Recap Of DeFi Africa AMA Session With Makerdao

DeFi Africa held its first AMA (Ask Me Anything) session with MakerDAO in our public Telegram channel on 10th December, 2020. The guests for this session were Maria Magenes (Community Lead for Europe & Africa, Maker Foundation) and Gustav Arentoft (Business Development for Europe, Maker foundation).

The AMA was structured into five chapters.

Chapter 1 – Introduction of guests
Chapter 2 – Basic Questions About MakerDAO
Chapter 3 – Answers for questions on twitter
Chapter 4 – Questions from audience live
Chapter 5 – Winners announcement from both live and twitter

MakerDAO is an open-source project on the Ethereum blockchain and a Decentralized Autonomous Organization created in 2014. Builders of DAI, the first decentralized, stable cryptocurrency that can be used by anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Let’s have a look at what the Europe & Africa Community Lead – Maria Magenes, and Europe Business Development Lead – Gustav Arentoft had to say in the AMA.

Chapter 1 – Introduction of guests

Sahabia (AMA Moderator)

Hello, Maria and Gustav. Thanks for joining us today.

Could you please tell us a bit about yourselves?

Gustav (AMA Guest)

Hey Sahabia, thanks for having us!

My name is Gustav Arentoft, I manage the European and African Business Development for the Maker Foundation. I’ve been with the project for almost 2,5 years. Prior to joining Maker I worked and lived in Argentina.

Maria (AMA Guest)

Hello guys!

I am Maria Magenes, the Community Lead for Africa and Europe. I have been with Maker since 2019 and prior to working with Maker I was with Aave project. I am 28.

Chapter 2 – Basic Questions About MakerDAO

Sahabia

Starting with Gustav, please explain, What is MakerDAO and DAI in brief?

Gustav

MakerDAO is a decentralized organization dedicated to bringing financial stability and transparency to the world economy. MakerDAO enables the generation of Dai, the world’s first unbiased currency and leading decentralized stablecoin. Dai mitigates volatility through an autonomous system of smart contracts called the Maker Protocol, as well as through decentralized community governance.

The Maker Protocol, as one of the largest decentralized applications (dapps) on the Ethereum blockchain, was the first decentralized finance (DeFi) application to earn significant adoption. All Dai is backed by a surplus of collateral that has been individually locked into audited and publicly viewable Ethereum smart contracts. Anyone with an internet connection can monitor the health of the system anytime at daistats.com.

Sahabia

Maria, how is DAI different from other stablecoins in the crypto space?

Maria

The main differences are that Dai is decentralized (there is not a central entity in the background) and unbiased. Dai lives completely on the blockchain, making it borderless and available to anyone, anywhere. Though currently on the Ethereum blockchain, Dai is built to be blockchain agnostic.

All Dai is backed by a surplus of collateral that has been individually locked into audited and publicly viewable Ethereum smart contracts.

Sahabia

Also Maria, what are the various ways one can use the DAI Stablecoin?

Maria

There are plenty of use cases.. Here the top 5:

Inflation protection and savings (e.g. in Argentina)
DeFi products and services, and the enormous opportunities they offer
Gaming
Digital art (NFT)
E-commerce

Chapter 3 – Answers for questions on twitter

Sahabia

Starting with Gustav

How do you view competition down the road if someone figures out; how to do non-collateralized loans on Ethereum? (Q by @ubaidu_isa)

Gustav

Thanks Sahabia

So non-collateralized loans pose another risk to the underlying lenders. Maker is unique in the sense that it does not have lenders only borrowers. Dai is created in the moment of borrowing. Other protocols therefore deal with liquidity restraints based on the amount of supplied assets they have. We do not have that restraint. To the point of the question a protocol dealing with non-collateralized loans needs to be able to attract liquidity, we don’t. Therefore it seems unlikely that someone will be able to do so in a big fashion

But we are always innovating, so who knows where MakerDAO is at that point in time.

Maybe we could even adopt their framework to our protocol, we are very flexible in the possibilities

Sahabia

Maria,

Which is the necessity to use a second internal token (MKR), it will not be enough with just the DAI token? (Q by @cudosinichi9)

Maria

Thanks for the question

MakerDAO is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization with decentralized governance. It is important to make this distinction: DAI is a stablecoin that is soft pegged to 1 USD and MKR is our governance token. MKR is created to enable governance of the system and giving voting rights to MKR holders. The primary responsibility of MKR holders is to ensure the stability of the Dai Peg and the overall health of the Maker Protocol.

Sahabia

Gustav,

Who are MakerDAO partners nowadays? Can you appreciate the importance of what partners have supported MakerDAO in protocol development ? (Q by @HolderEthereum)

Gustav

Today MakerDAO has over 900 partners globally and we have had a huge focus on pushing the protocol to as many people as possible. This is also the focus on the teams that Maria and I work at. Business Development works with Partner integrations and Community Development works with individual contributions and people interested in Dai. We have always tried to include as many people as possible in the project. In regards to major partnership integrations some of the biggest have been companies like Wirex, Coinbase, OkEx, Compound and AAVE. However, these are just a couple of our big partners

We work almost exclusively through 3rd party partnerships. So it’s always been very important for us to push Dai as a product via our external partnerships.

