Jun 29, 2021

9 min read

Unido— Telegram AMA — May 18

On Tuesday, May 18, we had the pleasure to welcome to our Telegram chat:

Michael Swan, CEO & Co-Founder.

We asked him questions about the development of Unido.

Some sentences have been slightly edited for readability but the meaning has been conserved.

Summary

Unido is an enterprise platform for decentralized capital markets. Unido enables enterprises to seamlessly manage their crypto assets through an enterprise-grade platform with a suite of DeFi and crypto banking management tools.

Unido’s distinct protocol facilitates investment in DeFi by leveraging its efficient proprietary and multi-sig key signing technology. Users have the unique capability to manage crypto banking operations in complete security.

Through Unido’s user-friendly protocol, participants essentially have access to three main features all responsible for the system’s special implementation of the blockchain, namely, Enterprise Crypto Banking Suite, DeFi Vault Access, and Governance/Security features.

$UDO is a utility token, which will be required to pay for transaction fees and must also be staked to receive access licenses for the various Unido product offerings and including the Unido Enterprise Platform and Unido Core.

Introduction

Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Let’s start with a little introduction for those who missed out that time. What did you do before crypto and did you have any other previous venture in crypto?

A — Michael from Unido: I’m a career banker in traditional finance, most recently before jumping into crypto, I was a Vice President at Goldman Sachs. After a decade in traditional finance, it became evident to me that centralized control of finance stifles innovation and over the last 2 years, I have since become a crypto convert.

My years in finance, working with the world’s biggest corporations and fund managers, gave me an important insight into the realities of enterprises getting involved in crypto. They are limited by their own corporate governance, hamstringing their ability to adopt new technologies. The custody of the private key was, and remains today, a major issue stopping mainstream corporate adoption of crypto. This realization led to my search for PAC Blockchain 18 months ago and their work on Unido.

Previously, no other crypto experience!

About Unido

Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Let’s talk about Unido. What is it about in a few simple sentences?

A — Michael from Unido: Unido is an enterprise platform for decentralized capital markets. It enables any enterprises who hold crypto in their books, such as Tesla, Microstrategy, and other neo-banks, asset managers, or crypto-native businesses, to seamlessly manage their crypto assets.

We do this by providing a suite of crypto banking tools and an enterprise bridge to allow businesses to securely invest crypto treasuries into DeFi through platforms through an innovative dashboard.

The core technology is a fragmented key signing engine, which allows mapping the signoff protocols of any corporate or fund manager to the rules of reconstituting the private key and signing transactions. It enforces corporate governance at the blockchain level. This is critical to en masse enterprise adoption of crypto.

It’s a real problem for any corporate to get into crypto. Security of material assets. We have a solution out of the box.

Q — Ayeley from GAINS: It’s been ~3 months since the IDO. How would you rate the journey so far and what are some highlights you are most proud of?

A — Michael from Unido: We launched in a super hot token market, and of course have seen choppy markets since. What has been very positive, however, is the commercial engagements we have been having with particularly the institution end of town, all looking to offer crypto products to their clients who are demanding crypto access. Apart from EQIBank, we have several dialogues progressing which all represent huge revenue opportunities as they are realized. I’ve been overwhelmed by the outreach of other projects wanting to partner with us. Business development has largely been inbounds, with so many projects recognizing the need for security and corporate governance over the private key, which really spurred on after the situation with PAID.

Q — Telegram user Marian Merheb: I read that Unido has 3 product variants available for customers, can you tell us more about these products? Why did you decide to have different versions and what are the main differences between them? To what target audience is each one of them designed for?

A — Michael from Unido: Several segments of the crypto market need the security and corporate governance that Unido provides. So the variants are built to suit each need. EP is a self custody product, Insto is for custodians or exchanges or ne-banks who will provide crypto as a banking service and Core is for non-crypto enterprise blockchain apps, such as EMMI which we covered in our announcements group

Q — Telegram user Nakata Sakoy: APY of 161% and 194% respectively, don’t you think that’s too high for a reward?

A — Michael from Unido: It’s a function of the size of each pool at any one time. If those numbers are appealing, jump in!!

Q — Telegram user August: You mention that United products are backed by United Core, but are “United Core” and “United” really part of a vision of the same founder? or are they totally different projects?

A — Michael from Unido: They are all the same underlying IP, the fragmented key signing engine, all developed by PAC Blockchain, the developer and promoter of Unido. PAC has been around since 2012 developing software, so has huge experience in this space!

