ICON Strategy 2024

Recorded: Jan. 17, 2024 Duration: 1:17:51

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you here, Chief? How's it going?
Yep, yep, all good.
How's everyone? How are you?
How's Rosh?
Excited for the space.
I've always enjoyed hearing
Fez and David's voice
and more importantly
ICON strategy for this year.
Yep, the space
is going to be a big one.
David is here
and Fez is here.
Hey David
Can you hear me?
Am I 100%?
There's a slight
echo-ish but
other than that it's perfect.
How do I sound?
David, I can't hear you.
I can't hear you.
I can't hear you.
I can't hear you.
How do I sound?
David, I can't hear you if you were talking.
You sound
you sound professional.
Why thank you.
Just to double check
does the spaces
a desktop
computer these days?
Because I could switch to that.
Flawlessly, David.
On the desktop. It does? Oh yeah.
Compared to my phone, now the desktop version
is like awesome.
Right. Okay, I'll be back in 20 seconds.
No worries.
Let me quickly
share it.
If in mid-conversation
I lose my train of thought, I apologize to everyone.
Just remind me what I was
referring to or talking to.
I've been up since 6.30
in talking
quite a lot.
And, Erosha, if I ramble
and chief, if I ramble at all,
if David doesn't tell me to shut up,
one of you step in
to tell me I'm rambling.
But I'll try not to.
I'm sure you'll
do just fine, man.
Oh, big, big spaces.
Good to see.
Can we send David an invite?
Am I still audible?
Yeah, ready to go
or interject when Fez is rambling
to eternity.
Yes, my savior.
And you do sound much
more crystal clear.
That's good.
Should we start?
Yeah, good to go.
Hello, everyone.
This is chief speaking.
Today we are going
to talk about
the icon strategy
Today we have
Fez and David
from Icon Foundation.
And they will be helping us
to understand the general
strategy of the foundation
for the year.
just for the
hottest topic, I want to
begin with the
merger between Icon Foundation
Amazon Foundation.
please give us
summary of
how this idea
evolved in time.
I know it's been in the talks
behind the scenes, so
let's begin with David
with this one.
Can you give us a little summary
about this merger?
There are
forum posts up
in both the balanced
and the icon network
forum environments
that propose
this merger
with the subset of requirements
and what it would
imply with
main goal being for the
communities of both the platform
and the network to
respond to that, share
their ideas, opinions,
do they think it's a good or a bad idea?
And in essence, the
proposal is to
get the icon network
to be more intertwined
balanced DeFi app
as it exists today
because the idea
that is pushed
forward is that it
offers a win-win scenario
where both
the icon network and
the balanced app can benefit
from this
collaboration. So in terms of
growth and perspective
cross-chain expansion,
it would be a one plus one
is a three scenario.
According to the proposal, and yeah, the community
either seeing that or disagreeing with that
and a lot of talk has
been happening over the past week, I'd say.
And in terms of
collaboration for it, of course
it's not an idea
that you think of on a Monday and you post
it to a forum on a Tuesday, like it's something
that you need to
really round out and
have a lot of thought and conversation about
before you put such a proposal
to the community.
And that's what's happened now, so
forums for balance to an icon, that's
where you can read the thing
and discussion is happening over
there in the comments, but
I would say most of it is actually happening in
the respective Discord channels
as well, like you could scroll back and
spend a full 24
hours reading or
the discussion there
and that's
the current state of things,
not sure if Fez wants to add
his perspective to that as well.
I think you covered it really well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, as you said
there is a potential win-win
situation since
this merger proposal aims
to bring value to both
icon and ICX holder
in a few ways.
I know one crucial aspect
involves the introduction of a burn
mechanism. Fez,
could you please provide more
details on this topic to
enlighten the community in a better way?
Yeah, okay, so
like we know icon
the blockchain itself has
a burn mechanism, right?
If transactions outweigh
inflation, the amount of transactions,
then it burns ICX.
In fact, every transaction burns ICX,
it's just at the moment inflation is much higher than
what transactions we're able to generate.
So that's one thing.
The second thing we know
when XCall gets adopted
or originally it was BTP,
but as we've learned
that the messaging component has been
abstracted, XCall is the messaging
DAP standard
and XCall itself
will take a small fee
whether it be in ICX or
on different chains, like for example
when you're sending from Archway to
ICON from Archway,
it's taking that fee in arch tokens
when you're sending from ICON to Archway or
using that transaction, it's taking that fee in ICX.
Now that is something
that the network retains
and ideally
when I say ideally
it's retained to get burnt.
When I use the word ideally
ideally it would be cool to do like
on the other tokens you do a bit of an
auctioning system to
get an external audience
to go hey am I getting a 5% discount
on ETH or am I getting a 5% discount on
Arch or am I getting a 5% discount on Injective
they run in and buy it
which they have to use ICX to
purchase it and then that ICX gets burnt.
Whatever that formula may be
at the end of the day, XCall when
used takes a small fee
and banks it that is going to
be used to burn ICX.
So that's the
burn mechanic XCall introduces
and under the proposal
the whole idea around this
is if we enshrine the app
ICON the network
then starts providing liquidity
for balance which is going to
then generate revenue and
50% of that revenue
also then starts buying ICX
and burning it. So this
is kind of where your three fundamental burns
come into play and all
complement each other. If there's
volume there's XCall transactions
and there's layer 1 transactions for ICON
like all three come into play.
