On September 03, Centrifuge and PolkaWarriors together organized an AMA to introduce their project, Altair Network - The canary network of Centrifuge as well as reveal their plan to participate in the parachain auction.

Altair is built using Substrate, and will have nearly the same codebase as Centrifuge Chain (just like Kusama is to Polkadot!). It is an experimental network for users who want to test the bounds of asset financing. From art NFTs to undiscovered assets — Altair enables users to tokenize their most experimental assets and finance them. It is the next step for anyone looking to unlock financing for their assets.

This AMA was held in PolkaWarriors Global Telegram Group with the participation of Cassidy Daly - Economics/ Token Design of Centrifuge. Many interesting questions were answered by Cassidy.

Below is a summary of the outstanding questions and answers from the AMA session.

1. In practically every industry, Covid-19 has a negative influence. So, how did that affect you as a crypto project? How did you and your team deal with the pandemic?

Cassidy

Fortunately for Centrifuge we are a remote first team - so the pandemic was not so tough for us to work together. For the business - we actually were able to make some good impact! We worked with an asset originator to provide financing for businesses that are working hard in this pandemic to supply PPE to frontline workers!! We are super happy that Centrifuge can make a positive difference for people during this time

If you want to read more about financing PPE you can read that here: https://medium.com/centrifuge/how-defi-is-delivering-key-supplies-during-covid19-4fe174c81ae8

2. DeFi is evolving too fast and the ability to break is very high. What do you think about this and can you be sure that Centrifuge’s products will be in demand in the long term? What is Centrifuge planning to contribute to DeFi’s growth?

Cassidy

This is a great question!

One large problem in DeFi is that everything has been tied to crypto native assets - which means if crypto prices go down then the whole system goes down. This is super risky and problematic to grow

Centrifuge brings real world assets to DeFi which are uncorrelated to crypto assets

This means that Centrifuge makes DeFi stronger!!

Also by bringing in RWA (real world assets) Centrifuge brings a huge value to DeFi to help it grow much larger than today just with crypto assets

Here our co-founder Lucas wrote more about this: https://medium.com/centrifuge/black-thursday-showing-the-potential-for-real-world-assets-in-defi-d0538dd53da9

3. In the Altair’s announcement:”Tokens are also minted and rewarded to Tinlake participants in order to incentivize adoption”. Does this mean crowdloan participants will get AIR tokens and in case they are Tinlake users at the same time will get an additional amount of AIR?

Cassidy

Yes! Tinlake provides liquidity rewards to investors that lock DAI into Tinlake pools.

Right now those rewards are provided in CFG on Centrifuge Chain

Once Altair launches - crowdloan participants will receive AIR rewards on Altair

And once Tinlake launches on Altair then users will be able to earn liquidity rewards in AIR

4. Partnership is always an important factor for every project. So who is Centrifuge’s partner? What are the benefits you get from those relationships?

Cassidy

Yes, integration with other projects is super important! This is a key for the blockchain space in my opinion

For Centrifuge - we work with many different companies to bring assets into Tinlake that we call ‘asset originators'. These are companies that you can see on tinlake here: https://tinlake.centrifuge.io. These are companies like NewSilver, ConsolFreight, Bling, EndBridge, and more. Another huge key for us is integrating with other DeFi projects. We are very excited to have a close collaboration with MakerDAO to integrate with them. We are also working very closely with Aave! And soon will have an integration with them also. You can read more about some of our integrations, and why they are so important to us here: https://medium.com/centrifuge/as-composable-as-it-gets-43b4dcc5db5a

5. Governance in this type of project is key but I did not find much info about its governance system. What will be the methodology or system that will be used to make important decisions regarding the overall ecosystem of the project?

Cassidy

Yes, we agree that governance is super important for crypto projects - to put power into the hands of the users themselves. Centrifuge and Altair use the same on-chain governance system as Kusama and Polkadot. We also have a governance forum where users discuss different topics at https://gov.centrifuge.io. You can read more about how our on-chain governance works here: https://docs.centrifuge.io/use/participate-in-network/. After discussion on our forum, any token holder can propose something on-chain for governance decision

6. AIR seems like a very interesting project. Definitely follows the wild ethos of Kusama. My question is: with regards to art NFTs, experimental assets and all that... How is the value of those assets determined when it comes to using those NFTs as collateral for lending?

Cassidy

Good question!

With these sort of experimental assets - it will be a process to find the right way to determine their value

With something like art NFTs - there is not a large market for them. Since they are not very liquid it is hard to determine an accurate market price for them.

This will be something super interesting to watch grow - and I think it is the perfect use case for Altair!

