Men build too many walls and not enough bridges, Joseph Fort Newton said. In Satoshi Club we build bridges! And today we would like to tell you about the AMA session with our friends from Centaur. The AMA took place on October 08 and our guests were James, co-founder of Centaur and Sean, the Co-founder of Centaur and lead the crypto team in SG.
The total reward pool was 3000$ and has been splitted in 3 parts.
In this AMA Recap we will try to summarise the most interesting points for you.
Part 1 — introduction and questions from the Telegram&Bitcointalk community
Mary | Satoshi Club: Hello, Satoshi Club!Today we are happy to announce our AMA with Centaur! @james_CNTR @sean_CNTR welcome to Satoshi Club!
D. | Satoshi Club: hello all! @james_CNTR, @sean_CNTR hello and welcome to Satoshi club!
Serg | Satoshi Club: Welcome to Satoshi Club!
Sean | Centaur: Hey everyone great to be here!
James | Centaur: HI guys, James from Centaur, good to be here!
Mary | Satoshi Club: Could you please introduce yourself and Centaur? How did you both start with this project?)
James | Centaur: I’m James, co-founder of Centaur. I am a serial entrepreneur that started in the Maritime industry a good number of years ago but have since transitioned into deep tech and fintech. By leveraging on the networks I’ve established over the years across Southeast-Asia, I spearhead the integration of blockchain technologies into emerging industries to drive digital transformation and digital banking solutions. At Centaur, I manage most of the business development efforts for the Asian region together with our Singapore team.
Sean | Centaur: Hi I’m Sean, I’m the Co-founder of Centaur and I lead the crypto team in SG. I’ve been in the crypto space for a few years have worked with a number of different project teams in the past. At Centaur, I oversee most of the crypto developments!
Mary | Satoshi Club: Nice intro, guys! Thank you. Who’s idea was to create Centaur?
Sean | Centaur: I would say we actually came up with the concept together as there were quite a few discussions we had while bouncing ideas off each other. Our other co-founders Mark and Raj were both also a big part of helping ensure our plans were feasible, both in terms of implementation and technical development. We’ve known each other for some time now and were both passionate about blockchain technology. Early last year, we decided to work on an unsecured lending platform which then became the underlying framework for ProDeFi, ultimately cumulating in the Centaur we see today.
D. | Satoshi Club: and how long Centaur in development?
James | Centaur: Centaur has been in conceptualization phase in early 2019, we incorporate late 2019. I would say it has been in development for a good 1.5 years!
Mary | Satoshi Club: Ok, how big is your team? Because as i understand it has to be big) developers, lawyers etc)
Sean | Centaur: So far we’ve got about 8 people in the Singapore office that work directly on the DeFi/crypto-related aspects of Centaur. We also have a separate dev team in India that works together with the devs in Singapore to cross-audit the work, followed by a business development team in London that helps with onboarding of partners, mostly established fintech players or licensed entities.
Q1 from bitcointalk user juanes @juaniss on Telegram
You have a vesting period of 10 years for seed investors!!!! How did you manage to convince them to agree to this? It is very risky to wait 10 years in crypto space. It means they trust you and you presented a good roadmap and tech
D. | Satoshi Club: 10 years woow…long run project 😀
Mary | Satoshi Club: I think the longest i ever seen before)
James | Centaur: Our seed investor is a traditional fintech player in London, with portfolio of licenses under their management, that includes Estonia virtual currency wallet license, Czech republic e-money license, Swiss SRO license which is convertable to a full fledge banking license. They are also equity investors, hence having a longer term horizon because time is required to bridge the C-Defi market. Of course, they are also confident in the potential of the team 🙂
Mary | Satoshi Club: Sure, they find something special in your roadmap and presentation) but what about community?) You leave them just 1% for public sale:unamused:
D. | Satoshi Club: you think it’s now enough? 🙂
Mary | Satoshi Club: You know, i like sales:joy: It’s always not enough for me)
D. | Satoshi Club: i feel you)
Sean | Centaur:
Ahh don’t worry about it, even though the 1.39% allocated to the public sale may seem small, its important to remember that they are fully unlocked. This means that on the first day, the public sale tokens actually account for 40% of the circulating supply. If you take a look at the vesting schedules for the other segments, they are mostly also based on longer durations. Team and advisors have 3 year vests with 9 month cliffs and Ecosystem and Treasury are on 4 year vesting schedules.
Mary | Satoshi Club: Your Public Sale was concluded as Public lottery, right?
James | Centaur: that’s right
Mary | Satoshi Club: Are you happy with the results? Are tokens already distributed?
