COTI AMA Recap — September 6th, 2021

Published in

COTI

15 min readSep 6, 2021

We held an AMA on the COTI Telegram group, following the revelation of the COTI’s growth plan to become a next-gen financial ecosystem.

Here is the full recap:

COTI: Hello everyone and welcome to the COTI AMA! 🙌

The past few weeks have been very exciting for us, as $COTI was listed on Huobi Global (Native and ERC-20) and Coinbase Pro (ERC-20) the same day. A day after, Coinbase.com also listed COTI’s ERC20 token.

We also shared that the NFT auction platform which we developed with Cardano for Wolfram Alpha is live, and already processing transactions (over $1M now!).

The NFT game is on fire and two lucky winners of the summer seasonal raffle have won 52,000 $COTI each!

Lastly, we proudly published COTI’s Growth Plan to become a next-generation financial ecosystem and this AMA will focus on all the aspects of the plan.

The main pillar of COTI’s Growth Plan is the Treasury, which among many other innovative tools and options, will make COTI’s Staking program available for everyone. Using the Treasury, users will be able to set their staking level, staking period, and even influence how the Treasury algorithm manages their leverage and risk level, democratizing the Staking platform for all.

You can watch the plan presentation by Shahaf here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3GNkEmKtxM

And read the full article here:https://medium.com/cotinetwork/beyond-payments-cotis-growth-plan-to-become-a-next-gen-financial-ecosystem-2907949df002

Today, Shahaf will join us live to answer all your questions about it.

Ready? Let’s do it!

COTI:

Exciting times for COTI! We’re here for your questions and will also be sharing some news

let’s go!

Community:

Question regarding Stablecoins.

I’m new to algorithmic stablecoin protocol. If those coins are crypto-backed, what happens if the price of collateral cryptos move quickly? (with volatility)

How do you mitigate the problems like the Iron Finance had a few months back? Please give us some images to understand more about algorithmic stablecoins.

COTI:

There are various approaches for that, like OVER collateral. Iron Finance was under collateral. I suggest you read the white paper for Djed, as a good example, to see how they implement their algo.

Community:

You said COTI has all the licenses to issue stable coins. Can you give us more details? What COTI has over competition and when can we expect the first stablecoin on COTI trustchain to be announced?

COTI:

Stable Coins are very interesting in terms of regulation. There is no set answer to how it would be regulated, but it seems that the collateral and the peg will have a great effect on whether a stable coin will be considered a currency, commodity or a security. The act of minting a stable coin means that a user will exchange a collateral for a newly minted stable coin. As we hold an exchange license, we can be the issuer, which gives us an advantage over someone that holds no licenses.

Community:

Will you be joining crypto banter or other channels to inform about this?

COTI::

Absolutely. I will be on the Banter show soon. We are very close, as you know

Community:

Updates EMI Licence and Visa?

COTI:

An EMI license is very beneficial in many ways, especially around the ability to hold Fiat and Crypto under the same entity and product, issuance of e-money etc. We can’t discuss where we are with our license, but we currently work with partners that give us good coverage anyhow.

Community:

Will we see a CEX for govi this Q?

COTI:

There’s a lot of excitement around $GOVI by a lot of partners, as it should be. It’s a new piece that was missing in Defi.

We can’t comment about CEX listings…

Community:

is coti built in a way that is able to integrate with any ecosystem (fantom, ethereum)? if yes why the focus only on cardano

COTI:

We are also operating on Ethereum (CVI) and have working relationships with Fantom

Community:

Any updates on ledger support?

COTI:

We submitted our updated application and are waiting for their approval. Could be any day now

Community:

Will Node Operator’s rewards stay the same with the new Treasury idea?

COTI:

Full nodes are obviously still key in COTI’s Trustchain and will always continue to exist. Node operators will be compensated for their service, of course. The exact model is still not completely designed, but will obviously be very attractive.

Community:

How are debit cards and bank accounts going on? any news?

COTI:

I received my card 2 weeks ago and have used it since. It’s awesome. To begin with, it was buggy and I had issues with swiping or tapping it on some locations. The team at VISA and Simplex was able to pinpoint the issues and resolve them. I have decided to delay the cards until all issues are resolved, as I believe that cards are such a cool thing and shouldn’t have any issues. I’m happy to say that it all looks good now and we expect to open registration and ship cards soon. We may do another test with a limited number of participants next week, but other than that we are all good.

The bank accounts are also awesome and have worked seamlessly for me.

The team has made a cool video about it… @EfratBL will share it!

