2023 Roadmap AMA Recap

10 min readJan 18, 2023

Yesterday, we held an AMA with Shahaf Bar-Geffen, COTI’s CEO, and Yair Lavi, COTI’s Chief Strategy Officer.
The AMA took place on the COTI official Telegram group. If you weren’t able to join, here is the full recap:

Natalie:

Hey everyone, thank you for joining us today for our 2023 and beyond AMA! My name is Natalie, COTI’s Marketing Manager, and I will be your host today.

Even though 2022 has been a turbulent year for crypto, the fundamentals remain the same.

In our 2023 roadmap we shared our future plans for the Treasury which include the Treasury 2.0 and its governance token $gCOTI and how $gCOTI holders will continue to benefit from the network’s success.

We shared COTI Pay and enterprise growth plans utilizing our Tech 2.0 stack, and issuing new enterprise tokens on our network.

We also mentioned how we will also push further for the adoption of Djed towards becoming the dominant stablecoin on the Cardano network.

Lastly, we shared our vision for COTI V2 and how it will innovate developers both independent dApp builders and enterprises on the tech stack level and on the use case level.

If you missed our “Plans for 2023 and beyond” article, you can read it here: https://medium.com/cotinetwork/coti-our-plans-for-2023-and-beyond-5de2e44e3c8e

We also shared a video of Shahaf, presenting our plans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-Iy0cQaXjc&ab_channel=COTIGroup

Natalie:

Joining me today are Shahaf Bar-Geffen, COTI’s CEO, and Yair Lavi, COTI’s Chief Strategy Officer. Welcome guys!

Shahaf:

Hello everyone! Hope you are all here and ready with your best questions.

Yair:

Hi everyone. It’s great to be here. As a way of personal introduction, I’ve been in COTI since early 2018, acting as CFO and in the past year I’ve been leading the financial and strategic planning in the company, as well as establishing and leading our investment arm, COTI Ventures

Natalie:

We will start off by answering some pre-submitted questions, and then we will open the conversation up to everyone. The chat will be muted for the first part. So without further adieu, let’s begin.

Here is our first question: The Treasury Reserve Fund will hold $COTI and other tokens and use them to maintain its reserve. Is its only purpose to allow token swaps or it has other purposes as well?

Yair:

The Treasury Reserve Fund will become the component that collects fees from all Treasury components and will hold $COTI tokens and use them to maintain its reserve.

This means that all funds circulating in the Treasury will either be distributed by the Treasury Reserve Fund or sent to it to maintain its liquidity and to incentivize Treasury participants, as well as maintain the stability of the Treasury ecosystem

Natalie:

Thanks Yair! Next question is: How does the “participating in liquidation rewards” work?

Yair:

That’s a great question. For now I can say that the idea is that it will be based on purchasing some of the liquidated position of the initial user with $gCOTI at a fair discount. In any case, the mechanism will be further explained in the Treasury 2.0 whitepaper and closer to $gCOTI launch, so stay tuned

Natalie:

Next question we have is: “Stability Providers will be incentivized to provide stability by receiving liquidation gains and rewards in the form of $gCOTI and $COTI tokens”

Doesn’t that mean that the rewards will also be distributed to the liquidity providers, causing lower APY to the Treasury holders?

Shahaf:

On the contrary. The new activities and liquidity will increase the transactions and volume in the treasury, along with introducing new fees for stability pools and liquidations, and therefore, the total APY should increase.

Natalie:

Looking forward to it! Here is our next question: Besides increasing the TVL of the Treasury, what exactly do stability (stablecoin) providers bring to the table? How exactly do they benefit the ecosystem?

Shahaf:

The Stability Pool allows COTI to grow the Treasury’s reach beyond the Trustchain, by allowing other networks to participate in COTI’s Treasury while growing its stability.

Stability providers will receive liquidation gains and rewards in the form of $gCOTI and $COTI tokens for depositing stablecoins in the Treasury.

Natalie:

Our next question is: Will we have multipliers on new tokens that will be added to the treasury?

Yair:

The simple answer is yes — when using multiples, the price of $COTI will be used to determine the health factor

Natalie:

Thanks Yair! We have another question: Would gCoti also be available to buy in the market, is it going to be listed on exchanges ?

Yair:

Indeed, $gCOTI should be available in the markets

Natalie:

Ok guys, now we’ll take one more question from our pre-submitted questions and then let you guys submit a few live questions.

The next question is: The process of completely revamping the protocol would take time, is there an ETA for how long the team has stipulated this would take?

Shahaf:

In 2023, expect the unveiling of COTI’s V2 infrastructure and use case expansion through a detailed whitepaper.

We believe that the development will continue through 2024 and there’s no ETA yet. It’s a grand mission.

Natalie:

Thanks Shahaf!

Now let’s open the chat for some live questions. Once there are many questions we will mute the chat again to give the team time to answer. Let’s go! 🔥

Community:

Is COTI’s Trustchain going to run as a sidechain to Cardano or just a bridge ?

Shahaf:

COTI will not run as a sidechain for any chain. We build bridges for other networks.

Community:

Any at least one name of enterprises that signed up with coti to be revealed or announced within this year 2023?

Shahaf:

Yes, probably

Community:

Since real yield is becoming a popular alternative to platform token yield (for good reason), is there any plans to to reward treasury stakers with non-COTI tokens?

Yair:

Yes, the first non-coti token that will be distributed is $gCOTI

Community:

There will be any funding fee for leverage position in the treasury?

Shahaf:

There’s a multiplier fee

Community:

How many % of total supply of $gCOTI will be airdropped?

Shahaf:

The initial campaign will be about 10%, but over 50% is destined for the community

Community:

Any hint on the language syntax for smart contract for cotiv2 ?

Shahaf:

it’s not determined yet

Community:

Will developers outside of Coti’s team be able to build for example an exchange on trustchain to swap MDT ?

Shahaf:

yes, we plan to allow developers to build what they wish

Community:

Who will be able to get gcoti? Any clear deatails?

Natalie:

We plan to introduce $gCOTI and the entire plan sometime around the beginning of February. Being active means first of all to continue to interact with the Treasury and to support the COTI ecosystem, by making long term plans. Then we also have social engagement contributions. Regarding the process, we will use different platforms to track and monitor social engagement and have a dedicated social campaign that will help us spread the word about gCOTI. Anyone who will participate will be rewarded. We will share more details later on.

Community:

In a recent Cardano over Coffee, you, @shahafbg, implied that depeg of Djed is nearly impossible, since a drop of 75% to 87.5% in value would have to happen in a very short time.

Your reasoning seems to be that people will burn/sell DJED and/or mint/buy SHEN if the time is long enough and prevent the depeg by it.

What is your reason to believe that there are incentives for people doing that — despite the reason for even having a stable coin is to hold it until the bottom is reached and the incentives for buying SHEN are also the largest at the bottom?

What preparations do you have for a depeg of Djed during the crash after the next bull market

Shahaf:

If Djed holders are concerned about a depeg, then they won’t stay until the bottom as you’ve suggested, but actually burn their Djed for ADA. As Shen holders are not able to burn under 4X, there will be enough ADA liquidity to make the Djed holders whole

Community:

So, you are saying DJED as a *stable* coin is only a hedge against small fluctuations, but in a drop as we have seen it in the last 1.5 years people should better sell their DJED and go into real fiat?

Shahaf:

that’s exactly not what I have said. I said that even with a HUGE drop you could still remain stable with Djed. There hasn’t been ANY scenario in Cardano’s past where price dropped enough to depeg Djed. I never mentioned fiat, either.

Community:

Will COTI 2,0 contain smart contracts like eth-based/coded contracts? So it’s easier to grow development?

