AMA with MELD
On 2nd June, 2023 at 1 PM UTC, Decentralized Club
had the honor of hosting Mr. Ken Olling, CEO MELD
team for an Ask- Me- Anything session on their
Telegram page with a community of over 60,000
people. It was hosted by DC Admin, Miss Futuristi.
The session was divided into three segments.
Introductions were made in Segment 1, questions
from the Twitter community were answered in
Segment 2, and live questions from the community
members in attendance were answered in Segment 3.
If you missed this event and would like to know what MELD is all about, you can find a recap of the interview here. Information here should be researched and should not be taken as investment or financial
advice. Also note that slight edits have been made for clarity, and links in this recap lead to images, documents, or other media.
> Miss Futuristi:
Hello there Decentralised Club. It’s your fantastic Futuristi and I will be your host for today for a
yet another awesome AMA session with Ken Olling, CEO, MELD
> Miss Futuristi:
Community please welcome and give a big hands for our guests for today @kenblaue
A very warm welcome to you Ken
> Ken Blaue:
Hi everyone
> Ken Blaue:
Very nice to be here.
> Ken Blaue:
Really looking forward to having this AMA!
> Miss Futuristi:
Hello Ken
How are you doing?
> Ken Blaue:
I have gots of alpha for you guys!
> Miss Futuristi:
First of all kindly introduce yourself to our community.
> Ken Blaue:
Sure
> Ken Blaue:
Hi everyone, my name is Ken Olling, I’m the founder, chairman and chief astronaut at MELD.
> Ken Blaue:
I’ve been in crypto for about 3 years now. Since 2020 (DeFI summer). And MELD has been around
for about 2 years now.
> Miss Futuristi:
Okay sounds great
Kindly type done ✅
So that I can get you are done writing your answers and will move to next one.
> Ken Blaue:
My background is in technology for the past 12 years. I’ve had 3 startups over the past 12 years.
Mainly working with mobile tech, game engine tech and the latest was in finance.
> Ken Blaue:
I started by tech experience back in the 1990s I had a startup and sold it during the dot com.
> Ken Blaue:
In 2016 I started a process to get a bank license in Malta which ended up failing because Malta
was put on the ECB grey list.
> Ken Blaue:
Before all the tech work I worked as a designer and brander for 25 years. As a profession, Im a
typographer.
> Ken Blaue:
So I’ve had a kind of mixed background from tech to finance to design and communications. I’ve
working many many industries from hedge funds, to medical and automotive.
> Ken Blaue:
Crypto touches on all parts of our lives because it’s effective a form of currency. So by
background has help me in understanding how it all fits together. Especially on a macro economic
scale.
> Miss Futuristi:
Yup It Seems great to have such a diversified background
> Miss Futuristi:
Let me quickly explain the flow of today’s events with you...
> Miss Futuristi:
Segment 1 : Introduction Questions with Project team
Segment 2 : 5 best Question from Twitter Gets Answered
Segment 3 : Live Telegram Questions ,Best 5 Telegram questions get answered.
Kindly type"✅ " after you are done answering so we can move ahead.
> Ken Blaue: Sounds good
> Ken Blaue: ? Sticker
> Miss Futuristi: So let us quickly proceed to Segment 1 Introduction Segment
> Miss Futuristi: So the first question is
> Miss Futuristi: Can you start us off with the introduction to MELD and its major mission?
> Ken Blaue: So MELD was created to build self-sovereign finance products fro the other 99% of the world.
> Ken Blaue: Our goal is to bring financial fairness to people everywhere. And to promote a more holistic form
of economics.
> Ken Blaue:
To start with we began our life as a lending and borrowing protocol.
> Ken Blaue:
We want to be Abel to help people in DeFi to lock up their crypto in a trustless and non-custodial smart contract and borrow either crypto or fiat against it.
> Ken Blaue:
Kind of like AAVE and Coinbase put together.
> Ken Blaue:
This very quickly took us to the realisation that we needed to have direct control over a fiat institution to handle fiat for our users. This led us to get an electronic money license. Or a Neobank in plane language.
> Ken Blaue:
The other thing we discovered was that we needed to be able to have crazy low transaction fees in order to be able to offer meaningful products.
> Ken Blaue:
You can’t pay $4 for a transaction of $1 in tokens.
> Ken Blaue:
So we ended up looking at the options and building our own blockchain. The MELD blockchain.
> Ken Blaue:
We used the Avalanche subnet architecture and we launched our blockchain in May of this year.
