MANTRA DAO AFRICA | BLOCKCHAIN NIGERIA GROUP

The 25th AMA session of Blockchain Nigeria Telegram group was graced with the first DeFi platform on Polkadot MANTRADAO as the Africa branch manage by Olapade Samuel was welcomed alongside with one of the Council Members and Co-founder of MANTRADAO Will Corkin.
Blockchain Nigeria Community Manager Mr Adebayo the event

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Follow closely and read through all questions and answers.
Adebayo (BNUG CM)
It is with a great privilege to co-host this silver jubilee AMA session with MantraDAO and we would like to welcome the co-founder and CM to this group @Will_Corkin @Engr_Samest. Can we appreciate them with a clap of hands?
𝓔𝓷𝓰𝓻. 𝓢𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓼𝓽
Thank you @Cryptobayo we are so honoured to be here!
Will Corkin | MANTRA DAO
Thank you so much for the warm welcome @Cryptobayo. We are excited and honoured at the opportunity to be able to share more with you all about MANTRA DAO!
Adebayo (BNUG CM)
Can the team from MantraDAO do a formal introduction of themselves?
Will Corkin | MANTRA DAO
Absolutely! So my name is Will Corkin and I am the Co-Founder and Council Member of MANTRA DAO and am based in Hong Kong. I am originally from the US, Boston, but have been in Asia for the last 6 years and on and off for some years before that.
𝓔𝓷𝓰𝓻. 𝓢𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓼𝓽
I'm Olapade Samuel from Oyo State but based in Lagos. I'm an Electrical Engineer and the Africa Community Manager for the project. Started crypto journey since 2017 with crypto trading and little of blockchain understanding lol!
Adebayo (BNUG CM)
Tell us about your blockchain project, the community is waiting for you.
Will Corkin | MANTRA DAO
MANTRA DAO has been in the making for some time now but we finished our membership offering in August and have had our DeFi platform operational for the last almost 3 months. MANTRA DAO is a community-governed DeFi platform that focuses on staking, lending, and governance, and has a handful of other exciting DeFi services that will really set us a part from everyone in the space currently, such as our KARMA Protocol, MANTRA POOL, etc
Adebayo (BNUG CM)
When they are done, we allow the first set of questions to come, then we mute the group for @Will_Corkin and @Engr_Samest to answer your questions
Will Corkin | MANTRA DAO
I think we can start to get some questions in

Community Questions And Answers

Question 1 by Solarlee:
I can see MΛNTRΛ DΛO is built on Rio chain which is Polkadot if I am not wrong..What makes you believe so much in Polkadot and why not Erc20 or Trc 21 directly

Will Corkin | MANTRA DAO: Currently, MANTRA DAO is built on Ethereum, but we are working to migrate onto a substrate based blockchain so that we can interoperate within the Polkadot ecosystem and numerous other blockchains. Interoperability and offering cross-chain and multi-asset services has been something that everyone in the blockchain space has been looking forward to and Substrate based blockchains and Polkadot are the solutions to this.
they allow for cross-chain interoperability, as well as solves a lot of the problems that the current Ethereum network faces, most notably the slow network congestion and high gas fees for making transactions
𝓔𝓷𝓰𝓻. 𝓢𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓼𝓽: This solution provides us with the opportunity to communicate with multiple chains and also solve the scalability issue which is one of the major problems with Ethereum blockchain

Question 2 by khrispy:
I love the back to back updates on the MANTRA DAO, they never fail to keep the community updated.
Q - How has this been on the team since from the road map lot is yet to be achieved?
𝓔𝓷𝓰𝓻. 𝓢𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓼𝓽: Though @Will_Corkin will still shed more light on this if you have been following our mantradao.com, we are still on track with our roadmap. We are in Q4 and in the next few weeks a load of features/platform will be completed

