HurricaneSwap AMA#2 Recap— Technical Deep Dive With Hunter Cheung

On September 30, 2021 @ 12:00 p.m. (PST), an AMA session was held in the Avalaunch Telegram with special guest Hunter Cheung, CTO of Hurricane Swap.

Below we present to you a recap of the AMA with questions and answers.


Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

Hello and welcome everyone to our second AMA with Hurricane Swap…the technical deep dive. Lay back, get comfortable and enjoy the show.

Today, we are fortunate enough to have the CTO of Hurricane Swap, Hunter Cheung. Welcome to the often imitated but never duplicated Avalaunch community. @hunterhaonan How are you today?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

Cool Dave, ready to share with you guys in any seconds!

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

For starters, please give us a bit of background on yourself. What did your career and education look like before crypto, and how did you end up focusing on blockchain technology?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

Well, hi guys! I am the CTO of HurricaneSwap and also the first author of Roke Protocol. I majored in physics at the University of Waterloo.

I actually started trading crypto currency in 2017, and built a start-up company named Jianan Quantitative Investment Management, and we are pretty active in both centralized and decentralized crypto arbitrage strategies. The company has continuously gained profits since the beginning.

I also need to introduce Ted Yin, who is the chief Protocol Architect and co-founder of Ava Labs. He graduated from Cornell University with a PhD in computer science and is also my good pal back in high school. I started this idea of building a unique cross-chain decentralized exchange since the mainnet launch of Avalanche. And Ted was being quite supportive during the whole journey of building this platform. I want to use this opportunity to thank him and his team as well.

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

Ted came up yesterday as well. I think there’s something in the water in upstate NY as the Cornell connections in blockchain are numerous.

Can you offer us a technical breakdown of how HurricanSwap works? How does the Roke Protocol, HurricaneStation & HurricaneAlliance come together to form something the market hasn’t seen before?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

I will use this picture as an illustration.

The whole process is a little bit complicated but I will try my best to break it down for you guys.

Basically, HurricaneStation is a place where users from the BSC chain could stake their assets. Once they stake their assets, we will use the LP cross-chain bridge to cross-chain those assets to our target chain, in this case, the Avalanche chain.

And what happens on HurricaneSwap on the Avalanche chain is just like Uniswap on the any other chain, you can just simply trade any cross-chain assets you want.

After a series of transactions, there might be a price gap between the cross-chain asset and the original chain asset, then the HurricaneAlliance will step in and narrow the price gap by doing the arbitrage between the two chains.

And that’s how the whole system work.

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

It is elegant and not terribly complicated considering what you’re accomplishing. Nicely done.

How long has the project been in development? Has it taken longer than you suspected?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

Well, we basically started the idea of building a unique decentralized exchange on the Avalanche chain since the Avalanche mainnet launched, which I believe was about a year ago.

The whole development process is on schedule but we purposefully postpone the mainnet launch date 10 days later to conduct some extra stress tests and security inspections. We might even delay the mainnet launch date even further if needed because safety is our first priority.

I mean nothing is perfect, but I could promise our community we will not launch the mainnet if we think there might be something left we haven’t checked carefully enough.

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

Understood. Even the most risk on investors are not opposed to a safety first approach in DeFi now. We hopefully have begun to learn our lesson.

How many core developers are working on the project? As a CTO, how do you divide the work between them?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

There are 6 developers including me working on this project. I couldn’t get into more details about who is in charge of which part, due to security issues.

But I can tell you that we used to work in a distributed manner but recently I gathered all of the team members together to make sure we could launch our mainnet as scheduled, which is October 10th.

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

Your public testnet has been live for some time. What learnings have you arrived at through this deployment and how has the testnet strengthened the project?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

I mean we got lots of feedback from the community through email and other channels.

We are receiving more than 500 emails and I think we have already fixed more than 100 bugs thanks to the community feedback.

However, none of those bugs are security-related. So even on the testnet, the funds of our users stay safe.

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

I recollect from yesterday that there were almost 200K addresses in your testnet and there were around 130K addresses altogether in Avalanche testnet at the beginning. Some big numbers.

How much research goes into designing an application like HurricaneSwap before development can begin? Do you piece together other protocols or is this something entirely novel?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

I mean we are basically developing something that is brand new in the blockchain ecosystem. So there is really nothing we can refer from.

But we did get lots of help from the Avalanche ecosystem. Some developers who help build PangolinSwap in the early stage saved us a lot of time by sharing their experiences on how to deploy such a complicated contract on the Avalanche chain.

