Fortress Protocol AMA Recap with Fortress Protocol Project Lead Miro
This afternoon Miro, founder of the Jetfuel Finance ecosystem stopped by to talk to Sergeant Pepper and I about his teams new project, Fortress Protocol and answered some questions from the community. To celebrate the BSCTimes and Fortress AMA, $100 in Fortress tokens will be given to five members from the community who participated in the question and answer segment at the end. Stay tuned for announcement of the winners!
Fortress Protocol Interview
TheDevil100x – BSCTimes.com, [Apr 21, 2021, 11:03:53 AM]: Hello Everyone! Welcome to our AMA with the Fortress Protocol team! So without further ado, I’d like to introduce the project lead for Fortress Protocol, Welcome @jetfuelmiro!
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 11:06:37 AM]: Thanks @TheDevil100x! I’m so excited to be here to talk about Jetfuel’s next expansion, The Fortress Lending Protocol!
TheDevil100x – BSCTimes.com, [Apr 21, 2021, 11:07:39 AM (Apr 21, 2021, 12:00:30 PM)]: I bet! I have kept apprised of your guy’s work on the project over the past few months, and I bet you’re so excited to finally share it with the world.
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 11:08:08 AM]: Absolutely, we’ve been working very hard on Fortress. 😁🏰
TheDevil100x – BSCTimes.com, [Apr 21, 2021, 11:09:25 AM]: Lately I’ve seen Fortress all over social media, and I incase there are some out there that aren’t aware of what Fortress is, could you please explain?
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 11:11:09 AM]: Sure! The website for Fortress is https://fortress.loans/
Fortress is an algorithmic money market, and synthetic stable coin protocol designed to bring secure and trustless credit and lending to users on Binance Smart Chain. We forked the battle tested, audited, open source code of Venus and Compound to build Fortress.
Fortress enables investors to lend and/or borrow cryptocurrencies, by pledging the platform an over-collateralized amount of cryptocurrency. Fortress does this by utilizing money markets, which are pools of assets with algorithmically derived interest rates, based on the supply and demand of each asset.
Users who choose to supply liquidity to Fortress earn compounded interest as rewards for supplying their assets to the protocol. When supplying assets, users are also given the ability to mint stable-coins, or borrow other assets against their supplied assets. Once a user has supplied assets to Fortress, the user can then borrow assets or mint stable-coins, by over-collateralizing and paying interest on the amount borrowed.
Loans from the Fortress protocol do not have monthly payments, late fees, and can be paid off at any time. Fortress is able to do this without ever requiring a credit check, with near immediate origination, using smart contracts that provide an automated, and absolutely transparent system for investment and profit distribution.
TheDevil100x – BSCTimes.com, [Apr 21, 2021, 11:12:33 AM]: Very cool. Theres a huge need for more projects to compete in this field, so I am excited. How are you planning on launching this project?
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 11:15:05 AM]: Fortress is currently almost done it’s IJO via the Jetfuel Launchpad. For those unfamiliar with the IJO, it’s our (Jetfuel) tokensale launchpad for new and exciting projects. Our 2nd token, GFCE, was launched through the Jetfuel launchpad to great success.
We are raising $2million BUSD and selling 500,000 FTS tokens at $4.00 each. The sale type is overflow and are raising with BUSD, you can learn more about the overflow method here: https://docs.jetfuel.finance/fortress-ijo-using-the-overflow-method
At the time of writing, we are 81% sold out! We expect to be fully sold out of FTS before the sale ends on April 22nd at 5 PM UTC. You can learn more about the sale and purchase FTS tokens here: https://www.jetfuel.finance/launchpad/buy/fortress
We will launch with 12 assets users can supply and borrow against. We’ll also enable users to mint our FAI stablecoin. The launch list of bep20 assets is: USDC, USDT, BUSD, BNB, BTCB, ETH, LTC, XRP, ADA, DAI, DOT, & BETH
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 11:16:30 AM]: We expect Jetfuels’ Fortress Lending Protocol to go live tomorrow, April 22nd after 6 PM UTC
Sergeant Pepper (BSC TIMES), [Apr 21, 2021, 11:17:27 AM]: Beautiful! I know there’s a lot of excitement around the launch of the Protocol!
