Gifto Q1 2019 Review
A message from the team
In Q1 Gifto went live with many new features which had been under development through crypto winter — from our launch as the InfiniteX platform token, to new uDiamond-to-Gifto conversion countries in the Gifto wallet across Uplive, to adding e-commerce exchange rewards for mainstream users of Gifto. Gifto has emerged from a thawing crypto winter, in which we were building all throughout, more poised than ever to take Gifto mainstream.
Meanwhile, the industry has become much more focused and sustainable. Chains are moving forward on scaling technologies like sharding (Ethereum) and Lightning (Bitcoin) which will make it much more practical to build mainstream apps on. Facebook is launching a stablecoin which will bring in significant new capital and credibility to crypto, and more countries, including major economies like Germany and Australia, are releasing crypto regulations which make it easier for projects to grow token usage. We anticipate mainstream adoption of crypto will continue to take time, and our focus on token access through as many avenues as possible will pay off.
In the last few weeks, we’ve received a lot of feedback from the community that our rollout in Uplive has not met their expectations:
“It is very clear that a lot of people are fed up with the way you’re managing GTO right now.”
“For me, it’s the way you ‘handle’ things, and your inability to implement GTO within your own platform, your inability to properly promote GTO.”
“GTO is still nowhere near [where] it should be, even in Uplive right now, so, at this point, mass adoption is a joke.”
The team wants to address these head-on in this update. But first, we want to thank all of the community for giving us these feedback, it means several things to us:
- Most importantly, we have a lot of Gifto holders who really care about our project more than oneyear in
- The community recognizes the importance of mass adoption for crypto industry and Gifto
- The community recognizes the value of Uplive as a powerful platform
- We collectively have not done a good job of communicating frequently enough the myriad of tasks that we are doing, why we are doing them, challenges we face, and how we are addressing those challenges
- We cannot just rely on live streamings and medium articles, as they are not viewed by everyone all the time, and key information tend to get lost. We will do better here.
State of the Gifto Ecosystem
Here we’ll share the state of the wallet and our dApps to give a more full picture of the Gifto ecosystem.
Uplive & Gifto: The world’s biggest consumer app featuring a crypto token
With the Gifto wallet having been integrated into Uplive earlier this year, Gifto is now among the few crypto currencies actually being used globally by mainstream internet users. Uplive has grown significantly since one year ago and now boasts over 100m users, many of which are able to receive and send virtual gifts denominated in the Gifto token through the Gifto web wallet. Through the uDiamond-to-GTO conversion gateways in the Gifto wallet, first-time crypto users can buy Gifto.
However, the team acknowledges that the amount of Uplive users with the ability to purchase Gifto in the first place remains a small part of the overall Uplive ecosystem. This is because:
- Each country has different regulations for providing fiat access to crypto, and we are still rolling out Gifto purchase in new markets in a compliant way.
- For example, some of the biggest countries in the world have legally banned crypto, including China, India, Vietnam, etc. Therefore users in these countries cannot buy Gifto.
- Google and Apple App stores have strict guidelines for crypto usage in apps.
- Most mass users do not understand what crypto-currencies are and do not have an exchange account.
- For some users, crypto has taken on a negative brand due to scams and bear market.
This is the issue facing all crypto projects aiming for mass adoptions, and since we are at the forefront, we are experiencing these challenges first hand. This does not deter us, as difficult things are valuable, and we are making steady progress.
Our measures for resolving these issues and pushing mass adoptions have not changed since last year, they are still two-fold
- Expanding fiat on-ramps via uDiamond-to-Gifto conversion, one country at a time
- Leveraging partners such as InfiniteX for new, smoother, direct fiat ramp-up of Gifto
We have indeed run massive promotions last year in Uplive app, across all of our countries in fact.
These promotions had positive results of over one million Gifto wallets activated, including over 100,000 on-chain wallets, which puts us among the top 20 address holder tokens, higher even than Basic Attention Token. Of course our market cap is very different, but we see that as the potential upside once the value of mass adoption is recognized more by the industry.
However, without the basic access to Gifto in place and the concerns remaining with crypto, we do not have the large scale of transactions as we anticipated. Thus we now are focused on building the infrastructure and crypto on-ramps.
Gifto Wallet: The mass-market, consumer-friendly web crypto wallet
During the inception of Gifto, we quickly realized that the crypto wallets on the market are mostly designed for crypto users, and mass market users in general could not figure their way around most wallets. In addition, it is complicated for most consumer apps to integrate a native mobile app SDK of a wallet, including Uplive.