Shout out to the developers who have helped us along the way. We cannot get this far without your help.

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

This is a tight-knit community. We’ve gotten to know a number of projects developing here and it’s generally super supportive. Appreciate that Hunter.

What has been the biggest technical challenge in designing and developing HurricaneSwap? Was there maybe a point where you thought it might not be possible?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

The biggest challenge has to be the LP cross-chain bridge, you not only need to cross-chain an asset to another chain but also need to verify that the amount of tokens stays on a 1:1 ratio the entire time.

As for the second question, I will use a short story to answer it. One of our core developers, whose nickname is Box, joined us when we faced lots of bugs in our original LP cross-chain bridge and could barely make this function usable.

He magically fixed almost half of our contract bugs in one single afternoon. And when I tried to call him to find out who this hero was, he told me he was in the middle of a work meeting, so he could not pick up the phone.

Can you imagine the hero who single-handedly saved our LP cross-chain bridge was a normal guy doing a part-time job and had to be careful not to be caught by his boss when he was doing his full-time job. Lucky, we manage to persuade him to join our team full-time and the work became a lot easier since he joined.

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

Big big ups to Box!

With a system this complex, spanning multiple chains, the technical challenges around securing funds and malicious activity are immense.

Outside of audits and technical due diligence, what mechanisms are in place, at the level of the protocol and architecture, to prevent loss of funds, accurate representation of assets across chains, and bad actors.

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

The amazing advantage of our LP-bridge is that we can ensure the security of users’ assets. The assets staked on the BSC chain could only be unstaked and sent back to the original staking address.

The whole process works exactly the same as in Uniswap V2 because we just simply forked the mechanism to the BSC chain. So I think it is safe to say that we share the same level of security as Uniswap V2 on BSC chain.

So no matter what happens, the users’ assets on the BSC chain will be 100% safe.

As for the minted aToken on the Avalanche chain, we use Chainlink’s PoR service to make sure nothing is overminted. Thus, the price of the minted aToken might fluctuated because of the market movement, the number of the minted aToken will stay at the correct amount. So you will be safe to trade aToken at a correct price (HurricaneAlliance will eliminate the price gap.) on avalanche chain anytime you feels like to.

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

Appreciate these comprehensive and thoughtful answers Hunter.

Next question — Right now, HurricaneAlliance is centralized with plans to progressively decentralize. Why is it important to start with this trusted setup and move to something more community-owned?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

I mean almost all projects start from centralize to decentralize.

Yeah, right now it is the core team’s job to decide which chain we should crosschain from and which assets we should bring from that chain.

However, all of that will be changed once the DAO features is lived on HurricaneSwap V3, which should happen about 3 months later.

For the moment, the reason we choose to be more centralized is because we still have to make sure all the HurricaneAlliance functions run smoothly and safely in the initial stage of HurricaneSwap V2. So we only invited some trusted names in this industry. Right now, two of the official HurricaneAlliance nodes will be Chainlink and Avalanche.

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

What is the utility of the HCT token? Why would someone want to hold HCT long-term?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

There are three practical ways of $HCT I can share with you guys right now, and the $HCT tokens will have more functions in the future.

First is that some portion of our transaction fees will be used to purchase AVAX to airdrop to $HCT holders and liquidity providers of $HCT-related pools as well.

Secondly, if you pledge some $HCT, you could become a verification node of HurricaneAlliance in the future. Even if you only pledge a small amount, you can still get a small share of that verification node’s arbitrage profits.

Lastly, in the future, we will add DAO features to the $HCT as well, so users could choose which original chain they want us to cross-chain to the Avalanche chain and what assets we should bring from that chain as well.

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

Excellent and Symington mentioned the burn feature as well. The utility is quite robust actually.

What component of HurricaneSwap will eventually be subject to governance? Have you taken inspiration from other protocols in this area?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

HurricaneSwap is a community-driven project, according to the tokenomics of $HCT, our native token $HCT represents holders’ many rights, and one of them is the right to vote.

After we launch the mainnet, $HCT holders are expected to participate in project governance. That means if you think Polkadot or Celo is a good choice to build, you can get some $HCT and make a proposal, then vote. If the community says YES, we will definitely do that.

I think the idea of HCT governance is mostly innovated and we will try our best to make HCT an interesting token to hold and play with.

