July 13th AMA Summary
Introduction:
On 13/07 last Tuesday we had a very informative and engaging AMA session on Telegram. The session was hosted by @wilsoneth, who guided the hour and a half ask me anything with relevant questions and remarks. In the end readers and followers of the Telegram group was offered an opportunity to ask their questions. As a token of our appreciation two participants where gifted with $50 worth of GMS.
Beneath you can read through the session and get to know the Gemstones Finance project and our vison on the DeFi space. If you have any question, suggestion or otherwise, then do join our community on Telegram. https://t.me/Gemstones_Finance
Enjoy the reading!
AMA Presenter:
So, let’s start with the introduction. What is your role in Gemstones and who else is in the team? I am sure there are many members in this group who are unaware of this.
Gemstones Finance:
We have 3 core devs 1 marketing 1 business development design / marketing man and an extended family. Let me share with you a little back ground on some of us from a previous AMA
Marketing:
I have been involved in crypto since 2014, but often just as an investor and seeing its use case in online poker. I have been head of marketing and vice president of a live seminar teaching business 2014 that was shaken by covid. This transitioned crypto from a passion to a profession. I got proactive in various DeFi platforms and communities last summer, most notably Sushiswap where this year I have co-hosted the weekly Sushiswap Forum Community Call. This will actually be in 4 hours in the sushiswap discord voice lounge. I have done consulting work with a few other protocols both in terms of marketing and design.
Devs:
Our core dev team exists out of 3 devs. We are all full stack developers for around 12 years. One of our team members started his crypto journey in 2013 with mining and was involved in the inception of early altcoins. Because of our tech skills it wasn’t hard to create the on chain multi-tier referral system into masterchef. We also look forward to create the new features/products that are on the roadmap.
AMA Presenter:
That is a lot of experience combined.I must say I am impressed with this. Haven’t seen any yield farm on Polygon with devs having so much to offer. Nice to see that
Can you give an intro about Gemstones as a project real quick?
Gemstones Finance:
Well most platforms aren’t nearly as transparent as we are, we like to form a community and be open about who we are and what we bring.
Gemstones is focused on integrating with the newest technologies. We are the first Polygon farm to utilize the Kashi lending protocol. This shows that we aren’t just copy pasting we are building in new ways and will continue to. We want to be one of the first Polygon farms to use curve’s long term staking voting for profit share and voting gauge boosts. This model gives greater incentive for farmers to hold our token long term, as well as incentives both platforms that host their liquidity on our DEX and yield aggregators to become holders of our token. Unlike many platforms on Polygon, we are here to build for the long term, we make our decisions based on what is best for the long term growth of our protocol.
So we integrate newer technologies into older paradigms. We have teammates who work closely with sushiswap and see the gold in what they do, so we are heavily influenced by them as we feel they are leading defi in innovation and expansion.
We plan to build dapps on top of their bento box to make their systems even more efficient as kashi allows un “borrowed” lent money to be put to better use. We have a heavy focus on controlling inflation through deflationary mechanisms and sound tokenomics.
AMA Presenter:
Yeah I have heard that you are the first polygon farm to utilise kashi. Can you provide some info about kashi? Most people don’t know what kashi actually is. Of course long term farms are what farmers look for. So, that’s a big plus.
Gemstones Finance:
kashi is a lending platform the first dapp built on top of bento box. Bento box already earns people interest based on using any money with in it for flash loans and a select few other strategies. Kashi allows you to lend and borrow on specific pairs so that you aren’t exposed to possible black swan events if one of the many assets on the platform goes to 0. It allows for gas efficiency through its cooking system, it bases its interest rates on a target rate of utilization and gradually increases or decreases when not in this window so it generally provides a very affordable lending industry, it allows for auto leverage and will incorporate functions such as auto shorting
Gemstones Finance:
From our medium: Imagine if you could deposit your money into a bank and they would not only share 90% of their earnings on it with you, but also give you a receipt that you could deposit to earn even more money with. Kashi, Sushiswap’s new lending platform, offers this and so much more. Its’ features include risk-isolated lending pairs, reduced gas costs, elastic interest rates and capital efficiency by depositing unborrowed assets into strategies built on top of Kashi. Additionally, money lent on Kashi gives you a km token that you can use to interact with other protocols like Gemstones Finance. This allows you to earn interest on your native coins, in the following example USDC, and get secondary rewards.
So we allow you to earn rewards on your money that is already gathering interest making it a safer yield farm in terms of guaranteed yield.
The rates will only get better as more dapp are built on top of it with various hackathons in the works globally including some that we plan on being a part of.
AMA Presenter:
Definitely a great incentive for gemstones investors. I am sure most of our community members would have understood.
