Empowering the Next Generation Economy

Published in

THE Foundation

17 min readJan 24, 2021

INTRODUCTION

Everest is a next generation blockchain + fintech platform bringing the mass-market of users and traditional financial institutions into the decentralized finance (DeFi), crypto + fiat future.

The meteoric rise of DeFi pushed over USD $14 billion into stablecoins in 2020, and over $24 billion into swapping in September 2020 alone — only to see networks get overwhelmed with transactions taking 24 hours or more to process, and cost $5–200/transaction¹. And with wallet addresses cresting over 100 million users, the demand is parabolic. Similarly, the first generation of fintech saw companies like Coinbase, Revolut, Monzo, N26, Chime, Transferwise, and others offer new digital financial services to grab market share from the slower, traditional financial institutions (FIs) — and garner multi-billion-dollar valuations in the process. Everest represents the next generation of blockchain + fintech infrastructure platform, combining the best of both worlds.

The Problems:

Blockchains like Ethereum, where 96% of DeFi is currently transacting, were not designed to handle the speed, cost, regulatory, UX and reach requirements needed to go mass market with DeFi or run a “real economy”. The fragmentation on a technical, regulatory and regional basis is solvable by Everest to create a true mass market.

SCALE: Layer one protocol suppliers like Ethereum can’t process transactions quickly or cost-effectively. According to Vitalik, “The L1 is nearly unusable for many classes of applications, and there’s no non-L2 path that can get us to scalability in the short-to-medium term”, and that is likely for years to come. In September 2020, we witnessed networks get overwhelmed with transactions taking 24 hours or more to process, and cost $5–200/transaction¹. An L2 solution, be it a rollup, optimism or plasma is required.

COMPLIANCE: And despite all the hype and transactions, few are taking regulations seriously — “56% of them (exchanges) did not follow KYC guidelines at all despite anti-money laundering (AML) regulations. The highest number of such exchanges are in Europe — a region renowned for stricter regulations. However, 60% of European Virtual Asset Service Providers have deficient KYC practices……21 decentralized exchanges, DEXs, found that a whopping 81% had weak, or no, know-your-customer (KYC) practices…..didn’t think DeFi would escape regulations for long.²” Even initiatives like Stellar and Ripple only perform inter-bank settlement (they rely on custodians to handle the regulatory issues, KYC/AML users, and don’t offer access to multiple services). The DeFi protocol developers can’t do custodianship, verify identities, or do fiat-in themselves. Akin to BitTorrent, inventor of p2p transfer protocol, which was legally able to produce and market a protocol, yet unable to legally distribute content or transfer value, DeFi requires an entity (Everest fills this role) that will (a) comply with legal + regulatory rules, and (b) on-board the hundreds of millions of users who are clamoring for the benefits of DeFi.

UX and REACH: Consumers demand a seamless mobile experience to manage their money where they want, when they want, and into whatever investment or account they want. Consumers are demanding and moving to financial platforms that meet their demands of user-centricity, mobility and connectivity.

They want to easily move money and crypto between savings, checking, investment and other accounts, without the hassle of mapping wallets, converting four types of crypto currencies to be potentially rewarded with a fifth reward token. We cannot expect users to understand TCP/IP, managing their own server farms or program hard-drive backups. Simply put, consumers want to easily and for-free (not charged 2–5% as many fiat on-ramp providers do) transfer from their bank account into something that earns them more yield. And Many consumers simply want to hand cash to an agent (yes, over 80% of the world still runs on cash; and yes, even industrialized economies like EU are over 65% on cash).

Currently, fiat on-ramps are limited to just that function. And all the current players are limited to where they secured a license or regulatory approval (i.e. 30 US states, or just Eurozone). Yet, as Everest is demonstrating, the DeFi market does not need to function in such a fragmented way, nor be limited to regional, usually industrialized, markets.

In sum, consumers demand a seamless mobile experience to manage their money where they want, when they want, and into whatever investment or account they want — and they are migrating to financial platforms that meet their demands of user-centricity, mobility and connectivity. By its very nature, blockchain and DeFi can’t get to mass-market with a single ecosystem that cost-effectively and seamlessly allows users to come in and out of crypto and fiat and various savings, lending, swapping, investing vehicles. Not one single company is currently capable, legally or technically, of putting it all under one roof — until Everest!

The Solution: Everest’s Global “Banking Platform”

Everest combines secure, mass-market biometrics and encryption technologies to facilitate identity creation/verification, account creation, and transaction tracking and validation. With any smartphone, a user or Financial Institution can capture a myriad of biometrics (e.g. face, palm, finger) and create an account — Everest accomplishes this in minutes and for pennies per customer, compared to days and tens of dollars as necessitated by traditional financial institutions (FIs). The patent-pending “datagram” of attaching biometrics to an ERC20 wallet with associated distributed storage for authentication and authorization, promotes true agency for end-users; that is, no one can open users’ accounts except the user themselves. And with the combination of storage of tokenized money and docs with a blockchain, users’ can granularly share attestations, attributes, digitized monies, etc. at their leisure. Further, by being a regulated custodian with the ability to issue its own Stablecoin, and leveraging an incredibly scalable ledger (300,000 transactions per second; considered a “rollup” to Ethereum mainnet), Everest is positioned to bring DeFi into the mass market.

By vertically integrating all FI functionality, including biometric identity creation/verification, remote onboarding, virtual account creation, multiple currencies, bridge to DeFi protocol processing, cross-border, crypto, payment stack & rails, and regulatory compliance, Everest delivers all the necessary requirements to satisfy the regulatory regimes, and the demands of mass market DeFi consumers. Everest’s patent-pending biometric identity + cloud account technology solves the problems associated with cost, reach and compliance that prevent FIs from offering these new services in order to remain competitive with their larger brethren. Further, due to recent regulatory changes in Europe, Everest is now licensed to issue and process payments of “programmable money”, which can be turned into any national currency, crypto, gift card or eVoucher; and since the programming of money is un-regulated (like a closed-loop, gift card), Everest is allowed to offer the service globally with merely a merchant or payment account in a given country. Everest is regulated in Europe, adhering to GDPR guidelines and is also compliant with California’s recent CCPA data privacy law.

The recent regulatory approval of Everest in the Europe for stablecoins/eVouchers opens up the opportunity to accept deposits, issue instructions on “programmable money” and process payments on a global basis; a capability Everest can endow partners, like legacy financial institutions, local payment providers, mobile carriers, any community globally. Due to these patent-pending innovations, and recent regulatory changes, Everest’s platform delivers new services like: access to and processing of DeFi protocols, instant cross-border sending, conditional loans, remote on-boarding, credit scoring, digital money orders, purchase of crypto, etc.

Recognition:

Visa Everywhere Initiative — Semi-finalist in two categories 2020
Visa Fast Track — 2020
Ethereum Foundation — 2019 grant winner (eKYC on Mainnet)
Inclusive FinTech 50–2019 winner
Oregon Enterprise Blockchain Venture Studio — 2019 winner
New America, Blockchain Impact Ledger — recognized in 2019
Approved vendor list of United Nations and Asian Development Bank

Partners:

PLATFORM SUMMARY

The Everest platform consists of the following six modules:

Gateway Node: enables FI partners to quickly and seamlessly integrate Everest with their own legacy financial platforms via lightweight, secure and inexpensive APIs.
Identity Verification: Quick and inexpensive biometric ID creation & verification with integrated KYC/AML. Any smartphone made in the past seven years (with an auto-focus camera) can create or verify a user’s identity. A user does not need any device at all if relying on an agent’s smartphone, and a host of different biometrics are possible.
Universal Account: An account in the cloud that stores documents, identity data, access to bank accounts, currencies and investment vehicles. Also, the account provides access to the 4+ billion users who don’t have a smartphone and are often un-bankable; a user with the proverbial shirt on their back can visit an agent with a smartphone or ATM with camera, scan their face, type in their PIN and then access their account to make a withdrawal or deposit.
Stablecoin: an eVoucher that functions like programmable money, or a digital gift card, with full compliance tracking and reporting — and salable globally. For example, a user can send a voucher from Europe to his mom in Mexico that can only be used to pay for utilities, or convert a national currency to/from crypto. FI partners can program their own “money” with Everest’s tools, or use Everest’s eVoucher on a co-label basis.
Ledger Management: Tracks all inbound/outbound transactions associated with a given account, and ensures that compliance rules are satisfied for the FI and its regulators.
Network: A network of fiat and crypto accounts in US, Europe, Australia, Indonesia, Philippines, Mexico, India, and elsewhere that enables Everest to send money cross-border in minutes and for pennies.