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

What has the experience of developing on Avalanche been like? How does it differ from other chains?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

It is just like building on Ethereum. However, it’s much cheaper and faster to deploy the contract.

I think the total cost for deploying the whole program on the mainnet is only several thousand dollars. I mean, this kind of low-fee and fast-speed infrastructure of Avalanche really helps developers to just want to build more, and I think that’s great for the Avalanche ecosystem.

As for the differences, we actually received help from early-stage developers of Pangolin Swap. So all I can say is that Avalanche is a friendly community for developers. We aim to grow with each other instead of fighting with each other.

For me personally, I’m open to help any developers who want to build on the Avalanche. Feel free to contact our coreteam (coreteam@hurricaneswap.com).

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

Avalanche is super friendly for developers and projects are very cooperative with each other. For sure. Will we ever see HurricaneSwap deployed elsewhere?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

Sure. Our LP cross-chain bridge could be deployed on any original chain A and we can cross-chain those assets to any target chain B.

So all of the combinations of A and B are possible, just simply use your imagination. We could cross-chain from Avalanche to BSC, we could cross-chain from HECO to BSC as well. So yes, HurricaneSwap will definitely be deployed on many other chains in the future.

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

Final question before we move on to Twitter so let’s make it a fun one — What aspect of HurricanSwap are you personally most excited about?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

Best question of them all!

HurricaneAlliance. This is a brand-new way of earning APY instead of simply farming on a swap. And the APY for HurricaneAlliance should be much higher than simply staking on the farming section.

Let the numbers talk. You guys will be impressed and will want to join the HurricaneAlliance in the future. Not to mention that becoming a node of HurricaneAlliance requires pledging some $HCT. We will try our best to make your $HCT more valuable in the future. (“Pump it!”)

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

That is cool and the numbers don’t talk…they scream!

Now, first up from one of our 50,000 faithful over on Twitter — @PoetraNet1 What was your situation in the testnet stage before IDO, were you satisfied with the testnet, what kind of feedback did you get from these tests?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

I think, to be honest, the testnet results were very surprising to the whole team, to everybody in the team and we did not anticipate that the testnet would get such a huge amount of attention.

I can give you some numbers to back up my theories, like 30% of all the testnet wallets hold $HCT tokens and more than 85% of all the testnet trading transaction volume were happening here on HurricaneSwap. Even the testnet $AVAX had an OTC price because people want to purchase testnet $AVAX to participate in our testnet events. Can you imagine a ‘fake’ $AVAX having an OTC price? You basically can get it for free.

And that’s how this testnet event was going. It was phenomenal. And we also got a lot of feedback from our users. According to their needs, we’ve made a lot of adjustments to the UI of the V2 and also fixed many bugs. We have really good confidence about launching our V2, which should happen on October 10th.

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

@RJM_500 Can you tell us if you have “Buyback and burns” mechanism in HurricaneSwap? I would like to know how the buyback percentages are divided into dividends?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

Bro I get your point. However, to answer your question straightforwardly, I think we will have the buy-back feature of $HCT but not in the near future.

But I do believe that if you nice folks willing to join this project on this early edge, you should be rewarded if the HCT ecosystem is booming, So instead we choose other approach’s to make your HCT more valuable in the future.

I think 1‰ of the transaction amount will be used to buy back $AVAX and airdrop to $HCT holders. Also, you can single stake $HCT in our farming section to earn annual profits. In the near future, you could also pledge $HCT to become a node of HurricaneAlliance and get some portion of the profits. We will work hard to make your HCT more valuable, if you join this AMA, I consider us as band of brothers, and brothers fight together!

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

Love it. Giving them the skinny Hunter. Our ecosystem rewards are slated to give our longer term stakers benefits, but people look at the short-term and want it now so I’m with you 100%.

@Thom_Barber How does hurricane swap differentiate itself from other dexes like sushiswap or pangolin?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

Roke Protocol is our core technology and killing part compared to other DEXs. The whole point about HurricaneSwap is that we are not cross-chaining the actual token itself, we are using LP token to cross-chain the price movement of that asset.

And because we are cross-chaining the price movement instead of the token itself, the whole process will be much faster.

It takes only 2 to 3 seconds for the price movement to be transferred from the original chain to the target chain, according to our closed V2 testnet result.

The other amazing advantage of LP-bridge is, we can ensure the security of users’ assets.
The assets staked on the BSC chain could only be unstaked and sent back to the original staking address. The whole process works exactly the same as in Uniswap V2 because we just simply forked it to the BSC chain. So no matter what happens, the users’ assets on the BSC chain will be 100% safe. As for the minted aToken on the Avalanche chain, we use Chainlink’s PoR service to make sure nothing is overminted.