Gemstones Finance:
What’s so great about it is it allows for composability with so many other platforms so the more integration and innovation in defi the more powerful a tool like this becomes. The future of it is part of what inspires us.
AMA Presenter:
So, as defi grows, kashi will grow with it
Gemstones Finance:
Indeed its a whole ecosystem that is expanding chains by the moment with 2 new ones in the past week!
AMA Presenter:
To the next question. Gemstones is a few weeks old if I am not mistaken. What has been achieved so far since the launch? Any partnerships?
Gemstones Finance:
We launched with just our the LP pools and added kashi pools throughout the first week, because of it being new technology and lacking APIs to pull figures we have to code a complex system to give accurate staked amounts liquidity and aprs for kashi.
We had the unfortunate or fortunate luck of finding out there was an exploit on other transfer tax coins the day before our launch. This caused a lot of stress testing needing to be done on all of our tech. We had spent a lot of time with our lottery trying to find tune it so that masterchef would recognize the correct amount of funds in the pool as this was the former attack vector. Right now we are adding an auto compounding vault for our staking pools and in development of vaults for other platforms. With a new experimental type of vault in the works.
We have a prominent platform building us a vault but they are giving priority to the larger TVL platforms such as titan ATM so that should be coming out real soon
Gemstones Finance:
We are in talks with many partnerships, our dev fund has kept 100% of our 9% mint and all of our original team mint for this purpose but we want to make sure that these assets grow our protocol the best they can, so we have been choosey.
We also have been in talks with chainlink and will become a partner with them in the near future both for lottery and for future kashi strategies that require them to make custom adapters so that our smart contracts can interact with changing aprs.
We have a few lower grade partnerships also in the works that don’t involve trading of coins but more just symbolic relationships.
AMA Presenter:
Such exploits do happen in defi. Speaking of exploits, how serious are you about the security of your platform and the funds of your investors?
Gemstones Finance:
Security is our top priority. Before launching we stress tested our contracts 24–7 because of said exploit and already had a Certik audit completed before launch.
We have our team mint and original liquidity all in a custom made locker so that no one has to be afraid of dumping or other scam tactics.
We have a timelock, we have removed the migrator code and we even have a display on our home page that will show any pending changes to our contracts.
We are of the belief if we can vet them the more partnerships the better. Again looking at the defi giants as our thought leaders with yearn and sushi their business development creates so many possibilities.
AMA Presenter:
So, if you implement any changes to the masterchef, will get displayed on website?
Gemstones Finance:
Correct, so that everyone can see what is happening the moment is it is queued in our timelock that controls masterchef.
AMA Presenter:
I like the transparency. However, I suppose the there is no utility of GMS token as of now
Will there be a use case of the token in future? And will it be used for governance of the platform?
Gemstones Finance:
Yes I am a firm believer in the idea of a DAO, we already have an awesome community who contribute to the ideas and vision we are creating. At the moment GMS is just a yield generating instrument but we have a lot more plans for it. First with our lottery.
However, our roadmap will be adding multiple uses to the token both as a voting instrument, an allocation generator for IFOs, a profit share tool and as a cross chain incubator. With a lot more unofficial ideas in the works
Gemstones Finance:
One of our brilliant community members introduced an idea to add a utility to our coin that can help with polygon congestion! Stake GMS in order to not have to use 200 gwei like yesterday. Also some plans for influencing trading fees on our dex but that hasn’t been coded yet.
AMA Presenter:
How will you do that? Can you give some info about that?
Gemstones Finance:
Well that community member shared it in other places too but in a world of copy/pasting it can be dangerous to give out too much alpha. But it involves us running our own private node through matic and developing a system that only allows members who are long term staking a certain threshold of GMS to access this node.
AMA Presenter:
Yeah absolutely. People steal ideas lol. So, anyone who is staking GMS gets access to it
Nice incentive for holding the token. So, a dex also Impressive. Can you share a link maybe which depicts your roadmap.
Gemstones Finance:
We are firm believers in the more benefits to holding, staking and providing liquidity long term the better it is for our protocol so we will be constantly trying to think of ways that keep GMS out of the circulating supply and in our Tribes wallets and our smart contracts
Link to our Roadmap: https://gemstones.finance/images/roadmap-min.jpg
Gemstones Finance:
Our DEX is the next big thing which we have a lot of innovative ideas for. Both in terms of user experience and incentivizing new platforms to host their liquidity. We plan on using the sushichef v2 system of dual reward systems but are also excited to see what their 7/20 big news release is as we think this is something big and maybe will shift our views on what is possible with our platform.
Yield aggregation and advanced strategies for Kashi and vaults is big too. We feel that the current paradigm of just super fast auto compounding is a little too simplistic and with congestion nearly toxic.
