Launchpool AMA Recap — Pollen
Launchpool x Pollen AMA Summary
Place: Launchpool Official Telegram Community
Date & Time: April 1st, 11:00 UTC
Guests: Maarten Ectors, Decentralisation Lead at Pollen DeFi
Host: Jean-Marc Griffith (Launchpool Team)
Launchpool was excited to host Maarten Ectors, Decentralisation Lead at Pollen DeFi for an interactive Ask-Me-Anything session with the Launchpool Community. This AMA comes in anticipation of the Open-Beta launch. This session lasted approximately 1hr, and consisted of questions from the Launchpool Team as well as questions from the Community.
Questions from the Launchpool Team
Jean-Marc:
Hello and Welcome all #LPOOLers,
As many in our Community already know, today we have an AMA session with Maarten Ectors, Decentralisation Lead at Pollen DeFi.
Pollen DeFi is a first of its kind truly decentralised next-gen protocol where the community builds reputation and earns rewards by collectively managing asset portfolios and associated ‘asset pool tokens’.
As always, the chat will be muted for roughly 30 mins whilst we ask the pre-prepared questions. After this, we will open up to questions from the Community for another 15 mins. We will also enable “Slow Mode” for all questions.
Welcome Maarten!
Maarten Ectors: Thanks for having me.
Jean-Marc: The pleasure is all mine. Let’s jump right in, please could you give the Community a quick reminder of the Pollen DeFi project.
Maarten Ectors: Of course. Pollen is like fantasy football but for crypto investors. You can create virtual portfolios and play against others. You get rewarded if your crypto portfolios beat the market and other investors. If you are one of the best then you can climb to the top of the leaderboard and become a top Pollenator.
Others who want to learn from the top pollenators can delegate their PLN into following them and by doing so share 20% of their profits with the Pollenator. This can enable top Pollenators to substantially earn more PLN than if they would invest their own PLN only.
By knowing who is the best and what they think will be market beating portfolios, we can now make aggregations of the top portfolios and soon we will allow asset pools, which are similar to indexes, to automatically follow asset allocations of the top Pollenators. So by investing into one pool token, you can automatically follow a combined pool of assets which the top Pollenators expect will beat the market.
Hope that helps.
Jean-Marc: Yes it does. I actually took part in the Beta myself, admittedly I didn’t get very high on the leaderboard.
Maarten Ectors: Keep on practicing 🙂
Jean-Marc: Could you tell us about the main developments since the raise?
Maarten Ectors: We did the biggest raise on ROCO FINANCE in the history of the platform, the $PLN token was launched on Trader Joe and Ascendex. The Pollenators are in private beta and we had over 1,000 active users use beta.pollen.id.
We have worked on making the beta.pollen.id a lot better and added some amazing new features. Next week we will open the beta to every one.
Jean-Marc: That’s excellent. I’m looking forward to seeing how I stack up to more competition. How are you tracking against your roadmap? Could you please talk us through the next steps.
Maarten Ectors: We had a bit of a delay with launching Pollen to mainnet among other things because our audit team was in Ukraine and we had to switch. Next week we will open the Pollen beta publicly. The new beta will have many changes over the current beta. Delegation is working. Reputation has improved. Staking PLN via vePLN. The overall application has been made easier for first time users. Rebalancing has been made substantially cheaper.
We are working now on two new big features:
Leagues — compete against others in private leagues, e.g. against your family and friends, your colleagues, other DeFi/GameFi/Metaverse/ECO experts,… Afterwards different leagues can also compete, e.g. Avalanche vs Polygon.
Asset Pools — the automated indexes which take the input from the top Pollenators (inside a league), allow anybody to buy the pool token and convert their investment automatically into an automatically balanced asset portfolio based on input from the top Pollenators.
Jean-Marc: This is quite interesting. I have several local communities that focus on trading and I’m sure those in our Launchpool TradeChat would welcome the opportunity to challenge each other in a fun and competitive environment.
I’ll be looking forward to the launch of those two new features.
Maarten Ectors: Let’s create a Launchpool league!!!
Jean-Marc: I like the sound of that! What are the potential barriers to the project hitting its roadmap targets in 2022? And how are you preparing for these challenges?
Maarten Ectors: The next big milestones are mainnet launch, leagues and asset pools. We will soon move from launching; to scaling Pollen. This will bring a set of new challenges which we are now trying to anticipate and mitigate the risk of them occurring.
Mainnet is foreseen for the end of the month.
Jean-Marc: Great, I can’t wait! 😃 In terms of marketing, what plans do you have in store for 2022?
Maarten Ectors: Lots. The mainnet launch, announcement of important partners having their own league, and asset pools. New features based on customer feedback. The creation of an ecosystem of partners around asset pools.
