July 29 Product Updates Livestream with Alejo Pinto: a detailed recap

Every Friday, Key Pontem Contributor Alejo Pinto shares the latest updates in an AMA session. Here is a recap of the July 29 session, where Alejo talks about the roadmap, metagovernace, Liquidswap AMM, and more. .

Roadmap timeline

As Pontem Network always aims to be completely transparent with the community, it made sense to start the AMA with a roadmap update:

• The Liquidswap AMM & the Multimask wallet are now live in alpha. So far an impressive 70,000 addresses have interacted with our token swap protocol, and the wallet has been downloaded 30,000 times (by the way, you’ll be able to get it in the Chrome store very soon). We’ll be grateful for your feedback, by the way.
• For the mainnet versions of the AMM and the wallet, we depend on the Aptos mainnet launch, scheduled for  fall 2022. Right now they are in the second stage of their incentivized testnet, AIT (out of four). The AIT is very important for us, too, as it makes sure that Pontem’s dApps will launch on a really safe, stress-tested network.
• Later in 2022, we’ll assess if (or when) we should launch our own token and perhaps test some of the utility (such as governance) in a sort of a canary network. We’re going through several audits to find and remove any smart contract vulnerabilities, too. Overall, there’s a 50% chance of our token launching before the end of the year.
• Pontem is also exploring an NFT program as a tool to incentivize the core contributors.
• EVM implementation for Move: a product that’s similar to Aurora, Neon, or Moonbeam, essentially an EVM layer on top of Move that will allow deploying dApps from Ethereum, BSC etc. to Aptos and other Move-based chains with minimal code changes. Eventually we’ll have a fully integrated vertical structure consisting of the EVM layer, trading protocol, Pontem Blocks (a low-code tool for linking together transactions and protocols), and the metagovernance protocol.
• We have big plans for our trading protocol, with a constant function market maker, stablecoin swaps, markets for liquid staking assets, concentrated liquidity, extra-low slippage and fees, etc.
• We already have an MVP for Pontem Blocks, while the metagovernance feature is in the R & D stage.

Metagovernance layer: a deeper dive

Metagovernance is all about maximizing the value of the governance layer. Instead of manually micromanaging all the functions to optimize your tokens’ yield, you can deposit them, delegate your voting power, and even set up a risk management strategy to avoid issues like illiquidity or arbitrage bots. Ultimately metagovernance maximizes the rewards.

There are already projects exploring metagovernance - for example, Convex and Index Coop.

Our goal is to build a standard framework that’s easy to compose, so it is adaptable to other protocols. Everything will be automated and executed on-chain to be decentralized and transparent.

Any product that we build will be across our vertical, so that we can control the user experience, and for this the governance layer will exist above the protocol but beneath the wallet interface. This will allow the wallet to function as the user interface for governance and utility.

We also want to deploy the Aptos framework on other L1s so that there can be safe bridging and allow simple, easy, and cheap cross-chain transactions.

We plan to have canonical tokens on most layer-1s (except Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Aptos) by enabling a Move VM layer that people can lift and deploy on other layer-1 blockchains. The goal is to provide a DeFi superapp experience, so that users don’t have to go connect to multiple interfaces and protocols. You’ll simply aggregate all the deposits into one interface in a Pontem dApp you can trust.

Questions:

1. The roadmap covers 2022, but what is your vision into 2023?

We’re going to be focusing on improving the AMM and wallet to have a good, solid user experience. For the wallet, this means an intuitive, easy-to-use interface, and for the trading protocol, this means low slippage for best pricing and liquidity. Looking at the VM, the main goal is low fees and really high transaction throughput.

2. What’s your goal with the Move VM?

We want to port over the Move VM to other Layer 1s so we can support the Move ecosystem, encourage it to grow, and bring our wallet as an interface into the ecosystem. We are also exploring possibly adding EVM compatibility so we can support EVM chains like Ethereum and Avalanche.

3. Can you create more tooling for data visualization for those who don’t have the technical skills to build their own data visualizations from the blockchain?