> Ken Blaue:
By validator, we are the biggest blockchain in the Avalanche ecosystem now.
> Ken Blaue:
And transactions are about $0.00013 to send.
> Ken Blaue:
The blockchain is designed to handle 2200 TPS. So very high throughput.
> Ken Blaue:
And we have designed it to be very multi-chain oriented.
> Ken Blaue:
The $MELD token is available on 4 blockchains right now and we will be expanding this to all 6
major chanson the coming months.
> Ken Blaue:
You can trade $MELD on uniswap on Ethereum, Trader Joe on Avalanche and Minswap on
Cardano.
> Ken Blaue:
We strongly believe that the future is multichain and that tokens and NFTs will be cross chain.
> Ken Blaue:
So in the coming months we will be launching our Neobank. Which is a crypto friendly Neobank.
> Ken Blaue:
If anyone here is interested in getting early access to the MELD neobank you can signup for early
access here. ? https://meld.fi/early-access-apply?source=Decentralized_Club
> Ken Blaue:
If you signup you will also be eligible for some other great things too.
> Ken Blaue:
So in summary MELD is a Layer 1 blockchain with high throughput, low transaction fees with a lending and borrowing protocol on the DeFi side and a Fiat Neobank on the other.
> Ken Blaue:
Done
> Miss Futuristi:
That was a perfectly well detailed intro?
> Miss Futuristi:
Sounds perfect let us move ahead
> Ken Blaue:
great
> Miss Futuristi:
What basically is MELD Ecosystem?
> Ken Blaue:
The ecosystem allows users to use collateral from all of the major chains, BTC, ETH, AVAX,
MATIC, ADA, MELD, GLMR, BNB and their tokens together to borrow against.
> Ken Blaue:
And you can do this in a very effect manner with a novel lending and borrowing solution.
> Ken Blaue: Our lending and borrowing is similar to AAVE in many ways but it differs in one major way. The suppliers yield is much higher.
> Ken Blaue:
We can do this by what we can yield boosting.
> Ken Blaue:
When you supply an asset in a Lending pool the yield you get is based on others borrowing the asset.
> Ken Blaue:
If I supply $1000 in ETH and someone borrows $10 in ETH my yield will be very low, because the borrowers interest payment has to cover a lot.
> Ken Blaue:
What we do is if an asset is not being borrowed we send it to liquid staking to generate a yield against it. So the floor yield is about 2%-5% higher than a normal pool.
> Ken Blaue:
You can see this diagram to better understand
> Ken Blaue:
? Photo
> Ken Blaue:
So we want our system to capital efficient and for our users to get the most out of their supplied
assets.
> Ken Blaue:
But then, once you have supplied you can borrow fiat if you want to.
> Ken Blaue:
In order to borrow fiat you will need to get a MELD Neobank account.
> Ken Blaue:
Once you have that you can connect your non-custodial wallet to the Neobank and then borrow the fiat.
> Ken Blaue:
If you try and do this via AAVE and Coinbase you will have a very hard time telling the tax
authorities that the money you got from coinable is debit. They will want to tax you as capital gains or income.
> Ken Blaue:
MELD helps to avoid this.
> Ken Blaue:
And we can do this because 1) we have our own blockchain. 2) we have a Neobank and 3) the lending and borrowing protocol his design to solve this problem.
> Ken Blaue:
All of this is controlled by our wallet the MELDapp.
> Ken Blaue:
? Photo
> Ken Blaue:
If you go to app.meld.com you can get the MELDapp which is a non-custodial wallet supporting
MELD, Cardano, Etheruem and Avalanche right now.
> Ken Blaue:
We also support NFTs of course.
> Ken Blaue:
? Photo
> Ken Blaue:
Done.
> Miss Futuristi:
Again the perfectly detailed with technical aspect.
do readcommunity and follow their socials?
> Miss Futuristi:
let us move to 3rd one
> Ken Blaue:
MELD Neobank Early Access Signup ? https://meld.fi/early-access-apply?
source=Decentralized_Club
MELD Discord ? https://discord.gg/melddefi
MELD Global Telegram Channel ? https://t.me/meld_notifications
MELD Telegram Announcement Channel ? https://t.me/meld_notifications
MELD Twitter ? https://twitter.com/MELD_Defi
MELD Medium ? https://medium.com/meld-defi
MELD Linkedin ? https://www.linkedin.com/company/meld-defi/
MELD Youtube ? https://www.youtube.com/c/MELD_labs
MELD Facebook ? https://www.facebook.com/defiprotocol/
MELD Instagram ? https://www.instagram.com/meld_defi/sna
> Ken Blaue:
Lets go!
