SV joins Jarod in our fifth Town Hall with the Vesq community on Discord with an update on Vesq 2.0. He reveals that Phase 1 of Vesq 2.0 is scheduled for release by the end of the month & commits to having biweekly community updates with everyone. He also shares the latest on vLabs, locking, revenue generation, paid-marketing, NFTs, bonds, max cap, & more!
Transcript by Decise
Introduction Section:
Jarod Yong (JY): Hello everybody, welcome to the long awaited town hall. Our last one was months ago, but I believe Syed (SV) has some really good news to share today, so without further ado, Syed, all you.
SV: Yes, very exciting. All good, all good. Thank you very much, Jarod, for everything you have done so far, not that I don’t say it enough. A long, long, long awaited community call. To be honest, I’ve been looking forward to it since we started to plan all this. A long awaited V2.0 and a few more new features and structural changes that we’re making at Vesq. I hope everyone is safe out there at this current time. It’s crazy right now, with everything that’s going on in the world of crypto. I hope everyone is not in the mess that is happening right now. That’s why I hope everyone still has their health and wealth, but we have to move forward.
We’ve been working on the structural changes to Vesq, as we want to make it more suitable for what we’re trying to achieve. At the beginning stages, it wasn’t very suitable for what we were actually trying to achieve out there. I think we have tracked down this structural problem that we’ve had. So we will start with the structure first and work our way towards timelines, deadlines, how we are going to be deploying V2.0, and what is going to be pertaining to V2.0 as well.
So, starting with structural changes: Vesq will be going under vLabs. vLabs is the development lab that Vesq brought out. It’s a team that is well-suited to battle DeFi on Polygon, so we have our chief strategist, Yohan, who is from Polygon. The CEO is me, Syed, from Vesq. Our Community Management and Outreach lead is Jarod. Pat from PolyDoge is the Chief Marketing Officer. Our Business Development lead is Pranjal from Quickswap and Tetu. Chief Developer is Greg from Vesq as well. He’s actually the developer that helped build Vesq.
So that’s the major structural change we’ve made, to make things in a more organized form where we can start pushing and deploying new products at a regular pace, and keep an eye on things in terms of strategy, like what to do and when to do it. Vesq will be working under vLabs, and will be alongside all the other projects that vLabs will incubate and work on as well. They will be managed by the same people, so that we know we have some structure in place.
Let us now move on to Vesq V2.0. I know it’s been long awaited. We released a teaser, but the market is very uncertain and volatile. I think it’s the lowest I’ve seen things go. It’s the biggest bear I’ve been a part of since the beginning. It is a very tough time for us all. We want to change how the liquidity protocol works. I’m still a fan of the mechanics, but with the downturn of the market, it would not do us any better to have done so.
So, how can we improve our existing features to a more sustainable model where we won’t have to move to a whole set of substandards and stay in the standard we’ve made now but make it more sustainable or “real” in terms of making money and sustainability?
We created this vision that we have in the back-end with the team and worked out some strategies around a vision that works in theory. Now we are building it out, and getting it ready for launch, end of this month hopefully, subject to audit obviously, but I think that will pass with flying colors. With most of the audits that we have done up to date, there are not many changes to be made, and they’re very simple and easy to make.
We’ll have staking turning into lockers. We still have the whole idea of lockers where you lock your VSQ up and will receive tokens on top of it. Instead of just earning VSQ and MATIC in the original plan of how we had it, you’re going to be earning multiple tokens in this one locker, including MATIC, USDC, USDT, and so on. It will be Wrapped MATIC (WMATIC) instead of MATIC directly. These will be going to your locker on a regular basis.
We will be redistributing our earnings as well. A portion of vLabs’ earnings will be going to our Vesqers, that includes from all projects that vLabs is working on as well.
Bonds will be coming back, but there is a major difference with these types of bonds. We will have our own dedicated Bond Manager. The Bond Manager’s job will be to make sure that discounts are given ONLY at the time when discounts are needed on the protocol. When it’s not needed, they will be turned off.
A new feature we are adding is that every time someone buys a bond, say a MATIC bond, a portion of that MATIC will be redistributed to lockers as well. Some will go to the treasury, and some will be used to buy back VSQ to burn. This way, we create a loop within ourselves, so that whenever a bond is purchased, 3 positive things are contributing to the protocol and community, rather than people dumping tokens and buying bonds repeatedly to make that extra 10–20% every time. With this, we remove the risk of bond problems and the staking problems where people are sniping rebases with locking.
pVSQ holders: your pVSQ will be redeemed, but it will be unlocked within your locker. It won’t unlock fully immediately, but can be redeemed in your locker to manage pVSQ dumping risk. These things will take a more immediate effect and will be available by the end of this month, to make sure we can survive this bear market.
