Ferrum Network Ama Hosted By CryptoCabital

CryptoCabital hosted FerrumNetwork Chief Operations Officer Ian Friend,
who have joined the group to answer numerous questions in the group during a LIVE AMA.

Here is a recap for those who missed the live event:

Let me welcome our today’s guest from Ferrum Network:
🤝 Ian Friend (Co-Founder, COO) who have joined CryptoCaBital group to answer our questions

Q1: Ian @ifriend05 could you please introduce yourself, tell us a bit about Ferrum Network in a few sentences? Why did you and Naiem Yeganeh found Ferrum Network?

A: Sure so Ferrum Network is really two things — 1) a high-speed interoperability DAG network that can connect to nearly any blockchain and 2) the advanced financial products that will run on the network such as fiat gateways, wallet, cold storage, and DEX. Our first fiat gateway — First Kudi — is already live with users in Nigeria and expanding to other West African countries. Our other products are in the pipeline, including staking which will be opening up for contributions this upcoming week. https://ferrum.network/staking/

So part two of question 1: why did we found Ferrum Network? Naiem and I identified a gap in the market when it came to blockchain projects — the fact is that there a lot of them but hardly any real-world usage. So we wanted to approach things in the more traditional way: build useful financial products and then migrate them onto a decentralized network, rather than the other way around. This is why we started with Kudi, acquiring real users, and are going from there.

Q2: I am a fan of FRM when I joined your campaign in past, so I really worry about some issues in recent AMA, you said FRM doesn’t have enough budget for marketing and listing on more exchanges, so how did this problem solve? And if FRM doesn’t enough money to rent good engineers how will FRM’s products catch up others??

A: To be perfectly clear, there is enough budget for good engineers, in fact, we just hired 4 more bringing the total to 5 full time. The issue really comes down to high price exchange listings. Did you know OkEX charges $600,000 for a listing even in the bear market? We only raised $1.12milion on purpose — our plan was never to overvalue ourselves and raise so much more than necessary simply to hand it over to the massive exchanges.
I think this would have been a disservice to our investors and community. In terms of big exchange listings, we must leverage the community and other strengths rather than just pay massive listing fees. I want to be perfectly upfront with that: Ferrum will never spend outrageous sums of money on listings.

Q3: What are your top 3 marketing strategies to attract customers to use your solution? Why people choose you instead of others?

A: Fundamentally, the first reason is superior technology in an easy to use UI. Take Kudi for example, its the only app in Africa that allows you to send fiat currency instantly for 0 fees right through What’s App, plus give you access to investments in Bitcoin, and lower business costs with a point of sale system. Int terms of marketing, it comes down to being very aggressive with guerilla marketing and getting hands dirty by getting to know our customers. This is why we do so many AMAs. Its why we have on the ground in Nigeria going door to door signing up merchants. It also requires educating our users about the benefits of our products. So while we are smart with our marketing budget, we are quite aggressive yet cost-effective.

Q4: Your metamorphosis is a laudable one, how have you been able to survive this longest bear market and to what extent have the recent bear market have on the project development

A: Thank you, surviving the bear market has not been easy. Our entire existence has been through a bear market but it is only made us stronger. By being frugal and focused, we were able to build and launch Kudi on less than $100k. We take these lessons of frugality as we continue to grow, and it means we will be able to survive for many years even if the market stays down.

Q5: Currently, there are 3 products of the Ferrum network are ready.
So, What’s the next upcoming product we can see from Ferrum network?

A5: So right now we have one main product (First Kudi — formerly Kudi Exchange), and two smaller products — token bridge and ERC-20 staking. The next product to launch is UniFyre Wallet which is a non-custodial wallet like Trust Wallet but with many more features. https://unifyre.io/ this will be launched end of this year or early next, as development is ongoing now.

Q6: Could you explain the main utilities and use-cases of Ferrum coins.
What is the real-world use case of Ferrum network coins? Where we can use Ferrum coins?

A: This an important question. So FRM has numerous utilities — the primary is that it will be the gas of the network and will burn with each transaction. But prior to the main net, we will be incorporating FRM into the Kudi app for direct purchase with fiat, and as a rewards token which will be redeemable for real money, in which case we will buy back and burn it. It will also be required to unlock certain features in our wallets, among other utilities that we are discussing internally now.

Q7: As today we see 90% of traders only see short term trading profit without understanding the project’s long term strength and I believe Ferrum would be one of the precious projects of 2019–2020 in the crypto field by seeing your roadmap on Kudi and lots of exciting updates are coming to my question is IN Q4 2020 why you planned to rebrand Kudi exchange will this create hard to understand to current users?

A: Yes we see this as a major challenge — how do we encourage people in the space to think a bit more long term? For one, we over-deliver on our promises and demonstrate our fundamental value. For two, we aggressively market Ferrum so everyone knows who we are. Even short term traders will start to see the value especially if they realize our market cap as compared to our underlying value. But in terms of Kudi, the rebrand has not been confusing to our customers, so its mostly an opportunity to showcase new features on the app including the addition of FRM and ETH into the Kudi app, which should be out by end of this month or next month.

