AMA Recap : MahaDAO
[we are joined in the AMA by Pranay Sanghavi & Steven Enamakel — the founder and co-founder respectively]
Question 1 :
First, let’s just very briefly go over the basics of the ecosystem : what is MAHA & what is ARTH?
— Pranay Sanghavi :
MahaDAO picks up where previous decentralised autonomous organizations left off, introducing the concept of a valuecoin, as opposed to a stablecoin.
MahaDAO is a dual token system:
MAHA — Governance and Utility Token
ARTH — the world’s first valuecoin
Similar to MakerDAO — Maker & DAI
— Mission :
What do you mean by “valuecoin”?
— Pranay Sanghavi :
The token is a valuecoin, as its value endures irrespective of which direction the market moves, and it hence maintains the buying power of the holder.
Unlike stablecoins which are pegged to the US dollar, the world’s first valuecoin ARTH is pegged to Arth Global Measurement Unit (GMU), a basket of uncorrelated assets in the ARTH vault, and maintains (and even appreciates) its purchasing power regardless of wider market movements. Price stable, vs valuestable
This novel approach to crypto finance creates a situation where ARTH is not only viable as a long-term store of value, but due to its ability to retain value in the face of fiat inflation, can also be used as a reliable, timeless unit of purchasing power.
— Mission :
So, essentially, it counters a devaluing currency like USD which is getting hit with inflation over-time?
— Pranay Sanghavi :
Yes, the fiat currencies are losing value as we speak. Inflation is reaching record highs in many nations, even as the pandemic continues to rage on across the world. energy and food costs are predicted to spur further increases in inflation throughout 2021, we saw that people of the world are losing value in their money. All the other stablecoins are price pegged, like USDT, USDC, DAI — thereby again inherently losing value.
— Mission :
Alright, so just to be clear : ARTH is the “core” of the ecosystem — a valuecoin, and MAHA is the governance token associated?
— Pranay Sanghavi :
Perfect! Yes!
Question 2 :
Before going into detail about the mechanics behind ARTH 2.0, let’s first address ARTH’s history. How did the launch of ARTH v1 go, and what was learned?
— Steven Enamakel :
To create an asset that is designed to protect the buying power of it’s holder, we need to come up with an absolute unit of measure, a reliable financial standard and measure of value to understand the buying power of an asset
(which is not measured in US dollars). ARTH v1 was more of a research launch, we can say a GAMMA version of the real deal to come. The core of ARTH, i.e. The Arth Global Measurement Unit (GMU) is still the same.
ARTH v1 was based on elastic coin concept, i.e. Seignorage shares. However we realised that there is nothing as foundational and robust like our original idea (as was in the whitepepar) about it being a collateral-backed currency
— Mission :
I think the utility of a valuecoin is clear to anyone who has thought about crypto a bit at all. It’s really insane that we’re all keeping our “reserves” in the US dollar while the fed is just printing away like insane.
I read something like ~30% of US dollars were printed last year alone, or some huge number. . . Insane.
— Pranay Sanghavi :
ARTH v2 comes in with a lot of protocol innovations, improvements, feedback and voting from the community. The world economy is overheating. Consumer prices continue to skyrocket and show little sign of stopping.
Once data from the next quarter is released, these worries about rising food prices and increased cost of living are unlikely to wane. With inflation, your hard-earned wealth can be easily eroded in a matter of weeks. inflation rates are the steepest they have been in many years — the United States, for example, is seeing a 13-year high in CPI (consumer price index)
— Mission :
Alright, we’re jumping ahead of ourselves, a bit. Just to organize things. . .
Question 3 :
Tell us how ARTH 2.0 will differ, what are the mechanics that make it a “valuecoin” instead of a simple stablecoin? Specific mechanics, etc. Such as the GMU — how is this composed?
— Pranay Sanghavi :
Great.. So lets start with the basics of GMU as the Arth Global Measurement Unit (GMU) is the pillarthat differentiates ARTH from the others.