COTI:

https://youtu.be/Tphit9ZnO7w

Community:

Do you plan to redesign the coti.io site and when? Its very old and need full redesign

COTI:

Yes. We are working on a new website for COTI to better represent what we do and plan to do. It’s a work in progress.

Community:

Will the bank accounts support SEPAinstant transfers?

COTI:

Yes. SEPA and SWIFT

Community:

Do you still have a very good relationship with HOSKINSON? Are you going to develop a more elaborate marketing plan of this synergy?

COTI:

Of course, he is a partner and a friend (not in that order!). I’ll be seeing the Cardano team in September for the Cardano Summit, where we’ll be presenting new things we’re working on together

Community:

What will the governance token be like. Will this be tradable?

COTI:

We’ll be introducing a governance structure and a governance token that will be distributed to those who participate in the Treasury and replenish it. More details will be published soon on the upcoming Treasury Whitepaper — stay tuned!

Geordie:

I’d like to have a go with Shahaf card too, for testing purposes on large value items (have to be thorough) 😁😉

COTI:

You are definitely one of the first people on my list to get a card.

Not all of you are aware, but @GeordieR has been instrumental in helping Huobi run a node with COTI.

He can tell you if he wants.

Community:

If we visit Israel, do you have time for a coffee with people from the community? If yes, how can we book one?

COTI:

Absolutely! I would love that. Just let me know when you are around and i’ll make the time

Community:

I know we are not supposed to speak about EMI License, but how can this license help if we can do everything from the COTI ecosystem? What benefits does this license bring?

COTI:

As mentioned, an EMI license is very beneficial in many ways, especially around the ability to hold Fiat and Crypto under the same entity and product, issuance of e-money etc. We can’t discuss where we are with our license, but we currently work with partners that give us good coverage anyhow.

Community:

If Huobi Has Native + ERC20 versions of COTI, does this mean it works like a Bridge? So we can send from Binance to Huobi and withdraw native? Is this the reason why Huobi sometimes suspends NATIVE withdrawal, because it is the same liquidity problem as it is with the bridge?

It’s the bridge now 100% functional? OR what issues could you encounter?

COTI:

In effect, Huobi now works as a bridge between Native to ERC20. The same goes for Binance which is a de-facto bridge between ERC20 to BEP20.

Like any asset, the exchange needs liquidity to allow swapping.

And yes, the bridge is 100% functional, go check: https://bridge.coti.io/

Community:

Is there a native implementation anticipated for binance?

COTI:

it’s not a priority now. Liquidity is quite good now for all chains. BUT, I think that once the Treasury is open, many partners would want to list Native $COTI

Community:

Update on staking from the US please. Staking and stake rewards pass the Howey test and are a legal non regulated asset. When can US citizens stake with Coti network?

COTI:

This is interesting, I wasn’t aware of that. We can definitely check it.

Community:

Is coti Mainnet on schedule

COTI:

First, I’d like to announce that we intend to launch Mainnet2.0 in the coming weeks, possibly even during September! Mainnet 2.0 brings a lot of upgrades to it, especially around scalability and flexibility. It deserves a focused attention and we’ll cover it in a dedicated post as we launch it. Get ready for Mainnet 2.0

Community:

When can we get our bank account? Do we need to wait for the cards to be made and use our IBAN account, we can bank wire the money without the card, or this part is not done yet? Can you give us more info?

COTI:

If all goes well, next week. It seems to be working well (you can buy Oreo with it, for sure).

The Bank Account is independent from the card, so you can use it right away, regardless of the card.

The card is an extension of your bank account, in the sense that you can spend your balance.

Community:

Is COTI gonna attend any payment / crypto / tech expo by 2021/22? If yes, which ones?

COTI:

my next one is with Cardano on September 25th

Community:

Will we have a Treasury system shortly after Mainnet2.0?

COTI:

Yes

Community:

Will the new staking remove the “amount” slots and move into a more logarithmic way of rewarding higher staking amounts. Which would allow the possibility of compound staking. Compounding is the king!

What’s the prediction for the Treasury to be fully operational? 1 month, 6 months, a year? Next week maybe?

COTI:

Yes, it’s completely flexible and capital efficient. You decide on timelines, risk profiles, amounts etc. Accordingly, your APY is calculated.

