Crypto Wizards AMA With Solv Protocol

Guest: Ryan Chow (Co-founder of Solv Protocol )

Crypto Wizard
10 min readFeb 5, 2022

--

Introduction:

1. Could you briefly introduce yourselves as well as Solv?

Ans:Hello everyone, I’m Ryan, co-founder of Solv Protocol and head of Solv’s marketing and research teams.

Solv Protocol is a decentralized platform for creating, managing, and the on-chain transaction of NFTs that broadly represent financial ownerships and rights. We call such NFTs, Vouchers. As NFT containers for digital assets, the Voucher can significantly enhance liquidity for locked assets and has proved extremely useful in numerous use cases across DeFi. Our token standard, ERC-3525, allows individuals to split or merge Voucher containers in whatever way they see fit.

We recently closed our Series A round led by Blockchain Capital, Sfermion, and Gumi Cryptos, with DeFi Alliance, The Lao, CMT Digital, CMSholdings, Apollo co-investing. We have so far partnered with 25 DeFi projects, all of whom have minted their Vesting Vouchers here at Solv. And to this day, over 7000 addresses have interacted with Solv, and the TVL has reached an all-time high of $260M on January 10, 2022.

These numbers signal the tremendous market potential that comes with utilizing NFTs which express and execute sophisticated financial contracts or financial NFTs. Soon, trillions of dollars of assets will pour into the DeFi space, where customers and institutions can enjoy the leading on-chain, permissionless marketplace for the financial NFTs in DeFi, provided by Solv Protocol.

2. What problem is Voucher trying to resolve? What is a Voucher?

Ans:The most pressing problem in the emerging field of DeFi right now is the absence of an efficient and flexible tool to express complicated financial contracts.

Vesting Voucher is a splittable NFT structure that represents ownership of locked allocations. For projects and investors, it’s a low-cost and frictionless solution for trading and managing allocations. Solv’s Voucher is a splittable NFT that represents ownership of allocations. An initial Voucher offering (IVO) is a public offering in which allocations of a project’s native tokens are sold in the form of Vouchers, to individual investors. IVOs are an excellent way for projects to reward early users and to form strong project-user relationships.

As NFTs, Vouchers are highly extensible by design to meet a wide array of use cases. Solv’s upcoming product Convertible Voucher is a structured financial product that can be converted into a predetermined number of tokens or stablecoins under certain conditions. It would empower DAOs that have listed their tokens to obtain cash in the most efficient way, while it allows voucher investors to receive healthy returns on a token in a relatively unstable climate.

3. IVO is a new fundraising model. What’s so special about it when compared to IDO and Coinlist?

Ans:Vesting Vouchers might seem like a simple concept for token lockup, but as a tool in practice, it’s effective and neat. It plays as a crucial medium through which a crypto project can connect with the users in a real way.

As we all know, these days investors can invest in a project’s token mainly through IDOs. But the downside of IDOs is that they neither bring long-term user base to the project nor are they rewarding users of the project for investing. As an alternative, the IVO offers a rare opportunity for early retail investors to purchase tokens at a low price point, something they are usually not able to do.

That being said, IVOs and CoinList do share a lot of similarities. For me, it helps think of the IVO as more of a “decentralized” Coinlist, but with additional benefits as follows:
1. More inclusiveness. Anyone can purchase inexpensive, early allocations through the IVO as long as they’re Whitelist.
2. More feasibility. Vouchers are accepted on every exchange, lending, or derivatives platform that supports NFTs, and you can freely send or receive Vouchers as long as you have a crypto wallet.
3. Enhanced security. Vouchers are secured by decentralized infrastructure.

On Dec 13, 2021, we launched our IVO event. Within the first hour, trade volume soars to nearly $2M BUSDs, with the highest floor price being $1500 BUSD - up from the opening $400. The next two days after the launch saw SOLV Voucher rising to the 2nd place in the 7D Hot Series list and first in the 7D Premium Creators List on the Binance NFT platform. Safe to say our IVO was quite a hit.

4. Could you introduce more about Convertible Vouchers?

Ans:As the second member of Solv’s financial NFT family, Convertible Voucher is a structured product that can be converted into a predetermined number of tokens or stablecoins under certain conditions.

From a technical point of view, the Convertible Voucher is an NFT container for locked token assets, and it revolves around three core parameters: a maturity date, face value, and a predetermined price range, which is called the “bond range.” If the token price falls into the bond range, the Convertible Voucher will execute like a zero-coupon bond, offering full nominal value payout to the investor in stablecoin. On the other hand, if the token falls out of the bond range, the Voucher owner can redeem the tokens whose amount equals the Voucher’s nominal value divided by either limit of the bond range, depending on what the token price is.