I will be pumping in a few different things as well from investors, so in terms of funding, we are all set. We do not need any new funding or anything. There will be a new Treasury Manager. They will be well-known and fully doxxed. None of this Sifu stuff going on here. They will be doxxed and know what they are doing. Most likely an ex-professional in the banking world. We have a few in mind and hopefully will be enlisted by the end of this month.
Regarding the Multi-sig for treasury, the vLabs main team will all be on the Multi-sig wallet; all professionals from reputable projects; Polygon people, Quickswap people, Tetu people, Polydoge people, etc. very well-known people in the crypto space.
The last thing we will be bringing out, but not immediately. We are waiting to see market conditions and market sentiment before we do, but the last and final feature is vUSD. Originally, before the whole UST collapse, we were thinking then of taking a similar route to UST, but a more sustainable version. Because UST was algorithmically backed, there was more risk involved. We don’t want to give that risk to our community and cause damage to people’s investments due to a failure on our end.
We have not been hacked or exploited to this day, and security-wise things have been going well for us. We have always been security-focused. As a result, we are abandoning the algorithmic route in favor of a fully-backed vUSD. If you think of the original reserve currency, it was an asset that backed the token in circulation. In this case, it would be the assets in our treasury.
Every time one vUSD is minted, we make sure there is one dollar for every one vUSD available to redeem at any point in time. So there is no mention of collapsing, and we won’t use any algorithmically backed tokens in the treasury. They will be directly backed like DAI or USDC. Only fully collateralized tokens are accepted. This way, we remove the risk of any depeg.
Once we start getting TVL for vUSD, we will start introducing yield features and some automatic loops that will be fully secure without major risks of losing anything. We’ll bring out some lending and borrowing afterward, but not just yet. Lending and borrowing will not be a good idea for anyone just yet in these conditions. We also have the Dystopia NFT, so we can start directing some liquidity and bribes through Dystopia to vUSD and VSQ, to make those pump and burn as well. We want to use this to start burning VSQ regularly too, as an additional measure.
These 3 things are what is coming to VSQ on the horizon, two of which are coming out at the end of this month. We will then take it on a month-to-month basis on when to release vUSD from when we release V2.0. There is a whole brand new UI. I’ve shown Jarod some sneak peeks of the UI. I’m sure he can give a comment about it. Can you Jarod?
JY: Yep, it doesn’t burn my eyes. It’s very clean, not congested. Black and green. I like it; it looks very professional. Well done!
SV: All the information that is needed is here. All you’ve earned, the APY you’re getting, the exact tokens you’re getting, and so on. Slowly but surely, we will also start working on our launchpad bonds. The new projects coming out will be on launchpad bonds. Vesq will have very early access to these projects, at very very low valuations, even pre-seed valuations.
That is everything I can really fill you in on for now. Let’s at least set up these town halls once a week, get back into the regular basis of it again. It’s just nice to enjoy ourselves as we work too, have a chat with the community and see what’s going on in the crypto world, not just about Vesq but things happening in crypto. We want to make it a more regular occurrence of us talking to the community and the community talking to us, like how it used to be. This helps us get more in tune with each other, Vesq, and the community as a whole. Jarod, over to you.
JY: Yep, I’ll go ahead and open up the floor to questions.
Question Segment:
Q1:
JY: Syed, you talked about multiple tokens entering our locker. Are those available immediately or will they be locked?
SV: Nope, anything other than VSQ is claimable instantly in your wallet. You can just click “claim” and it will go directly to your wallet. The VSQ will be locked. That will be how your voting rights stay locked in as well.
While I’m on this question, I will explain how voting works. Once you have locked your VSQ, you get voting rights. Snapshot is being set up to make proposals and vote for proposals, so we can get the community involved more in giving a voice to what they want, and it will be used to create a sort of bribing system as well.
Q2:
JY: What are the terms for locking now? six months? One year?
SV: So there are four terms for a locker now. We found it more sustainable to use a three (3) month lock period, so three (3) months, six (6) months, nine (9) months, or twelve (12) months. You will have a variable APY as well, depending on which you choose to use to lock your tokens.
