DeCus recently held an Internal AMA in our official Telegram group giving our community members the opportunity to ask their most pressing questions. It was inspiring to see the community’s passion to learn about all things DeCus.
Here are the complete questions and answers from the AMA：
Guest: Iris, the community lead at DeCus
Part I: Warm-up Questions
Q1: Iris, could you please introduce us to what is DeCus?
Iris: Overall, DeCus is a decentralized and high-performance cross-chain platform dedicated to bringing Bitcoin to the DeFi ecosystem and making other blockchain assets flow freely across different chains.
Can’t get the point? Let’s put it more simple.
If you are familiar withWBTC, renBTC and TBTC, DeCus does the same thing but in a totally different way.
Two aspects make DeCus outperform other solutions: decentralization and scalability.
Decentralization means that DeCus builds cross-chain assets with a decentralized network made up of Keepers who are permission-less to join or leave the network at will and are randomly selected to undertake the custody work instead of using one single institution to accomplish the process.
Scalability means high minting capacity and high capital utilization since DeCus can ensure the security of the custodian network with no over-collateralization provided by the Keepers.
We are dedicated to building a trustworthy infrastructure for the DeFi ecosystem.
Q2:What is SATS?
Iris: Before introducing SATS, let me give background information and explain what is pegged value crypto assets.
Pegged value crypto are tokens that have their value pegged to an underlying asset by some means. The most common type of pegged value crypto asset is a stable coin, like USDT, USDC, of which the value is supposed to be $1.
SATS is a kind of pegged value crypto. It’s a token pegged to one 1 Satoshi, the smallest unit of Bitcoin and backed by real BTC deposited in the Bitcoin network.
This chart shows clearly the advantages of SATS. It’s minted by a decentralized system, has a market cap that almost equals the market cap of Bitcoin, and does not need the over-collateralization provided by the custodians.
Currently, SATS is launched on the Binance Smart Chain and will be expanded to other emerging networks, like Polkadot, Polygon, Solana, etc.
Q3: What can I do with SATS?
Iris: As we’ve mentioned before, SATS is a kind of pegged value crypto, or to put it more specifically, a kind of BTC-pegged token, the price of SATS is basically determined by the price of Bitcoin, or in other words, is changed correspondingly with the price of Bitcoin.
Then, some users who are not that familiar with the DeFi ecosystem start to be suspicious of holding or buying SATS. Why not just hold Bitcoins? Let me show some incentives to hold SATS.
With SATS, firstly, you can trade Bitcoin with greater flexibility.
Why? With the increasing price of Bitcoin, it becomes more and more difficult for common users to buy an ‘entire’ bitcoin, calculate the price when trading, and use it as payment.
For instance, buying one cup of coffee may only cost 0.0001 BTC, while taking the train may only cost 0.00008 BTC. Users will have to repeatedly confirm how many decimal places there are during the payment process, and it will be very easy to make mistakes.
Barry Silbert recently also came up with a proposal that it was time to use SATS across wallets and exchanges.
Enjoy juicy yields in a variety of DeFi protocols while still holding your BTC positions is another reason to get SATS. Now, you can trade SATS-BTCB on Pancake.
Later, SATS will be able to trade on premium derivatives dex which will allow you to make leveraged trading with SATS.
We are also negotiating with our partners to launch the SATS LP mining pool. Once open, you can stake your SATS LP token to earn rewards.
Part II: Community Questions
DeCus Community: OK. Thanks for all the detailed information. Now, let’s move forward to the next part. As we’ve mentioned before, in this part, Iris will answer the questions we received before the AMA which are strongly concerned by our community.
For the past few days, some of our community members were confused between SATS and DCS, can you explain it again ？
Iris:Okay， let me introduce DCS
DCS is the governance token of the DeCus system. It is not available for trading yet, please pay attention to scams.
The total supply of DCS tokens is 1 billion, and the overall token allocation is illustrated in the following picture.
For detailed information about DCS, please check👉https://docs.decus.io/announcement-1/dcs
DeCus Community: Good answers！ And how can we earn DCS tokens？
Iris: Quite Simple！
There are two main roles in the DeCus system, Keeper and User, and both can earn DCS tokens.
As a Keeper, you need to run a Keeper Node, deposit collaterals and undertake the custody task (i.e sign transactions). Then you can get DCS tokens as rewards.
The BETA version of the DeCus system has run securely and stably on the Binance Smart Chain for over 30 days, and the first batch of Keepers has enjoyed 300%+ APYs. The second round of Keeper recruitment is live now.
Anyone who’s interested in this, please check
Don’t want to be a Keeper? Don’t worry. Here’s another way for you to earn DCS. Users refer to those who deposit their native bitcoins to the DeCus system and get BTC-pegged tokens (SATS) back, and those who use the BTC-pegged tokens (SATS) built by the DeCus system. Users can harvest DCS tokens by minting SATS or staking LP tokens. Once the LP mining pool is open, we’ll announce it through our website and Twitter. Please keep updated
DeCus Community: Okay! Sounds great! Now our community wants to know when the airdrop will distribute？
Iris:Please check out this one page of DeCus. It gives a brief picture of us. Enjoy it!