I was going to say exactly the same thing Fez
because basically
a burn that is
the L1 fees. There is a burn
that is the XCall cross chain
transactions and then the proposal
proposes a third
burn mechanism which is
the burning of trading fees
in token pools that
the ICON network has supplied the liquidity
and indeed
the second
burn mechanism which is the XCall
transactions would receive a boost
if the third one is
implemented. So the proposal
kind of touches on all of it.
Are there
any other
benefits coming
from this merger
other than burning
mechanism?
loaded question. There's so many
I think for me
personally it's having a flagship
application.
We know the
story. The tech's good. I've heard this.
The tech's great. The tech hasn't
been available on mainnet. It's great
believe me but nothing's available. Finally we have
the tech available but there's
no flagship application showcasing the
actual tech and this is what
it balance represents
and by kind of doing
this merger it removes
the question of balance
say at the moment is
bear mark has been rough
a few implications that
balance has worked through but the state
of things are rough for people working
on the actual protocol. This kind of
removes all of that and go
don't have these worries anymore.
You are the enshrined
flagship product to showcase our tech
and this product will help
us reach other chains because we can not
just connect to other chains. We can then
show this working example of how
this DAP is using
and through that we're acquiring
users and obviously
it's a win-win on both sides. The tech finally
gets displayed and balance we can keep
growing balance aggressively.
From a technical standpoint
I'm a bit of a control freak and
I like having
oversight and a bit of
oversight
and planning
across how we're building
this new feature of XCOAL. We've got balance
right there in the background,
tested out and ready to get to
mainnet when that new feature of
XCOAL is about to get released.
It goes hand in hand versus
I'll use an example
that may not sit too well but
deploy the tech and then
are waiting for a long time for
someone to come in and actually use it.
A good example there is craft.
Craft a busy building but they're not
at that stage to utilize the tech
even though that infrastructure
and the integration
to Neutron has been up and running for the last
four months.
That's how I see it.
David, do you have anything to add?
I don't want to dig into
questions that you want to cover
further down the line.
If we're talking about other benefits
of the merger besides
the burn,
I'd say the acceleration
of growth on both ends.
On the icon side
there is this XCOAL
technology that has so much
benefits for app builders
if you don't have this
amazing testimonial coming from
Balanced or this flagship that you can put on
display where people actually see
Balanced pop up on these different chains
at a speed
that is impressive. We're not just
hopping from one EVM
chain to the other. We're talking about
heterogeneous
chains that have their own
protocol logic and
standards and balances just connecting
to them like it's nothing because it's
using XCOAL. When that happens,
it would help
other apps or
developers or teams see that
there is something there. Come check it out
and build with it.
On the Balanced side, the
growth that can be achieved
with this merger,
I think the key is definitely
a part in the network-
owned liquidity side of the proposal.
A DEX needs
liquidity and
if you can kind of have a guarantee
that your pools are going to be
filled and deep every
time you access a new
chain, that just sits
well with users who are looking to trade.
They might want to trade big without
price slippage. They might want to trade
a lot without
price slippage and they can
when you have deep liquidity. So the fact that that's
baked into this proposed
merger I think is a benefit on the
Balanced side.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
You know, at the first place
when I read the
merger proposal, I thought
there is a
there is a shift
in the strategy for 20
You know, you
you talked about
you know,
showing an example
to other developers for the ecosystem.
But I felt
the opposite way when I first read
the article.
Does this merger mean
ICON is shifting more towards
infrastructure and
focusing on cross-chain
infrastructure instead of
layer one decentralized
applications because it
made me feel like
trying to
you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, it is
is it a shift?
I wouldn't say
so directly. See the thing is
the strategy
for ICON is to
bring value to the ICX holder
and the way that that can be done
is, you know,
a straightforward method of doing so is burning
ICX tokens.
That can be done
in different ways and
up until like a year ago
the only way that that was done is through
layer one fees. So it made
sense to pursue
apps and teams
to come and build on the layer one blockchain.
But the interoperability
aspect has always
been a goal for ICON
so they were always aiming to add
interoperability
functionality which is infrastructure
and the inherent fees
and ICX burn
that that implies. They were always
aiming to add that
to the value package that is ICON
now. This year
I wouldn't say we're seeing
a strategy shift. If anything we're seeing
us double down on
the X goal strategy
that was announced like last year in January
I'd say that you could call more
of a shift because what we
saw there was that
instead of just relying on
one interoperability solution
we looked around and realized
hey there is multiple solutions
out there and for apps to build with
it they need to have choice
what are the real pain
points for apps when they want to go cross
chain? Can we solve that
for them? And that's when
X goal kind of got lifted from
BTP and we said hey
let's plug this into not just BTP
but also IBC maybe in the
future layer zero wormhole to give
app builders
much more options and benefits
when they go cross chain
with X goal. So that
was more of a strategy
shift I would say last
and what you're seeing now is kind of
doubling down on it. We want more
users of the X goal tech. We've
seen spectacular deployments
drop over the past
12 months. There's really been
good delivery
of connected chains and a logical
next step is now we want apps to come and use
those chains. That doesn't mean
that we're going to stop with the tech.
We're still building
working on X goal, improving it
new features to be
added, new chains to be added. That still
happens but we're
doubling down in this proposal saying
hey let's accelerate
the growth of this flagship app
so that we have an easier
time convincing
other apps whether they're on the icon chain
whether they're on other chains
to come and consider X goal
use it and potentially down
the line generate transaction
fees that will result in
ICX burn. So
I wouldn't say it's a strategy
shift into infrastructure
if anything it's kind of
doubling down on bringing
value to the ICX holder
and Fez when
I'm rambling you've got to stop me.