Q3:
JY: Are we still working with Multifarm for the UI?
SV: Yes, we will be.
Q4:
JY: So for revenue sources, will it just be from bonds?
SV: No, it will come from all of vLabs. Every project that vLabs works on, or any revenue that comes in from wherever it may be, whether pre-seed rounds we invest in, or anything. All of that goes back to the VSQ lockers and those that hold the lockers. Back to you guys.
JY: So it could be more than just projects we are involved in but could be part of something that we invested in as a treasury DAO?
SV: Yes, 100%. yield strategies are also available. safest possible yield strategies. We are going to be moving farther away from the DEGEN plays and bringing more institutional value to the protocols. We are trying to learn from everyone’s mistakes, even our own sometimes.
Q5:
JY: There’s a question about the legal aspects of the DAO-ification of our project.
SV: I’m not exactly a legal person myself, but anyone who has legal questions, please direct them to my DM’s. I’ll try and consult our counsel and get advice to relay back to you. We have people that do that stuff for us. I know we are in so many different jurisdictions around the world, but we try to make it as safe as possible for everyone from a legal standpoint for us and you guys as well. We will do anything in our power to make sure it stays like that.
Q6:
JY: Can you talk about where vLabs is going to be set up as far as jurisdiction and location?
SV: It’s going to be set up in Dubai.
Q7:
JY: What are the use cases of vUSD?
SV: vUSD will be a place where you can park your tokens and have them available in USD value while earning a steady income. You can utilize vUSD across other platforms, not just a single use case with Vesq, but with multiple platforms like AAVE and Market.xyz and so on.
JY: I think a more concrete picture of vUSD will come along later. First we are working on V2.0 and getting that out, and then getting the bond manager.
SV: With the market and news about stablecoins lately, I know the market’s fears and thoughts about stablecoins aren’t that great.
There’s news coming out every other day this week where projects are just disappearing and going insolvent. We want to make sure we don’t end up like that and build ourselves a platform that will sustain us through this difficult period of time we are all facing. It’s always been like this, and this market cycle, even though it’s the worst I’ve seen, we just need to make sure we push through and get out the other side. I’m 100% certain we will.
Q8:
JY: How will Covenant work? Will their revenue be shared with VSQ holders?
SV: Yes, but I’m positive we will set up an AMA with Covenant, so I won’t go into it too much yet. We can start next week with a community call about vLabs and their projects directly. I’ll get some of the other members, like Yohan, and maybe some other members, to join us then to give perspective as well.
Q9:
JY: Are the rewards received dependent on the tokens held or the locking period?
SV: Both locking amount and time frame. The more VSQ you have, the longer you lock, the greater the rewards. Our goal still stays the same; we want to make sure that we are as low-risk as possible. We want to make sure that your VSQ stays where it is, but all the other tokens you might earn, like DAI and USDC, will be able to be used in your day-to-day life.
Q10:
JY: Is the maximum supply of VSQ confirmed at 100,000,000?
SV: Yes, the max supply will be at 100,000,000, with immediate deflationary measures taking place after reaching 100,000,000.
JY: What sort of measures, for example?
SV: Buy backs and burns, directly from revenue.
Q11:
JY: Are we still going to be working with Frax?
SV: Yes 100%
JY: As a follow-up question, where are we with the FPIS airdrop?
SV: It’s not entirely us that’s responsible for this problem. We are waiting on a few bits and bobs to get our amounts out of the FPIS contracts from Convex and Frax. There was an issue with the multi-sig on withdrawing the funds and some issues with ABI constructs.
I’ve already been speaking with them, Convex has done their part. I’m just waiting on Sam from Frax to do his part. As soon as it’s done, it’s going to be there and available for everyone to claim. It’s not going anywhere. I’m sure it will be resolved soon.
Q12:
JY: If the treasury shares all revenue with lockers, how will the treasury grow?
SV: Through bonds mostly, but when I say “share the revenue with lockers” I mean it will share with them their portion of the revenue. A portion goes to the treasury, the rest goes to the community.
Q13:
JY: Some people are comparing that vUSD will be like a new token called USD+, where they will have a daily rebase on the stablecoin. Will vUSD be like that or is it different?
