Ferrum Network / tehMoonwalkeR AMA
Here is a recap of the recent AMA conducted by tehMoonwalkeR with our COO Ian Friend for those of you who missed the live event:
→ What is Ferrum Network?
Ferrum Network is a fin tech company that has built a high-speed interoperability network designed for real-world financial applications. With Ferrum, users can exchange and transact any digital asset, peer-to-peer, in milliseconds, for near-zero fees. You can think of it like lightening network, but for all the blockchains!
→ We are building a vertically integrated line of financial applications on top of the network:
• Kudi Exchange: A Fiat-to-Crypto Exchange and Mobile Wallet in West Africa — The ONLY exchange/wallet in Africa to offer a U.S. Dollar Backed Stable Coin, Gemini Dollar
• UniFyre: Decentralized Crypto Wallet for Risk-Free OTC Transactions
• Infinity Dex: Cross-chain High Speed Decentalized Exchange.
• Subzero Wallet: A Revolutionary Cold Storage Mobile App Secured By Military Grade Technology
→ Exchanges
• FRM token is available to trade on BitMax, IDEX, Eterbase and Binance DEX
What is special and unique about the working products of Ferrum Network that people really use in day-to-day life?
From day one we realized we must build useful products otherwise we would not suceed. This is why we started with a fiat to crypto exhcange + payments app in the high growht region of Africa where crypto and fintech are really helping people. First Kudi is the only app in the region that allows you to buy/sell crypto, send real money instantly for no fees thru Waht’s App and has a US Dollar backed stable coin, and offers bank accounts to all our users. Coming next we are adding FRM to the app. Heres a peak at the new site
There are 3 core issues prevalent in crypto and blockchain: Security, Interoperability, and Scalability. How does #FERRUM plan to overcome these issues?
The underlying technology of Ferrum Network was designed originally to make existing cryptocurrencies faster and more scalable so you could actually use them for day to day needs. Right now bitcoin and eth network too slow to compete with Visa. Ferrum built a provisionally patented technology that allows you to import any digital asset into the network, and then excahgne/transact it much faster and cheaper than on its original blockchain. For a demo of how this looks check this out.
How Ferrum attracts developers to build dApps on Ferrum?
So we actually took a different approach from many projects. We arent trying to rely on others building on top of our network. We wanted to guarantee utility by building useful products first, then migrating them onto our network. This is why we started with Kudi in Africa and will launch our non-custodial wallet next (https://unifyre.io/) and then migrate those products onto our main net. However, it will also be easy for others to build on top of Ferrum, we just did not want to rely on it. Plus we realized we needed a revenue generating business in order to survive long term — cant just rely on the token to support yourself. That is bad for the project and bad for the community in our opinion.
How is FRM Token used in Ferrum Network? What are the benefits for long-term FTM holders?
So the FRM token has a number of utilities. First and foremost, it is the gas of the network like ETH is to Ethereum. Howveer the key difference is that every time a token is spent to run a transaction, it will be burned (although a portion will be distributed to those running nodes). So the token is inherently deflationary. Aside from that, the token will be used in Kudi as means of attracting premium members who will have to hold the token to receive benefits, and it will be used in our other products to unlock certain features, for instance our cold storage app Sub Zero Wallet. It is also being used now for our token bridge, staking and social mining.
A token’s price may not always be reflected by the project’s development. Why do you think Ferrum’s token holders should not be worried about the price?
I encourage everyone involved in the project to think long term. We are building a real business in Africa and like 5 other crypto-related products. These things take time and the price is usually impacted by the overall market conditions. Anyone concerned about our ability to execute should understand we built and launched a fiat gateway in Afica on less than $100k. Given enough time, I am completely confident Ferrum will be a major project in the blockchain space, especially considering we are about to launch a non-custodial wallet that has more features than even Trust Wallet, and this is coming out in a matter of months.
What is your progressive plan to ensure that project Network remains relevant & valuable in the next 5 years, in terms of adoption and use-cases ?
What is the vision of Ferrum in the era of Blockchain technology?