Sahabia

Maria,

What is being done to drive DeFi to Africa which is the future for everything blockchain? (Q by @SilentShepherd3)

Maria

First of all a lot of education is needed in the African region (but in general all over the world) and we are pushing it also with the help of our ambassadors, like Sahabia and Ahmed, and DeFi Africa. We try to speak about Dai and DeFi every time we can and in the easiest way possible. In order to better understand Dai, there are various resources to learn about MakerDAO and Dai: https://community-development.makerdao.com/makerdao-mcd-faqs/faqs/dai#what-is-dai

Also, increasing access to Dai is crucial for increased adoption of Dai. For example, integrating exchanges and fiat on and off ramps are crucial. We just started an initiative with PundiX and Dai Agent Network to push Dai usage and Dai acceptance among merchants in Ghana.

Chapter 4 – Questions from live telegram audience

@HeRmAwAnTrAdEr

What are the great achievements that MakerDAO has achieved so far? What difficulties and risks did you encounter during project implementation and what factors helped motivate you to overcome difficulties?

Maria

I would say Dai launch in primis, then MCD launch and we are looking forward to full decentralization.

@Lion_456

What are your biggest achievements in 2020?

Gustav

Reaching 1b Dai and maintaining the top 1 DeFi position in the space.

@Loversss10

Can you list 1-3 features of MakerDAO Secure that makes it ahead of its competitors? What is the competitive advantage your platform has that makes you better from your competitors ?

Maria

Dai is decentralized and unbiased, it has many use cases and a supply of 1B

@Reysantoscryptoo

What’s your next development step? What do you want to achieve next year 2021?

Gustav

In the upcoming year there is a strong community focus on on-boarding RWA (Real world assets). So it will be very interesting to see how the community will push the MakerDAO protocol to normal companies looking for credit.

@gabriel878

The crypto world is becoming overcrowded with blockchain projects and tokens, what makes MakerDAO different from other projects?

Gustav

We are one of the oldest Ethereum projects which dates all the way back to 2015. We popularized DeFi and paved the way for many partners to grow in this new space. We also have a very unique proposition in regards to being the only major decentralized stablecoin.

@Onyejekwe

Question: You have a bunch of acronyms that exist within the MakerDAO ecosystem. DAI, MKR, CDP, DSR and soon MCD and SAI to name a few

Can you run us through what these terms mean and how they all work together to achieve the end goal of decentralized asset backed digital economy?

Gustav

Dai is not an acronym, MKR is for Maker, CDP is for Collateralized Debt Position, DSR is for the Dai savings rate. MCD is Multi Collateral Dai, Sai is single collateral Dai. Some of them like CDP and SAI are old. The other ones are still used.

Maria

DAI is the multi collateral Dai (the one existing now)

SAI is the single collateral Dai (only backed by ETH, prior to 2019)

CDP and Vault are the same, collateralized debt position (renamed as vault) has to be opened to create Dai

DSR is the Dai Saving Rate, the user can earn it only by holding Dai.

These are part of the Maker protocol together with the governance, keepers, oracles and MKR holder. They allow the system to work

@Lanre_Akorede

Question: Who will have the final say in development and business decisions? How much will the elected representatives be able to influence when it comes to business and development decisions? Will the company have some kind of veto when it comes to decisions?

Maria

The community. In the near future, the community will have the final word on everything

@Mccoyevans

Does MakerDAO have any plans of looking into DEFI insurance?

Gustav

There are already options for insurance which can be looked to be integrated into the front-ends of the different protocols.

@Loversss10

The common problem that often occurs in cryptocurrency projects is smart contract vulnerability, which has led to loss of funds. What steps have been taken by MakerDAO to fix this major problem and avoid future occurrences?

Gustav

MakerDAO has had one of the most strict security roadmaps of all DeFi projects. you can see it here at: https://security.makerdao.com/

@Mccoyevans

The overcollateralization required by MakerDAO is capital inefficient and dulls the benefits of taking out these positions to begin with, how do you plan to solve this?

Gustav

The overcollateralization is depending on the underlying collateral. So on very volatile crypto assets you will have a higher ratio than if you use more stable assets like Real world assets, gold or other commodities. This is the way all collateralized lending works.

@Adebowale0

Question: The Maker CDP (Collateralized Debt Position) smart contract runs natively on Ethereum. As a result, only ERC-20 compatible assets are available on the platform, So do you have plans to change that and allow use of other kinds of tokens?

Maria

Dai is blockchain agnostic, and interoperability is fundamental. Right now there is for example WBTC accepted as collateral. In the ideal future also real word assets will be accepted as collaterals

Sahabia

Awesome Gustav and Maria 👏

Thanks for that. We are now getting to the last segment.

Please audience. In the next chapter, we will announce winners and close for today

Chapter 5 – Winners announcement from both live and twitter

Maria

Winners of the AMA are;

From Twitter Questions:

@Linhmiuxinhgai

@SilentShepherd3

@Crypto_Oppa

From Telegram Questions Live:

@Lanre_Akorede

@olufemijoel

Sahabia

Congratulations to all winners of today’s AMA. If you don’t see yourself among the winners, don’t worry. Hang tight for more similar opportunities. To the winners, please provide your DAI addresses to receive your gifts 🎁. Just DM with your addresses @realsahabia

Thank you Maria and Gustav for honoring our invitation