Rocket Aims To Boost Tezos DeFi With IDO Launch Platform

An Introduction To Rocket

The folks down on the Farm will be expanding their Tezos DeFi footprint with the introduction of their Rocket platform. The Rocket name is an appropriate analogy for their goals. They aim to create a DeFi launch platform for Tezos that will help to DeFi projects in a safer and more effective way.

Just like launching a craft into space, starting a DeFi project is dangerous and fraught with potential disasters for both the start-up team and the investors.

By there very nature, ventures that push the imagination and limitations of human capacity are risky. However, certain known risks can be mitigated.

Borrowing from the rocket analogy, a reasonable assessment of the functional capacity of a rocket can be evaluated. Based on this analysis, one can formulate the potential for success or failure of the rocket reaching space, barring unforeseen, unpredictable catastrophic events.

Similarly, aspects of a DeFi project can be evaluated that will provide insight into the possibility of success. For instance, does a project have the potential to successfully launch and accomplish its goals?

An assessment of the development and support teams that are involved in a project will also provide insights into their ability to complete and support the project. Again, borrowing from the rocket analogy, does the team consist of experienced rocket scientists and engineers, or is it made up of backyard mechanics and tinkerers?

Finally, some understanding of the intentions behind a project is essential. Is there a sincere effort to succeed or is the effort merely superficial in nature, designed to deceive investors and to cheat them out of their hard-earned capital?

Rocket is setting out to address these important issues and more. It’s as though they made a list of the most common problems associated with launching DeFi projects and set out to solve them one by one. Most impressive is that they are attempting to accomplish their goals in a decentralized manner utilizing the Tezos blockchain.

Just as the effort to launch a vessel into Earth’s orbit is perilous, defi projects are also vulnerable to variety of factors that are beyond the control of the development team such as cryptocurrency price fluctuations and the introduction of new government regulations.

While it may never be possible to eliminate all risk, if Rocket is as successful as we hope, it will be doing a lot of the heavy lifting for Tezos defi start-ups for the foreseeable future.

The Rocket IDO Launchpad Tokenomics

$RCKT is the utility token of the Rocket Launchpad. The $RCKT token will be utilized in the Rocket platform to determine the eligibility of participating in future IDO projects and farms.

Token Breakdown:

Capped Supply: 500,000,000 $RCKT

Total Raised Goal: $2,067,187.50 / 590,625 $XTZ

Circulating Market Cap After Presale: $3,250,000

Token Contract: KT19JYndHaesXpvUfiwgg8BtE41HKkjjGMRC

Decimals: 6

The Rocket Interview

I was fortunate to have an opportunity to virtually discuss Rocket with the team through Discord.

Thank you for agreeing to do this virtual meeting to discuss Rocket.

Certainly, many of us have concerns about blindly jumping into defi projects in general. No doubt, we have all been burned at least once. Of course, we all want to get in at the ground floor, but this often involves substantial risk on top of an already high risk investment environment.

Given the relative anonymity of many of these projects, I’m sure we have all been anxiously waiting for a free market solution to this dilemma.

As I read through the information that you have provided on Rocket, it seems as though you have found an elegant and decentralized way to solve this problem. Tell us more about Rocket. What are your intentions and plans?

Our current plan is to launch our platform utilizing agile development. After launch we will start adding features one at a time starting with those most needed and beneficial.

A huge part of our plan involves marketing and community outreach. We know how big the Tezos community is and that the growing defi space is still in its infancy.

We want to start by showing the rest of the Tezos community what we, and others in the Tezos defi space, are building. We are all growing with Tezos, and aim to bring users from other blockchain networks to Tezos.

Our short-term plan is to successfully complete our $FARM/$SOIL presale and our public sale. Shortly after the sales, we hope to launch 3 projects with zero fees.

We hope that going feeless for these pioneers will entice projects to come to our platform and that their success will show other teams how we can help them along their way.

Now that your Farm/Soil defi project has been active for a while, are there things you have learned from this experience that will help you launch Rocket?

Oh YES! We learned just how important community engagement can be. It taught us that not only were our thoughts on user communication and transparency correct, but that they were also time consuming!

We dedicate a large chunk of our time simply communicating with the community and hearing their thoughts and concerns and digesting them. The upside is that being active in the community has allowed us to bug test and add UI improvements quickly, address user concerns in a timely manner, and even come up with ways to improve the platform from user suggestions.

Defi development on Tezos is just really starting. In many cases we are building something few, or possibly no one, has ever built. It definitely adds challenges, but the community once again comes to the rescue.

The ability to ask questions and brainstorm with the community has saved us so much time and netted great results.  Lastly, our experience as users highlighted one major trait we valued and sought out in a team: transparency and open lines of communication. That is something we will continuously strive for.

