7 Takeaways From Ampleforth Office Hours
On May 19, 2021, the Ampleforth team held a live AMA dubbed “Office Hours” on their general Discord channel.
Hosting this session of Office Hours from the Ampleforth team side of things was Brandon Iles and Evan Kuo — Founders of Ampleforth, and Richy Qiao — Operations and Business Development at Ampleforth.
Joining the Ampleforth team in answering questions was Nithin — a blockchain developer and Xiaohan Zhu — CEO and Co-Founder of Meter Passport. These two individuals were part of this session of Office Hours because of their involvement with the $AMPL multichain bridge.
The “Office Hours” AMA is kind of muddled in Discord, so I decided to put all of the info here in one place.
7 Key Takeaways
- $AMPL on Aave implementationaplicación is still in the works
- The aAMPL code for $AMPL on Aave looks good and ready to be implemented
- $AMPL and the $FORTH governance token will shine if the markets go sideways and we get another “DeFi Summer”.
- $AMPL got a new governance forum and snapshot page.
- $AMPL is expanding beyond Ethereum with a Multichain Bridge.
- $AMPL derivatives are being worked on.
Where is AMPL at with AAVE?
If you’re an $AMPL fan, I’m sure you already know by now that an $AMPL on Aave proposal was submitted last year and that the proposal recently hit the required proposition power to move to a final vote.
The $AMPL community is now patiently waiting for the proposal to receive enough votes to get passed, and in the meantime, the Ampleforth and Aave teams are working hard to finalize the implementation and ensure a safe launch.
Regarding the $AMPL on Aave proposal, someone asked what the timeline was for it and how it was going.
In response, Brandon said:
“Can’t say too much right now except “when it’s ready”. It’s really difficult for us to put a timeline on anything that’s not directly under our control. Integration work is always like that. I can say that there’s a lot of demand though and it’s going as it needs to.”
Nithin also replied to this question stating:
“If it counts for anything.. I can say the last pass I took over the aAMPL code I was pretty satisfied.”
Overall, it seems the $AMPL on Aave implementation is still in the works and the top priority for the team.
Governance Updates
On April 21, 2021, Ampleforth launched the $FORTH governance token, which will be the governing mechanism that oversees Ampleforth’s evolution by allowing the community to vote on parameter changes to the core $AMPL protocol.
During the Office Hours AMA, a concerned $AMPL advocate posed the question:
“How do you guys value your governance token, especially after today’s sell off and consistent declines since the Coinbase debut?”
In response, Evan said:
“Secular fluctuations are part and parcel to the space at large, but we’re all excited about getting closer and closer to financial utility.
“My feeling is that DeFi has the greatest potential impact when markets are moving sideways (as in the case with DeFi summer last year). The infrastructure we have this year has the potential to make waves.”
Moreover, regarding governance updates, Brandon said the Ampleforth team is revamping the governance process, specifically the sequential steps used to increase levels of consensus from the community.
Here’s what’s new/changing:
- Forum.ampleforth.org will be replacing AmplTalk — it will be more targeted, with less spam, easier to moderate, and friendlier for users.
- Signal.ampleforth.org is a new Snapshot Page — it will help gather community sentiment in a gas-free, non-binding way.
For snapshot, there are two sections: Core and Community. The Core section is reserved for votes attached to AIPs and the Community section is open to everyone who meets a min threshold of $FORTH holdings.
As for voting, they are currently counted by $FORTH balance, but once they have an easier delegation tool it will change to delegated voting in the same way on-chain voting will be.
Ampleforth governance, how $FORTH fits in, and the sequential steps involved are all explained here at ampleforth.org/governance.
AMPL Multichain Bridge
As Ethereum’s DeFi moves across chains so $AMPL will be expanding beyond it to grow the Ampleforth ecosystem in anticipation of a multichain world.
To do this, a bridge for cross-chain $AMPL between Ethereum and other chains must be built, which is exactly what Nithin in collaboration with Meter Passport is building.
During the Office Hours AMA, Nithin and Zhu from Meter Passport urged people to try their test bridge for cross-chain $AMPL between Ethereum and the BSC testnets.
You can interact with the testnet bridge either through the Ampleforth UI or Meter passport’s UI:
Take Note:
- To play with this cross-chain test bridge, you will need some testnet AMPL (Ropsten). You can get those by asking @Poe Mander @Timo K or @Sen for some in Discord.
- You will also need some testnet ETH which you can get here: https://faucet.ropsten.be/ and the Ropsten AMPL contract address is: 0xd0e9335817f7b7c2567b784fd55b203697177e2a.
Moreover, some questions regarding this $AMPL multi-chain bridge include:
Question 1: “So Matic, Fantom and others could be an option? Estimated effort in adding a new bridge? Days, weeks?”
Zhu Responds: “Yes, they all can be done very quickly, mainly based on community needs”
Question 2: “One of the major obstacles for AMPL adoption I’m seeing is the exorbitant gas fees on the ETH network. The Cardano chain has recently come out with an “ERC20” converter that allows tokens to easily be applied to the Cardano chain with a matter of clicks (so no heavy dev effort). I’m wondering if this is of interest at all to the team?”
Evan Responds: “Yes THE GAS is too damn high! Bridging to additional chains will help with this, and it’s mostly a matter of ordering our efforts.”
Nithin Responds: “Yeah BSC should help. I’ve looked into Matic (which has a native bridge which supports L1 L2 message passing). In theory we can deploy on any such chain by implementing a simple adapter contract. Once the cross chain code is public, anyone could write this adapter and help deploy AMPL on other chains.”
Question 3: “How do you plan to handle the mint and burn required for rebasing across chain?”
Zhu Responds: “The router actually doesn’t take custody of the AMPL coins, instead it helps the AMPL contract to pass information across various blockchains. Rebasing instruction is one of the information parameters Meter Passport is helping to pass to all the blockchains from Ethereum.”
$AMPL Derivative Products
$AMPL is a novel monetary asset, composable DeFi building block, and unique collateral asset used to denominate stable contracts.
But it’s also so much more than that…
$AMPL will be used in unique and unfathomable ways through $AMPL derivative products such as:
- Rebase rate swaps
- Swapping LP tokens
- Leveraged $AMPL trades
- Interest-bearing $AMPL that can be staked in other protocols
- On-chain futures contracts
- Insurance contracts
- Leverage contracts that are purpose-built for elastic tokens
- + So much more
Regarding $AMPL derivative products like the ones listed above, an avid $AMPL fan asked this question:
“Are there any AMPL derivative products in the works? With the recent black swan in mind, denominating a contract with AMPL and leaving a safety margin will be capitally inefficient.”
In response, Richy said:
“What do you think about something weird like instead of an interest rate swap, a rebase rate swap.”
Adding to this, Evan said:
“100% — there are things in the works here that I’m personally super excited about and working on actively now. Can’t wait to share more about this, but I’m sworn to secrecy”
That said, we can speculate that Ampleforth derivative products are in the works and maybe coming soon?