Token

Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Now that is a compelling reason to hold some $UDO. For those still on the fence, what are some use cases of the $UDO token, and where can we get our hands on them?

A — Michael from Unido: $UDO is a utility token, which will be required to pay for transaction fees and must also be staked to receive access licenses for the various Unido product offerings and including the Unido Enterprise Platform and Unido Core.

The Unido Treasury built into the ecosystem will enable enterprise users to seamlessly exchange stablecoins for UDO to power their transactions and purchase additional licenses for their organizations. This will mean that we continuously purchase UDO off the open market as adoption increases.

Once we launch the Unido Core API, the token will also be used for governance rights to distribute the Ecosystem Funds to subsidize 3rd party dApp developers who wish to utilize our technology.

As mentioned a moment ago, the token consists of an initial burn on fees paid to reduce the total issuance by 20%, to magnify the buy-side demand on investor tokens, by reducing the total circulating tokens.

We also have our own liquidity mining program to pair UDO with ETH or USDC, paying right this second an APY of 161% and 194% respectively, we have the 5 token Unifarm cohorts and we just announced our MLP with Bridge Mutual, an exciting way for our UDO holders to get some BMI tokens.

$UDO is available on UniSwap, Gate.io, Bibox, and Bilaxy currently

As part of Unifarm, we have created a bridge to allow $UDO to be held on either ETH or BSC. Stay tuned for announcements on trading on BSC platforms.

Q — Telegram user Tu¢ng Xuan: Can you share with us a step-by-step GUIDE on how we can stake UNIDO tokens in the UniFarm Cohort 7 pool?

A — Michael from Unido: We have a step by step guide in our TG group and Twitter feed, explaining the bridging from ETH to BSC then simple website integration with Unifarm.co to enter the pool

For those of you who like to farm, there are some compelling yields and the token price is super attractive to get in at this point.

Competitive Advantage

Q — Telegram user JEHA: In what ways does your project stand out among your competitors and what is interesting and unique about your project?

A — Michael from Unido: Compared with custody providers like BitGo or Coinbase, we are a fully decentralized solution, rather than a website where at the end of the day, the private keys are stored on a database and if the database is hacked, the private key can be stolen. Our private keys are fragmented and distributed amongst the various wallet members, so if one device is hacked, the private key is not at risk

Financial

Q — Ayeley from GAINS: You had successful fundraising earlier in the year. How have you managed the funds so far, and do you have plans to raise any more?

A — Michael from Unido: The cash funds have been used to support the further development of the EP Defi dashboard and the 3rd party developer API set which will be available at the end of the year. We have no intentions for any further primary capital raises for the Unido ecosystem as the developer and ecosystem development fund are well catered for and we are reaching a point of near-term revenue with EQIBank coming online soon. As mentioned in our group, that revenue will be used to buy back $UDO from the market, including a 60% burn element.

Partnerships

Q — Ayeley from GAINS: You’ve recently announced a lot of partnerships. Off the top of my head, I can mention Unifarm. How will these help you in achieving your aims at the end of the day?

A — Michael from Unido: Our partnership with Unifarm recognizes that $UDO investors are interested in high intrinsic value projects which are building the infrastructure to keep blockchain agile and innovative, so we partnered in a pool of like-minded projects. We think $UDO holders will be very interested to earn a yield in the partner coins and not be exposed to market price risk on $UDO. It’s a really compelling staking option. Well worth a look!

Q — Telegram user iffh sfnd: Unido has launched its own Mutual Liquidity Pool (MLP), which partnered with 2 more platforms on it. How does this partnership give an advantage for each platform, especially Unido

A — Michael from Unido: This is a pretty cool liquidity pool option for UDO holders to get access to BMI tokens, without having to stake any ETH/ USDC as well. If UDO holders want to diversify into BMI it’s a great way to utilize otherwise parked UDO.

Business Development

Q — Ayeley from GAINS: What should the community look forward to from you in the coming months?

A — Michael from Unido: We have brought forward the plans for the token buyback and burn, given the approaching near-term revenue. You should also expect further commercial and partnership announcements, as we pursue our go-to-market.

From a development perspective, the Defi dashboard is taking shape as is the API set for Unido Core.

Thanks Michael for coming in today. It was refreshing hearing what you have been up to so far. Anything else you’d like to share? And where can we follow you to stay updated? — Ayeley from GAINS
Come join our TG group and keep up to date on farming and the commercial uptake of Unido. We have a strong use case to enable enterprise adoption of crypto and represent critical blockchain infrastructure for the future. We would love to see more Gains investors in UDO who also share our vision!! — Michael from Unido