Here is a transcript from our most recent AMA held on 26th May 10pm SGT in BNB Chain Telegram Group
Hello BNB Chain community
Grag (Martian): Please introduce yourself and tell how you started InsurAce to the community? @vagrantcrypto
Hi everyone, thanks for having me guys, great to share some info about our project with you and the BNB Chain community
Dan Thomson: I’m Dan Thomson, the CMO for InsurAce (.io). I am originally from London, have lived in Spain previously and now in the Americas. I have a background in growing companies across Europe and have been in crypto since 2015 when I bought my first Bitcoin. Since then I have gone on to launch one of Europe’s first crypto Index Funds based out of Gibraltar, and then moved into DeFi which is when I came across InsurAce and the DeFi insurance sector.
I joined the InsurAce team just over a year ago (a lifetime in crypto), just before the project first went live in April 2021. It was founded in September 2020 by our CEO, Oliver Xie, who saw the need for a quality decentralised insurance project in the space to make crypto safer for everyone.
Grag (Martian): Interesting history! Can you explain what is InsurAce all about? Give us a little summary
Dan Thomson: Sure thing!
Dan Thomson: InsurAce is a DeFi insurance protocol protecting your assets from hacker attacks and bugs in smart contracts that may result in losses to your assets, we also cover some custody insurance for funds kept on exchangse, as well as Stablecoin De-Peg events, and IDO events. From as little as 2% you can guarantee your assets’ security and have peace-of-mind. We are deployed onto the Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon and Avalanche Mainnets.
Not limiting ourselves to that, we cover 140 protocols across 20 public chains and have covered over $340 million worth of assets in our first year alone! Generating over $2m of revenues. We will be adding more types of insurance in the future including Rug-Pull, Market Volatility, NFT insurance amongst others.
Decentralized insurance works by sharing these risks between many users, insuring their assets on many protocols, as well as stakers (underwriting miners) who are incentivized by high yield rewards for providing liquidity. The rewards are generated from both the premium income and also investments made by the reserve capital in the liquidity pools. This all helps to give participants greater rewards, whilst reducing the overall premiums paid by the end-user.
In the result of a hack or a bug, where funds are lost in one of the protocols, then the users can simply submit a claim through our protocol and our token holders govern the decision on whether the claim is legitimate or not.
Even with audits and bug bounties, protocols have still been hacked. Even with the best teams and investors. Over $10 billion dollars has been lost in 2021 due to this. Up from $120 million in 2020. The only way to mitigate this risk is with insurance. This doesn’t even begin to include the De-Peg cost this year from $UST. Another product we have, and are likely to be paying out $11m to our policy holders
Dan Thomson: 2022 is the year of DeFi Insurance and InsurAce.io is leading the way.
Grag (Martian): Let’s discuss your token $INSUR
Can you share with us your tokenomics? And what are some of $INSUR use cases?
Dan Thomson: Of course!
The INSUR token is our governance token. It is used for voting on claims and payouts as well as used for rewarding users of our protocol, both for providing underwriting capital and also for rewarding voting and other activity within our app. A full breakdown of our tokenomics can be found here: https://docs.insurace.io/landing-page/documentation/token-distribution
Dan Thomson: The INSUR token has a maximum supply of 100,000,000 tokens. It is deflationary in nature and although has suffered from high sell pressure over the last year, our upcoming tokenomics upgrades will allow far more utility to users and holders. Our v2 updates include allowing for profit sharing via our token, buy backs and redistributions, and bonding for higher yields.
Grag (Martian): Ok got it. We are moving on. I want to ask about security.
Does InsurAce get audited?
Dan Thomson: Yes, we have been audited twice. First by SlowMist and then by PeckShield. These are both high quality auditors. We also have strong working relationships with them as well as BlockSec Certik and Hacken. In fact, we’re working with Cer.Live soon to be giving security rating scores on the protocols we cover too
Grag (Martian): Great! What can we expect in the next 3 months and in 2022 as a whole?
Dan Thomson: Right now we’re getting quite a lot of interest because of our coverage of the $UST de-peg event. So we’re working through that to best protect the policy holders as well as our own stakers. But once that’s over, we’re back onto focusing on our future!
Our roadmap is quite extensive, very ambitious, but equally exciting. We have announced our v2 with all the upcoming improvements to our tokenomics, branding, app and systems. For more information on our roadmap and v2, you can read about it in detail here: https://www.insurace.io/blog/?p=2527
2022 is the year for DeFi insurance. The narrative is changing. With over $10bn in hacks in 2021, investors are no longer blindly accepting audits and bug bounties, but also mitigating their risks with insurance. As institutions are now looking at the space they are seeing the value in the protection. With returns of 30% or more APY in DeFi, to protect against hacks for just 2-5% makes sense to a lot of smart investors.
We even cover BUSD de-peg, and a LOT of BNB Chain projects. As mentioned before, a few valid claim payouts will help the industry come along. As well as some more commonly sought after insurance products like rug-pulls, nfts, and market volatility.
Direct integration within DeFi apps will also help a lot! This is a big plan we have to offer 1-click opt-in insurance services, like when you book a flight and opt-in for travel insurance. Lastly, there are a few different protocols working on solutions to some of the existing issues for DeFi insurance (capacity, concentration risk, and adoption). I know we’ve got some great developments coming out very soon.
Grag (Martian): I hope your plans come true
Dan Thomson: With the continued support of the BNB Chain community, I’m sure it will!
We were even lucky enough to be a part of the BNB MVB IV program recently
Grag (Martian): The next question is: How can InsurAce generate profit/revenue to sustain your project, and what is its business model?
Dan Thomson: Great question! And super important for this space. There are a lot of ‘hype’ projects out there that don’t operate any sort of business fundamentals. Investors need to be careful.
