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Equilibrium CEO Alex Melikhov AMA Recap

Equilibrium CEO Alex Melikhov AMA Recap

On Wednesday, November 20th we have held a community AMA session with Alex Melikhov – CEO of Equilibrium. Here you can read the recap of everything we have discussed during the session!

Guarda:
Hey, Guarda Community!
Our AMA with CEO of Equilibrium Alex Melikhov is starting! 
Great to have you all here. We will be live for about an hour – get ready to drop your questions!

Alex Melikhov:
Hey guys, a pleasure to be here!

Guarda:
Thanks, Alex. I guess I’d start – can you tell us a little bit about Equilibrium and your core values?

Alex Melikhov:
Sure. We have been working on the Equilibrium framework since October 2018 – more than a year.
We consider ourselves as a multichain framework for DeFi projects and decentralized stablecoins.
The first proof of concept we have built on top of Equilibrium is the first EOS-based decentralized stablecoin called EOSDT (launched back in April this year).

Question:
What are the key differences compared to other competitors such as MKR?

Alex Melikhov:
Good question. I personally don’t think we are competing. We are working in the same space and more complementing each other creating the consistent space of stablecoins.

Question:
What is the difference of EOSDT than other stablecoin like Dai, USDT?

Alex Melikhov:
EOSDT is also a decentralized stablecoin inheriting the advantages of BitUSD by BitShares.
However, the main differences between us and others lie in the underlying technology basis and particular system parameters.
E.g. EOSDT requires at least 130% collateralization when MakerDAO requires 150%.

Question:
Nowadays, How is  DeFi changing our relationship with money, investing, credit and debt? How does Equilibrium help in this case and bring DeFi into real life?

Alex Melikhov:
We are building some solutions ourselves – like EOSDT payment system which can be easily integrated into any online store or can be helpful for crypto events to sell tickets.
Also, we are expecting community to create their own products on top of the Equilibrium framework.
That expectedly will lead to more adoption.

Question:
Which market are you most active right now?

Alex Melikhov:
We are quite known in the Western world (the US, Europe). Now aiming to become more popular in China, Korea and in other countries of APAC.

Question:
What are your plans for development right now?

Alex Melikhov:
Our dev plans align with the tendencies in crypto space overall. We are going to be multi collateral, being more adopted to mobile users and have more practical use cases in the real world.
Also, we are developing a toolbox for regional-currencies-pegged stablecoins. It will allow launching any world currency pegged stablecoin almost instantly.

Question:
Why EOSDT?

Alex Melikhov:
It’s based on the EOS blockchain and backed by EOS cryptocurrency.

Question:
What are the difficulties to run your project on the blockchain?

Alex Melikhov:
Not that many difficulties. Moreover, blockchain allows running projects without backend – it might simplify the dev process.

Question:
What is NUT?

Alex Melikhov:
It is Native Utility Token – the basic asset for most products based on the Equilibrium framework. It is used both as internal currency and a governance token.

Question:
The legal issue is still the biggest problem hindering the virtual currency market, so how will EOSDT have plans to trade?

Alex Melikhov:
EOSDT is not much triggering regulatory issues in most jurisdictions. JFYI we have obtained the US legal opinion which considers EOSDT as a utility token.
Also take into account that centralized stablecoins (USDT, USDC, TrueUSD, etc) are considered as e-money in the UK for instance. Decentralized stablecoins are under the radar of regulators for now.

Question:
What are the types of users on your project? 
How do you keep all users to stay with your project for the longterm?

Alex Melikhov:
We see two main use cases for EOSDT (and similar stablecoins) 
– an opportunity to get leverage on existing crypto holdings at relatively low APR – this is much relevant to more sophisticated crypto users
– to trade/transact on the secondary market (being confident that each EOSDT stablecoin is transparently backed by liquid collateral at any time).

Question:
How many users do you have and how many use EOSDT for daily payments?

Alex Melikhov:
There are around 500 user positions on the smart contracts (users who collateralized their EOS and generated EOSDT), you may inspect all daily activities on-chain btw.

Question:
I am holding USDT, so what is the difference between EOSDT and exchange?

Alex Melikhov:
USDT is a centralized stablecoin. It has an obvious advantage – it is very much liquid and has almost no constraints in market cap (you can collateralize as many physical dollars as you want). Simultaneously there is a serious drawback – it’s backing is not that transparent. Do you remember they recently stated they became fully backed again?
It does not make any sense.
EOSDT is transparently backed by EOS collateral by design.

Question:
How did You select strategic partners and early investors? Can you show some names of your partners?

Alex Melikhov:
Sure, there is a lot.
Changelly, Huobi Wallet, HitBTC, BeQuant, Bancor, MeetOne, Provable, LiquidApps, etc.

Question:
What are EOSDT’s plans for 2-3 years from now? What are the growth targets for sales, users, markets? What do you think about the China market?

Alex Melikhov:
The Chinese market is a top priority for us, specifically for EOS it is huge. We are in talks with several major market players on cooperation to have more exposure there.