A treat to those nice gentleman’s who stay with us the whole time. V2 Hurricaneswap Station screenshot leaked!

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

Nice. Appreciate the alpha. Any time you can throw “killing time” into an AMA, I’m impressed.

@elif611_ How does hurricane swap attempt to address and mitigate temporary losses in LP pools?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

You basically earn not only LP profit but also $HCT as well. However, $HCT will only be distributed to those $HCT-related pairs. We are also considering using $HCT to reward people who provide liquidity on the BSC chain. I think all these combined should not only cover the impermanent loss in LP pools but also earns you a lot of the extra profits.

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

Last question Ser — then, we’re going to unmute to chat, open the floodgates and you can pick 5 that rock your world.

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

We’re going to unmute the chat for a couple of minutes. Thanks for all the banging answers and one of the more informative AMAs I’ve been a part of

TONEY Bear Gem Hunters

I wanted to follow your project for the long term. Where i can get all the latest news about your project? Do you have Twitter/Telegram/Discord community? If yes can you share the link here because there is a lot of fake telegram/twitter groups?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

Here are our official social media link, I wish you all could give it a try and join our community, no matter if you are an investor or a user, just join us.
Twitter : https://twitter.com/HurricaneSwap
Telegram:
-English Group: https://t.me/HurricaneSwap
-Simplified Chinese Group: https://t.me/Hurricane_zh
-Announcement: https://t.me/HurricaneSwap_Announcement
Medium: https://hurricaneswap.medium.com/

Manuel Neuer

Where can token be bought as at now, what exchanges is it available?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

I think the only place left to do IDO is on Avalaunch right now, so you are in the right place. And I think the OTC price for HCT on MEXC is already 6 times than the IDO price, so this is the last chance to purchase HCT at IDO before listed on the centralized exchange.

Katherine Langford

Do you also build NFT ?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

We do have an interesting idea of building an NFT cross-chain bridge, you will be informed in the future about more details.

NFTmoon

How can the community contribute to the progress of your project? Do you have a Governance model? Do you care about community request while you decide?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

Once the DAO feature is lived I think Hurricaneswap will be 99% community driven project and yeah we will listen to the community request unless it is security related issue we will still step in when needed. We will be with this project the whole time, from beginning to the end.(Hopefully it will never end LOL!)

Yến Nii

When THE BEAR MARKET COMES, WILL your token PROBABLY DUMP? Are you prepared for this bear market? How will you handle the panic of your Investors?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

I think there is really no bear market for the on-chain world, I mean the market will always find the next hot spot, from DeFi to GameFi to NFT. I don’t care if somebody decide to dump, it is their token and it will be their choice to make, but those with diamond hand I think will be rewarded the most in the long term.

Superr Mann

Who is your investor? How do you generate revenue to sustain the project? What are your goals to the end of 2021 and beyond?

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

Some of the big name investors including Huobi Ventures, Bybit Investment department, A & T capital, they not only invested in us but also helped us along the way. As for the revenue, most dex has really stable cash flow, so I personally believe Hurricaneswap will stick around for a long time. As for our goal on the developing side was to launch Hurricaneswap V3 before the end of 2021 and got listed on more centralized exchange in the near future.

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

Well done!

Hunter Cheung| HurricaneSwap

Thank you Dave and thank Avalaunch community for giving me this wonderful chance to share with you nice folks, stay with us and long live the bilockchain!

Dave Donnenfeld| Avalaunch

@hunterhaonan many thanks Hunter. This was informative for sure and you made it interesting. Appreciate the bit of edge too. I hope that our community will diamond hand their way to HCT rewards. Again, let me throw a link up to your socials —

Twitter : https://twitter.com/HurricaneSwap
Telegram:
-English Group: https://t.me/HurricaneSwap
-Simplified Chinese Group: https://t.me/Hurricane_zh
-Announcement: https://t.me/HurricaneSwap_Announcement
Medium: https://hurricaneswap.medium.com/

Post navigation

RocoFinance x Rise Online AMA#2 — Technical Deep Dive with Mehmet Kurtoğlu (Recap)

Fief AMA #1 — Project Overview with Coop (Digital Marketing) (Recap)

Lost Worlds AMA #1 — Project Overview with Quaison (Co-Founder & CEO) (Recap)