Ardana is a DeFi hub built on the Cardano blockchain. Ardana provides Cardano’s users with tried and tested DeFi primitives that will catalyze and sustain its financial ecosystem.

On November 3, Noam Elbaz, Head of Research at Ardana joined us to answer our questions.

Noam Elbaz, Head of Research at Ardana

I have been a devout bitcoin fan for a few years, I have gone deep into DeFi around a year and a half ago and I’m hooked ever since.

Questions from the CryptoRank team

#1. Can you tell us about Ardana? What problems do you solve, both in the space and for the community?

Noam E.: – In a high level, what Ardana comes to solve is freeing up capital. There is a lot of ADA sitting there staked and earning interest, with no current decentralized venues to leverage that idle capital elsewhere, with the stablecoin protocol we want all the ADA stakers (who know how to manage a CDP) to mint stablecoin and go look for new opportunities for their capital.

I guess the problem for the financial community at large, crypto or otherwise, is the need for yield. With collateralized ADA still earning native staking rewards, thus effectively subsidizing the loan, and many venues to earn dUSD on in the plans, we hope to help solve the problem of the much-needed need for yield.

#2. Could you briefly describe the milestones Ardana has achieved, and about your upcoming plans?

Noam E.: – Our main milestones have been technical and economical in nature mainly, we worked hard to improve current collateral auction models by making them less gameable and more automated, we are also working hard right now to make sure that Ardana conforms to the current lessons of the DeFi 2.0 trend. But I would say that the biggest milestones have been the work behind the scenes of building and tying together a functional decentralized economy on Cardano, or in layman’s terms- partnerships.

Questions from Twitter

#1. How is the Ardana stablecoin different from Djed?

Noam E.: – Djed is an algorithmic reserve currency, which means that the stablecoins are backed by a reserve of various assets, with an algorithm controlling the supply & demand of the stablecoins in order to fix the price around the peg. Ardana is a collateral-backed stablecoin, which means that all stablecoins in circulation are backed by user-created overcollateralized CDPs.

What this practically means for users is that Ardana will allow users to retain ownership (and staking rewards in the case of ADA) of their collateralized assets, basically leverage. And that we are not as reliant on an algorithm to manage the price, but rather we have room for the general market to participate & profit in maintaining the peg, mainly through arbitrage.

Seeing how users keep their collateral on Ardana, we provide a risk-on leverage approach, while Djed is a risk-off approach since you are trading your volatile assets away.

#2. Farming is very popular nowadays but does Ardana plan to add more features to your platform like staking -lending -buyback or mining with your tokens? What other ways to enjoy and earn with Ardana?

Noam E.: – We will most definitely implement some or more forms of liquidity mining in our various protocols, we don’t want to commit to a set-and-forget approach, as we want to be as reactive and dynamic in our operations of this kind. DANA holders who time-lock their DANA will receive non-tradeable exDANA in return, which will boost their yield on supported liquidity mining venues, give them governance rights, and entitle them to a pro-rata share of the admin fee.

#3. Is this (Ardana) Cardano?

Noam E.: – In so far as the things that are built on Cardano, are Cardano, then yes, this is Cardano. While it is of course possible for something to exist on Cardano without it being Cardano in and by itself, was Cardano not have been, neither would have the thing built on it be possible or even conceivable. Nevertheless, even though we are on Cardano (though not being Cardano), we will expand to other chains.

Questions from Telegram

#1. On your website you don’t mention that you have done any internal or external audit of your smart contract, so can you give us details if you have done any audit before? And in case you haven’t, would you plan to perform any review of your smart contract in the near future?

Noam E.: – The audit is still ongoing, to make things better, our developer teams are all auditors themselves too. We will be doing an internal audit and 1-2 external audits, with formal verification.

#2. Most investors focus only on the short-term price of the token instead of the actual value of the project. So what are the benefits for long-term investors in the project?

Noam E.: – Since the token has intrinsic value by it giving holders title to some of the protocol revenue, as the protocol matures & grows, so will the value it confers to the token. So long-term holders can know that they will be receiving a yield in addition to whatever price action might occur.

#3. Too many projects promise magic but never release any working product or prove any revenue, within a short/long time of release. Is your project also like this? If not can you tell us, what makes your project different from other projects?

Noam E.: – We will have a working product within a month or so of the TGE. I think what makes us different from most DeFi projects on Cardano is the DeFi native approach. We know what works well, what doesn’t, and what can be potentially catastrophic, our goal is to be the base & the builders of a thriving DeFi ecosystem on Cardano, both in terms of our product-market fit, and in terms of our personal aspirations.