D. P.: Today we’re gonna talk about some issues EAST faced over past weeks, as well as the features and fixes planned. You may be wondering where Ivan Gramovich, the former product manager, is. Well, he left the Waves Enterprise team a few weeks ago, he’s now doing his own project. I, Dmitry Piterkin, work as product manager of EAST.Finance for several months already.

First of all, let’s talk about the peg. It wasn’t very stable in the past few weeks, fluctuating between $0.9 and $1.5. This was caused by a little mismanagement. Currently we have two pairs at WX.Network, EAST/WAVES and EAST/WEST, worth about $40k. In the nearest weeks we plan to add liquidity with another stablecoin like USDT. Maybe we’ll use some WAVES for it.

We have some other features planned that will also improve the peg. The redemption pool will let you exchange 1 EAST for $1 in the backing assets. This is a hard peg from the bottom. So if EAST is worth less than $1, arbitrage traders will buy it from the market and exchange it for a bigger price within the protocol. Another feature is minting EAST with stablecoins as collateral. When EAST is worth more than $1, we’ll enable USDT as collateral with 100% backing ratio necessary — the lowest it can be. This will enable instant profit by minting EAST and selling it at the market; as a result, the price will get down to $1.

We’ll also implement a dynamic stability fee that will change according to the peg. If the unpeg is rather small, for example $1.1, we’ll increase the stability fee. This will motivate debt owners to pay their debt.

— Will there be changes in how the community is handled?

Yes. As a PM of EAST, I’m going to be much more active in the chat — there is a new chat we launched today specifically for EAST discussions. You can also tag me in the Waves Enterprise group.

— Will WEST exist as an asset with value?

This AMA is primarily about EAST, but I can assure you WEST is also being handled, new features are implemented. Now we believe EAST to be the strongest utility case for WEST and mainnet, because EAST can be scaled and streamlined for corporate and enterprise users. That was kind of a teaser: there are plans for EAST not only in traditional DeFi, but also in institutional DeFi, which is a bit different, but also quite cool. Follow the updates.

— What about EAST and ORIENT staking?

This is another big topic. EAST staking will be released next, in two weeks at most. It’s already done, but we decided to delay the release a little, because we made a proposal to PowerDAO: 7.5% of total ORIENT emission in exchange of $50k of PowerDAO XTN funds. It passed, but there was a little mismanagement.

All the PowerDAO accepted proposals are acting directly in the blockchain. So your proposal must include a ready-made transaction with a timestamp of execution. Our timestamp for the swap was set nine days after the voting finished. But another project made another successful proposal after us, and set the transaction for an earlier time. They pulled most XTN from the PowerDAO treasury, leaving too little for our swap to be executed. So our transaction failed. But we’ll make another proposal in the future when the treasury is replenished.

Now this story is over, and we’ll release EAST and ORIENT staking shortly. Next week we’ll bring EAST staking, and in two weeks — ORIENT farming and staking. You’ll have regular APR in ORIENT just by having an active debt in EAST.

— Is there any proof that EAST won’t follow USDN depeg?

The main reason for having EAST in the Waves ecosystem is the fact that it has no overcollateralized native stablecoin. As you know, USDN was an algorithmic stablecoin, so it depegged like LUNA and UST. On the other hand, EAST is more similar to the MakerDAO model that fuels DAI. We’re also similar to MIM, which is Abracadabra protocol, and Liquity. These projects prove themselves for a long time, and actually I don’t know any overcollateralized stablecoin that crashed. I see no chance for such a depeg. Maybe the price will fluctuate a little right after we introduce new features, but just for a short time. And we’ll keep it $1 as much as we can.

— Will there be pairs with other stablecoins like USDT or USDC?

Probably they will be released next week, when we find some tokens for these. Or we’ll use WAVES liquidity to buy the tokens necessary.

— How are you going to extend the utilization of EAST in the Waves ecosystem?

One of the features planned is flash loans, so the arbitrage traders can have as much EAST as they need. Flash loans mean you must return the same amount of EAST in the same transaction. These are mostly used by traders and bots; this will give more utility to EAST. We’ll profit from the flash loan fee; at the same time EAST will circulate more actively in the pairs, in liquidity pools.

Also, we’ll collaborate with other projects to make EAST more popular, more trusted.

— Isn’t EAST also algorithmic?

Every stablecoin that isn’t managed by a real bank, like USDT or USDC, is algorithmic. But much depends on the exact algorithm. The one by MakerDAO got so popular that now it stands out as a new type of stablecoin. Technically, it is algorithmic, but it is a specific type of algorithm that can stand the test of time.

— Will EAST boost Waves Enterprise ecosystem?

EAST is the strongest mainnet case as yet, and we’ll plan to use it in institutional, enterprise DeFi. Corporate users will also find EAST.Finance useful.

— Did you promise any user can get a list of EAST vaults for liquidation?

With the EAST staking update we’ll redesign the whole interface of EAST.Finance client, and you’ll get a dashboard with information about your position, its collateral, risks and so on.

— Explain why we need an ORIENT token. Is it for governance? Will it bring extra APY?

Yes and yes. ORIENT will be the EAST governance token. Part of the fees collected by the protocol — stability fee, liquidation fee — will go to the treasury. And we plan to split all these fees between EAST and ORIENT stakers. Both will get APR.

You will get ORIENT as a reward for having EAST debt. Hopefully, it will bring more users and liquidity to the protocol. I can’t predict the exact APR, but you’ll see it yourself as it comes out.

— Do you plan a mobile version of EAST client?

Currently we don’t have such plans, but it’s a good question to discuss with the team.

— How many ORIENT tokens will be released and how long will it take?

The whole ORIENT minting program will take four years, and the emission will get slower over time. So you should jump in at the start to get as much as possible. This will work like Bitcoin emission, getting smaller and smaller. In 4 years it will stop.

— Has WEST DAO anything to do with EAST?

WEST DAO will be scaling and will work very closely with EAST.Finance, as Waves Enterprise does.

— Are you in WEST/EAST still in contact with the Russian dev team?

As you may know, Waves Enterprise split some time ago, and I have nothing to add here. As for EAST.Finance, the whole team is operating outside Russia. Still, we have some minor contacts with the Russian team.

— I feel like EAST is a rather closed ecosystem. Do you have dashboards and open statistics?

Yes, we do. It’s a good idea to make it public, I’ll discuss it with the team. We’re watching the peg very closely, we have info on liquidatable and risky positions, volumes of trading, oracle prices and so on. According to these, we implement new features and sometimes even arbitrage EAST ourselves. By the way, if you are a bot developer, you can make one to arbitrage EAST; it is still rather profitable, but this won’t last long.

— Will the Russian team use EAST for their customers?

I don’t have info about that. As I said, all the EAST.Finance developers are outside Russia.

You can find the full video of the AMA on Waves Tech channel. Join our new EAST chat to discuss everything about EAST! Also check out the official EAST channel with all the updates!