Bryan Gross discusses ICHI's stablecoin minting protocol

0:20really excited to dive into ichi the stable coins decentralized monetary authority you really have some interesting initiatives on this community project right now i would love for you to start us off with just a high level overview of ichi in the platform and then we can dive into the details yes our so ichi is decentralized financial infrastructure

0:42it says i'm a network steward i'm not the ceo or founder i was an early member of the community but our vision is to give people complete freedom over how they spend save and otherwise use their money we really see it as completing the vision of the bitcoin white paper wow that's very high level and that sounds

1:08like an ambitious goal but i know that your team has set out a great foundation so far i was reading into the platform and that how it seems like it's primarily dealing with stable coins if you're looking at saving and spending obviously the stability is going to be one of those major factors maybe you can dive into some of the details surrounding you

1:26know into stable coins and how exactly the platform is going to solve those problems yeah we actually saw three major blockers one was price stability i mean when you look at the cost to really doing real business with money you have to have stability against expenses especially the price of labor or goods you have to be able to run a

1:54p l you run a business you understand that but that isn't enough you can have stability and you're just as good as the money you already have you also need to be able to fund adoption you need to be able to provide a better value better interest when people are saving but more more and better discounts when spending and each he has a model

2:20that allows any community to create us but that same community can also grow a treasury of assets that can fund this adoption and then last but not least it is important to be compliant operationally with the rules around the world and aml laws are important kyc laws are important and when you redeem an

2:48e.t stablecoin you're left with a fiat-backed stablecoin that already has those licenses so you so it really solves all three of those problems but yeah it starts with stability definitely and you mentioned being a network steward of the project it really is community-based project and the project itself is really going for you know that decentralized

3:14Model as much as it can and part of that is the creation of the decentralized monetary authority can you talk more about that dma and what that means for the project and how that changes the way that people issue stable coins and use the platform yeah and most importantly it is a you know we used to say business to business system but in this case it's

3:39like a dow to dial system the ichidao does not have a stablecoin like we're the one stable coin project that never bothered to make our own stable coin every stable coin that comes into existence using the ichi smart contracts on ethereum is owned by another community and every single one of those stable coins represents a vote on what to do with

4:05that stable coins treasury now what ichi did do is put together the contracts that make make this fast so a community can go from not having a stable coin and not having a treasury and not having governance over these types of things to having it within hours so something that you know which which really that didn't exist before i mean stable coins there's been over 200 stable coin

4:30projects the last two years alone only 30 have launched and i'm saying we can launch one for any community in just minutes wow that's really interesting and obviously there are some advantages to having this decentralized authority but there also sounds like there could be disadvantages and it does make it a little bit more challenging as well can you talk about those advantages and

4:52disadvantages and that trade-off yeah so which disadvantages well are there disadvantages of you know it's a little bit tougher to have a decentralized monetary authority that's governing the platform rather than a centralized issuance and there's a little bit of differences there and be great if you could elaborate on that yeah i mean i think any time

5:17you have a single entity or person in charge of something it is simpler you know so it would be simplest to create a company and to accept your money as a deposit and to issue you an iou on a blockchain this stablecoin iou so that if you ever wanted a dollar back

5:44you'd come in and ask me for it and my system could give it back to you that is technically simpler but that is also the exact same thing as a bank which defeats the whole point of blockchain or decentralization or crypto so it's hard for me to think of it as any

6:09advantage of that system because that's the system we've had for hundreds of years so in our case you do have to you do have to govern it you do have to pay attention you know you need to elect your representatives you need to you know believe in the community that you are participating in but if you if you do those things it

6:37really isn't more work all of these communities need to manage code they need to manage treasury funds this is just like moving the funds from your left pocket to your right pocket it's no more complex to hold my money in my right pocket than in my left pocket it's just a different pocket yeah definitely and so back to the platform usage just of

7:02being able to create stable coins obviously coin is only good as you know to have value if there's others accepting it and actually having a network value and a means of exchange for it and i know that the ichi platform has already partnered with some different exchanges and service providers to help grow that network can you talk about some of the major

7:23partners that the ichi platform has already partnered with yeah so we the model is dependent upon automated exchanges so just like not being a stablecoin ichi is isn't an exchange either but it couldn't have been built prior to these really deep liquidity pools we've seen in d5 since last summer so those those deep liquidity pools on

7:51automated exchanges allow the community's will their you know their decisions to rebalance or invest they really enabled the community to execute that will those votes without having to create an account of finance or something so we have reached out to all of the top decentralized exchanges and we have some level of relationship you know

8:19again it varies by exchange where that exchange is directly supporting our project with five out of six and by the way the sixth one we're working on we're going to get all of them beyond that we have a few projects that launched with eg their own stable coin during our i guess proof of concept period and we have more projects that are scheduled to launch

8:45as ichi version 2 comes out in just a couple of weeks definitely and i was just going to ask you about ichi version two can can you give a little synopsis for the viewers of you know each version one is live you have a few partners you're working on eg version two what does that upgrade look like and what's going to change and evolve throughout the platform

9:07as v2 is released yeah so with version one given that there was no team cut no investor sale no pre-sale or anything like that it had to launch with a very limited budget and honestly less money than you really need to do these things so a lot of people volunteered their time and energy and resources to get it done but if you're

9:36not embarrassed by your version one when you're launching version two you're probably not doing version two right so what we've been able to do since proving the model in november is we went back and we hired some of the top coders in the industry to rewrite the contracts that took several months we got those contracts audited by quantstamp and solidified

10:01we really re-architected it for the two-tier governance where ichi is controlling the oracles the investment strategies that you know basically the white listed contracts but the communities are in complete control of their money and so that the ability to do all that on chain is really it really comes as part of version two and then the last part and this is the

10:28most exciting part is when we were in version one you had to create a new custom contract for each project that wanted a staple coin now it really the changes weren't that extensive you know you have to plug in a different contract address adjust a few parameters but even if you change just a code comment your audit doesn't apply any longer yeah and so

10:59you would have had to go and get new audits done as weeks of time if you really wanted to do things right but with ichi version 2 there's a factory contract so you put in your scarce crypto you select from the white listed oracle's and collateral options and you will have a quant stamped

11:25audited stable coin in minutes well so that's really the big difference all right it takes a little while to explain because the model isn't changed how the stable coin maintains its peg was proved with version one and that will continue but the difference is like going from a really just a proof of concept to a production device or system you know this thing can scale to meet

11:53the needs of everyone with version two definitely and that sounds like a significant upgrade so i'm looking forward to seeing v2 launch there and more stable coins being produced under the platform now you mentioned that about the eg platform that there is there wasn't a stable coin but there is an ichi token if i'm if i'm not wrong can can you talk about the ichi token in

12:17the platform and how does that work throughout the ecosystem and does it create a sustainable ecosystem for all the participants yes yeah absolutely so the ichi token is there's a supply of five million and that they were that contract that made those tokens minted all five million last november and a day or two later all five million

12:46were transferred to the liquidity rewards contract and when the time arrived to start providing those rewards ichi started coming out of the contract to it to whoever had minted stable coins and deposited their assets to a decentralized exchange so that means that all the people who got ichi from that very first day till now

13:13understood the system participated in it and provided liquidity to it at a minimum and we felt that was important because we really wanted people who understood the system to govern it and each is a governance token when you provide liquidity to those pools the ichi in those pools can be used to vote on all matters of governance right and so ichi that's just sitting on a

13:41centralized exchange or sitting in a wallet not doing anything doesn't get a vote doesn't get any governance rewards because it doesn't get a vote but the ichi that's put to use in the system governing it making decisions otherwise supporting the system gets a vote and gets rewards that's really similarly just so that it is a mission based so just so it

14:05doesn't run out of ichi the emission rate is cut in half a halving if you will just like bitcoin having but instead of bitcoin we knew we weren't smart enough to decide when the having should occur far in advance so the ichi voters just decide when the next one will occur so one happened two three weeks ago and whenever the community decides

14:34it's wise to vote on the next one somebody will put forward a proposal and all of the ichi that's in these liquidity pools that's that's being put to work across d5 will vote on when the next halving occurs and it and it's token weighted so every single vote will influence the timing of it even if it's just by a few seconds very interesting and i do like that

14:59only the active participants are you know allowed to have a vote and if it's if the tokens are just sitting there on an exchange it doesn't really do much for the network so you know you shouldn't really have a say in the network so that's really interesting brian now we are running short on time but i do want to take a look at the platform way down

15:18the road you know five plus years down the road what do you see as one of the key factors to success in the widespread adoption of ishii issuance of stable coins and the decentralized monetary authority yeah so the success of ichi is entirely dependent upon the projects that launch one tokens so if they in their community find value in having

15:47money that is stable against expenses they find value in building up a treasury of their scarce crypto and if upon discovering that value they do a lot more of it each people will be just fine if we're wrong and they'd rather use tether then i guess we'll go away i'm really looking forward to seeing it grow out and especially with this v version two that's coming out you know

16:14it does sound very promising i will be following along with the project if the viewers are looking to follow along with ichi's upgrades and just learn more about the platform and to get involved as well what's the best way for them to learn more the best thing to do is to start by going to ichi.org that's i c h i dot o r g and then at the bottom of the page

16:37you'll see join us in telegram so you can click there and join the discussion sounds great brian i will leave the links for the ichi community and the website in the description box below all the best with the continued growth of the community platform and let's follow up in the near future yes thank you ashton appreciate you having me on the show today

17:06you