Anybody wanting their own league should reach out.
Jean-Marc: You’d definitely be hearing from me. The opportunity to gauge individual performance against the market and others is great.
My next question is this; what would you say is the best thing to do with the token at the moment? Should our Community be staking for example.
Maarten Ectors: Through the new vePLN staking mechanism, users will be able to gain extra rewards. However the most important utility is to participate either by being a Pollenator or a Delegator and have fun using PLN.
Jean-Marc: In that case I really need to hone in on my skills and climb that leaderboard!
Maarten Ectors: You will want this:
Jean-Marc: 🤩 I’ll get there. Can you talk us through the longer term vision for the token, how it interacts with the industry and what are the uses within its own ecosystem?
Maarten Ectors: PLN is used to stake and rebalance portfolios. It will also be used to launch asset pools. Via vePLN staking rewards can be obtained as well as other advantages.
We expect leagues to give a lot bigger utility to PLN because each community, friends/family circle, event, VC, hedge fund, crypto category, sector,… can have their own league in which you can see who is the best crypto investor.
Asset pools will have their own token. When you buy the pool token, your funds will be swapped for the underlying assets the pool holds. When you return your pool token, the reverse swap will happen.
Pollen is actively looking to integrate many different chains and DeFi project. This will bring more utility to Pollen as well.
Leagues will have their own league pool, e.g. the best DeFi investors will determine the assets in the DeFi League Pool and with one DeFi Pool token you can buy into this ecosystem.
Jean-Marc: I’m sure our Community would have a few questions in regard to this. Do you have any upcoming news or partnerships you would like to share?
Maarten Ectors: Open beta next week at beta.pollen.id
Mainnet end of the month and lots of exciting stuff is coming afterwards. One very big name will be announced soon but unfortunately I can’t talk about it yet.
Jean-Marc: Great. I’m already following your socials, so I’d be looking out for that big announcement. For those newer to Pollen DeFi, where can we join your community to stay updated?
Maarten Ectors: Many places:
Twitter:
Telegram:
Discord:
Medium:
Jean-Marc: Great. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions Maarten.
I will now open up the Community to questions from the floor. Please be reminded that we have “Slow Mode” enabled and will only be answering questions related to Pollen DeFi. Any other questions can be answered in our 24hr dedicated Support Chat.
The Floor is Now Open❗
Questions from the Launchpool Community
Question: Will we have a chance to make single stakes without creating a portfolio on the platform?
Maarten Ectors: Yes via delegation you can stake $PLN into following the top Pollenators.
Question: At what stage are you on the roadmap, what are we hoping for in Q2?
Maarten Ectors: Successful mainnet launch, leagues and asset pools on testnet are all planned for Q2.
Question: Will there be an educational aspect to the beta? Would i be able to learn more about trading crypto?
Maarten Ectors: Very good question. You will be able to understand how the top Pollenators invest. In the future we are exploring to also share the why they invested with delegators.
Question: Do you plan of getting more use case for pollen in the future… Games can be boring sometimes.
Maarten Ectors: Pollen is on one side to have fun while investing or learning to invest and on the other side to simplify investing, e.g. buy one pool token and get exposed to a combined portfolio.
Question: Knowing that their investments are safe is one of the most important concerns for investors. What steps has Pollen DeFi taken to protect users?
Maarten Ectors: Security of the Pollen platform is key. We have used automated tools to review the code. We are now doing multiple audits with multiple parties (two external companies and one internal person who never saw the code before).
Question: Revenue is a very important, aspect for all projects, to survive and maintain the project/company. What is the way to generate profit / revenue of token? What is the income model?
Maarten Ectors: Great question. For the leagues we are looking into either a commission or entry model. For asset pools we are also exploring entry and premium modules. In all cases we are looking to convert Pollen into a decentralised platform that is economically sustainable but also low cost.
Jean-Marc: If the Community has any more questions or if a question is unanswered here, please hop on over to the Pollen Community to have it answered.
Once again, thank you Maarten for your time in sharing all the info and we can’t wait for what’s ahead!
Maarten Ectors: It has been an absolute pleasure to participate today and if the Launchpool Community is interested in a Launchpool League, I’d be happy to accelerate that.
Jean-Marc: Excellent. Thanks to everyone that participated!
This will be the end of our AMA.
About Pollen
Pollen DeFi is a first of its kind truly decentralised next-gen protocol where the community build reputation and earn rewards by collectively managing asset portfolios and associated ‘asset pool tokens’. Great minds don’t think alike. They think together.
About Launchpool
Launchpool leverages communities, knowledge, expertise, contacts and capital to provide crypto projects with the best possible start to life, maximising their chances for success in this fast moving & dynamic space.