Community:

Recently I saw that Input Output Global (IOG) is one of the 15 finalists in the CBDC challenge as announced on Singapore Central Bank website. Will COTI be involved in development of the country’s CBDC (Djed) if IOG is selected? :)

COTI:

Wait to see the announcement during the cardano summit, is all I can say for now

Community:

All things are fine but I have a complaint regarding support tickets. Team should solve issues within ETA. Every time someone opens a viper account and submit kyc. He needs to contact the admin on chat after 5 days… Then kyc completed. Plz solve these issues.

COTI:

To be honest, I couldn’t agree more. We have been overwhelmed with tickets as we grew so fast, and just didn’t catch up.

This is what we’ll do to make things right:

1. Recruited and still recruiting more support people

2. created a better workflow between Support and Tech

3. KYC: Up until now, all was done in house. We are now incorporating a 3rd party automated system that will supposedly shorten times dramatically.

I’m monitoring this personally

Community:

Is the process of depositing COTIs to the Treasury automated? Like a click of a button?

COTI:

it’s a simple process, built like notable Defi platforms. Essentially you pick how much you want to deposit, lock period, risk profile — and then make a deposit.

Community:

How will govi be integrated into the treasury?

COTI:

Yes, it seems that we have created an unintended confusion with the article, sorry about that. I’d like to confirm that for all intent and purposes, those who use CVI or hold $GOVI will be unaffected. CVI is fully independent and we see a tremendous future for the platform.

COTI itself receives GOVI from the system as the founding entity and as liquidity provider. This GOVI, over time, should be deposited in the treasury (whether as GOVI or converted to COTI then deposited).

Community:

If so many merchants are signing with COTI, will you add more nodes to the network? Any predictions on how many nodes till the end of the year?

COTI:

Full nodes are key in COTI’s Trustchain and we will continue to add nodes. We have been busy with the preparations for Mainnet 2.0 and the Huobi integration, and wanted to make sure the network is stable in the process, so we didn’t add more nodes to not add possible complications. However, now that everything is in place, we’ll be adding more nodes. The network is even stronger now

Community:

When you release some updates through Telegram channel, and other social media accounts, is there any plan also for press releases or some advertorials? I know there are articles on Medium, but to help boost the news with some minimal marketing like: 1–2 press releases, 1–2 youtubers with a decent amount of followers, 1–2 twitter accounts with a decent amount of followers etc? I see a lot of questions related to Marketing, and people always ask for more. What plans does the Coti team have in terms of marketing and collaboration for the short and long term ?

COTI:

We have a PR team and actually all major events get press exposure

Community:

Hello Shahaf, I guess the waiting list for staking 3.0 will be cancelled then, so the people who waited a long time to get a good APR might see a decrease in their rewards?

COTI:

The treasury is completely flexible and users are free to choose how they want to participate and how they want to be rewarded. For instance, Staking via the Treasury will allow the users to tailor their own program — their staking level, staking period, and influence on how the algorithm manages their leverage and risk level, in order to determine their specific reward and APY. As the treasury is very capital efficient, we believe it’ll be very rewarding for participants

COTI:
Looking at the crypto space today, we see that ecosystems are valued directly by the Total amount of Value that is Locked into them (TVL). The treasury is a great instrument that concentrates liquidity and provides a simple metric to show how valuable COTI has become. We believe the treasury will ultimately have hundreds of millions of USD in terms of TVL

To add to that, locking a lot of $COTI out of circulation adds value and stability.

Specifically, the Treasury has key advantages:

1. Flexibility — lockup periods, risk profile — leading to 9X the rewards.

2. New abilities, like lending and borrowing.

3. Regulation ready.

4. Decentralized through a governance structure and a governance token that will be distributed to those who participate in the Treasury and replenish it.

Community:

Regulation ready.

How it’s ready? Can you explain it a little more please?

COTI:

The only way to deposit into the Treasury is through a VIPER wallet. This is important to note, as we’ve been collecting “know your customer” (or KYC) papers from our users since day one. Regulations are now becoming a requirement in crypto, but we’ve been ahead of the curve. This has given us a major head start, as the COTI Treasury is already regulation ready.

Community:

Is there a new roadmap coming?

COTI:

https://cotinetwork.medium.com/beyond-payments-cotis-growth-plan-to-become-a-next-gen-financial-ecosystem-2907949df002

Community:

In addition to point 1 and 2 Marius mentioned. I do get the feeling sometimes a clear omnichannel marketing strategy or the execution of this is niet optimal for coti. Not all provided information is up to date and coherent. If you put the information on coti’s own website next to the most recent medium articles the website is not up to date. If every step Coti takes gets announced, communicated and updated to all communication channels at the same time, the potential impact of the news will be much greater. A simple example if you go to the news page on coti site the double listing isn’t even mentioned 😅

Also it might be worth considering to give community members a active but above all coördinated role in coti’s marketing strategy. I wouldn’t mind to spend an hour or 2 a week writing articles or making tutorial videos. The initiative Marius took to start a Coti knowledge base is amazing, if the coti team would think of ideas like this putting the goal on the horizon, the community can pitch in and support the team.

