Community AMA Recap: 17th March

Here's our pick of the five best questions from the AMA, plus the latest on earning Diver, Navigator and Submariner roles in our Discord Roles program.

Mar 21, 2023

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Swell

Didn't catch the Community AMA with Salex, Baley, and Daniel last Friday?

Here's our pick of the five best questions from the event, plus the latest on earning Diver, Navigator and Submariner roles in our Discord Roles program.

Top 5 Questions

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1. What is the elevator pitch for Swell?

Swell aims to deliver the world’s best liquid staking experience, simplify access to DeFi, and secure the future of Ethereum.

We achieve this by bringing a number of uniquely competitive features to the staking market — including a simple reward-bearing token model, and inbuilt DeFi integrations for boosting yield.

Discover more about Swell in this blog post: 10 reasons to stake with Swell

2. Is Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) on the Swell roadmap?

DVT will not be part of the protocol at launch, but we have plans to integrate it in the mid-to-long-term.

3. What is Swell's main differentiator from Lido?

One of the biggest differences is that Lido's liquid staking token, stETH, is a rebasing token, which means that the supply of stETH inflates each day to reflect the accrual of staking rewards.

This presents a couple of issues:

DeFi compatibility: Rebasing tokens are not compatible with most smart contracts, making it difficult to integrate them with DeFi.
Tax inefficiency: Earning more of the stETH token every single day can be tax inefficient because it creates numerous taxable events. Furthermore, the wrapping and unwrapping of the token may itself be a taxable transaction. (Disclaimer: this is not tax advice!)

Swell has learned from Lido's design to make a number of different architectural decisions. As such, swETH is reward-bearing, which means that the gains are generally treated as capital instead of income.

Furthermore, Swell is also distinguished from Lido by our in-app vaults. These enable easy access to onchain yield opportunities from directly within the Swell dApp, without needing to navigate to other DeFi protocols.

4. Will swETH increase in price over time? Is that how it works?

Yes — as a reward-bearing token, swETH will increase in value against ETH as the staking rewards are baked into the price.

This can be difficult to conceptualize, which is why we have a clear user interface design in the roadmap to help stakers understand their cost basis over time.

5. What will the launch process be?

The guarded launch will be commencing in two to three weeks, which puts us on track for a public permissionless launch in April.

Prior to that, the protocol is being audited by top-tier smart contract security firm Sigma Prime.

Get all the latest in our fortnightly Deep Dive.

Discord Roles

Following the AMA, Discord submission channels were opened for Diver, Submariner, and Navigator roles.

If you attended the AMA, you are now eligible to apply for these roles by following the instructions below:

Diver 🤿

Simply quote retweet this thread with the phrase "splish splash", and post your tweet in the diver-submissions channel.

Navigator 🧭

To be eligible for a Navigator role, you'll need to tweet memes or Swell art on Twitter, and then post your creations in the navigator-submissions channel. We'll be picking a maximum of ten of the best memes and artworks.

Submariner ⚓

Submariner submissions could anything that really dives deep into Swell – ranging from long-form educational to Twitter threads, infographics, or data-driven reports.

Once finished, you must post your content in the submariner-submissions channel. We'll be selecting only five of the best pieces of educational content.

Don't forget: