On August 5th we invited our Co-Founders Alvin Lee and Henrique Matias for an ask me anything (AMA) session in our official telegram group. The team shed light on the upcoming ALN exchange listings, PRO subscription plans, the distribution of the Ecosystem Fund, the utility of the ALN token, security of API keys, marketing plans, and much more! At the end of the AMA, the community also got to participate and ask their most pending questions.
Here’s a recap of all the questions and answers from the session. Enjoy!
Host: Thank you all for joining us for this AMA with the Aluna.Social team!
As you may know, Aluna has been putting out regular Quarterly and Monthly updates, and more recently summaries of those updates on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/alunasocial.
You can find the Q2 update on Medium (https://aluna.medium.com/aluna-community-update-3-recap-of-q2-2021-89a67b91ebfc).
On Monday, we also shared our update for July (https://t.me/alunasocial/187127) on our social channels.
To recap:
✅Official partnership with BitMEX
✅VALR exchange integration (read-only)
✅Gate.io exchange integration (read-only)
✅BitMEX CopyTrading launch (last stage before grand release)
✅New currency conversion methods (based on CoinGecko data)
✅2 AMAs with Aluna’s Top Traders @Magnus and @Astolatt
✅5 Million ALN locked up and staked (27.2% of circulating supply)
✅51,403 ALN burned in July (0.21% of total supply burned)
We’ll kick off today’s session with a list of 7 FAQs we’ve received over the past weeks, covering topics including marketing, exchange listing, token utility, and tokenomics.
Now, without further ado, let’s get started.
Host: What is your plan for Marketing?
Alvin: We have been planning for an 8-week marketing campaign filled with new features and initiatives, joint campaigns with partners, ALN prizes, and more!
Goals of this campaign are to:
- Increase brand awareness among liquidity providers, leader traders, and follower traders
- Increase liquidity of ALN markets on DEXs
- Increase community engagement and involvement
- Grow platform user base and activity
This kicks off tomorrow with an announcement about the launch of Copy-trading on BitMEX.
Make sure to Like and Share our posts!
Host: Very excited about that. Any Exchange Listing for $ALN coming soon?
Alvin: We are keen to get ALN token listed on more exchanges including both DEXs and CEXs.
We plan to add up to $200K of liquidity to DEXs over the next few months, with new liquidity mining campaigns to go along. (One new DEX on Ethereum mainnet, and at least one on another chain.)
Actively working towards a new CEX listing but this will take time.
Host: How has the Ecosystem Fund been deployed since TGE?
Alvin: At the TGE https://aluna.medium.com/aln-token-generation-event-tge-and-exchange-listing-on-gate-io-uniswap-2e02b6fedb42, 3,000,000 ALN was unlocked from the Ecosystem Fund.
Since TGE, ~1.3M has been deployed, with ~1M distributed for liquidity mining over 3 waves, and the remaining for liquidity on Uniswap and marketing.
~1.7M is budgeted for deployment over the next 2–3 months:
> ~60% for liquidity for new DEX listings
> ~25% for liquidity mining rewards
> ~15% for marketing and campaigns
The remaining 11,538,825 ALN for the Ecosystem Fund is held in 2 vesting contracts:
> ~1.538M ALN that fully unlocks in September 2021
> 10M vested until March 2024, cliff ends in September 2021
Host: Nice, that brings us to a very important question… what’s the Utility of ALN token (other than farming)?
Alvin: This is a question we get asked a lot: what’s the use of the ALN token?
First, backtrack a bit…
The purpose of the ALN token economy is to:
- Incentivize behavior that benefits the ecosystem and its participants
2. Reward value creation
And as per our Whitepaper (https://aluna.social/WP.pdf), one of the core functions of ALN is to Bootstrap community, liquidity, utility, and governance.
This is being carried out in phases:
Phase 1: Bootstrap community & liquidity
Phase 2: Bootstrap utility
Phase 3: Bootstrap governance
Phase 1 focuses on implementing incentive mechanisms to bootstrap community and liquidity, with user acquisition campaigns and rewards for early adopters, such as trading competitions, airdrops, and liquidity mining.
While this first phase largely involves only “farming” and other ways to Earn ALN, there will be more uses for ALN as we transition into the next phases.
Phase 2, “bootstrapping utility”, will give a boost to ALN’s utility by enabling Spending ALN, and introduces significant enhancements to the Token Economy.
This will begin with the rollout of PRO subscriptions by the end of 2021.
As the ecosystem grows and discussions are more active, we plan to get the community more involved with decision-making and introduce governance of the Aluna DAO.
Host: Thanks for that! Can you tell us more about the PRO subscription features?
Alvin: For the initial rollout, PRO features will be related only to copy-trading, while keeping everything else free, including:
- Unlimited connected exchanges
- Unlimited insights
- Copy unlimited number of leader traders
Free accounts will have limited access to copy-trading:
- $100 limit for copy-trading
- Only 1 active copy-trade
This means that, with a free account, you can copy an unlimited number of leader traders. However, when copying, you can only copy for a maximum of $100 per position opened by your leader. Furthermore, a free account can only have 1 copy-trade active at any time. This means that if you have copied a position open, any new trades opened by any leader will not be copied until the active one is closed.