Is your team for Rocket the same as your team for Soil/Farm? Tell me a bit about your team and how everyone contributes.

We are the exact same team! We knocked out the creation of $FARM in 3 weeks and I know these rock stars are up for the task of building Rocket. However, we do have the resources to easily add to the team if need be.

-Product lead and designer:

Frank Kirk has 4 years of experience leading and product design for military / industry projects. If you have seen him on Twitter, you know that he is an opinionated baker and very passionate about Tezos.

-Smart contract developer

Josh Dechant’s passion is obvious from his experience. He has been a developer for over 15 years and has been building on Tezos for the past two. He is currently working on the OpenMinter project, building out Crunch; another exciting farming service, and also built the smart contracts for farmsoil.xyz

– Front end developer and smart contract apprentice

Andrew Algard is a developer with 6 years of experience. Kirk has personally worked with him on other projects outside of blockchain. He is extremely motivated and talented. With the lack of smart contract knowledgeable developers, our goal is to train him up while he develops all our front end designs.

-Marketing, community management and funding:

Colin Cooley and Joshua Vaught are ICO participants and long-time Tezos community members. They helped guide development, designs and the community in the creation of $FARM. They will take on a similar role with Rocket.

I was pleased to see that you are all maintaining your commitment to Farm by giving Farm liquidity providers a place in the Rocket presale. In a sense, you have created a unique membership structure that is based upon providing liquidity. Will this unique structure for membership expand to Rocket as well?

That is a question I would love to clear up. In order to participate in projects being listed on the Rocket Launchpad, you will ONLY need to stake a certain amount of $RCKT tokens. You will not need to provide liquidity on Quipuswap and then stake those LP tokens.

Rocket Launchpad will operate off of a tier-based system:

25,000 $RCKT- Triangulum Tier

250,000 $RCKT- Milky Way Tier

5,000,000 $RCKT- Andromeda Tier

In order to participate in an IDO, you will have to stake enough $RCKT tokens directly on our platform to qualify for that tier.

For example, if a project is raising 20,000 $XTZ in the Milky Way Tier, then you will need to ensure you own and stake 250,000 $RCKT tokens on our platform to qualify. The higher the tier, the more likely you are guaranteed to receive an allocation to purchase in an IDO.

Later on, we plan to introduce liquidity staking where you can earn $RCKT for your staked $RCKT/$XTZ liquidity pool tokens.

Certainly, Rocket provides multiple benefits for those launching defi projects. Allowing them to maintain an element of anonymity while verifying that they are not attempting an outright scam. Is this the free-market solution that we’ve been hoping for?

Is there still some possibility that a fraudulent project could still sneak through the Rocket verification process? Would you provide information to authorities if this type of act occurred?

No doubt you have a legal advisor. Is there a clear precedent for situations such as this in crypto?

This is a very interesting question and is a hot topic in many of our team meetings. First, we spent a lot of time developing and ironing out our project vetting process to ensure we are launching the highest quality teams and projects. In fact, teams launching with us will not be able to remain anonymous completely.

We of course will be approving projects on a case-by-case basis, and a potential team’s transparency will hold significant weight in their approval. From the start of development, even with our Farm project, our team was transparent on who we are, and we expect similar stances with projects who want to launch with us. Transparency establishes trust, and our users’ trust is extremely important to us.

Secondly, Rocket’s smart contracts utilizing Crunchy Network’s tools provide many safeguards to prevent any short-term scams from occurring on our platform, such as “rug-pulls”.

Liquidity is locked for 6 months ensuring, at least for a time, that a team can not run away with funds. What we can guarantee from the Rocket platform is a safe and secure token launch.

After a successful launch it is up to the project’s teams to deliver on their promises, and this is something every one of our users will have to consider before participating in any IDO we launch.

Like you said earlier in your questions, these types of endeavours will always have the risk of a project and team being unable to deliver. Our vetting process includes considerations for projects and teams that we believe will have the highest chance of successfully delivering on their visions.

If needed, we would always cooperate with any authority in whatever legal capacity we realistically are able to. We plan on hiring dedicated legal counsel in the future to deal with any issues that may arise.

Where do you see the Rocket ecosystem in five years? 

We love projects with great communities, and we want to build a platform that teams and projects strive to be launched on and that users trust and love to interact with without fear of being scammed.

A platform that genuinely grows together alongside the Tezos blockchain. This is our vision.

Stay up to date on the Rocket project through their Twitter, Discord and their web page. For those of you that are eligible, the Farm presale will be held on June 30, 2021 @ 1200 EST.