On the 1st of September, Algonauts Official held AlgoFest 2021, an online organization that brought together projects that run on Algorand and the Algorand fans. This one day event was live on Algonaut Discord server and Youtube channel and lasted all day.
Tinyman team was also one of the invitees of the event with two team members, @Fergal and @one of tinies. We had the chance to attend the AMA session with @Shaman and @pneumatic-alchemy on Discord to answer community’s questions and talk about Tinyman branding, mainnet launch, future versions of Tinyman, stage of the audit process and other subjects brought forward by the community. Here’s a recap of questions and Tinyman team’s answers.
Shaman :
We have @Fergal | Tinyman, the CTO of Tinyman and @one of tinies, the Head of Marketing at Tinyman joining us.
I appreciate you guys taking the time out to give the community more information about Tinyman. I know I am personally very excited for your project.
We will start off answering some questions from the community — either one of you is welcome to answer: Could you please give us a rundown on what your project is and a little background on your team?
Fergal | Tinyman :
Tinyman is a decentralized AMM trading protocol. It is built to serve as an open and safe marketplace for traders, liquidity providers, and developers. It should be familiar to anyone who has used Uniswap, but it is built from the ground up specifically for Algorand.
We are a team of builders, and we’ve been making digital products for over ten years. We have worked with many startups and many fintech related products in the past.
Shaman :
I know Algorand is dying for an AMM, and Tinyman looks like it will be the first to be released on the mainnet. A lot of people have asked, when do you guys think the timeline will be for launch?
Fergal | Tinyman :
According to our roadmap, we wanted to launch on Mainnet in Q3. We are on track with our estimate.
pneumatic-alchemy :
How is the Testnet launch going, any metrics or ideas you can share that you’ve learned from that?
Fergal | Tinyman :
It’s been great so far! We received loads of feedback from users which were overwhelmingly positive. But of course some bugs were found, which is the whole point. There were some useful UI/UX feedback from the community too.
one of tinies :
To me what was really exciting about the testnet was how people also suggested new ideas and some angles we haven’t noticed before.
pneumatic-alchemy :
Are you planning a token for Tinyman?
Fergal | Tinyman :
Yes. There will be a governance token.
Our focus is on the mainnet launch and the operability of the platform. Once we make sure that this stage is fully completed, we can start working on our governance token. So for us, it is more of a matter of doing it right rather than doing it soon.
The governance token will have real utility, empowering our community to make decisions on the future direction of the project.
Shaman :
Is there a timeframe for the token to be released? I believe your road map had Q1 2022, is that still on track?
Fergal | Tinyman :
That’s still the hope:)
pneumatic-alchemy :
One of our community asked if you have a date for the audit report yet?
Fergal | Tinyman :
The audit of the mainnet contracts has been completed and we’ll be making a joint announcement with Runtime Verification in the coming weeks. it will definitely be out before mainnet launch, just not too soon before.
pneumatic-alchemy :
Another community member asked if you had any good or bad experiences you could share dealing with TEAL. And the difference you see between 3 and 4. Will you be able to get more of what you want done with Teal 4?
Fergal | Tinyman :
It’s been fun writing in TEAL, it has its ups and downs. But it’s a really great well thought out platform/language and it is improving all the time. We started targeting TEAL2 and designed around that. Then we moved to TEAL3 and made some improvements. Then we needed some features that only came in TEAL4, but we weren’t able to take advantage of some of the newest stuff on TEAL4, just because we were so far into the process, but it hasn’t stopped us developing a great product.
Shaman :
Thats awesome that you guys were able to scale up the project as TEAL upgraded as well. Do you plan to implement TEAL4 into upcoming updates on the Platform?
Fergal | Tinyman :
just, as a dev, i could write cleaner code in TEAL4. And yeah we will have V2..V3…V..
Shaman :
If tinyman is looking this good already — I can’t imagine…
Fergal | Tinyman :
These will take advantage of improvements to the AVM and allow us to implement more awesome advanced AMM features. I have to say though the limitations of early TEAL are an advantage too. It makes it easier to write safe code when you have more limited functionality. Looking forward to V2 already before V1 is out the door.
