Community AMA #7 / February 21st

Wit:
Hello everyone, shall we have a little chat? 😊

wrydais:
Hello 👋

Roman:
Hi Family, short update from my side.

Lots of stuff happened in the past 2 weeks. We have successfully launched the V2 on minted.vodka with complete feature parity. The only exception are the cocktails: The cocktail system will be improved any way, so it did not make sense porting the old system as long as we do not need it.
There are quite a few improvements to be tackled, especially on the UI side. For example, sorting of search results. Those tasks will be done gradually over the next weeks as we progress. They are perfect for new devs, so I am keeping them exactly for that purpose.

Apart of the migration, we have streamlined the network onboarding process and added two additional chains: Callisto and Telos. Right now we are in talks to coordinate mutual marketing efforts and cooperation events. We are in contact with promising NFT projects on those chains to discuss collaborations.
From technical side we now know that, indeed, adding new network to MintedVodka will take less than a day. While we could theoretically add dozens of additional networks in a very short time, we prefer doing it gradually in order to give enough thought and attention to marketing and collaborations with the newly added networks.

Over the past couple of days, I was streamlining our DevOps processes to make onboarding of new developers much easier. This week a new dev will join the effort to continue the work on MV Auctions. We will scale our efforts gradually over the next few months.

Meanwhile, I am working full-steam on minting right now. Not much to say, yet. March is still the target month to go live with minting. Preferably, ASAP!

I think that is all from my side for now!

Any question, shoot! 👍

Adam X:
why the newly-added l2 chain not famous?

Roman:
For testing of integration and the onboarding processes it made sense trying with smaller partners. They are also more eager to collaborate. We are in talks with bigger partners, however. But the processes are slower on their side, naturally

Adam X:
ok

Roman:
But the onboarded networks are very promising. Take callisto: it is about 30.000 cheaper than BSC

With blocks of 1 second. I am not sure if that is very scalable after a while, but right now it is blazing fast

Adam X:
According my several years’ blockchain experience, transaction fees is not so important

Roman:
We had game concepts in the past that we discarded because of high gas fees (even for BSC). Callisto could be a go-to network for such more complex game concepts in the future

Adam X:
just like so many eth killer

because the network effect is the most important things

Roman:
Oh well, it depends. If you have a game where you have to do hundreds of TXs a day and each costs you 2$, you will quickly notice the difference.

Wit:
Oh, but they are important — especially in pure on-chain gaming (and other types of high-intensity apps). You cannot build more complex applications on high fees.

Adam X:
yeah

Roman:
Network effect play less of a role on a multi-chain environment. Everything moves in the direction of multi-chain. There will be node network to rule them all. Even BSC is working towards side-chains. It is the only way to scale

Adam X:
actually I do not know these two new chains a lot. But when you talk about fully on-chain

Roman:
To have dedicated chains for specific purposes

Adam X:
I think nowadays jpg nft is bubble, I bet a on-chain nft future

when we talk about fully on-chain, what do you guys think about dfinity and arweave?

Wit:
Ecosystems/EVM-chains fight for creators right now. Like in the early days of smartphones: the platform that has the most apps wins. It is similar in blockchain/web3 right now. The ecosystems that attract the most creators/developers win. We see Minted Vodka as a “DApp and NFT Magnet” for ecosystems — because of unique minting, trading & collaboration features. It makes sense for a chain to have such tools like MV to attract more creators, that is why we try to partner with several of them 😊👍🏼

We think that NFTs will go through several innovation cycles in the near future. We have already invented “software-NFTs” (see GameAce games). The market grows exponentially ($250MM 2020, $41B 2021, …) there is plenty of room for innovative services and features (like the ones offered on MV) to enter and grow with the market.

We are in very early stages of “digital assets” — this is just a beginning. And we are here to help shaping the future 🚀

Adam X:
Does the team have enough usd to support all the expense for more than 3 years ? (I mean usd because in bear market, coins would devalue very quickly)

Wit:
W are financed for this year and at least a part of the next year. So we keep building no matter what. Furthermore, we are currently in early talks with institutional investors to have a fundraising round — to secure additional funds for a longer runway and also to invest in growth (especially more developers and upgrading the business side — mostly marketing).

Our network has grown dramatically since the incubation — we are also in talks with many potential partners. Binance Labs constantly connects us with other projects and companies — we are getting huge support there.

Adam X:
what is the plan to outperform opensea?

for two parts: 1. Why would not eth monopoly the market? 2. If the future is multi-chain, how MV outperform opensea

Wit:
Look, OpenSea is the elephant in the room. They reach $5 billion monthly trading volume — there is certainly a long road to catch up. However, we do have features that will remain unmatched. Our team is small, but we are very flexible as is our technology.

1. we can onboard new chains much more quickly than others — we can cater niche chains, for example.
2. we have more innovative tools for trading, minting and collaborations. Just to name a few on the current immediate roadmap:

a) user NFT “shops” and user-launched “mystery boxes”
b) game minting (+ hackathons, give access to NFT market to millions of indie game devs)
c) layered minting (easy create auto-gen collections, like crypto punks, based on rarity tables)
d) claimable NFTs
e) user-launched farms (coins & NFTs)
f) …

Roman:

f) user launched cocktails

Wit:
we will start with niches (“smaller” chains, specific creators like game devs, etc.), targeted partnerships, and build the platform traffic. Through networking effect it will attract a broader audience.

Also, as I said, we are partnering with institutions that will help us to push the marketing & collaborations. So the idea is to attract creators and expand the exposure step-by-step

Finally, everything minted on MV is automatically multi-chain (on current and all future supported chains!). So as a a creator you do not have the risk of getting trapped with your NFT collection on a chain that is too expansive or may become irrelevant in the future.

