Soda X Francium 29/05/22
Part 1 Soda Intro
CM Icy: Soda - The financial portal of Web3 including DeFi, data and privacy services. Welcome to our AMA with Soda! I'm honored to be your AMA host today. Let's welcome our guest: CEO of Soda, Mark. Mark: Hello Everyone!
CM Icy: Hi Mark, Glad to have you here! Please first introduce yourself to our community. Mark: Glad to see everyone here. I am Mark, CEO, and co-founder of Soda Protocol. I was very fascinated by the core characteristics of Blockchain, web3, and decentralized finance solutions, so I dived right into Crypto quite some time ago. With 15+ years of financial working experience, I have been deeply involved with many different financial fields such as fixed income, equities, and forex. To apply what I have learned and experienced in Wall Street to Soda Protocol has been quite an interesting ride. Before joining Soda Protocol, I worked with Fortune 500 companies such as IBM and Goldman Sachs. I believe in the Soda Protocol because I agree with its mission to build the most practical web3 financial service platform in the Solana ecosystem. And I believe that through our continuous efforts, its vision will finally come true. Let me talk about our team for a little bit as well. The Soda Protocol now has a team of 10 core members in total, based in Taiwan, Singapore, London, etc. Currently, we work in a decentralized office system.
CM Icy: Awesome, you do have a strong team! So what kind of product is Soda going to offer users? Mark: Soda Protocol consists of three complementary business sectors, Soda FI, Soda Maze, and Soda ID, which correspond to DeFi, privacy service, and data service respectively. Our ultimate goal is to provide a true Web3 financial service platform for the Solana ecosystem, which means we need to provide infrastructure services to achieve this vision. SodaFi currently includes two products: lending and leveraged aggregator. We provide leverage for Swap by reusing the liquidity of Raydium and Orca. When we add the Auto Router function in the next version, it will provide users with excellent trading depth. And it can support the long and short positions of long-tail assets with sufficient liquidity on Raydium and Orca, which will greatly improve the capital efficiency of the Solana ecosystem.
At the same time, in order to optimize the experience of lending and trading, we use Raydium to realize the function of using any asset to repay any debt, which greatly improves the user experience and provides great convenience for loan repayment and position closing operations.
As for the Soda Maze, we creatively combine Mixer and lending and can provide privacy proxy services for DEX and other types of protocols, and it will become the first infrastructure to provide privacy services in the Solana ecosystem. Finally is our data service Soda ID, which realizes the visualization of user behavior by collecting, cleansing, and parsing the data on the chain. You can clearly know what operation you have done, in which protocol, and when, and these operations will be converted to weights in our credit model. The goal of Soda ID is to become the data oracle of the Solana ecosystem for various projects and users to call.
In general, Soda Protocol creates a positive cycle ecosystem through the combination of various businesses, and it provides services to the Solana ecosystem through integration with other protocols.
CM Icy: Thank you for the great introduction, very impressive! These features are all very useful. Mark: Thank you for the kind words, this is what we thrive to do.
CM Icy: Regarding Soda Maze, I heard that you will open the public test of Soda Maze in the near future, could you introduce it briefly to us? Mark: Privacy has always been one of the most important directions of Web3, as it is the basis for protecting users' rights and expanding the crypto market. In the open and user-led Web3 era, privacy protection will be a standard feature. Unfortunately, even though Solana is the leader of the new public chain, it still has limited computing resources for a single transaction due to its unique account system, smart contract architecture, and extreme requirements for atomicity destruction and the multi-transaction decomposition must be split, and at the same time, the hidden dangers of contract security issues must be avoided. It is much more difficult to build privacy protection on Solana than on EVM, which is why there is no mature privacy protection protocol so far. Now let's dive into Soda Maze As for Soda Maze, I believe it will become the first privacy infrastructure of the Solana ecosystem. And I will introduce it in the following four aspects:
Combining the privacy pool with the Soda lending pool: In protocols such as Tornado, the use of a large number of deposited funds is only to enhance the size of the privacy pool to better achieve privacy protection. These funds do not generate any other value, and users cannot get any other benefits, and the only way to obtain and retain these funds during the growth phase of the protocol is to subsidize them through Tokens. In order to better improve capital efficiency, we directly use the Soda lending pool as a privacy pool. While enjoying privacy protection, users can earn interest on deposits and use the lending services. Due to the combination of Soda Lending and Soda Maze, the development of one end of the business will drive the growth of the other end. Moreover, the behaviors in the two scenarios will be mixed, which can better counteract on-chain tracking.
Flexible deposit and withdrawal scale: Only allowing a fixed amount of deposit scale will bring a very bad user experience, and users may need multiple operations to complete the private transfer of funds. Soda Maze uses an innovative zero-knowledge-proof circuit design that can support deposits and withdrawals of any amount without sacrificing any privacy.