I know you're
making good points
so I think
what I want to add there
in a very direct fashion
I see that as well
I can understand totally with this shift
it's like are we abandoning the layer 1
I think it's more
zeroing in
focus, a very focused
execution instead of
going hey applications come build
which we did have and
it did kind of succeed for a brief
period of time and then fizzle
and we had CPS finding a bunch of building
that eventuated to nothing
so it wasn't good
funds I would say in that way
but the ultimate
story of this is
even after you build
we were behind in connections we weren't connected
to things so
we had that one connection that we get
in and out of Ethereum and Binance
chain through thanks to Icon Bridge
so this was a real roadblock
and by the time we've been able to fix
some of our delivery pain points
which I do believe we fixed
and in the year of 2023 we have been shipping
but I'll come back
to that. Finishing off this
train of thought is
now I think
if we expand balance with a real
zoned approach we start getting a
ton of assets. Ethereum, BNB
we're talking like all the major
chains. Hell, I've been wanting to connect to SUI
I've been wanting to connect to many chains
but there's a limit to how much we can do
and how quickly we expand and also you
gauge our performance and make sure security
standards are up to scratch and all that jazz
but once we have these
assets under balance and we
acquired a new user base thanks to it
I think ThorSwap is a great
example so we won't chase the assets
ThorSwap have, we'll try to diversify
so that we have a bit of a unique
proposition here but
once we have all of that the layer
one very much comes into play
suddenly you can build
again on iCon because it's not a closed
chain, you could do something on it
and you could benefit from a ton of
liquidity because of it. Whatever you may
be doing, you may be doing NFT stuff
you may be doing other random stuff
so I would argue that
actually it's the
reversed but at the
moment it's a very focused approach
that will complement
if we execute and pull it off
it should bring back
bring back the builders or bring
back some kind of innovation and building
and unique use cases and we've
already seen that
just to keep ranting
David stop me but like
thanks to this balanced
integration
we've got Lydia Labs who deployed this
treasury bonds
product on Avalanche
there's literally moments ago I got
a Discord message that they're trying to set up
a few last components to actually start
testing the integrations they have planned for
the treasury bonds
the treasury bond into balance
to introduce the savings rate and a few other mechanisms
yeah I hope that's answered
the question so it is a
direct like granular
look and execution
style that we will
reap rewards in the long run
yeah Chief how about that?
yep yep yeah yeah I'm convinced
100% convinced about
the question so
we were talking about the icon side
of the merger let's talk about
the balanced side of merger
I'm going to ask this one
to David first
how would this merger benefit
balanced now that interest
is picking up again in the crypto space
couldn't balance
just keep doing its thing and
grow its own
well yeah they could
I mean we could I'm a balanced
holder I'm technically
a part of the DAO I could say
that could happen
it hasn't been easy
for balanced you know after
a couple of years of bear
market last
June a big exploit
of the platform like it's not like
balanced is
that doesn't help a platform thrive
let's put it that way
and having said that
I think the merger
would benefit balanced
of the speed at which it can
pursue growth see
if the merger were to occur
you know you'd no longer have
to rely on for example the
CPS grant platform to
fund a development if you cannot
carry it internally or
relying heavily on external
liquidity to come in and fill up your pools
I think those are two
major benefits that balanced
could take from the merger
so on the liquidity side
of things like I've kind of touched off it before
but these proposals they
they propose deep liquidity pools
for cross chain token pairs
which you know if you want people
to have a good trading experience on your
decks you need
those and
without the suggested merger
I guess balanced would
go and deploy on a new chain
but they wouldn't have that direct liquidity
backing from the network
which makes protocol so usable cross
chain so that's just one of the benefits
for balance that when they do set their
targets to you know a new chain
that they could actually deploy with
deep liquidity and
they could execute faster
than without the merger is
says anything to add
look as they said
also a balance holder
I don't know it's a
it's a hard one for
me to answer in terms of
I understand that balance
would be viewed as a low cap
market cap point
so the idea that it can grow
in value is
well it can grow
faster in value right like that would be the
counter biggest counter argument
kind of tend to put that a little bit to the
side only because it's like well it cannot
grow if there's no one
to work on it okay
and that is the state of affairs
like due to the hacks
and that's not an
excuse the hacks aren't an excuse
shit gets hacked it is fat
Abe's got a hack
like major platforms radiant the other
day got hacked right and these have
TVLs of like in the billions
if not close to eight hundred
nine hundred million dollars right
they recover because they have funds
and they keep pushing on and
eventually as long as you know
the protocol is doing what they
can to add security layers which
balance is doing you know now that the lock limits
there's certain things in place so
if icon the network starts putting in a bunch
of liquidity well what are the risks
of there being hacks there are risks
but now thanks to some of
pieces that have been put in place
the hacks would be limited
in its damage right so
that's one aspect
the second piece is
I come back to funding to get
the work done like ultimately
my brain is only seeing it this way
like you've got a protocol if
no work it won't survive like
even right now
the expansion of balance like
in the background is thanks to
the you know foundation
helping where it can
to fund smart contract development
to make sure we
have a product to showcase
but it's just we haven't been able to execute
in the pace that we would
like to and this merger
kind of gives us that like
you think balance is
shipping with the merger
we'll be able to ship at a much quicker
rate because we know we have dedicated
front end resources we know we have
smart contract resources we know we have
the resources there
and the work you know
already mapped out on what we need to deliver
so for me
it's all just a bad delivery right I keep coming
back to this I just want to keep
getting stuff out
which we have done in 2023 but
we've only done that we've only shipped
