2018 can be called the stablecoin year. From the beginning of the year, lots stablecoin projects come to the fore, amount those project, Alchemint is a project build on NEO blockchain is one of the best. They received invest from Fenbushi Capital、NEO Global Capital、Signal Ventures、BK Fund、Blockchain Ventures and some of the top capital’s invest, and reaching partnership with multiple institution. On 5th June, 2018, Alchemint founder Elva Zhang accepted Jinse interview. During the interview, Elva introduce Alchemint’s philosophy, mechanism and vision, also shared her experience in blockchain.
Host: Hello everyone! Today we invited Alchemint founder Elva Zhang. Elva, welcome to Jinse.
Elva: Thank you, Hello everyone.
Host: I heard in blockchain industry people use one day as one year, is that true?
Elva: Yes that’s true, during our presale, one of our investor wondering why we always online,ask when do I usually take rest. I said we prepared to work 7*24. And that investor said “One day in blockchain，one year in real world”
Host: I notice on your LinkedIn profile, you wrote: create the stablecoin in the digital world, connect virtual to reality. Can you tell us why you have this idea?
Elva: Thies is our vision for Alchemint, usually people talk about cryptocurrency is for trading and holding, I think it’s misunderstand of the cryptocurrency, any technology revolution in past included Internet,
Host: Can you share with us how “Alchemint” come up?
Elva: For our name, we need thanks to our Adviser, one of the most famous and handsome lawyer in the blockchian industry Ming Sun. He combined Alchemist and Mint into Alchemint, express our desire to make the perfect Stablecoin in the market.
Host: Interesting, do you remember when it’s your first time you heard blockchain? How’s that impact to you?
Elva: I am not a blockchain early adaptor, I read a book about blockchian in early 2016, it have a huge impact to me, i think it might be a important technology as revolutionary as internet. But during that time, nobody understand how to bring it into our life, until I studied the Vitalik’s Ethereum, In particular, the invention of smart contracts can solve the problem of the establishment, transfer, and circulation of property rights. Anybody can directly issue tokens, which will bring me great impact.It is worth mentioning that in the past, I once made a crowdfunding trading platform. The crowdfunding of stocks is the transaction and circulation of unlisted stocks. It has always been a problem. Everyone knows that it is very troublesome to go to the Trade and Industry Bureau to transfer the rights. The emergence of smart contracts has given me a profound understanding that many issues that cannot be solved in the current institutional framework, when new technologies emerge, may be a programmer’s invention that will give you a perfect solution.
Adventure: Three features make Alchemint better
Host: The concept of Bitcoin was first proposed in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto. The concept of stablecoin was about 2014. This year, the stablecoin became a hot spot in the blockchain industry. The Alchemint project was also favored by many capitals. Why do people invest in this project?
Elva: The earliest design of a stablecoin-like model was Dan Larimer from Bitshare. Dan Larimer is also a person I admire very much. Alchemint has attracted a lot of attention from the market, attracting investment from some of the most well-known blockchain investment banks in the world, including Fengbushi Capital, Branch Bank Capital, BK Fund, and thousands of funds.
They are concerned about our involvement in early stage investment. I think there are several reasons. First, we all see that the stable currency market is a huge market. The gradual easing between the actual economy and the virtual economy in the future will become a trend, and the stability of the currency is expected. Act as a bridge and media. The other is that I think that Alchemint’s business model and business model are unique in the industry, different from the three new models of common stablecoin in the market, which is also an important reason to attract investors’ attention.
Host: What are the pain points in the current stable currency market? How does the Alchemint project solve these pain points?
Elva: There are two key points in stablecoin. One is liquidity; the other is stability. Prior to the start of Alchemint, we spent a long time studying the field of stablecoin and found that liquidity is currently the main pain point. The mainstream stablecoin products in the market generally have certain deficiencies in liquidity supply. USDT has been plagued by various problems in credit. Not long ago, the TUSD that was just launched on the currency line has had to be unloaded after a delisting.
To solve this problem, we have adopted a mechanism designed for the B-side. You can understand this B-side as an exchange, a cross-border e-commerce, or a lending intermediary, because they have stable currency. Application scenarios and customer requirements, then you can use the Alchemint system to issue stable currency for your own business services.
So, I often tell people that we are not the makers of the stablecoin. We are just making the stablecoin platform.
Host: How can you become the leader of this year’s competition for stablecoin?
Elva: Alchemint has several core advantages: high liquidity, good stability, and extensive scalability.