So we want to create solutions outside of the box such as diversification and incorporation into multiple type of platforms. Sushi’s TWAP oracle should be released very soon which will expand kashi tokens and allow for us to implement rewards from a vault going into lending of a secondary more secure asset.
Often these pump and dump autocompounders end up hurting people on contraction where if they were invested in more solid secondary strategies they would be as exposed.
Though we believe in degen strats too ;)
AMA Presenter:
Crypto has room for degens too lol. Looking forward to using your dex:). I must say you have very ambitious plans for the future but with a team like yours I am very confident that you will achieve all of them in time.
Gemstones Finance:
Yes we have a lot of ideas and developers who really want to contribute to the ecosystem and bring their ideas into creation.
Inclusivity is a principle we believe in and diversification. Having a percentage of your roll in risky high yielding strategies is often the highest expected value system with it backed up by steady lower risk hedges.
AMA Presenter:
I see that you have a referral contest or something like that going on. Care to explain a bit?
Gemstones Finance:
Our referral system is multi-tiered and doesn’t subtract from the user who gets referred. It is a 1% system broken up into .6% for who you refer .3% of anyone they refer and .1% of anyone they refer so if you have a big network it can generate a lot of passive income
Gemstones Finance believes in creating a tribe. One of the ways we do this is by rewarding you for inviting your friends to join us with our referral system.
Join the Gemstones on-chain referral program today at https://gemstones.finance/referral
All you have to do is tell a friend how great Gemstones is, and when they farm with us, you get .6% of their rewards. It doesn’t stop there, you also get .3% of all harvests and lottery winnings of anyone they refer and .1% of any one that person refers.
If you have a big network this is huge!
How To Enter The Gemstones Referral Program
1. Connect your preferred wallet.
2. Click on the referral page to generate your unique referral link.
3. Share your referral link with friends.
4. When your friends visits our website, they get our cookie and as soon as they connect their preferred wallet and farm any Gemstones mining or staking pools, you get to rake in free money!
The Gemstones tribe experience doesn’t stop there. With community incentives, referral contests and other giveaways you will be stacking passive income with ease while enjoy a fun interactive community.
Anyone who refers 3 active users will be entered into this giveaway. We will have 5 separate drawings over 10 days with 3 winners each, giving away a grand total of 4500 $GMS.
Additionally, at the end of the week we will be giving out a few more special bonuses for the highest referral earners, those with the most number referrals and those we see most active shilling us on twitter (make sure to include #GMSreferral). This is just one of many giveaways at this time, a few are ending today but more are coming and the referral giveaway is still active with less than half of the drawing being done already and with the end of the period bigger drawing still to come
AMA Presenter:
Nice, So, if I refer someone, I will get 1% of what he earns and he doesn’t lose anything?
Gemstones Finance:
Correct all additive. We will continue to have more rewards for our most active affiliates
AMA Presenter:
One last question before we open the chat for community round. How is the revenue generated from the platform used?
Gemstones Finance:
Right now our treasury is mostly supported through our presale which we still have a healthy budget from. To cover growth of our platform until more revenue sources are available.
In addition to that we have the 1% deposit fee generated from our vaults. With our DEX we will collect trading fees, with our vaults both for our auto compounding staking and for our auto compounding vaults for other platforms / advanced strategies we will generate either a performance fee or a withdrawal fee. Without long term staking those who leave early with occur an early withdrawal fee. All of these future fees will be incorporated into our profit share system for long term stakers.
We also plan to incorporate layer 2 farming where you can earn other tokens by staking GMS so in a way through partnership we will have additional revenue to share with our holders.
For more details on our current giveaways and our referral contests see our medium at:
AMA Presenter:
Very well:) So mostly it is and will be used for further development and incentives for users. Sure, I will look into it.
Gemstones Finance:
Yes we have strong beliefs in reinvesting instead of feeding our wallets that’s is why our team hasn’t sold any team mint or dev fees and have been conservative in our use of our current budget. Long term sustainability, we will wait out the Ponzi schemes and pump and dumps and our cream will raise to the top.
AMA Presenter:
Excellent. I like your transparency and the effort that you are putting into this project. It is one of the ingredients for success of any project
Selection of questions from the AMA participants:
Blockchain Lobster:
Hello GMS enjoyers! I have a question regarding Kashi lending and its future — may be too much in the weeds. Currently the service only supports the Chainlink oracle but TWAP is on the way. What will TWAP bring in terms of future development and integration on the Gemstones.Finance side?
Gemstones Finance:
Most of all it will give additional utility to coins in terms of lending but it will also allow us to build strategies where the liquidity we incentivizes lets strategies be created that can either through lp or other means can create yield opportunities that weren’t possible beforehand.
