Hello, this is Conward with Crypto Loops. Today, we will be going over a recent interview we conducted with Long Nguyen, the team lead of Minswap. Minswap is a decentralized exchange (DEX) that is being built and prepared in anticipation of the mainnet launch of smart contracts on Cardano.
Conward: Hello Long, it’s nice to have you on the show, and thanks for taking the time to talk with us today and answer a few questions about the work you’re doing on Minswap.
So, first of all, tell us a little bit about yourself—your background, what drew you to crypto in general?
Long: My name is Long, I’m a software engineer living in Vietnam now. I have experience working at Amazon and a few other startups. The reasons why I got drawn into crypto is because I like the idea of decentralization and transparent finance, and, in my personal opinion, crypto is one of the fields that I can build a product affecting people around the world without being in Silicon Valley. I can stay in Vietnam and build a product that impact millions of people.
Conward: As you know, I’m a big believer in Cardano and its potential for decentralized finance. For anyone who doesn’t know, Minswap is a decentralized exchange (DEX) that will be built on the Cardano ecosystem. Can you talk a little bit about Minswap and how it is different from other competitors like Cardax, Sundaeswap, or Adax?
Long: I think we need to be aware that no DEX has been launched or is available yet, so it’s difficult to list the differences between them. With that said, having researching other projects, I think the value proposition that we’ll bring to the DEX space are features like concentrated liquidity pools, multi-asset pools, StableSwap pools, initial farm offerings (IFO), and a friendly SPO delegation policy. I think all of this is possible because we’re an engineering-first, product-first team, and I think such philosophies will entail different values compared to other decentralized exchanges on Cardano.
Conward: Something that really stood out to me is that you’re using an AirDrop method to release initial tokens to the public instead of using an initial coin offering. Is there a particular reason for taking this route?
Long: Good question! We have many, many reasons why we’re going the AirDrop route. The first one is to reward early supporters with MIN tokens. Our early supporters can use MIN tokens to provide liquidity on the mainnet, so when we launch the mainnet, we’ll have people with lots of ADA and MIN tokens. In a DEX, the more liquidity the better.
Another reason is we want to stress test the DEX. If we launch a testnet without incentivization, then only a handful of people will test our DEX, but, if we launch a testnet with token incentivization, then lots of people will come in and we can see if our product can withstand the heat.
Conward: Sounds good. Now I’ve got a few questions after reading through your whitepaper, and I’d recommend everyone reading this to check out the Minswap whitepaper. I read about multi-pool routing, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you picture this working within Minswap?
Long: If you’ve read the whitepaper, you know that we’ll become a multi-pool, which mean we’ll have multiple liquidity pools for a single token. After we’ve completed the constant-product pool, we may also have a StableSwap pool, and a multi-asset pool so users have many ways/options to trade their tokens. We don’t want users to have to think about that. We have a multi-pool routing algorithm that will help users pick their best pool for token trade. After that, we’ll further improve this by splitting user tokens into many parts, and each part may go to different pools. This might result in an even better trade, kinda like what 1inch is doing on Ethereum now.
I think it’s the DEX’s job to provide users with the best options to choose from. I mean, in the end, cryptocurrency is about freedom, right? So, users have the freedom to pick the pool with the highest APY, and naturally, there’ll be some kind of dynamic that balances everything out.
Conward: I also saw that governance might be a functionality of Minswap. How will this work, and what are some practical applications of this concept within Minswap?
Long: Governance is an important topic that our team is actively researching now. Users can get MIN tokens by providing liquidity, but what are MIN tokens used for? Currently there are two use cases. The first one is that users can deposit MIN tokens to get profit sharing from the DEX fees, like how SUSHI is being used now. The second one is governance, so MIN holders can vote for new feature. I think it’s a good way because the people that have the most influence over the future of the protocol are the ones that supported the protocol the most in the beginning.
With that said, we won’t have a fully-decentralized protocol in the beginning, yet. The governance is heavily centralized in our core team’s hands, and the treasury is also centralized, but we’ll have security measures like multi-sig wallet and a vesting period. And over the next 2-4 years, when our community gets stronger and they have proved that they can drive the progress of the protocol, then we’ll gradually hand-over the decision-making to the community. Hopefully, in 4 years, Minswap will become a fully-decentralized protocol.
Conward: Will there be lending and borrowing functionalities on Minswap?
Long: We’ll probably not do that because there’re many projects are doing that very well, but we’ll partner with lending and borrowing projects to, hopefully, give users more yield farming strategies.
Conward: Lastly, and I’m sure this is the question everyone has been anticipating. Do you have an expected release date for Minswap?
Long: We have multiple phases for releasing. Our testnet has two phases. The first phase, we release the DEX features so users can add liquidity, swap, and do the trading stuff. The second phase of the testnet, we’ll release the farming, so users can use LP tokens to farm MIN tokens.
After the second phase, we’ll launch on mainnet and the specific release date is not yet decided because we’re waiting for Alonzo, but the first phase of the testnet should be around next month.
Conward: This has been super informative, and I really appreciate you taking the time to chat today. Before we go, how can listeners get involved with what you’re doing, or how can people best support you and your team?
Long: There are many ways to support us:
- Follow our Twitter
- Follow our Reddit
- Retweet our tweets
- Go to Ideascale and clap our proposal.
Next month, you can vote for our funding proposal on Catalyst, and make sure to do that. Stay tuned for the testnet because it’s also around mid-to-end of next month. We’ll also have an NFT giveaway next week so make sure to follow our Twitter and join that. When the Cardano NFT marketplace goes up, you can trade those NFTs for who know how much, so it’ll be a good opportunity.
Conward: All the links for Minswap will be down below. Again, thank you so much for joining us for this interview, and I’m sure we all are looking forward to seeing the development and implementation of your DeFi platform on Cardano!
Links:
Website: https://www.minswap.org
Whitepaper: https://docs.minswap.org/whitepaper
Twitter: https://twitter.com/minswapdex
Discord: https://discord.gg/amg2AFrPMJ
GitHub: https://github.com/minswap
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsRa1jLwp7fhgh5P2KzBR8Q
Writings and Blogs: https://medium.com/minswap
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MinSwap/