Support multi-currency privacy protection: In theory, as long as the currencies are supported by Soda lending, we can use Soda Maze for privacy protection, but considering the market demand, we will initially support SOL, USDC, USDT at the beginning.
Stronger scalability to become a real privacy infrastructure: The traditional Mixer is a completely isolated protocol, and it is difficult to integrate with other protocols. But Soda Maze’s technical solution allows us to become a privacy layer agent for protocols such as DEX. At present, we have already designed a technical solution that can be realized and are under discussion with partners. Implementing zk-SNARK on Solana is a very difficult task. Thanks to our excellent core developers, we have basically completed the verification of its contract part, and it will meet the public around the end of next month. Welcome everyone to test it.
CM Icy: Can't wait for the coming of that day! Everyone check this out if you wanna join the public test of Soda Maze! You really did great job! So what plans do you have for the future? Mark: With the approach of Soda Maze, our three business sectors of DeFi, privacy service, and data service have basically taken shape. The next focus is to continuously polish our products to make them more usable and practical. Take our leveraged aggregator as an example, we will add Auto Router in the next version so that the trading experience will catch up with the existing head aggregator products. Meanwhile, we can get the on-chain price information of more tokens through deep cooperation with Raydium, to provide leveraged trading of long-tail assets with sufficient liquidity such as GST, SLND, and DFL. In Soda ID, we will continue to optimize the granularity of the data and show more and more complete on-chain data to users and our partners. At the same time, large-scale business cooperation will be started to find more application scenarios for Soda ID's credit score, so as to truly accumulate on-chain behavior value for users. Soda ID will be used as a data oracle at the right time to allow other projects to make data calls to help them achieve refined operations such as airdrops, whitelist distribution, and customer management. As for Soda Maze, we have discussed with our partners how to become their privacy layer proxy, and I believe you will be able to see amazing progress soon. In the long run, Soda is committed to becoming an important financial infrastructure in the Solana ecosystem. We will continue to integrate with other protocols to make full use of the advantages of composability and help the entire ecosystem to improve capital efficiency.
CM Icy: Perfect! Capital efficiency really matters, we both want to provide the infrastructure to improve capital efficiency and maximize yield for all DeFi users. I guess we are all excited to know the answer to the last question! How will Soda be integrated with Francium? What aspects can we explore together? Mark: Francium is a great partner of ours and they are the best yield platform on Solana. The cooperation between Soda and Francium has three main points: The first is at the data level. We have initially supported the behavior analysis of Francium. If you have used Soda ID, you can now see your past operations on Francium. At the same time, Francium is the best strategy income protocol, and the Framing behaviors in it will greatly improve your credit score in Soda ID. I believe these valuable data can provide a strong reference for Francium's future airdrops. The second point is that a key factor limiting the growth of the yield platform is the size of its own TVL. A larger TVL allows users to bear fewer interest costs. The current funding volume for Soda is far less than Francium’s. When Soda's TVL grows, we will give priority to under-collateralized loans for Francium to help them further expand their business scale. The third point is that in the future, we will integrate the head protocol of the Solana ecosystem in the Soda ID section. Yield farming is a low-frequency operation, but the social attributes contained in SodaID are a high-frequency operation. We will share the traffic we get with our partners. CM Icy: That's very cool. I believe this will not only benefit our users, like helping them with reporting taxes, but also helps grow our protocol.
Part 2 Pat Answers
Mark: Here come the questions, are you guys ready?
Mira: Could you introduce briefly about #SODA tokenomics? And tell us more about Total supply and Starting price per token? How many tokens will be minted in future and how many tokens will be locked by the team/Investors? Mark: The total supply of SODA is 200 million, of which 51% belongs to the community, 17% is used for ecosystem construction, 15% is held by the team, and the rest part for investors. We do not have detailed release rules for 51% of the community for now, but we will consider how to balance the release and demand of tokens when designing the model, instead of making the SODA token useless. One important thing that I want you to know is that: it will take more than 6 years for the team share to be fully released, which shows our determination to the long-term construction of the Soda Protocol.
Charlie Simpson: Have you any way of tying both Web2 and Web3 identities to create a more holistic product? Mark: This is a very good question! As there are many DID-oriented products currently trying to bind Web2 information to blockchain on-chain addresses, such as associating users’ Tweets, Discord, and so on with blockchain addresses. We can do that, but we don't force or incentivize users to bind. Because we think that the identity generated through on-chain native data is the future of Web3 - it will make you completely have nothing to do with the color of your skin, your nationality, your education, what you've been through over the last few decades, it will only care about what you've contributed to those on-chain protocols and what achievements you've made in the Web3 world.
MyBoyAlex: What is your current criteria of adding a new lending pool for a token? And the criteria of removal? Mark: Liquidity is the only criterion, because it involves whether we can successfully liquidate it in the event of severe market fluctuations to ensure that there is no systemic risk.
