Aluna.Social: AMA
I hosted an AMA for Aluna.Social team on t.me/panamacrypto on December 7th 2020 at 2PM UTC. Alvin Lee, Henrique Matias participated from Aluna.Social; and myself as moderator. Below are the questions and answers from the resulting AMA:
1. Do an ELI5 on what Aluna is and what is trying to achieve.
Alvin:
Aluna is a gamified social trading terminal that rewards top traders and enables beginners to learn from and auto-copy the world’s best traders.
This is achieved by combining a multi-exchange trading terminal and a social network with gamification elements. Users can manage multiple exchange accounts in one place, earn rewards for being active and profitable traders, and learn from others to become better traders or automatically mirror their trades.
Henrique:
At the moment you can connect your Bitmex, Bitfinex, Poloniex, Bittrex and Binance accounts and manage all of them from one place..
Once you do it you will have a public profile with your portfolio distribution, your margin positions and your “insights”, Insights are similar to “tweets” but on the Aluna platform they can have links to market data, also worth mentioning that even if you have a public profile we never reveal how much funds the users can, i.e. we show the portfolio distribution but don’t show how much $$ the users have the margin positions we display, works the same.. i.e. we show the open price / base price / close price, but we don’t show their position size one super cool thing IMHO is that if someone opens a trade on Aluna it automatically becomes a “thread” where everyone can comment, see the chart of the market, where the person opened the trade, where they closed..
So it’s basically an open forum where traders can discuss / learn from each other and look at real data together ( :
2. There are a few copy trading platforms out there, who is your main competitor and what do you like about them? also what sets Aluna apart from the competition? i.e what is your selling point on why should people use Aluna and not another one?
Henrique:
I personally don’t think we’re a “copy trading platform” because there are features / reasons to use Aluna Social even if you don’t plan to copy trade! That being said, copy trading is part of what we do as well some projects that are somehow similar to Aluna I would say are Covesting and 3Commas outside of the crypto world there is also eToro and many other “legacy” platforms who offers copy trading.
I think what sets Aluna aside from all those projects is — like I said in the previous questions — the fact that every trade is an open thread where people can discuss it.
Also, we give a lot of importance to our interface and how easy it is for users to use our platform. For instance, if you go to https://aluna.social you will notice you don’t need to register to start browsing around and learning how it works.
Also, the registration process is really quick, so you can easily start chatting with other people.
We don’t really have a paywall or registration wall because one of our goals is to help create a more open and transparent community.
Alvin:
Just wanted to add to the previous question that Aluna’s co-founders have been trading Crypto since 2013, and have a deep understanding of the crypto market and the problems faced as a crypto trader.
Also, Aluna is not a brokerage/exchange ourselves, and is a non-custodial service.
Lastly, Aluna has a unique incentive mechanism that realigns interests between leader traders and followers.
3. How many active users does the platform currently have and how long has it been operational?
Alvin:
Our current MAU is ~5000 and DAU is ~350.
Our beta has been live since late 2019.
Henrique:
MAU = Monthly active users
DAU = Daily active users
4. How do copiers pay to copy and how are traders paid by copiers currently?
Alvin:
Aluna is currently in Beta and is free to use.
PRO Subscription Plans will roll out in Q1 2021.
Users who want to use copy-trading will pay a monthly subscription fee of $20+ (with tiers depending on copy-trading volume). There is no fee paid directly to the traders you copy.
Leader traders who are profitable for the month and earn a positive ROI for their copy-followers will earn a share of the pooled monthly subscription fees. This incentivises traders to perform well not only for himself but also for his followers.
5. What is the use case for ALN token?
Alvin:
There are three use cases for the ALN token:
1) To fuel the rewards and gamification mechanisms of ALN-powered products & services
2) To bootstrap utility (and liquidity)
3) To coordinate decentralized governance
6. What problem does the ALN token is trying to solve?
Alvin:
Incentive models of existing social trading platforms are broken. Some traders earn a fee based on Assets Under Management (AUM) regardless of their profitability. While others earn a monthly subscription fee regardless of the number of trades he opens or his profitability.
Aluna aims to solve this with the implementation of ALN token as an incentive and gamification mechanism on ALN-powered platforms such as Aluna.Social. Our unique performance-based reward system for leader traders realigns the incentives between leader traders and followers.
The ALN token also serves to bootstrap the community, utility of the platform, and reward active users and top traders on the Aluna leaderboard.
How can we build a crypto social trading platform that is fit for a post-Bitcoin world?
This is what we aim to solve with the Aluna project and ALN token — to gamify finance for a Web 3.0 world.
7. What will motivate people to buy and hold ALN other than hype and future expectation of profit due to others paying more than they paid?
Alvin:
1) Utility on our flagship platform — users who stake 1337 ALN gain access to premium features for free, and other staking benefits.
2) Access to Token-permissioned chat groups on telegram and discord for holding at least 1337 ALN.
3) Utility on new ALN-powered products & services.
8. Aluna seems more like a tool or software and not a protocol or organization, so Why does ALN needs Staking (since it’s not for securing the network), Farming (since it’s not a DeFi project and doesn’t need to incentivize liquidity of the platform), Governance (clearly a meme and not an use case, again this is not a DeFI project) and Burn (another meme and not a value accrual mechanism).
Alvin:
Aluna is indeed a tool for crypto traders and a guide for newcomers to the space…
Staking in Aluna is not meant to secure the network.
Staking ALN provides you with premium features and other benefits such as earning tokens from the ecosystem fund distribution campaigns.
Farming in Aluna is for 1) marketing and 2) acts as an incentive to provide liquidity on DEXes.
