Levana Interview

Our interlocutor was Jonathan Caras, who has extensive experience in the field of software, worked in StarkWare and now joined to Levana.

Cosmobook: Hello. Tell about yourself. What role do you play in Levana? How did you get into the team?

Jonathan: My name is Jonathan Caras. I do Communications for Levana. I joined the team about 18 months ago. I was working at StarkWare doing business development and met the Delphi team through that role. They were launching an incubator for a few different projects such as Mars and Astroport; I have been building software for 20 years, so I left StarkWare and joined the incubator to help bring Levana to market.

Cosmobook: Describe Levana for those who are not yet familiar with the project from our readers?

Jonathan: Levana is an acronym: Leverage Any Asset. Levana is a protocol to build out methods of generating price exposure via leverage trading on the Cosmo blockchain. Levana aims to be the “GMX of Cosmos”

Cosmobook: By what criteria did you choose the zone to run perp DEX? Why Cosmos? Why Osmosis?

Jonathan: Cosmos offers the most flexibility for projects. It has a great approach to scaling, and the standardization of the Cosmos SDK and IBC across so many zones and apps presents a really promising future.

We published a thread a few months ago about why Cosmos is so important: https://twitter.com/levana_protocol/status/1541781343943680001?s=21&t=Spp6OQObMtN-G-lFVlYvKA

Levana, like Mars protocol, aspires to exist on many different chains. The de facto “hub” of Cosmos is the Osmosis DEX. We are excited to launch Levana on Osmosis and extend the features of the Osmosis Zone to include leverage trading.

https://twitter.com/Levana_protocol/status/1622245311040348160

Osmosis has the most liquidity and the largest active user base. It’s all open source, and they have a great team to work with.

https://twitter.com/Levana_protocol/status/1622245295731146752

Cosmobook: There is a big problem in Cosmos space - liquidity. Do you really think big players will come into space soon? When do you think this will happen?

Jonathan: I think that liquidity follows utility. As more projects deploy on Cosmos, more liquidity will come. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg, such that good projects are somewhat dissuaded from building on Cosmos because of the lack of users and liquidity.

I think EVM compatibility will help bring large projects because it lowers the technical barrier to entry for including Cosmos as part of a multi-chain roll out. We have not seen significant adoption with EVMOS and Chronos yet, but I think it will come in time.

I personally am bullish on Cosmos in 2023/24 but that's not financial advice.

Cosmobook: What will happen to Levana's eggs in the future?

Jonathan: We published a thread and blog post giving an update about the NFTs now that we shut down our GameFi development. We are really interested in what other perps platforms have done with their NFT collections in terms of integrating the collections into their DeFi apps.

https://blog.levana.finance/nfts-and-perps-53ff4791f28b

After the launch of perps, we anticipate egg holders will be able to merge dust and eggs into their perps account to hatch their eggs; this will result in the creation of baby Dragon NFTs, which may be used for premium benefits in perps and future Levana products.
https://twitter.com/Levana_protocol/status/1622245487645700097

The baby dragons won't have any utility in the perps platform immmediately following launch, however, we fully intend to roll out premium features at a later date .

Cosmobook: What is your plan for the development of the collection?

Jonathan: We put on hold developing the collection beyond the baby dragons. We are hopeful that if perps is successful we will be able to work on building additional games which will incorporate the baby dragons and allow them to grow.

Cosmobook: Are there plans to launch NFT collections yet?

Jonathan: We are strong believers in the power of gamification, and will look for ways that these concepts can be best used to increase engagement with Perps, this might involve minting badges or trophies and the like, but we have no definitive plans for launching new collections.

Cosmobook: Tell us a little about the games you plan to launch.

Jonathan: We shut down our gaming development. We have spoken to a number of 3rd party game developers who are interested in building games themed like Levana, but we have no concrete plans to work with anyone specifically. At this time we have no plans to build any new games. Once perps is successful we will reassess.

In 2022 Levana released 3 games for the #Juno network, and built a 4th game, Council Labyrinth. This game will be hidden in Levana Perps after launch as an Easter Egg. Prizes will be awarded to brave adventurers that find the entrance to the Labyrinth and complete the quest

https://twitter.com/Levana_protocol/status/1622245571154292737

Cosmobook: I saw that you temporarily stopped Levana Options and said that you should look at how much this product is needed at all. What will determine your decision to continue working on Levana Options? Why did you choose Juno to carry out the project?

Jonathan: We interviewed many beta testers and looked at the performance of Options trading dApps in the market, and it’s clear that perps has greater product market fit.

Options is on hold until there is evidence of product-market fit for Perps. We love options trading but recognize that we must focus on building one product at a time.

https://twitter.com/Levana_protocol/status/1622245554012176389

Cosmobook: You are about to launch a series of novels and comics. Do you already have story? Tell me?