Question:
What about Security? How one is secure on your platform? What is your team size enough to achieve your goals? Or do you want to increase this size? What will it be like to join your team?

Alex Melikhov:
We are following TDD principles in smart contract development. The team is around 30 ppl, for now, 17 of them are working on the dev side.
We are always looking for talented team members. If you feel you can bring value – don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Question:
How are you doing when there are too many stable coins, and the market is getting worse, especially in the coming winter. Do you plan to organize an event to create heat for the market and more investors come to you?

Alex Melikhov:
We are hosting events and are thinking that it is very important to spread the word about DeFi space and educate the community. Take a look at www.cryptodefiance.com we hosted last week in Singapore. Over 200 attendees, thoughtful panels, great speakers.

Question:
Do you have any community group, can you share the link?

Alex Melikhov:
Sure, you are welcome to join our Telegram community.

Question:
Where can I buy EOSDT or how do we get EOSDT?

Alex Melikhov:
You can either generate EOSDT at gateway.eosdt.com or buy from secondary markets.

Question:
Can EOSDT be used in the field of e-commerce payment? Is it possible to exchange between EOSDT and Fiat currencies via banks to increase liquidity without having to convert via any intermediary step, especially in Vietnam?

Alex Melikhov:
Sure, it can be very useful for e-commerce. That is something we are working right now – an easily integrable payment system. There are several OTC providers who could provide fiat settlement for partners.

Question:
Why is the EOSDT only exchanging on 2, 3 exchange with great features that can be widely used? Will that make EOSDT users not equal to other Stablecoins?

Alex Melikhov:
We are currently in talks with several major exchanges re-listing, several announcements are coming soon, stay tuned, join our Telegram community.

Question:
What keeps EOSDT prices stable?

Alex Melikhov:
In broad strokes, there are stability mechanisms inbuilt into logics on EOSDT smart contracts.

Question:
An EOSDT is equivalent to a US dollar, so with StableCoin in general and EOSDT in particular, if the inflation rate in the US is high or fluctuate strongly by the economic situation, how does it affect the operation of EOSDT?

Alex Melikhov:
That is a very macroeconomic question. I think it would affect all the crypto market anyways.

Question:
What is your plan to increase your users and build more liquidity for EOSDT?

Alex Melikhov:
More use cases, more integrations, more application for EOSDT, more products on top of Equilibrium.

Question:
The big problem I think is very urgent to solve the international trade problem. In international trade, the efficiency of the whole process is very, very low. In particular, in writing, most processes cost trillions of dollars a year. So you think with EOSDT, this problem can be changed? And how do you do that?

Alex Melikhov:
You know, we are providing technology and a highly transactable cryptocurrency on top of it. It is transparent and pegged to USD at all the time – this is what we are focused on. We definitely would love if it finds its application in the real world.

Question:

  1. How EOSDT secures digital files from unlawful manipulation, digital fraud?
  2. How EOSDT work on use cases ( Education, Finance and Law)?

Can you please highlight more on the decentralization aspect using your technology. Also in the future, is it possible to quantify the level of decentralization and economic incentivization?

Alex Melikhov:

  1. This is something mostly on a client-side. However, we are in talks with Chainalisys and Chrystal blockchain to provide EOSDT customers with a fraud monitoring tool.
  2. This is more related to the Equilibrium framework – dev teams can take advantage of this technical infrastructure in order to accelerate the development of their DeFi applications utilizing EOSDT and NUT.

Question:
Where is your ideal to build stablecoin on EOS comes from?

Alex Melikhov:
We saw the gap for this type of stablecoins there. Also, we were looking for a more scalable blockchain protocol for our DeFi framework.

Question:
With the growing and popular development of USDT, does it create challenges for EOSDT to overcome? If a customer wants to sell ETH to Stablecoin, how does EOSDT decide that the customer will choose himself and not USDT?

Alex Melikhov:
Educating end-users is a very important aspect. We are striving to explain how impactful decentralized/transparent backing is through hosting events, public activities, etc.

Question:
What do you think about Asian markets like Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand?

Alex Melikhov:
Looking forward to working more closely with these markets.

Question:
Which outstanding partners have trusted EOSDT technology? From your perspective, What are the reasons that these partners believe and cooperate with EOSDT project?

Alex Melikhov:
I mentioned above that we have a lot of partners. Check on https://eosdt.com/ – there is a list at the bottom of the page. I’d highlight Changelly, Bancor, Huobi Wallet, etc.

Question:
EOSDT is partnered with top tier companies, Can you explain to us in what ways are they helping you build your company and which partner has played a big role for the past year in EOSDT’s development?

Alex Melikhov:
All partners are playing an important role in our journey. Would not distinguish somebody particularly.

Alex Melikhov:
Thank you guys very much for having me.
Keep up with us, here are the most important links:
eqframework.io
eosdt.com
twitter.com/eosdt
t.me/equilibrium_eosdt_official
Guarda:
Thank you, Alex!