James | Centaur: We are certainly very flattered to have received over 10x the interest from the community. Although it was very tedious for us to filter out about 34000 entries to removes repeated submissions and bots, we were happy that we were able to make this a fair and transparent process for our community. The tokens had not been distributed but it will be soon, there will be huge announcement in the next few hours as well, so do follow us on @CNTR_ANN to get updates!
Sean | Centaur: And it was done fully on-chain! So everything about the lottery was transparent and provable. We even used Chainlink VRF to generate the initial seed!
Mary | Satoshi Club: Yes, i saw this) never participated in such sales, it is something new for me)
Q2 from bitcointalk user gustafsson @jmalton on Telegram
The vision of Centaur is To be the bridge between decentralized and traditional finance. I have seen this moto at several projects. One example is FinNexus: bridging centralized and decentralized finance. Why do you think we need one more project specialized in this? What new do you bring? Thanks!
Sean | Centaur: Hahaha the main difference is in the approach. Our solutions are focusing on cross-chain interoperability for the blockchain space, while also integrating solutions with regulatory compliance through the licenses that we have access to, as James shared earlier.
What this means is that the C-DeFi bridge that we are designing is not just to bring centralized solutions over to the blockchain space, but rather to design blockchain solutions while considering the strengths and potential impacts of traditional finance.
We’re also doing a three phased rollout where the liquidity pools (that are already built) will be deployed first, followed by an oracle network and the Centaur Chain for settlements (which are also already built) followed by the Dapps that will leverage on the frameworks that are already deployed.
Mary | Satoshi Club: So, as i understand you plan to cooperate with banks, am i right?)
James | Centaur: Yes, it is our core ethos to bring the traditional finance user into the crypto space. Not just the banks, also credit companies, payment processing companies 🙂
D. | Satoshi Club: do you have any real competitors on this field? or you working on something unique?
Sean | Centaur: Hmnn I think due to the sheer scale of things that we are doing, its hard to identify one specific competitor to name. The core solutions we’re building are still going to be in the DeFi space so there’s quite an overlap with many of the other projects in the same area, but we do focus more on integration as opposed to competition as we are very ecosystem focused.
Mary | Satoshi Club: Mix of centralisation and decentralisation, hope it is possible, because for me it is always was like blend of fire and water))) but we live in such world and, of course, need bridges)
James | Centaur: We all can have hopes! From our on-the-field experiences, many fintech companies are keen to join the blockchain space and Centaur will certainly make their entry to it seamless!
Sean | Centaur: I prefer to think of it as a blend of human and horse, something akin to a Centaur 😉
D. | Satoshi Club: haha this is great!
Q3 from Telegram user @ion_cristescu
Elrond are my friends from Romania – a great team. When I’ve seen on your website that you partnered with them, it gave me a lot of confidence in you. I would be glad to hear in what consists your partnership with them? Also, What other good partnerships do you want us to tell about?
Sean | Centaur: Collaborating with Elrond has been an amazing experience and we’ve been really fortunate to get the chance to work directly with the team. Apart from the eGLD stakedrop program we just did with them, we’re also working on plans to roll out our ZKP-powered liquidity pools on the Elrond Mainnet once they support smart contracts! One of the pleasant experiences we’ve had was also when integrating Chainlink’s VRF for our public sale. The onboarding process was very seamless and we’ll definitely be looking forward to working with them on the oracle implementations in future!
Mary | Satoshi Club: Any new partners names that you can tell us about?))) We like news here:wink:
James | Centaur: Definitely there will be, shall we start with the listing of CNTR that will be announced in a few hours! There are more in the pipeline and will certainly come to light in due time 🙂
Mary | Satoshi Club: Wow, it’s near:+1: Please, don’t forget to share this news about listing with us) And, of course, we will follow your announcements)
Q4 from Telegram user @jefer_bn
Can you explain what do you mean by measured regulatory control? How can you influence regulations or laws?
James | Centaur: I would not say that it is influencing regulations or law, but rather have proper processes and accountability in the design of our platform that will be more palatable for current regulators.
Mary | Satoshi Club: Current regulators are very rigorous with crypto. What do you offer them for cooperation?
Sean | Centaur: Hahaha just to be clear, we do not offer anything to regulators. I think what James was trying to explain is rather that we are working within the constraints of existing laws and going about the proper processes, such as applying for licenses, ensuring the right capital requirement, performing stringent KYC processes and making sure we our accounting done in a very detailed manner.
