Offshift | October AMA Answered!

October 30, 2020

The Team Responds to Part Two of a (Mostly) Monthly Series.

Once again, thanks to the Offshift community for a great response to our call for questions for this month’s AMA. We’ve combined some questions that were similar and answered as many as possible. If your question isn’t answered, please come by our community Telegram and ask!

What are the main advantages of using the zkAssets on Offshift? I have a rough idea but it would be nice to hear from the experts.

In our opinion Offshift offers a few major value propositions. First, it’s a way to privately store value on a permissionless chain that’s usable and familiar.

Second, our shifting mechanism allows users to peg that value to a (potentially unlimited) number of assets. If a user wants to retain USD value, they can shift from XFT>zkUSD. If they want to retain value versus BTC, they can shift XFT>zkBTC. The protocol will give users a multitude of options against which they can peg value.

Third, the protocol allows users to stake their zkAssets and receive rewards in the same asset. For example, a user storing and staking zkBTC receives rewards in zkBTC, giving them a better return than if they sold XFT for BTC and held BTC.

And last, zkUSD will offer a way to spend privately that’s easily integrated with existing Ethereum/ERC-20 payment solutions.

Will there be a growing ecosystem of assets or just the ones on the current roadmap?

The zkAssets listed in the roadmap are only the beginning, we envision an ecosystem with many private pegs, limited only by user demand.

Will we have zkXFT?

Yes. While it’s not listed on the roadmap, zkXFT will be one of the simplest to implement and will launch with the initial group of assets.

What will be the process for adding new zkAssets (like zkUSDC or zkYFI) each time? Will the team be deciding this on its own or will XFT holders be able to vote for new assets and XFT will serve as a governance token also?

New assets will be chosen by XFT holders, yes. We’ll provide more information on this process likely after mainnet launch.

How easy will it be to use XFT and zkAssets? Will you have your own exchange or site that has all possible pairings/pegs?

If you can use metmask or uniswap you’ll have no trouble using the shifting interface, which will look a lot like our testnet interface (which you can find instructions for here ). Additionally, code will be open source after our mainnet launch and developers will be free to build their own interfaces if they wish.

XFT’s zkAssets are ERC-20 tokens, with Eth2 coming soon, will we face any issues scaling?

We don’t foresee any issues with respect to the Eth 1.0 to 2.0 migration , but we’re certainly staying up to date with the discussion and any developments.

Is it possible to use Offshift to not pay taxes or use it in a way that’s really making a difference to the financial world?

It’s no more possible to use Offshift for tax avoidance than it is to use cash for tax avoidance. That’s certainly not why the protocol is being built. None of the team are tax professionals nor do we offer any tax advice, other than to follow all local regulations. The goal, in our minds, is not so much to make a difference in the financial world as it is to make a difference for individuals who value privacy, and we think it will.

Are you considering opening the platform for traditional market assets? Can we count on zkTSLA, zkGOOG zkAAPL?

It will be up to XFT holders which asset pegs are added after we implement those laid out in the roadmap. The protocol will be capable of supporting any asset with a price feed though, including the stocks mentioned above, and we hope the community decides to add assets like these.

When will you guys launch the product?

As per the roadmap , launch on Ethereum’s mainnet is slated for the first quarter of 2021.

What will happen with the bridge fee? When shifting to zkAssets there is a fee but where will that fee go to?

There is only a bridge fee on shifts from zkAsset back to XFT for the first seven days after zkAssets are minted, but all bridge fees will be distributed proportionally among staked zkAssets.

I was researching the Aztec Protocol earlier this year when I was reading about the EEA (Ethereum Enterprise Alliance) which they are part of. Won’t projects like Offshift be obsolete when they are up and running considering that it will work tokenless?

Offshift and the Aztec Protocol are very different things in our opinion, not sure one could make the other obsolete. Aztec offers a privatisation service for physical digital assets you own, meaning they’ll take your ERC-20 token and anonymise it so your balance and transfers aren’t viewable on the public chain.

Offshift offers private, synthetic pegs that are made possible by their backing with XFT. This allows a lot of flexibility as far as zkAsset offerings, and makes it possible to privately store value pegged to not only ERC-20 tokens, but digital assets on other chains, real-world assets, and potentially anything with a price feed.

Additionally, Offshift enables the staking of zkAssets, which sets us apart as well.

Once again thanks for all the great questions! We hope we answered yours, but if we didn’t, or if our answers left you with more questions (hopefully not) please come by our community Telegram and ask away! Thanks for taking the time to read this and thanks for your interest in the Offshift project and financial privacy. Be sure to follow our official Twitter for the latest updates!

About Offshift

Offshift is leading private decentralized finance (PriFi) with the world’s first Private Derivatives Platform. It leverages zero-knowledge (zk) proofs and sources reliable, real-time price feeds from Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network to enable users to mint zkAssets, an unprecedented line of fully private synthetics. Offshift’s mostly anonymous team has developed a trusted reputation for their thorough privacy research, development and execution.

To learn more and get involved, visit the links below: