auditing experience in various smart contract platforms such as Quorum, Hyperledger or Ethereum, her platform of choice. Originally drawn to the ecosystem through Initial Coin Offerings smart contracts development and auditing, Yosra is now operating her own blockchain consulting company, and teaching a Solidity class at an up-and-coming blockchain school.
Prosongit is an experienced marketer that has been enabling dozens of blockchain and cryptocurrency projects to develop their community since 2015.
Aymen is a Senior Cloud Architect and one of CIO Magazine’s top 100 DevOps influencers in the world. As the curator of Faun, a family of weekly DevOps and BlockOps newsletters, and a (technical) writer, he has built a community of 13K+ DevOps practitioners and developers from the very best technology companies. He brings a world-class Content Marketing expertise to Stacktical, and closely works with me on driving the awareness and adoption of DSLA Protocol among service delivery managers, site reliability engineers, developers and other customer service stakeholders.
Everybody in the team is public, and easily verifiable on LinkedIn.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to share or you want us to know?
Wilhem: I just want to invite anybody in this group that has any question to feel free to message me. We’re working very hard on delivery value with DSLA Protocol and the DSLA Network flagship dapp. None of this would be possible without our community, and the needs expressed by its members. Please keep supporting projects that genuinely want to showcase the real power of blockchain and decentralized technologies to the world.
Thanks for having me, everyone!
Giveaway Section
KuCoin and DSLA Protocol have prepared a total of 100,000 DSLA to give away to AMA participants.
1. Red envelope giveaways: 37,600 DSLA
2. Free-ask section: 2,400 DSLA
3. Post-AMA activity: 60,000 DSLA
Activity 1 — Quiz: 40,000 DSLA
Activity 2 — Price Guess: 20,000 DSLA
. . .
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