In this Telegram AMA recap, you’ll find insights about the Pollen project. In an event hosted by Shaun from MEXC, you will meet Frederico (Quant Analyst) and Maarten (Decentralization Lead) from Pollen.
Introduction:
Frederico: I am Frederico. I hold a Bachelor in Mathematics and a Ph.D. in computational and mathematical modeling from ETH Zurich. Over the last 15 years, I have been working on numerical methods, high-performance computing, optimization, meta modeling, and machine learning in several industries. I work as a Quant Analyst at Pollen, precisely on the methods that connect the signals created in the Pollen DAO with the investment thesis running the Indexes.
Maarten: I am Maarten. I have been doing innovation for 2.5 decades. My first interaction with Ethereum was presenting on DevCon1 in 2015 where I shared the same stage as Vitalik. I met a small startup called slock.it there, took them to Mobile World Congress 2016 where they won the best IoT startup award and later became infamous for launching The DAO. Afterwards I worked as Chief Innovation Officer for Legal & General (UK biggest asset manager with £1.3T AUM) where I launched among other things the world’s first reinsurance on blockchain. In 2021 I advised two of the biggest coin listings of the year: Casper Labs and Human Protocol. I lead decentralisation and commercial activities at Pollen.
Questions from community:
Question 1:
Shaun: What is Pollen? Can you share with us more in detail?
Frederico: Pollen’s primary goal is to disrupt the asset management industry by providing highly performing decentralised index funds at very low costs, which we believe will make crypto investment much more accessible to the masses and institutions.
To achieve this goal, Pollen is taking a unique approach in which we incentivise traders to compete in our virtual asset management platform, think fantasy football for crypto investment. The top traders are then ranked using our Pollen Skill algorithm and their positions aggregated to provide signals that inform indexes holding real assets how best to rebalance. Resulting in a dynamic and hopefully performant decentralised asset management system. These traders can earn a profit share from others who delegate and copy-trade them.
In the future we want top traders to become teachers to others so the whole community improves and the trading signals become better in quality.
Maarten:
We will shortly introduce a new feature called leagues which will allow anybody to create a group for traders to compete. You will be able to define the crypto tokens that can be used, e.g. only DeFi, GameFi, ECO,… As such you can have a DeFi league and show you are the best DeFi trader. You will also be able to create leagues with family and friends, colleagues, … Each league will have a leaderboard. The top 10 traders inside a league will provide the ranking for the actual league so it will be possible for different communities to have competing leagues, just like football clubs. So Pollen will become closer to fantasy football. The best leagues will get their league index, hence with one index token, e.g. DeFi index token, you will be able to follow a category of tokens, e.g. DeFi index.
Shaun: Wow! that sounds really heartwarming! I’m sure top traders would love to give back to the community by helping the newcomers! 😄👍
Ah yes. Fantasy football is super popular! I’m sure this league system will create a dynamic and exciting environment for all of the traders on pollen!
Question 2:
Shaun: What triggers you guys to launch Pollen? What are some of the real-world problems/ pain points that Pollen aims to solve?🌎🧐
Frederico: Asset management is broken in traditional finance. Active management is expensive. Passive management is cheap but when the market crashes, all indexes go down. We want to solve this.
There are a couple of projects creating indexes out there. They translate the concept of asset managers creating indexes into the world of decentralised finance. Pollen however takes a different approach. Because top traders are playing fantasy football for crypto and are getting rewarded through delegation, the Pollen indexes do not need to reward asset managers. This means that investors will need to pay a lot less and their investments will be based on a larger pool of expert trader data. We expect indexes to outperform other approaches and cost substantially less. With Leagues we are able to really tell everybody how good a trader is. The really good traders will get lots of delegators. The fake star traders can be easily called out. Skill over fake marketing. The killer feature of Pollen however is that it is fun.
Maarten: https://t.me/MEXCEnglish/2769022
Shaun: Sounds like a super sophisticated and well-thought out design! It’s also great that there are mechanisms in place to ensure that fake star traders can be called out. This ensures safety and fun for the community! 🥳
Maarten: Exactly, the best are really the best
With inflation at an all time high, making something very cheap is hopefully appreciated
Question 3:
Shaun: What is the role of the $PLN token in Pollen? Would you tell us more about its tokenomics?
