Recently, we conducted a short Q&A session with Mario Salazar, the CTO behind the wildly successful Filipino startup Acudeen Technologies. As the date of the Public Sale draws near, Mario provides his insights on the current landscape and the implementation roadmap for the AssetChain, the evolution of the Acudeen platform which utilizes the ACU Token.
Before reading, we suggest you first take a look at content previously created related to the token sale:
1. How will the migration to blockchain affect existing users of the platform? Are there any extra steps they have to take aside from acquiring ACU Tokens? Are they incentivized in some way for being users pre-AssetChain era?
We will make the transition as frictionless as possible. Our users will still see the same UI elements as we currently have.
Each user will have their own wallet within the Acudeen Invoice Marketplace. The wallet will hold their ACU and CryptoFIAT tokens. When the new platform is implemented, their balance from current platform will be reflected as cryptofiat balance.
To buy ACU tokens, they can either participate in the token sale or buy ACU from crypto exchanges. Current Sellers and Funders will be credited ACU tokens based on the invoice’ face value they sold or bought. Transaction cut-off is April 30, 2018. However, these free ACU tokens will only be used within Acudeen Invoice Marketplace and cannot be transferred to a personal wallet or sold to an exchange.
2. When do you expect to be able to fully implement the following:
a. AssetChain
We are expecting to have AssetChain beta version ready by Q3 2019
b. Service Tokenization (ACU)
ACU will be integrated with the current platform as part of transition phase before moving to the new platform. It could happen by Q2 2019 or earlier.
c. Enabling Cross-Border Purchases (CryptoFIAT)
We will implement Stellar-based wallet to hold CryptoFIAT by Q4 2018 in the current platform.
3. How does the implementation roadmap look like? What are the different milestones that we are looking at and during what month/s should they be projected to be completed?
2018 Q4 — CryptoFIAT implementation in the current platform
2019 Q2 — ACU token adoption in the current platform
2019 Q3 — AssetChain Testnet release
2019 Q4 — AssetChain Beta version
2020 Q1 — AssetChain Full Implementation
4. What specific deliverables are being prioritized by the team as of the moment in terms of development? What is going to come out the soonest and when can users start to confidently utilize this feature?
We are prioritizing the adoption of a Stellar-based wallet to hold CryptoFIAT in the current platform. Right now, all balances are held in a central database.
By implementing a Stellar-based wallet, our users may opt to keep their fund balances on their cold wallet or hardware wallet and transfer them to Acudeen Marketplace whenever they wish to participate in an auction.
5. What is the roadmap for getting listed on various exchanges? Do we have specific target dates for them?
By end of the public sale, ACU tokens will be tradeable in Stellar Distributed Exchange, for example StellarTerm and StellarPort. We will apply for listing on high level exchanges such as Binance and Bitfinex as well.
6. What companies are we eyeing to do partnerships with, what is their current status/what is our current progress with them and how does our partnership with these groups benefit token investors and Acudeen users?
We are building partnerships with Stellar, Hyperledger project, and IBM. We are also actively engaging industry partners that will form the whole AssetChain ecosystems.
7. What differentiates us from similar platforms that also do SME financing? Aside from the hybrid buyer-supplier system what is our edge over the competitors in the landscape?
Acudeen is actively building business in the frontier and emerging markets. Since we started in the emerging market, Philippines, we believe we will be successful in similar markets.
8. What are the biggest challenges you expect to face during the development phase and how do you plan to overcome these?
Blockchain is still new and there are only few available talents with the right skills, I think the biggest challenge is how quickly to form the right team that will build the product.
Aside from in-house training, we are also actively hiring developers not only in Manila but from other countries as well.
9. What are the various assets and liabilities that our project faces?
Our assets will be the current team and our 2 years of actual business operations.
10. Where can we find the source code?”
Open source codes are mostly for Ethereum-based ICOs where the Smart Contract of the token/coin is expected to be published.
For Stellar, it works differently. Anybody, can check the Issuing Account about the tokens we generated.
