The BOTS DeFi AMA with Tim Apthorp, Yield Farming & Decentralized Exchange Specialist
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The BOTS DeFi AMA with Tim Apthorp, Yield Farming & Decentralized Exchange Specialist
Bots News
May 10, 2022

The BOTS DeFi AMA with Tim Apthorp, Yield Farming & Decentralized Exchange Specialist

Last Friday 06/05 we hosted an AMA on our BOTS Discord with Tim, our BOTS “DeFi guy”! He walked us through the ever-changing decentralized finance landscape and gave some tips and sneak peeks on how yield farming can and will be an important part of making your capital grow!

What are BOTS' plans to use DeFi in the app? Will it be possible to farm yield through the BOTS app, or what should I imagine?

Yes! It will soon be possible to farm yield through the BOTS app. We are currently testing several single asset staking strategies to measure risk/reward and expected fees. Once the single asset bots have launched we plan to also add liquidity mining bots, making it easy to get into and manage DeFi! You can imagine it looking the same as other bots in the BOTS Store, but behaving differently as it won’t be trading price fluctuations, rather, harvesting and compounding rewards (yield).

Are there any DeFi plans or things you're working on that you are allowed to share? Maybe something about how we could implement DeFi stuff (staking, yield farming?) to BOTS?

Yes, as per the first question/answer, we will introduce new bots that are able to stake your funds on various networks and Dapps. First it will be just a single asset staking with stablecoins and network coins such as BNB, MATIC, Solana etc. Then we will also add LP Bots which can form liquidity and stake the LP tokens for some juicy APRs (Annualized percentage returns)

How do you think people can make their first steps in the world of DeFi?

Good question! I would recommend watching youtube tutorials or look at the ‘docs’ tab of any Dapp you are interested in. Often there is a step by step guide in the docs on how to use the platform. Maybe start with staking a single asset to get used to the wallet interactions etc, then once you have mastered the basics, try to add liquidity and stake the LP. If you can do those two things then you shouldn’t have much trouble with the rest of DeFi. As always though, it is a learning curve.

In which mainnet/blockchain do you personally see the most potential and why?

Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Polygon, Solana, Fantom, Terra. All of these have a rapidly expanding ecosystem and provide an inviting place for developers to build Dapps. I won’t single one out, because I believe they all have a lot of potential. There are many networks and I am not so fussed about which one I use, as long as the gas fees are low and the RPC's are not too congested.

Will we have another DeFi summer this year?

I cannot predict the future so can’t say with certainty. However, I believe if Bitcoin goes to the moon, then many people will pile into crypto and DeFi will benefit from that greatly. Similar to how Alt seasons has frequently followed Bitcoin rallies in the past.

Where do you see the future of DeFi? Do you think governments will try to interfere and eventually, for example, it may also be necessary to do KYC before you can use a MetaMask wallet? We also thought at first that Bitcoin would disconnect you from governments and KYCs, but now almost every exchange or marketplace requires you to go through a KYC before you can buy or trade coins at all.

I think certain governments will try to impose regulations etc but there will always be a way around it, especially in DeFi. If MetaMask asked everyone to do KYC before it is able to be used then I believe a lot of users will switch to another EVM compatible wallet which doesn’t require KYC, and which there are plenty to choose from.

Governments will likely go after the bigger Dapps first, not the users. If a big Dapp like PancakeSwap were to go down, it would be replaced very quickly by the next best alternative. Because it is so easy to launch a DeFi platform, essentially the governments would be playing a big game of Whack-a-Mole.

I also saw things about yield farming where you can get 12% interest per year on stable coins. Can you maybe explain how this is possible? Do they lend my money? Is it high risk?

Getting a 12% return on Stablecoins is decent (we used to be able to get much higher %). It differs per Dapp but generally they charge fees on deposits, transfers, trades etc. This revenue is then distributed back to those staking, even stablecoins. They do not lend your money (unless you supply your coins to a lending platform like AAVE), your money is most often just held in a smart contract. It isn’t high risk, but you should always do due diligence and check Rugdoc.io to see if the Dapp you are investing in is legit. Even then you can’t be 100% sure and that is why it is super important to find ways to perform an emergency withdrawal before you invest. VFAT tools are good for this.

Do you think that DApps will be the future? Like, do you think that most people will use a decentralized search engine, email provider or cloud storage provider in a few years and that we will get rid of big tech companies that dominate the market like Google and Meta?

I think that could be very likely, but we must remember that large institutions such as Apple, Meta, and Google have a lot of power because their ecosystem is already well established, with billions of users. DeFi still has some ways to go, we are all very early in this. I certainly think Dapps could be the future as they open the doors to development and decentralization, but it will take time. This probably won't happen in the next few years at least. Thanks for the question!

What applications do you like to use that are decentralized, or perhaps applications that are not currently available but that you would like to see decentralized?

I am only involved in decentralized finance, but I believe most things should be decentralized. We should find a balance between centralized and decentralized entities/institutions/applications. We have started this process in finance but it should be expanded to other areas as well. Although I think we have to keep some things centralized, like law for instance.

Do you have an opinion on pegged stablecoins like DAI or UST? I dived into Anchor Protocol today that gives a nice yield for UST and Luna, but do you think it will collapse? I read it happened in the past to some other projects with a similar structure

I think algo pegged stable coins are a great idea and I have been using DAI for a long time, never let me down. Anchor Protocol is huge now, it seems like everyone is on it. It could very well collapse, I would exercise caution, and as always, only invest what you are willing to lose.

EDIT: between the AMA and time of posting, UST did lose peg and LUNA had a major crash. Please DYOR before investing. 

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