GIFTO Weekly Update — 3 April 2018
A Message from Andy Tian, CEO and Co-Founder of Uplive
Welcome everyone to our weekly update!
Spring is upon us and we are pleased with GIFTO’s first quarter developments as a young blockchain project. I would like to do a round-up with everyone here and share our plans for the second quarter.
Managing blockchain project development is a bit different from managing our core business of creating “traditional” products.. This takes time for us to get used to as a team, so we are flattered and extremely grateful to the entire community for your support and high expectations for us.
Q1 Success
- Held several outstanding events, especially the one with Binance which generated user growth and trading volume.
- Transparency in our weekly reports and diligently allowing the community to understand our progress and new developments.
- Our GIFTO Angles active involvement in our global community. We would like to thank our Angels around the world for all of your hard work and support!
- We have launched some innovative events such as our Rotary Event and the Forever Rose project, which are firsts for the industry. . We firmly believe that innovation is the foundation of success and we will continue to try out new ideas. Please do not hesitate to contribute any suggestions!
Areas for improvement in Q1
- New information on our project has not been updated in the most timely manner and sometimes key pieces of information are incomplete which leaves our community guessing. Our team will continue to improve upon and revise this process, so please be patient and bear with us as we adopt your suggestions .
- Underestimated the difficulty of integrating a crypto wallet w into Uplive’s system. This is the first time that a blockchain product is being used in a large-scale commercial application, which created a number of implementation issues. Based on our experience with building a functional wallet, we will now be able to better estimate our development time., As we continue to pioneer a new and groundbreaking product, we anticipate future obstacles that we will need to solve quickly to overcome.
- Our cooperations with other projects have not been deep, meaningful collaborations. We want to take these good relationships with many of the leading projects and establish more meaningful connection.
Our product and operations plan for the second quarter are as follows. Anticipating various unexpected problems during these next development and implementation stages, we will make some adjustments to the timeline. We hope that everyone can be patient and give us your continued support.
GIFTO Wallet
The function of buying GTO using uDiamonds will be removed temporarily.
- Buying GTO directly with uDiamonds requires a KYC process for legal compliance. However, we discovered during testing, that KYC creates large barriers to usage, even with a simple design. While experienced digital currency community members have no difficulties with KYC, asking new users to overcoming that obstacle will present some challenges and questions about why we require their ID information.
- Therefore, we have decided to temporarily halt the function of using uDiamonds to purchase GTO in order to temporarily cancel the need for KYC.
We will further simplify the registration process by implementing biometrics for wallet login.
We will begin to convert Uplive users into wallet users and will gradually input a small amount of GTO into their wallets. This is a key step for them to learn and understand digital currency and GTO. In this way, users can immediately see that they have a valuable digital currency in their wallet, encouraging them to take their first step into understanding the digital currency world. Of course, in being mindful of currency circulation, we will not use more than 10 million GTOs in the development of our wallet user program through the second quarter. The initial development plan is as follows and may be accelerated or slowed down depending on operational progress.
- Develop 100,000 wallets by the end of April
- Develop 500,000 wallets by the end of May
- Develop 1,000,000 wallets by the end of June
New version of the wallet will be launched at the end of May
The hybrid private-public chain architecture of the wallet will be upgraded at the end of May to meet a potential increase in trading volume in the month of June.
Once we have established the GIFTO wallet, we will proceed to add GTO application scenarios.
Uplive App
- Use GTO to purchase exclusive GTO gifts for broadcasters during their livestream
- Broadcasters can receive GTO and transfer them into their own wallet
- This requires significant back-end customization support from the Uplive system. Again, this is one of the first times blockchain features have been placed into a massive commercial system. Hence, the development and testing will require some time, but the current target is in June.
Universal Gifting Platform
After our Web-based universal gifting platform was tested with selected Youtube influencers and our broadcasters, we will continue to iterate the experience, in particular.
- Better core flow of gifting experience, especially around feedback for the influencer
- More customization/pricing setting features for influencers
- Allow influencers to upload new customized gifts, and begin development of tool to allow external designers/artists to create new gifts
We will be expanding usage through working with more Youtube influencers, expanding to our full broadcasters, and potentially celebrities in June.
Social Virtual Gifting
- Everyone knows that we have made greeting cards as virtual gifts on Christmas and Valentine’s Day. Although not many people have used it, we have gained valuable experiences in the whole process, from creation to testing.
- Why have we been testing greeting cards so early since December? We feel that exchanging gifts between family and friends is the most natural thing to do. We want to share the experience of gifting through the use of blockchain technology, allowing anyone to be able to send virtual gifts to their loved ones at their own convenience.
- While this will require more time and development, we believe that this is a massive use case that will increase both the adoption rate and total number of virtual gifting transactions.
- The first version of social virtual gifting will be tested in the Uplive wallet and is expected to launch in May. From there, more testing will be done to polish the gifting process. We hope to be able to promote this extensively through more special occasions and events.