a whole lot of stuff but
we've lost a lot of users
so now it's about okay well
how can we take what we've shipped
with the product to start acquiring
the user base again get new
people in seeing how cool
balance works from a cross-chain
perspective
cool cool cool
let's talk about the
balance team
balance is a doubt and there is
a governance mechanism and it will stay
like that and the
only change is in the
routing will be in
how will this merger
impact the roles and responsibilities
of the balance team
I mean will their contributions
be limited post-merger
situation and I'm asking
this to first directly
no like the idea of this
merger and one of the reasons why
entire buyout
is being proposed is
balance would be owned by the
ICON network right
and so instead
of the balance being
a doubt it is
part of the ICON network so
you could imagine any voting
that would need to happen would either
be done through validator sets
and that's how the
relationship is kind
of intertwined it's not so
the balance team is basically
becoming the ICON
team but ideally most
of the people working on balance will stay focused
on balanced
the protocol because it's part of the
enshrined application and obviously
it needs to keep evolving and
has that made sense
yeah so they will be providing
their work for the
nothing has changed as I understand
no nothing
like I don't know if
I'm just checking like the question is like
for example Scott
happy to touch on this I know Scott's
been a very much a thought leader and a driver in the
ICON space since even right at the start
if Scott's at the helm you believe you know stuff's
getting done because that's who he is
he's not going anywhere he's still there
it's just this is just a way
this merger is kind of best
for both worlds and it removes
how are we going to pay or how does
a Dow keep funding when it's
low on funds at the moment and this is
the bear marks being rough and the hacks blah blah blah
so this kind of
solves all of that and then
in a unified direction we start
we keep building
call call call
I guess there's a time frame
for this process
can you please tell us
the potential dates for the proposal
and you know
setting up the infrastructure if the
proposal is approved
it's a proposal at the moment so
at this point like a ton of
feedbacks come through and this is something
as well to reiterate
we've got a new video dropping as well
everything that has been put forward
a lot of conversations have happened in the background
to make sure the core teams
are aligned you know as you've been
what happens to the balanced team so a lot of
conversations have happened with the balanced team how do they
okay with this direction this is what it means for them
this is the implications with the token so those
conversations have been had
the proposals have been put forward and now we've gathered
a lot of feedback from the community
and we've been having a few meetings in the background
to kind of go this has aggregated all that feedback
and what are the next steps whether it be
a new counteroffer
or a variation to the
this is being collated at the moment
in a perfect world I would love
to have the vote by the end of
Jan we presented an
option that's as generally designated
with the icon community and the balanced community
I'm not going to be able to get
everyone to go yes love this
but in general the idea of this
is not to
is to make
unify the community not divide it
end of Jan is the current
I would timeline we pinned in
but that is that can change if there's
a lot of back and forth
but the goal is to be aggressive
in timelines perspective
as long as everyone's happy
asking and we are doing the space
do you know enlighten the community in a better
way so they can understand the concept
better the proposal better
so I was just curious about the timeline
that's why I asked
So Chief one thing
the next thing you did ask me like
that was the vote and then
there's a bunch of work that needs to happen
post the work like say
yeah exactly
so we do have one of the devs
on here on the call as well
if we have a bit of
a smooth transition there
is a bit of work I anticipate
we're hoping around a month worth of work
in terms of smart contracts
extra stuff you know the buyout
how the ICX
is inputted and how people can do
their swap so we estimate
high level around a month's
worth of work that needs to get done
before everything's able to execute
from a technical standpoint
let's work with a month
month, month and a half worst case scenario
yeah cool cool cool
I know there are a bunch of
balance holder
listening to the space
so let's talk about
the bomb buyout
deal the proposed one
the current proposed buyout is
0.5 ICX for
every bomb
is this aspect open to discussion
and there could be
could there be any potential
changes if so
have there been more compelling alternative
suggestions for the buyout
of bomb holders? I've seen some
talks in the
Balance Discord
so can you please
dive into this
topic? Yeah
it's an interesting thing isn't it
the current
market of balanced tokens is
proposed to be
bought out at half
an ICX for every BLN
token, balanced token
and that is at a premium
to the market price
as it stands
and of course like
you'd expect, it's a mixed bag
of sentiment about
how balance
holders feel about this, we're seeing
it in mostly the balanced
Discord really
and I can talk to
it as a balanced token
holder myself, I've got ICX and
balanced token
and to me personally
the buyout at a premium
seems reasonable but then I can
see how there are big
balance holders who feel that the premium
is not high enough and that's something
that's being talked about
and discussed in the
Discord channels and then there's
the proposed vesting schedule
that actually says, hey
after the buyout occurs
you will get your ICX
but you cannot sell it
manage it immediately, you're
going to have to wait a certain amount
of time before you get access
to it and that's another aspect
that people have divided
opinions about, some people may
not care, others want to be able
to access
their funds immediately after the buyout
occurs, so these are two elements
the buyout premium
and the vesting schedule
that have been heavily debated
and to me personally
I'm happy with both
as I would
categorise myself as an average
holder of balanced and ICX
but I can see how if you're
more skewed to one side
or the other, that
the opinions differ and these are things
that are being taken into consideration
after all it is a proposal
you have to find something that works
because as Fez put it earlier
this is supposed to
strengthen and unify
the community moving forward
to give even more perspective
to bring more value to ICX
so that's the goal here
not to split up into camps
and stuff like that
I'm curious about yourself Chief
what you think of the balanced buyout deal
do you hold balanced token?
