FalconSwap AMA with Apollo

February 12th 2021 — Ashwin Somasundaram (@ApolloCEO) CEO at Apollo participated in an AMA within the FalconSwap Telegram group. Below is a report of this AMA

Ashwin Somasundaram
Hey! :)

Tim | FalconSwap
Welcome to the community @ApolloCEO

Ashwin Somasundaram
Happy to be here!

Tim | FalconSwap
@ApolloCEO There has been a lot of excitement in our community about the Apollo Protocol tokenpool and the innovate approach you are taking for your project

Ashwin Somasundaram
We are honored that our humble project has received so much interest.

Tim | FalconSwap
Before we start the questions in the group, Can you start with your introduction and how you started this project.

Ashwin Somasundaram
Absolutely!

My name is Ashwin Somasundaram, I am the CEO/Founder of Apollo Protocol.

I have a nontraditional background as an Assistant Professor of Medicine, Medical Oncologist by practice, and physician-scientist focused on systems biology and tumor immunology. I have a longstanding interest in blockchain adoption for fundraising and healthcare integration.

I have been involved with systems based model development and advocacy for other projects in the space. We wanted to build a volatility solution and this led to the conception of Apollo Protocol which evolved into what we are going to discuss today.

Side note: we started Apollo to be a decentralized charity for cancer research

I hope one day we will be able to add that arm into the lending platform :)

Tim | FalconSwap
That’s interesting! Excited to see how you have ventured into the blockchain space and came up with an innovative approach for creating stable coins and solving a lot of underlying issues we saw with the first generation rebase projects and even early second generation stable coin projects.

Ashwin Somasundaram
Absolutely!
A lot of VCs gave us push back as no one wants to hear the word charity in the blockchain space :)
So the advice we received is to solve the barrier for adoption in the public and this is where volatility solutions came to play. Our team and advisors have a longstanding history and expertise in this area as they worked on some of the teams for both first gen and second gen algo-stablecoins

Tim | FalconSwap
I see your commitment in the charity space and with the adoption of Apollo Protocol this will open up new avenues in multiple areas including charitable causes.

Ashwin Somasundaram
Indeed that along with a lot of other use cases

To get there we needed the ideal volatility solution and to build our long term vision of a “decentralized bank”

Tim | FalconSwap
Alright, let’s start with the questions from the community as they have been eagerly waiting for you to ask about Apollo Protocol and how it works.

Ashwin Somasundaram
Excellent!

Question from PJ
How many team members in Apollo and where is team located?

Ashwin Somasundaram
The core team consists of 5 people. I am located in Pittsburgh, PA, and the others are in Seattle and Vancouver. The team is based in North America and the devs/audit team are based in Europe :)

Question from bobiiione
Question what the difference is between AOX token and AOZ token? Witch token got more chances to grow up AOX or AOZ?

Ashwin Somasundaram

The above players guide gives nice summary on the tokens playstyles for risk/reward and how to use them

AOX is a growth coin that feeds into the stablecoin (AOY) that our future lending platform will be built on

AOZ is is a shares tokens that is for governance and to farming in various pools and for investing with lower risk over a longer period of time similar to a stock share.

Question from CryptoN0ob
Hi @ApolloCEO
Why do you hav chosen FalconPool as IDO platform when there are more hyped platform like Polkastarter, Poolz, Paid Network, … What feature made the difference in your choice ?

Ashwin Somasundaram
Great questions! FSW has been in the space longer and we have unique contracts that we need an experienced team to be able to launch with. FSW worked with us and has the capability in their platform that the others did not. While hype is nice, experience and fundamentals are always good. As the newer platforms establish themselves beyond hype that it will be good to see what they do.

The Salmon (OG Ferg)
Let go pittsburgh represent haha

Ashwin Somasundaram
Go steelers :)

Question from Austin
What advantage does Apollo have over competitors, which distinguishes the project from others, what is its feature?

Ashwin Somasundaram
To answer this I would need to give a bit of a history lesson:

USDT is undercollateralized
DAI is overcollateralized but undercompensated with no incentive for liquidity
USDC is perfectly pegged and ideal, but no incentive for growth
AMPL is 1st gen and prone to “death spirals” and is not pegged faithfully
ESD/DSD are 2nd gen and do not faithfully peg or have full collateral or maintain stability
FRAX is 2nd gen for the closest, their only shortcoming is they are semi-collateralized

No single token can achieve the holy grail of algo-stablecoins to be used in DeFi for Maker, Comp, AAVE or our lending platform/decentralized bank “DELPHI”. However, APOLLO as an interconnected ecosystem of tokens can as it is fully collateralized, decentralized, self-governing, faithfully pegged, with growth incentives

We have a growth coin (AOX) that has a mobile peg and is represented by a basket of weighted assets meant to be a true store of value and hedge against inflation relative to the USD.

This growth coin will also be collateralized by their underlying assets (7 GDPs, 7 top used fiat, 7 highly traded commodities) as we expand. This growth coin feeds into the treasury vault and our stable coin.

The stable coin (AOY) is fully collateralized eventually with real world vaults of fiat forming a decentralized yet incentivized bank that also has an incentive backed by real world assets hedging against inflation.

Question from Cryptowizard
@Tim_falcon — I hope holders that have minimum of 10K for several weeks have a higher chance of being whitelisted?

Tim | FalconSwap
We have something planned for long term holders as well. This one is just the beginning where snapshots are being taken

Question from Joeet
What are your long term aspirations for this project?

Ashwin Somasundaram
These vaults of fiat will be used for real world loans which will be completed on our lending platform “Delphi” after we complete regulatory approval with the SEC, obtain a bank charter and a lending license/lending partner. All of this is linked through our shares and governance token (AOZ). This governance/shares token acts as an off-ramp for the volatility for the other two as an additional barrier to ensure stability.

Delphi is our long term decentralized lending platform that is backed by our fully collateralized stablecoin. This is what allows us to act as a decentralized yet regulatory approved bank.

The fiat that backs AOY will be used for real world lending with future lending partners such as mortgages, auto loans, or student debt. The lack of overhead leads to far more competitive rates compared to traditional banks while allowing for a greater APY for users that hold AOY compared to a savings account holding USD fiat.

Question from Tuan Tran
For the second-gen stablecoins, we have alot flash-loan attach cases for example LBT of LIEN, OUSD of OGN, … What is your team’s solution for this?

Ashwin Somasundaram
Great question! Our lending platform is for real world usecase and not for margin/leverage and have a real world process of application. Flash loans are not possible.

Question from Joeet
Like you alluded to most investees in crypto are currently in crypto to make money. What reason do these people have to invest in a product directed towards charities?

Ashwin Somasundaram
Well the charity aspect will be a for-profit that is years in the making as an arm of our decentralized lending platform which is two years away. Simply put, that aspect will be coming from the team and not the community :)

I believe I have caught up to the questions!

Please let me know what other questions you may have or any I missed! :)

Again our telegram is: https://t.me/ApolloProtocol

Please feel free to ask there after this

if there are any additional questions that arise later

Joeet
Thanks @ApolloCEO very interesting!

Tim | FalconSwap
Thank you Ashwin for answering all the questions

Ashwin Somasundaram
Absolutely!

Tim | FalconSwap
I believe people know much more about your project

Ashwin Somasundaram
We have multiple AMAs in other communities and multiple more partnerships for farming pools and on-chain integrations and discussions with exchanges and fiat ramps as we continue to work towards regulatory approval and expansion. We will continually announce these items as they are confirmed. Thanks!

Question from Crypto N0ob
I saw on your website the logo of Binance Smart Chain.
What is the nature of your partnership if it exists ?
Do you plan to migrate from ethereum to bsc ? It will be a great move with the explosion of eth gas fee :)

Ashwin Somasundaram
Shortly after our ETH launch on the 17th at 8pm PST, we will be launching the entire ecosystem again with liquidity raise on binance smart chain 2–3 weeks after. We have been working with them since January when they reached our to us :)

Question from Tuan Tran
for about the project audit. Will project be audited by the experience team that outside project ?

Ashwin Somasundaram
The project has been audited by Zokyo and we will not launch without their full approval and green light. We have completed internal and external testing and their final report will be sent post-launch

Tim | FalconSwap
Guys, please join the group and announcement channel of Apollo protocol https://t.me/ApolloProtocol to know more about the project and keep upto date with the progress.

Ashwin Somasundaram
Thanks so much @Tim_falcon!

Tim | FalconSwap
And we are all excited to see this project launch on FalconPool and reach a wider adoption in the defi space.

Ashwin Somasundaram
100%

Question from Crypto N0ob
What are your next big millestones ?

Ashwin Somasundaram
Launching on BSC, then ideally DOT and other major chains that cannot mentioned
- addtional pegs for the Yuan and Euro as we integrate fiat ramps in asian and European markets
- complete seamless fiat ramps
- after AOY is connected grow the vaults until we move to fiat FDIC insured vaults
- obtain and complete regulatory approval with SEC registration, bank charter, mortgage lending license/lending partneer integration

Question from Estebva4n
When Moon ? Just Hold !

Ashwin Somasundaram
Our projections suggest the best risk/reward is to stake LP and then compound rewards for more LP to be staked :)

Crypto N0ob
You have a “poor” website (sorry for the formulation) but when will the website be as good as your project? :)
It an important mareting tool !

Ashwin Somasundaram
Sorry about that, our website is a placeholder as it is under construction for our dashboard
Our new website and dashboard has been completed for over 2 weeks but we have not launched it as we need to connect it to the contract. I also hate the look of the current website right now :)

Tim | FalconSwap
If you have any more questions, you can always discuss that in Apollo Protocol’s community https://t.me/ApolloProtocol
Moreover, there are more AMAs planned for the coming days

Ashwin Somasundaram
I think we are good! I was fortunate to catch all of the questions so far :)

Thank you so much for having me!

We are excited to work with your wonderful community

Tim | FalconSwap
Yes, I am glad people got a chance to talk to you before the pool as they can know more about the project before they participate in the pool and hopefully become long term supporters of Apollo Protocol.
It was a pleasure to have you here and It’s been great hosting the AMA with you!

Ashwin Somasundaram
The pleasure is all mine

For more information about Apollo

• Website : https://apolloprotocol.org/
• Medium : https://apolloprotocol.medium.com/
• Telegram : https://t.me/ApolloProtocol
• Twitter : https://twitter.com/ProtocolApollo

For more information about FalconSwap

• Website : https://falconswap.com/
• Medium : https://medium.com/falconswap
• Telegram : https://t.me/Falcon_Swap
• Twitter : https://twitter.com/Falcon_Swap