FLURRY Finance AMA Highlights: A Conversation with BTSE on August 5, 2021
On August 5, 2021, FLURRY Finance CEO Mike Ting and CTO Lawrence Wong joined the BTSE Exchange Telegram chat for an AMA.
FLURRY Finance is a DeFi protocol offering yield aggregation that uses its platform’s token called rhoToken, which is pegged 1:1 to its underlying stablecoin. It automatically farms for yields without locking up funds or interest earned by diversifying DeFi product risk, resulting in lower gas fees.
FLURRY Finance will launch its mainnet later in August and have cross-chain implemented in early October.
Here are the highlights of the AMA in case you missed it.
• • •
Introduction
BTSE Moderator:
Please meet Mike Ting and Lawrence Wong from FLURRY Finance! Let’s get started. Please tell us a little more about yourself and your team members.
Mike Ting:
Hello everyone.
My name is Mike Ting, and I’m the CEO of FLURRY Finance. I came from a traditional background, spending most of my career trading stock and derivatives in Hong Kong, South Korea, and Singapore markets. I previously worked at banks such as JP Morgan and Société Générale.
Amazed at how much digital freedom blockchain can offer, I entered the crypto space in 2018 and applied my trading experience to trading crypto derivatives.
I co-founded C-Trade, a crypto derivatives trading platform, at the end of 2019. At the beginning of 2021, I felt that DeFi has really brought application scenarios to blockchain, and so I aimed to recreate existing traditional financial services in a decentralized way using blockchain.
Education background wise, I studied computer science at Cornell University and Stanford University.
And as for our team, most of us come from the traditional banking industry and personally have contacts with many hedge funds and high net worth people who have not entered the crypto space yet. Because of our backgrounds and track record in the traditional finance world, we are trying to simplify DeFi products so that everyone can get involved. FLURRY Finance is our first DeFi product focusing on yield generation for stablecoin owners.
Lawrence Wong:
Hi, my name is Lawrence Wong, and I am the CTO of FLURRY Finance.
I hold a master’s degree in software engineering from Imperial College, London. I have a mix of tech and trading experience in developing trading systems, pricing, and trading fixed income and equity derivatives from various positions held in trading financial institutions such as Barclays Capital, KBC Financial Products, and Daiwa Capital Markets. I also founded my own trading company, doing low latency trading in equity derivatives.
I was first exposed to crypto and blockchain in 2017. I didn’t participate in the 2017 BTC rally, but I saw the potential in blockchain, and I knew it would be a game-changer. In 2018, I started exploring the crypto and blockchain space in 2019, and I joined FinFabrik, a startup based in Hong Kong, to develop a digital assets platform on R3 Corda, a private blockchain.
I wanted to understand first-hand the challenges of digitizing off-chain assets and explore whether a public chain or a private chain is more suited for tokenizing real-life assets. This is going to be a big deal as the trend is already showing more assets will be digitized and exchanged online.
The explosion of DeFi is really encouraging and has created a lot of opportunities. The success of DeFi shows that, gradually, each function in traditional finance is being reinvented in the crypto space. With our tech and trading background, we are in a good position to do something innovative and help contribute to the growth of DeFi and overall in this emerging crypto industry.
• • •
The FLURRY Finance Team
BTSE Moderator:
Great, thank you for the self-introductions. Let me start by asking a bit more about the team.
What is the team’s main goal? How will it be accomplished?
Mike Ting:
Our goal came from our experience using DeFi products. There is a lot of innovation in the DeFi space. However, many users are not enjoying the benefits because of the unfriendly user experience. As part of the crypto community, we believe that DeFi should be for everyone but not for tech-savvy only. That’s how we started FF and target to create a simple and convenient DeFi experience for all users, starting with yield aggregation.
BTSE Moderator:
How many investors, partners do you have on your team? Please do share with us if you are allowed to disclose.
Lawrence Wong:
We are currently working with ten investors and partners, and we also have ten people on our team. So, of course, we are looking forward to different ties and partnerships in ways that we can share the benefits of DeFi and the FLURRY protocol.