Shaman :
Really looking forward to what you guys put together on that end.
Another community submitted a question which I think will bring @one of tinies into the loop — why tinyman? How did you guys come up with the name and branding?
one of tinies :
Centralized financial world is comprised of systems, numbers, terminologies that are made to be over-complicated on purpose and companies that put themselves on a pedestal excluding all these people who wanted to take part in this world no matter their size of operation.
In our experience, when we were trying to carry out our own financial decisions, we all felt like a tiny man trying to roam in this space. A tiny man that wants to invest, trade, stake but got hurt by the exclusivity of the ecosystem, the fees and unfair regulations that favored those who are big enough.
pneumatic-alchemy :
I think we all feel that.
one of tinies :
In our minds, this platform is created by this Tinyman who wanted to give equal opportunity to all, create an accessible space and not favor size but independent and reliable trade.
Shaman :
Well said, the tiny man which most of us are in this ecosystem. I think that is a great marketing campaign. I also love the UI and I know others have expressed the same.(edited)
Shaman :
Kudos to the design team.. Speaking of Algorand, One of our members wants to know: Are you planning to have wrapped tokens from other chains to stake?
Fergal | Tinyman :
Well Tinyman is entirely permissionless, so we as the team won’t be deciding the tokens on the platform. But we expect users will use bridging projects in the ecosystem to bring over assets from other chains and pool/trade them on Tinyman.
pneumatic-alchemy:
Will any pools be incentivized?
Fergal | Tinyman :
There will be swap fees of %0.25 going to liquidity providers in all pools. There won’t be further incentivisation in V1. But there may be something more in later versions with community controlled aspects.
one of tinies :
I guess that’s where the governance may step in.
Shaman :
One of our community members has asked: What do you envision as the best UX for a wallet in Algorand? Do current solutions limit your product potential?
Fergal | Tinyman :
We think a wallet needs to be both secure and user friendly. It needs to be easy for users to interact with dApps safely. The new Wallet Connect features for the official mobile wallet are a great example of this. The wallet app is pretty nice and user friendly and WC makes it compatible with dApps now which is awesome. We’re looking forward to releasing this integration on testnet very soon. We expect this will be the most common way for people to interact with Tinyman by using the wallet they know and love.
pneumatic-alchemy :
Community question: Compared to Uniswap, what does Tinyman do on Algorand aside from offering lower fees as a function of not being on Ethereum? Any new functionality possible on AVM that pushes the envelope?
2a. Further to understanding functionality, will Tinyman enable flash swaps?
2b. If so, can those transactions be front-run (as they are routinely on Ethereum)?
It’s a lot but a good question
Fergal | Tinyman :
Good questions indeed!
A few points. One major advantage on Algorand is that traditional front running is not going to work, because fees have no effect on the transaction priorities.
one of tinies :
Actually this was a discussion also in our channels a couple of days ago! Algorand makes it so easy:)
Fergal | Tinyman :
We’re not saying frontrunning or MEV is impossible but it’s much much harder on Algorand than ethereum. So that’s nice.
We don’t support flash swaps, in the initial version at least. They open up a huge variety of potential attacks, so it is safer to completely avoid them for now and better/safer for the ecosystem as a whole in my opinion.
Additionally the AVM is a lot safer to write for compared to the EVM so the chances of critical bugs are a lot lower
Shaman :
Makes sense. Maybe, as you guys move along that could be a potential addition, if things evolve better on the security side.
Well I know our time is coming close to an end here. I wanted to give you two a last chime in for anything you’re excited for in the future or anything you want the Algorand community to know?
All in all, it was fun and educational being a part of Algonaut’s Discord AMA. It was certainly a different experience attending a chat-box based AMAs, we can definitely say it exceeded our expectations. We have enjoyed the conversation with Shaman and pneumatic-alchemy and had a blast connecting with the Algonaut and Tinyman community.
Tinyman team loves to engage with our community and answer more questions in case you have more. You can find us on the following links:
🌍 Website