PRO accounts will have unlimited access to copy-trading.
Subscriptions will start at $19.90 per month. We plan to rollout PRO subscriptions by the end of 2021. We will also offer discounts for users paying with ALN and we’re considering having introductory discounts during a trial period.
After the feedback from our initial rollout, we will re-prioritize upgrades, such as:
- Paywalling existing features for PRO users
- More premium features for PRO users
- Bonus rewards for PRO users
- Additional subscription tier
Host: How do PRO payments affect the ALN token economy?
Alvin: PRO payments introduce several new mechanisms to the Aluna ecosystem:
- *100% of non-ALN Payments will be used to Buyback ALN and added to the Ecosystem Fund.
- 50% of ALN Payments will be Burned.
- Introduction of “Performance Pool” to reward top leader traders on Aluna.Social.
- Introduction of Referral fee rewards.
* for a limited time
This diagram illustrates the new mechanisms:
Note that this architecture is still a WIP and subject to change.
For example, we are considering not burning ALN payments, but adding 100% of that to the Ecosystem Fund instead, as inspired by PlaceholderVC’s Buyback and Make model (https://www.placeholder.vc/blog/2020/9/17/stop-burning-tokens-buyback-and-make-instead).
Host: Very excited about the PRO plans! Now let’s switch it up a little. Here’s a question that many traders ask… How do you keep traders’ API Keys secure?
Henrique: We save and transact users’ keys always encrypted, so even if someone gained access to them, they would be unreadable and useless. Our system automatically decrypts them as required, in a real-time and decentralized manner, using multiple levels of security through a chain-like strategy, and keys are never stored decrypted anywhere at any given moment.
Furthermore, for the exchanges which allow us to check the key permissions, we will automatically reject API KEYS with withdrawal permission.
Worth mentioning: users not using the Aluna Social interface are free to connect READ ONLY keys which can provide an even higher level of security.
Community Questions
Is it possible for aluna to get integrations with travala/shoppingio for added token utility?
Alvin: I just submitted the form for Travala yesterday, will see how it goes.
Will also explore other integrations which will enable ALN to be more spendable and have more utility in general.
So if a subscription is there, isn’t it exclusive anymore to 50k bag ALN bag holder? As I’ve seen in the whitepaper that pro features are only for 50k Aluna stake/holders. I’ll adapt to changes. Perks.
Henrique: We plan to offer PRO plans for free for holders as well.
So what is Alunaut feature.. I must seek something unique with those bags of 50k tho.. (ya I'm a buyer since 1$ too) never giving up averaging.
Henrique: We’re working on more advanced features for a higher tier with more advanced automation ( i.e. integration with trading view / other automated trading solutions ), from my personal point of view this is one of the more exciting things. We’re also exploring new web3 features which might come into play as well.
Is it possible for Aluna to have an own wallet on our website Aluna.Social if we are adding more token utility or staking pools or something we could enjoy using our Aluna?
Alvin: We don’t plan to create our own wallet, but instead utilize available web3 wallets such as Metamask.
The first thing we can do is to show your Metamask balances on your “Balances” tab, alongside all your other CEX accounts.
So the next CEXlisting (praying for Kucoin) is to be expected this year?
Henrique: We can’t comment on that at this time, but we’re definitely keen on having more listings, unfortunately, that’s all we can say for now.
When can we meet the newly hired members/devs? Ya following up team tab on the website as it is very informational to new peeps around.
Henrique: We’re working on an updated version of the website which will be 100% SEO compatible and will also have loads of updates in that sense, not only mentioning the team but also our new advisors. We currently have 4 advisors from Cadenza ( https://www.cadenza.vc formerly known as 100X )
What is Aluna’s short-term Roadmap?
Alvin: Aluna.Social Platform:
- FTX and Binance Futures exchange integrations
- PRO subscription plans
- Further improvements on Copy-trading
Token:
- Multi-chain listings
- New staking contract
Web3 Product Roadmap:
- DeFi Leaderboard
- Prediction Games
Explore other new verticals.
And yep I’ve heard you guys been here since the crypto winter or lets say no funding for VC… Survivability at its finest. Building and stealthy since then.. Very big impact soon enough!
I’ll screenshot this. On this day onwards.. 6920 to 100k members in tg soon as social trading terminal of Aluna will hit the market. Best and unique in market. Manifesting this things, more success @onemanatatime!
Alvin: Will put in our 1000%!
We are building the world’s best social investment network.
Our first product is live, has product-market-fit, and is ready for growth.
Aluna has a strong and dedicated team that has weathered the crypto storms for multiple cycles. Rain or shine, we’ll be here building and growing the ecosystem.
Onwards & upwards!
Connect with us and learn more about Aluna.Social
Website: https://aluna.social
Telegram Announcement: https://t.me/aluna_ann
Telegram: https://t.me/alunasocial
Twitter: https://twitter.com/alunasocial
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/hsadykv
