This AMA took place in the ndau community Telegram group.
John Lester
Time to kick things off. Welcome to our AMA!
We’re very happy to have Ken Lang here,who will be answering your questions about ndau. We received a lot of questions from the community, so we’ll be going through them one at a time.
Ken, can you introduce yourself briefly to everyone here?
Ken Lang
Sure! I have a background in blockchain, machine learning, and monetary policy. I was an early member of the ndau Collective about 5 years ago where we designed the basic principles and architecture that were to become ndau in that group. Today I am the CTO of Cosimo Venture Partners and I am also a delegate on ndau’s Blockchain Policy Council.
John Lester
Great, thanks.
Let’s dive into the questions. I’ll be posting the questions we received from the community and then Ken will answer them.
Question #1: How does ndau compare with Ampleforth?
(from @mr_ramen)
Ken Lang
One way ndau is different from Ampleforth is in the contraction part of adaptive monetary policy. ndau’s philosophy is that an important part of stability includes the gradual inclusion of a currency into contracts, denominated in that currency. This is a big reason people hold USD in general – to pay near-term obligations denominated in dollars when they don’t wish to be caught short because of fluctuations between assets. As an example, if someone will be obligated to pay 100 ndau at a future point in time, according to a contract, that amount is fixed. With ndau, if you have an amount of ndau in your wallet sufficient to cover that 100 ndau obligation, it won’t involuntarily be subtracted from due to a contraction monetary policy the way Ampleforth does, so you won’t be caught short. ndau’s contraction (“burning”) only happens when defined actions by the owner occur that they have a choice over.
John will be posting a link to a more general comparison chart between the two currencies.
John Lester
Thanks. Here’s an ndau – Ampleforth comparison table that sums things up. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1McnuGaZyloHAIb0z0Gwt7akUlnms-KGaDdbdIaDAr6Q/edit
ok, next question
Question #2: ndau collective seems a very great initiative for a long term plan for the project. Can this be better explained? With focus on benefit to project, community, selection of members etc
(from @lilguap)
Ken Lang
The ndau Collective began a few years ago as a group of experts in different disciplines who believe blockchain is the solution to fixing the issues with our non-digital institutions that make us all dissatisfied with them today and making them more effective and resilient against compromise. ndau the adaptive long-term store of value staking currency is the first such blockchain institution, needed for the others to function. The ndau Collective serves as a loose think tank group to continue to provide analytical and architectural advice for the project and allows for anonymity of its members so that they don’t have to worry about accidental perceptual conflation of their involvement with ndau with that of companies, institutions, or other organizations to which they may also belong. If you have relevant expertise and wish to get involved, please drop us a message!
John Lester
Thanks Ken.
Question #3: what would you say is the best and focal use case for ndau?
(from @Fiveon1t)
Ken Lang
Today, it’s as an adaptive long term store of value, and as that proves itself, as a staking mechanism of accountability in digital institutions and in DeFi applications. There is an infographic with more info on use cases at: https://ndau.io/use-cases/
John Lester
Thank you.
Here’s a pic of that infographic in case anyone wants to see it in chat:
Question #4: How can I get involved and run a node? What is the amount of ndau that needs to be staked? What is my potential earnings?
(from Steve)
Ken Lang
There are 2 types of nodes, verifier nodes and validator nodes. Validator nodes offer the ability to stake ndau and then earn rewards. The ndau code update required to allow anyone to run a validator node is almost complete and we’ll make an announcement when it’s ready. For now, anyone can run a verifier node. Verifier nodes do not earn ndau rewards, but running a verifier node will help keep the ndau network more robust and distributed. You can learn more about how to run a verifier node by either looking at the ndau open source code repository on GitHub (https://github.com/ndau/) or following this easy guide if you have MacOS (https://ndau.io/knowledge-base/ndau-guide-setting-up-a-verifier-node-on-macos/)
John Lester
Thanks Ken. I wrote that guide for MacOS, and I’ll be writing more such guides for people who want to run validator nodes once things are ready. In the meantime I’d also encourage code-minded people to really dig into our ndau repo on GitHub. Lots of information there in the readme files as well.
ndau is open source, so it’s all there. 🙂
Question #5: I see that the decentralized advisory body for ndau just became re-approved through a referendum. Is there a minimum or maximum of tokens to hold to become a member of BPC? Also if it is duration , how long ?
Ken Lang
BPC delegates must post a stake of a minimum of 1000 ndau tokens to become delegates and the duration of staking must extend at least one year beyond term of service. The stake is subject to forfeiture in the event of bad faith violation of ndau principles.
John Lester
For those of you who want to learn more about the BPC, you can find all the BPC meeting notes, schedules and announcements on the BPC’s website here: https://blockchainpolicycouncil.org/blog/
I also post links to all BPC meeting notes and announcements in the Telegram group.