Shahaf:

COTI V2 will have smart contracts, yes!

Community:

will gcoti be able to get traded?

Natalie:

Yes, $gCOTI should be available in the markets.

Community:

I hold COTI in ERC-20 format in Coinbase.. will I be eligible for the gCoti airdrop?

Natalie:

We do have plans to incentives ERC holders as well, and we are exploring ways on how to do so

Community:

GOVI accessible in the bridge 2.0 soon?

Natalie:

We are looking into it

Community:

As Coti become open source what parameters would need be met to avoid the network being spammed with rug pulls, scams or just failed products or is this just part of the process or could this be voted on by gCoti holders?

Shahaf:

Wallets are still KYC’d, so it should help. We’ll be looking at it, too.

Community:

Do you have target for how many total coti going to be staked in treasury for this year? At least 50% this year, can do?

Yair:

At the moment more than 44% is staked, so 50% seems feasible after launching the new products

Community:

Please define “long term” holders in treasury who will benefits most from the gCOTI airdrop. I only have recently deposited Coti in treasury and locked them (x2) for 120 days. Does this make me a long term holder co side ring the deposit was just few weeks ago?

Natalie:

We will allow longer staking periods in the near future.

Community:

My question is about staking stsblecoins. you still write that new opportunities will increase the volume, which will translate into aps? how can you be so sure about that? what is certain is that a lot of people use stablecoins to perform one transaction per month. what % of this transaction is to go to treasury? certainly very small in relation to how much such staking will take from it. of course, we still don’t know how it will all be structured, but hoping that suddenly the volume will increase incredibly and the money suddenly starts to treasury flowing like a river seems to me a bit wishful thinking. the question is what is the plan if it turns out that the volume has not increased enough and the costs of staking stablecoins will turn out to be so high that apy for coti holders will drop drastically.

Yair:

We’ve been researching for quite a while about it, according to our estimations (based on the current market conditions), this could be a very profitable move, and is a good base for future plans and use cases we plan with these tokens, some of them include collaborations with other projects.

Community:

Will Coti be participating in enterprise trade shows and increasing marketing awareness now?

Natalie:

Our business development teams engage with suitable enterprises around the world and offer them all the benefits that come with the COTI’s Private Payment Network (PPN).

Community:

How many merchants still running active on trustchain currently that still giving fees to treasury?

Yair:

Please note that all transactions are giving fees to the treasury, whether they’re by merchants or others. As mentioned in the past, we cannot disclose commercial confidential information

Community:

You mentioned in one of the Youtube interviews that #Djed liquidity was already provided, are you not worried this presents some degree of centralisation ? Wouldn’t it have been better to allow the community to build up liquidity through a boostrapping event maybe 1 month to #Djed launch ?

Shahaf:

The community will build liquidity, of course. What we have done, on a business development level, is to reach out to major ADA holders and pick their interest. Happy to say that we’ll have great participation. They all see the value

Community:

Emission schedule is going to change to a flexible release, so the plan is to change the tokenomics. Total supply will remain by 2 bn?

Yair:

Yes, total supply will not be affected

Community:

Any idea, how many new main nodes needed for expansion 23/24?

Natalie:

One of our goals for 2023 is to expand the number of new Node operators, and allow more testnet operators to run a mainnet node, but we don’t have a specific number.

Community:

Would love a response on how new mainnet node operators will be assessed

Shahaf:

Quality, Uptime, understanding of the underlying technology, commuity support

Community:

Will the initial bootstrapping of shen allow lots of investors to “get in early “ on Shen? What I guess I’m asking is….is there a lot of people potentially getting Shen at a real nice early advantage?

Shahaf:

no, its the same price for everyone

Community:

Is Djed and Shen based on another Cardano stable coins mechanism? I read this somewhere

Shahaf:

You probably mean SigmaUSD on Ergo, that is based on similiar ideas (but not a Cardano token)