Games
- The first blockchain game produced by our internal game studio will begin testing in May. GTO will be used for the first time in the game. After the testing is successful, we will have more games coming up that will further expand the use case of GTO’s.
Marketing
We will have at least one large-scale partnership and promotion every month to build the influence of GIFTO and the number of users. A few partnerships are in the pipeline, and we will announce them as soon as they are confirmed.
Confirmed partnerships include:
- 2018 Asia Model Festival in April-May. This will greatly increase our influence in the entertainment industry.
- Charity event on the end of May to continue our public contributions and commitment to charitable giving.
Finally, we would like to express our thanks to the community for their support and feedback. Without you, there is no GIFTO!
Asia Model Association — Face of China
On Sunday, April 1, GIFTO participated as a judge in the Asia Model Association’s ‘Face of China 2018’ beauty pageant. Andy awarded contestant number 15, Ms. Li Han Wen (李涵雯), the ‘GIFTO Choice Award’. Ms. Li will also represent China in the finals of the ‘Face of Asia 2018’ beauty pageant which will be held during the Asia Model Festival (AMF) in Seoul, Korea from 3–6 May 2018.
Until next week!
Andy and the GIFTO Team
GIFTO Korea
1) Andy Tian at IT Chosun Blockchain Conference
Andy was invited as a speaker IT Chosun Blockchain Conference on Mar 29th 2018. With the title “Tokens from the sky to the ground: Experience from Asia’s fastest ICO”, Andy explained the definition of Reverse ICO and current business development of GIFTO. After the event, Andy had interviews with several media in Korea and more news articles will be released soon. Stay tuned!
2) Coinone blocks Meetup ‘Connect 2018’ with Kyber Network
GIFTO, Kyber Network, and Coinone blocks co-hosted the ‘Connect 2018’ meetup on 30 March 2018. Dylan Park, head of GIFTO, spoke about ‘Decentralized Technology: Challenges to Mass Consumer Adoption”, explaining the current status of GIFTO and how GIFTO is going to be adopted by mass market consumers in 2018. He also participated in a panel discussion with TN Lee (Kyber Network), Joseph Nemelka (Coinone Analyst). During the panel discussion, the speaker discussed the current situation, regulatory climate, and prospects for the blockchain industry in Korea.
GIFTO Korea Special
This week, we would like to discuss the current situation of the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry in Korea.
Regulation and Policy
As cryptocurrency trading overheats and with Ponzi schemes and fake deals involving cryptocurrencies occurring, Korean regulators declared in a series of press releases that they will ban all types of initial coin offerings (ICOs) and also tighten the regulation on cryptocurrency trading in general.
Recently, lawmakers from the ruling and opposition parties rushed to draft cryptocurrency-specific laws, stating that reasonable regulation is necessary rather than a complete ban. It is a good indication to move in the direction of a rules-based approach, pulling away from the previous complete ban pursued by Korean regulators. South Korea’s ban on ICOs could ease in the coming months.
Current Crypto Market in Korea
Korea’s cryptocurrency market is the most active cryptocurrency trading markets in the world. Bitcoin trading units based on the Korean won are currently the third largest in the world, after the US dollar and the Japanese yen. As a result of unusually hot transactions, the price of Bitcoin in South Korea was once a more than 10% of premium than other countries, and it is currently stable at between 3% and 5%. South Korea is the largest currency trading markets for ETH and ERC20 tokens in the world. Famous exchanges such as Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Coinnest, etc., account for approximately 8:2 of the transaction volume of commodity money and cryptocurrencies on the platforms.
The Korean government issued an agreement last December to require autonomous regulatory clauses, the qualification of an exchange establishment, and KYC authentication system for protection of investors, while demanding an exchange platform to provide real money transactions. As we now see, most major exchanges have already met government requirements and the attitude of the government has also eased.
We, Asia Innovations Group, have long-term prospects for the Korean market and currently have about twenty people working at Korea branch. The branch operates the Korean cryptocurrency market, entertainment, community, and blockchain areas for. At present, the blockchain industry has accumulated many science and technology fields, entertainment groups and model brand resources in the industry, and our integrated gifting platform will become the largest platform of mass consumer adoption in the world.
Media Perspectives
Media perspectives in Korea are shifting towards a more positive stance than ever before, given the regulatory and taxation framework of the Korean Government. This makes it one of the key factors in boosting global cryptocurrency markets.
These are the tops news regarding cryptocurrency in Korea:
- Blockchain can be next Korean wave March 26, Korea Times
- Cryptocurrencies to be available at 6,000 outlets in Korea March 26, Korea Times
- Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange operator to invest W100b in blockchain tech March 26, Korea Herald
- Young South Koreans Remain Optimistic about Crypto, Survey Finds March 27, Cryptovest
- South Korea Plans to Announce Cryptocurrency Tax Framework by End of June April 2, Coinspeaker
- ‘S-Coin’: Seoul Mayor Floats Launching Cryptocurrency for South Korea’s Capital City April 3, CNN