Sab3602: Do you have any plans to allow permissionless lending pools? How can users benefit from a high Credit score on Soda Web 3.0 ID? How can other Solana projects utilize Soda Web 3.0 ID feature? Mark: Yes, this is in our plan, we name the business sector of non-collateralized loan Soda Pro. Compared with the business model of loans for institutions such as Truefi and Maple, we will use the SDK to provide funds for other safe and reliable protocols, such as Francium. But the premise of this business is that the TVL must be high enough, and we do not have this condition at present.
@wandacharter Hackers are very active in the market and almost everyday we hear about another hack attack. Can you please give some information about the security system of @SodaProtocol? How safe are the funds of investors? Do you already have an audit? Mark: I think every investor should be concerned about the safety of their money. We attached great importance to security. Before going live, we had a comprehensive review of our code by the well-known auditing institution Certik. Trust me, the audit fee for the Rust language is ridiculously expensive (laughs). Thank everyone who asked questions on Twitter and congrats to the winners!
CM Icy: Congrats! And thank you Mark, very detailed answers! Alright, let's proceed to Part 3: Live Questions.
Part 3 Live Qestions
CM Icy: The first two questions are from Soda community. Q1. How can lending protocols play a role in improving the efficiency of capital locked in vesting contracts and payroll streams? Mark: This is a very good question. Currently, except for the leading lending protocols such as AAVE and Solend, others are all facing the problem of inefficient capital utilization and a large amount of TVL is deposited in the protocol but cannot generate value. But the yield platforms such as Francium can make good use of funds. The fundamental reason is that Francium is closer to the application scenarios and users can earn profits directly in the protocol. I believe everyone as Francium users can understand this well. As for Soda, we have actively expanding more application scenarios such as the leveraged aggregator, which provide leveraged funds for users by calling the funds in the Soda Lending Pool. Another example is the Soda Maze, as an infrastructure service, it is also combines with Soda Lending Pool. Traditional Mixer users cannot get any income after depositing into the privacy pool, but in Soda Maze, these funds can be used as collateral or used by others. In addition, we will actively integrate with other protocols, and actively supply the precipitation funds in the protocol to the demand side under the premise of ensuring safety.
CM Icy: Q2. What is the actions/measurements would take after the hacking occurred. Mark: I personally hope something like that never happens to us. (Laughs) We have been audited by Certik, a well-known auditing institution. And we will try our best to ensure the security. Of course, no one can guarantee that they are absolutely safe in the web3 world. First of all, we will reserve a part of the protocol income as a risk reserve, so that we can have sufficient compensation capacity in the event of such a situation. In addition, at the technical level, we monitor the status of the fund pool in real time, and set up abnormal status reminders to ensure that we can know and respond to problems as soon as possible.
CM Icy: Now I'll open the chat, the community is free to ask other questions about Soda within 3 minutes. The best questioners will get rewards!
ashley: Q3. Why does your team develop soda maze function and does this make any sense for the Solana ecosystem? Mark: Privacy has always been one of the most important directions of Web3, as it is the basis for protecting users’ rights and expanding the crypto market. In the open and user-led Web3 era, privacy protection will be a standard feature. Unfortunately, even though Solana is the leader of the new public chain, it still has limited computing resources for a single transaction due to its unique account system, smart contract architecture, and extreme requirements for performance. Therefore, in order to perform the complex problems and calculations, the atomicity destruction and the multi-transaction decomposition must be split, and at the same time, the hidden dangers of contract security issues must be avoided. It is much more difficult to build privacy protection on Solana than on EVM, which is why there is no mature privacy protection protocol so far. Meanwhile, because of Solana’s fast speed and low gas, obtaining privacy services on Solana is cheaper and faster, allowing more people to participate. Soda Maze is determined to help users achieve a low-friction and practical privacy service.
GeneralX || AGG: Q4. Will soda and Francium consider a merger In the near future Mark and have you thought about also moving to other ecosystems? Mark: We will not merge, but will gradually strengthen business cooperation in all aspects. As I mentioned above, Soda will continue to provide Francium with more refined data analysis services, allowing Francium users to better manage their positions and understand their operational history. Moreover, we will make more combinations under the premise of ensuring safety to maximize the capital efficiency of both parties.
lostinthejuggle: Q5. What is the mission and vision of soda? Mark: Our mission is to become an important infrastructure for the Solana ecosystem, bringing more possibilities to the entire ecosystem. We will continue to deepen our current business scope and continuously optimize the product experience. At the same time, we will develop new business forms, help users earn profits, and help more other protocols to grow better. Thank you CM Icy for having Soda. We had so much fun. Thank you Francium! We got so much love from the Francium community and we want to give you guys lots of love as well. Stay tuned for more cooperation between Francium and Soda. And don't forget to join the Soda community to get the latest updates!
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