FAQ
If you have a question that isn't listed below, please send an email to: [email protected] and we will answer and add it to the FAQ below!
- 1.
There are basically three ways to purchase ADA:
- 1.Through a centralized exchange like Binance or KuCoin.
- 2.Through an 'onramp' service like Onramper and Chainbits.
- 3.Hardware and Software wallets like Ledger and Atomic Wallet.ㅤ
- 1.Create a Seed In all cases you will need to create a seed, think of this as your master password and treat it as such. The seed is everything and should be handled with the utmost care and security. The best practise today is to never put your seed on our computer or in any digital device. Write it down in a notebook and and store it someplace secure, like in safe, lockbox or in a safety deposit box.
- 2.Generate your Wallet In some cases this will automatically happen, but for example on Yoroi and other wallets, you will need to specifically choose an ADA wallet account. With Yoroi you will need to personally name the wallet and choose a Shelley, 24-word recovery phrase, account.
- 3.You are ready to go! At this point you are ready to transfer funds to your wallet. If this is your first time, it might be a good idea to start by transferring only a few ADA to the wallet as a test to make sure that you've set up everything correctly. Always consult the official documentation and guidance.
- 1.Find your account address Wallets have their address in different place you will need to find where the wallet keeps the address.
- 2.Copy or generate an address You will use this address to send your purchased ADA to your wallet.
- 3.Transfer the ADA to your wallet Once you have copied your wallet address then you can use it to transfer the ADA. Transfers are very fast and should be registered within under a minute.
- 1.Choose Delegate in your wallet
- 2.Find the MELD ISPO Once you are in the delegation section, you will then need to find the MELD stake pools. This is a very simple search process. Type in MELD and you will get the results for all of the MELD ISPO pool. Then you need to choose which pool that you want to delegate to.
- 3.Delegate! Once you have found the MELD stake pools, you're able to choose which pool you want to delegate your ADA into. To delegate you just click on the Delegate button. from there you will be asked to choose how much you want to delegate to that pool. Select the amount and click on the Delegate button and you're done!
No, we're MELDing the crypto world with the fiat world! Our users will get exposure to many classes of assets, both crypto, and fiat, both digital and physical. We're working with both crypto companies and real-world banks and foundations. We're doing all the dirty and hard work to bridge the two worlds. So yes, do expect the best DeFi services for both crypto and fiat from us.
We have deflationary mechanisms like buy back or burning the MELD token in our one-sided liquidity pools (on withdrawal) to keep the token valuable. But this is either algorithmic or driven by the community. We never burn tokens for the sake of attracting people, especially not investors.
We'll deploy and rigorously work on it on the testnet first. So deployments will come as Alonzo progresses. For auditing we have a team of world-class security researchers and engineers who are building the first analysis, auditing and reversing tools for Cardano Smart Contracts.
We'll audit from the bytecode level. Then as our solution matures and mainnet gets closer. We'll hire a proven auditing firm for it as well. There won't be a hard cap on the mUSD and mEUR, because one does have to deposit more values to mint them. And they are burned as debt positions are closed or liquidated.
Many people are crypto-rich and cash-poor and they need fiat to spend on their daily expenses. Just because some don't doesn't mean the ones who need such service should not get exposed to that. We also provide crypto-to-crypto lending and many more services. The point is to provide different solutions for different needs and let users select the ones they need most at any certain time. We don't force anyone to borrow fiat, or only provide such service.
Yes, currently Vent.finance and Polygon and are very close to projects like Liqwid and Indigo, also need more DEX, Oracle, Synthetic, and Stablecoin solutions to build our whole suite of services. And we all don't want to cash out on ADA unless our life depends on it, so for any recipient who wants to stay long on ADA, we pay in ADA instead. Which at the end of the day, both parties keep staking. The only way we could announce 6 stake pools was because we've been working with the Cardano Foundation themselves to fill them.
MELD came about from seeing a need in the market. I have a lot of friends that invest in crypto like everyone here. They have been investing for a long time. Normal people with normal jobs. But because they have been investing for so long, they have amassed a large amount of value in their portfolios. But they are all poor in the real world. Because they put any extra money into crypto, they believe and have been awarded so far. I want to see if there is a way to fix this. There has to be a way to unlock some of this value. They couldn't go to BlockFi or Nexo because they are not based in the states and didn't/couldn't pass KYC. So Hai (my co-founder and the CEO) and I wanted to build a protocol that made it possible to get fiat loans from locking crypto into a smart contract. We want to do this based on the values of DeFi. So it's open, trustless, decentralized, and most importantly non-custodial. You don't have to give up your keys as you do with all of the other fiat lending products. This is how MELD came about. MELD is bridging the gap between fiat and crypto in the DeFi space. Hai and his team have been developing on Cardano and contributing to the Cardano source code for the past 3 years. So they were a perfect fit for this protocol.