In terms of integration, Everest integrated a full vertical stack of Identity, KYC/AML, Wallet, Fiat-in/out, Custody, Stablecoin, Remittance, Card, Interbank and DeFi capabilities…..into a single platform.

ID TOKEN MODEL

Everest Foundation offers Stakers, eAgents and eTellers the cost-competitive, vertically integrated solution from Everest Networks for onboarding an account with integrated eKYC + compliance, and the ability to effectively resell Everest-supplied services, such as DeFi (savings, lending/borrowing, swapping, etc.), international routing, peer-to-merchant. Stakers, eAgents, and eTellers are incentivized through the ID token, a utility token that rewards virality and holding.

The Everest platform leverages the power, transparency and security of blockchain technologies to deliver a new economic model. Organizations who want to monetize their communities need a tool set like those provided by Everest: verifiable identity (biometrics ensure deduplication, and a user can only have one “top” account), regulatory licenses, cash-in/out, access to DeFi protocols that are fast and cost-effective.

To enable this, Everest utilizes both (a) a virtual financial asset/token, the ID, and (b) a stablecoin, the CRDT. The ID token unlocks various capabilities of the Everest platform for holders and acts as a governance utility for the future development of the ecosystem. The CRDT, or “Credit”, is the native currency that Individuals and Institutions use to verify identities and exchange value; all taking place on Everest transaction protocol. Akin to Switzerland or export-led national economies, Everest will generate a surplus of CRDTs, USD, or similar stable currency based on the profitable transactions that occur over the ecosystem.

ID Token

The total supply of ID tokens is 800 million. The ID token is a virtual financial asset/token, (utility functionality, per legal opinion in Europe with availability in over 170 countries) endowing holders with rewards, voting and governance rights, and enabling access to the network and the myriad of applications and services that are available in the economy. Team and Strategic Partners, Consultants are locked for six months. Reserves are locked for 18 months. Ecosystem development locked until eAgents and eTellers produce revenue accordingly.

CRDT Stablecoin

The CRDT is a stablecoin currently pegged to the USD and can be used to transact on the network or can be cashed in for fiat less a transaction fee. Each CRDT will effectively carry a smart contract to grant reward tokens to eAgents and eTellers. Users will have incentive to participate, as they will receive Staker bonuses, which will grow as the number of users and resulting transaction value increases. Transactions can only be done in CRDT credits/currency, and incentive rewards are based in ID tokens.

Market Incentivized Model

Stakers are given rewards & varying levels of access to the platform based on how many tokens they stake, and the associated voting rights to determine the future of elements of the platform. Stakers also have access to lower fees & higher returns.

ID tokens are purchased and held by Stakers (i.e. Users, Gateway operators, custodians, financial institutions, messaging companies, mobile operators, etc.) and eAgents, which grant them access to the network for a limited amount of time, similar to a SaaS “seat”. Holding IDs will entitle Stakers to additional rewards, like the following:

5% APY to hold IDs in their EverWallets
25% APY to stake/lockup IDs in their EverWallets for 90 days
40% APY to stake/lockup IDs in their EverWallets for 365 days

Staking at one of the below levels unlocks benefits like reduced transaction fees and increased reward rates.

Silver: 10,000 IDs

Save 5% on fees for buying crypto, remittances, swapping, borrowing
Earn additional 0.25% on savings

Gold: 25,000 IDs

Save 10% on fees for buying crypto, remittances, swapping, borrowing
Earn additional 0.5% on savings

Platinum: 50,000 IDs

Global Debit Card in 2021 (European & US residents; 2nd can be anywhere)
Earn additional 0.75% on savings

Stakers will also be required to hold varying amounts of IDs for functions like market-specific applications, such as SDK, API access, medical records, land title, voting eligibility, aggregated data, anonymous geographic market research, credit scores, smart contract functionality beyond simple cash transfer, etc. Similarly, when updates, changes and additional features are proposed, ID holders will govern those choices.

Governance: Stakers can determine the direction of Everest. As a regulated financial institution, Everest is legally required to maintain control over elements like compliance, but such things as adding new features, allocating a portion of the ecosystem pool can be determined by the community. For example, the community could vote to incentivize penetration in the Philippines with 1M location-specific ID tokens that can only be used for sign ups in the Philippines, or 1M ID tokens if 50k users sign up in 30 days; both scenarios leveraging Everest’s programmable token.

Ecosystem Development: eAgents and eTellers: eAgents are organizations who manage eTellers, and eTellers are those who sign up users to the various Everest services. eAgents & eTellers earn tokens based on the number of friends signed up, and the associated fees generated by their friends. Kyber, for example, is an eAgent, who will earn reward ID tokens, and pass those on to their users. The commission schedule is as follows:

20% commissions, paid in ID tokens on the monthly average price of IDs in USD
eAgents & eTellers sign up users to an Everest wallet using an affiliate link or agent app, and split the commission 50/50.
eTellers are individuals who register users who perform functions like send/receive remittances, buy/sell crypto, save in an account, etc.
i.e. An eAgent Organization signs up five eTellers, who bring on 1,000 users, who generate fees of $50/user/month = $50,000. So, the eAgent and eTellers would receive rewards of $10k/month in ID tokens.

Services: In addition to facilitating fundamental digital services, (onboarding, KYC/AML, account creation) for users, Stakers, eAgents & eTellers, Everest supplies a bevy of financial services. Similar to LendingTree, which initially offered loans and then expanded to provide access to insurance, credit cards, savings accounts, checking accounts, Everest offers services including (a) DeFi products and services, (b) Purchase of Crypto and USD stable accounts, (c) Cross-border transactions, and (d) Programmable Money.

(a) DeFi: Savings, Lending and Investing — Everest already has integrations and/or accounts into centralized and DeFi providers, like Aave, Kyber, Uniswap, Deltec and Bity, that enable Everest to offer attractive loans and interest-bearing accounts. Since the aforementioned DeFi providers (Aave, Kyber, Uniswap) typically only accept deposits via crypto, Everest acts as a bridge to traditional FI partners; and the centralized financial partners (Bity, Deltec) primarily offer services in crypto and require an extraordinary amount of compliance and regulatory rigor. Everest will bridge many of the existing DeFi protocols to its platform for a simple, one-click access to these products and services, globally. Given Everest’s reach to accept fiat/cash-in/out in, AND its abilities to do nearly free transactions, in under 5 seconds with integrated KYC and compliance, especially in emerging markets, positions it to take significant market share.
(b) Purchase of Crypto and USD accounts: Everest offers many unique services, such as setting up a USD-backed account, which is attractive in many markets where inflation runs rampant, or where negative interest rates prevail. The demand for a USD-backed stable account is currently soaring, with companies like Tether growing from $4 billion at the beginning of 2020 to $10 billion in August 2020³. Everest is the custodian in these cases, and offers advantages of easy, cost-effective onboarding in emerging markets, and integrated KYC/AML and monitoring services.
(c) Cross-border: If a staking partner wishes to resell cross-border money movement services, the partner purchases and holds ID tokens. When money is moved & converted, the transaction is translated into CRDT tokens to facilitate regulatory compliance, stability, reporting, and Everest receives a small percentage of the transaction. For example, Everest will earn 0.25–0.50% of the money sent cross-border from Papua New Guinea, where the commercial partner is the custodian. In Europe and Australia, Everest is the custodian and takes the deposit, processes the transaction itself and it earns 3–5% of the transaction.
(d) Programmable money: Everest is one of the few platform suppliers which has secured regulatory approval to sell, program and process electronic vouchers or “programmable money” (CRDTs) that can be converted into crypto or other digital assets, or a myriad of fiat currencies with conditions. Everest can sell “programmable money” in the form of CRDTs globally, or enable our partners to do so. In addition to converting to national or crypto currencies, Everest can program money to be time-limited (i.e. must spend in next 30 days), place-limited (i.e. must be spent in 95129 zip code), or even purpose-limited (i.e. must be spent on food or medicine). A recent article on Nasdaq.com articulates how this can be combined with medical records (i.e. a voucher that can only be spent on a Covid-19 test, and the test results are privately stored in the user’s account), and a case study on how Everest solved subsidy delivery for the Indonesian government and BRI bank is described here. Similar to a Nike or Home Depot gift card, a closed-loop system, where the issuer must also redeem for goods & services, not money, Everest can program the money to be more “open-loop”, like a debit card — redeemable for national or crypto currencies. Use cases range from sending a friend mobile minutes in Colombia, to payment of a mother’s utility bill in Mexican pesos, to simply buying Bitcoin. Everest earns 0.5% to 1.5% of the transaction for simple conversion to crypto (depending on amount and cash-in medium: credit card, bank account), and from 2.5% to 5% when combined with sending overseas or other complicated instructions, depending on volume, and if sold directly, or a revenue share when an FI resells the service. The competition typically charges customers between 1% to 3.5%. Due to vertical integration that includes customer on-boarding, eKYC/AML, integrated compliance and account creation, Everest is much more cost-effective than alternative solutions.

