Transparency, tools for easy decision making?

[Thomas_Edible]

I have had a few simple transparency/functionality issues which I believe could be easily solved if they arent already…

1. Is there any way I can see the current fees I would have to pay for unshielding and sending out an amount, without actually having that amount to send? (making sure one could withdraw the funds for a fair fee is pretty basic due diligence in deciding whether to deposit funds in the first place…).

2. As all deposits in provide earn a fee in PRV and “earnings” can only be withdrawn in bulk (not separately), it’s both difficult to track the exact interest I am receiving and the historical data… Would be great if there was more optionality and transparency there. (Also it doesn’t make much sense to keep my prv earnings in btc’s 10% APY while I can withdraw them and deposite them as the PRV that they are receiving 21% APY. Only this means I have o withdraw all the yeilds hence restart the count of the compounding interest thus loosing the nature of compounding pretty much. Is that correct? What am I missing?

3. Would be great to have some better idea on the security mechanisms in place while my funds are:
   A. In my wallet. The difference between shielded and un shielded coins.
   B. In provide.
   C. Why this cannot be a ponzi

(I know the 3rd question is kind of vague and strange, it’s one I still never got proper answers to, and I realize the concern is still there after using the platform for many months and being involved so I put it there (

Thanks guys and gals,
Much love from never neverland!

[Chucky]

Hey @Thomas_Edible Great concerns.

1- There’s https://inquery.tipcoin.app/ Which @abduraman built for us to use. At the top you will see the unshield fee tied to each currency in It’s native currency and in PRV.

2- Unfortunately at this time that is correct. Earnings are separated by asset type and are displayed below each currency, however, so you at least know the grand total of what each currency has earned. If you provide something other than just PRV, you do have to withdraw ALL of your rewards and redeposit them in order to be able to get the 21% APY on PRV. I’m sure this can be improved, but our goal is to replace Provide with a decentralized solution, as Duc mentions in this post. Instead of working on Provide we will work towards decentralized solutions like Add v2.

@duc

After releasing Privacy v.2 and coming pDEX improvements, we will create a decentralized liquidity incentive structure and migrate liquidity from Provide to ADD in an organic way.

3-
A) If you have funds in your wallet (assets) this means the coins are shielded (giving them complete privacy within the Incognito ecosystem). Unshielding is the process of going from shielded privacy coins (pBTC, pETH, pBNB, etc) back to the public counterpart (BTC, ETH, BNB, etc) and losing its privacy features, by sending it to a non-Incognito address (in a third-party wallet). Put simply, if your coins are in Incognito, they’re shielded, if they’re not, they’re unshielded.

B) Provide is a temporary and centralized solution, so there is trust involved. The code for Provide is also closed sourced, so that if there were any security issues we would be able to diagnose and fix it without compromising your funds. Yet, as mentioned above, you do have to trust us, which is not ideal. Once ADD v2 is implemented there will be no trust involved, and any funds in Provide will be migrated to Add v.2 or withdrawn back to your wallet.

C) Are you asking if Incognito is a ponzi or if Provide is?

If it’s about Incognito, the blockchain is open-source, and the point of the project is to provide privacy for crypto. This is a valid use-case in demand, and the network is fueled by PRV, which has a verifiable tokenomic. By these standards, I don’t think it’s possible to label it a ponzi. And given our recent announcements, you can see that the blockchain and most of the project can continue to be operated by the community if the core team were abducted by aliens, and the rest of the project is in the process of decentralizing to that point as well.

If this is about provide, you basically have to take our word for it, or not believe us and avoid that feature. When you add funds to provide, your funds will either be used to fire up more nodes (where the % APY comes from), or deposited into liquidity (in which case the % APY is paid from DAO funds) so its not like funds magically appear or are taken from other users’ provisions. But like I said, this is all closed-source, so it’s not verifiable by you. That’s why Provide is a temporary solution for attracting liquidity, and we’re building a decentralized and open-source model for it as we speak.

[Mike_Wagner]

@Thomas_Edible

As all deposits in provide earn a fee in PRV and “earnings” can only be withdrawn in bulk (not separately), it’s both difficult to track the exact interest I am receiving and the historical data… Would be great if there was more optionality and transparency there. (Also it doesn’t make much sense to keep my prv earnings in btc’s 10% APY while I can withdraw them and deposite them as the PRV that they are receiving 21% APY. Only this means I have o withdraw all the yeilds hence restart the count of the compounding interest thus loosing the nature of compounding pretty much. Is that correct? What am I missing?

As Chucky stated, Provide is a temporary solution and will be going away soon. The dev team is focusing their time and resources on the replacement (v2 trustless Add). Thus spending time making changes to a feature with a looming replacement date is unlikely.

If you’d like to have more discrete control over your Provide contributions, you could withdraw your rewards AND provisions, then re-provision each crypto from a separate account. This would give you a transaction history unique to each asset. You could still periodically withdraw the PRV rewards to provision in your PRV account for higher APY compounding. That is until Provide is retired in the near future.

[Chucky]

@Mike_Wagner

If you’d like to have more discrete control over your Provide contributions, you could withdraw your rewards AND provisions, then re-provision each crypto from a separate account. This would give you a transaction history unique to each asset. You could still periodically withdraw the PRV rewards to provision in your PRV account for higher APY compounding. That is until Provide is retired in the near future.

I wouldn’t have thought of that one @Mike_Wagner. Well put.

[Tempestblack]

Thank you both to @Chucky and @Mike_Wagner for their very open and clear answers to the questions posed by @Thomas_Edible and indeed thank you Thomas for having asked the questions as well…it is thru these questions and the fine work in the responses given that transparency is further shown to all in the community thereby strengthening the belief in the project…once again thank you…great work…

[Jamie]

@Thomas_Edible

Only this means I have o withdraw all the yeilds hence restart the count of the compounding interest thus loosing the nature of compounding pretty much.

You are the second one who thinks this is how it works, and I have no clue why.

Provide rewards are compounded every 15 minutes. When you withdraw all rewards, from all assets present, and add them to your PRV amount in Provide, you continue with the same total amount as before. Only difference is every reward that didn’t relate to PRV before now earns at a higher percentage.

While the withdrawal and adding back is in process, you earn less rewards as the money leaves the provide pool. Unless you have really large amounts of money in the provide pool, this shouldn’t result in a big loss.

[Mike_Wagner]

@Jamie

Provide rewards are compounded every 15 minutes.

Every 1 hour. Says so right on the tin.

Has been the case for quite a while too.

[Jamie]

Guess I ended up on a slightly other post

It doesn’t change the story.

[Thomas_Edible]

“Only difference is every reward that didn’t relate to PRV before now earns at a higher percentage.”

Exactly…