Although we are still in the early days of experimentation, I would not rule out decentralised governance and DAOs as a meme. Projects like COMP, MKR, YFI, SNX and DXdao are paving the way for implementing on-chain governance, and there are many things we can learn from.
Our goal is to transition from a centralized project to one that is partly/largely governed by the community and token holders over the next 3 years.
Regarding Burn, Indeed an interesting article by PlaceholderVC (https://www.placeholder.vc/blog/2020/9/17/stop-burning-tokens-buyback-and-make-instead) also pointed this out.
If we receive ALN as payment, we are currently considering burning a part of this. Alternatively we are also considering the “buy-and-make” model proposed by PlaceholderVC and not burning any tokens. This is still an ongoing discussion.
We don’t plan to burn any tokens that we buy back (if any).
Anyway, I do think it’s kinda weird talking about whether we should or should not have certain features because “we’re not a DeFi project”.
The whole space is a big experiment at the bleeding edge of technology. Isn’t every crypto a DeFi project? =)
As a service that is currently completely centralized and governed by the Aluna core team, it is not practical to expect to be “decentralized” from Day 1.
That said, our goal is to transition from a centralized project to one that is governed by the community over the next 3 years.
For now, the Aluna team will have a large say in how the protocol is governed. We hope that as the community grows and more participants contribute to the project, that we will be able to realize this transition.
9. The token split is only 15% to purchasers + 10% early adopters which leaves 75% still with Aluna, how can this lead to a DAO, this is far from being “decentralized” and self-governing.
Alvin:
As a service that is currently completely centralized and governed by the Aluna core team, it is not practical to expect to be “decentralized” from Day 1.
That said, our goal is to transition from a centralized project to one that is governed by the community over the next 3 years.
For now, the Aluna team will have a large say in how the protocol is governed. We hope that as the community grows and more participants contribute to the project, that we will be able to realize this transition.
10. A funny but interesting feature seems to be the Counter Trade option, is there any benefit for the user being counter traded, does he get any fee?
Henrique:
When PRO Subscriptions go live, users who want to use the copy-trading feature will pay about $20 per month.
These fees are pooled together and shared between leader traders who make a profit for their followers who are copying or counter-copying them.
To answer your question — yes, a user being counter-traded will earn a fee if his followers actually end up making a profit from counter-trading him over the month.
11. Do you acknowledge the fact that some traders will even feel insulted by others countertrading them? It’s like the ultimate mockery and something that could drive away users, since most traders are unprofitable.
Henrique:
I don’t think it’s insulting at all… I think it’s more of a playful feature ( :
Also there have been copy trading platforms in the past where a famous user would be doing loads of good trades and then suddenly he started doing really terrible trades, it looked even like if was on purpose. So, in that case it would have been good for other traders to be able to do the opposite, so we thought “why not?”…
Alvin:
I’m not sure if traders will feel insulted by this. Maybe. More importantly, I hope it makes them strive to become a better trader!
12. In the future, what other improvements and features are you looking at implementing and why do you think those features are needed or are cool?
Alvin:
Right now, Aluna.Social is a social trading terminal for centralized exchanges.
How do we do the same thing for trading on DEXes? Can we copy-trade someone on-chain?
This is something we’ve been experimenting with a lot this year, and one of the more exciting things I’m looking forward to.
Another cool feature we’re working on are our Prediction Games. We’re exploring some ideas with DXdao and Omen to create a gamified trading experience and fun ways to participate in the market.
Users would be able to wager on certain market outcomes, such as:
- Do you think Bitcoin’s price will be higher or lower tomorrow?
- Do you think Ethereum’s market capitalization will be higher than BTC within the next 12 months?
And even predict the performance of other participants:
- Do you think trader X’s BTCUSD long position will close in profit or at a loss?
- Which trader do you think will top the Aluna Leaderboard for January 2021?
13. What is your long-term vision about the industry which Aluna is working at? Are you afraid some day there will be another project with more innovative technology can replace Aluna?
Henrique:
I think Aluna is more than “technology”, the way we approach some of the problems and how we “think” is a big part of our platform, if someone have similar way of thinking i would think it would be more likely become a partner than replace us, we’re not fighting with other people and we would like to help build a strong community ( :
14. Why should we choose ALUNA? What are the advantages of ALUNA over other platforms?
Henrique:
Do you have any specific platform in mind? I think one of the key features on Aluna is how easy it is to use and how simple / nice the UI looks like / the fact people have public profiles and you can learn from each other.
15. What role do you think ALUNA will play in making Cryptocurrency highly adopted in the worldwide stage?
Henrique:
I think Aluna can help a lot by creating an open space for people to learn from each other, see how other people trade their coins / find other interesting projects, discuss about trading without being distracted by other subjects.
For instance, a lot of people use Twitter now to talk about crypto but Twitter is not only about crypto, there are a lot of distractions on Twitter.
Also, you can’t see on Twitter what other people are buying, what’s their portfolio distribution and so on. So, in that sense i think Aluna can help people learn from each other, exchange information with their friends, talk about strategies. Even if people are not traders, Aluna can still work as an open forum about cryptocurrencies in general.
If anyone would like to follow up further on Aluna.Social:
Website: https://aluna.social/
Telegram: https://t.me/alunasocial
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlunaSocial
Looking forward to see you guys active on the Aluna.Social!
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This is not a financial advise and you should do your own research before investing, and understand if you are willing to lose this investment, as there is always risk in innovative markets as technology, fintech, and cryptocurrencies, due to regulations, geopolitical issues, and what not. That being said, besides being invested in ALN, I am being compensated for my time writing this article.
