AMA VIC Group with Persistence One

18 min readOct 22, 2020

Mr But ( Host AMA)
Welcome two guests to join our AMA today @abhitejsingh @tusharaggarwal
Are you ready ? @abhitejsingh @tusharaggarwal
Tushar Aggarwal | Persistence
Ready :) , Very happy to be here and speak to the VIC community
Abhitej Singh | Persistence
Hello everyone,

Great to be here!
Mr But ( Host AMA)

Today, VIC Group will have an AMA session with Persistence One

The Group will be Muted now for the AMA session to begin !!!!
Today’s AMA session consists of 3 parts

👉 Part 1 : Basic Introduction of Persistence One and Tushar Aggarwal, CEO of Persistence One

👉Part 2: Guest Tushar Aggarwal, CEO of Persistence One will answer community questions from to form

👉Part 3: All members can ask anything directly about Persistence One
Abhitej Singh | Persistence
Would like to remind everyone to follow the steps to grab the chance to win the rewards. Don’t want anyone to miss on the rewards.
Mr But ( Host AMA)
💥NOTE: Please make sure to complete steps:

1. Join Persistence One community

2. Subscribe to Persistence One Announcement Channel

3. Follow Persistence One , VIC group and Megala on Twitter

Thanks to the reminder from the guests, we’re going to start part I: Basic Introduction of Persistence One and Tushar Aggarwal, CEO of Persistence One @tusharaggarwal @abhitejsingh
Please introduce yourself and the Persistence One project to everyone
Tushar Aggarwal | Persistence
Let’s do it 🙌🙌
My first crypto experience was when I was based in Singapore — towards the end of 2016, I got on Coinbase and started buying cryptos after getting my capital out of some traditional investments

Was looking to do angel investments into startups but instead came across crypto and the rest is as they say, history

I started my career in the Blockchain/Crypto industry hosting the Decrypt Asia podcast (https://decrypt.asia/) and writing extensively about Blockchain/Crypto on Tech in Asia.

Then I joined as the first employee at Singapore based LuneX Ventures (Crypto arm of a Traditional VC Golden Gate Ventures — https://goldengate.vc/). Seeing an opportunity to contribute more to the ecosystem by being a founder versus an investor and bringing institutional capital into the industry, I started Persistence in Q2 2019 and we came out of stealth in January 2020.
One of my blogposts on Terra — https://www.techinasia.com/terra-drive-mass-adoption
I’ll let Abhitej introduce himself also
Abhitej Singh | Persistence 🦾
Thank you for the warm welcome @Mrbut88.

I am Abhitej Singh and I take care of Strategy and Community at @Persistenceone. My introduction to Crypto was in 2016–2017 while I was travelling across different part of India and the US. I was very fascinated by the core characteristics of Crypto and Blockchain in general — ownership and transparency. So, after initial introduction I jumped into Crypto completely in late 2018.

Before joining Persistence, I was helping a couple of early stage startups (now backed by Ola and Flipkart — unicorns in India). I was also actively involved building communities for Google, facebook and co-founded national hackathon in India called Code2Create.

I met Tushar and Deepanshu in 2019 at Blockchain Conference and really liked the vision they had and joined them back in November 2019. Here we are building @PersistenceOne.

I also co-founded Cosmos India with Tushar and Deepanshu.
Mr But ( host AMA)
Yeah thanks for the guest introduction and about Persistence One?
Abhitej Singh | Persistence 🦾
Persistence facilitates the borrowing of Cryptoassets (Stablecoins) using Real World Assets such as invoices as collateral. This bridges DeFi and traditional finance and uses the features of DeFi to solve real world financing problems.