Yes, we definitely plan to. A potential good avenue for this will be Pontem Blocks. We’re essentially enabling a data infrastructure layer. For example, on Liquidswap, we’re enabling user-friendly data visualizations for things like the total number of addresses, distributions of the token holders for those addresses, etc.

4. What is the private key rotation as a feature?

Private key rotation is a feature that Aptos enables natively. Think of a private key as a password for your email or any other account. For security purposes, you want to update your password every once in a while, and what Aptos enables is for you to essentially change your password to a new password - the private key to your wallet - in order to ensure that you can safely execute this process.

5. Do you have to be a Curve or Uniswap user to use the Liquidswap AMM?

Simply put, no. All you’ll need is some gas in your Aptos wallet and Aptos tokens (or rather, testnet tokens for now) to use it. It functions very similarly to Curve and Uniswap, so if you’ve used Curve or Uniswap, and our AMM is actually superior to them in some ways; for example, it has a more user-friendly interface. But Liquidswap isn’t dependent on Uniswap functionally.

6. What does your partnership with Aptos look like?

We have a close partnership with Aptos, and they provide us with technical and business support. We work together with them to solve technical challenges and enable us to build our products, which has been incredibly beneficial.

7. A lot of DEXs have a very complicated UI. What about Liquidswap’s UI?

At Liquidswap, we want to make it really simple to understand what you’re doing, especially when it comes to the utility of various tokens, APRs, and rewards. We keep adding tutorials and intuitive guides, which will hopefully improve the user experience. Your feedback is essential here, so please go on the product feedback channel and submit bug bounties, bug reports, and comments.

8. Is slippage useful for trading as a feature?

No, the most important thing is to have low slippage. As an exchange, your best feature is favorable pricing, because most AMMs have more or the less the same fees. More liquidity equals less slippage, and since price is a function of fees plus slippage, as long as the slippage is low, the price will be attractive.

9. How do the AMM, MultiMask wallet, and Pontem Blocks all work together? Is Pontem Blocks similar to DeFi Saver?

Yes, Pontem Blocks will work similarly to DeFi Saver: you’ll be able to link together transactions and optimize your yield farming without writing code, through a simple, user-friendly interface. The difference is that Pontem Blocks is vertically integrated with the wallet, so you don’t have to go to a third party like DeFi Saver.

The aim of Pontem Blocks is to create a very simple, easy-to-use experience for people to link together transactions and yield farm. But the cool part is that you can also create your own blocks of linked transactions and monetize them if you want. If you create your own DeFi strategy, other users can use it while essentially streaming fees to you for using your strategy.

10. What’s the difference between Pontem products and other wallets and exchanges?

While we’re not building anything entirely new, we see a huge opportunity in building the primitives for Aptos and the Move ecosystem which don’t exist yet. A trading protocol and a really useful, safe, and intuitive wallet are necessary, so that’s going to be our first area of focus.

We want to create the best safe and reliable key primitives that everyone can build on or can plug into for liquidity and velocity. IWe are going to make iterative improvements, act conservative and offer a really good user experience. Then as Aptos and the Move ecosystem grow, we can grow with them and support innovation at the edges.  

11. Why would people use Pontem?

Because of the great user experience for both the end users and the developers building integrations and tooling, such as trading apps or rebalancing software for liquidity provisioning. We really want to differentiate on the user experience because we think that’s the key thing that’s missing in crypto. The key to that is high throughput and cheap fees - which we inherit from Aptos - which would already improve upon the experience compared to other Layer 1 blockchains. And then we innovate on the user experience for the developers and the users.

If you’d like to listen to the full version of the AMA, you can find it here:

Join Pontem Network on Telegram, Twitter, or Discord so that you don’t miss the next AMA Alejo Pinto - remember, they take place every Friday.

About Pontem

Pontem is a product studio working toward global financial inclusion powered by blockchains - primarily Aptos, the most scalable and safest L1 network. We are partnered with Aptos to build foundational dApps, development tools, AMMs, and more. The first dApp, LiquidSwap - the first-ever AMM for Aptos - is already available as a test version.