RECAP AMA PORTAL DEFI x CRYPTO OLALA

7 min readAug 23, 2021

1️⃣Segment 1: Introduce and Question Warm-up

Question 1: Can you introduce overview the Portal DeFi project?
What is the current solution Portal DeFi is building to solve?

Portal’s technology enables people to do peer to peer spot trading, options, insurance and peer to peer lending/borrowing with on chain collateral. Native, cross-chain, trust minimized exchange is the goal of the project.

I believe this will be the most important project of the century to enable the full usage of the bitcoin blockchain. This will make lightning network appear obsolete.

Cross-chain development is now centralized on many platforms, so will Portal consider this the focus of the platform’s technology development?

Yes, our goal is to make cross chain contracts trust minimized and decentralized. Neither we nor any facilitator controls or custodies your coins.

Question 2: Portal is built using Fabric, so can you tell us more about Fabric? What advantages will building on Fabric bring to your platform?

Fabric is the protocol for peer to peer message passing and contracting using bitcoin as the security layer. All of the layered networks built using Fabric can use portal to exchange into Bitcoin and other assets.

Fabric has blazingly fast confirmation, low gas fees, and will enable Bitcoin to become a more useable chain. Developers can build high performing DAPPS ontop of the bitcoin layer, and Portal, our cross chain dex will be the first DAPP to demonstrate the power of the Fabric L2.

So, What makes Portal unique and stand out from other platforms? Is this Fabric?

There are many other DeFi services built on other blockchains, but not many on Bitcoin because they are hard to build. However, it is the most secure and decentralized chain. The ZK circuits we use are provably secure, while giving you the speed, usability and inexpensive transactions like centralized platforms. Plus, we do not use wrapping or bridges unlike other projects.

Quesiton 3: Can you explain to us the advantages of Layer 2 P2P network as well as the advantages it brings to Portal swaps? What benefits will this bring to users when using it to swap BTC for other tokens and vice versa?

DEX trading UI/UX has been awful so far. We have a beautiful non-custodial wallet that is as easy to use as Coinbase but self-sovereign and trust-minimized, where you can store coins and trade from within the same interface. We’ve worked years on developing this.

The wrapping and locking of funds onto other chains by these so-called “cross-chain” DEXes are neither trustless nor decentralized. BitGo custodies the majority of the billions of locked up BTC. As we saw with the recent $600M hack, these DEXes are honeypots waiting to happen. Atomic swaps solves this. Wrapping tokens becomes a thing of the past since coins of incompatible chains can be traded natively and without a risky middle-man. Each party’s funds are only locked during trade execution and not re-bonded or replicated onto other chains for eternity.

Portal is built — using Fabric — ON BITCOIN. Bitcoin provides the security; no need to implement a new system and attempt to garner superior adoption. Bitcoin is the most decentralized and secure system and we think it is the monetary layer. If you want to build functionality, finanicial contracts and beyond, it makes sense to build it on top of the monetary platform vs any other platform. More importantly, layers of functionality on top of Bitcoin enable BTC to capture the value, but not the risk the failure at layer 1.

Additionally, by moving all communications to layer 2, akin to Lightning Network but purpose-built for exchange, we can achieve super fast trades while avoiding mining fees until final settlement.

Last, other blockchains and token communities will want interoperability with Bitcoin as trustlessly as possible. Portal technology can enable quick, anonymous trade between their token and BTC… potentially even coinjoin-like obfuscation for payments of their token.

Question 4: As what Portal Defi is aiming to become is to become a platform that converts Bitcoin to any cryptocurrency and vice versa, absolute guarantee of privacy or security, so in the future, Do you have a plan to support more networks like Ethereum,Binance Smart Chain,Polygon? (the number of users and the problem demand of these platforms is huge).

It’s a completely community-driven development. The community will determine roadmap and what chains need to be supported, features post-launch. We’re excited to see where the community drives the project as they push the bitcoin interoperability ecosystem forward.

Question 5: During your recent development, what highlights or milestones have you achieved? Can you share with us your future development plans and goals?