We therefore developed as our first product, the Gifto wallet as a Web-based wallet for the Gifto token. It has following features which have stood the test of time over the last year:
- Easy to use for a non crypto user
- Seamlessly supports on-chain and off-chain transactions
- Easy to integrate into any mobile app AND Web-based services
- Secure despite being a web-based wallet
- Easy to iterate and expand, because the front end is HTML5 standard
In Uplive, it enables users to convert uDiamonds, a virtual currency used in the Uplive livestreaming ecosystem, to Gifto in select countries where compliant. Current released uDiamond-to-Gifto countries include Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Korea, with several more markets in the pipeline. Gifto will continue to roll out access to this feature globally in a compliant way.
More importantly, this wallet is also available outside of Uplive ecosystem, and can be integrated by any third party, for example, e-commerce companies that began talking with us last year.
Gifto’s E-commerce portal is live
E-commerce is one of the biggest mass market use cases, and many real world ecommerce partners have approached us last year wanting to use Gifto and Gifto Wallet to access crypto users. But actual integration with retail merchants who do not understand crypto took a long time, with the first integration with Taiwan-based retailers live in early Feb.
Thousands of Uplive users have begun using the Gifto e-commerce portal through several events such as Valentines sale. Though a small start, the team now has the infrastructure in place for easy access to Gifto (via uDiamond conversion) with user-friendly KYC, as well as so-called crypto “offramp” to e-commerce goods so that users without an exchange account can immediately realize the value of their Gifto. As we open up conversion in new uDiamond-to-GTO markets, we’ll also be launching new e-commerce goods for exchange, and moving forward with previously announced partnerships.
CoinUp Network: Next-gen crypto media, incubated by Gifto team
CoinUp Network is a livestreaming platform for crypto-content creators with virtual gifting featuring the Gifto token. It’s the world’s first multi-lingual crypto livestreaming network that works across all devices for users all over the world. While in beta over the past two months CoinUp has featured a number of well-known projects, including Origin Protocol, Elite Mining, and Longhash. Gifto will continue to leverage the CoinUp Network to increase awareness of the Gifto token among crypto communities and develop it towards the vision of rewarding content creators in crypto, as per our whitepaper vision.
InfiniteX Exchange: Pioneering fiat-to-crypto top-up in the Gifto wallet
InfiniteX is a new compliant fiat-crypto exchange based in Australia which uses Gifto as its platform token. With this new global fiat on-ramp infrastructure we are excited to explore huge opportunities for Gifto, such as:
- Executing on global fiat-to-Gifto top-up directly in the Gifto wallet
- New ways to reward creators online, for example, a digital Creators’ Bank backed by Gifto and fiat
- Tokenizing creators and their revenue streams
- Backing Gifto with a Gifto stablecoin
This milestone is an important step towards realizing the goals of our whitepaper vision as well as our updated Gifto 2.0 vision of mainstream adoption of Gifto.
Asian Blockchain Accelerator: Catalyzing new use cases for Gifto & Gifto Wallet in Asia
The Asian Blockchain Accelerator (ABA), a strategic partner of Gifto’s, has started working with a number of established consumer brands in Taiwan, one of the most crypto-friendly countries in the world, to leverage blockchain for their businesses, including Taiwan’s largest offline coupon platform which is integrated with 80% of Taiwan’s retail infrastructure. Gifto is actively exploring implementation of previously announced partnerships in Taiwan with ABA as well as with new, established brands.
Article in Taiwan’s Economic Newspaper about ABA’s work with MoGong
Key milestones in Q1
See the below summary of the progress Gifto has made throughout Q1 2019:
- March 21: Smart Contract Lockup Public Testing & Ecosystem Token Update
- March 24: GTO launched as InfiniteX platform token
- March 5: uDiamond-to-Gift expansion in Korea, Hong Kong
- Feb 26: Taiwanese eCommerce beta in Gifto Wallet scores 100 sales
- Feb 12: Gifto fiat-to-GTO in AU via Infinitex & Cheeseduke e-commerce launch
- Jan 23: BNB in Gifto wallet + BNB gifts on CoinUp Network
- Jan 19: Andy Tian on What Crashed Crypto
- Jan 14: Gifto eCommerce rewards launched!
- Jan 14: CoinUp Network featuring Gifto token launched!
Commitments update
Besides these key milestones, we made strong progress against our commitments for Q1 made in Q4. See below for a status check:

Q2 strategy
- Beta test of smooth in-wallet top-up of Gifto with at least one fiat currency
- Rollout uDiamond-to-GTO exchange in the Gifto Wallet aggressively (10 new countries)
- Rollout e-Commerce rewards for Gifto wallet users in at least 3 more markets
- Implement a major new use case of Gifto with a partner
- Improve and ramp up communications in all major languages
A final word
Hopefully we have given you a detailed look of what Gifto has done in Q1, and more importantly, why we are doing these things. Our journey to push mass adoption has not changed, and we won’t waver in either bear of bull market. And as many of our development, partnership, and foundational work are yielding fruits, we will ramp up our communications with all of the community. Thanks again for everyone’s support!