The challenge of a start up is to succeed in the short term and also maintain your vision for the future. For us it fundamentally comes down to being nimble and being able to build and launch products quickly in the face of ever changing market conditions while staying core to our values of transparency, honestly and generating real utility. For instance, we saw the market wanted staking. We launched staking in about 45 days from start of development to launch. Our devs are highly skilled and keep our pulse on the market. In addition our roadmap includes products that the market needs but doesnt have. There is no cold storage solution for emerging markets right now. Sub Zero Wallet takes an old smart phone and turns it into an ultra secure cold storage app. Infinity DEX will be among the first true cross-chain DEXes with advanced features like margin trading. We can do a lot on a little and dont plan on going anywhere for many years to come.
How do you plan to explain such technical topics to a wider audience? How do you plan to show the world that your product is not just another useless blockchain solution to a non-existing problem
Excellent question. One of our strengths lies in the fact we have an incredibly brilliant and technical co-founder who can build products at an extremely fast pace. I am not technical, however my training as a lawyer and litigating big cases in New York City courtrooms gave me the skills to breakdown and explain complicated concepts. If you read our whitepaper youll see it is actually relatively easy to understand. whitepaper.ferrum.network. But yes many blockchains have not come to their full potential. This is one reaons we started with the product and acquiring users, and then foucused on the underlying blockchain technology. Its a path that has proven succcessful since we alreahttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ferrum.kudidy have thousnads of users and hundreds of merchants using our app.
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?
Yes so Kudi beta was launched last week of May 2019. We have grown to over 3000 active users and over 100 merchants. However, we have not nearly reached our full potential. The app was launched as a beta and only in the Android store. Next we are adding iOS and also adding FRM and ETH to the app. This means not only can users buy FRM directly with fiat, it also means we can add more utility to the token within the app. For instance our merchants can become premium members and earn additional cash back if they hold a lot of FRM. This program is called Kash and Kudi and can be found on the site. Within the next year after the rebrand, we want to hit 100,000 active users and we can do this by aggresive on the ground marketing through our team in Lagos, and a strong influencer and traditional media campaigns. We also will be attracting interntioanl travelers to the app through the Kudi bank card. This is an underserved market that has a lot of disposible income. More on this to follow.
Ferrum launched staking. What are the advantages of staking on Ferrum?
So we just launched our first version of staking which is for ERC-20 tokens. It is very unique in that the user interface is very simple and easy to use, and it also offers a form of fun and competition since it is group staking and those who stake the longest earn some of the forfieted rewards of those who unstake early. For those who missed the 1st round of pools, it is quite likely we will open a 2nd round in the near future. Stay tuned. https://ferrum.network/staking/
Kudi app. I sincerely love this great app. My question is this. Do u guys have plan to add more cryptocurrencies apart from btc and eth
Thank you for using the Kudi app. You can refer friends and family and earn BTC. We will be adding FRM and ETH to the app. Otherwise your Kudi account will work for your UniFyre Wallet. UniFyre Wallet since it is aimed at a crypto audience will have many more cryptocurrencies. We will start with the majors and then add others based on community votes. Really looking forward to that.
Sending bitcoin in miliseconds?
While reading your whitepaper, I discovered that I can send bitcoin in milliseconds through Ferrum network. How possible is it. Pls convince me..
This is how it works. We have built advanced technology such as value pegs, decentralized proxy tokens and plug ins that allow Ferrum Network to connect to almost any other blockchain. Once connected, users can deposit BTC (or any other asset) into the Ferrum Network where a proxy of that BTC is created. The private key is broken down and randomly distributed among the nodes, and there are anti collusion measures in place. The proxy BTC or fe(btc) appears in your wallet. You can then send it over our network rather than the bitcoin network. Since our network is a DAG it is must faster and cheaper than a blockchain. This technology works for almost any digital asset, which is how we can create a cross-chain DEX for instance. This is simple explanation but for more detailed please check out the technical sections of the whitepaper: whitepaper.ferrum.network
What do you think about the vale of community support to a project?
Community is everything to us. We built Ferrum exclusively in the bear market. It has not been easy. We would not be here without such a supportive community. To give back we have a number of initiatives. The main one is social mining. This is like staking + bounties. You hold minimum 5000 FRM and create valuable content, and every 2 weeks you are rewarded in FRM. You can sign up here to learn more: community.ferrum.network
What business models can Ferrum Network’s payment technology apply? Are your customers’ businesses or government organizations?
Our business model is both B2C and B2B. So our exchanges and products are mostly B2C, like Kudi is. However, a part of our business model involves launching other fiat gateways in other regions of the world. To do this, we partner with locals on the ground who can secure the necessary licenses and banking connections to launch a fiat to crypto exchange and payments app. We provide the technology and some marketing support, and the team executes on the ground. This is how it works with Kudi and how it will work when we expand our fiat gateways elsewhere. Right now we are talking to teams in the Middle East and Brazil. We hope to announce something soon more official.
Currently, what are risks affecting the Ferrum project? In order to develop project in long term and attract investors, which method do you use to manage, minimize the negative impact of risks? I mean that, what are the risks and how do you deal with them?
There are many risks, like general risks in terms of execution and finding good product market fit, and also crypto specific risks like the market crashing. I think we have mitigated those risks on behalf of investors to a large degree because we only raised after we launched a product and acquired users. We also have diversified and do not rely solely on crypto products. For instance Kudi is also a remittances app and point of sale system. In fact most of our revenue in the bear market comes from the merchant services in the app. The fact that we have survived and even thrived in the bear market and launched an exchange on less than $100k budget is because we are very frugal and always think long term. I believe this is one reason investors have much confidence in us that we can keep executing at a high level.
FERRUM has planned to launch Fiat gateways in different countries m but sill it is barrier by government and they don’t approve crypto as valid currency. How will Ferrum face this and solve it?
We only target markets that have crypto-friendly regulations and have a strong market for our product. We believe emerging markets are the most promising in terms of actual crypto adoption and willingness to embrace crypto from a regulatory standpoint. This is because the legacy financial systems are not really present in these countries. Nigeria was the perfect market to start because it is a huge country (200 million peopple), deep smartphone penetration, strong interest in crypto (7th most BTC volume sin the world), openness to new technology and relatively weak fiat currency. We have identified the Middle East and South America as having similar characteristics which is why we are targeting these areas next, in additon to expanding Kudi to neighboring Ghana.
Ferrum network looks good but it confuses me that there are so many other Blockchain projects. What should I pay attention in ferrum network to give it the importance it deserves? What are you planning to achieve with your project?
There are indeed many blockchain projects. My suggestion is to focus on the ones with existing products and users. That should narrow it down quite a lot. But even among those it is about a few things. One execution. We have demonstrated this by launching a growign product in a challenging market. Two is understanding the crypto market. There is a reason we do non stop AMAs and have made strong relationships with hundreds of important people in the space over the past 1.5 years. Third is committment to community. We are extremely engaged with the community. We even know most of them on a personal basis. With these fundamentals, we hope to inspire confidence, even when times get tough.
As an investor and early adopter, I find it difficult to access/value a project in the short term and require longer periods of time to fully understand, recognise and value it. So, to help my understanding, can you tell me what plans are set in motion to add value to Ferrum?
Thank you for being with us from the beginning. The biggest thing in terms of value is utility. Without it, its just speculation. For us we had a longer term plan but realized we needed utility sooner. This is why we quickly launched a token bridge (which requires FRM to use), social mining (which requires you hold FRM to receieve rewards) and staking. Those are “early utilitiies”. Next we will add FRM to the Kudi app. This will open up a host of other utliities such as requiring our merchants to hold FRM in order to recieve benefits. But the big one comes when main net is launched and FRM is used to power transactions over the network. So sending a BTC to someone using UniFyre Wallet will be extremely fast, and only cost you about 1 cent in FRM. With our existing user base on the products, the main network will launch with utility on day 1.
What’s your vision for whole Blockchain ecosystem with Ferrum network? Is that $Ferrum is just limited to Africa?
So that is a common misconception. Ferrum’s first product is an Afican fiat gateway and payments app, but we are a world wide project and have many other non-african products coming. We are also committed to other markets and will be making different language versions of our non-custodial wallet and launching fiat gateways in other markets.
Why did Ferrum choose the DAG consensus mechanism? What are its superior advantages compared to other consensus mechanisms, also your TPS to handle trading volume?
We chose a DAG because we feel it is more suited for financial applications where the key requirements are speed and scalability. Blockchains have miners and basically assemble the data into a blockchain whereas DAGs allows a natural graph to form and then uses prior transactions to verify subsequent ones. It is a next generation consensus mechanism and is very well suited for our goals of high speed and decentralized financial transactions.
What did you achieve in 2019? How many users do you have? Are you profitable?
2019 was a big year for us. We launched Kudi in end of May. Held the ICO in August. Listed on 4 exchanges since the ICO. Built the token bridge and staking. Updated Kudi app at least 3 times, with a major update on the way for ETH and FRM. Successfully grew Kudi to thousands of users and over 100 merchants. Laid the groundwork to enter other markets. Built out most of the backend of UniFyre Wallet. Hired 5 new devs. Built out the community to the point where it is basically self sufficient, and probably a whole lot more I am forgetting! But as big as 2019 was, 2020 will be even bigger! Think about the fact that most still dont knwo about Ferrum and we have spent barely anything on marketing. Now understand we have a world wide product coming out and the main net. With a little market cooperation, I believe Ferrum will make an even bigger impact in 2020.
FERRUM offers 50% earning with staking. Which seems the highest reward in the crypto market. Do you not afraid of inflation? What if the value lowers?
So we launched 3 staking pools. The longest (diamond) has 50% rewads per year if you stake for 18 months. However the pool size was only 1 million FRM. So the total amount of inflation is relatively low. Between all 3 staking pools, about 9 million FRM was locked up and we will give out 2.3 million FRM over the course of 3–18 months as people unstake. So inflation is very low compared to the benefit we recieved of launching an exciting product and giving back to our best supporters.
What are the difficulties you have been faced during the development of Ferrum? How many product have build on your platform? Can you tell some highlights from them?
The main challenge involved the fact that we laucnhed in a bear market. Securing investment was difficult. Attracting users to an exchange is difficult. Getting anyone excited about crypto in general is difficult! But this is why we have been very frugal and done as much as we can on a small budget. They say the best projects are built in a bear market, and I do believe we will benefit from our frugal approach and long term thinking, even though there has been much personal sacrifice.
Why should the community care about clients and adoption? Does it bring any benefits to token holders?
So the way we structured our token metrics, adoption is actually a key factor in utility. Since our products require FRM as gas or through other utlities, we all want adoption of the products. This means use case for the token and actual demand aside from just speculative demand. We are also devising an economic burning system such that some of our revenue is reserved for buying back and burning tokens. More on this will be announced soon. But overall yes, if Ferrum does well, so should the token holders.
What was Ferrum’s greatest accomplishment? How does Ferrum always develop and maintain its position?
I think the greatest accomplishment so far is launching a fiat to crpypto exchange in Africa on a seed budget. This took a ton of hard work and I want to thank the entire Ferrum dev team and the Kudi team on the ground in Lagos Nigeria both working tirelessly to improve the product and grow the userbase. But there are many great accomplishments aside from that, including growing a really amazing community that support Ferrum in the good times and bad. They are what give me confidence that we will succeed no matter what is thrown at us.
With the appearing of many blockchain projects, especially payment project which has newest technology, scalability, effiency, even no fee on transaction. Does FERRUM feel pressure from this on the race of global payment solutions?
Yes there is massive pressure. There are many other start ups doing similar things, and then you have the big players like facebook wanting to enter the payments space. Our strenghts lie in the fact we are very nimble and can launch products quickly, and we know the market well in Nigeria whereas players like Binance arent as deeply embedded as we are. I also think because we have a very supportive community we can do a lot more than other start ups without one.
Can you give details about Ferrum Staking ? Whats the minimum amout we can stake and what average returns ?
This will be my last question, but all informaiton on staking can be found on the staking webpage or medium.ferrum.network. Staking is closed for now but we will likely be opening up more staking pools in the near future. We have taken your feedback and will be improving upon the staking this time around. We will also be adding a referral link so you can earn rewards for referring your friends to our staking! Later on we will announce the requirements for running a node, so stay tuned for all of this and more.
Next big announcement will be coming in a week or so. We will be adding FRM to the Kudi app and announcing a host of utilities arising out of this integration. We are very excited and cant wait to share with everyone.
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