We’ve held 4 rounds of community testing. The eligible participants will definitely get their airdrop rewards. Don’t worry about that. You will be able to check your airdrop balance through our website in the next month.
For any updated about the airdrop, please keep up with our Twitter！
DeCus Community: Okay! Sounds great! Looking forward to the airdrop!
In case someone is curious about the mechanism of our system, could you explain briefly how it works?
Iris: I’ll try my best to give a clear answer.
As the core role of the whole system, Keeper Network is responsible for the custody of underlying crypto-assets and provides crypto collaterals against system security risk. And the smart contracts deployed on target blockchains (currently is BSC) will mint SATS.
The whole process is like this:
DeCus Community： Ok. Here comes the last question about the AMA. Safety is very important when using DeFi protocols because there were too many hacks and thefts in this market. What does DeCus think about safety?
Iris: Well, Security is always the top priority at DeCus.
Our core code has been audited by SlowMist, an industry-leading security company. You can check the report here: https://github.com/decus-io/decus-core-audits
We’ll launch a bug bounty with ImmuneFi soon.
DeCus is also working widely with several professional teams to test the financial infrastructure of the protocol’s resilience to attacks by corrupted keepers as well as incentives for honest participants.
But we still know that our protocol depends on new technology that may contain undiscovered vulnerabilities, so we encourage the community to audit t contracts and security.
You can check our code here: https://github.com/decus-io
Part III: InteractiveQuestions
Q1:DeCus is for everyone? that is, is the platform accessible and friendly to an average user without programming experience and without a degree in programming?
Iris： DeCus IS FOR EVERYONE! Does not require any programming skills…
But you should always be aware, that investing in Crypto may be risky, and you should understand what you are investing in.
Research the project and understand what SATS is… and ALWAYS keep your wallet keys safe :)
Q2:The crypto industry is a fast-paced industry, how flexible is your Project to change quickly and keep pace with technology trends? What is your long-term vision for the forecasting industry in which your project operates?
Iris： The core value of DeCus is to become a bridge for incorporating not only Bitcoin but any Crypto that deserves a spot in a cross-chain world.
So, not only SATS but many other cross-chain tokens are being planned to incorporate in the most demanded blockchain networks, in order to provide a Decentralized Custody service that can adapt to the future changes of the crypto space.
Q3.Can you list 1–3 killer features of your project that make it ahead of its competitors? What is the competitive advantage your platform has that you feel most confident about?
Iris： As we’ve mentioned before, DeCus outperforms our competitors in terms of decentralization and scalability which are quite significant for a cross-chain bridge.
And also the Decentralized nature of the custody for the cross-chain assets, that makes it much safer and reliable than any other centralized asset provided by a private exchange.
Q4: A curious question, are you building nodes in DeCus? Can a normal person (without programming experience) run a validation node?
Iris: Yes! The keeper is the most vital role in the DeCus system. And running node is one of the “jobs” Keepers need to accomplish. Everyone can apply for and run the Keeper node. If you join now, you’ll get the juicy rewards for early birds. Please check: https://decus.medium.com/be-a-keeper-and-get-your-rewards-2461dfb1805d
Q5: What is your biggest advantage that you think will make your team lead the market? In contrast, what is your weakness and how do you plan to overcome it?
Iris: The greatest advantage of SATS and the DeCus network is the flexibility and adaptability for cross-chain interoperability. One may say that maybe DeCus may begin with the disadvantage of not having a previous user base like a big exchange like Binance with BTCB. But the custody method of DeCus has been peer-reviewed and published by PhDs, that is why it was accepted for the WINE conference.(https://hpi.de/wine2021/accepted-papers/)
(By the way, DeCus technology is based on the third paper on the list, from “Zhaohua Chen and Guang Yang. Decentralized Asset Custody Scheme with Security against Rational Adversary”)
With DeCus the anchor currency (like BTC for SATS) is never decoupled from the minted cross-chain tokens.
Q6:As far as I know, tbtc V2 is also decentralized, scalable, and has a low mortgage rate, and the security of the threshold-based network has been verified in practice. What is the advantage?
Iris: Wow. You must have a deep dive in DeFi. Your question is quite professional. tbtc V2 has a big improvement, while the mortgage rate is still over 100%. In contrast, the rate in our system can be decreased to 50%, or even lower.
The underlying technology is what differentiates DeCus from the competition. And the collaterals in the tBTC system are other tokens than Bitcoin, there are still possibilities for custodians in the network to be liquidated.
Underlying assets and the infrastructure track are big and promising. DeCus and tBTC are all trying their best to make our system better.
DeCus Community: Times up, guys thanks for all your questions, for more project information please keep following our Twitter and Telegram!
Please keep on supporting DeCus!