So before we move on – Revisiting the first question: could you give us a brief ELI5 of what Fortress is and will do?
That was a great, and very thorough explaination that used a lot of big words.
Sergeant Pepper (BSC TIMES), [Apr 21, 2021, 11:20:02 AM]: Asking for a friend… 🤓
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 11:22:20 AM]: Certainly 😅 Defi can be pretty complicated.
The easy explanation of Fortress is that users can deposit assets to earn compound interest on their deposit. They’ll also earn the FTS token as an incentive to provide liquidity.
Users can borrow against their deposits using a different currency. Borrows will pay interest to depositors but they also earn FTS tokens.
Currently suppliers and borrowers have the same allocation of FTS rewards.
Lastly, if a user does not want to borrow funds, they can mint the FAI stablecoin against their deposits and stake the FAI for more FTS.
All in all, deposit, borrow, and stake to get paid and earn FTS.
Sergeant Pepper (BSC TIMES), [Apr 21, 2021, 11:23:35 AM]: Thanks for breaking it down for us!
TheDevil100x – BSCTimes.com, [Apr 21, 2021, 11:25:28 AM]: I love that, so you earn interest as well as FTS for supplying your collateral, you earn FTS when borrowing assets from the protocol, and you can also earn FTS from minting the FAI stablecoin. Very cool
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 11:26:07 AM]: Exactly! We’re making it easy to earn yield on your assets.
TheDevil100x – BSCTimes.com, [Apr 21, 2021, 11:26:08 AM]: So the dApp will launch tomorrow on fortress.loans, Is that when the FTS tokens from the IJO token sale will be distributed or how will that work?
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 11:28:53 AM (Apr 21, 2021, 11:29:59 AM)]: Yes we plan on switching from testnet to mainnet Fortress tomorrow after the sale is completed!
Users will come back to https://www.jetfuel.finance/launchpad to claim their FTS and any unspent BUSD from the overflow method after liquidity is added. Liquidity will be set first at a price of $4.40, up 10% from the IJO price. We expect this to happen around 6 PM UTC April 22nd.
We’ll enable the claims at the same time liquidity is set to ensure the starting price is $4.40.
TheDevil100x – BSCTimes.com, [Apr 21, 2021, 11:29:25 AM]: Oh cool! I can’t wait to claim mine and start earning money
So, when it comes to Fortress in general, what are some things you are most excited about?
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 11:32:38 AM]: We have an extensive and very exciting road map planned for Fortress 😁
- Rate modification by spending FTS to boost supply APY and reduce borrowing APR
- Leverage as a service to other yield farms
- Flash loans
- Fixed rate lending and borrowing
- cross chain to ETH, HECO, and Avalanche. We’re also looking at Solana.
- Uncollateralized lending
Sergeant Pepper (BSC TIMES), [Apr 21, 2021, 11:34:33 AM]: Wow, that’s brilliant. You can change the rates by paying FTS? Am I getting that right? Similar to a home mortgage, where you can buy down your points?
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 11:35:15 AM]: that is exactly right!
Sergeant Pepper (BSC TIMES), [Apr 21, 2021, 11:35:13 AM]: So that’s one function of FTS. Tell us more about the token and it’s use case. How about the tokenomics?
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 11:39:03 AM]: Sure!
So at it’s core FTS is a governance token that is used to dictate the direction the community wants to take the platform. 1% of the total supply or 100,000 FTS will be needed to bring forth a proposal.
FTS will have it’s own lending and borrowing pool with Fortress after launch once the market for the token has stabilized.
