BSC.chat Interview Transcript with Knights of the Round Table Project — Binance Smart Chain
Below you will find the transcript of the interview between Bill Cassidy and Aorlan of BSC.chat with tris from Knights Project. This interview was conducted on the BSC.chat Telegram room March 31, 2021.
bill
Today we are having a Chat with https://t.me/KnightsOfTheRoundBSCChat — Check out their website after the chat and see what they are all about. The telegram channel is a lot of fun and super active. https://www.knightsdefi.com
tris
I’m ready!
bill
Start it off with an introductory message about who you are, your background and experience and the role you play in Knights Project.
tris
Hi, first off thanks for having me! I appreciate the opportunity to speak about our platform. My background is in IT, I’ve been working in software development and systems analysis with a focus in industrial systems for a long time now. I am the lead dev / founder of Knights DeFi. This is my first blockchain project, actually.
bill
Nice. I wanna ask since this is your first blockchain project what was it that compelled you to start working on the project? I am curious because I want to see more developers start focusing on blockchain development.
More specifically, why Knights?
tris
Fantastic question… so I actually got over here to BSC because ETH gas fees are so high right now. And what I realized is most projects are scams and rug pulls… I myself was rug-pulled 3 times in a row before I decided I was done with that, and was inspired by the idea to try to launch something that would have some longevity and work for the people who are sick and tired of being scammed. Obviously Knights have honor, and that is a major reason for the theme.
So my focus became to start simple and build a community. And if you’ve dropped by, you’ve noticed how active our small community is. One of the best on TG for sure that I have experienced.
Obviously I am a solo dev, so I have reused as much as humanly possible.
But I did write my first completely custom contract that launched last week.
bill
That’s a great answer too by the way, yes. I do want to say that from what I have seen the community forming over there seems like a great group. The support you have is a great sign for any investor or user. I’m sincerely happy to have you here today.
tris
The pleasure is all mine. I love talking about our platform and the great community we’re building. We’re adding features regularly and have been around for over a month at this point!
I’ve been so busy that I barely get time to do interviews / AMAs and it is a nice change of pace ;)
bill
I fully understand.
Lets talk a little bit about the project.
Tell us about Knights. Give us the general sense of things. What can we expect when we visit your website? How do users join in on the fun?
tris
So first off, the site is mostly a pancake clone, so it’s very familiar for most people. The front page has statistics about our tokens (and yes, we have 4 tokens, and it’ll make sense as we explain the purpose of each token), and links to buy on Pancakeswap and charts. I wanted the site to be a one-stop shop, but if anyone gets stuck, you can always join the Telegram and get help from our awesome community members. We do have one very unique feature that is a bit different from any other DeFi project I’ve seen so far called Battlefield, and I can explain that a little deeper.
We do have plans to “scrub off the pancake” so-to-speak, but it was a great way to get everything working fast to make sure we could keep moving forward quickly.
There are also links to our medium, which includes roadmaps and explanations of our tokens… and an audit we had done by TechRate as well.
bill
Mostly straight forward, I was going to follow up with “Can you tell us how the Battle field works?” so why don’t you go ahead and explain that too. Ill give you an opportunity to share all the links once we transistion to @aobr95 so maybe someone can get a list ready for you.
tris
perfect.
So Battlefield is a bit of a new-concept farm in my viewpoint. Instead of minting new tokens, we’re distributing existing tokens that are being harvested from other transaction fees… All 4 of our tokens can be earned by sending troops “to battle” which is basically the same as staking. It is also able to be expanded easily to include any new staking or reward tokens without having to deploy new contracts. However the feature that I’m most proud of, and I think we’re the first to do this, is to harvest reflect rewards from reflectionary tokens and add them back into the reward pool instead of getting lost forever on the contract. This keeps a supply of all tokens available for rewards.
Battlefield uses the concept of Army Strength, which uses a logarithmic formula on the multiplier to prevent early whales from taking up too large of a % of the army and harvesting all of the rewards. It’s working out exactly as I had hoped at this point, and people are seeing diminishing returns in trying to dominate the overall reward pool.
So the goal from my perspective is to allow everyone to participate and enjoy it… Admittedly it’s a little math heavy and that has led to a lot of questions, so I’m working on putting a front-end calculator in so people can estimate their army strength easily and see how adding new staking tokens will influence their rewards.
As a simple example, imagine something like Feg being able to be used as a staking token and harvesting its own reflect rewards to give out rewards as well. It’s a pretty whacky concept.
but it works!
AORLAN
that would be great.
bill
Okay so maybe tell us about your 4 tokens too
The purpose each one serves, I am getting lost on harvesting reflect rewards and it might be because I don’t know what reflect is. Assuming one of your tokens.
tris
As john posted, it explains each token’s role in our ecosystem.