NFTs minted on MV are multi-chain — they exist beyond the bounds of a single chain

Adam X:

okay

wrydais:
At present, most users of NFTs are monopolized by the head market. Now some new NFT markets also attract traffic by airdropping their users. How can we attract these creators and users come to our platfom?
Moreover, many current NFT games don’t have cross-chain requirements (maybe there is no such tool), but after we make it, do new projects and old projects have great demand for cross-chain?
BTW, how safe is the cross-chain technology we use? Is the cross-chain cost attractive enough?

Roman:
Well, cross-chain NFTs certainly open other possibilities, including in the GameFi space. There was no demand because there was noch technology that effectively could provided such a flexible bridge. As @witwit7 said above, our primary use-case right now is to give this flexibility and security so that creators are not tied to a certain chain.

The cross-chain technology is as safe as it can be. Everythin was, is and will be audited as we progress.

Regarding costs: they are set to cover the gas fees of the target network. They depend on where you want to bridge your NFTs to. To bridge to callisto, for example, you would pay about 0.001 GAT. Ethereum, on the other hand, is considerable more expensive.

Wit:
Regarding the attraction of creators — we do have a set of tools and approaches that we want to use.
a) as I said we are partnering with institutions that will help us approach creators
b) specific events for niche-creators, like hackathons for indie game devs
c) we will have unbeatable features for creators (we will be the only place where you can mint games or layered auto-generated NFTs) — not available anywhere else
d) engagement rewards on MV (we will put a system in place to gamify and reward the use of MV)
e) other events like Shopping Sprees (we will use some of our budget to collect NFTs as a company) — we want to support & promote rising stars
f) we are setting up a more direct social engagement process to reach smaller artists directly on social media
…

just to name a few things

Sandbox Nguyen:
As marketing play a biggest role in this market. Does the team have any priority plans ahead about approaching new customers using our platform besides developing plans? Can you share more about it😊

Marketing is a topic we explore every day. We are aware of the importance but it’s very difficult.
And it’s not even just a question of money since we are ready to invest in an efficient marketing. But we have tried different approaches in the last months and neither professional marketing agencies nor banner or shillers have been successful. We have to invest our funds responsibly and therefore make sure that money spent on marketing pays out.
We met founders of other projects in the last months and can exchanged our experiences. Most founders we spoke to have made the same experiences as we did and also struggle to have a more efficient marketing.

Of course, we receive marketing offers every day from “influencers” and youtubers. But to judge their service one must take a closer look. Many Youtube and Telegram channels have no real audience. This is easy to recognize for TG channels. But also when you take a closer look at some YT channels you can see that the followers are fake or not active anymore. Even the number of views can be faked nowadays.
Basically, there is 2 types of channels: Fake channels who try to scam projects or legit influencers. The fake channels are a waste of money and the channels are very hard to reach or don’t answer requests.

What has proven to be the best way so far is cross marketing and partnerships. An important area we are working on — but this takes time.

In case someone can suggest legit channels or influencers please let us know — ideally together with a way to contact them. We will surely talk to them and try to find a cooperation.

Apart from that we keep building our network to explore efficient ways for marketing.

Sandbox Nguyen:
Thanks for sharing

Abdurrahman:
I’m late

Johalex:
I came quite late today, hello👋

Wit:
Hi @Johnalxg and @aurkan27

Abdurrahman:
MV2 migration complete
Congratulations

Will you head to the alchemy arena now?

White-label alchemy arenas are on the roadmap. 🙂 There are more important steps before that though, like minting. Which is what is keeping me busy at this moment

Abdurrahman:

hmm
As I recall, we made project proposals for you.
It was a Google poll

Were there any projects that you interviewed through those surveys?

I guess it’s time to come to alchemy toys and arena

Wit:
not sure what you mean to be honest

Abdurrahman:
You asked us for project proposals to partner with

I remember filling out a Google form

do you understand now
https://forms.gle/YynkG1YyUhmVFDCL7

Wit:
Oh yes, it was about trusted collections on MV that we can mark as trusted 😊
@Pete4GAT manages those 😊

Pete:
We used this information to add trusted projects to MV — we requested details of the project too in case we needed to reach out, or to make additional decisions if it was not clear whether it should be a trusted NFT

Abdurrahman:
I get it now

Johalex:
what is there outside of the current roadmap that they want to implement in the future?

We are working on things to be implemented in Q3 and beyond, however it depends much on how we proceed with current features and partnerships. In general: we want to continue offering unbeatable features for all sorts of NFT creators 😉

Johalex:
understood 👌

Abdurrahman:
As a surprise, are there things other than the roadmap you want to explain to us?

The crypto market is bad right now and project investors need morale

Wit:
things change, we use market downturns to build

Johalex:
It’s time to make sure the boat is strong. when the current turbulence passes there will be better times

and sure the GATE holders will be very happy

Abdurrahman:
Opensea was hacked recently

Is there a security team for mintedvodka, or someone interested in it

Wit:
our developers have decades of experience in web development under the belt — I think we can manage the security quite well 😉
Of course, we do audit all smart contracts. + there are not so many “moving parts” to exploit

Roman:
OpenSea was a phishing hack with signatures. Nothing that concerns us directly or could be directly applied in our case.

Okay guys, I think I will get getting back to work

thanks for stopping by and having this chat! 😄

Wit:
Have a great week, and let us please continue the conversation very soon! 😊👍🏼