AMA Recap: Nova Finance x AscendEX
On January 13, Nova got listed on AscendEX, our first Centralized Exchange! Co-Founders Adam Greenberg and Tom Sichel got invited by AscendEX for an AMA in their Telegram with the community members. Below you’ll find a transcript that summarizes all questions and answers from the conversation. We are very excited for this partnership and we had a great time meeting the community!
Q: For those that are not familiar, can you briefly describe Nova Finance, and what problems you are aiming to solve?
A — Nova Finance is an asset management protocol designed to help make access into DeFi easier. For many, the operations with DeFi and crypto are pretty complex and it can be hard to understand and take advantage of the opportunities available.
Within our platform, users can create nAssets. nAssets let a user provide instructions on how the nAsset rebalances by using market data. For example, volatility indexes can be used to sell an asset as it becomes negatively volatile into something more stable and then rebuy when volatility has subsided. All the instructions and strategies available are designed to reduce downside risk and increase returns over time.
nAsset can also be easily set up to participate in yield generating activities in other DeFi protocols by providing liquidity. On our launch, we will have yield integrations with Port Finance & Saber.
Within our Devnet, we’ve had over 150 nAssets created within our first portfolio nAsset type but there are many more use cases we have planned for nAssets for the future such as algorithmic stablecoins and within NFT’s!
Q: How does the NOVA token function within the platform and why is it needed?
A — The Nova token is primarily a governance token. It will be responsible for making decisions in the following areas:
- nAsset Integrations
- Protocol upgrades and modifications
- Treasury Spend
- Portfolio Curation
- Holding Nova Token may also bring about application specific benefits such as exclusive access to premium features in the future.
In the future, we want Nova to be able to fully govern itself and have no central point of influence or control. To achieve this, we are working on a meritocratic governance model where Nova network participants can evaluate decisions and opportunities based on a range of different factors and values. Users who put forward the best ideas for the platform will be rewarded in Nova tokens.
Q: Could you share the development status and progress of the project thus far? Including the major partners and perhaps some operational data.
A — Currently we’re in devnet and conducting testing and interviews with our community. Here’s some information on the success so far:
- 2300 people signed up for testing
- Over 150 different portfolio nAssets have been made
- Around 97% of our interview and survey participants have said that they want to use Nova as an asset management tool when it goes live
On product partnerships, we’ve already formed partnerships and integrations with Serum, Saber & Port finance. We recently announced partnerships with Supra Oracles and IXswap to add value to our product too. There will be more partnerships announced over the coming months.
We’re also working on an Ethereum version of Nova Finance and aiming for a release in early Q2. This will allow users to manage and program assets cross-chain.
Q: Who will the users/clients be on your projects and what are some examples of use cases for them?
A — Within our MVP, there is a focus on creating nAsset portfolios. These portfolio’s can be designed by anyone and automated to bring about the best returns through monitoring trends and smart rebalancing. During our product design research we’ve found a lot of interest from experienced crypto investors through to complete newcomers, high net worth individuals and financial institutions looking for crypto exposure.
For more experienced crypto users, being able to automate strategies that they would have to do manually while also sharing and earning rewards from people who join their portfolio is very exciting and valuable to them.
For less experienced users, being able to participate in successful portfolios created by experts and being able to trust that their investment will follow a secure and automated path is very valuable to them and we’ve already built up a healthy list of people looking to use our protocol when it goes live.
Q: What is your strategy regarding attracting more users to your protocol?
A — There are a few ways we’re bringing people into Nova:
- Referral Codes — If you create a portfolio, you can earn 10% of all the yield generated by anyone who deposits into your portfolio. It’s a great way to onboard friends or promote within your online audience!
- Key opinion leaders — We’ve begun working with a really great group of people who we’d consider to be pillars of the crypto community. Each of them has a great level of experience across Crypto, DeFi and Solana and want to create portfolios and promote Nova to their wider audience.
- New ways of assessing and promoting Nova
Like mentioned above, retail and institutional audiences have different requirements from crypto native people and will want to interact with Nova through different devices and application types.
They also pay attention to different things from crypto native people and value information they find from PR and physical advertising over medium articles and tweets for example.
It will be really interesting to take Nova down this route and adapt Nova into something that anyone, anywhere can use!
Q: Let’s talk about the current landscape of other projects doing something similar. What separates you from some of the competitors?
A — There are a few other portfolio orientated platforms out there that we get compared to such as Enzyme Finance and Solrise. However, as an asset management protocol with the ability to create synthetic assets, we see them potentially more as collaborators in the future as they can incorporate our technology into portfolios they provide to users. We’ve actually had some early conversations with some of these protocols about the possibility of an integration.
The main benefit to Nova is its flexibility. Any aspect of the asset can be programmed and adapted over time as the investment landscape changes within the crypto ecosystem. Many other asset management protocols are fixed or depend on human interaction to change over time. Nova is fully autonomous and gives users (and other protocols) assurances and trust over the assets and what activities they will carry out.
Q: What unique experience does your team bring that puts Nova Finance in a position to be successful?