So I’ll start with the basics… there are 4 tokens, the purpose is to have multiple levels of “rarity” and also gamification.
So the highest supply token is SQUIRE, which we introduced this past weekend. It has a 2 billion supply , with 1 billion sent to the burn address . 2% txn fee (1% liquidity lock and 1% reflect) so it is deflationary.
Our second token is KNIGHT, which is essentially a pancake clone token. It has a master chef and is minted. We will stop minting at 10M total supply, which is just a few months away!
The third token is LEGEND. It has a total supply of 155. It’s another Liquidity lock / Reflect token; however, it also sends 1% of all txns back to Battlefield as rewards to keep the supply up. This is the primary rare reward for Battlefield. We are giving out 2 per day, but we’ll have to slow that down soon to stay sustainable.
The fourth token is TABLE. It has a total supply of 13, for King Arthur and the 12 Knights of the Round Table. It has a 2% reflect.
Keep in mind, as I mentioned, all 4 tokens can be received as rewards from Battlefield, which is quite interesting… not many people have low supply coins being returned as rewards.
The goal with each token is to add utility. We just launched our lottery an hour before this interview started which takes KNIGHT. We will have Common NFTs that take SQUIRE, and we will have rare NFTs and other types of games that can use LEGEND and even TABLE.
One concept we’re working on now is an NFT based Equipment that can boost power in Battlefield and other features, and each token buys a different rarity of item that has more power based on the token.
Like an RPG where you can “equip” NFTs and they provide the boosts.
bill
Okay so first of all
Wow
Second
I love reading this. You are DOING what so many fuckers claim they WANT to DO.
tris
Yeah, I’m trying to take a new approach… community first. I get rewarded by being a participant in my own ecosystem.
bill
“Gamilyfy this” “NFT THAT” — it’s a breath of fresh air to see a team actually building shit
It makes me fuckin happy
tris
Glad to hear it :)
So I am incentivized to bust my ass for the community and continue adding features for our awesome community.
bill
Okay so I am going to transition over to @aobr95 — His internet is spotty right now but Ill be here if he goes out.
Before he starts why dont you tell us all How can users stay updated with this project? Are there channels, including local communities where users can get the latest updates?
tris
Sure, definitely check out our TG. That is where the magic happens.
Great group of people and everyone helps each other out
https://twitter.com/Knightsbsc
https://knightsoftheroundtable-bsc.medium.com/
And you’ll notice we tend to use all of our logos pretty interchangeably. People are having fun swapping between the tokens (including me!) to optimize army strength in Battlefield, as well as predicting price patterns, etc.
AORLAN
sorry if I look like an old man writing or answering, a tree fell a while ago a few meters from my house and damaged the internet cables. LOL
Since you mentioned King Arthur.
At what age did King Arthur draw the sword from the stone?
it’s a joke if you don’t know the answer, let it pass.
lol
tris
I’ll guess 13
but I have no idea :)
Dangit, I was close.
I can just delete my messages and modify my answer, but I won’t… :)
AORLAN
Nice try at 24 years lol
tris
There are lots of variations on the legend for sure, I just googled it and saw 15 haha
bill
I didn’t know.
AORLAN
ok now more serious.
What is the biggest challenge your team has faced since launching to this date?
tris
Oh this is an easy one!
So I had been working my ass off on the Battlefield contract… but again, I’m a solo dev, didn’t have a lot of extra eyes on it.
I had a very close family member pass away last week… and it was the day before launch… so obviously wasn’t quite in my right mind, but I know how FUD works, so I decided to go ahead with my plans to launch.
AORLAN
oh, sorry to hear that.
tris
And launch was successful at first.. and then people start reporting some bugs. Needless to say, there was a major bug in the contract that was giving out too many rewards. Luckily people brought it to my attention, we had everyone withdraw, and redeployed the fix the following day.
Usually in a lot of communities, that would destroy price and holders, from what I’ve seen.
Our price barely budged, and everyone was extremely understanding.
But needless to say, that was the worst I’ve slept in years.
It was awesome to see the community rally around me and the rest of the team.
bill
Seems like you handled it in a professional timely manner. Nice work @Sir_Tris
tris
That’s how I approach things. We were open about the issues, and I also reimbursed everyone’s costs of entering and withdrawing… some of it from my personal wallet.
AORLAN
Yes, it is the difficult thing to be dev, you have to have a good view, sometimes you get dizzy with seeing a lot of code and you can miss any error, but it was good that they solved it quickly.
tris
And if you’ve seen the price of TABLE, you’ll understand my sadness lol.