Question 3 by Deleke Nice:
There are many modern staking platforms now. what makes MantraDao attractive?
You have a grant programme which is yet to be launch. Is the grants conditional? Or it is open to all users or stakers? If it is conditional Can you tell me the conditions for eligibility for the grants?
Will Corkin | MANTRA DAO: There may be a handful of staking platforms out there but where we differ is we offer non-custodial staking (which means the funds are safe and never leave your control or come under our management as they do on centralized exchanges that have the risk of being shut down or facing complications), very shortly we will have our OM incentive staking which will allow users to stake their PoS and DPoS assets through us, receive rewards in the tokens they are staking, and also receive additional OM tokens just for staking through MANTRA DAO an added incentive to stake with us.
that is all on top of us having a very user-friendly and easy to use platform that is made to be simple enough for non-crypto people to be able to stake and partake in our DeFi services
𝓔𝓷𝓰𝓻. 𝓢𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓼𝓽: Our staking platform support non-custodial staking services which start with Polkadot ecosystem assets like DOT KSM and our own OM. We also go beyond the Polkadot ecosystem we include some DPoS asset also like XTZ TRX ADA EOS and there will be custodial staking-as-a-service for other PoS assets, such as ETH 2.0 and DASH. So there is a lot to say about our staking platform. To further discuss this... We presently give access to OM, RFUEL and UNI OM/ETH holder to stake on our staking platform... RFUEL is the utility token for Rio chain which is where our mainnet will be launched soon
UNI OM/ETH is the LP token received for providing liquidity on Uniswap
And of cos OM is our governance/utility token

Question 4 by Bayowa Sam:
I found that $OM staking is running on your platform with good APR. Do you plan to bring more tokens for staking in your platform? If so, can you give a hint of the upcoming planned tokens and how soon?
𝓔𝓷𝓰𝓻. 𝓢𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓼𝓽: Absolutely yes.. as previously answered. We give fixed 88.88% APY at the moment and stakes grow daily as stakers also enjoy incentives in form of airdrops from some of our node validator platforms we partner with.

Question 5 by khrispy:
How long does MANTRA DAO believe AMA would continue, like in the case where Allocations for AMA gets exhausted what would be the next available option?
𝓔𝓷𝓰𝓻. 𝓢𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓼𝓽: Not sure we'll stop what we are doing as technology is new every day and the beauty of technology is innovation.. we will definitely continue to share knowledge through AMA, presentations, seminars and many more to increase adoption of DeFi and crypto, in general, knowing that this is the future of money!

Question 6 by Never Losing:
So far, what major achievements have your project achieved? What difficulties and risks did you encounter in the process of project implementation, and what factors prompted you to overcome the difficulties?
Will Corkin | MANTRA DAO: Some of the high-level accomplishments and milestones over the last 2 months include:

launching our non-custodial staking platform
being chosen to join the Substrate Builders Program
Joining the Kusama 1000 Validator Program
have our first soft governance vote
getting numerous validator nodes up and running including DOT, KSM, LUNA, etc
we still have a lot to do and accomplish in our roadmap, and in the rest of Q4 (the next month) we still plan to launch our MANTRA POOL, mobile app, initial lending platform, and a few other exciting features

Question 7 by Sunday Joshua:
MantraDAO is operating as a financial bank. So what advantages does ManTraDao has over Banks in term of collecting loan? Why choose MantraDAo over Banks in general aspects?

Will Corkin | MANTRA DAO: That's right, we do offer services traditionally found in financial banks such as loans, but it is better to go through us than banks for a few reasons. Firstly we will offer lower interest rates than found in traditional banks, while members have the ability to make money by lending out their crypto and earning interest which currently banks take all of that interest. Our initial loans will be over-collateralized so they are relatively straight forward with having assets in a smart contract, but where it will be something new in the current DeFi space is when we add in under-collateralized loans. This is something no one has been able to accomplish yet but will be massive if done correctly. That is all tied into our KARMA protocol which will allow these services to our members and which we are currently working with some of the best economists in the world to help build this out. This is on top of being decentralized and allowing anyone to access it from anywhere in the world without having to go through all the bells and whistles that go into taking out loans from banks or any of those traditional financial services

Question 8 by ALTS:
-Can you explain the concept of 'Buyback and Make Model' and how is it different from the 'Token burn mechanism' usually practised.
-Why did you decide to opt for this model and how has this benefited Mantra DAO Ecosystem?
Question 9 by Emmezy KingIn 🤴:
From My Research:
Can you give us a very high-level overview of what Mantra DAO is and what competitive edge it brings to the DeFi landscape?
How can PoA consensus mechanisms benefit DeFi compared to PoS and PoW consensus mechanisms?
What roles does the Web3 Foundation play in Mantra DAO?
Do you have any coin burn/buyback systems or any token burn plans to increase the value of OM token and attract investors to invest?