Question #6: Correct me if I am wrong but I read in the BPC notes they are considering increasing supply to 40 MM total NDAU going against the very concept of long term value/storage, not to mention 25% dilution of current holders. There was never any mention of 40 MM total NDAU anywhere in the white paper, please clarify, thank you.
(from Alejandro)
Ken Lang
Looking at the posted meeting notes for that meeting, I think I see the cause of the confusion. The existing monetary policy is that there was a starting reserve of ndau of 30m, all of which is to be sold according to the prespecified price curve as demand warrants. Ecosystem Alignment Incentive (EAI) ndau, used to pay rewards for various incentives, does not come from that reserve. EAI ndau comes directly from the protocol itself, the same method new bitcoin are manifest through their own (different and non-adaptive) monetary policy. Because EAI is being generated at the same time as other ndau may be being burned, however, this doesn’t necessarily inflate the monetary supply unless the difference between the two is net positive. The 40m hard limit in total supply of circulating currency was defined in order to ensure there was a limit to this possible inflation.
The consideration by the BPC is not to increase either limit, but to see how this general EAI mechanism might be used to further incentivize growth and adoption of ndau in ways that all holders should find worthwhile.
John Lester
For reference, here are those BPC meeting notes: https://blockchainpolicycouncil.org/2020/07/16/bpc-meeting-notes-07-08-20/
Question #7: NDAU seems like a great asset to be used as collateral for any lending. Are there any DeFi projects accepting NDAU as collateral for loans of other cryptos?
(from Steve)
Ken Lang
Not currently to my knowledge that have been announced yet. That’s an area of great potential and definitely one we all should encourage. ndau is community driven, so everyone can help spread the word about such key use cases.
John Lester
Things happen very fast in DeFi, and the community can definitely help spread the word about how ndau could help the DeFi ecosystem. We have an active presence on Twitter, and there’s a lot of DeFi conversations on Twitter, so that’s a good place to raise awareness!
You can follow ndau here: https://twitter.com/ndaucollective
And if you’re just starting to learn about DeFi, here are a couple educational resources I recommend:
https://academy.binance.com/blockchain/the-complete-beginners-guide-to-decentralized-finance-defi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEkXIcBKK9c
OK, next question.
Question #8: What are the problems ndau intends to solve in the world of DeFi?
Ken Lang
DeFi has raised a great deal of interest in the area of banking innovation, especially around new ways of implementing lending/borrowing and earning interest. Unfortunately there’s also a great deal of confusion around how these new instruments work, and most of them are far too complicated for an average non-trader to benefit from. ndau has a number of ideal roles in the DeFi ecosystem, from serving as a easy to use income source (users earn extra ndau – called EAI – just by holding and/or locking ndau in their wallet for periods of time) to leveraging ndau as the underlying collateral in future DeFi smart contracts. In addition, ndau has the potential to integrate with a wider Cosmos-based ecosystem of DeFi components since, like Cosmos, ndau is based on Tendermint. Good thread here on the idea of a Cosmos-based DeFi ecosystem: https://twitter.com/MessariCrypto/status/1292807916421079047
John Lester
That Twitter thread by MessariCrypto is very interesting to dive into. DeFi doesn’t have to be limited to just Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens. And I think the broad crypto community is starting to realize that.
Question # 9: Lately there is a lot of talk going on about volume on centralized and decentralized exchanges. Is there any concrete plan about bringing NDAU tokens to more liquid exchanges?
Ken Lang
These discussions are always ongoing, and as ndau grows, ndau groups seek larger exchanges with greater exposure and liquidity. As this takes place, ndau becomes increasingly positioned to become a quote currency much like a stable coin but without being tied to a fixed amount of depreciating fiat currency.
John Lester
We’re excited that we were just added to Vinex recently. Announcement here: https://medium.com/vinexnetwork/ndau-listed-on-vinex-network-exchange-a6cb507fab22
And you can always find links to all the exchanges ndau is on here: https://ndau.io/buy-ndau/
Question #10: There is a lot of talk about crypto influencers – do you have any plans to bring them on board and if so when? Influencers can really take the word about a project to the broad audience of crypto investors.
Ken Lang
We are starting to get noticed by influencers and we are seeing more interaction and organic introduction of ndau to new folks on telegram and twitter. As our adoption grows we believe a greater number of influencers will support it further.
John Lester
Thanks Ken for all these answers! We had 45 min for this AMA and we’ve gone a bit over that, so thank you for your time and helping the community better understand ndau and the opportunities.
Ken Lang
it was my pleasure! thank you everyone for your attention and support of the ndau project.
John Lester
We have more questions still in the queue, so we’ll organize another AMA soon to get to those we didn’t have time to address today.