Apr 25, 2021
GEM DIGGERS AMA with SIENNA NETWORK
There are many reasons that could debated for what will drive mass adoption of the DeFi (Decentralised Finance) and the Blockchain space. Regulation, legislation, security and volatility or reduction thereof, are some of those reasons. Perhaps though, one of the most important reasons could be absolute privacy…
“For money to function properly, it must be private” — Team Sienna
The use of blockchain has come a long way since 2009 when Bitcoin emerged. 12 years on there are multitudes of projects out there developing use cases for the technology and bridging the traditional centralised worlds of finance and trading into DeFi. However there is one fundamental issue, transactions and data on the blockchain are not private…
Why is privacy important? Well…here’s a simple question. Would you be happy for anyone in the world to be able to access your bank transactions, see you how much you earn and spend, when and where? I’m pretty sure the answer would be NO WAY!!!
Now expand this thinking beyond individuals to business and large institutions investors. Sure.. we have seen explosive growth in DeFi over the last 18 months but institutional interest is being inhibited by the lack of privacy. Hedge funds, insurance companies, pension fund and banks do not want their trading data in the public eye.
Sienna Network is on a mission to solve this problem for both individuals and institutional players in order to drive mass adoption. It is the first privacy protocol with privacy preserving smart contracts built on Secret Network. The platform will provide complete privacy for trading, lending and borrowing. They guarantee that no one, not even they can see your wallet content or transactional data.
The technology also provides an inherent protection against the dreaded front-running phenomenon. Another key incentive for institutions given that front-running is illegal in regulated financial systems.
The name Sienna comes from the Italian city of Siena, a historical centre for trade and banking dating back to the 12th Century. It was a key location for the Knights Templar who would use their encryption method based on the iconic eight-pointed Maltese cross to allow customers to move money between cities without actually carrying it from city to city.
The team at Sienna are obsessed with privacy, so much so that in our recent AMA I had to address them as Team Sienna…lol. Take a look below at the full Q&A below
Ozzy: Firstly, can you tell us a bit more about the Sienna core team, their experience and what brought you together to create Sienna?
Team Sienna: The team is super dedicated to innovation and creating products with a great user experience. Everyone on the team has different experiences and this is what makes it super strong. One is an economist specialized in game theory, another has been running peer-to-peer networks, another is a compliance specialist while others are specialists in blockchain development. In general, the team has different skill sets but also a lot of experience with crypto and distributed networks. We are super excited about this and we believe it can make a huge difference for the community that the team also engage actively 😄
Ozzy: The Sienna launch is coming very soon, what major challenges did you face in getting to this point and how did you overcome them? Can you reveal any more about the launch itself?
Team Sienna: We have been blessed with a very strong team, which has led to very few problems. However, everyone has been working around the clock to be ready for launch. Fortunately, we are now ready, everything is audited, so we are looking forward to the launch!
Ozzy: Secrecy and Privacy; historically has been seen negatively when it comes to mass adoption and trust of blockchains not being abused, admittedly from senior figures in centralised finance & government. What is your view on this, how would you ‘elevator pitch’ Sienna to large corporations?
Team Sienna: Our experience is that institutional investors expect privacy. The critical point is compliance and as Sienna will soon enable you to document KYT (know your transactions) it meets the criteria of institutional investors.
Privacy at Sienna is not made for bad actors — actually quite the opposite. The team has been working quite a lot with the compliance matters and it already resonates well with the institutional investors that have been in touch.
It is important to understand that institutional investors are demanding this asset class and they are looking actively to solve it. This is where Sienna, among other things, come into the picture.
Ozzy: What about bridging the world of traditional finance & trading, are you planning anything on this front e.g., forex, stocks, bonds?
Team Sienna: This is a super interesting topic and yes, we are considering multiple opportunities to enable the users with the traditional (or systemic, if you will) banking.
It is also another reason why we chose to build on Secret Network. Sienna is working on integrating private credit scores for under-collateralized loans, private decentralized identities, and many other features. More specifically, we are looking at tokenized assets so you can buy listed shares or bonds directly through Sienna. This is a great example of a bridge to the traditional finance ecosystem.
All this is possible thanks to the blockchain Sienna is built on — Secret Network, which is the first blockchain with privacy-preserving smart contracts.