Q8: I just checked the Ferrum Product “ Subzero Wallet, really Amazing!!
But can you tell us how the Subzero wallet is more secure than other even hardware wallets? Which security technology is being used in the Subzero wallet?

A: So Sub Zero Wallet is designed to address a major gap in the market, and that is currently cold storage products like Trezor and Ledger are pretty expensive and not accessible in many parts of the world. For instance, it’s hard to get them shipped out Nigeria! Also, they are difficult to use and have a poor UX. With our technology, we can create a cold storage app in an offline phone, So you can turn your old smartphone into an ultra-secure and easy to use cold storage app! We can also make an enterprise-level version of it as well. Really looking forward to launching Sub Zero Wallet sometime next year.

Q9: So you mention that the Subzero wallet is more secure than a ledger. How can any mobile wallet be more secure than any hardware wallets?

A: So an offline phone actually has less connection to the internet than a thumb drive device inserted into your computer. In addition, we have other technology to create an extra layer of security for sub-zero wallet.

Q10: Adoption and UTILITY is very key, what plans are in place to drive global adoption and expansion of FERRUM and what’s the real-life use case and application of FERRUM

A: Yes adoption and utility are everything, which is why we are on the ground in Nigeria signing up customers one by one in person. But aside from our efforts in Africa, there is another part of our business model which involves opening other fiat gateways in different regions of the world in partnership with locals on the ground. And then we tie these products together with our non-custodial Dapps like UniFyre Wallet. In terms of expansion, we are in the early stages of the Middle East and Brazil. It’s still early days but we hope to announce something official soon.

Q11: Following the most recent support for crypto and blockchain technology from China, does FERRUM consider China as a target market and Asia as a whole?

A: Yes so we are very bullish on China, which is one reason we partnered with PCHAIN to help us understand this market and become more connected to it. In fact, we plan to launch a Chinese version of UniFyre Wallet. You can see some early renderings here

Q12: Can you tell about Kudi Exchange? Where are you now (number of users and money transfer per day), what is your short and mid-term goal (number of users and money transfer), and what is your roadmap to achieve those goals?

A: So Kudi is growing slowly but surely, and now has over 3000 active users and over 100 merchants on the product. We had run into an issue with deposits into the app which had been somewhat of a slow process. But we just solved this by partnering with Providus Bank and giving each user a bank account at that bank. Now you can deposit money into the Kudi App in less than a minute. Now that this roadblock is solved, we are expecting an uptick in growth, especially after we add FRM and ETH and announce the rebrand with the major marketing campaign we have planned.

Q13: What is Social mining? How does it work? @ifriend05
Ferrum recently launched staking. Can you talk more about it? What are the advantages of staking on Ferrum?

A: Yes so two unique products we have now are social mining and staking. Social mining is a community-driven rewards program that allows participants to be rewarded in FRM every 2 weeks for their value-added contributions in terms of marketing like Tweets, articles, videos, etc. All is required is to sign up and hold a minimum 5000 FRM. community.ferrum.network

Our flexible ERC-20 staking is also very unique and interesting. With it, you can earn up to 50%+ rewards on your FRM tokens. We offer 3 staking pools, short-medium, and long term, each with different rewards structures. We also give people the option to withdraw early so you have the flexibility and will still get some rewards. However, if you stake until full maturity you will also get some of the rewards given up by those who left early. So there is an element of fun and competition to it and it opens this week.

Q14: What business models can Ferrum Network’s payment technology apply? Are your customers’ businesses or government organizations?

A: So our payments technology is actually a b2c model. You can send fiat currency to anyone in the world right through What’s App and the money appears instantly in the other person wallet for 0 fees. Businesses can also use this technology, especially in that we offer a point of sale system within the Kudi app that uses this same instant fiat payments tech.

Q15: I know that before joined Ferrum, you were a lawyer in New York, It maybe not related to the blockchain, so could you share with me why do you choose to join Ferrum and what does Faculty of Law help you with building FRM?

A: Yes so prior to Ferrum I was practicing law in NYC, where I co-founded the blockchain practice team at my firm. So I was already beginning to work in the crypto space prior to meeting Naiem and co-founding Ferrum. Those skills have been very helpful in that we have saved probably at least $30k on lawyer fees because I was able to do the legal work myself.

Q16: You are putting the power of blockchain technology in the palm of your hands, do you consider ignorance and lack crypto knowledge a barrier to this, and how can Ferrum successfully ensure real-world adoption?

A: So yes this is a huge challenge especially in Africa where there is less understanding of crypto, although there is a great interest in learning. So we have started an education campaign involving in-person presentations and meetups, online courses and quizzes, and in general, being very responsive in the community to any questions about the value of cryptocurrencies in people’s everyday lives.