Altair is really the experimental little brother to Centrifuge - where we really can push the boundaries of asset financing together

With something like art NFTs there will probably grow some platforms that are specialized just in finding the accurate price for them in order to access financing on a platform like Altair

Maybe it won’t be available for every NFT but definitely for some of the bigger ones you know and love like Cryptopunks...

**7. Many projects promise a long term plan, big mission and great success in future, but never release any working product or revenue. What makes your project different from these projects? Could you share some big achievements that you will get in 2021? **

Cassidy

I love this question because Centrifuge is very different from other projects here!

Centrifuge is already live for over 1 year.

We have over $30M value in total value locked in Centrifuge Tinlake - financing many different types of assets from Real Estate to Invoices

I think this is something super exciting about Centrifuge compared to other projects - there is already a product working really well and growing super fast.

Some of the big achievements this year were also the integration with Maker DAO.

This is super exciting because it essentially gives an open line of credit to different Tinlake asset pools.

We are also super excited to be going through the Aave governance process

And of course.. launching the Altair parachain soon

So make sure to support the Altair crowdloan on Kusama to help us continue to grow!!

8. With the development of blockchain technology, an infinite number of blockchain projects have appeared on the market. But people prefer/ will accept projects having real use cases. Can you tell us about real-world use of CFG or solutions that contribute to this?

Cassidy

This is where I think Centrifuge is super special Centrifuge is real world DeFi!!

Centrifuge is already today financing real assets - which you can see at tinlake.centrifuge.io.

These are assets like real estate, invoices, gig workers, and more!

I think this blog post is a really good example of how we can make a real impact in the world today https://medium.com/centrifuge/how-defi-is-delivering-key-supplies-during-covid19-4fe174c81ae8

Ultimately - Centrifuge’s mission is to open access to financing for everyone

And I think we are really growing to realize this vision

You can also read more about our work with NewSilver to finance real estate here: https://medium.com/centrifuge/new-silver-the-first-revolving-pool-for-real-estate-in-defi-a425e7528cb1

And hopefully many more types of assets and Tinlake pools in the future!

In the live questions section, Cassidy did answer several short questions from the PolkaWarriors community.

1. What is the current target market of centrifuge , as well as its target customer? Is the centrifuge friendly with Non-English speakers? How many languages does centrifuge support? Can you tell us more about centrifuge's marketing plan to expand globally?

Cassidy

Centrifuge does not target one specific market or language! It supports many different types of assets (and hopefully with Altair even more types!). One thing is that our team is still very English / Europe based so we need more help to grow the communities and language support in other areas

2. Do you think that adoption & utility are the key factors to a project’s survival & success?What’s being done to drive global adoption of #CENTRIFUGE finance amidst crypto regulations legislation & competition? Will you expand communities in both English & non-English speaking?

Cassidy

Yes I agree that adoption is key to the survival of the project. That is why I am so excited to see how much Centrifuge has grown already this year to more than $30M TVL!! For Centrifuge, we accomplish this by working together with the traditional regulation & financial system and pushing the limits there as much as we can

3. How important is the community to you? and how can we collaborate or help you for the development of the project?

Cassidy

The community is extremely important to us!! We want to support the community to grow more and more. That is why we take part in so many events and AMAs so that we can reach as many people as possible and show them the potential of Centrifuge. We are also super lucky to have great ambassadors for Centrifuge!! If you are interested in joining our community and becoming an ambassador you can also join our telegram and get involved https://t.me/centrifuge_chat

4. While you build your project, do you take into account community feedback and demands?While you build your project, do you take into account community feedback and demands?

Cassidy

Yes, community and user feedback is super important. That is why we have telegram, discord, and the governance forum to give the community plenty of ways to have discussion about Centrifuge. If you want to discuss your opinions about the project and propose something, definitely check out the forum! https://gov.centrifuge.io

5. Do you have a user manual or short videos that would guide potential users of the project to safely navigate your platform?

Cassidy

The best place to learn more about Centrifuge is in our documentation at https://docs.centrifuge.io

You can also check out some tutorials there too

6. Have you been audited ? Have not heard you talk about that the security of funds is what every investor craves for and plans to escape incase of insecurity if funds,scams and rug pulls ? How strongly built are your security put in place?

Cassidy

Yes, Centrifuge and Tinlake have been audited many times. You can check out the audits on github! All the code is open source and you can find that here: https://github.com/centrifuge

7. Since NFT is popular nowadays, is there a plan for NFT integration?

Cassidy

Yes! That is how Centrifuge works already - we tokenize real world assets in the form of NFTs so that they can access financing

The next thing I am excited about is to have this more experimental on Altair to finance art NFTs like cryptopunks (or something like Kusama punks)

So make sure to contribute KSM to the Altair crowdloan to make this a reality!!

About Centrifuge

Website | Twitter | Telegram | DMC

About Altair Network

Website | Twitter | DMC