Ozzy: Following launch, what is next on the 3–6-month roadmap for Sienna? What other features & products are you building?
Team Sienna: In parallel to Sienna Swap, we have been working on a private lending platform (Sienna Lend) so users will be able to earn interest and borrow to leverage their holdings. Private tokenized assets will most likely be the next thing. We will also let SIENNA owners vote for future features in a couple of months. This is just tip of the iceberg… Other things are happening behind the curtain 😇
Ozzy: I’ve read that Sienna is working on bringing institutional players to the platform, can you elaborate on this? Which sectors/industries are we talking about and why?
Team Sienna: Pension funds and other investment vehicles are currently paying a great deal of interest in Sienna. Their interest is to invest but also provide liquidity.
This is interesting in itself, but we also have dialogues with deeper integrations to banks that will enable their customers to trade through Sienna. These things take time and do not happen overnight, so please be patient 😊
Ozzy: Who are you partnering with for marketing, or planning to? What work are you doing on raising awareness and driving mass adoption of Sienna?
Team Sienna: A lot of initiatives are happening currently. We believe a strong community is key to building a strong platform and we are excited to see how fast the community is currently growing. Working with DAO Maker, Polkastarter, Secret Network, and many more have been fruitful but we also see a great deal of engagement from the value-adds we have gotten from private sale investors who will help out with their expertise in various domains.
As most people know by now Sienna is doing a dual public sale on both DAO Maker and Polkastarter. Info can be found on Sienna’s website.
Ozzy: What differentiates you from your competition, a quick google search reveals several projects claiming privacy focused DEX/Token offerings, why should investors/traders choose Sienna?
Team Sienna: We see a lot of great projects out there and we are super excited about it. Privacy DeFi is here to stay. They are all different (unless it is a direct fork of another project) and Sienna is also its own in the way it addresses privacy, scalability. DeFi will differ a lot in the future and we will see a lot of very unique projects. Sienna’s focus will remain to connect private and institutional investors, and the other things mentioned previously, while maintaining a completely decentralized, trustless and privacy-first platform that everyone will benefit from
Ozzy: Tell us more about the utility of the SIENNA and wSIENNA tokens, how is demand created for them?
Team Sienna: It is all built for the long run rather than the short-term yield. Fortunately, they are not opposites, and focusing on the long run also delivers short-term appreciation. By building some very lucrative incentivization mechanisms in the token structure, the SIENNA is super attractive compared to many other tokens.
Liquidity provider fees are powerful and while many others are charging 0.3% for the liquidity providers Sienna Swap will automatically burn 0.02% for each transaction and deliver 0.28% to the LPs. This is far more attractive than providing 0.3% to the LPs and they will gain greater benefit from this structure by being $SIENNA token holders.
Ozzy: On token rewards for LPs, after 4 years what happens with rewards once 3.9m Sienna tokens have been minted? Is it a case of people leaving the platform to let new people in, how do you keep growing the ecosystem?
Team Sienna: The minting pool is meant partly for rewarding usage of the platform, but also for increasing the circulation slowly and making sure the distribution of SIENNA is broad. Plus, you’re seeing many projects having great success without a minting pool. It will also be up to the community via governance to decide how new mechanisms should function on the network in the future.
Ozzy: So, coming to the security of the environment, are you offering any measures to help users protect themselves against bad actors, hackers etc.?
Team Sienna: We are obsessed with privacy and security, and this is why we are building on Secret Network. It is one of the most secure protocols you will find. Privacy itself protects against a lot of bad actors and hackers as they are struggling to see what is going on and where to attack. Also, the smart contracts for Secret Network uses Rust programming language, while Ethereum is using Solidity. Rust is generally known for having fewer unreliable edge cases than Solidity
So that completes the Q&A we had with the team from Sienna. Their conviction is strong and they are focussed on making privacy DeFi the new disruptor in this space. See there resources further below to keep up to date with developments.
Best Question…..And the winner is !!!!
We always get excellent engagement from our audience and this time was no exception. The team from Sienna answered many of the questions posted and decided this was the winning question:
From @hanihaj — What makes Sienna Network unique compared to other networks?
A simple question, yet one that wants to elucidate why Sienna is different. Sometimes it’s better to keep things simple to win…!!!
To learn more about Sienna Network and be part of their community, feel free to use the resources below
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