By integrating the market-leading crypto and stock derivates exchange, Everest is poised to bring crypto and digital finance to the masses. With market-beating low fees, earnings will be significant.

Example eAgent and Staking partners are Kyber and Aave, upcoming integrations, where Everest will perform User onboarding with KYC/AML to an EverWallet; convert Users’ fiat to crypto, and place in the respective DeFi protocol for the User. Organizations like Kyber and Aave will accrue a small amount of reward tokens, and the majority will be passed down to their users, thus incentivizing eAgent, channel adoption. And they will thus be Stakers over time as well.

An example Staking partner is Kina Bank

Cross-border money sending and compliance with KinaBank (publicly held 2nd largest bank, largest wealth management, largest stock brokerage and largest fund administrator in Papua New Guinea) — First phase delivery 2019, working on 2nd phase anticipated complete in Q4, 2020. Anticipated to continue with 3rd and 4th phases in 2021 and a 5th phase in 2022. Announcement here

Jointly offering cross-border services to the nation of Papua New Guinea
Mobile-first applications to facilitate onboarding + eKYC and performing cross-border money transfer
Implementing a self-service eKYC onboarding experience to quickly onboard new customers
Kina Bank: First phase delivery in 2019 completed and we are working on 2nd phase to be delivered in Q4, 2020. Continuing with 3rd and 4th phases in 2021–22.
KYC/AML + Processing cross-border are part of contract, and the rest is potential additional services

The $390,000 setup fee for various services they access equated to 125k ID tokens staked for 12 months.

SYNERGIES

Everest will earn fees not only the fiat-to-crypto conversions for Aave, Kyber and others, and on eKYC + cross-border remittances, it will facilitate access for all Users to receive services from FTX, or Kina Bank, or Aave or Kyber, or any other partner that partners with Everest.

Recent Press:

Case Studies:

Proved humanness and uniqueness attached to a wallet in Indonesia. Additionally, Everest showed that it could program money, and send to users (even those without a device) with full transparency.
Proved KYC status attached to a wallet in Australia + Samoa The platform showed that a KYCed identity can be associated with a wallet, and we can track transactions in real-time with automated reporting.
Proved organizational/corporate identity being made up of two or more individual identities with GLEIF This means companies can have identities, do transactions, and adhere to various reporting and legal requirements.
Proved a person or org can share their identity attributes (human & unique, KYC status, Organization) over Ethereum mainnet. VASPs can use Everest as the oracle to verify KYC status of any wallet.
Registration by an agent, when the user has no device, can be seen here: https://youtu.be/EcuV_qpPZp0. Authentication and transaction of eMoney over the ledger can be seen here: https://youtu.be/ti_UBUOjXHc. When using fingerprints or palm-prints, Everest accommodates countries where burkas are prevalent.

WHY THE EVEREST ECONOMY WILL SUCCEED

Existing traction in the market from world-class, tier-one institutions
A technically differentiated, scalable, cost-effective and secure solution built on disruptive technology
A large market opportunity with an incentivized ecosystem that promotes virality and holding
Multiple recurring revenue streams attached to various services

[1]: https://decrypt.co/43763/vitalik-buterin-ethereums-nearly-unusable-for-many-app-types

[2]: https://cointelegraph.com/news/more-than-half-of-all-crypto-exchanges-have-weak-or-no-id-verification

[3]: https://eng.ambcrypto.com/stablecoins-half-yearly-performance-will-tether-be-overtaken-anytime-soon/

Empowering the Next Generation Economy

ID Token

CRDT Stablecoin

By integrating the market-leading crypto and stock derivates exchange, Everest is poised to bring crypto and digital finance to the masses. With market-beating low fees, earnings will be significant.

Written by The Foundation