> Miss Futuristi:
Can you tell us about the MELD roadmap? Whats the current development flow?
> Ken Blaue:
Sure, so the MELD blockchain and MELDapp went live in May.
> Ken Blaue:
The MELD Neobank will go live in August for early access beta testers.
> Ken Blaue:
And the lending and borrowing protocol will go live in Q4.
> Ken Blaue:
So we have a lot going on in the coming months.
> Ken Blaue:
As part of this. We will be doing a big MELD airdrop for poeple that signup for the Neobank and
use the MELDapp
> Ken Blaue:
Done.
> Miss Futuristi:
Looking forward ?
> Miss Futuristi:
that’s an interesting one
> Ken Blaue:
The fiat side of the MELD ecosystem is very similar to traditional banking with a few exceptions.
> Ken Blaue:
1) we are not allowed to touch customers money. They are held with the Central Bank of
Lithuania.
> Ken Blaue:
2) We can only facilitate transactions SWIFT, SEPA and Debit Cards.
> Ken Blaue:
3) We are connected to our internal crypto exchange where you can on-ramp and off-ramp
crypto.
> Ken Blaue:
4) all of this is connected to a non-custodial wallet where you own your keys to your crypto.
> Ken Blaue:
This is the definition banking stack. Benefits of fiat, keep your keys keep your crypto and bridge
between them .
> Ken Blaue:
If you think this is interesting please sign up for early access to the Neobank and get the MELD
wallet (it’s free).
> Ken Blaue:
MELD Neobank Early Access Signup ? https://meld.fi/early-access-apply?
source=Decentralized_Club
> Ken Blaue:
Done
> Miss Futuristi:
So to summarise this one, Decentralization is always better ? ?
> Miss Futuristi:
yup guys never miss this opportunity
> Ken Blaue:
Always better
> Miss Futuristi:
So community its time for twitter segment. Are you ready ?
> Ken Blaue:
Great. Looking forward to the questions
> Miss Futuristi:
Twitter Segment begins...
> Miss Futuristi:
Q1 fin_lean How is MELD working to resolve inefficiencies in the digital lending space? What are
the intuitive solutions that MELD applies to solve and dilute the current and existing loan scheme?
How can I be part of the solution and part of the evolution?
> Miss Futuristi:
first one
> Ken Blaue:
As I played out above we see that capital efficiency is very low in lending and borrowing. We want
to help make it much more profitable and efficient for everyone. Our goal is to facilitate a solution
that leads to Net positive yield when you factor in both the supply yield and borrowing rate.
> Ken Blaue:
Yield boosting is our major innovation.
> Ken Blaue:
Done
> Miss Futuristi:
perfection!
> Miss Futuristi:
Q2 alabi_funke42 As we all know security is the most important thing to consider when starting up a project or partnership. We will like to know how secured your project is for users and investors? Because there has been a lot of hacking issues.
> Ken Blaue:
Hacking is always as issue. We take security very seriously and we make sure everything is audited and we try to minimise unnecessary security risks like mint/burn on demand.
> Ken Blaue:
You can see our audits here.
> Ken Blaue:
https://skynet.certik.com/projects/meld
> Ken Blaue:
And our security score.
> Ken Blaue:
Done
> Miss Futuristi:
Hmm secured
> Miss Futuristi:
next one coming
> Miss Futuristi:
Q3 YulianaZebro When borrowing trust money through MELD, what means of payment do they
use to lend to users, what interest rate do they charge, and what kind of collateral must users
provide in exchange for a loan?
> Ken Blaue:
So for collateral you will be able to use BTC, ETH, ADA, MELD, AVAX, MATIC, GLMR, BNB,
USDC, USDT, DAI and about 30 other tokens as collateral. This will expand over time.
> Ken Blaue:
You will be able to borrow the same for the Crypto side and for Fiat you can borrow
AUD
CAD
CHF
DKK
EUR
GBP
HKD
HUF
PLN
RON
SEK
SGD
USD
JPY
> Ken Blaue:
Done
> Miss Futuristi:
perfect!
> Miss Futuristi:
Q4 Patternboy11 Talking about Lending and Borrowing. How does @MELD_Defi ensure secure
loans? What type of information do you need from borrowers?
> Ken Blaue:
For crypto to crypto loans, we need nothing. It’s a DefI loan, you can do what you want.
> Ken Blaue:
We do screen for wallets that are sanctioned so that the pooled don’t get sanctioned.