Ten is our lucky number, apparently!
• • •
FLURRY Finance’s Vision
BTSE Moderator:
Let’s move on and talk about FLURRY Finance. Could you please explain what your vision is?
Mike Ting:
We strive to enhance the usability of DeFi products. Advances in technology often outpace the equally crucial improvements in user experience, resulting in entry barriers and adoption hurdles. DeFi should serve everyone, either you are new to the crypto world or an enthusiast.
That’s why we introduce the rhoTokens. It is a cross-chain token that will use the goodness of its underlying stablecoins to allow users to continuously participate in yield farming with lower fees and diversified risks. We automate the tedious task of locking/unlocking and switching in and out of DeFi products on different chains to generate yield.
Most importantly, rhoToken is pegged 1:1 to the backing stablecoin and thus can act as a medium of exchange. In other words, rhoToken won’t lock up your funds. You can spend it while earning interest.
• • •
FLURRY Finance Overview
BTSE Moderator:
There are quite a few elements listed on FLURRY Finance’s website. Could you give us a simplified version of what they are?
Mike Ting:
The website is about our development and the roadmaps of our project, which involves two tokens: 1) rhoTokens 2) $FLURRY tokens.
BTSE Moderator:
Please tell us more about these two.
Mike Ting:
rhoToken is the cross-chain stablecoin with continuous yield farming capability. rhoToken owners enjoy flexibility and stability with a passive income. rhoTokens prices are pegged 1:1 to the underlying stablecoin deposited. So, their price will not go up. rhoUSDC is pegged 1:1 to USDC, rhoUSDT is pegged 1:1 to USDT, etc. The cross-chain interoperability also allows yield incomes from more liquidity pools.
If you are looking at investing in the FLURRY protocol and enjoy the upside potential, they should buy the $FLURRY token. $FLURRY is the governance token, and $FLURRY owners can stake their $FLURRY to enjoy the management fee income generated by the FLURRY protocol. As a result, the more successful $FLURRY is, the higher the price of $FLURRY.
Our testnet launched last week, and you’re more than welcome to check out our tutorial. But once our product is launched, you can use rhoToken while earning interest and stake $FLURRY while earning with rhoToken.
• • •
FLURRY Finance’s Unique Features
BTSE Moderator:
What do you consider to be the strongest suit for the project?
Lawrence Wong:
One of the most significant features of FLURRY Finance is its rebasing mechanism. The FLURRY protocol has a different interest distribution mechanism from existing yield aggregators. The yield generated in FLURRY Finance is distributed through increasing the supply of rhoTokens.
For instance, if a user has 100 rhoUSDC in their wallet and earns a 5% interest on that amount, FLURRY Finance will pay them by minting five more rhoUSDC by increasing the supply of rhoUSDC.
The FLURRY protocol makes sure 1 rhoUSDC is always equivalent to 1 USDC. In other yield aggregators, users are getting deposit tokens in return which unfortunately have a changing value due to the interest accrued.
With a changing value, deposit tokens cannot be used as a medium of exchange, and thus your funds are locked up while earning interest. But in FLURRY, 1 rhoUSDC is always pegged and backed 1:1 by the underlying USDC, and therefore rhoTokens can be spent the same way as stablecoin.
In other words, rhoTokens can act as a medium of exchange, and owners do not need to unlock funds before spending them.
Apart from the rebasing mechanism, another significant feature of FLURRY Finance is cross-chain interoperability.
Current yield aggregators are limited to Ethereum-based products or work on a single chain, whereas FLURRY Finance targets work cross-chain to look for the best yield after cost on different chains.
Think about it. Ethereum stablecoin owners can earn interest on another chain, e.g., Matic, without worrying about all the hassle of transferring their stablecoin cross-chain through bridges and the complicated minting/ redemption process.
All they have to do is to convert their stablecoin to rhoTokens. It is super simple and convenient to use. And you can see that from our testnet.