Q17: 50% earnings with staking is one of the highest rewards in crypto. Are you not afraid that the value will be lost if there is such high inflation?

A: So even with the high rewards, the amount being staked is not that high. These 3 staking contracts will result in 2.2 million FRM being introduced into the ecosystem, but only after 18 months. So it’s not really a big concern of ours.

Q18: And staking structure with 3 staking pools and reward rates will stay the same after the Mainnet launch?

A: Probably not. Staking after main net will involve running a node. Youll need a lot more than 5000 FRM to participate. Also the rewards will be based on the number of transactions your node helped verify (plus probably some bonus), so the structure will be different.

Q19: You have distributed all the (pre) sale tokens correct?

A: Yes all investor tokens are completely distributed. There are no more investor distributions and there are no more bounty distributions. The only tokens coming online are marketing tokens, which are being used for AMAs like these, and social mining (about 250k tokens every month are distributed monthly to our participants).

Q20: In a short time Ferrum Network attracted great interest. What do you attribute this to? Investors always support good projects. He pays attention to promising projects. Do you agree?

A: I think Ferrum has a long way to go in terms of interest. There are entire communities that have never heard of us. This is not acceptable, and one reason we do so many AMAs and have many community initiatives. Our approach is very community-driven. 14,000 dedicated supporters are a lot more effective than one small team, no matter how active we are.

Q21: Ferrum has the plan to launch many payment gateways for fiat on over the world, but in some countries (as my country), the government doesn’t approve cryptocurrency yet, so how will Ferrum face and solve this problem?

A: Yes flag bearers are basically nodes. The incentives will be in the form of FRM payouts, but the amounts have not been determined yet. it’s going to depend on a lot of factors that we don’t have enough data for yet. There will be many nodes and running a node will be easy and rewarding in order to increase decentralization and security.

Q22: Ferrum has the plan to launch many payment gateways for fiat on over the world, but in some countries (as my country), the government doesn’t approve cryptocurrency yet, so how will Ferrum face and solve this problem?

A: We only focus on countries where there is an established demand for cryptocurrencies and an open stance toward crypto, and also don’t have too many major incumbents. We can’t be everywhere at once. So it’s better to focus on places where we can succeed.

Q23: What distinguishes Ferrum with other cryptos so we have to buy it? Why not try to list on Binance? I heard the need a 1500 BNB listing price…

A: Well, we have a working product with users (First Kudi, and two other products (staking and token bridge) so if you want a project with substance, Ferrum provides that. We also have strong token metrics and low cap. We also do a lot of marketing and have now been noticed by major influencers like Moonwalker. We don’t give investment advice, but if you like a team that works hard, follows through on their promises and does right by their community, then I personally believe you will like Ferrum.
Also in terms of Binance, that fee is for Binance DEX. Which FRM is already listed on. In terms of Binance the fees are quite high, so to get there we must leverage our community and unique qualities like our fiat gateway in Africa.

Q24: Why is Ferrum running on DAG consensus, why have you chosen this and what advantages does it hold over another consensus?

A: Ferrum chose a DAG because it’s inherently faster and more scalable than a blockchain. There are no miners and so transactions are much faster.
We have Kudi rebrand coming up, along with UniFyre Wallet. 2019 was a challenging yet exciting year. We went through a lot dealing with the bear market. Many people are not that interested in crypto anymore. So this also makes it hard to get users on the products. But we took those lessons and evolved. We now focus on education and face to face marketing. We also continue to be very frugal because no one really knows when this alt winter will end.
UniFyre Wallet comes out in the next few months. I got an update on it the other day from the devs. It will be very impressive.
https://medium.com/ferrumnetwork/tech-update-from-ferrums-ceo-naiem-yeganeh-6bbf0eb58ae

Q25: Is there anything being done about liquidity for FRM tokens? The order books on Bitmax where the majority of the volume is generated is rather thin.

A: The long term solution to liquidity (and many other challenges) is attracting new investors and traders. This is done by launching great products and marketing them heavily. It is also helpful to have a strong community behind us, which we are blessed to have.

Q26: Ian, is there anything you want to say to us and our members that you have not yet said here with the questions

A: Not at this time, other than I encourage you all to join the Ferrum community and feel free to ask questions there anytime. We have excellent CMs there to help, and I am often around to answer questions directly. If you are interested in earning FRM, you can also join social mining and begin adding value to our marketing efforts! And don't forget staking is out this week so please get your tokens ready!!

Ferrum Network Links:

Website: https://ferrum.network/
Telegram: http://telegram.ferrum.network
Twitter: http://twitter.ferrum.network
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.ferrum.network
YouTube: http://youtube.ferrum.network
Reddit: http://reddit.ferrum.network
Bitcoin Talk: http://bitcointalk.ferrum.network
Facebook: http://facebook.ferrum.network
Github: https://github.com/ferrumnet/
Instagram: http://instagram.ferrum.network