Mary | Satoshi Club: Oh, that’s clear for me:joy:
Sean | Centaur: For example, the rollout of the unsecured lending platform will be done regionally, starting with the UK and EU region where we have strong partners who are working in Fintech and Compliance related solutions and have many years of track record under them 🙂
Q5 from Telegram user @lionelos
In what jurisdictions are you operating at the moment? Do you expect to become a global company or to cover just some strategic regions?
Sean | Centaur: We are currently operating in SEA with a foothold in Singapore, and the UK/EU region with our London team and Fintech partners. The solutions will be rolled out in various phases and structures. For example, the financial solutions that are more centralized in nature will have to be based on strategic regions first and slowly expand outwards, whereas the other solutions that are more crypto-centric such as our collateralized lending platform, liquidity pool and upcoming mobile wallet will all be launched globally with a focus on blockchain technology.
Mary | Satoshi Club: In simple words – how it will work? For me, for example) imagine that i am your ordinary user)
Sean | Centaur: Hope this helps a little. Centralized finance solutions (Unsecured lending / Asset Management / Custodianship) -> Strategic Regions. Crypto focused solutions (Staking / Overcollateralized Loans / P2P Transactions / Cross-chain DEX) -> Global. The long term goal is definitely to be a global company though
Q6 from Telegram username @barkadita
In your roadmap you have as an objective integration of EU and UK partners for this quarter. Could you share how is this going and who are your partners in this area?
James | Centaur: We have definitely paved the way for extensive adoption in the EU/UK region, our pilot project includes our partner imiilion, they are a payment processor whose monthly transaction volume is about 200million, we have signed an MOU looking to on-board about 10% of the payment volume onto our network. It will require them to hold a certain deposit amount of CNTR which will support the health of the token ecosystem and also bring in steady revenue for Centaur.
Mary | Satoshi Club: Wow, incredible :+1: Btw, do you already applied for any lisenses?
James | Centaur: Our seed investor as mentioned, have a portfolio for licenses under them including the Estonia virtual currency wallet license, Czech Republic e-money license, Swiss SRO license and UK payment licenses, so this will definitely make our adoption by traditional fintech players easier. In Singapore, we are also in the process of working for a payment services license which will allow us to process, hold and remit digital currencies and fiat.
Part 2 — live questions from the Telegram community
Q1 from Telegram user @Jonahapagu
In a Research done by Blockfyre on Centaur (Prodefi) one of The risks and concerns they pointed out about Centaur(Prodefi) was that it will be hard to bank the unbanked through Centaur’s strategy, as many of these individuals do not have credit scores. One of Centaur’s Main aim is to Drive Mass Adoption do you see this as a barrier in bringing in the unbanked into Defi, and what strategies do you have that will ensure that even the Unbanked especially in underdeveloped developing regions do not miss out on what Centaur is doing?
James | Centaur: For this initiative to bank the unbanked, it is directly led by myself through my network build over my years of entrepreneurship.It has been well thought out, the initial steps would be to work through regional non-profit organisations that have worked on ground with the villages for years and have good data on their source of income, this will allow Centaur to predict transactions between the users within the local community. For unbanked communities like migrant workers, it will be an easy solution as we can work with their employers and predict the amount of credit that can be allocated to them, for example, in traditional finance, the monthly credit should not be more than 40% of the person’s income.
Q2 from Telegram user @K2ice
Centaur has a fixed limit on the total supply of CNTR which is 6,000,000,000. Will Centaur burn/buy back any percentage of these tokens? Or will Centaur distribute these tokens to strong community members rather than burning the tokens or buying them back to drive the price up? What is the reason for your choice?
Sean | Centaur: Although there is a fixed limit, we have allocated them out into a few major categories of which a large portion (38.13%) has been set aside for the Ecosystem and placed into a vesting contract (this can be found in our transparency report). These tokens are meant to incentivize community support either directly through campaigns, staking, block producing and oracle rewards, or indirectly via strategic partnerships with key players in the crypto space. As much as possible, we will try to avoid burning any tokens as we believe that there are better ways to utilize them for the community.
Q3 from Telegram user @baobao265
Why is the $CNTR token necessary for your ecosystem? What kind of a value does it bring to Centaur and in which different ways is it used within the project?
James | Centaur: The CNTR tokens is necessary to support governance measures like voting, it is also used to rewards our network oracles that will be providing crosschain data that is essential to the health of our network.CNTR will be used in a transactional nature for Centaur solutions such as to function as collateral and loans or Dapp fees.
Q4 from Telegram user @chelyabinsk_crypto
You claim to be ”semi-decentralized” and making it as the new standard of DeFi. What does it mean actually to be semi-decentralized? Which parts of your project are centralized and why?