I don't hold balanced token
but I think
I hope that was
I hope that was shock Fez
keep it PG
that's a question I was
going to ask
after this question
it seems time for now
since the token value
is below the proposed
swap let's say
I don't know
if you know
there might be people who
bought above this price
and was waiting for the
rise of the BILN
it's a complicating that that's why
this proposal
but for now it seems fine
and in the end there is
a you know
bond holders receiving ICX
and the BILN style becoming
a platform for ICX
holder in general so
there is a potential win-win situation
in the long run so
personally I would approve
the current
I didn't mean to switch it up
you can ask the questions chief
he can't help himself
I want to talk about the
vesting period so
so it's not an easy
thing to you know decide on
basically because
you know if you remove the vesting period
there might be a pressure on ICX price
or if you
increase the
vesting period
timeline it would hurt
or you know make angry of the
balance token holders
this question is going to
fast you know about the vesting
would the removal of a vesting
period cause a material
self-pressure on the
ICX price
in what way we could
a vesting period still be a beneficial
balance token holder
so chief I'm not going to comment on
self-pressure on
ICX and stuff like that
I will say
that this is probably the
view coming through the
community that they don't agree with
the locking and the vesting over three months
that feedback has been taken
right on board and
I think part of whatever
you know the counter
things come through
it will just be dealing with that
so that's not a worry
the other side of it is
part of that process could be
well the standard balance holders
don't have any vesting
or anything like that
the vesting could just be for
the core contributors who have
you know a large stake in balance
and that would kind of
answer your ICX self-pressure
question as well because
for the selling pressure on ICX
I can't sit here and give you any
sure-fire answers it's just
yeah but this is
the fact is this is how the community feedback has been
taken on board and these are some of the conversations
now happening in the background to see if it's viable
to do it without the vesting and as I suggested
what the final outcome will be
is post conversations with teams
which Scott is obviously having in the background
but I'm giving you some insights into
how it's going
David anything to add?
No I think he wrapped it up well didn't he Faz?
Okay cool and now it is
the hard question
do you guys think it is a
fair assessment to say that
by buying into this balance holders
have the opportunity to
share not only in balance
success but also in
all future strategic partnerships
of ICON like they
open themselves up to more possibilities
as ICX holders than they
would have as bond holders
So balanced
holders always have
the opportunity to share
future of ICON's strategic partnerships
because they always have the opportunity to
swap their balance for ICX
so if you haven't done that
you're making a conscious decision
to focus on
basically betting on
for balance to show
growth and potential that is going to be larger
than that of
all of ICON
probably because of the cross chain
aspect and the opportunity that
lies there
so as a balanced holder
if you're buying into this and you say
okay I'm going to vote yes
you're saying that
you think the proposal
and by default you're buying into
the future strategic
partnerships of the ICON network
I would say so
but then the
point is mute
in the sense that
there's no
if you vote no
you could say you're not buying
that's really what it is
I'm not sure how I can
maybe I'm taking the question wrong
it's a hard one for us to answer
we're on both sides of the fence
they're holders and at the same time
we're trying to
execute on a direction that
that is saving
or saves is beneficial
for both parties not saving
but your question
I would flip it back and go
as a balanced
if there's no one to do the work and no
liquidity on the platform what good
is that balanced token
and that's all that's how I always
that's the only way I can see it at the moment
right so for me then
this is it's like
protocols go up in flames all the time
like on other chains and you're
left with this dead token
people who know me in the community know
I'm famous for the amount of rugs I've been in
I can't even put a number
to it anymore but
this is where it comes down to for me
you've got a protocol
it is they're telling you, the team's telling you
like we're hitting a bit of a stalemate here
due to everything that's happened
we need an injection in funding
icons kind of gone
yep we also need a flagship that we know
balance is the bomb
what if we unified it and shined it
which many chains are doing
this is not just something random
we've come up with Kojiras or been
doing this Canto and there's
several other examples so
it's kind of a happy medium here
so for balance holders it's like
protocol either
stopped or it can't expand
or we do this merger you're still getting
a token and there's
this aggressive push
paired with the tech to expand it
across other ecosystems and you know
you should already
get an inclination of
if we can get this passed and then
get the teams like
like Parrot 9 people
don't throw them enough credit
how much work they've been doing
just hanging on like through
it through you know the front end pieces
what they do like I cannot throw
them enough credit so like
to be able to then go to these teams and go okay actually
you don't have let's get you funded
let's get working we have
injective we have what have we got now we've got
heck we're Neutron, injective
Ethereum thanks to BDP
Binance Smart Chain
we have so many chains they're literally
just now waiting there I can feel one of
the devs on the call already
sweating as I say this but
yeah we're there we can
expand aggressively
and balance needs
the funding so to me it's just a win-win
it's a low cap coin but if it can't
keep building it's a low cap coin
that cannot
do anything and it will
suffer whereas
this is kind of a win-win you're getting
a buyout yes it's at all time
lows you're still getting a premium on it
and what we're going to see
is ongoing aggressive
building and expansion of it
yeah 100% agree
since we are talking about ADEX
yes balance is a doubt but it's simply
ADEX and liquidity is the
perhaps the most important
thing when we
are talking about ADEX
at the centralized exchange so
it's definitely a win-win situation
for me as well
so we talked about
both sides
sub both sides of the merger
definitely there is a shift of the strategy
promoting this strategy is another
thing so we have discussed the topic
of the day but I'm curious is the
foundation has any plans to promote
the strategy in the blockchain space
when you talk about
promoting this strategy
do you mean the strategy of
collaborating
having a network
collaborating with an app or this specific
instance of balance
and training with the iCon network
could you elaborate on
the question in that way?