SV: vUSD will not be like that; it won’t be a rebase type of coin. It’s just a utility stablecoin that will be fully backed. It will give the option of utility on multiple platforms. There will be no degen strategies, and it will be used exactly like a stablecoin. If you have 100,000 vUSD, then it will always be equal to 100,000 USD. The funds will always be available to withdraw through the stablecoin they choose, whether DAI or MAI or whichever we have available.
Q14:
JY: People are asking how they can help further with the marketing of Vesq.
SV: Our new marketing director is Pat from Polydoge. He will be heading up full marketing developments and strategies we use, such as who we are marketing with, what we will market about, and so on. Once I have a full plan, I can share details with you guys, and wherever the community sees fit, they can join in with that.
JY: Yeah, I think we should have an AMA with the vLabs team for sure.
SV: Yes, agreed.
JY: Because although Vesq will be running under vLabs management, the DAO still decides treasury movements and investments, right?
SV: Yes. We have a nice little bribing system coming with that too, with Covenant, which will be the first of its kind, and a nice partnership with UMA as well.
JY: Everything with Covenant is done and ready. We are just waiting for the audits, right?
SV: Yes.
Q15:
JY: With the Vesq marketcap so low, will we still get MATIC from LM 2.0 (Liquidity Mining 2.0) rewards?
SV: Yes, they will come in monthly regardless. That’s the beauty of creating the LM program and receiving their rewards. Incubating projects like this means we get paid regardless of market movements; the same amount every month.
Q16:
JY: There are questions about the various NFTs. When will they be coming?
SV: So after the V2.0 launch, we will look into all the extra utilities like NFTs and so on. We just want to get this next part out of the way so we can start setting deadlines and hitting targets and ensure we are all on our way and on the same page. So then we get a sense of where our targets are, when things are coming, and we have a clear roadmap of where we go. All of these things matter when building, but currently our entire focus is on launching these V2.0 mechanics.
Q17:
JY: There are many questions about vUSD. Some are asking why do we need another stablecoin?
SV: It’s a feature of Vesq. It’s not a byproduct but a feature that keeps us stable without insane volatility. Instead of creating pools and yield farms where it is unsustainable for a long period of time, It gives people a place in the Vesq ecosystem to park their assets and get vUSD in return, while earning without major risks like depegs.
JY: I feel vUSD is probably several months down the road, right?
SV: Yes, we will take it on a month by month basis after the V2.0 launch, on when is a good time to launch it.
JY: I’m sure by the time it’s ready to come in, more use cases and utility will appear.
SV: Yes, definitely.
Q18:
JY: How many developers do we have working on our project?
SV: We have four (4) full-time developers and six (6) contracted developers working with vLabs. Running a business is not simple. I’ll tell you that. It’s a lot of paperwork. This is the life we chose and we have to live it. I honestly enjoy it personally. It’s times like this that test us, and it’s enjoyable to go through those tests. It can be hard, but if you can get through this, you can get through anything.
Q19:
Audience member (AM): Will the value hold steady with everything else dropping if people aren’t selling Vesq?
SV: Yes, and when the lockers do unlock, like how Olympus has inverse bonds, we will offer that as well. It’s only natural that, after a long time, people may want to sell. We want to make sure that the market price isn’t the only thing that suffers when lockers expire. We want to think about what happens when lockers finish, how we will accommodate, work with it, and how to retain those customers/investors. Do you know what inverse bonds are?
AM: Not entirely. I was going to research it afterward, though.
SV: I’ll give you a basic rundown of it. Basically, bonds are where you would give something like MATIC for VSQ tokens. Inverse bonds go the opposite way, where you give your VSQ tokens for MATIC or another option. Rather than going directly to the market to sell and affecting the market price by selling, you can trade it with the treasury, similar to OTC trades.
Q20:
JY: If I lock my VSQ today and tomorrow I want to top up and lock some more, will it reset the timer?
SV: No, the APY will change as a variable depending on what you add. It will adjust based on how much you add; no timer resets, no top-up sniping.
Q21:
JY: Is Zack still with us? What’s his role on the team now?
SV: In vLabs, there is no current role for Zack, but he is still with us in Vesq. We can define more roles there as well.
Closing comments:
JY: Let’s call this one a wrap. Thank you very much, everyone, for being here. We can set up a call about Vesq bi-weekly and every other week in between we can just do a normal call to chat about the community and the crypto market or anything happening. If there are further questions, we can talk more casually in the general section of our Discord.
SV: Sounds good; thank you, Jarod; I look forward to the next one!