Global measurement unit (GMU) is a decentralised, objective measure of value, consisting of several assets — some of them are traditional, well known financial assets and some are new age, digital financial assets. ARTH is backed by
80% fiat
15% gold
5% bitcoin
if fiat goes down; gold and btc goes up
if btc and goes down; fiat goes up
Our inhouse team led by
• Prof Zoran — GMU economist and
• Nenad- Quant research
Have worked for months, running many models, simulations, testing in real world, talking and brainstorming with global economists and finally arrived at the Arth Global Measurement Unit (GMU)
I’ll let Steven tell a bit more about the specific brilliant innovations in ARTH protocol that were undertaken since last few months
— Steven Enamakel :
Correct as rightly pointed out — ARTH has backing of gold/bitcoin and fiat. Which mean that every holder who holds one ARTH token. WIll get the benefits of gold, bitcoin and fiat currencies.
So you get the benefits of the fiat side of thigns which is stability
and the bitcoin/gold part acts as a hedge against the inflation that the fiat side gets you
so simply hodling ARTH is much better than holding USDT or USDC
because ARTH will be stable but also protect you from inflation of USDT/USDC
— Mission :
Got it, it seems like a nice peg. But can you talk a bit about how ARTH will hold that peg? I think this is one of the major problems of new stables out there — which people here are quite aware of.
— Steven Enamakel :
Yes correct. Anybody got rekt here by $IRON finance? 🙂
(definitely)
the protocol will easily maintain the peg; because it “over-collatearlized” to the tune of 110%. which means there will always be backing for ARTH.
— Mission :
So, how does the minting and collateralization process work? This is where ARTHx comes in?
— Steven Enamakel :
Yes, there is where ARTHx comes in . . . When you mint ARTH; you need to put in 110% worth of collateral. Out of whic 100% goes towards minting ARTH and 10% goes to minting ARTHX
When you want to redeem ARTH; you will get back 110% worth of colaltear. Out of which you need to supply 10% of ARTHX which gets burnt off.
So this way the protocol is always having enough collateral to rely upon, this is what the UI looks like :
— Mission :
What’s the rationale behind a system like this? How does ARTHx help ARTH act as a valuecoin? It’s a system that relies on arbitrage, then?
— Steven Enamakel :
ARTHX allows for that extra room for ARTH to scale properly and be very capital efficient.
However unlike FRAX, IRON and other fractional reserve stablecoins; You mint ARTHX when you are depositing collatearl, and not while redeeming it.
Which makes the protocool resistant to Bank Runs (which is what happened with IRON and could possibly happen with Frax as well)
And yes; arbitraguers profit in keeping the system stable.
— Mission :
So just to summarize :
ARTH is an over-collateralized (110%) valuetoken comprised of fiat/gold/bitcoin, MAHA is the governancetoken, an d ARTHx is the arbitrage token that absorbs volatility within the system & prevents runs, as you said?
— Steven Enamakel :
that is quite good actually! 😄 yes
— Mission :
How about network? What chain will this all be on?
Perfect. So you guys are generally chain agnostic. . . Let’s move on.
Question 4 :
Now that we’ve covered ARTH 2.0, it’s my understanding that there will be more products within the ecosystem that build off of ARTH. Can you tell us about these? Such a mahalend, for example. . .
— Pranay Sanghavi :
More important than the products that MahaDAO team builds, is the places where ARTH would be goin …
Adoption of ARTH is our foremost goal — to get ARTH integrated across multiple domains in the world
Besides that, ARTH is slated to be adopted as a foremost underlying currency as a part of MahaDAO incubation, in
- Banking & Finance — Scallop
- Streaming, NFT, Gaming — TBR
- Social Tokens, Charity — TBR
Scallop is the World’s First Regulated, Insured #DeFi Bank, approved by the FCA, and insured too!
Scallop provides traditional bank accounts, and allowing the users to deposit fiat money into #DeFi protocols like AAVE, Compound, etc.
However, The exciting products like MahaLend, etc are underwraps and we’d be sharing about them soon — stay tuned!
— Mission :
Ok, we’re running short on time, so let’s move on a bit to something I think that’s important. . .
Question 5 :
There was a lot to cover, but I think it’s important to explicitly discuss the ARTH, ARTHx, MAHA tokenomics / network effects. Can you briefly go over the tokenomics of each, and the benefits of holding each?