MELD at its core is a concept, to blend the on-chain (crypto) and the off-chain (fiat) worlds together, as well as the many Blockchains and DeFi protocols. We at MELD Labs have been pushing this concept forward through the development of multiple products and services. The first being a self-paying loan protocol where you can deposit crypto as collateral to lend fiat to spend in your daily life. With efficient technical designs, the collateral can be yield farmed on to pay the interest. The loan is also tax efficient, with most borrowers having a net profit after the loan duration! This way users can still keep their long position on their growing crypto, while still have the fiat money to live their life. Another critical service is MELDed assets, where we allow people to bring and represent tokens from other chains like BTC, ETH and BNB to Cardano for these usage. This increases liquidity and helps people stay longer in their crypto of choice, instead of forcing Cardano/ADA. So we're not maximalists, we contribute to the whole ecosystem from all angles, bringing the best out of every protocol and platform.
MELD is built on Cardano and they really give us a great advantage in many ways. It also allows us to create some exciting products in this space. We have an oracle bridge between the crypto world and fiat accounts. So we can record what happens in the fiat world into the blockchain. With this oracle, we can then offer loans and credit lines in fiat currency (USD and Euros) based on a person collateralizing their crypto. As part of this process, we are also bringing "MELDed" assets onto the Cardano blockchain. ETH > mETH. renBTC > mBTC. BNB > mBNB. mUSD and mEUR as well. These give us the flexibility to work all of the liquidity locked in ADA and bring even more liquidity to the Cardano ecosystem. Because we have this, we can create inspiring new products like the "Genius" loan, which is a self-paying fiat loan. The longer the loan runs, the more it pays off the principal until the loan is gone. We will also be offering ADA-backed loans to mUSD and mEUR. All of this is controlled with the MELDapp on iOS and Android and as a Chrome extension.
Well, at launch, we will start with MELDed Assets like mETH and mBTC. We will also have ADA>mUSD loans. Soon after that, we will begin with Fiat loans and credit lines (with Debit card). But in the long term, we see MELD the banking stack on Cardano bringing many services in banking to the DeFi space and working with other DeFi protocol to create new products. MELD can be a new kind of financial Dapp and we really consider we can help bank the unbanked! I think we will see huge changed in the financial world and the full potential of MELD will come to light in 2024.
Security is definitely our number one factor. We have qualified in-house security engineers, been working with world-class security researchers and going to hire the best auditors in the scene. We're doing very careful security design, operations, and implementation to secure all end users, devices, stake pool servers, cloud infrastructure, smart contracts and economic models. We're constantly attacking ourselves to find vulnerabilities from attackers' perspectives. Also subscribed to all the latest news, seminars, courses and other resources from top security researchers to always stay up-to-date. Very serious stuff. Users don't have to do KYC to use crypto-only functionalities of the MELDApp. Only required for fiat services. And yes, we'll pay the top price for bug hunters.
There are many different ways to make a profit on MELD. As a lender, you can provide fiat or crypto to the lending pool to earn interest and yield. As a borrower, you yield farm on your deposited crypto collateral to pay back the interest. So in a bullish market (why you stay long on the crypto), you're going to have a negative interest on your loan! You can also deposit assets to a stability pool to earn a net positive on a liquidation event. All these participation scenarios are further incentivized with MELD tokens from the treasury pool. That you can stake to earn even more MELD reward as a further revenue stream. Protocol fees mainly come from trading fees on our deep liquidity pools by traders, and MELDing fees on our MELDed asset service, in exchange for exposure to a diverse asset class's deep liquidity. So now it's not too good to be true, it's a well-designed protocol that benefits all users.
MELD is different in that we operate in fiat in a very tax-efficient way. So once your crypto collateral is deposited and locked on-chain, the fiat loan will be automatically wired to your bank account. This doesn't risk a capital gain tax event like when you cashing out on borrowed crypto. And the fiat loan interest is tax-deductible in many jurisdictions as well!
- MELD1 (100% MELD) (FULLY SATURATED) This ISP offers 100% of rewards in MELD.
- MELD2 (50% MELD 50% ADA) This ISP offers 50% of rewards in MELD and 50% rewards in ADA.
