Kava & HARD Protocol AMA Summary with Decentralized Club ✔️
Dear, Community,
Welcome to the recap of our AMA with Kava & HARD Protocol.
Our vibrant and enthusiastic community had a lot of questions to ask. To those who want to know quickly what Kava & HARD Protocol is about, we are sure this recap is gonna help you. So without further ado, continue reading 😉
✔️Introduction with Kava & HARD Protocol :👉
BILLY | Decentralized Club:
Q1. Can you please introduce yourself and also tell us a bit about Hard Protocol?
Aaron Choi | Kava:
Hi everyone! I’m Aaron Choi, I’m the VP Global BD of Kava and HARD. Before Kava, I was mainly on the exchange side of the crypto business, running the international business at BTCC/BTCChina, one of the earliest chinese exchanges before selling the business in early 2018. Afterwards, I was CEO of GJ.com, another crypto exchange before selling that in 2019. Personally, I’ve been in crypto as an investor since 2012.
HARD Protocol is the world’s first cross-chain money market for digital assets. Similar to Ethereum-based applications Compound and Aave, HARD Protocol provides users with the ability to lend, borrow, and earn with their digital assets. Unlike existing applications, HARD Protocol is built on the Kava DeFi Hub enabling it to uniquely provide money market services to non-ethereum assets such as major market cap crypto such as BTC, XRP, BNB, BUSD, and others.
How HARD Protocol works is simple, users can contribute digital assets they have into a pool upon which other users can borrow. In order to borrow from the pool, a user must first lock their own digital assets as pledged collateral to secure the loan. When repaying the loaned assets, the user also must pay interest to the pool of lenders in exchange for the service. In this way, suppliers of assets in the pool generate yields from borrowers on a prorata basis.
In addition, each pool is allocated a certain amount of HARD token rewards. HARD is the governance token of the application responsible for deciding what assets get money markets, where fees go, and what rewards get paid in each pool. Both suppliers and borrowers earn HARD tokens for using the platform. In this way, HARD Protocol will be decentralized, governed, and maintained by its users.
There will only ever be 200M HARD tokens. Those who hold HARD will be able to direct the future of the platform (and accrue any future fees taken) however they desire.
BILLY | Decentralized Club:
What a detailed explanation! 😊
Q2. What is so exciting about Hard Protocol that we should know about?
Aaron Choi | Kava:
With Hard Protocol, users can earn HARD tokens by lending their assets on the platform, borrowing assets, and by staking Kava tokens on the blockchain. HARD is meant to be governed by the people that use the platform so that it can evolve and maintain itself in a way that always meets the ever changing needs of its users.
Users can potentially earn even more HARD tokens by using their digital assets like BTC as collateral to borrow USDX, then using that borrowed for earning a return lending. This process is like nesting returns for greater results.
BILLY | Decentralized Club:
Definitely a profitable venture for anyone thinking about indulging in it 👍
Q3. Which are the most important achievements in 2020 for Hard Protocol? @a1choi
Aaron Choi | Kava:
Well, of course us launching HARD Protocol with the HARD token this year was a huge achievement. And then hitting over $25M in assets within a couple weeks of launch is another milestone we quickly hit.
We added 7 different assets (some that are cross-chain) that are supported by HARD Protocol that can earn returns. No other cross chain app is able to do that now.
BILLY | Decentralized Club:
That’s not just good .its insane . Such huge numbers actually proves the brand Kava had built which in turn augmented by Hard Protocol’s unique features resulted in such a success 👏
Q4. Finally, any sneak peek into 2021 plans for Hard Protocol? @a1choi
Aaron Choi | Kava:
Our next plans are to support lending on our next upgrade. That will complete the cycle of the HARD product, which will then allow the product to generate returns and not rely 100% on liquidity mining. This is our next big step.
After that, we want to keep on improving the governance as well as the product itself. We want to support even more cross-chain assets which will be driven by the Kava side of things, and then voted on by HARD holders to integrate onto HARD Protocol.
BILLY | Decentralized Club:
Awesome .. a lot done and a lot left to be done .but bottom line is Hard Protocol is ever expanding and improving 😊👍
Aaron Choi | Kava:
yup, adding more assets that our users want will be the most important piece for us.
🐧Community ask Questions by Twitter ✔️
Twitter question no 1.
Username : @KathDM3
What aspects of The Hard Protocol can $HARD holders decide on? What aspects can be modified by the community and which are exclusively for the developer team?
Aaron Choi | Kava:
HARD is a governance token which means it has ALL the value of the application. HARD enables holders to vote on important proposals, upgrades, and changes. This includes adding new assets, collecting fees, deciding where and to whom those fees go, etc. (such as to HARD holders!)