InsurAce is already the fastest growing insurance protocol in the market. Our revenues in our first year were over $2m, and now we are seeing regular increasing revenues, over $350k last month alone.
Dan Thomson: Users are trusting us more and more and purchasing insurance to protect themselves against hacks, bugs, and other smart contract vulnerabilities as well as stablecoin de-pegging events. The recent UST case is going to be a huge case study for us and will enable us to sell even more insurance to the wider crypto community. By constantly adapting and improving our risk models and operational systems we will continue this rate of growth or maybe even accelerate even faster!
Grag (Martian): Decent answer, moving next!
What are the main competitive advantages that InsurAce has over other insurance protocols such as Nexus Mutual, Unslashed, Risk Harbour, Sherlock, etc …?
Dan Thomson: 1/ InsurAce is a leader in DeFi insurance, we are only 8 months since we went live on our mainnet and we are the only protocol to have deployed on both eth and BNB Chain as well as Polygon and Avalanche. This comes after we launched our multi-chain services allowing for users to insure their assets on 9 other chains like fantom, solana, arbitrum, celo and harmony.
2/ We have no KYC.
3/ We offer the lowest insurance premiums on the market, up to 60% cheaper than our competitors and up to 50% less on gas fees too, by using our portfolio based insurance model. You can insure all your bags together instead of separately to make these huge savings.
4/ Also, our governance model is different from our competitors. We have advice from insurance experts who help to govern claims and insurance services that we offer to allow for a more streamlined and knowledgeable decision making process when it comes to both offering insurance and also processing claims.
6/ Finally, our upcoming investment model will allow for users to opt between high and low risk investments for higher or lower yields. This will use our capital reserves more efficiently to achieve higher gains on our capital which will benefit our stakers, insurers and insurance customers.
Grag (Martian): That is a very complete description. Thank you @vagrantcrypto for your responses.
This is all from my side for now, and now we are going to our Questions part.
Dan Thomson: You’re welcome
Grag (Martian): Don’t worry, we will give you enough time to learn them, before we begin!
1. We have added one secret hashtag to take part in our activities, so to find it you have to check the AMA session very attentively. Before we begin, you will be given some hashtags, and only one will be correct!
2. You will have only one attempt for each segment of our activities, so double check the hashtags and info you are sending, in case of sending more you will be disqualified at all!
3. All questions and answers will be checked manually, so only real people will win.
4. Questions and answers in the private messages won’t be considered.
5. If signs of fraud are noticed, the user may be disqualified and added to Black List!
Now you will have few minutes to learn the rules carefully and check out our AMA! Treat it responsibly, only the most attentive will win!
Have a nice time and good luck!
Today’s hashtags are: #InsurAceDanThomson, #CEOMatthewXie, #CeFiLendingProtocol, #DeFiLendingRagPool
Remember, only one is correct!
You are free to ask @vagrantcrypto questions, and the authors of the best will be rewarded.
We have turned on the slow-mode during this activity, so check the question and the hashtag you are sending
Remember to use the correct hashtag, and ask only 1 question not to be disqualified!
The chat will be opened for 30 seconds
Altaf Crypto is life: As mentioned There is referrals program in InsurAce. What are the requirements for referring? Do we need to hold tokens to refer and how many referrals limit per person? #InsurAceDanThomson
Dan Thomson: We have a great referral program open to all. It’s very simple to use, just connect your wallet to our app at app.insurace.io and find our referrals page from the main menu. This will generate you a unique referral code allowing you to get 5% rewards on any insurance purchases… but also give the person you refer a 5% reward too! No other insurance company in this space does this.
Irfane: Why does InsurAce chose to launch its project to BNB Chain? Then what do you mean by insurance cover to BUSD de-peg? #InsurAceDanThomson
Dan Thomson: We chose BNB Chain as it has an exceptionally high adoption rate by the crypto community, and the team behind it and working on the projects are all super talented. So we have been working with all aspects of Binance to make ourselves able to cover as much of the ecosystem as possible. From custodian cover at Binance, to Smart Contract Cover for BNB Chain projects, and Stable-coin De-peg insurance for BUSD
lexon: how can I get started in using insurAce to insure my crypto assets and what are the requirements . Do I get full insurance on my assets when I am insured on your platform … www.insurace.io
Dan Thomson: To get involved in InsurAce you can buy INSUR tokens from insurace.io/market Specifically we’re listed on PancakeSwap. Then to use InsurAce you can either provide undwriting mining to earn rewards. Or purchase insurance cover for your other staked assets, all using our app at app.insurace.io
Emre: Is paying out a claim the only way to gain credibility for DeFi Insurance players, which may result in a chicken-and-egg scenario? Are there any ways to gain credibility on this front?
Dan Thomson: It’s not the only way, but as a core part of our service, it is kind of what trust in our system is based on. That said, we built up sales of over $2m in our first year without a payout, so enough people believed in what we’ve been doing. But we think that is about to explode now.
Martha Vermillion: I got attention that Insurace offer protection for stablecoin De-Peg risk. As blockchain ecosystem is still very hype with pro and contra on uncertainty UST future. So, Im one of the UST holder too and Im excited to join the UST insurance. Could you tell us the guide how to purchase your UST insurance ? What do I need to prepare for that ?
Dan Thomson: Unfortunately our UST coverage is now sold out and unlikely to be live again for us to sell following the recent events. However we have plenty of other products that you should consider using as part of a safe investment strategy in DeFi projects.
Grag (Martian): Thank you @vagrantcrypto for the detailed answers! Whose questions were selected will be asked to provide your wallets.
So our AMA is over
Thanks to everyone who took part, great activity, follow our news channel so as not to miss such events
