Sentre x Port Finance AMA recap (September 21th, 2022)
Sentre recently announced a partnership with MeanFi, a non-custodial money market protocol that offers a suite of fixed-income products on the Solana network. Sentre and Port held an AMA session on Sentre Telegram to provide users with more details about Port Finance. Read on to learn more!
In this AMA session, we had the pleasure of having Port Finance's CMO, Mr. YK, join us to answer questions about Port Finance and discuss the risk and the long-term development of the bear market. Here are some of the highlights from the conversation:
Part 1 — Introduction Questions
Q1: Everyone knows Port Finance is a lending protocol on Solana. So, where did the idea for Port Finance as a lending protocol come from, and why did you decide to build it on Solana?
A,: So our founders started working and building on Port Finance just when Solana started. At that time, Solana had no borrowing and lending protocol, so we decided to move on to work on that! As we are building the variable rate lending product, we realized that t lot of product is yet to be built, including the fixed rate lending and interest rate swap.
We decided to build on Solana for a few reasons:
- Solana is a great fit for the Port Finance protocol with low latency and high throughput. Higher speeds enable us to liquidate users much faster, meaning less collateral is required from the user compared to other popular lending and borrowing platforms.
- On Solana, Port Finance utilizes the on-chain order book of Serum, opening up exciting new possibilities for implementing more complex financial products not currently existent on Ethereum.
- With Solana, developers can build using Rust, one of the fastest-growing languages, and with the Port Finance team hailing from a formal computer science background, Rust's cost-free abstract, well-designed type system and handy toolchains complement our expertise perfectly.
Q2: What are the main reasons DeFi users would want to lend from Port Finance, and What makes Port different from other lending protocols?
A: We are working very closely with the major projects on Solana, which includes marinade, Lido, Hubble, and Hedge, to provide generous liquidity mining incentives together with Port tokens to lenders of Port Finance.
We offer a wider range of products than other lending and borrowing protocols. We aim to provide a whole suite of interest rate products. We offer both fixed-rate lending and floating-rate lending. We have a true fixed rate lending product that provides users with ease of mind (the true fixed rate that is non-adjustable within the duration of the loan). For larger users, they will also have the option to state their desired interest rate upfront.
Q3: I know you're planning many things for the upcoming. Are there any upcoming features or events you would like to present to our audience?
A: Right, so for unsure users, we have, over the past few months, launched an innovation zone where we list assets (isolated) from the main pool for riskier assets. This allows us to provide generous liquidity mining rewards even during this bear market period while maintaining the safety of users' assets! We are committed to introducing and listing more assets; we already have a few in the pipeline!
Q4: What role would Port take during a relatively bad or even bearish market condition?
A: We position ourselves as a yield-generating foundation even in a bearish market like now. Our new innovation zone listing assets gives a high yield APR for users who lend their tokens to PORT! Users can also lock in stable yield using our fixed rate lending features! This is all thanks to the projects as well for working together with us and providing generous LM rewards!
Q5: What's your short- to the long-term vision for Port Finance?
A: Our goal for Port Finance is for it to become the one-stop solution for all users' borrowing and lending needs.
Part 2 — Questions from the Community
Q1: What makes you guys super confident about Port, specifically about your native token $PORT in the future? And because there are so many Lending protocols on Solana, including Larix, Solend, Francium, and even Hedge.
A: In any protocol, there will be a lot of competition; an example would be to look at Olympusdao and its forks and many others. Competition is healthy as it fuels innovation; in port finance, we differentiate ourselves by venturing into fixed-yield products. Fixed yield, as I shared previously, is not something that protocols within the space have brought forth, and we are excited to bring more to you guys.
Q2: See your roadmap up to April this year. It was five months ago. Have you updated your roadmap? Can you explain the development carried out in more detail after the roadmap ends?
A: I think roadmaps are a "nice to have". In this space where things are shipping and moving fast, sticking to a planned-out roadmap might not be the wisest thing to do. We have to constantly adapt to things such as macro and other factors in place. If you refer to some other projects like Raydium, Uniswap, and compound, they do not have a roadmap at the moment either. We go with the flow!
Q3: How can Lenders and borrowers be safe under Port Finance? How will the platform ensure that there is no scam against them?
A: Port finance has been audited twice by Brahma and Kuldeski. Audits help in getting a new perspective or new pair of eyes! There is no guarantee of 100% safety in any DeFi or CeFi products. Even Luna, as a whole, collapsed.
Q4: If a project were to copy Port Finance's entire platform and technology for development? And How did Port solve it?
A: I think there is no way we can prevent that from happening. Any projects can replicate lending and borrowing if they want to, in my opinion. What we have is that our institutional and community support is here for us compared to someone who copies and does not have strong foundational support from legitimate people. For us, we will keep innovating and try to implement newer features on top of what we have already built.
Q5: It's often easy for community activities and engagements to die off in this present sort of market condition; how do you intend to keep the Port community (Portmates) active and engaged in products you are building during the bear season
A: When we push forth more innovation zone assets, we are essentially trying to pull users with high yields and get them over to our platform. AMAs are incentivized to keep them active and participate in our events. From time to time,collaborateions with other projects as well, and they help keep users with us! Step by step, we rebuild the community and get them on track with us!
Q6: Most investors focus only on the token price in the short term, not on the real value of the project. Can you talk about the benefits for long-term investors?
A: I think most protocols have this problem right now: essentially, their token price is hard dumped. Which is also attributed to the bear market. I think users need to know that with lending and borrowing, you can easily collateralize and use assets elsewhere while still earning yield on your loaned assets. In the long run, we offer a wide range of services that users can use, like fixed-rate lending that helps users to tide through times where yield is super low and volatile.
Q7: PARTNERS are the most important that strengthen the ecosystems of all projects. Could you tell us about your project partners and their adopted partnership strategy?
A: I agree; for protocols, partners are super important. Right now, we have worked with a few big ones like Hubble, UXD, and Hedge, where they each try to offer their differences within the ecosystem. We try to push for more utility for the tokens they have listed with us when we list them.
Q8: What is your go-to-market strategy? Or who do you see as your biggest competitors?
A: So far, I would say our biggest challenge to overcome is definitely the other lending out there, mainly Solend. They have the biggest TVL there. I think so long as we continue to strive hard and think of new enticing marketing strategies while working with our partners constantly, we will be able to capture back some TVL here and there slowly. We are working on it!
Q9: Do you think the status of the current market will impact your project? Do you have a plan to survive during this period?
A: The bear market is tough for sure! But we have a long enough runway to last us quite a long time. So we ain't exactly worried. Also, we are very prudent and will continue to do so to get through the bear period!
Conclusion
We hope you found this article useful and informative. The DeFi space is growing at an unprecedented rate, and Sentre is pleased to partner with Port Finance to provide our users with the best DeFi experience when coming to Sen Store.
About Sentre Protocol
Sentre Protocol is a DApp Store for All Things Solana where:
- Users can install and use their favorite DApps on a single platform;
- Developers and partners can deliver their DApps through Sen Store, fully use available resources and contribute to the platform with no restriction.
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