Why can I introduce these three features? First, the stablecoin is essentially a monetary. If the Token corresponds to the stock market, then the stablecoin corresponds to the money market. For the money market, liquidity is crucial. I had mentioned before, we have made great efforts to provide sufficient liquidity, and it is also the key for us to surpass other stable currency projects and lead the market in the future.
Good stability is the basic characteristic of a stablecoin program. If a stablecoin is often off pegged to the FIAT it suppose pegged to, it is not a stablecoin. There is also a wealth of extensibility. This feature means that Alchemint’s logic to generate stable currencies is not only a single asset mortgage but will be included in a package of assets in the future. We are currently developing cross-chain functionality while we believe that more assets from other chain will become a trend, and the assets of the future real-world will be gradually mapped to the blockchain.
Model: Stablecoin is project, SDT is project token
Host: People always think stablecoin is non-profitable, is that true?
Elva: This is a problem that we have to repeatedly explain to many people. Alchemint is a stablecoin project that implements a dual token mechanism. The project token is called SDT. SDT is a utility token first, and it is required to create a stablecoin through smart contracts. Pay SDT as a fee, it is our project token, the price of the project token is fluctuating, the participating investors can get the value-added benefits. And the other token is Alchemint’s stablecoin , which is our product, the stablecoin uses a 1:1 soft pegged currency, for example SDUSD pegged to USD, or SDJPY pegged the yen, and SDEUR pegged the euro. So our stablecoin and our project tokens are completely two concepts.
Host: Can you explain Alchemint dual token system?
Elva: I just mentioned that anyone can create stablecoin by using smart contracts. The stablecoin adopts a soft anchoring currency, such as pegging the US dollar, which is called SDUSD. The SDUSD can be used in various scenarios such as exchanges. Payments and transactions, which you can transfer to anyone from your wallet, can be bought directly from the exchange, just like other cryptocurrency.
The other token is Alchemint’s project token SDT. The SDT is a utility token. In the process of using smart contracts to create a stablecoin, SDT is required to be used as a fee. In addition, it is also a token for our project and has investment value. With the continuous expansion of market and product scale, the more successful the Alchemint project, the higher the price of SDT.
Host: Finally I understand. What’s the currently stage for Alchemint? How to unsure the stablecoin have enough liquidity? And how to keep the stablecoin price stable?
Elva: Alchemint had founded for half years, we already finished most of our smart contract development, web based wallet is in testing phase, also we finished our funding. Right now, we are develop our SAR-B, and cross-chain functionality. We are proud of our community, we had 25k follower in just few month time all over the world. For long time follower of NEO, this project is exciting for NEO ecosystem. For how to keep the price stable, we need talk about our core mechanism SAR, which stands for Smart Assets Reserve, SAR had set some collateral parameter, people who holding cryptocurrency can put their cryptocurrency into the SAR, and based on the setting collateral parameter, they can get correspond stablecoin.
People might worries, the cryptocurrency can moves up and down, NEO and ETH price are unstable, in this case how the stablecoin keep the price stable? SAR had seted the collateral rate and warning level, when it’s reaching warning level, the system will require the people open the SAR to add collateral or close the SAR. If the people open the SAR choose to do nothing, the Alchemist will approach those SAR, after the price below warning level, Alchemist will take over the asset and payback for him, but the people open the SAR can not redeem his collateral back anymore.For Alchemist, the action is profitable, after the collateral been auction, they can keep parts of the it as rewards.
With NEO: Alchemint will be the killer dApp
Host: We noticed Alchemint always connected with NEO, in the NEO economy system, what’s the role of Alchemint’s stablecoin?
Elva: Alchemint is closely connect with NEO, we are a dApp on NEO blockchain, NEO’s founder Uncle Da had stated 5 points how NEO become the best cryptocurrency in 2020: High TPS, Digital ID, Finality,Interoperability and stablecoin. I think we filled the stablecoin from the NEO blockchain, Uncle Da also mentioned Alchemint during the NEO DevCon in San Francisco. We have to confident to become the killer dApp in NEO blockchian, and help NEO become a stronger, better blockchian.
Host: If we talk about NEO, we have to talk about NEO’s founder Uncle Da, how do you approach him and reaching this cooperation?
I had mention before NEO’s 5 feature, Uncle Da also mentioned multiple, Alchemint make up the empty filed of the NEO’s stablecoin.
At the beginning, we think about which chain we choose to use, we even thought about to build our own chain, but in the end we choose to cooperation with a matured blockchain NEO.
