XCAD AMA Recap
To help celebrate the listing of XCAD on AscendEX, AscendEX’s Mary Zheng sat down for an AMA with XCAD’s CEO Oliver Bell to gain more insight into the project’s success and strategy for the future.
Mary Zheng | AscendEX
Hi Oliver. If you don’t mind, let’s start with an introduction of the XCAD network, the history as well as the team? Also, what problems are you aiming to solve?
Oliver Bell | XCAD
The XCAD Network is a tokenization and NFT platform for content creators, think of it as CHZ but instead of for football clubs it’s for Youtubers (Fan tokens). It allows fans to earn fan tokens by watching their favorite content creators on YouTube without any changes to their existing workflow, these tokens are tradable and govern decisions around the creator’s content. You can also think of XCAD Network as an additional layer of monetization for content creators. In terms of history, we are just a month old, we conducted our sale on DAO Maker and was at the time the most oversubscribed project on their platform. We went for a different approach to most projects with our sale, instead of big whales we went for a wide distribution model with lots of small retail investors, to date we have over 7,000 holders over all chains.
Mary Zheng | AscendEX
Let us transition towards to the native token — XCAD. How does the XCAD token function and work within the platform and why is it needed?
Oliver Bell | XCAD
The XCAD token powers the whole XCAD Ecosystem, here’s some of its utility -
- Used for governance if a creator can become tokenized and what goals they must hit in order to unlock some of their own token (A bit like team tokens but of course it’s an individual)
- Powers the XCAD DEX Known as the creator DEX, users can only swap assets against the XCAD token, Liquidity pools are of course only using the XCAD token. The XCAD Token will also govern changes to the DEX in the future.
- Online educational portal will be powered by the XCAD Token (YouTube academy)
- You need XCAD to use the plugin to earn creator tokens directly on YouTube, if staking XCADs with creator tokens you will get a bonus reward when consuming a creator’s content
+ More to be announced shortly.
We are looking into possibly launching a creator launchpad too which you would need to stake XCADs to gain allocation. Oh and we also have an NFT farm too 🙂 Where you can farm allocation for projects and also earn creator NFTs. Stake XCAD, and Earn NFTs 🙂. We recently tried sharing some partner companies’ allocation in this farm, in the form of NFTs, it went very well with over 2m XCADs staked out of the 10m circulation supply 🙂.
Mary Zheng | AscendEX
Could you also share the development status and progress of the project thus far? Including any major partners and perhaps some statistics.
Oliver Bell | XCAD
I think it’s nice that people can earn them instead of just buying them, everyone wins 🙂.
Zilliqa is building the blockchain technology side of our platform. We listed on exchanges a month ago and have already released an MVP (Alpha build) of the browser plugin which allows users to earn rewards on the Zilliqa Test net directly on YouTube, the plugin has already gotten positive feedback from top YouTuber KSI who recently tweeted about it! We will shortly be pushing an update to the plugin and releasing the DEX On the Zilliqa testnet. We are aiming to launch on the Zilliqa Mainnet in Q3. For those that are not aware.
Mary Zheng | AscendEX
Cool. Who are the users/clients on your platform and what are some examples of use cases for them?
Oliver Bell | XCAD
I think adoption is pretty hard in the crypto space, however we are in the lucky position where a creator that tokenizes him or herself who usually will have millions of followers will get their audience to download the plugin to earn free fan tokens without any changes to their existing workflow, imagine earning your favorite creators token for consuming content on YouTube, just like you do everyday anyway which you can use for any services around the creator including helping them make decisions (governance) on their content. Most crypto products you see are simply speculative and also are targeted at only crypto users. Due to the audience we are targeting with this, things need to be simple to use. Why does crypto have to be so complicated with long addresses etc.? So our strategy is to use our network of creators to promote the product and to have a simple design/UX. This will then hopefully lead to a snowball effect growth. Think about how scalable this is.
Mary Zheng | AscendEX
Let’s talk about the current landscape of other projects doing similar things. What differentiates you from some of the competitors? In other words, what is your strategy to attract more users to your platform?
Oliver Bell | XCAD
I think the closest comparable projects are CHZ which was a huge success, as we have a similar business model just for creators. You also have Rally who Coinbase recently invested in which is I guess similar but without the contacts and network we have, and also no way to earn their fan tokens like on XCAD. We already have most of the biggest creators involved in some form.
https://cointelegraph.com/press-releases/youtubers-mr-beast-and-ksi-invest-in-xcad-network
Here’s a good chart from the DAO Maker research page on competition. I think people are doing things similar to what we are doing, but not with exactly the same model. Market cap is outdated on the above image as its from our launch* XCAD MC is currently around 10m.
Mary Zheng | AscendEX
Can you please elaborate on XCAD’s goals you aim to achieve in 2021?
Oliver Bell | XCAD
Mass adoption, every project says this, but with the network and product we have, we can achieve this. I see millions of users using this plugin pretty quickly after a full product release, I mean people watch YouTube anyway, why wouldn’t they watch it and earn fan tokens which they can stack up and sell for cash or use on services around the creator. There is no change to anyone’s workflow. You earn these tokens DIRECTLY on YouTube. I feel most people try to reinvent businesses in the crypto space, e.g. creating a decentralised YouTube. I don’t feel you will ever compete with YouTube, so why not just add further value on top of it to an existing user base. We want the biggest creators in the YouTube space to use the product, who we are already in talks with or connected with 🙂.
Community Questions:
𒆜Altຮ to tђe ᴍoon𒆜
While I was searching for XCAD, I found that it’s a very interesting project. But I think that the recruitment of famous creators is essential for the success of this project. Are there any problems such as contract issues or legal disputes with platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram for recruitment and content citation? Or are you planning to collaborate with these platforms?
Oliver Bell | XCAD
Great question, our tech doesn’t use the YouTube API or anything connected with YouTube. If anything, YouTube will like this as it encourages longer viewing time, rewards are only given out if you watch 80% or more of a creator’s video, this in return makes the user watch more ads. So we break no terms of service for YouTube. I like to compare us to the Honey discount app.
Rasel Islam
It’s easy to make a token but it’s really hard to make a token valuable? So what’s your strategy to make the $XCAD token more valuable and what’s your plan to maintain token price and supply?
Oliver Bell | XCAD
So we haven’t released this yet, but a percentage of trading fees used on the DEX will be burnt, reducing the supply, of course we see users buying XCAD with Fiat to stake with creator tokens to earn bigger rewards too 🙂.
Rasel Islam
What are the key milestones on your roadmap-both things you have already achieved and things that we can look forward to? Any partnerships or short/long term technical milestones that you want to talk about or bring some attention to?
Oliver Bell | XCAD
One goal is onboarding of a lot of big creators as you can see from our twitter https://twitter.com/XcademyOfficia MVP Alpha build released already 1 month after listing. We have already seen pre-launch token utility, which according to a few people in the community offers more utility than they have ever seen with their previous investments.
ÇRYPTÖ DÜDË
XCAD supports a cross chain of ziliqa and eth. Is there any chain you would like to add in the future?
Oliver Bell | XCAD
I think cross chain is key, we are in talks with doing some NFTs and a few other things on some other chains too 🙂.