For risk-averse investors, the Convertible Voucher is the best way to invest in tokens that have unique risk profiles. It also gives owners of the Convertible Voucher an out before the settlement, by letting them trade those Vouchers on Solv Marketplace.

5. Convertible Voucher sounds like a great tool for diversifying treasuries. How is the payout calculated?

Ans:Take this Voucher for example. It has a face value of $1,000, Bond Range from $0.5 to $1.5 and a maturity date that arrives in 294 days. In 294 days, the payment will be based on USF’s last 7-day moving average (USF/USD) up to the maturity date.

When the settlement price falls inside the bond range( $0.5 to $1.5), the amount paid to the Voucher holder would just be the Voucher’s face value. As figure shows, #30’s value (the blue curve) keeps a steady $1,000 as the settlement price traverses across the $0.50-$1.50 bond range. Assuming the Voucher was purchased at a discount for $800, in 294 days the holder will be offered a full face value profit of $1,000, generating a ROI of 25%.
If the settlement price ends up anywhere over $1.50 (upper bound), the holder receives a fixed payout 666.67 SOLV, generating a ROI of at least 25%. If the settlement price drops below $0.50 (lower bound), the holder receives a fixed payout of 2000 SOLV and a negative ROI.

6. How does it attract retail investors and why should they buy it?

Ans:Convertible Voucher is a new digital asset that allows crypto investors to receive healthy returns on a token.

Its unique payout mechanism takes into account the volatility that currently characterizes DeFi and makes it safe to invest in promising, new projects while retaining strong toleration of risk.

If you are a lender on Compound while earning 2% APY. Lending out stablecoin through Convertible Vouchers would produce a much competitive overall yield(8-12%). Not even including the Solv’s incentives yet.

If you are going to purchase $USF, buying a Convertible Voucher of $USF would give you protection even if the price dropped 50% if the settlement price is still higher than the lower limit of the bond range. All in all, Convertible Vouchers offer passive investors a rare peace of mind not found in most investment products of DeFi.

7. Who will be the first to issue Convertible Vouchers and how to participate in this event?

Ans:Any project teams who have a treasury (especially DAOs) with very limited liquid assets would be interested to issue their Convertible Vouchers. Unslashed Finance, a decentralized insurance protocol, will be the first project to launch their Convertible Vouchers on Solv’s financial NFT marketplace. On February 7, Unslashed Finance will issue Convertible Vouchers with tokens worth 1 million US dollars.

Unslashed Convertible Voucher Offering Event details:
Details of USF Convertible Voucher Offering
👑 Total value: 1 million USDT
⏰Offering start date: Feb 07th, 2022
💰 APR: 8%
💰 Bond range: 1/4 average price ~ 6X average price (the average price will be set up by Unslashed)
⏰ Maturity date (UTC): May 07th, 2022
Users have to get whitelisted to participate in. Solv co-host a gleam whitelist campaign with Unslashed, you could join Solv’s Telegram or Discord to learn more details.

Unslashed($USF) Convertible Voucher Offering Whitelist Campaign on Gleam
https://gleam.io/ffJ8h/usf-convertible-voucher-offering-whitelist-campaign
👩🏻‍ Total Winners: 800
👑 Each Winner can purchase: $ 1w - 100w
⏰ Whitelisting Start date: Jan 21st, 2022
⏰ Whitelisting End Date: Feb 6th, 2022
Complete more referrals and tasks to have a better chance of securing a whitelist spot
Any cheating or use of bots will be disqualified immediately
Please note securing a spot on the whitelist means you can participate in the Convertible Voucher Offering but it does not guarantee an allocation - IVO will be first come, first served.Follow Solv Protocol
Official Website: https://solv.finance?13007
Telegram: https://t.me/+Wd9SHxzctr5iODc1
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SolvProtocol
Discord: https://discord.gg/Q64HKqgP5v
Medium: https://solvprotocol.medium.com

Twitter Segment:

1. I understand Solv Protocol is a decentralized platform for creating, managing and trading Financial NFTs with more real financial scenarios. So what are these scenarios, and how will they affect digital finance?

@CD7978

Ans:1. Manage project team’s vesting tokens. 2. IVO. 3. Convertible Vouchers 4. Community building etc... It will denefitely bring project teams a cost-low wat of financing without dumping presure and generate more opportunities for retail investors to invest by a institytional level in the early of one project. I’m sure it will be the trend and the way of future in this industry.

2. Could you explain to us the concept of Financial Nft's and how they are different from other nft collections in the market ? Does Financial Nft's have an artistic effect or are they strictly of Financial purposes ?