Will Corkin | MANTRA DAO: To answer your last question about the buyback and burn, we do not plan to ever implement a burn mechanism for our OM token because we are a DAO and every OM token represent ownership into the Foundation and represents voting power. Because of this, we think it is smarter to have a "buy-back and make" strategy (to learn more about what that is I suggest you take a look at this article: https://www.placeholder.vc/blog/2020/9/17/stop-burning-tokens-buyback-and-make-instead). In terms of a buyback, we do use 50% of the profits generated by the foundation through its running validator nodes, amongst other revenue streams, to buy OM off the open market and put into the reserve wallet and out of circulation

Question 10 by Zizzy:
Apart from buying OM token, what other ways are there to earn it?
𝓔𝓷𝓰𝓻. 𝓢𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓼𝓽: By staking and by sending out your voice to the world to support MANTRADAO through mantradao.com/sherpas program. You can also join the Africa community to learn more about this.. @mantradaoafrica on telegram

Question 11 by ALTS:
-Mantra Pool is scheduled to be launched this quarter. Can you share with us progress made so far? Will there be an incentivised liquidity program?
-PolkaDot has continued to dominate the crypto market. As one of the Defi project that strives to deliver innovations, what will MANTRA DAO bring to Polkadefi Ecosystem?
𝓔𝓷𝓰𝓻. 𝓢𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓼𝓽: As we planned to launched Mantra pool soon, our pool is based on crypto savings game which allows users to participate for the chance to win a percentage of MANTRA DAO Foundation’s staking reward... So far with our partnership with kava, terra (Luna) and many more we have been able to start a validator node and already generating staking reward.. therefore mantra pool is close by.
You can check out our last validator node announcement with LUNA: https://medium.com/mantra-dao/mantra-dao-validator-now-available-for-luna-delegation-b7462ad4b68c

Question 12 by Horizen Light:
Marketing is a central element for every project so that everyone knows the potential that a project can bring is vital to achieving the goals set. What is your strategy to attract new users and Investor to your platform and keep them long term?
Will Corkin | MANTRA DAO: We are constantly working towards growing our community and making our platform more and more global. We find doing AMAs like this one to be very beneficial to share what we are building and growing our communities. We often carry these out in different language groups, and currently, we have over 15 different languages and region telegram channels. We also just launched our MANTRA DAO Sherpa Program (ambassador) that works with our global community members to help spread what we are doing and create content around MANTRA DAO all while rewarding them for helping to grow. For those interested in learning more, you can look at https://mantradao.com/sherpas

Question 13 by khrispy:
What other future partnerships are the community members to expect when it comes to fun?
Will Corkin | MANTRA DAO: We think the DeFi space is still fairly early on in its lifetime and we want to work with as many talented companies and teams that we can to help build this space into what it can be. Over the last 2 plus months, we have made a number of partnerships with different companies in the space and we have a number more lined up to announce when ready. Many of the partners to date have been around our staking services and us becoming validator nodes for these PoS and DPoS blockchains. We want MANTRA DAO to be the go-to platform for staking crypto assets so we will work with as many PoS and DPoS as we can to offer the most to our community.
Having said that we are open to working with any company that will add benefit to MANTRA DAO and our members, and there have been some partnerships that have actually come from our community members who have driven the suggestions and introductions to those projects. we are always listening to and having conversations with our community and as a community governed DAO we look to their guidance and feedback with everything we do

Question 14 by Adeleke Jr.:
What will be the minimum and maximum amount of $OM token to stake on the platform and what will be the percentage of profit on stakes? Since staking as stated is a good factor in combating high gas fee.
Will Corkin | MANTRA DAO: we want anyone to be able to take part in our DeFi services and be able to make some passive reward through staking so we have kept our minimums low with all you need being 1 OM token to stake and earn rewards. Currently, we have 88.88% APR on our staking but soon that will change from a fixed APR to a variable APR which we anticipate as being lower than the promotional 88.88% but still very attractive. because we are a community-governed DAO, we look for our community's feedback at every step of the way! Any community member can propose votes for what they want to see done with our platform. We currently are still in soft staking through our partner Snapshot but once we migrate to our substrate-based blockchain we will have proper on-chain, executable governance

Question 15 by ALTS:
Apart from BONDLY token airdrops for $OM stakers, should we expect more airdrops soon? How often will the airdrops be done and how can we participate?
Will Corkin | MANTRA DAO: we have a number of airdrops happening soon including $BOND, $QUICK, $POLS and all our community members need to do in order to receive and participate in those airdrops is stake $OM on MANTRA DAO!

Question 16 by khrispy:
Your APR in staking is relatively one of the highest I have come across (so far). Q- How would the project make sure there is no dump in the claimed APR?
Will Corkin | MANTRA DAO: This 88.88% APR was a promotional APR that will be ending this month and moving to a variable rate APR. In addition to work against people dumping their OM rewards, we will look to incorporate a lock up on staking rewards

Question 17 by Eddie 🇺🇬:
MANTRA DAO has proposed multiple lending products over three phases, and this makes it different from other lending platforms. What approach are you guys using to deal with attacks?
Will Corkin | MANTRA DAO: Many of the recent attached on DeFi platforms has been on their economics and not about hacking the actual code or smart contracts. to make sure we avoid this is why we are working with some of the best economists in the world to make sure our economic models around lending and our other DeFi services is sound, sustainable, and safe

Question 18 by Solarlee:
I can read that the community have the right to vote what are the needs for a member to be able to vote and is there any reward for voting
𝓔𝓷𝓰𝓻. 𝓢𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓼𝓽: The need is to stake $OM on our platform... Yes, there are future plans for voters as incentives but we started with the first proposal voting which ended last week and the reward is to all stakers. Check through this: https://medium.com/mantra-dao/mantra-dao-launches-soft-governance-with-community-governed-pols-allocation-aec4d22eb6fd

Question 19 by i John:
There are a lot of complaints about the staking process and the high gas fee.
What can be done to tackle this in the future
Will Corkin | MANTRA DAO: high gas fees are something very unique to Ethereum and many of the current problems in DeFi, which is why we are building on parity substrate and Polkadot, which solves the efficiency and gas fee issues

Question 20 by Dareem Temmy:
Q - What are the basic factors you consider before signing a partnership in all your projects so far.?
Will Corkin | MANTRA DAO: Of course, we need to make sure the partnership adds value to MANTRA DAO, OM tokens and the overall community, as well as being a legitimate and long-term oriented project

Question 21 by Tobi:
You did not answer my Q even after I asked the second time, however... "The BORROW section on the features of Mantra communicates more of a centralized system. Seeing Mantra as a relatively new project, what are the progressive systems, set in place to ensure low credited crypto assets is qualified for a borrowing alliance with MANTRA?"
Will Corkin | MANTRA DAO: Sorry, I missed your question but since you asked a few times I'll answer. So our Lending and Borrowing section are Decentralized as we do not play the middle man or the part of a bank in this, we only create the smart contracts and pools which members are able to lend and borrow out of/in to. In terms of the systems for our DeFi services, we have an incredible team of top economists to make sure we are able to offer and structure all of these services successfully and safely in a way that cannot be gamed or taken advantage of.
The event lastest for 1hr 30 minutes and it was a huge success.

For more information about MANTRADAO
Visit: https://mantradao.com
Join official telegram: https://t.me/mantradao
Africa Community: https://t.me/mantradaoafrica

MANTRA DAO AFRICA | BLOCKCHAIN NIGERIA GROUP | AMA RECAP...... Featuring Will Corkin

Community Questions And Answers