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Namaste Tribe! We had an amazing AMA session with Ashish Suvarna & D.R., Project Serum Contributors in WazirX Telegram group as a part of Grand SRM Giveaway on Friday, 4th September 2020. Here’s a quick summary of the session.
Hey D.R. & Ashish, welcome to today’s AMA session. To begin, could both of you introduce yourselves & Project Serum?
D.R.: I am working for FTX in BD and Operations. FTX started Project Serum a few months, this aims to be the first fast DEX that has a limit orderbook, fast transactions, low fees and feel exactly like a centralized exchange. You can find lots of information here https://projectserum.com
Ashish: I’m Ashish, currently based in Mumbai and consulting for FTX India. Actively involved with the Project Serum Community to build and develop this wonderful DeFi ecosystem! Like D.R. mentioned, you can find more about Project Serum here – projectserum.com (We have been building some really cool stuff here!)
Q1. What are the key features of Serum and why should we invest?
(by @daphuyen)
Ashish: Well, none of this is investment advice, but consider the following points to make a decision for yourself:
- It is fast.
- It is developed in collaboration with some of the best minds in the crypto & DeFi space (Alameda research, FTX, Compound, etc.)
- The Serum DEX has a full central limit order book (unlike most DEXes)
- The DEX is completely on-chain and will also support cross-chain transactions.
- The project went from ideation to v1 mainnet beta in less than 8 weeks. (Project Serum innovates and delivers fast)
Q2. Once a product is developed, one of the main challenges seems to be adoption. What are some of your plans to stimulate adoption and build out the ecosystem around Serum?
(by @fouad0761)
D.R.: We have different incentives for people to start developing more things in the Serum ecosystem. We have a list of project ideas with bounties here https://serum-academy.com/en/serum-project-ideas/project-ideas/. For incentives for the DEX adoptions, I think that the speed of Serum, liquidity, and low transaction fees (compared to ETH gas fees) are the main incentives. We are also collaborating with other main crypto actors to spread the adoption.
Q3. Why did Serum choose to be built on Solana blockchain instead of other blockchains?
(by @Firza17328744)
Ashish: Solana is several orders of magnitude faster and cheaper than other blockchains. For reference, it is 10,000x faster than Ethereum and also significantly cheaper. A transaction on the SOL blockchain might cost you somewhere around 0.001 SOL (actually even less). Also, the Solana team has been constantly innovating and are a pleasure to work with!
Q4. In building a public chain ecology of multi-currency integration, how robust are you, what is your TPS and how do you determine currencies to be integrated?
(by @EndtimeProphet2)
D.R.: Serum is built on the Solana blockchain. Currently, Solana has 50k TPS and 400ms Block Times. Serum is an open-source DEX and anyone can add a new coin to the DEX.
Q5. Launching Serum DEX, what incentives do you have for node operators? About security, does SerumDEX plan on getting or creating a system working as an insurance fund in case a hack happens on the exchange?
(by @tolgaozek)
Ashish: Nodes will receive the following rewards: for each payment, the leader will receive 15% of the node’s total reward, with the other 85% being split proportionally, each node will receive a base of 2% APY per year on its holdings, each node will receive another 0% – 13% per year based on its performance at its duties, each node will also potentially receive rewards for their success in specific challenges and duties. Regarding security, Serum is a DEX so Serum is not in charge of the custody of the funds, unlike a centralized exchange. This means you are in control of the funds and own your private keys, therefore, there will not be any insurance fund.
Q6. How is Serum different from other DeFi exchanges? What are its benefits above others?
(by @Rajesh_Crypt0)
D.R.: Most DeFi exchanges have an automated market maker and no limit orderbooks. Serum lets you have a full central limit orderbook completely on-chain! It is significantly faster than other DEXes and all of its operations are completely on-chain.
Q7. Is there any dApp coming up for Serum Cross-Chain Swaps or is it planned to be offered by DEX soon?
(by @RashidDar18)
Ashish: The community is working on many different projects. You can find the whole list on Serum Academy, the type of project you are referring to is not done yet but this is the type of project we would love to see being developed! Serum academy link – https://serum-academy.com/en/
Q8. How does Serum voting system work? And what’s the usage of voting system in Serum project?