this strategy
this merger will
be targeting to bring more
pairs to the DEX itself
so there will be
products of other
chains and
balance taxes
so how will we reach
other token pairs
like the other blockchains
so in the
in the merger proposal
one of the
the purchase of network owned liquidity
so this is the part
where the network
to purchase
the other side of a token
pair for example ICX
and let's say Injective
and then provide the liquidity
on the DEX such that users
can come in and do a lot of swaps
they can do even bigger
swaps without the price slippage
and those trading fees
can then be used or at least
50% of them as proposed
can be used to burn ICX
at the end of the day
after a month, after a year
whatever governance decides
this liquidity could
be pulled again
ICX could be bought back
could be burned
going into circulation
as a token it's simply
functioning
as liquidity to enable
trades and the generation of trading
fees and after which
it can be done with
it can be disposed of
so that's kind of like the proposed
part of the proposed merger
strategy and then
in terms of promoting
the strategy what we do is we
reach out to the foundations
on the other side of the pond and we
tell them what the plans
are for balanced
for the liquidity and we kind of
ask them like hey we would both
benefit if you would
provide liquidity as well
this happened with archway where
we have good
liquidity for the arch B and
USD pair on balanced
but because we collaborated with the archway
foundation we have good liquidity
for the same pair on
Astrovolt which is a DEX on archway
and this enables even more trading because
now as prices between these
pairs fluctuate between these exchanges
arbitrage traders can
come in and benefit from price
difference and kind of keep that
all level
and at the end of the day again that generates
more trading so in terms of promoting
this strategy we do
talk with other foundations
or other parties and see if
we can get them on board with what we're
doing because we
all see that it's a win-win for
both. What is a much
more interesting strategy to actually
promote is the
Hubspoke strategy that
Balance is employing with their
cross-chain expansions
and the reason for that is because
Exco, the
ICON cross-chain messaging
is at the center of it so
the way Balance works is
the core logic remains on the
ICON blockchain and whenever
a cross-chain expansion
occurs a subset of contracts
is deployed on the
partner blockchain
and the logic
gets passed between these
blockchains using Exco
Why is that such
a great harmony?
Because if Balance decides that they want to go
and use IBC or if Balance
goes and decides they want to use
before they'd have to rewrite
all this cross-chain logic because they're using
different bridging protocols. They might want to use
Layer 0 in the future. They'd have to rewrite
all the cross-chain logic
to fit the Layer 0
bridging protocol but with Exco
they only write once
and whenever Exco integrates
with a new bridging protocol, Balance is
now prime to go and use
that to go cross-chain. So the
Hubspoke strategy there in combination
with Exco really works
and that's something worth promoting
because if other types
of apps see that
and want to use it,
it kind of puts Exco into that
pushes it forward and increases
Exco adoption. So I think
in terms of promotion and
strategies, that's the one that we want to be
pushing forward especially once
success is being put
on display thanks to
Balance. Now the deployment
to Archway occurred
last month
and there's more coming
so right now this is the moment
where Balance should benefit
from Exco
with subsequent expansions
and I may have glossed over
the topic or not been
all too accurate in my explanation
so maybe Fez, if you've picked up
on anything, please correct me
and otherwise I'm going to pass it to you anyway.
one thing David
did reveal that I don't believe
everyone knew, so as part
processor with Archway, yes, we've worked with
the Foundation, we've actually gone in
and the goal was to provision
liquidity. One of the
goals we have as part of this, anyone
we're partnering with, we want to try and provide
liquidity for the
liquid staked asset being
injective, it'll be whatever the liquid
derivative of that
chain we picked is paired with BNUSD
and ideally we want
to have the same pair on
another DEX on that chain
so on Archway it is not
AstraVault, it is AstraVault that is
their first DEX to launch
and all these arrangements have been made
unfortunately you haven't
seen the pool there yet because
their DEX has a dependency
on a couple of APIs provided by CoinMarketCap
and CoinGecko
and these have been causing us
a bit of a nightmare. We are working
with CoinGecko to get this result
but unfortunately it's a very
tedious process where
time just keeps getting lost
you can communicate only a certain amount
before you have to wait a certain amount of time
so this process has been ongoing but yes
that was a bit of alpha
that should have happened
on launch day, it's got delayed but eventually
it is, the liquidity is sitting there
unfortunately that price feed doesn't exist
which we're trying to fix so
that's one of the ways we want to expand
partnerships, the other part
Chief you may be asking
there is active web
proposal stage, that's why we're not going
off promoting to other networks, hey
before we promote we need to make sure
it passes so that we don't have this
whole, I don't know, in the Cosmos space
it's very, you can see when it's divided
it becomes very vocal on Twitter
and stuff and I think
at the moment we need to be
very focused and execute, we can't have
a lot of division, my personal view
on that front, so
this particular plan, no, it hasn't
been actively promoted but
in terms of the IBC, like
when we built IBC, we're the second
team to ever build IBC
out of the IBC implementation, the second
team and we worked on it for nine months
and shipped a mainnet product
and it got
published on various platforms
Hackenoon, everywhere else
but again, oh
that's cool, go to use it
how can I use it, there's no
you can't point to an application but
there's nothing there, so this is kind of where again
balance kind of fix it's like, yeah we've done this
we've done this, we've got this
DAP using it
and this is how it uses xcol and this
is how xcol intertwines with the other
interoperable solutions
and this is how you can use dual verification
bam, it's all on display
for an app showing
the actual physical
product using it, then it
becomes a very different story to promote
so I hope that answers
a little bit of
that question around promotion
and then to
finally close this off around
what were you as well
asking, there was one final point
I lost my train of thought now
yeah, I think
no, I was just wondering
about if there