As stated in the last answer, in a future Fortress update, users will be able to spend FTS tokens to reduce the interest rate when borrowing, or increase the interest rate when supplying. This mechanism will greatly empower our users to fine tune their investments, to their own personal time-scales, by allowing the user to choose how much FTS they want to spend to modify their interest rate. An example of how this is done traditionally is when people choose to spend money to buy down the interest rate on their mortgage.
FTS has 10,000,000 tokens. FTS rewards emissions will last for 2.5 years.
65% or 6,500,000 FTS is reserved for farming/liquidity rewards. Borrowers and Lenders will each have 22.75% of the emissions each. FAI stablecoin minters will have 19.5% of the FTS emissions.
The remaining FTS is allocated as such:
- Team: 20% – 2,000,000 – vested over 6 months
- Initial Jetfuel Offering (IJO): 5% – 500,000
- Reserve: 10% – 1,000,000 (to be used for initial liquidity, marketing, ect)
TheDevil100x – BSCTimes.com, [Apr 21, 2021, 11:42:47 AM]: That’s pretty fascinating what you have coming out AND planned, as someone who’s been in DeFi since basically it’s inception, you’ve gotta be ecstatic about the torrid pace of development and maturity level of DeFi nowadays.
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 11:43:47 AM (Apr 21, 2021, 11:44:06 AM)]: Thank you! The market moves so quickly you have to work extremely hard to keep up and stay relevant. It’s amazing to see the rapid growth and success of DEFI as a whole.
TheDevil100x – BSCTimes.com, [Apr 21, 2021, 11:44:33 AM]: Yeah I imagine that’s tough, but at the same time exciting being able to accomplish things that weren’t even possible months ago
You named the project Fortress, and you used a Certik audited codebase (Venus) as your starting point, and you then went and had two smart contract audits done on the platform, I can only assume you’re taking security very serious?
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 11:48:59 AM]: Security is absolutely paramount. With billions in potential TVL we took every precaution to ensure that user funds are secured and safe. We always encourage users to do their own research DYOR as there are always risks associated when interacting with a smart contract.
That being said – we’ve had two additional audits done on the code base through Ether Authority and Hash0x. Both security firms gave our code a highly secured rating.
Both audits can be found here: https://www.jetfuel.finance/audits
TheDevil100x – BSCTimes.com, [Apr 21, 2021, 11:50:43 AM]: That’s great to hear. I know you guys have had a very good track record with security since you launched Jetfuel, what back in like November/December?
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 11:51:18 AM]: December 6th 2020 was when Jetfuel went live to the public. 😁
TheDevil100x – BSCTimes.com, [Apr 21, 2021, 11:51:47 AM]: Wow, so almost 5 months now What are some of the biggest lessons you have learned in that time?
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 11:54:15 AM]: Community involvement and rapid development is critical to a projects long term success. If you act with kindness and an eagerness to help the community, you can go a long with your project regardless of the price action.
We also know the importance of moving quickly. The first mover advantage in this space allows a project to capture a large part of the market.
Sergeant Pepper (BSC TIMES), [Apr 21, 2021, 11:56:15 AM]: I’ve always admired how interactive and patient you are with the JF community. So valuable. It seems to have fostered a lot of ride-or-die JF fans.
Sooooo… Venus. What’s your take on yesterday’s events? And maybe a brief recap of what happened for our guests who aren’t up to speed on it.
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 12:01:35 PM]: Sure, so a TLDR of yesterday is that Venus implemented a 0.1% withdraw fee on all assets expect for BNB to provide revenue to their treasury controlled by governance.
The side effect of the withdraw fee is that 3rd party yield optimization platforms like Autofarm & Beefys current contracts are not compatible with the fee structure and users have the potential to lose money in the vaults.
The small fee change reduced Venus’s TVL from $10 billion + to $6.5 Billion overnight.
