AMA Recap of Dude’s Army x MOAR Finance

On Monday, April 11th, Dude’s Army community had the great opportunity to host an AMA with MOAR Finance’s team, very instructive and educational. We will share with you a little bit of what this experience was like.

The Dude👨‍💼:

Let’s start this AMA. Feel free to introduce yourself and share a bit about your background and how MOAR was first thought of.

John:

I am John, project lead for MOAR. I hail from Wall Street with 9 years trading alternative products and derivatives and 10 years building products crossing the gamut of operations, risk, and trading for the industry.

For the last 3 years I have been “full-on” in blockchain, leading product organizations and strategy at public protocols like Fusion, and advising various digital asset startups. Currently, I am CPO of UNION, a project building cutting edge protection products for DeFi.

The idea was all about capital efficiency — crypto is great at technology efficiency, but for leveraging TradFi financial instruments, DeFi has much to elearn.

MOAR started under UNION, meaning we have all the expertise of UNION as a starting point. The origins of MOAR, ULend, was to showcase UNION’s protection product (starting with UNION’s revolutionary capital efficiency product, C-OP) so that other lending platforms can utilize ULend as a guidebook on how to integrate UNION’s products.

As we spoke with more people, it became very clear there is a huge demand for a product like MOAR.

The Dude👨‍💼:

Please explain to our community more about MOAR! What service it provides, what’s it’s advantages against others and why building it on UNN?

John:

Yeah, there’s a strong symbiosis happening between UNION and MOAR. More adoption! More Protection!

The one sentence:

MOAR is the first-of-its-kind, derivative-aware, capital-efficient lending platform.

Our name explains the features of our project. MOAR stands for Multi-asset Optimized Automatic Return.

Multi-asset:

Not only will multiple cryptocurrencies be supported as we build on cross-chain protocols, but also multiple asset types of those currencies.

Optimized:

In a nod to our roots of C-OP (Collateral Optimization Protection), MOAR is about optimizing capital efficiency. The platform optimizes collateral utilization, return streams, gas efficiency, liquidation protection, and more.

Automatic:

Smart contracts have enabled disruptive automation in finance and other industries. However, those automations are still split across different projects that for the average DeFi consumer, make them inaccessible. MOAR leverages composability to create a one-stop, one-click experience for mass adoption.

Return:

MOAR provides decentralized money-market lending returns enhanced with sophisticated financial tooling and DeFi Protection, such as UNION’s crypto default swaps.

The Dude👨‍💼:

And here I see it has multi assets but will it be only ethereum or cross chain later on?

John:

Absolutely, we start with Base Ethereum, because that is where the majority of TVL is. It’s also an excellent hub for all the other chains.

Then in Q4 of 2021 we start migrating to cross-chain protocols, such as Polkadot

The Dude👨‍💼:

Definitely. ETH still is number one right now. What about APY? Will it be like others?

It will be based on Pool lending not P2P correct?

John:

Do you mean yield for deposits and incentives? Absolutely, there will be attractive rates. We start with the base ingredient of money market lending. And then overlay the efficiency of C-OP, letting our users borrow 1:1 for collateral ETH (to start). That’s the secret sauce of capital efficiency, at least the start of it.

The Dude👨‍💼:

I mean the yield for lending on it.

Sounds great! Can you explain a bit more though?

John:

We’re not going for P2P yet, I think other projects are experimenting with it and we’ll keep our eye closely on the development.

We think there is a lot to accomplish for pool lending in the form of fix/float rates that will bring another leg of innovation and adoption to DeFi lending.

The Dude👨‍💼:

Not familiar with the term “C-OP” and how will the collateral work?

Definitely. Just wanted to make sure! They are actually very very different

And indeed the concepts and applications for pooling format are quite big and adoption as well.

For p2p is hard solutions and hard adoption but beautiful once coded as well.

John:

Sure, typical lending platforms allow borrowers to post their deposited assets as collateral. However, to preserve liquidity in case of massive gap downs, the lending platform overcollateralized the loan. For example, for every $0.75 of ETH deposited, you can borrow $1 of asset.

However, if we overlay this same ETH position, and give the lending platform a known exit price for that ETH should liquidation occur — then the need for overcollateralization drop significantly.

If for example, lending platform knows it can get out of ETH at $2,000, then it can lend 1:1.

That’s the way C-OP works. It’s in essence a put option primitive wrapped with borrow collateral. This tight integration of assets is very well done in TradFI, allowing them to unlock much more value for a given asset.

Granted, DeFI has flash loans — which TradFi does not. But people aren’t borrowing (in general) to yield farm with flash loans, for example.

So MOAR takes the best of DeFi and TraFi and “composes” them together!

The Dude👨‍💼:

How will you make sure that this ETH will be actually sold at 2000$ though?

How does that work? Do you have a buyer or something for when it happens?

Or did I miss something here?

John:

Let’s say I have one ETH deposited.