Persistence follows a three step process to facilitate this:

♦️Asset tokenization — tokenization of real-world assets through document fingerprinting of invoices using NFTs to capture all the unique metadata

♦️Asset Exchange (NFT Marketplace/DEX) — trading/exchange of tokenized real-world assets against Stablecoins

♦️Financing / Liquidity Pools — usage of NFT assets (representing invoices) as collateral to borrow/lend Stablecoins through Stablecoin liquidity pools

The community can find more about our project on our website: https://persistence.one

To add on to what Abhitej just mentioned, the first application of Persistence is Comdex, a decentralized physical commodities trading and trade financing marketplace, which has facilitated $41M in transaction volume till date
Mr But ( Host AMA)

Thanks for a brief introduction to all of us going ahead with Part II :

Guest Tushar Aggarwal, CEO of Persistence One will answer community questions from to form

Let me start with the first question : What solutions has Persistence One PROTOCOL developed for DeFi’s general problems and how did they manage to aggregate the entire crypto market on a decentralized platform?
Abhitej Singh | Persistence 🦾

Yes, so given the back story of how Persistence started (Tushar’s frustrations around how no ‘real world’ problems were being solved) — Persistence aims to solve certain problems within both Defi and traditional finance

This goes into some of the problems Persistence is solving at the tradiotinal finance level and the solutions as well

As for DeFi, here are some of the problems and solutions

Now that the problems and solutions are set, how do we actually go about solving them

The overall tech stack looks as follows:

So essentially we are bringing together the traditional finance and DeFi. The institutional side applications users such as traders on Comdex get the much needed accessibility for the operating capital (liquidity) and at the same time Crypto native users get the chance to earn a sustainable yield on their assets (stablecoins) through our Persistence native application.

To explain how we are aggregating the liquidity, let me explain using a simple diagram:

Mr But ( Host AMA)
Thanks for the vivid response from the guest, we will continue with question 2 : At the moment , what’s Persistence One focusing right now ? building and developing product or getting customers and users, or partnerships ? Could you explain it to Vic community ?
Abhitej Singh | Persistence 🦾
At the moment, Persistence is focused on three areas:

- Expanding the technological capabilities: Our Persistence SDK (the toolkit as illustrated above) is already ready and open-sourced for the developers to build on top of it. But now we are working with leading projects from across different ecosystems to tackle different real-world use-cases and building pluggable module for the institutions to leverage the Blockchain technology.

We are also working with Interchain Foundation to develop inter-chain NFT and Metadata standards that will make it possible for NFTs to be interoperable. They will be same as ERC-721 for the ethereum, here they will be for Interoperable world.

- Growth (Team and Community): The team is continuously evolving and we are already a 13 members strong team with exceptional individuals from Tech, Business and Community domains. Our Blockchain developers are from the top institute of India, IIT-B (Harvard of India with less than 1% of acceptance rate). Now we are expanding our team further and hiring best of talents across different roles.

On the community side, we have launched the Stakedrop campaign, our biggest community initiative so far through which we will be distributing 1% of our total token supply. Stakedrop is essentially an airdrop for focused group of Crypto community (stakers and hodlers). The StakeDrop helps in two major ways:

- Community development with high-quality individuals who are well-educated about the Crypto and also believe in the long-term of vision.

- Very decentralised token distribution which in turn will help in the network stability and adoption in future.

The last area being Collaboration and Partnerships:

@PersistenceOne has strong partnerships with the leading validators such as Stakefish, Dokia, Cosmostation etc (a lot of them being early proponent and investors in the project), ecosystem players such as Terra, Alameda, Interchain Foundation and other Cosmos ecosystem projects such as Iris Network.

We also have some exciting partnership announcements coming ahead, on which the team has been working on the background. Stay tuned on the same at our announcements channel: https://t.me/persistenceone
Mr But ( host AMA)
Thanks for the response from the guest we will continue with question 3 : No project can survive on its own. Can you tell us some of your partners in PERSISTENCE ONE and who you plan to collaborate with in the nearest future?

What are your strategies in building a big and strong community? Do you agree that the power of the community will lead your project to grow
Bụt Ra đê Rồi Đừng hỏi, [21.10.20 20:47]

Thanks for the response from the guest we will continue with question 3 : No project can survive on its own. Can you tell us some of your partners in PERSISTENCE ONE and who you plan to collaborate with in the nearest future?