In terms of achievements, we invented zero knowledge swaps, which fix the Layer 1 tier nolan atomic swap problems. In addition, Fabric protocol (the protocol we use to build p2p ZK circuits for FHE), has been iused to build peer to peer communication and other apps.

For Bitcoin to become money, we need a censorship resistant, peer to peer trading system that crosses blockchains. That’s why we are building DeFi using cross chain atomic swaps. BItcoin is strengthened by building many layers of functionality.

2️⃣Segment 2: Question Selected from Form Google

Question 1: Why did Portal DeFi choose to build its project on Fabric? What are some of its benefits? From @Shamekiwa

This is similar to a previous question, so I’ll reiterate the answer:

Question 2: What is your long-term vision about the industry Portal DeFi working? Cryptocurrency industry is always thriving, What plans do you have to keep up with technology trends? From Kuromia

I believe the DeFi revolution — AKA immutable, self-executing financial contracts accessible to all — brings the world to play in a financial marketplace that previously only 1st world countries, large institutions had access to. Plus, when trillions of dollars of financial contracts are running on crypto chains, it creates an entire economy that politicians wouldn’t dare over-regulate for fear of collapse. DeFi is how we will protect Bitcoin from nation state attacks.

Question 3: Many projects rug pulled and exit scam recently. Why should investors trust your project not to do the same? From @tinhle102

We applaud El Salvidor’s efforts. Seeing this happen brought tears to my eyes

We are not here to convince investors or solicit investment. Our goal is to educate users and get feedback, so we can get more users into the ecosystem. Our biggest goal is to build products that the community trusts, uses, and, most importantly, embraces. Portal the network doesn’t depend on us, and is not controlled by us — the ultimate security. You want p2p systems to be secure against any 1 point of failure. The participants in the Portal network make or break the system- not us.

3️⃣Segment 3: Live Question

Q: In past few years many cryptocoins are prone to hacking …what you can assure to crypto traders that Portal DeFi has strong security and privacy to prevent hacking?

The ZK circuits we use are provably secure, while giving you the speed, usability and inexpensive transactions like centralized platforms. Plus, we do not use wrapping or bridges unlike other projects

Q: Your project looks good but it confuses me that there are many other Blockchain projects. What should I notice about you to give it the importance it deserves? What do you plan to achieve with your project?

I answered this , but it’s worth repeating.

Q: There are some marketplaces for NFT’s but do you plan to create your own marketplace in the future?

There are NFT projects that are building bridges to Portal. A unified wallet/Croschain DEX that integrates as many assets as possible is the ultimate goal.

Q: To compete with similar project which already been in ecosystem is very tough & and its all depend on the devloper team of the project who assures the rapid developments and separate functionalities. So, there any noteworthy challenges that your team meet in the past on Portal DeFi ecosystem. I want to know more about your planning?

First, why atomic swaps?
Atomic transaction means either the entire cross chain contract (typically updating of both ledgers) happens all in one piece. For example, if you “”atomic swap”” your Bitcoin with someone’s ETH, either you get their money and they get yours, or nothing happens. It provides guarantees of a secure execution of an exchange without a trusted third party.

To fix the problems that have made layer 1 “”tier nolan”” atomic swaps impractical until today — such as miner front-running, long transaction times, lockup griefing, and all-or-nothing order execution, first we are utilizing Layer 2 for fast communication and coordination, including the ability to recompose orders into smaller chunks to create execution that is fungible, and therefore scalable. It’s done through the Fabric protocol (the protocol we use to build p2p ZK circuits for FHE), has been iused to build peer to peer communication and other apps. We utilize Fabric like a Lightning Network that is purpose-built for trading.

Second, we invented zero-knowledge swaps at a layer 3. How can a decentralized exchange layer be truly censorship-resistant if traders are known and addresses can be traced? So, Fabric technology enables ZK circuit creation which, when implemented, opens the door to a whole host of new methods of obfuscating transactions without losing verifiability.

Website: https://portaldefi.com/
Portal Chat: https://t.me/portalgroupchat
Portal Finance Announcements: https://t.me/getportal
Twitter: PortalDefi (https://twitter.com/portal_finance)

RECAP AMA PORTAL DEFI x CRYPTO OLALA

Written by Crypto OLALA