• • •
How FLURRY Finance Minimizes Gas Fees
BTSE Moderator:
Gas fees have always been of great concern for DeFi users. How do you plan to minimize costs? How is this different from what is currently available in the market?
Mike Ting:
The FLURRY protocol was designed to pool assets together and move the funds in one single transaction, so the average cost incurred per user will be divided, as the number of transactions will be automated to diversify risks on different network chains. If you compare the gas cost between each rhoToken holder and individual yield farmers on the result of total gas cost spent on yield farming, there’s no doubt that the rhoToken holders will have an advantage; hence, high transactional cost on cross-chain yield aggregation won’t be relevant to the multi-chain model as you mentioned.
When more DeFi protocols appear on newer and more efficient chains, the supply yield, transaction costs, and bridging costs will be considered when the algorithm decides where to invest money on behalf of rhoToken holders. This gives the user the best return across the whole DeFi market, no matter which blockchain it is.
• • •
FLURRY Finance Tokenomics ($FLURRY & rhoToken)
BTSE Moderator:
With all this talk about the tokens, let’s dive into tokenomics. First, tell us more about the token, rhoToken. Why is it named rhoToken?
Mike Ting:
Rho is a Greek letter. And in finance, rho measures the sensitivity of an option or options portfolio to a change in interest rate. That’s precisely what rhoToken does — diversifying risk factors and yielding the best interest returns for users. The concept of rho works on the FLURRY protocol, which does all the work automatically and continuously, so it spares you all the tedious back and forth process of trying to increase your pool of assets.
BTSE Moderator:
What is the function of the rhoToken?
Lawrence Wong:
You can earn it, use it as a medium of exchange, and spend it as another stablecoin.
BTSE Moderator:
What are the benefits to the user?
Lawrence Wong:
Users benefit from the fact that we lower the average cost per user by pooling assets together and moving the pooled asset in and out of different products in one transaction. Users have their risk diversified because we split the fund into different pools, while users may find it not cost-justified to do the same on their own.
BTSE Moderator:
In your Whitepaper, and also from your answer here, rhoToken has been mentioned that it is pegged to stablecoins.
How many are we talking about here?
Mike Ting:
If you are talking about the number of stablecoins we are supporting in the first stage, it will be 3 stablecoins we are supporting initially.
USDT, USDC, and BUSD because they are the most stable, safe, and liquid stablecoins.
BTSE Moderator:
Will there be any listings on exchanges in the future? What is the general direction for promoting the use of the token?
Lawrence Wong:
Yes, we are finalizing our IDO date and will update you all as soon as we have aligned with the time and place.
The direction we’re heading is to put the financial management tools from traditional centralized financial institutes on blockchain. With the decentralized version of such, people who have stablecoins in hand will have another option to grow their assets before or after making an investment decision.
After all, we believe in blockchain technology, but the lack of a direct pathway to fully facilitate its benefits is one of the reasons why we are here.
• • •
FLURRY Finance’s Yield Farming Advantages
BTSE Moderator:
Let’s talk a bit more about how FLURRY Finance stands out from what’s out there. There’s a lot of yield farming systems out there. Where does FLURRY Finance fit into that?
Mike Ting:
The rebasing mechanism that we talked about and the cross-chain interoperability that differentiates FLURRY Finance from other yield aggregators. We are going to be the first cross-chain yield aggregator with no lock-up!
BTSE Moderator:
Which project do you see FLURRY Finance working with to enhance cross-chain interoperability?
Mike Ting:
To achieve cross-chain interoperability, we need liquidity bridges and mechanisms to sync states between chains. We are now working with O3 swap on the liquidity and Poly Network regarding the infrastructure on syncing state.
• • •
FLURRY Finance’s Future Plans
BTSE Moderator:
Do you have any plans to expand your reach to other regions for community building and building your user base?
Mike Ting:
Yes, we do! We know there are many crypto lovers in Asia, like Taiwan and Vietnam. We would love to engage with them, and we have plans to set up local communities with different languages and ambassador programs in the future.
If anyone in your community is interested in being our ambassador, please feel free to contact us!