We could accomplish even more faster if we worked together more coherently.

COTI:

How about we start a TG group with all the community members that can help us and coordinate there? @EfratBL

Community:

Is Coti developing financial instruments to allow microfinance to occur between the developed and developing world?

COTI:

the Trustchain can definitely support micro payments, being very scalable and low cost

Community:

you are silent for CVI, I understand it is independent but we have no roadmap, no information? marketing? listing soon?

COTI:

We are active about it in the CVI group. A roadmap for CVI should be published next week

Community:

Would the demand for COTI be proportional to the supply and transaction volume of customer-specific stablecoins?

Also, is there any algorithmic element that involves burning/minting COTI in order to maintain the stablecoin peg (similar to LUNA ecosystem)?

COTI:

Yes, customers pay fees in COTI, so the higher the volume the higher the demand for $COTI.

Pegging mechanism will be dependent on the type of merchant. Generally speaking, over collateral is probably the easiest way to launch and with the least amount of regulatory head wind

Community:

What are the chances of a proper Celsius integration in the Viper Wallet in the near future? Is this something we can still look forward to? At the moment it is simply a ref link to Celsius. Thanks

COTI:

It’s in the works. Long term, however, lending and borrowing will be done directly with COTI’s Treasury

Community:

What happens if some country regulates staking during your lockups at the Treasury in the future? Will it be possible to withdraw your funds under those unpredictable circumstances before your lockup period is over?

COTI:

As all deposits are through VIPER, which does proper KYC — most likely we are already abiding regulation

Community:

Another question regarding nodes, what will happen with the 35% APR for node runners? Will it be the same? Or how are node operators rewarded from the Treasury?

COTI:

Community:

Also, curious about what the “risk level” is supposed to mean. Not sure what the risk should be by just staking and earning because of transaction fees raised and distributed

COTI:

The Whitepaper for the Treasury will be published soon and all the details will be revealed.

Community:

I just want to thank Shahaf and the Team for the work they have already done and are doing! STAYCOTI ❤️

COTI:

I see a few questions about Cardano.

Cardano and COTI are very close. We speak with various members of the foundation or IOG almost on a daily basis.

You have all seen ADA Pay and will soon see a lot of partnerships that it led to. We are onboarding new partners to the system and will announce it according to the partners’ schedule (we let them announce first).

You have seen NFT auctions which we have recently built with Cardano and Wolfram Alpha.

https://twitter.com/COTInetwork/status/1431971503093002243

NFTs are huge and there are more partners, some very well known, that are now integrating NFT auctions with us.

That said, what you see today is just the tip of the iceberg. We are working on very big things with Cardano. If all goes well, we’ll be able to announce a new product with Cardano during Cardano’s upcoming summit in September. It’s big.

Community:

Any answer about the release of a new node ?

COTI:

We will continue to add nodes. We have been busy with the preparations for Mainnet 2.0 and the Huobi integration, and wanted to make sure the network is stable in the process, so we didn’t add more nodes to not add possible complications. However, now that everything is in place, we’ll be adding more nodes. The network is even stronger now

COTI:

I hope you are all playing the NFT game. The Autumn season of the COTI NFT game has started and you still have a chance to join the COTI NFT game and win insane prizes. 1st place will win 1,000,000 $COTI (almost $400K now)

Last week we had the Summer Seasonal raffle, with 2 lucky winners, winning 52,000 $COTIs each! This week we will have the first raffle of our Autumn season — If you haven’t clicked on the Claim button, remember to do so for the next raffle.

The Claiming session starts every Thursday at 1 pm UTC, and ends every Sunday at 7 am UTC, during the weekly raffles.

https://medium.com/cotinetwork/coti-will-launch-an-nft-game-with-insane-coti-prizes-of-over-2-000-000-coti-57f6d6acd0ef

COTI:

Guys, I’d like to leave you with the next things to expect and follow:

1. Mainnet 2.0 in the coming weeks, maybe even September

2. A Whitepaper for the treasury. It will blow your mind

3. New product with Cardano — to be announced in the Cardano summit

4. CVI roadmap — next week

5. Bank accounts and Debit cards are almost here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tphit9ZnO7w