Twitter question no 2.
Username : @DurdenMagnat
Hello. Can I redeem my funds from deposits any time, or are there fixed periods? Let’s say 7, 14, 30 days deposit blocking period.
Aaron Choi | Kava:
Funds can be redeemed at any time, and are not set for fixed period, granted that you have low enough debt (or no debt) in the system to remove your collateral away.
Twitter question no 3.
Username : @LWSLuke
What are the other assets that will be integrated in KAVA and HARD as collateral?
Aaron Choi | Kava:
Well, we have 7 assets that are integrated at the moment. We’re working on direct blockchain integrations with BTC and XRP that we hope to roll out in 2021. We are also working with other assets on centralized platforms like exchanges as they also hold a lot of cryptoassets, and would like their users to start to take advantage of DeFi products too. We’ll announce those specifically as we move closer to launching those.
Twitter question no 4.
Username : @MaxiVV05
What were the features Kava tokens didn’t have for performing the functions of HARD token? and, how does it have repercussions on KAVA token holders?
Aaron Choi | Kava:
We didn’t want KAVA to hold the governance features of HARD because both are quite different products. KAVA controls the CDP, which also controls the minting of USDX.
HARD is created to control HARD Protocol, where the money market is the main product and the different rates and fees will be governed by votes.
This actually aligns the value of the tokens more closely to what they can actually control. This way, value is more efficiently bundled with each respective token.
Twitter question no 5.
Username :@Nilanga10795075
How will transferring of different chain tokens/crypto to the pool work? Will we be able to transfer directly from an exchange?
Aaron Choi | Kava:
Cross-Chain swaps are currently happening with the Binance Chain (BEP2). While this isn’t extremely frictionless, we are working to improve this process for everyone. Cross-chain functionality is still in its infant stages.
We are definitely working on direct exchange integrations that will allow withdrawals and deposits of assets on Kava Chain, but doing something like this takes a lot more effort from the platform to support with compliance and risk factors to wallets etc.
BILLY | Decentralized Club:
Thanks for those detailed and informative answers Aaron . Hopefully the question askers were satisfied 😊
✍️ Telegram live Questions answered by Kava & HARD Protocol ✔
Elias | BDcrypto:
HARD Protocol launched on two different chain. Why HARD Protocol decided to launch on both BSC and KAVA mainnet? What are the advantages of using two chain at the same time?
Aaron Choi | Kava:
We believe that BSC is offering a very targeted DeFi experience and having HARD on BSC is a great way to get our HARD tokens distributed into the hands of more users that want to use DeFi protocols.
As a company that is focused on Cross-Chain interoperability, we support cross-chaining of our tokens as well as as our platform.
Emi 💌:
Being Hard Protocol an application built on Kava, will it have access to any asset on the Kava blockchain?
Aaron Choi | Kava:
Yes, exactly. HARD Protocol has access to any asset that is on the Kava Chain. But HARD token holders will be able to vote for the ones that they want to move forward with. For now, since we have a smaller amount of supported tokens, it makes sense to support them all, but over time, maybe the mix of assets will be different than those that are available on Kava.
Other apps that are built on Kava will behave in exactly the same way too.
steff:
“ HARVEST “ was the initial name given to HARD PROTOCOL, what is the reason behind changing the name ?
Aaron Choi | Kava:
We initially wanted to use Harvest as the name of our protocol, but there was an incident that happened with another DeFi product that shared the same name, Harvest.Finance, that got hacked for a lot of money.
At the time, we had not launched our product yet, so we still had an opportunity to rebrand our product so that we would not get confused with the other project that got hacked.
Because our token name was HARD, we decided to rebrand our protocol to HARD Protocol
Femi Oyinloye:
Hard Protocol is complex to understand for me, Is there any user’s guide on your website to help understand the project better?
Aaron Choi | Kava:
Here is a guide that might help with your needs. It is a step by step from putting Binance assets into HARD protocol.
Also, you can join our community on telegram at https://t.me/hard_protocol and some admins there can help you as well
Melissa:
What new features will be added in HARD v2? How long until its launch?
Aaron Choi | Kava:
There will be a lot of optimizations that will happen behind the scenes to support the scalability of HARD on the Kava Chain. This will also improve the health of the Kava Chain itself.
Also, v2 will feature the borrowing of funds from within the pools. Also, these will have associated farming yield pools that will need to be managed well by governance.
v2 is quite close to launching and we hope to launch before the end of Q1 2021.