I then buy one put (C-OP) ETH with strike of $2,000. This means, should price of ETH drop below $2,000, I can sell (exercise) my put and get the difference between $2,000 + current market price.

So, assume the price of ETH gaps down to $1,500 and the borrower account goes into liquidation. MOAR sells the 1ETH asset at $1,500 and claims the put to receive ($2,000 -$,1500 = $500. Giving the platform $2,000.

On the other side of the put option is the C-op liquidity provider.

C-OP is UNION’s stuff.

What’s important for our users though is they shouldn’t need to understand all this fancy stuff behind the scenes.

One-click, do you want to borrow $1 for $1 asset instead of $0.75 for $1?? Users will get that!

The Dude👨‍💼:

Talk about MOAR token utility now!

How will it be used in the ecosystem?

John:

A utility token that confers voting powers which affect the operations of the protocol to holders of the token is essential for a thriving decentralized project.

MOAR token will be used to vote on operational aspects of the lending platform including, but not limited to: borrow/deposit rates, which tokens to support, risk parameters of derivative composition, incentives to increase TVL.

In addition, MOAR will also be used as an incentive in form of reward tokens for liquidity providers, discounted borrow costs, and enhanced yield generation. MOAR itself can be used as a collateral for money market lending purposes.

And once you factor in the liquidation cost of 10% PLUS the opportunity cost of the liquidated asset, the intangible cost really adds up!

The Dude👨‍💼:

Let’s goo! Amazing! Will you work with other projects building enhanced yield or is MOAR itself building that enhancement?

Definitely. Truly amazing! Let’s see how much TVL it will hit day one haha

John:

Mix of both.

DeFi succeeds through collaboration. There are so many protocols doing amazing things and focused on JUST doing that particular thing. In such cases, there’s no need for us to re-invent the wheel. Whether it’s UNION, the likes of Yearn, Ironbank etc. We want to bring these options of return (hence the “R” in MOAR) to our users in one click.

There are also other situations where we may have to build our own, due to nuances of the platform. For example mixing interest rate swaps with some Yearn or Curve pool. How cool is that?!

Community Questions

Q1 from Dan — Uniswap Knight:

hi Mr. John @johnl1 Can you explain a little more about your “Automatic” feature in MOAR Finance? Currently I have believed that AAVE or YFI were automatic protocols, so what new does MOAR have to offer in this field? and how to prevent automation from being a nest for vulnerabilities?

John:

Great point. Blockchains’ “siren song” (attractiveness) for finance, or any industry has been Automation. So what’s the issue? The Automation is still siloed and mostly beyond reach of the average user.

Want a flash loan? Goto Aave. Want to stitch flash loan with some liquidation protection? Set up Defisaver with flashloan. MOAR wants to give the “smooth brain” option. Like the “Robin Hood” version of Automation for our users.

Q2 from Tolga:

To what extent MOAR will be independent considering the whole process of UNION / Ulend?

By the way, No website, just some tweets during 5 days… It seems you are behind a roadmap or giving the feeling that you are in a hurry..Am I kinda right?

John:

MOAR/UNION , we described this already. Sister projects that benefit each other. One focuses on protection, one focuses on lending that uses protection products.

Kinda not right! All has its own time and schedule. One can quote about Gandalf, something about a wizard is never late or early, but arrives exactly when he means to.

HOWEVER, things are moving very quickly. Would it be DeFi if we were moving at snail pace? And the response to MOAR has been much bigger than anticipated — so, kinda right on this front!

Q3 from Eliana:

How is MOAR really different from UNION? And why didn’t they focus on a single project?

John:

It’s exactly because UNION should focus on protection rather than diverting energy on two fronts.

However, there clearly is an opportunity uncovered here in lending and it’d be a pity to not respond to market demand while simultaneously activating an adoption amplifier for UNION.

Q4 from Harsha Prabath:

Typical lending platforms allow borrowers to post their deposited assets as collateral. But you said Lending on MOAR Finance will be quite different. Can you tell us more describely about that? Is it suitable for normal user or those who used existing Lending platform?

John:

The experience will be very familiar to people who have used a lending platform (like a Compound). You still post your deposit. Except, when you borrow, you will have an option to “optimize” directly within the platform, as part of your borrow transaction.

There will be new features that aren’t in DeFi, but will be very easy to relate to TradFi. For example, does a user want to deposit for a longer term to earn more fixed interest? very intuitive, but under the MOAR hood, will be an interest rate swap + yield curve.

About MOAR Finance

MOAR Finance stands for ‘’Multi-asset Optimized Automatic Return’’, and is a sister project of UNION (unn.finance). It is a DeFi lending platform built to unlock the power of inter-chain derivatives primitives. It supports multiple cryptocurrencies and provides gas efficiency, liquidation protection and many other great features.

More information about MOAR Finance:

Website: https://www.unn.finance/

Telegram: https://t.me/MOARFinance

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MOARFinance