- MELD3 (100% MELD) (FULLY SATURATED) This ISP offers 100% of rewards in MELD.ㅤ
An ISPO is a revolutionary new way for investors and the community to support MELD using the Cardano blockchain. An ISPO is very simple. You delegate your ADA to the MELD ISPO stake pool and based on the amount of time and quantity of ADA you stake, you will receive MELD tokens as a reward. The longer you stake, the more MELD you get. The stake pool opens on July 1 and closes on December 8. If you participate for the full period, you will be rewarded approximately 2 MELD for each ADA staked.
The reward mechanism is based in such a way that 0.065 per epoch on the 100% pools like MELD3, 32 epochs make it 2.08 per staked ADA. So if you are not staking for the whole 32 epoch period, then you might be rewarded based on the no.of epoch period you staked for. For example, let's say if you start staking from August and till the end of the ISPO closes (which is in December), which is around 27-28 epoch period, then you will be rewarded according to this 27-28 epoch period, which would be around (28 × 0.065)=1.82 MELD per staked ADA.
Participants can easily join with just 1 ADA and a wallet like Daedalus and Yoroi. No sign-up required. All data is completely transparent on the Blockchain. You stake with us we airdrop MELD to you, that's all. You can unstake anytime and still get the amount for the staked duration, once we launch this December. If you stake with us right from the get-go then you'll get more than 2 MELD for each staked ADA. We officially launch the ISPO on July 1st, but have been able to attract over 60 early delegators already. Who will get the extra bonus that they deserve, you can go get some right now as well. The current live stake is around 1.63m ADA, and do expect it to explode soon. As we've been able to attract the Cardano Foundation and the many dedicated communities in the whole ecosystem. After the ISPO we'll lower the margin close to 0 for participants to get ADA rewards as usual. We also don't need to cash out on the ADA rewards, just keep staking to help maintain the Blockchain, and earn even more ADA. This way we always stay long on ADA and have a huge net positive on the whole ecosystem.
Yeah, we can mint and distribute Native Tokens since early this year. But will that token be compatible well with the MELD protocol is a question. If not, it's just a useless token with no utility. For example, the MELD token will be used in our one-sided liquidity pools with algorithmic minting and burning, hence a complex Monetary Policy to spend time on. We want to design the best policy to describe the MELD token before minting, instead of minting a non-flexible token, then have to add friction later on to the Smart Contracts for them to be compatible with it. What we also want is to hard test and (fail to) destroy it on full smart contracts on the testnet first, before finalizing its policy to mint on the mainnet. We can also push distribution earlier if smart contracts get stable earlier.
As to the nature of the loans, we will have several different types of loans for different types of borrowers. As a basis for crypto to fiat loans, you will need to have twice the amount of crypto as you will borrow in fiat. If you collateralize $100k in BTC, then you can borrow $50k in USD. But we also have loan types that let you borrow 90% of the collateral value and take out a loan in the MELD stable coin mUSD. Our focus is to provide a low-risk model because we want to minimize possible liquidations of customer positions.
How you stop this, KYC? On systems like ours, users can borrow less than their collateral value, so if they keep repeating the process, they keep borrowing less and less until their loan is not meaningful anymore. And many debt positions with interest aren't fun, way less efficient than one single position. Buying crypto with fiat and most other operations have transaction fees as well.
No, this is not a P2P lending model. Fiat liquidity providers (lenders) deposit their fiat into a lending pool (the non-profit MELD Foundation with a transparent ledger for third-party auditing) for borrowers to borrow against. Borrowers pay back to the lending pool, and if their collateral gets way undervalue and gets liquidated to fiat, that fiat also goes to the lending pool. When a lender withdraws back their fiat investment with interest/yield it is also from the lending pool. Your collateralized crypto position should not be affected by anything but the market price of that crypto.
The APY for the liquidity pools depends on trading traffic, the liquidity level and actual Smart Contract fees on Cardano. We'll announce more safe estimations as we have more stats to analyze, our economics model progresses more, and above all, simulating it aggressively against the testnet. You can check beforehand that we're going with the one-sided liquidity pool design (like Bancor 2.1), so borrowers don't have to deposit collateral in pairs that are very inconvenient and harder to follow. One of our difference is that we don't really need time-based impermanent loss insurance like them, as statistically, the impermanent loss has a very low impact after 100 days, which is quite lower than the average loan period. That said, as we already have deep pools thanks to large collateral to make fiat loans meaningful, we also want to invite direct liquidity providers to make the pools even deeper, the deepest in town, to enable massive liquidity and efficiency for traders. So to protect these shorter-term liquidity providers, we're going to use the staked MELD as insurance to offset the impermanent loss, with portions of the protocol fees fill the insurance pool in real-time for solvency.
Last modified 1yr ago