Jonathan: We spun out the work on the novel and comic to 3rd party teams to continue. The fist book is completed and needs editing and review. The rest of the story has been outlined with many scenes created.

The Comic team has been working independently to continue the story of Levana. They have been reworking much of the existing content to create a completed first graphic novel. The Levana book was spun out and is being conducted by an independent team, and it will be published as an NFT independently.

Cosmobook: How do you plan to link your applications or will they be completely separate products?

Jonathan: For now we are focused on creating success with the Perps platform. Once the core product has achieved sustainability, we will expand the use cases to integrate more of the NFTs, story, and subsequent Defi applications into Perps. We are passionate gamers and scifi geeks, and look forward to a future where we will get to focus more on designing and building games, but recognize that success comes through focus.

There is a lot of technical innovation in our Perps platform and we are optimistic that the crypto community will appreciate the protocol.

https://blog.levana.finance/levana-estimated-fee-comparisons-a8584fb99a90

Cosmobook: DEX, games, nft. These products make different commands? With such an abundance of planned applications, why did they abandon the idea of ​​an appchain to launch their own network of validators?

Jonathan: Launching an Appchain is expensive, and involves lots of overhead. To give Perps the best possible chance of success, we have put all of our efforts into creating the best Perps product in crypto. Everything else needed to take a back seat, including launching an appchain.

In addition to the overhead of additional cost related to building an appchain is the cost of attracting liquidity. We are excited to partner with existing liquidity locations such as Osmosis and other Cosmos chains, to provide native leverage trading on their chains.

Cosmobook: What utility is planned for your own token? Will it combine all products or will there be a separate token for each product? This will be extremely difficult to implement.

Jonathan: LVN tokens are the governance token for the Levana protocol. On Perps, LVN controls which markets are listed, which blockchains the platform is deployed on, what fees are collected and how those fees are used.

In the future, if other applications are built, they will also be governed by LVN governance tokens.

Cosmobook: I remember you wanted to launch on Terra. What was Levana's vision at that moment? Has it changed much due to the events that have taken place?

Jonathan: We had built a vAMM constant product Perps platform on Terra. We had completed the audit and were scheduled to launch on June 9th, 2022. A month before launch, the crash happened.

We spent a few months trying to figure out where to redeploy, and if we wanted to bring the same product to market. The more we analyzed the impact of the crash of LUNA on our Perps v1, the more we realized there is a better way to build a Perps platform that is far more robust

https://medium.com/levana-protocol/introduction-to-levana-perps-v2-5cfb3df7a770

Cosmobook: How did Terra's collapse affect the team? What did you do to mitigate the damage?

Jonathan: Many of the team members were financially destroyed on a personal level due to the crash. The Levana foundation was hit with substantial losses given the exposure to LUNA and UST.

To mitigate the damage, the team size was cut from around 50 people to less than 10 people. Getting perps to market became the most important focus of the team. We put gamefi on hold and spun out many of the other projects to independent teams from the community.

Cosmobook: What would you ask if you were in front of Satoshi Nakamoto?

Jonathan: I have met Satoshi once in 2018, he was very nice, humble. I asked him if we could take a selfie, he said no. But that's another story for another time.

If I met him now I would ask him about what books he likes to read, especially scifi.

Cosmobook: What would you ask if you were in front of Do Kwon?

Jonathan: I have a lot of respect for Do, I got to spend time with him and work with him for a few months at LFG. I think he is a visionary and understands how to create valuable products and teams that deliver. That’s not to say that he is without his faults. If I met him now, I would ask how he was doing, how his family was and how he felt the community could help him with everything he is going through.

Cosmobook: What inspires you?

Jonathan: I am an Orthodox Jew and try my best to bring the values of the bible into my work. I am inspired by scientists and biblical scholars.

Cosmobook: Name 3 favorite books.

Jonathan: Alice in Wonderland

Time Enough for Love

The Torah

Cosmobook: What is the current state of the crypto market in your opinion?

Jonathan: I think we are in a stage of rebuilding. I think the worst is behind us and it’s important that we learn from the mistakes of the last market cycle, of trust in people more than code, in faith in institutions more than community and market hype over fundamentals. I think we can aspire to build great things that will change humanity for the good, and if this is our focus, then the current state of the market is a huge opportunity.

Cosmobook: What would you like to say to our readers?

Jonathan: I read a recent tweet that really struck out to me…

No matter where you're starting, the process is the same:

Make more than you spend.

Make a long term plan.

Learn valuable skills people pay a lot for.

Work to own valuable assets.

Pay off debt.

Live within your means.

Invest constantly.

Never stop asking questions/learning.

Thank you for taking the time to interview me. My DMs are open and I’m always willing to talk to anyone about anything interesting.