any plans, not
execution of the promotion
if it is approved, if the proposal
is approved
does the foundation has
plans to promote this strategy
so I was just asking about this
but yeah, both answers
are perfect for me
I received
a question from the community since
talking about the strategy
of ICON for the
the increase of emissions
that's another topic
so there are
I have to say
community members are
worried about inflation
so do you
think the community should
scared about this
Yeah, it's a good question
and point to raise
inflation in general
is viewed as scary
I'd say, you know, a lot of people
see it through a lens of supply
so increase supposedly
pumping in more supply
dropping the value of the token
the proposal makes a very good case
for how the
increased supply is used
to facilitate
and it can be
seen in that sense as
investment similar to how
you know,
countries inflate
with their monetary policy
and they invest in their economy
so through that lens
that's what the inflation is meant to do
and a big note
is we see the percentages
in the proposal
and I guess what I want to stress
it caught me by
initial surprise as well until I
realized that like
85% of the proposed
increase is going
into that network-owned liquidity
that we talked about before
meaning that it stays
it doesn't go into circulation
in a sense, when we're done with it
we can essentially
burn it back up and
in the meanwhile it helps to generate
trading fees, so that's kind of a great
example how the inflation
helps kind of lube the engine
that is balanced, make it like
churn in higher gear
and when we're done with it
we take it out again
no harm done, right, so
that's 85% of the proposed
increase already, so
when you're doing your calculations
or your survey
mathematics
how you want to say it
that's something to be
mindful of, so yes
the inflation is
meant to help
balance grow
but not all the inflation needs
to be offset by the growth
because it's being strategically allocated
so yeah, before
in the current situation, all
inflation goes to
staking and validating rewards
and then there is a percentage that goes to CPS
now this all goes
into circulating supply
whereas I think
yeah, two out of the four
inflation
inflation posts
they don't go into
circulating supply, and that's
at minimum 85% of it
so that's my view
on it, and it's either
like everyone can make up their own mind
if they think that that is
smart or if that's worth it, and that's
again why the proposal is online
with all the numbers written out so that everyone
can see them and form their opinion
hopefully people see them
and see that
how it is, so
not sure if I've answered the question
but that was just my view on the inflation
part of the proposal on the
iCon network side of things
and not sure if you want to
dig into that deeper or if you want to ask Fez
I'm curious about
Fez's opinions
when first these conversations
kicked off and there was talk
of using inflation
I actually didn't entertain
the conversation, however
it is not
something I'm a subject matter expert on
so I was keen to learn
and this kind
of idea around it
is from a network-owned
liquidity perspective
at any given time we're taking
a value of one asset at its
time and exchanging it
not giving it away, exchanging it
for an equal valued
asset at the time that we then
hold as a network
and to me
I started thinking
of everything as user acquisition
this is constantly in my head
we're talking all these current plans all about
unifying and being in the same direction but we
still have this big bucket of user acquisition
to kind of fulfill
we need to execute that properly
as well otherwise it won't be successful
and I find
would it be
to onboard users on a platform
similar to like
Karma Finance style where now you
have a network-owned
ICX to go okay hey we want to acquire
this much Ethereum for the
ICON network and
you have this way of people
coming in and doing a small arc
and I'm not saying this is some
of the stuff that's just been tinkered and
worked through to see how we can do
this efficiently but this is one
of the conceptual ideas that
through this process we can expand
our user base as
we expand on chains creating a way
for users to actually provide us
with the network-owned liquidity
then ICON owns and is generating
revenue and as David said
at any given point in this scenario
remove that network vote and buy
the ICX that had
been released to the market and burn it
I have been open to that and after
seeing some numbers and
yeah just working through the plan
definitely
feel it is
it is doable and
a good move especially if we acquire
users on many
of the chains we're going to launch on
the second part of this is
the other aspect so there's a few
other buckets and they're very fractional
so the emergency fund
it's just like we see DYDX
they have an emergency fund
injective various chains they actually
have some kind of insurance or
an emergency fund in place and
normally these funds are viewed as
locked supply they're not circulating
they only would come out
in an event
like DYDX had one with their
wire and hack and that's where then
the emergency fund kicked in
to give confidence
to users who maybe
are worried of using the protocol
if they go hey when using this
protocol don't worry they have an
insurance fund of 50 million
a user is going to feel more
confident of using that protocol
and with their assets versus
it having no kind of insurance
and anything in that insurance
fund at the moment in the emergency
fund sorry is considered
just there as a backstop if
needed so
yeah again though reading the proposal
is keen some of these obviously I've shared
a little bit of my personal takes as well
inflation in general scares me in
this case
we the network
still owns it even if
it is via another asset it's still
owned by the network and cannot be
the only thing that can happen with it is
get moved
back into ICX and burned
so I like the fact
I like the fact that the validator set
staking rewards and CPS
for that matter like CPS gets
worth at ICX price at the moment
of inflation
those numbers haven't changed and this is where
that layer one like if we can strategically
use those funds to actually get projects
delivered that benefit the iPhone network
so be it and god damn we're succeeding
then with CPS versus
what's been transpiring so
yeah rant over
cool cool cool cool cool cool
so I'm opening
the question part
of this space are there
any questions from the community
we have one
listening in 24 super
fan go ahead
you're on mute
by the way
connected now it's connected
hey hello can
you hear me
I think you're good
to good to speak
we are having
a technical problem
Sulemanza let me add him through
hey Sulemanza
he is connecting
meanwhile
Arush do you have any other
questions?