• • •
Questions from Community
L I N D A (@HaiThan12):
Nearly 90% of investors focus on token price in the short term instead of finding out the real value of the project. Can you tell us about the incentives and benefits for investors to hold your tokens over the long term?
Mike Ting:
There are always different types of investors in the market, and it is out of our control when investors are buying and selling to take advantage of the market sentiment. All our team can do is focus on delivering the product that brings value to our users. If you are short-term punters, then I’m afraid you have to take the risk from price fluctuations and invest wisely.
However, if you are long-term investors, you are investing in our team and the product, and I can guarantee you that our team is doing our best to deliver! We are well ahead of our roadmap, and we will have our mainnet launch in August and have cross-chain implemented in early October. With the perfect mix of expertise in finance and blockchain, we believe our team will make FLURRY Finance a big success.
• • •
Happy Dragon (@ChuyenTinhToi):
Do you have any coin burn/buyback systems or any token burn plans to increase the value of your token and attract Investors to invest?
Mike Ting:
Yes, we do! We have a buy and distribute model. We will use the management fee income to buyback $FLURRY tokens from the market and put them back in the staking pool. This mechanism supports the token price in two perspectives:
1) The buyback itself provides support to the token price by reducing the circulating supply
2) The distribution part encourages users to hold on to their $FLURRY tokens, resulting in less selling pressure in the market.
• • •
Crypto Killer (@CrCryptoo):
Can I buy your tokens right now? Which wallets support your token?
Mike Ting:
We are planning to have a token sale in early September. Please join our Telegram and Twitter to stay tuned. Regarding the wallet we support, you can try out our testnet, and you will have an idea of what wallets we are supporting.
• • •
Xyz (@Kvfjbb):
Do you have audit certificates, or are you working on auditing your project to make it more secure and reliable?
Mike Ting:
We are currently having our smart contracts audited by Certik. We are looking for more auditors to make sure our contracts are safe and secure to use.
• • •
Fly 🚀🚀 Down (@phidown):
Has your project been fully decentralized? And will there be any risk of centralization in the future?
Mike Ting:
We have a plan of migrating to a fully decentralized model in 18 months. Since we are upgrading our code to implement more features and add more strategies to our product, there will be some element of centralization in the beginning. But as things become stable and smooth, we will fully hand over the control to a DAO model, governed by $FLURRY token owners in the long run.
• • •
Twitter Questions
BTSE Moderator:
Q1 — I understand that in Q3, you will launch the rhoUSDT, rhoUSDC, and rhoBUSD rhoTokens, but will this really be the only rho stablecoin tokens you will develop? Or in the long term, do you plan to include all the stablecoins on the market?
Mike Ting:
Absolutely not. In the future, we will add more as long as the stable coin is safe, liquid, and popular. That is the beauty of FLURRY Finance. We can wrap around any stablecoin and give the stablecoin the superpower of generating interest for its owners. That is what we designed FLURRY Finance for. We are not trying to create a new stablecoin or bet on which stablecoin will emerge to dominate the stablecoin space.
For other algorithmic stablecoin, which are usually backed by a basket of stablecoins, they have to decide on the composition of their basket and adjust the weights according to the popularity of individual stablecoin.
That is one of the reasons the peg is broken in some of the protocols. However, FLURRY Finance avoids that risk because we are wrapping around a single stablecoin.
So, we give back the control of the choice of stablecoin to the user, while the product is also safer in this design.
• • •
BTSE Moderator:
Q2 — Staking is one of the strategies to attract users and hold them long-term. Does your project have a plan for staking?
Mike Ting:
In terms of features such as staking, we do support three kinds of staking:
1) Stake $FLURRY to earn more $FLURRY
2) Stake LP Tokens to earn $FLURRY (if you provide liquidity on AMM pools such as Uniswap that involve either $FLURRY or rhoTokens in the trading pair). You can stake that LP token to earn more $FLURRY
3) Simply hold rhoTokens, and we will give you $FLURRY
All these are supposed to incentivize the adoption of the rhoToken and get the ecosystem going. We have planned fantastic rewards for early adopters, so be sure to keep an eye out for our announcements!