Had Venus worked with the 3rd parties more closely the massive loss of TVL and some users funds could have been completely avoided.
Luckily for Fortress, we do not have any fees to deposit, borrow, or withdraw any assets from the platform.
We’re currently working with a few other projects to provide vault and liquidity support for our assets pools.
Sergeant Pepper (BSC TIMES), [Apr 21, 2021, 12:03:16 PM]: Wow. Interesting. So big opportunity for FTS? Good timing.
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 12:03:51 PM]: Yes! We think so. It’s the perfect time to launch.
TheDevil100x – BSCTimes.com, [Apr 21, 2021, 12:04:31 PM]: Timing is so important.
@jetfuelmiro you willing to take some questions from the community?
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 12:05:02 PM]: Yes absolutely!
Community Question #1:
Ravi, [Apr 21, 2021, 12:06:52 PM (Apr 21, 2021, 12:08:04 PM)]: I have also invested in another token minting stable coins and doing this on the eth network, for every new asset they intend to list they need the consent and partnership of that asset, do you plan to add more assets and how difficult will it be to add more assets to the staking/lending/borrowing list?
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 12:16:41 PM]: It’s better to move slow when new assets are added as collateral to a lending protocol. You need to ensure that the project is stable, developing, and has enough liquidity to ensure the price doesn’t get manipulated.
Any new asset added will be properly vetted and will be cross marketed with the team.
Community Question #2
Den Morrison, [Apr 21, 2021, 12:07:05 PM]: BSC very good although many problem on BSC network, such yesterday lack/slow network or recently more rugfull on BSC project. (If audited I trust CeRtiK is the best for audited project build on BSC)
But, How will you manage your platforms if there will be unexpected problem occur in the future especially hacking issue or rugpul Smart contract? How efficient and secured is $FTS smart contract?
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 12:18:54 PM]: This is the exact reason to use a battle tested and audited code base that been heavily used. By using heavily used code that’s undergone multiple audits we’re confident the smart contracts are ready to be safely deployed.
Community Question #3
J. Marin, [Apr 21, 2021, 12:07:25 PM]: Who is eligible or what are the criteria to be eligible for a loan at Fortress? …
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 12:20:34 PM]: Anybody on BSC with the 12 assets we support can join Fortress! There are no credit checks, minimums, or forms to fill out. Just supply, borrow, and/or mint and start earning 😁
You’ll be able to borrow against your collateral at 60% of your deposited value.
Community Question #4
J. Marin, [Apr 21, 2021, 12:12:43 PM]: They have a very nice & Attractive roadmap. Do you have any plans to launch your mainnet or expand to other blockchains?
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 12:21:16 PM]: Yes of course! The Fortress mainnet goes live on Thursday April 22nd. We have plans to expand to HECO, ETH, Avalanche and Solana eventually.
Community Question #5
Jihan A Kusuma, [Apr 21, 2021, 12:08:17 PM]: The main goal of this AMA to convince community to join your project and hold your token. Farming and lending very impressed, but beside of farms, staking and lending
Please, tell me 3 reason why I as investor should invest in this project and hold $FTS for long term?
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 12:23:14 PM]: Fortress has multiple use cases beyond farming. Users can use FTS for governance & Rate modification by spending FTS will be developed.
Great questions everyone!
Wrap-Up
Sergeant Pepper (BSC TIMES), [Apr 21, 2021, 12:24:23 PM]: So @jetfuelmiro – how can people learn more about your project?
Social media, websites, etc?
Flight Commander Miro [Will Never DM First], [Apr 21, 2021, 12:26:35 PM]: Sure thing!
Fortress Links:
🌐Website: https://fortress.loans/
🦆Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jetfuelfinance
☎️Telegram: https://t.me/jetfuelfinance
ℹ️Medium: https://medium.com/@jetfuelfinance
👨💻FTS IJO: https://www.jetfuel.finance/launchpad/buy/fortress