— Pranay Sanghavi :
Maha tokenomics are on the website at — https://mahadao.com/tokenomics.html
We had a great launch, a historic IDO and I guess MAHA is the longest distributed token out there. Actually, stretching over a decade — yes a 10 year tokenomics
And here is the ARTH X tokenomics :
A total of 10 million MAHA tokens would be minted ever
Since ARTH is collateral based, there is no limit to ARTH tokens. Essentially infinite against the backing of the collaterals, similar to DAI for eg.
Question 6 :
Today is the genesis day, in fact, in just a couple hours. . . How can people participate? How will ARTH & ARTHx be distributed?
— Pranay Sanghavi :
The first thing that the community needs to do is to join the MahaDAO TG Announcement Channel, TG Group and Twitter group
And yes here is evrything you need to know about the juicy stuff
https://medium.com/mahadao/arth-genesis-live-ama-nft-reveal-and-faqs-6edc05ca495
People can participate by going on to arthcoin.com and commiting collaateral to help bootstrap the protocols.
users who commit collateral get a discount on ARTHX which follows a bonding curve.
Audience Question 1 : @Azima85
I have a question coz I’m actually a bit confused..how is Arth considered to be capital efficient when it’s overcollateralized?
— Steven Enamakel :
a great question; finally something intellectual after a lot of spammy AMAs 😄
so the CR is not 150–200+% which is what most stablecoins like DAI are backed with; It’s more on the lower end whichi is 110%.
ARTHX is the dynamic part. So every 1$ worth of collatearl will mint 0.9$ worth of ARTH and 0.1$ worth of ARTHX (depending on the price).
for us; anything below 100% collatearl is suicide (FRAX, Titan, UST and others). so capital efficiency comes at least 110%
Audience Question 2 : @Vuttu_kaka5
How do you plan to promote your project in various countries where English is not spoken very well? Do you have a local community so they can better understand your project?
— Pranay Sanghavi :
Yes, we have for eg started with an official Vietnamese community, started educational videos and materials in various Indian langauges like Hindi , Telugu
Over time we are starting (some of our fans have already started their own regional community like in Russia, etc we hve heard)
We’d be investing into education and knowledge sharing as we go along.
Moreover, through our first incubation Scallop, which is into EU, there’d be multiple European language materials for ARTH cming out along with that of Scallop
Audience Question 3: @Monachaina10
Has ARTH 2.0 been audited?
— Pranay Sanghavi :
Yes multiple audits, including one from the company everyone knows: Certik.
Please check our medium blog for the audit results and reports from all the stringent security audits ARTH has undergone
Audience Question 4 : @Monachaina10
Asking about the wallet app, can I assume you don’t have info on that atm?
— Pranay Sanghavi :
Gasless wallet is an idea that will be developed with our community members, MAHA grants shall be provided for many of such interesting initiatives either started by MahaDAO internal team and co-developed with community, or purely community driven products
Audience Question 5: @Rasel265
How can you earn passive income within the system?
— Steven Enamakel :
If you simply HODL ARTH, you will be outpefroming the dollar at a 6% APY.
Which means if ARTH is 1$ today (launching soon); then by the end of the year it’ll be 1.06$ (6% APY)
Besides staking and other farming options we will introduce. HOLDing ARTH itself will earn you a passive income
Audience Question 6:
Was a question about charity, is there some charity aspect to maha?
— Steven Enamakel :
The MAHA governance token holders are the torch bearers and will decide where ARTH will go in the near future.
Initially ARTH will be there to protect you money/wealth from the curses of US/Fiat inflation
But later on ARTH will evolve to something which will not only protect your money but also ensure your happiness as well. This is a much complex concept and will be brought about possibly a few years down the line
Thanks for reading the AMA, all info on Maha will be below. Was hosted in The Selective (https://t.me/TheSelectiveApe) by @crypto_mission
Resources 📚
- site : https://arthcoin.com/#/genesis / https://mahadao.com/
- twitter: https://twitter.com/TheMahaDAO
- medium : https://medium.com/mahadao
- telegram : https://t.me/MahaDAO