A — We currently have a team of 20, working from software to business development. We’ve got a really great mix of traditional and decentralized finance experience. I’ve personally been investing and trading cryptocurrency since the end of 2013. Myself, Tom and our core dev team have been working together for 4 years in a previous company so we know how to work together well and build great software!
We’ve also got a fantastic advisor and investor network who have been really valuable in helping us launch the project. You can learn about them all here: https://medium.com/novafinancedefi/nova-finance-investment-round-successfully-closed-30ed21ff8ae9.
Q: What does success look like for Nova Finance? What are the biggest risks and challenges Nova Finance will need to overcome to consider the project successful?
A — Nova’s success comes from the amount of people who use our protocol to connect to the cryptocurrency space and generate some kind of return from their investment.
One of the biggest challenges we have is ensuring that we can keep up with the innovation within the space. The more integrations we have for yield and strategies, the more valuable Nova is to the community while getting all the other advantages that Nova brings.
The other big challenge we have is in releasing our EVM version of Nova. Opening up a wider range of assets that users can invest and automate will deliver greater value and increase the amount of people who can and want to use Nova.
Q: Can you please elaborate on the goals you are aiming to achieve in 2022?
A —As you can imagine, there is a lot planned!
First of all, the product release is scheduled for early February. Devnet has been an amazing experience so far and we’ve gained a lot of valuable feedback as people try out the product, I would be willing to say they’ve helped make the product about 30% better and we’ve not even finished our feedback yet!
There will also be liquidity mining released during this time where anyone who creates an nAsset portfolio on the platform can begin earning Nova tokens. A portfolio can consist of any major Solana asset so there is a lot of flexibility. Distributing the Nova token is really important for the launch of our DAO framework and building a strong community around Nova as this is what will drive the success of the protocol and allow us to tackle new markets like institutions and retail audiences.
We’re also looking to deliver on the partnerships we’ve formed around product such as Serum, Supra and IX and the wider partnerships and relationships we’ve been building such as those with Alameda, Animoca, Ascendex and others who have began supporting our project in the last few months. If we can capitalize on these relationships, it will drive greater development and growth within Nova for our community.
Q: As a non-project-related question, which sector of crypto markets excites you the most?
Adam: “I find each new sector that emerges out of crypto super interesting, gamefi recently has been cool and I’d love to explore more ways that Nova can get involved in this space. My heart is always with DeFi though, the DeFi ideology of open financial operations for everyone is really important and I’m always thinking deeply on this subject. There is a lot more for DeFi to do within the world and I’m hoping Nova can be a big part of that!”
Tom: “My interests lies in new funding routes for innovation, for example Token Launchpads like Solanium or secondary markets like FTX. Besides that I like the aspiration or intention of DAOs, more than what’s actually available at the moment. Algorithmic stable coins and social tokens are also in my interest, these tokens are based on converting basic needs into tokenised vouchers or the intention of community tokens. And last but not least the Metaverse, not sure about that yet, I’m still waiting to buy a VR headset!
Community questions:
Q: Have you had audits done to ensure the security of the Nova Finance?Which security firm did you work with to achieve this? What kind of security solutions do you have?
A — We’ve carried out our first unofficial external audit at the end of December. This was mainly to evaluate the code and make sure it was as robust as possible before entering our full audit. Official audit will be started pretty soon, we’ve been evaluating the audit companies to figure out which will be best for Nova, especially as we’re a rust based protocol. Certik, Halborn and others are all in the mix.
Q: You said that one of your primary focuses right now is yield generation. The opportunities that give users a return on their assets are few or not enough. What does Nova Finance plan to do in this area?
A — Solana ecosystem is thriving with high and consistent yield right now. You’re right that might not last forever but I think the range of assets and yield strategies we will have enabled should mean there is always a return to be had on that front. Also, there is the yield that will be able to be generated within Nova through staking, if you use our protocol, you will earn rewards in Nova which will boost the overall returns you make.
Q: What is the advantage of working with Saber and Port financing for high and consistent returns?
A — Saber and Port are both showing consistency and good levels of user adoption, they also both provide relatively low risk yield generation opportunities in the form of stablecoin swaps and collateralized lending. They have some of the best chances of generating consistent returns in the space from our analysis 16:00 Adam | NovaFinance | LongGone ® | Platforms like Axie infinity have made the Play to Earn (P2E) mode… We’ve spoken about this a little in our community AMA’s but as our governance model is going to be heavily orientated around meritocracy, it means that hopefully the best ideas will rise to the top and be prioritized. I think that opens up an opportunity for Nova to become Govern to Earn (G2E). It means that you don’t necessarily need lots of Nova tokens to participate and earn rewards in governance. If you have good ideas, you will be fairly rewarded.
About Nova Finance
Nova is a programmable asset framework that allows people to access DeFi without having to learn complex financial management skills. Within the product, users can create a portfolio of assets which auto-generate returns through yield strategies while auto-executing on investment strategies such as dollar cost averaging, take profit calls and much more.
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