Totally, just not having a second set of eyes on a regular basis makes it difficult
AORLAN
that’s good of you.
tris
But, I live, I learn… I always try to do right by the group. Once that trust is broken, it’s all over.
AORLAN
you talked about family.
ow do the developers and team members divide time between crypto and real world living?
tris
I’d say these past 4 weeks I’ve maybe… neglected my real world living a bit, unfortunately. It’s a lot of work. My wife is a bit worried about me. I think we all make time for our kids and family, but certainly work/life balance is hard. I also have a full-time job outside of this.
It’s very difficult to balance, because I know how important it is that I’m present in the community on a daily basis… and honestly I wouldn’t have it any other way. I like to talk to the community members, and joke with them, or share weird crypto facts.
and then I also have to code, and then I have to also spend time with my family, and do my real job. Yeah it’s a lot. I think we all get hit by it a little, though… and hopefully everyone takes a break to spend time with family.
and friends.
AORLAN
It sounds difficult, the community can become a wife for you, do they demand a lot?
tris
You know, our community doesn’t demand much at all… they’re so awesome.
It’s maybe more of a workaholic issue.
I have seen so many chats where people are screaming for the dev to respond, etc.
We flat out don’t have that issue.
AORLAN
I like that, I just joined and they are great.
tris
Glad to hear it! They take care of new members, for sure.
AORLAN
good 👌🏽
ok returning to the project again.
What benefits have you found from launching your project on the binance smart chain?
tris
Honestly the biggest reason is gas fees. Imagine compounding daily with ETH fees… you’d have to have $50K invested to make it worth it. Battlefield just wouldn’t work on ETH. I wanted it to be fun, and people to interact several times a day. that is how I view success, it isn’t just money… The second reason is the amount of rug pull / scammers out here is insane. I felt like it was my duty to offer something better.
AORLAN
BSC is the best thing that ever happened I think, but you have thought of moving another network, heco?
tris
After I saw some people claiming to lose their life savings to a rug pull, I realized we needed some new leadership to help set an example, and start showing that long-term more serious projects can be attractive.
AORLAN
ADA in the future?
tris
Honestly, we’ve talked a LITTLE about it. ADA is definitely on my list
Harmony is not far off either… since it would be incredibly easy to port.
But yes, ADA is definitely the next network I would like to work on.
AORLAN
You talk about long-term projects, I like that, as you said, most projects emerge and are successful for 1 week, then they go into oblivion.
yeah i love ADA
tris
Yep, often abandoned.
AORLAN
What do you think about audits? Any plans to have audits done for your contracts?
tris
So first, I think Audits are great for devs; however, I do see a lot of auditors using it as a marketing technique and not actually ensuring the code is written properly. But yeah we actually have audits already for KNIGHT, TABLE, and LEGEND.
https://www.knightsdefi.com/Knights%20Defi%20TechRate%20Audit.pdf
We used a smaller company called TechRate. They were professional, and their price was in-line with a real-world audit… not $30K.
(I work with auditors in my professional life)
AORLAN
I think the same, sometimes they use it for just marketing.
Tris, [Mar 31, 2021 at 7:00:01 PM]:
I think a lot of people look at audits as a stamp of “Nothing can go wrong” and that is where I think there is a problem.
I really want to help improve the education of people in crypto… how to read a contract, and understand at least the basics.
thanks for sharing.
tris
We will have SQUIRE audited at some point, but the code is pretty close to LEGENDs, and all liquidity has been locked and burned, and ownership renounced
AORLAN
audits are currently not so safe, let’s see an example of what happened in pancake.
tris
Yep, exactly.
AORLAN
but it is good to have them.
tris
certainly
AORLAN
ok next question
Do you guys have any partnerships with other projects or any plans to form any?
tris
We’ve been in some discussions with a few others, but nothing official yet!
We definitely want to explore partnerships. One of the cool things about Battlefield is we can always use it as a launch pool type of platform where we can pair native token pairs to get rewards for partnerships.
AORLAN
Is it normal, some require an amount in dollars per token?
example 10k?
tris
I haven’t seen any requests like that yet, most people we’re working with at this time are likeminded and just want to help each other out.
It would be something like… I add a KNIGHT-partner token pool, and we can farm our tokens. They can add the same token to their side to farm their token (as one example)
We are also in some discussions with NFT platforms
AORLAN
I’m not saying that all projects do it, but most of it is their amount, but hey, the idea is to have more audience, right
that would be interesting.
tris
Yeah, for sure. I do feel like crypto is insanely pay-to-play. I disagree with that approach to building our platform and partnerships at this time. Perhaps in the future with a little more growth.
AORLAN
yeah, you guys are great, I like the theme it has, I think it fits a lot in BSC.
