Learn & Earn: Indorse & the IND tokenomics
Gaurang Torvekar, Co-Founder & CEO: “Imagine a world in which everyone is able to do what they are best at, and every job is done by the person best qualified for it. This is what we’re striving to achieve with Indorse”.
In the first series of KyberSwap’s “Learn & Earn” program, we have the pleasure of talking to Gaurang Torvekar — Co-Founder & CEO of Indorse. Gaurang will introduce you to Indorse and its services, how the IND token functions, and Indorse’s next big upgrades.
Remember to answer the quiz here after reading this article to have a chance to win 700 USDT! This program runs until 26 October 2020, 21:00 GMT+8. All answers after this timeline will not be eligible for winning prizes.
Indorse’s IND token will be listed on Kyber Network next week with a $10,000 trading competition! Stay tuned for more information!
Hi Gaurang, thank you for taking the time to join KyberSwap’s interview! Can you tell us what you did before crypto and how you got into crypto?
Hi, and thank you everyone who’ll be reading this article! I have been in the software industry for about 11 years now. After finishing my Engineering degree from India, I moved to Singapore to complete my Masters. Since then, I have been working as a Software developer in various startups in the nation-state.
I started coding in the blockchain space in 2015, writing Smart Contracts and working on personal projects, like writing my Prenuptial agreement on the blockchain. I have always been heavily involved in the Ethereum community in Singapore and was also the co-organizer of the Ethereum Singapore meetup in the early days.
Can you describe what Indorse is? How did you come up with the idea for it? Also, can you share about the core validation mechanism?
We believe that it doesn’t matter where you’re from, how you look, what is your social status or gender. All that matters is your skills. Imagine a world in which everyone is able to do what they are best at, and every job is done by the person best qualified for it. This is what we’re striving to achieve with Indorse.
As one of the early pioneers of the Ethereum/Blockchain space, Indorse is deeply ingrained in the community and development scene. Indorse was established in 2017 and in the last 3 years, the team has achieved a lot of great milestones, worked with several enterprise clients, and generated revenues in excess of US$ 1 million.
The cofounders of Indorse have been working in the blockchain space for 7+ years. David Moskowitz is one of South-East Asia’s early Bitcoin & Blockchain pioneers. I have been writing smart contracts since 2015. Avadhoot Kulkarni has been marketing and growing blockchain products for 4+ years. The team is spread across the globe having corporate offices in Singapore and London.
Indorse leverages a network of experts to assess tech skills in an objective manner. At its core is a Skills Assessment Platform, where a panel of expert software engineers coming from all over the world evaluate developers based on their tech skills. These code reviews are done either on candidates’ existing open source projects or on a particular tech challenge.
The underlying technology of Indorse is supported by the “Anonymous Indorsement Protocol (AIP)”, wherein, we have an independent community of expert software developers (known as “validators”) who conduct code reviews on the code submitted by the candidates on Indorse. AIP is supported by the Ethereum blockchain, and each review transaction is eventually recorded on the blockchain through a Merkle tree.
You’ve been in business for more than 3 years and have achieved different milestones as a business. Can you share something about the business, the clientele, and achievements thus far?
Although the early idea with Indorse was to build a B2C platform, we have in fact achieved more success as a B2B service and realized that gaining business by working with Enterprise companies is more sustainable in the long run.
This has proved immensely successful for us, and we are proud to have achieved revenues over US$ 1 million in the last year and a half! On the back of this, we have worked with several Fortune 500 enterprise companies in Singapore and also in the process of getting a few projects in the UK and European regions.
In 2019, we also raised a follow-on funding from the corporate venture arm of Times Group, one of the largest media conglomerates in India.
Can you talk about the Upskilling and Hackathon products of Indorse? What sort of clients do they have?
Indorse’s code assessment engine, and its network of experts of developers, are deployed in various ways based on the need of our clients -
- A consumer platform where candidates can submit their own codes for review
- Integrations with a few job boards, where we validate the candidates on the job board itself
- Working with Enterprise clients like Grab, Rolls Royce, Dell, RSK (IOV labs) on hiring and innovation hackathons and validating all the coding projects through our network
- Working with Enterprise clients like Ngee Ann Polytechnic, OCBC bank, Zalora, Shoppee, Foodpanda on various Upskilling programs, wherein the students’ tech skills are reviewed through our network
How does the IND token come into play?
Users of Indorse are rewarded for their activity on the platform with the Indorse cryptocurrency token (IND), which can be used to participate in the Indorse ecosystem.
With the upcoming updates such as new roles, staking, and DAO, the IND token becomes even more powerful, empowering the Indorse ecosystem to grow further.
Can you explain more about the tokenomics of IND? Also, shed some light on your new light paper?
These are the new additions to the Indorse ecosystem, as outlined in the Light Paper -
The utility of the IND tokens will be realized in these 3 forms:
- Introducing staking for validators in order to be onboarded and keep their “active” status in the community
- Introducing staking for a new role called “Decentralized referral agents”, who will refer more clients and code validators in the ecosystem
- These agents will have to stake IND tokens in order to be eligible for rewards from their activity
- Introducing staking for participating in the operations of Indorse DAO, which will be released next year (2021).
The Indorse 2.0 revised token model introduces IND staking which is meant to reward the most active members of the Indorse community. It has been demonstrated through several Defi projects recently that staking can be an effective method to incentivise token holders.
In addition, the IND token will become the key element of a decentralised governance model to be implemented throughout 2021 (Indorse DAO).
Are you excited about having IND on Kyber and the campaigns around it?
Yes, definitely! We have always been close to the Kyber community and Loi Luu was one of our advisors during the token sale in 2017. In fact, he was instrumental in shaping the AIP algorithm and the protocol.
We are really excited to be launching Indorse 2.0 in conjunction with this trading contest on Kyber!
What are your future plans? Is there anything new from the Indorse team that we should look forward to?
The Indorse 2.0 light paper introduces a lot of new things in the ecosystem. We will spend the next few months to focus on developing all these technologies.
The most interesting aspect there is the Indorse DAO, which will be a true manifestation of a decentralized future for the Indorse protocol, as mentioned in the original white paper!
Thank you very much for your time Gaurang! We hope that you and the Indorse team will find great success in the future!