> Ken Blaue:
For fiat loans you need to go through the normal bank signup process of KYC/AML. So your ID,
nationality etc.
> Ken Blaue:
Nothing special.
> Ken Blaue:
Done
> Miss Futuristi:
Yes, Obviosly its not a physical bank that demand a ton of forms lol?
> Miss Futuristi:
Okay so its time for the last question from twitter
> Ken Blaue:
No, it’s just a mobile app UI. Similar to a Revolut or N26.
> Miss Futuristi:
Q5 chukky10z With regards to the fiat lenders, I’d like to know if there is a set amount of time
during which they are not permitted to withdraw funds from the platform and lastly, how the MELD
ecosystem ensures that they won’t lose money in the event of a potential liquidation.
> Ken Blaue:
First, there are no lockup times. If there are issues then we will contact you and fix it ASAP. All on-
ramp and off-ramp is immediate.
> Ken Blaue:
If the amount is very large ($1m), we don’t hold it but the exchange might need a few hours to
complete and we might need more documentation for very large loans so we can produce the
appropriate paperwork for you taxes.
> Ken Blaue:
So we have 4 users of the system:
> Ken Blaue:
1) the supplier they can send assets to the LPs and get a yield.
> Ken Blaue:
2) Borrowers (same as the supplier) they can borrow and have to pay interest against it.
> Ken Blaue:
3) Liquidators (same as borrower or supplier) and they can run a bot to automatically liquidate
loans that start to get close to 100%. Liquidators are financially incentivised to so a liquidation
because they between 4% and 10% bonus if they pay off the loan and get the collateral in
exchange. So it can be very profitable if you liquidate a lot.
> Ken Blaue:
4) Stability pool stakes. They stake MELD and a bonded asset like ETH, BTC etc. and this can be
used if an unforeseen event happens and we have to pay off a specific loan.
> Ken Blaue:
Done
> Miss Futuristi:
So far so good
> Miss Futuristi:
now its time guys
> Miss Futuristi:
for the Live segment
> Miss Futuristi:
Muted
> Miss Futuristi:
? ?
> Miss Futuristi:
@kenblaue You may select best 5 amoung them.
> Miss Futuristi:
?
> Ken Blaue:
The genius loan is a very interesting product. You can supply an asset and depending on the
supplied yield and loan rate all of the interest from the supplied assets will go to pay down the
loan. So depending on the markets you can get a loan na dit will pay itself off in 5 to 10 years and
you have to do nothing!
> Ken Blaue: A big part of what we are offering is the ability to stake your assets and generate a yield. You can
do all of this inside the MELDapp. We will start by offering back staking and then expand to other
types of staking like structured products.
> Miss Futuristi:
2 more to go
> Ken Blaue:
MELD.FI is live now. You can get early access to the bank account and with will also make you
eligible for the MELD airdrop. The bank will be launching early access for beta users starting in
August.
> Miss Futuristi:
1 more to go
> Ken Blaue:
There is no repayment requirements, no credit checks, no guarantee needed. You supply the
collateral and you can borrow against it. If you don’t pay the loan back it will be liquidated and
then you just keep what you borrowed (you forfeit the collateral).
> Miss Futuristi:
Thats done ?
> Miss Futuristi:
That’s all for today and with this, we come to an end of this awesome session.
Thanks a ton for such a proficient session.
Some concluding lines you wanna convey to our community
@kenblaue
> Ken Blaue:
Some of the team is very young and inexperienced, they have energy and great ideas. They have
innovation and a will to drive things forward. Others on the team are bankers with lots of
experience. Our CEO of the bank is the former head of treasury at Revolut. We have a great mix
on the team.
> Miss Futuristi:
?
> Ken Blaue:
MELDapp is the gateway to all of the features and benefits we have to offer. You can do staking,
lending, borrowing, banking, NFTs, and normal wallet functions like sending and receiving. We
want the MELDapp to be a safe and easy place to interact with your finances.
> Ken Blaue:
Thank you everyone it’s been a great opportunity to speak to you all.
> Ken Blaue:
Please signup for early access to the MELD Neobank and become eligible for the MELD airdrop
as well.
> Ken Blaue:
Have a great weekend!
> Miss Futuristi:
We are equally honoured to have you here Ken
> Miss Futuristi:
You too
> Miss Futuristi:
Thanks again for that awesome AMA session, the well detailed answers? .
It’s your fantastic Futuristi signing off.
Peace out?
> Miss Futuristi: AMA concluded
> Miss Futuristi: unmuting chats