James | Centaur: Centaur strongly believes in the ethos of decentralization and the use of centralized elements in our approach is merely a fail-safe layer. A semi-decentralized model allows us to tap into the strength of decentralization (transparency and accountability) and centralization. A good example of this is the Centaur lending platform. The settlement of loans happens onchain while the KYC and credit review process is conducted through centralized organisations such as credit rating agencies and KYC/AML platforms. This allows us to expand beyond the niche use cases (e.g. lending restricted to over-collateralised loans) plaguing the DeFi space.
Q5 from Telegram user @TVT6VI
My brother is new but he wants to invest his spare money in CENTAUR’s liquidity fund, what are the conditions of participation? Is it easy for a novice like him?
Sean | Centaur: Because of the way we designed the liquidity pools and the use of Zero Knowledge Proofs and Ring CTs, the liquidity pools have to take in fixed denominations for the inputs and outputs. However, we have placed a strong emphasis on user interface and the user experience which will reduce, the difficulty in interacting with the liquidity pool. We’ve also designed a front end which is metamask compatible to help ease the learning curve.
Q6 from Telegram user @Jonahapagu\
Is it true that In the event of a default by a borrower from the platform, the team will pursue such borrower through the traditional judicial process.. Don’t you think that using traditional Judicial processes to resolve issues like this as Opposed to DAO Will hinder people from Using Centaur (Prodefi) and What types of Offences will borrowers commit before they are tried through the Traditional Judicial Process
Sean | Centaur: The use of judicial processes for the enforcement of bad debt is meant only as a last resort. The primary means of reducing the incidences of bad debt will be through the use of the credit review system to determine the creditworthiness of borrowers which in turn will determine the interest rates of loans as well as the collateral-to-loan ratio that the borrower will have to put up. Furthermore, laypersons are more familiar with traditional legal systems as opposed to DAOs. This, we believe, will ease the onboarding process for those who are less tech-savvy.
Q7 from Telegram user @endtimeprophet
Centaur offers under-collateralised loans, however We all know in the DeFi space the problems of OVER COLLATERALIZATION. can you briefly describe this problem and how Centaur deals with it
James | Centaur: We are looking to implement the uncollateralized loan regionally starting with places like Singapore and London where they have comprehensive credit records on the users and we will be able to access the credibility of the users effectively. Once user have established sufficient on-chain records, we can then based it on that and allocate him or her a credit ratio through our proprietary algorithm.
Q8 from Telegram user @jpsarmah
How will the Cross-chain DEX function and what major play will it allow for Centaur’s development?
Sean | Centaur: Before that can be rolled out, the liquidity pools, oracle network and Centaur Chain have to be built and deployed first. The deposits into the liquidity pools are tracked and forwarded via the oracle network to the Centaur Chain and this happens across multiple protocols, not just on Ethereum. Once that part is stable, it becomes the foundation for the cross-chain DEX, where users can transfer tokens from one liquidity pool to the other because the deposits and withdrawals are tracked and transactions can be matched on using the Centaur Chain as an aggregator and settlement layer.
Q9 from Telegram user @joy19x
Most
of investor just focus on the price of token in short term instead of
real value of project. Can you tell us the motivation and benefits
for investors to CNTR long term?
Q: What are the utility of CNTR
and the main real-world use cases? What is the long-term plan for the
5 year Alpha Finance project?
James | Centaur: Yes you are right, unfortunately that seems to be the trend that is in crypto space investments. However, we took our time to select investors that have the same long term goal as us and is aligned in terms of vision. We have build the Centaur platform from the ground up with architecture that is flawless in executing DeFi solutions and our investors were able to identify the huge potential in Centaur, knowing the limitations of current solutions.
https://t.me/Satoshi_club/325293
Q10 from Telegram user @Dmsaly14
Currently attracting real users and mass Adoption is a problem for Blockchain projects. So how will Centaur solve this problem?
Sean | Centaur: One of the issues that Centaur (and many other DeFi projects!) seeks to address is the banking of the unbanked. The unbanked population amounts to close to 1.7B globally and represents a market opportunity of about $200-300B. The adoption within the unbanked population is more than simply a technological problem. We at Centaur understand this and as such we are working closely with the authorities in South East Asia through our local partners. We believe are well-positioned to take advantage of this opportunity.
Part 3 – Quiz Results
In the final part we tested your knowledge in terms of Centaur. They’ve prepared 4 questions for this part. The total reward pool for quiz was 1800$.
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