• • •
BTSE Moderator:
Q3 — I’ve read that the FLURRY platform has a different interest distribution mechanism than the current yield aggregators. What makes this distribution mechanism different? Is there a coin redemption mechanism for $FLURRY? Can you tell us about the rebase mechanism?
Mike Ting:
On most yield aggregators, interest is accumulated in the pool token. Since the pool token value changes with the accrued interest, the pool tokens are not “usable,” and users need to redeem the tokens to use their funds. Users’ funds are thus essentially locked.
However, in FLURRY, we distribute interest by issuing more rhoTokens. For example, a user has 100 rhoUSDC and earns 5% on that amount. They will see in their wallet that their balance on rhoUSDC will grow from 100 rhoUSDC to 105 rhoUSDC. In this way, the FLURRY protocol makes sure rhoUSDC is pegged 1:1 to USDC. The price stability (derived from the underlying stablecoin USDC) allows rhoUSDC to act as a medium of exchange. That’s why the fund is not locked. Another benefit of our rebase mechanism is that the balance of rhoToken in the wallet automatically grows without spending any gas.
• • •
BTSE Moderator:
Q4 — Can you please share a few major milestones that your project has achieved during its development process? I want to know about your strategic investors and well-known partners, as well as the value they bring to your project ecosystem.
Mike Ting:
Sure. We have our first version of FLURRY deployed on Ropsten and Kovan, and we have our bug bounty program and trial campaigns coming up soon.
Mainnet launch will be around the end of August after we have our smart contract audit done by Certik. Please join our Telegram and Twitter channel and stay tuned.
As we mentioned, on the partnership side, we will have O3 swaps as one of the partners on liquidity bridges. We will work with Mask to integrate our yield generation feature for mask users.
We are also talking to the Polygon team to implement the FLURRY protocol on Matic. The goal is to allow users to earn interest on Matic even the users are holding rhoTokens on the Ethereum network or other chains.
• • •
BTSE Moderator:
Q5 — What is the role of tokens in the ecosystem? Where can people currently buy it? What are the functions of the tokens?
Mike Ting:
We have two tokens: rhoTokens and $FLURRY Tokens.
1) rhoToken is the cross-chain stablecoin with continuous yield farming capability. rhoToken owners enjoy the flexibility, stability, and passive income on rhoTokens. So, it is a yield product.
2) $FLURRY token is our governance token. $FLURRY token owners will be entitled to vote on the yield generation strategies addition/removal in the long run. $FLURRY token owners can also stake to enjoy the management fee income generated by the FLURRY protocol through the buy and distribute mechanism we talked about.
• • •
Upcoming Events and Plans
BTSE Moderator:
What can the community anticipate in the near future for events?
Mike Ting:
We have launched the testnet, and the testnet reward campaign will be out soon. Although we don’t have the exact date of the IDO yet, it will happen soon. Ideally, we can have the IDO and the product launched on the same day, as we are also expecting our audit report back from Certik within this week. We will have other marketing campaigns and interactions with our community to build up the momentum for the launch.
BTSE Moderator:
Where can the community find more information about FLURRY Finance and stay up-to-date with the project?
Mike Ting:
We have an announcement group and a chat group on telegram. However, we do find some spam groups and accounts posing as FLURRY Finance, and FLURRY admin is not happy about it.
If you bump into any other imposters, you’re more than welcome to help us out and report them. FLURRY admin is happy to answer your queries about FLURRY Finance.
Please follow Announcements and Chat.
And our testnet is accessible on http://flurry.finance. We have prepared a guide to walk you through the testnet. Let us know what you think via our social media channels!
• • •
FLURRY Finance’s Social Media
Find out more and connect with FLURRY Finance through these channels:
Website: https://flurry.finance/
Telegram: https://t.me/FLURRYFinance_Official
Telegram News Channel: https://t.me/FLURRYFinance_News
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FLURRYFi
Medium: https://medium.com/@FLURRYFiAA