(by @Firza17328744)
D.R.: Voting on proposed changes to Serum, e.g. fee changes. A node may be designated as a ‘voting-stake’ node or a ‘delegated-stake’ node. In a voting-stake node, each staker votes independently, and the majority vote of the node determines its behavior. In a delegated-stake node, each node’s leader chooses how they vote.
Whenever submissions are requested from a node (e.g. to help resolve a cross-chain swap dispute), any staker may propose a response to the node; a delegated-stake node’s leader chooses which response to submit, and a voting-stake node has vote among their stakers to decide what to submit.
A node may propose a rules change (e.g. fee changes). Doing so costs 50,000 SRM, which is deducted from the Node’s overall asset pool. If the rules change passes that 50,000 SRM is returned; otherwise it is burned.
A vote requires more than 60% of the world’s total staked SRM voting in favor to pass. (This parameter may be further changed via a proposal, within bounds.)
Q9. How will it be possible to exchange currencies from other blockchains, if Serum is on the ‘Solana’ network?
(by @azyrmdhn)
Ashish: In the future versions of the Serum DEX you would be able to see cross-chain swaps which will let you swap crypto with other blockchains. A semi-detailed description of the working is given in our white paper here – https://projectserum.com/white-paper
Q10. Ecology of a project decides the importance of a long term project. For developers and enthusiast communities, what are the main development ideas SRM is building?
(by @Manisha_ManiYT)
D.R.: There are a ton of ideas that we want the community to explore. You can find a partial list here – https://projectserum.com/blog/project-ideas. As mentioned earlier, we also have the ecoSerum grant where 2% of all fees from Serum DEX will be used to fund new projects. If you have an idea that you think is cool, feel free to apply for the grant! We also have a pretty active discord community that you could join to discuss possibilities – https://discord.gg/MxZFT4v
Question from WazirX Telegram group members:
Q11. The only way the blockchain industry will expand and grow is if we have users that will be able to use products with ease. What are some of the unique features of SRM that would help attract more users?
Ashish: For one, it’s really fast. Nobody else in the industry offers a full limit orderbook that is this fast, so that is something that you might want to look into. check out projectserum.com for more info
Q12. What are the major milestones $SRM achieved so far and what is in t future pipeline?
D.R.: The DEX was released a week ago dex.projectserum.com we will keep building new projects in the coming weeks/days
Q13. As a community-driven project, how can I contribute my quota to your success? Do you have a Global ambassadorial Program or Referral Reward System? Do I get any benefits from holding a token in the $SRM Token?
Ashish: You can stake SRM on ftx.com/staking and gain staking rewards! You could also hold on to FTT tokens to receive SRM airdrops!
Q14. What is the $SRM future plan for India?
D.R.: SRM just got listed on WazirX, we will keep working with Indian communities to build the ecosystem there. We would love to create more educational content in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil and other languages.
Q15. DeFi is the new frontier and already buzzing in 2020, what roles do you play in the innovativeness of DeFi and what’s your approach to DeFi and ultimate DeFi solutions.
D.R.: The main issues with DeFi are high fees and speed. Serum fixes those two problems while still being fully compatible with Ethereum.
Q16. What is the structure of the company, is it a decentralized, open-sourced protocol where everybody can contribute? If so, how does the governance plan on being handled?
D.R.: Serum is a consortium of DeFi expert and the project is fully open-source, anyone can contribute to it.
Q17. Right now issuing a token is a rather simple process. However, building the system and ecosystem is the most difficult part. My question is, How will the demand of the token increase, and how will this token use within the ecosystem?
Ashish: All of our seed investors are dedicated to making this a success long term. All seed sales are locked entirely for the first year and linearly unlock from year 2 to year 7. I believe this speaks volumes about how dedicated the community is in making Project Serum prosper long term.
Q18. Do you think banks will get on board with DeFi given it threatens their business models?
Ashish: Not sure about banks but jump trading which is an old player has partnered with Serum. https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/76826/veteran-market-maker-jump-trading-forays-into-defi-to-provide-liquidity-for-ftxs-solana-based-dex
Q19. The biggest barrier for DeFi is that of interoperability, providing cross-chain interactions and multiple blockchains, how does your Unique solution solve this
D.R.: Serum is fully interoperable with Ethereum to make sure all the DeFi ecosystem is compatible with the project
Q20. What modalities are involved in becoming a validator node? The TPS battle remains one at the core of blockchain solutions, what’s your TPS?
D.R.: 50k TPS and 400ms block time. But this can scale with sharding.
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