Can give us your vision for the project over the next 6 months to 1 year?
tris
Thank you!
Sure, so within 6 months, I expect we’ll have immense utility for all 4 tokens, as well as some or all of the features we discussed. We also have a few games planned that will use tokens, and I mentioned utility NFTs that can be used to empower other features of our ecosystem. We’re still in the design phase of that. By then all KNIGHT will be minted, and will start becoming rare as it is getting removed from circulation. I expect we’ll see a pretty nice price hike by then.
My price target for KNIGHT is $1.50 by the end of the September.
AORLAN
that would be good.
tris
and I hate to even admit how high I think TABLE and LEGEND will get… so in 6 months I think we’ll still be chugging along, but I think the platform will be mostly stable by then… mostly just maintenance.
In a year, I am hoping that Knights will be mostly self-sufficient and the platform can stand on its own without doing much.
so I can work on other projects
AORLAN
low supply tokens are very successful, although they are rare. we have Shitz.
tris
for sure, it’s a little meme-y to do the low supply thing, but I also think having the variations of supply / features in the same ecosystem will drive the value of holding the more rare tokens up even further.
AORLAN
I understand that this project for you has been more about learning.
tris
Certainly, learning in a few ways… Solidity isn’t really that difficult to learn by itself.. but understanding how marketing works and what people expect.
There is a lot that a holder / member doesn’t understand about how important tokenomics are, or to predict the future of a token based on the platform, the community, the dev, etc. It’s a lot of work to continually think about how to make improvements without disrupting the ecosystem.
AORLAN
If I speak in general, it is important to know how everything around you works
tris
Yep
AORLAN
Do you think DEFI projects will be sustainable if we enter a bear market?
tris
The technical side is by far the easiest part, imo. I think it’s very likely the answer is yes. It’s hard to predict, but DeFi may actually help lessen the impact of the next bear market.
I read some statistic about how more people are abandoning CEX in favor of DEX, which I find interesting. Your average person doesn’t really know how to use DEX.
AORLAN
the same, DEFI will be new and innovative, most users are looking for quick money. and in DEFI you can.
tris
But they’re starting to use it anyway :)
AORLAN
But the problem is that there are many people who do not know, so that is where the task of teaching them comes in.
tris
Spot on… we actually have tutorials on our subreddit that were written by one of the community members that helps people learn how to get involved in our ecosystem.
AORLAN
you can share it.
tris
knightsDEFI • r/knightsDEFI
A new approach to DeFi with Integrity, Honor, and Nobility.
tris
https://www.reddit.com/r/knightsDEFI/
AORLAN
thank you
tris
The pinned message include extra information about our project, as well as the tutorials.
AORLAN
🙏🏽
What do you think is going to happen in crypto over the next 1–5 years?
tris
Well it’s gaining a lot of attention. I don’t think that attention is going anywhere. Major public figures and celebrities are talking about it. The richest man in the world is basically able to manipulate the market with a tweet. It will continue to grow, and over time I think it starts replacing some of the current mechanisms we have in place. I don’t think it replaces big banks in 5 years, but certainly there are some lending practices that could be 100% handled by DeFi lending platforms, etc.
I do know there is a dirty side to crypto, but… honestly I think that is mostly fear mongering.
AORLAN
I think it will not take long to join them as an official means of payment, in some countries
tris
absolutely… I do think we’ll see additional regulations as well.
AORLAN
cryptocurrencies give us economic freedom, some take it as a second job.
tris
yep, it’s somewhat like the gig-economy… work when you want, as hard as you want, where you want, and for however long you want.
AORLAN
lol you are right.
tris
I told my wife I’d be happy if I could retire and just work on crypto 2–4 hours a day… and live my life how I want.
of course, right now there are more than 2–4 hours of work that need to be done :)
AORLAN
sometimes I think to do the same.
bill
Hey @Sir_Tris sorry for keeping you so long. I had to run and grab food I didn’t eat all day. I thought @DeFiCP was going to be here but I guess he’s not.
Thank you @aobr95 for keeping it rolling. And thanks again @Sir_Tris for coming over here.
tris
Sure thing, no problem! Thank you for having me!
As one last blurb, I’ll mention our goals:
What we want:
• Equitability for both heavy investors and casual investors.
• Engaged and pleasant community
• Increased utility and value of all tokens.
• Heavy user engagement in ecosystem daily, longevity
• Stay true to our mission of having integrity and honor, transparency
What we don’t want:
• Pump and Dumps / Cash Grabs / Ponzi
• Rug pulls
• Toxic community
• Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt Exploitation
AORLAN
Thank you very much for being part of this, your project is great, I wish you much success.
tris
Thank you so much!