so my question is that
beside the merger of
balance what would you rate
the next biggest
for the development
foundation
the next biggest goal is
actually see increased
usage of balance
and trading fee
burn so merger
would be one
for all the reasons listed
in the proposal but the next
big goal is to actually see
the usage of the platform increase
so you want traders
and people to
see it pop up
left and right and center you want them
to use it and you want them to come back
and continue to use it and that's something
it's beautiful on the blockchain you can literally
see it right so you're going to be able to see
whether that
adoption is happening and I think
that's the main goal
after the merger is complete because that's
essentially what's going to lead to
bringing the value to the
ICX holders it's going to lead to
the burn fees of the layer 1
the X goal transaction
and the trading fees so I guess
my initial answer
there is the next goal
is to increase the usage of
both balance and X goal
and to just add
to that I think
hand in hand more integrations right
so at the moment
we've got IBC in our
pocket and any potential IBC chain
theory a very quick process
for us not as simple as
IBC connecting to other IBC
chains but it is quite
quick now that we've finished the work on that
I would like
I think it's in ICON's best
interest and balanced
once we unify
we need more integrations
right and I don't mean
more adoption of other
interoperable protocols like
we've got wormhole, axle, we've got all these
things like it is
it should be it is our focus
in 2024 to start seeing
how we can get these integrations into
ICON as well because we've
already built if you've been keeping up
with the milestone stuff you know we've built
the adapters and X goal
to be working with wormhole
and layer zero at the moment
the EDM chains they
currently work on not connected
back to ICON but the next step is then to
actually get these interoperable
protocols connected to ICON
and that is also
the primary focus for the network
he's going to defend his back
thank you
thank you very much for
bringing me off
I have two questions that I want
the first question is that
I need to know some
of your features
some features of your project
the second question is that
I need to get the
question is that I need to know the security protocols of your project as we are now for now
there are so many projects before they launch their project there are scammers that they
used to copy their project and scamming people so I need to know what ways did you follow to ensure
that your project is more secure and not from that scammers people thank you very very much
right I guess the the initial answer to that is that you know balance is being built from the ground
up it's not forked from any other project out there plus it has a track record of
um community engagement and functionality right so balance got launched like three years ago
um and it's been very reputable ever since uh quite frankly it couldn't be forked because it's built
in java which is we've got a java virtual machine on the icon uh blockchain so you know that you
don't see that anywhere else it couldn't couldn't be forked in the first place uh if you asked
about the features of the project well to just rewind a bit balanced is essentially an AMM so it
offers like swapping as a DEX but and it also issues a stable coin so you can actually pop in
your collateral in the form of ICX or um other stable coins and and um yeah balance will issue
BNUSD which is then the icon native stable coin and if you look at the proposal you will also see
that in the inflation part there is a BNUSD savings rate mentioned which would then
you know eventually give rewards to people who lock up their BNUSD after it's issued so those
are a couple of the features and then in terms of security I might want to bounce it to Fez he's
maybe a bit closer to that uh yeah sorry I was on me uh yeah look I mean
in terms of security like even our IBC we've we've we've gotten internally now we've got a bit of a
review audit internal audit process um for um everything we're building so I can give you an
example with IBC even balance all the new balance features actually have gone through this process
where essentially when work is complete it's kind of hands down and no other works in progress
dedicated team members who haven't worked on the code then go through official auditing mapped out
process um testing the code and and you know trying to break it um and then in terms of our
IBC we've done that process and that process ran for five weeks so five weeks off the development
time although we used three weeks by the end of it three weeks all the resources on the project
were were um dedicated to no work just strictly auditing um the code and the build and and running
you know kind of all the vulnerabilities that are out there that we could gauge that could impact the
project uh and of course after that we've gone through official audits and this is something I
touched on in the morning session like one of the like I think people know in the community like
we've got an audit and even after audits things have happened um literally right after audit so
in this case with the IBC implementation we actually went to audit firms that that specialize
in like informal systems their primary audit they own the audit in the IBC ecosystem and all they
zone in on is actually the IBC implementation of it and part of that audit process is actually
assessing how the team have implemented or built the IBC integration so fast because we built the IBC
implementation in Java ground up they're actually using BTP blocks or connected blocks or just this
this side chain stuff that we built an icon to make fees more efficient when it comes to running
like clients um they're actually dug into how we've implemented that and re-architected the IBC
bill to ensure that we're sticking to IBC standards and and you know not losing the security that IBC
provides in this instance so I don't know if that's answered your questions but that's kind of some of
the um things practices we have put in place to to do everything we can to make our systems more secure
cool cool cool are there any other questions
I guess yeah yeah I don't see any more from
any of the forums then quickly check the discord if there is any
I'm also checking
nope it doesn't seem to be there was another question regarding inflation earlier today
but I think that was answered
yep yep I think that's it um I think it went well um we six blubbles and three penguins
tried to enlighten the community and it was a great one thank you for attending
and see you in the next one thanks for tuning in guys yeah thanks thanks everyone thanks
thanks dave thanks