AMA

• Please introduce the team and provide some details into the founders’ backgrounds.

  CEO - Vincent Lee

Before founding Themis, Vincent worked for 9F Inc. in blockchain product development in 2018 and joined QSN (later renamed Stratos) in 2019. Vincent has worked with giants like Huawei and JIUFU Holding Group, gaining years of experience in product design and brand management before beginning his work with lending protocols and co-founding Themis.

Co-Founder - David Braut

Our co-founder David worked as managing director of Kroleo, a Washington D.C. based consulting and I.T. development firm servicing Fortune 500 companies as well as the Federal Government. Notably, Kroleo joined the list of the top 100 fastest growing companies in North America as published by Fortune.

• Tell us about Themis Protocol. What is it? How does it work? What problem are you trying to solve?

Themis is a decentralized NFT lending protocol that will provide a collateralized lending scenario for NFTs. The protocol itself is a set of DeFi protocols developed based on smart contracts that allow users to lend, borrow, stack yield, auction, and leverage UNI-V3 NFTs.

With Themis, you’ll be able to receive a loan using your NFTs from Uniswap v3 as collateral — something no other protocol currently offers.

This way your liquidity will remain in the pool generating yield while unlocking the additional value to use however you wish — the ultimate money lego!

In addition to collateralizing your NFTs, Themis allows you to lend, farm, and even bid on liquidated positions in a Dutch Auction.

The $4.02B in TVL locked in Uniswap will be put to good use instead of just sitting there idle.

• What will users intuitively experience when using Themis?

If you regularly use lending protocols like Compound or AAVE then Themis will bring you something different.

First, we will offer the world's first and only platform that allows users to use UNI-V3 NFTs as collateral for loans. As a borrower, you are no longer collateralizing one token and borrowing another. Instead, users are collateralizing an LP that is providing users with revenue to get additional liquidity.

As a simple lender, users may find that Themis may have a higher utilization rate of funds and thus a higher yield. If users are players in the NFT space, perhaps those NFTs can bring them some value-added services, such as increasing the lending rate.

Additionally, you’ll have access to a role as a liquidator. Users can arbitrage the liquidation process of a lending agreement without being constrained by their own technical abilities and instead participate directly in the process.

Last but not least, we will be offering yield farming after TGE, allowing users to stake their tokens and earn rewards.

• You mention Uniswap. And about leveraging UNI-V3 NFTs. Can you provide some details here? How is this done? Would you be able to use any NFT?

When most people hear the term “NFT” they think of visual media, but non-fungible tokens can have functionalities that go far beyond the ownership of digital art.

When Uniswap introduced custom liquidity ranges in v3, this led to the development of NFT vouchers that represent each user's distinct liquidity position rather than representing it with the LP tokens used in v2.

At launch, Themis will support only UNI-V3 NFT’s, but we plan to incorporate other NFT’s moving forward!

Imagine taking out a loan on your Bored Ape (just don’t forget to pay it back)!

We regularly discuss NFTs on our Twitter, feel free to join us there.

• At launch, Themis will support only UNI-V3 NFT’s, but we plan to incorporate other NFT’s moving forward!

When you take out a loan with Themis, you’ll need to pay it back at some point (obviously).

If that doesn’t happen the LP will be liquidated, and the NFT voucher representing it will go up for auction. Once the collateral is liquidated, the NFT will appear in our Auction Pad and be sold in a public Dutch Auction.

Keep in mind that the value of the liquidated assets is often higher than the borrowing value and interest, thus creating great opportunities for arbitrage.

The Dutch Auction feature will allow other users to bid on those NFTs. Make sure to check it regularly, because you might find one lower than the market price!

• Tell us about $TMS. What role does the token play in the ecosystem? Governance?

That’s right, $TMS serves as the governance token for Themis.It represents your stake in the project and can be used to vote on proposals for anything from protocol upgrades, to adjustments in interest rates or how to allocate treasury funds, to name a few examples.

Users are rewarded $TMS by participating in the Themis ecosystem. Lending, borrowing and mining are all ways that users can get more $TMS!

Feel free to hop over to our Discord and ask us more about how to earn $TMS.

• Governance is a key component of Themis. What can we look forward to? How is it structured?

Themis’ governance model is a combination of new incentives for the functions and contributions of various governance roles such as Lender, Borrower, Liquidator, Vote, liquidity, Market Maker, Eco-Partners, etc.

The TMS token is the governance token for the Themis protocol. It plays an integral part in the DAO and will be used to vote on proposals such as burning, smart contract upgrades, the use of the Treasury, and ecosystem funding.

• DeFi is a volatile space right now that’s still trying to find its footing. What risk management measures are you taking to ensure the safety and security of assets?

Absolutely! Themis’ UI is quite streamlined and very user friendly. Users with any level of experience will have no problem using the app.

That being said, we understand that crypto newbies might not have as clear an understanding of Uniswap v3, or how NFT vouchers work. That’s why we’ve published several blog posts explaining UNI-V3 NFTs and the opportunity this has created for Themis and its users!

Check out our Medium blog if you’d like to learn more about Themis and how Uniswap v3 changes the game!

We’ll continue to publish more educational posts to better inform our users how they can make the most of our platform.

• What are your advantages over your competitors?

Themis is currently the only protocol that allows you to leverage your UNI-V3 NFT as compared to ERC-20 only lending protocols!

While there may be v3 management tools out there that could provide users with some sort of asset management capabilities, Themis allows users to incorporate more autonomy into their strategies than any other protocol in the space.

And we’re proud of that!

• Provide us some insight into the Themis roadmap. Where are you in the development stage? What can we look forward to in the next 6 months? 1 year? Is the platform on mainnet?

Great question!

By the end of 2021, we’ll have our main features launched and ready to use! That means you’ll have access to collateralized UNI-V3 NFTs, Yield Farming, Auctions, and our native Money Market.

In 2022 we’ll really ramp things up by incorporating features like an NFT Workshop to create your own NFTs! We’ll also be adding an NFT Market Maker Mechanism. Additionally, you can expect diversified crypto lending, LP migration to DEXs, an optimized receiving pool, and we’ll be releasing an even further optimized oracle as well.

Looking further into the future, we plan to have vaults, derivatives, data services, and digital copyright protection finished by 2023.

We’re always posting updates on Twitter, as well as in Discord, so be sure to join our community to stay up to date on all our developments!

• 11. What are the major milestones Themis has achieved so far?

Well, there have been many!

First off, we’ve raised a heck of a lot of funding in a very short time. We’re actually oversubscribed for fundraising! It’s always a good feeling when there are too many people that want to back your project rather than too few!

Secondly, we’ve had great feedback during our testnet period and everything is looking good for an on-time mainnet launch!

Lastly, we feel that creating the first ever UNI-V3 NFT lending and borrowing protocol is a major milestone in and of itself. We believe that this is a crucial missing Lego piece in DeFi, and we will be working towards the goal of unlocking even more liquidity for the metaverse by growing our community and partnering with other amazing projects!