It should be noted that some NEO is a open-source project, it’s open to everyone every project, you can create your project without notice them. But we would love to receive more support from NEO. We introduce the idea to Uncle Da, the whole process went very smoothly, Uncle Da is agree with Alchemint’s vision, in the end NEO Global Captial become Alchemint cornerstone investor.
Entrepreneurial: Financing does not use stablecoin, which is a common pit for many blockchain projects.
Host: Then I was particularly curious about you that from a financial executive to today’s entrepreneurial role, what do you think are the greatest feeling of entrepreneurship? What aspects of life have changed?
Elva: Actually, I mentioned that I had done Internet entrepreneurial projects before and I have failed ones and successful ones. Entrepreneurship is very tiring at first, a friend told me that entrepreneurship is a single strategy: you have only one way to go, and there is no choice, because you have a team behind investors, so you must go all the time; while investment is a complex strategy, you can choose There are many directions. But entrepreneurship also brings me great happiness. I enjoy the process of creating nothing.
Host: Did you encounter any difficulties during these several startups?
Elva: In fact, there are a lot of difficulties that may be sitting and chatting for a day. In the past, I think there are many difficulties fall in employment, technology, etc. Many entrepreneurs also have a deep understanding.
What I would like to say more is a difficulty happened this time. In fact, as a stablecoin project, we had been thinking about how to avoid the difficulty of financing fluctuations at first. Everyone knows that many entrepreneurial projects in this industry are funded by cryptocurrency. We chose ETH and NEO at that time and the value was anchored the US dollar, but by the end of private equity, the price of cryptocurrency had fallen by nearly half.
Therefore, we will inevitably face the problem of asset fluctuations. In addition, investors will have different investment costs in different stages, which will cause great distress to us. This is why we recommend using stablecoin whenever possible for cryptocurrency financing, which is a good way to avoid these problems.
Host: Since there was a three o’clock blockchain, the industry generally felt anxiety. Do you also have this feeling?
Elva: I am an anxious person. Of course, my mentality has been adjusted as far as possible, because the world is inherently imperfect. I sleep very late every day. One is the pressure of work. The other is that community fans and investors of Alchemint come from all over the world. Maybe we are the most active time in the evening. I think that Alchemint is a bit different from other projects. That is, we have been as transparent as possible from the very beginning. We are trying to explain to every investor about projects, our models and plans for the future.
Attitude: Responding to questions with transparent and pragmatic work
Host: Has anyone ever questioned the Alchemint project? How do you answer if you face doubt?
Elva: Sometimes too much argument does not make sense. It still depends on what we are doing. Now Alchemint White Paper is about to update, which embodies the Alchemint team’s thinking about business model of stablecoin, the process of stablecoin mechanism and the future digital currency market. Our code will be fully disclosed in the future. Everyone can see what we do at each stage. At the same time, the project weekly report is duly disclosed. The entire project is run in accordance with the promised architecture. So, the best way is to give time for the answer.
Host: Then our problem is drawing to a close, just describe what keywords do you think are right for you?
Elva: The first label I would like to add the word freedom to myself. When I was young, I was a person who did not like to stick to conventions. In my eyes, there are no established rules that cannot be challenged. I will think about the rationality of this rule.
After I became a university student, I began to approach liberalism. This is why I am very easy to accept the world of blockchain. In my understanding, this blockchain revolution has continued the legacy of the Internet Revolution in the past decade, accelerated the evolution of the entire human society, and will profoundly influence and change business model, economic and social organization.
Take Bitcoin as an example. In the past when the company was the basic unit of the economy, the operation of a company required shareholders to invest and gain profits to develop. However, today we have seen Bitcoin running perfectly for several years without a centralized organization. Every person involved can get the appropriate incentive to spontaneously promote the operation of the entire system. Therefore, the community governance of the permit economy may become a trend.
Host: The last question, can you reveal the Alchemint’s future development plan?
Elva: There are three very clear phases in the Alchemint roadmap. The first phase is called origin. At this stage, Alchemint’s product will be in the form of a wallet to make it easy for everyone to get a stablecoin.
In the second stage, we hope to stabilize the liquidity of the stablecoin can already reach billions of dollars in supply. At the same time, we hope to provide better solutions for more blockchain projects and online and offline payment programs.
In the third stage, we cannot predict this stage, but we believe that the bridge between the real world and the digital world at that stage may already be completed.
The entire plan should take five years or longer.
Host: Thank you, President Elva, for today’s interview. Finally, I hope that this industry is getting better and better and our life is getting better and better.
Elva: The financial industry is to make people’s lives better. I also thank you for providing such an opportunity for Alchemint to show and share stablecoin projects.
