GAINS AMA with InsurAce — August 16

GAINS Associates

7 min readSep 22, 2022

On Tuesday, August 16, we had the pleasure to welcome to our Telegram chat:

Dan Thomson

We asked him questions about the development of InsurAce.

Some sentences have been slightly edited for readability but the meaning has been conserved.

Introduction

Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Let’s begin by getting to know more about you. Tell us about yourself and what you do at InsurAce

A — Dan from InsurAce: I’m Dan Thomson, the Director of Business Development and Marketing for InsurAce. I am originally from London, have lived in Spain previously, and now have gone completely remote as a digital nomad, mostly following crypto conferences around the world. I have a background in growing companies across Europe and have been in crypto since 2015 when I bought my first Bitcoin. Since then I have gone on to launch one of Europe’s first crypto Index Funds based out of Gibraltar, and then moved into DeFi which is when I came across InsurAce and the DeFi Protection sector. I’ve been with InsurAce for over a year now since our mainnet launch. My job is to build partnerships and share our great project with the world

About InsurAce

Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Can you give us an overview of the InsurAce project? How does the average user interact with the InsurAce service? What do they need to get started?

A — Dan from InsurAce: InsurAce is a Decentralized Cover Protocol protecting your assets from hacker attacks and bugs in smart contracts that may result in losses to your assets, we also cover some custody coverage for funds kept on an exchange, as well as Stablecoin De-Peg events, and IDO events. From as little as 2% you can guarantee your assets’ security and have peace of mind. We’re deployed to Ethereum, Binance, Polygon, and Avalanche Network. To date, we’ve covered over $340m of assets on 140 different protocols, across 20 different public chains. In our recently updated roadmap, we announced that we will be adding more types of protection in the future including Rug-Pull, Wallet cover, and NFT cover amongst others.

The average user just needs a web3 wallet to use our app. A purchase can be made in just a few minutes via our app. Which protects their assets on other chains

Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Stablecoin de-peg events. So if I had insurance with InsurAce, in the wake of the recent UST and LUNA collapse, would I have been compensated?

A — Dan from InsurAce: Yes! We actually had the largest payout in the space ever. We paid $11.7m in payout to claimants who suffered because of the de-peg. So if you had cover, then yes, you could have claimed compensation. We approved 98.6% of claims and helped 155 investors to recover their assets

Q — Twitter user @BelkysGLZ: I read that there is an InsurAce referral program, which is a great incentive for users. Please, can you explain the conditions of this program? And how do you have a system to detect users that might try to cheat and take advantage of this program?

A — Dan from InsurAce: Sure, we have a great on-chain referral program, where you can get a referral code by connecting your wallet. This will give you a 5% reward for anything purchased with it as well as a 5% discount for the customer

Q — Telegram user See LIGHT: How are the coverage model applied by InsurAce, are they applicable for NFTs assets?

A — Dan from InsurAce: We don’t have a product for NFT insurance, but it’s in the works to bring one out.

Hopefully, at the same time, we can produce wallet insurance that will help users, like the victims of the recent Solana hacks

Q — Telegram user Ahmet: InsurAce current Total Value Locked is $19.4 million. But ETH is well ahead with $7.07M in Total Value Locked. Why is Ethereum so ahead in Total Value Locked?

A — Dan from InsurAce: Good question, the majority of our stakers are in Polygon, but we have a fairly even balance across our chains. We encourage all staking which is then aggregated by our protocol to provide a capacity for insurance coverage

Token

Q — Ayeley from GAINS: What is the use case of the $INSUR token in the InsurAce ecosystem?

A — Dan from InsurAce: You can buy cover with 6 different tokens on 4 different chains. The INSUR token is our governance token used for rewards and voting on various parts of our DAO structure, including claims, and proposals on various parts of our operations. The token can also be staked Our V2 tokenomics will be launched in the coming months, this will increase the token use cases to give extra value to holders through buyback and redistribution, as well as profit sharing

Security

Q — Twitter user @BelkysGLZ: Tell us about the security protocols on InsurAce and how secured users' funds are in staking pools because the issue of users' funds should be a top concern for any project.

A — Dan from InsurAce: Yes, we understand this, probably better than most. Our protocol is extremely secure, our team members are security experts, and we take extra precautions to make sure our smart contracts are as safe as possible. From next month we will have an insurance option for our stakers, as well as reinsurance to ensure that even in a hack, our stakers are protected.

Competitive Advantage

Q — Ayeley from GAINS: What sets InsurAce apart from the rest of the products on the market that also offer insurance cover for crypto assets?

A — Dan from InsurAce:
1/ InsurAce is a leader in DeFi Protection, we went live in April 2021 on our mainnet and we are the only protocol to have deployed on both ETH and BSC smart chains as well as Polygon and avalanche. This comes after we launched our multi-chain services allowing users to insure their assets on 9 other chains like fantom, Solana, Arbitrum, Celo, and harmony.
2/ We have no KYC.
3/ We offer the lowest coverage premiums on the market, up to 60% cheaper than our competitors and up to 50% less on gas fees too, by using our portfolio-based coverage model. You can protect all your bags together instead of separately to make these huge savings.
4/ Also, our governance model is different from our competitors. We have advice from investment risk experts who help to govern claims and loss protection services that we offer to allow for a more streamlined and knowledgeable decision-making process when it comes to both offering coverage and also processing claims. 5/ Finally, our upcoming investment model will allow users to opt between high and low-risk investments for higher or lower yields. This will use our capital reserves more efficiently to achieve higher gains on our capital which will benefit our stakers, guarantors, and protected customers.

Business Development

Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Tell us about other milestones reached since launch.

A — Dan from InsurAce: Yes, it’s been a great first year. Since our mainnet launch in April 2021, we’ve hit a lot of milestones along the way. We’ve successfully deployed to BSC, Avalanche, and Polygon chains, and we’ve added other protection services including De-Peg protection and IDO cover. We’ve covered over $340m of assets, generating over $2m in revenue. We now cover 140 different protocols on 20 different public chains, with 3 new projects listed weekly.

Our systems were thoroughly tested with the recent UST De-Peg event where we successfully paid out the largest amount ever in this industry of $11.7 million to affected UST holders who lost their assets in the collapse of Terra. We’ve got a bright future ahead with the continued release of our v2, the first stages of which have already been completed. Our upcoming v2 tokenomics will see huge value added to token holders and stakers, with buy-backs and redistribution, as well as a profit share function and increased use cases. This will feed nicely into our upcoming investment arm which will generate higher returns from existing capital pools. And finally, we have our insurance marketplace, allowing for a whole variety of new products to be developed.

Q — Telegram user Vector: Many Defi users are opting for these insurance policies but there are many projects that offer very limited policies for users, How will you solve it?

A — Dan from InsurAce: We are working on adding as many as we can as fast as we can! If you have a favorite protocol you can recommend them to us and we will list them

Dan, thanks for coming into our community, and taking the time to answer our questions, sharing all these updates of the wonderful things you have been up to. Above all, I am incredibly moved by the dedicaion you have to your clients, covering all their losses in the UST depeg. That’s incredible.
Do you have any final words for us? Where can we follow you to stay updated? — Ayeley Commodore-Mensah from GAINS Associates
Thanks for having me! Check out our twitter for regular updates and our telegram. All links can be found here. — Dan Thomson from InsurAce

GAINS Associates is the World’s First Decentralized VC, allowing anyone that holds $GAINS to invest in the crypto unicorns of tomorrow. With over 3 years of experience and several ultra-high return deals, we are removing the barriers of entry to investing and changing the world, one deal at a time.

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