Maarten:
$PLN token holders can create, manage, or delegate to virtual portfolios in order to earn rewards as well as play a role in governing the Pollen DAO. Additionally, PLN token holders have the option to lock their $PLN tokens in return for vePLN tokens boosting their rewards.
Frederico: $PLN has many utilities within the Pollen ecosystem:
– It is used in the reward / penalties system which incentives traders to compete in managing virtual portfolios. Users stake $PLN when they have a virtual portfolio open and are rewarded relative to their stake if their portfolio outperforms the market bench mark and on the reverse some of their stake is burned when they underperform.
– Non traders can delegate their $PLN to their preferred portfolio managers and piggy back on their performance.
– It can be locked up, converted to vePLN for boosted rewards and voting rights in governing the protocol.
– When opening an index some amount of $PLN must be staked by the initial index creators.
Shaun: Oooh, rewards~ sounds exciting! 🎉🎉
Wow! such a wide variety of uses, I hope our MEXC community is taking down notes! 🤓😉
Really amazing how Pollen has so many uses within its ecosystem. 💯
Question 4:
Shaun: Are there any exciting news or updates with regards to Pollen that you guys would like to share with the users?
Frederico: Nowadays there are nearly 7000 virtual portfolio managers using beta.pollen.id to show how good they are. Delegators can easily stake and follow the best “Pollenators”. We’re about to launch to mainnet in the next weeks.
You can already find $PLN on MEXC: https://www.mexc.com/exchange/PLN_USDT
$vePLN allows anybody to boost their rewards by staking $PLN. We are about to launch on mainnet. Leagues and Indexes are coming next and we are working with some amazing partners and building up towards amazing launches of leagues and indexes in the next months.
Maarten:
We would love to offer the MEXC community their own league and help each of you show how good a portfolio manager you are. Would this be of interest to you?
Shaun: wow! 7,000! that’s a lot! 👀
sounds like very exciting news! MEXC friends please take note!! ✅
This sounds like a fantastic idea! I’m sure many of our community members would be interested in taking up this challenge! 🔥
awesome Frederico and Maarten, thank you guys for the super well-thought out answers so far
loving this discussion!
Question 5:
Shaun: If you were to summarize your project in ONE word, what would it be? Why?
Frederico: ACCESSIBLE.
Because (i) it’s easy to create a virtual portfolio, (ii) anyone can join to show skills, and (iii) we make crypto investing more accessible to users through indexes that source the best market intelligence.
Maarten:
Try it for yourself at https://beta.pollen.id Can you beat the top Pollenators?
Shaun: Yes, don’t forget to check it out!
Fantastic! Accessibility is something which many value, as beginners and experienced individuals can all enjoy the process
I believe the community has a clearer idea of what Pollen is and what you do.
Free-asking Session
Q1. I am an EXPERIENCED DEVELOPER AND ETHICAL HACKER, does you have plans for HACKATHON so as to check the security of your ecosytem periodically and also invite developers to build?
Maarten:
We are about to open source Pollen and allow others to develop new modules to extend for instance indexes which in the future you will be able to sell. We are also happy to invite security experts to work with us. We have done external audits but in security it is hard to overdo it, so always happy to connect.
Q2. [9109] IS This Your project only for elite investors, how about others with small funds, is it open to everyone?
Frederico:
Pollen requires no credentials. Anyone can join, show their skills, climb the leaderboard. It doesn’t matter how much you started with, your skills matter!
Q3. [9109] Do the token holders have the right to participate in the governance of the project? What kind of decisions can they vote on about the project?
Maarten:
Great question. When you stake $PLN, you will get vePLN. vePLN will allow you to vote on key aspects of Pollen, e.g. when we launch on mainnet, tokens to support, … For Indexes we are having each index token also double as a governance token for the index. So index investors can drive the decisions of their index.
Q4. [9109] Do you have any Bug Bounty to check for weakness? In what way do you plan to make Your project more complete??
Frederico:
We’re heavily investing on auditing the smart-contracts. There are nowadays 2 independent external auditors, and every developer who join us is tasked with an independent audit.
Q5. [9109] Can you briefly describe your PARTNERSHIP so far and upcoming partnerships?
Maarten:
Partners are vital. Especially for the ecosystem we are building around indexes. Partners will need to provide us with pricing, assets, but also yield generation, KYC, fiat on/off ramping, crypto communities, new types of products like GameFi guilds, eco tokens, derivatives,…
We are talking to many exciting partners and will soon be able to make big announcements.
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