Nisansala:
When you first started on MATIC, it was a fast, low-cost network. It’s still cheap now, but it slows to a crawl and has more congestion than Ethereum on some days. Do you intend to cross-chain to Fantom, as Hyperjump did, or even to Solana, HECO, where there is a lot of buzz?
Gemstones Finance:
We intend for cross chain expansion without a doubt. What interests us most is arbitreum zk roll ups like starkware and optimism as these layers inherit the security of Ethereum mainnet. We hope that matic lives up to its ethereum of block chains vision but we do see a lot of growing pains here. So we are very open to expansion. Especially with sushiswap expanding and getting millions of dollars in grants for both kashi and their dex we see lots of oppertunities there. For instance on Harmony there is 1 million in grants for people building dapps to interact with Kashi on their so that has our attention.
Jack Downy:
At the moment, all tokens go down in price even with great partnerships, hype, marketing, and working products, etc. So, what the challenges do you have and the plan to make your project strong popular? Are you see it as an opportunity while the current market decline?
Gemstones Finance:
We see market decline as a way that all these pump and dumps and cash grabs will fade with time. So we have a strong focus on future orientation. We know that crypto is here to stay and through bear market diversification and through continued development of new novel ideas we think that a less saturated market could be good for us.
In terms of challenges we have faced plenty. Right now our biggest focus is development and user acquisition so we are marketing on multiple fronts and doing everything we can to get the word out there about our product so that once the noise fades people will gravitate towards us.
Nonim tharusha:
Can you list killer features of GEMSTONE that makes it ahead of its competitors? What is the competitive advantage your platform has that you feel most confident about?
Gemstones Finance:
We already incorporate Kashi which we truly believe is a game changer dapp that will only become more powerful over time. It is a little clunky and hasn’t been marketed well or built on top of so we are contributing to this in all sorts of senses. This and the desire to try new twists on the current paradigm instead of just the same old strategies. We have such a focus on APRs instead of the underlying assets and diversification. It can be counter productive to the vast majority of users.
JOHN BARNES:
What do you think would be the main challenges for trying to enter the Decentralized Finance space? And What are the main advantages of DeFi over Traditional Finance that you know?
Gemstones Finance:
I think user accessibility / experience is a huge obstacle. Just to teach people who to get metamask set up safely how to connect to matic network how to avoid scammers etc stops most from getting experience what it has to offer. We think that AAVE doing limited access features for institutional investors is great and maybe this could be done to retail where a dumbed down version of DeFi with more risk adverse strategies and easy interfaces could be huge and something we would like to contribute to on top of just educating the masses.
clark Kent:
According to crypto market capitalization aggregators, there are more than 5,000 cryptocurrencies in existence today.And I feel 90% of them have no utility. So can you tell me 3 good reason that your project is here for long run and have real utility that will increase demand of token in future
Gemstones Finance:
Incorporation of long term staking for voting rights on emissions is a big one. We had a question on utility up above but to restate our roadmap will be adding multiple uses to the token both as a voting instrument, an allocation generator for IFOs, a profit share tool and as a cross chain incubator on top of a few others is mentioned.
Шайма Саманмали:
The monetary value for tokens is derived from price oracles, according to a clause in your whitepaper about collateral value. Are these your own oracles, or are you relying on the work of others? How do you maintain the information you acquire from oracles up to date and free of tampering?
Gemstones Finance:
Chainlink oracles are used yet, we will be adopting the sushi twap which can be limited in its features but chainlink has certain requirements such as volume and number of cex’s and dex’s the coin is listed on so if we want to incorporate newer coins (which we definitely do) we have to rely on the current infrastructure which is limited. Chainlink and sushi TWAP oracles are on the way.
Ashmi migera:
As I know a strong community is very important for every project. Do you plan to be a local or global project? What strategy will be used to expand the community?
Gemstones Finance:
Our community is already great we have a community member of the day program where people are rewarded for contribution we are incorporating task based incentivizes to reward people for joining us in our marketing and other goals we are seeking.
Ashmi migera:
I would like to know if you’ve completed any security audits? Perhaps by third-parties? We’ve seen dozens of hacks, exploits and stuff like that this year, what measures have been taken to protect investors and community from it?
Gemstones Finance:
Certik audit linked above. More planned after dex release. [Otherwise see our website]
Robin Hood,
What strategy will you implement to bring non-crypto-natives into your ecosystem? How do you keep a balance between developing the technology and also improving the value of your token?
Gemstones Finance:
We have a few guides we have yet to publish and already have multiple guides on our medium. In addition to education we are hoping to make accessibility greater through on ramps and incorporation of non-crypto technologies with blockchain. There is obviously a lot of red tape here but we see mainstream adoption as the future and want to be part of that as much as possible from user friendly ness to education to marketing untapped niches.