What are your strategies in building a big and strong community? Do you agree that the power of the community will lead your project to grow

Abhitej Singh | Persistence 🦾
Also we have some the leading institutional investors, many of which will be running the nodes on Persistence network. The name include but not limited to Arrington XRP Capital, LuneX Ventures, IOSG, NGC, Spark etc

https://medium.com/persistence-blog/persistence-one-first-to-implement-interchain-native-nft-transfer-bags-icf-grant-cdb6c3856c25

https://medium.com/persistence-blog/pos-token-holders-prepare-yourselves-for-persistence-stakedrop-the-grand-unveiling-d5f6ca6ddc40

https://medium.com/persistence-blog/persistence-raises-3-7m-from-industry-heavyweights-to-bridge-traditional-finance-and-defi-via-nfts-a30256cdb428

1. Institutional investors: Our mission has attracted the support of a plethora of industry VC heavyweights including Arrington XRP Capital, LuneX Ventures (crypto arm of Golden Gate Ventures), IOSG Ventures, Spark Digital Capital, Woodstock Fund, Incrypt (crypto arm of First Principles VC), Genesis Block HK, NGC Ventures, AU21.

Some of these investors will be running a node on our network which make them a long-term strategic partner of @PersistenceOne. This demonstrates the strength of Persistence One at the core as well as external supporters level.

2. Ecosystem Players: We have partners such as Terra, Alameda and ICF which are helping Persistence grow in different geographies, ecosystem and also connect with wider opportunities in the Crypto industry. We are working with Interchain Foundation to establish interoperable NFT standards and the leading the development for the same. The interNFT Working group already has some the leading projects from Cosmos, Polkadot, Kusama, Solana ecosystem and many more joining every week.

Read more about our interNFt initiative here: https://interNFT.org

We also announced a collaboration with Terra a while back, read more here: https://medium.com/persistence-blog/terra-and-persistence-announce-partnership-to-drive-adoption-via-a-token-swap-and-community-677df3d0f6e0?source=collection_category---4------0-----------------------

These ecosystem players are also investors in Persistence One.

3. Community: We work every closely with some of the leading interoperable protocols and run Indian communities for those projects. One of the biggest examples is Cosmos India. We have been leading the Cosmos India initiative for around a year now and have added more than 1500+ community members. This also allows such to build a strong partnership with the Core project team.

Cosmos/Tendermint has appreciated our efforts and contributions time and time again. One of the recent example is the highest delegation to our validator node.

Read more: https://buff.ly/3ixOFDL

Abhitej Singh | Persistence 🦾, [21.10.20 21:08]

- Cosmos India (recently covered by Coindesk for it’s exceptional growth): https://buff.ly/34At1K1

- StakeDrop: https://medium.com/persistence-blog/pos-token-holders-prepare-yourselves-for-persistence-stakedrop-the-grand-unveiling-d5f6ca6ddc40

And we are working on bringing many more initiatives such as these.

Mr But ( Host AMA)

WOW is such a wonderful question and answer from both sides, we will continue with question 4 : Why did you come up with the idea of encrypting real-world assets by using NFT to bring them on-chain into the DeFi ecosystem? And why is #Persistence necessary for crypto and users?

What’s the difference between the #Persistance dapp and #Comdex dapp? What are both benefits and benefits to users of Persistence?
Abhitej Singh | Persistence 🦾

Sure thing. As mentioned above, Comdex is a decentralized physical commodities trading and trade financing marketplace.

Comdex is the first 3rd party application the Persistence ecosystem which is built from ground up using Persistence SDK.

It is the institutional facing product powered by Persistence which matches SME commodity traders and trade financiers across major trading hubs in Asia — Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Dubai.

It has facilitated 41M+ worth of transactions and has integrated with Westen Union for multi-region instant on/off ramp.

Press release from Q4 2019 — https://finance.yahoo.com/news/comdex-completes-over-10m-worth-070800123.html

On the other hand, Persistence dapp is essentially a liquidity aggregator which provides the exposure to the Crypto users to interact and engage with the Real-world assets. As mentioned earlier, there are some of the fundamental problems with both Traditional finance and DeFi, one of major one being using the Crypto as only collateral for borrowing Crypto.

Persistence dapp solves the same by bringing the tokenised real-world assets from the institutional facing application and using them as a collateral to borrow Crypto (stablecoins)

Have explained this here in the diagram.

As for answering you question on why did we choose NFTs to tokenise the real world assets, it makes the following processes every simple:

Asset tokenization — tokenization of real-world assets through document fingerprinting of invoices using NFTs to capture all the unique metadata

Asset Exchange (NFT Marketplace/DEX) — trading/exchange of tokenized real-world assets against Stablecoins

Financing / Liquidity Pools — usage of NFT assets (representing invoices) as collateral to borrow/lend Stablecoins through Stablecoin liquidity pools

Like how Pepe the Frog is unique, every ‘real world’ asset is unique.

Pepe the Frog has certain unique characteristics similar to every commodity or business invoice having unique characteristics. Like how you would be able to trade frogs or monkeys or digital art. Similarly once something is represented on chain, it can be traded.

We have been working on DeFi + NFT since early 2019 and before it was cool/hyped in the Crypto industry 😉

I believe the following images clearly explains why Persistence is important for Crypto and users:

Please let me know if I have missed on any part of the question. 😅

Every question has multiple parts, haha!

Trying to keep up the pace.
Mr But ( host AMA)

I see you answering the full part of the question from the community. Thank you very much for this
And now we will move on to the final question of Part II : What is #StakeDrop and what networks are supported on StakeDrop? How can I join StakeDrop? The hot new term in crypto is “YIELD FARMING”. So Do you have a plan to develop the Yeild Farming system?
Abhitej Singh | Persistence 🦾
👥 We’ve been meticulously planning an innovative initiative to provide the crypto community with access and exposure to XPRT (Persistence’s native token). It’s called StakeDrop, and it’s emerging on the horizon.

⛓ StakeDrop is a token distribution mechanism that allows token holders of prominent PoS networks to receive an allocation of XPRT tokens simply by staking on their favourite networks. Networks include: Cosmos Network, Terra, Kava Labs, IRISnet, Polkadot, Matic Network and Tezos.

💎1% of the total supply of XPRT tokens (1,000,000 XPRT) is allocated for StakeDrop rewards. Reward amounts for specific participants depend on a variety of factors, including which network/s they are staking on, whether they are delegating to an AUDIT.one validator (higher rewards) or a different validator, and the length of their participation in each campaign.

🤝 Airdrops are so 2017. StakeDrop has been designed to be much more than a conventional airdrop; it’s an experience. StakeDrop benefits all parties involved, whilst providing an engaging experience for StakeDrop participants.

📆 The first of seven StakeDrop campaigns will be on Cosmos Network, and will begin on October 26th, 2020.
For our first campaign (Cosmos Network):

✅ The participation process is simple. Firstly, you need to be staking ATOM on-chain with any validator on Cosmos Network (staking via exchanges does not count). Then, you need to register your participation by sending a ‘Magic Transaction’ to a specified address (more details found in the article below).

ℹ️ To provide more insights into the Cosmos Network StakeDrop and to ensure that ATOM holders are ready to participate, we’ve published a full run-down of the StakeDrop campaign here: https://buff.ly/2FItnpo

Remember to mark your calendar for October 26th, 12:00 am PDT, the start of the Cosmos Network StakeDrop. Get your ATOMs staked in advance so you’re ready to earn XPRT!
Further on the network that we have selected for the StakeDrop:

We will be distributing 1% of the total XPRT token supply (1,000,000 XPRT) to StakeDrop participants. Everyone staking with any validator on the following networks during the StakeDrop campaign will be eligible to participate:

• Cosmos Network

• Polkadot

• Matic Network

• Tezos

• Terra

• Kava

• IRISnet

As a staking, governance and ‘work’ token, XPRT will be an integral part of the Persistence network. StakeDrop is designed to facilitate the wide distribution of XPRT to those actively contributing to PoS networks within the wider blockchain ecosystem.
To answer the last part of the question:

For sure, Yield Farming gained a lot of traction but as we have observed recently the yields have gone significantly down. At Persistence One, our goal is to create sustainable yields for the Liquidity providers and adopt better practices to incentivise all the actors involved in the network/application — validators, users (lenders and borrowers) etc
To summarise: At the moment, we are focused on building a strong community and developing solutions for more and more real-world use-cases. And you never know, StakeDrop may beat Yield Farming 😉
So don’t miss the chance to participate in StakeDrop. It’s near-zero risk way of earning $XPRT tokens.
Mr But ( host AMA)
A nice synopsis from the guests :) and this is the last question to end part II
We will continue with Part III All members can ask anything directly about Persistence One
❤️❤️The group will be unmuted within 2 minutes for everyone to ask questions❤️❤️
Question : Are you planning to promote your project in different countries, where English is not good? Do you have a local community for them to understand more about your project?
Abhitej Singh | Persistence 🦾
Absolutely. Just like what we’re doing here. Other countries we are focusing on right now are China, Korea, Thailand, US, Russia etc
What’s your outlook on the future of Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain?Can you tell me 1–3 things that Persistence One looks forward to in the future?
Very bullish. Tokenisation of a lot of real world assets and bringing real world assets on chain
Question: — How does the Persistence Asset Exchange work? How can I trade real-world assets? Do you mean stocks? Or literally physical products?
Abhitej Singh | Persistence 🦾
Real world assets are represented on chain using NFTs. Those NFTs get traded :)
Question : 🌎!! Persistence? Why did you choose that as a name? Persisting on DeFi?
Abhitej Singh | Persistence 🦾
Haha we keep on ‘persisting’ whether the market is good or bad :)

It is a word that many people on the team identify strongly with
Do you have any Coin Burn / BuyBack systems or any Token Burn plans to increase the value of Token & attract Investors to invest?

Yes absolutely.

This image helps to understand how economic activity at application level leads to value accrual to the token
Question : 🔵 Persistence have a token generator, so its tool just is able to create NFTs? Also what are the necessary requirements that an user must follow to create its own tokens?
Abhitej Singh | Persistence 🦾
Very interesting question. We are coming up with the UI for community to create tokens without having knowledge of coding — both fungible tokens and NFTs with a simple interface.
Question : What strengths does the Persistence One project have compared to other projects and what breakthroughs will there be in the coming time?
Abhitej Singh | Persistence 🦾
Some of the key differentiators — our go-to-market vertical, geographical focus
Traction of course 😁

Also we have a highliy highly technical team that has and scale out products

For reference, we did the world’s first interchain NFT transfer:

https://medium.com/persistence-blog/1st-non-standard-ibc-transaction-executed-by-persistence-2-2-de935b22eacb
Question : I am an EXPERIENCED DEVELOPER AND ETHICAL HACKER, do you have plans for HACKATHON so as to check the security of your ecosytem periodically and also invite developers to build?
Abhitej Singh | Persistence 🦾
Recently, we hosted HackAtom India along with Cosmos Network to introduce developers in India to the Cosmos ecosystem and we will be hosting multiple Persistence focused Hackathons in the near future.

Read More: https://blog.cosmos.network/leading-interoperability-protocol-cosmos-network-partners-with-persistence-one-to-launch-hackatom-d06c1a234885
Question : Adoption is one of the important factor that all sustainable blockchain projects should focus to be more attractive in the investors’ eyes. What PERSISTENCE ONE has done and plans to do to achieve real world adoption?
Abhitej Singh | Persistence 🦾
The first application in the Persistence ecosystem, Comdex, already has processed more than $41M worth of trades on it’s platform which shows the strong traction we have.
High level, we have onboarded some of the top validators around the world.

Comdex as the first dApp has significant traction

We have solid team in place on the business, tech and community fronts.
Question . As we know, every successful project has some behind the scenes story, what is the story behind Your Project success?
Abhitej Singh | Persistence 🦾
Story behind is just relentless ‘Persistence’ ;)

I think the biggest secret sauce is the team. Every single individual brings something to the table to create a very fine balance for the organisation as a whole
You can see some of the milestones and achievements here: https://persistence.one/roadmap
You grow our community in a sustainable manner and also bring together strong believers in the project we have launched StakeDrop Campaign: https://buff.ly/375424p
Thank you so much for hosting us today @Mrbut88 and thrilled to see the response and enthusiasm for @PersistenceOne from the community.
Looking forward to interacting with all of you on our community chat. Also, feel free to reach out to me in case you have any questions.
Mr But ( host AMA )

AMA END Thank you to everyone who joined AMA today!!!!!!
👉Persistence One information:

💥NOTE: Please make sure to complete steps:

1. Join Persistence One community

2. Subscribe to Persistence One Announcement Channel

3. Follow Persistence One VIC group and Megala on Twitter

AMA VIC Group with Persistence One

Written by VIC Group

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