@Stephin63346024

Ans:The explosion of NFT artwork and Gamefi has given many people the mindset that art and games are the right paths for NFT development, naturally tying NFT to art, collectibles, cards, and scarcity.
But the value of NFT does not depend on NFT itself, the application scene will empower NFT value, NFT value can be redefined.
Many people currently understand the financialization of NFT as simply UniSwap v3. UniSwap v3 uses NFT to act as an LP token, which uses the ERC721 standard.
We believe that ERC721 is just a starting point for Financial NFT and is by no means mainstream.
Solv Protocol aims to bring the primary market into the DeFi space through NFT. We launched the Vesting Voucher and Convertible Voucher to address the trust gap that exists between investors and protocol DAO Treasuries. These two products are built on the ERC3525 protocol and are better suited for financial protocol-related descriptions.

3. It's amazing to see a solution devoted to financial NFT management and trading. I also found upon the Vesting Vouchers. Can you explain how these vouchers are used on the Solv Protocol?

@LeoLemonnS

Ans:One of the main goals of Vesting Vouchers is to completely improve allocations management experience with more even asset liquidity. And the following three characteristics of Vouchers will make sure the goal is met:

(1) Vesting Vouchers are transferrable. Thanks to their NFT-ness, anybody who owns a Voucher automatically has a right to its underlying tokens, as well as the right to retrieve them.
(2) Vesting Vouchers are tradable. All Vouchers are tradable on the DeFi marketplace such as OpenSea. It’s also entirely possible to put them up as the loan collateral (NFTfi or Taker) or a group of vouchers packaged and issued as ERC-20 tokens on derivatives platforms such as Unicly and DoDo.
(3) Vesting Vouchers are fractionalizable. Thanks to Solv Protocol’s original token standard with the feature of splitting and combining, Vouchers are supported by ERC-721 compliant infrastructures and are completely fractionalizable.

4. Protection of users and privacy has become an issue that many projects face in their development. Can you explain about the security of project and how it protects its users?

@Sabit50679515

Ans:In the pursuit of higher protocol security, Solv has purchased $1million worth of insurance coverage through Tidal Finance and $3 million of insurance coverage through Unslashed. This allows the Solv users to get insured over SC risk. The current plan covers smart contract vulnerabilities deployed on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. Needless to say, this is quite momentous as this is the FIRST time Defi insurance is being applied to the NFT sector!

Besides, we are offering a $50,000 bug bounty to incentivize developers and white hats to help us secure our protocol by uncovering its vulnerabilities and shortcomings. And we are pleased to be able to launch this undertaking with Immunefi, which is a leading bug bounty platform experienced in the testing and securing of Defi protocols.

5. Revenue is an important aspect for all projects to survive and maintain the project/company. What is the income model?

@solonav2

Ans:Solv will charge a 1.5% transaction fee from the successful transactions on the Solv marketplace. And we are focusing on the coming Convertible Voucher launch events in the coming two months. Please note the recent announcements in Solv communities and social media.

Live Q&A:

1)Where can buy tokens??

Ans:Solv token has not been listed now, you could go to Solv Marketplace to buy Solv Vouchers with Solv lockup tokens inside. https://app.solv.finance/marketplace?network=mainnet

2) What is your strongest advantage that you think will make your team leading the market?

Ans:We have launched vesting Vouchers and issued IVOs for Solv and IZumi Finance. Now we are focusing on the first round issurance of Convertible Vouchers.

3) Can you briefly describe you’re PARTNERSHIP So far and upcoming partnerships?

Ans:

Solv has cooperated with more than 20 project teams, and you could see part of them in this picture.

4) What are the important social media links to follow announcement of your projects ?

Ans:Follow Solv Protocol
Official Website: https://solv.finance?13007
Telegram: https://t.me/+Wd9SHxzctr5iODc1
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SolvProtocol
Discord: https://discord.gg/Q64HKqgP5v
Medium: https://solvprotocol.medium.com

5) Could you explain how SOLV’s mechanism for creating and transforming NFTs works? What kind of technologies or strategies are applied here to support various types of NFTs? What are the features that SOLV has and why it should be the favorite among users?

Ans:Solv created its own token standard— EIP-3525, which make NFTs fractionalized. And the minting process is open for everyone. Although Solv’s Vouchers use the EIP-3525 token standard, it’s fully compatible with ERC721 tokens, thus your vouchers could be traded on any NFT marketplace. Solv is the first one who make NFTs to be the financial instrument and we did a great work actually, so I think we are on the top of this field right now.

--

--

Crypto Wizard

The Crypto Wizarding Community. Let's travel together on the magical broomstick of Crypto to world of Peace and Prosperity 🔮Welcome Our Wizards and Witches 🔮