RECAP: Gate (CMO) — KardiaChain (CEO) LIVESTREAM AMA 28.05.2020
Q1: Welcome to the show, everyone is happy to have you. Obviously, there was a big search for the KardiaChain’s coin KAI, so we will be discussing the price later on, but first I want to talk about all the fundamentals such as your vision and the story behind your foundation?
Tri Pham: It started way before 2017 when I was in my tech company in London in 2014. At that time, I was focusing on new technology and looking into variables. I thought of new technology in order to apply them into daily life for most of the people. And during 2017, I came across the whole line blockchain application, and a lot of blockchain platform popped up at that time. I saw the potential of blockchain technology, and I also saw how many blockchain projects had failed to achieve their promises because they did not get enough adoption, they could not find a viable business model. It is a common story in the start-up world, you need to find the product market fit and then you can grow your project.
So that’s why me and Huy, my co-founder, a technical manager at Google at the time, were working across continents since I was in London while he was in Silicon Valley. We used to be classmates in high school, we thought about ideas, about how exciting the blockchain technology is, and we discovered what we think the problems in blockchain adoption were. It is very difficult for enterprises and government bodies to apply blockchain because there’re many sensitive data and they need to put them all in public ledger, so that’s why they are reluctant to try the technology. Also, in Vietnam for example, they are not really familiar with foreign entity like Ethereum, they don’t know which one in Ethereum they need to talk to, they are not familiar with the concept of decentralisation. The second thing is the private chain fits the purpose of providing transparency to customers and to the people. We came up with the hybrid solution — KardiaChain’s “Dual Node” technology to connect public and private blockchain for enterprises and government bodies to use. They can process their day-to-day data like all the sensitive data in their private chain and then they can also publish whatever necessary into public chain, for example Ethereum, KardiaChain, Neo, or Tron, which are the projects we already connected into our ecosystem. So, that will provide the transparency to customers and people. That’s the solution we provide, and we try it in Vietnam market because we see a very good market for blockchain and it’s our home market as well. We have personal and professional connection there so that’s why we all relocated, I closed my company in London, I moved my family here, my CTO as well, he sold his house in Silicon Valley and moved back.
Q2: Each ability and accessibility are really important to contribute to a successful project. Can you tell me how you are using both of these to your community?
Tri Pham: Definitely. For me there are 3 key areas to achieve mass adoption. The first thing is to build a good way for user to get and use crypto. For example, there is a very interesting game in Ethereum then the first thing they need is to get Ether coin. And sometimes they just need a very small amount like $1 or $5 of Ether, and they can go through the whole process of OCC or so to get to crypto. Second, we have a platform for user to spend their crypto. Third, the crypto has to contribute to their daily life such as for convenience and save time.
The first thing is that I’m working with the largest telco in Vietnam. We work on a payment channel that allows users to use their mobile balance to buy token. So, you can use text message, or you can directly use in the website with just one tap, and you confirm with your phone and then we deduct your mobile balance to give you token. And we tried to roll it out during this year, so we’ll be available to live millions of users in Vietnam. When the users get the token, they need to use it somewhere, right? So, we have KardiaChain as a platform connected to Ethereum, Neo, Tron, so users can use various decentralised applications on different platforms. Also, we are working with major service providers that they already have user base, so we tokenise their application, enabling them to easily get and use token, then can redeem into something else that they want like rewards or gifts.
Q3: I have seen it is a very popular way in SEA for adoption. So, on a more technical side, I know that you guys have developed a non-invasive solution called “dual master node”. Can you tell the audience about this and also the difference between the Dual Node and cross-chain?
Tri Pham: Cross-chain is a concept of moving asset and data from one blockchain to another. “Dual Node” is the KardiaChain’s way of doing blockchain operation, so we have many different types of cross-chain operation like using our Oracle, but the problem is that there will be a single point of failure, like a centralised point when we transfer from one blockchain to another. So, that won’t come up with the Dual Node, you can think of this like Ethereum, Neo, or KardiaChian, we speak different languages, and Dual Node is a bilingual translator that understands Ethereum’s language and KardiaChain’s language. It can confirm what happened in both Ethereum and KardiaChain’s network. Then we have a consensus between the Dual Node that understands Ethereum and KardiaChain, so we decentralise the data transmission as well. More than 60% of the translator from Ethereum to KardiaChain need to agree on that in order to confirm and transmit data from Ethereum to KardiaChain.
Q4: I know that you guys recently partnered with LG CNS, which is a global tech giant. Can you tell us a little bit more about what your partnership in details?
Tri Pham: LG CNS is interested in our technology because in Korea, they have competition between LG and Samsung to get blockchain adoption. LG CNS is a subsidiary of LG that is developing their own private chain solution. They have various commercialised products like community money — a token for a community, Decentralised Identity (DID), and certificate issuance on blockchain. But they cannot get client to adopt that technology, then they know about us through some partners in Korea, and they explore our technology “Dual Node” through code review and that kind of thing back and forth with our technical team. Finally, they think they can use our “Dual Node” to connect their private chain to other public chains to make their solutions more adoptable. We also leverage their private chain solution in order to bundle it to our hybrid solution. That’s how our partnership with LG CNS coming together.
Q5: That was a very big partnership, you guys have made it very clear and doing lots of great partnerships, business deals, with a lot of businesses. But I know that you’re also helping government departments to also adopt blockchain more easily. What specific actions have you guys done to make this a reality?
Tri Pham: The government side is a more interesting story because in Vietnam, during 2018 when we started to move back from the UK and US, there were a lot of scam projects, especially the one named iFan. iFan managed to capture about close to $1bn funds, the government became really cautious about cryptocurrency, making it a lot harder to introduce blockchain technology. We went through many of our more personal and professional networks to engage with different government departments at city and nationwide levels. We talked to the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Police, Ministry of Information Technology, these kinds of department, to help them distinguish between blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. So, cryptocurrency is just an application of blockchain, and not all token is cryptocurrency, we make them aware of utility token and security token. The second step is also one of the crucial points in Vietnam, because we don’t have any legacy system here, so the level of decentralisation in Vietnam is quite low. Danang is the third largest city in Vietnam and one of the more progressive in terms of technology adoption. They only have 10% of the population having their personal ID decentralised during 2019. It’s really helpful for blockchain adoption because we can come in and introduce a new system without competing with any old systems there to move to blockchain. Also, another selling point to the government is it’s more secure, and provide transparency helping people gain trust in the government. The first example that we work with is in education helping them to blockchainise student records and issue student certificates. Another experimental program is we worked with Ministry of Justice on the criminal records because criminal record is quite crucial when you apply for some specific jobs or various permissions, but usually you don’t want to review the whole criminal records because it’s sometimes irrelevant. The other thing is ID, in general, blockchain ID is a massive career, Vietnam is moving to that direction.
Q6: That’s very interesting. You guys have been focused on Vietnamese and SEA markets in general, but I also know that global communities are really taking interests in KardiaChain, so can you tell me more about why you think this interest exists and in which markets you’re going to focus on in the short/medium-term future?
Tri Pham: For the supports from the global community, I think one of the reasons is that we were starting to aware that Vietnam will be one of the fastest-growing country in term of blockchain. Our country has a big enough population to have an impact. We have 100 million people, it also small enough to get the regulation easily to roll out. For example, India has a large population of 1 billion people and it’s really difficult to roll out any regulations because the impact is huge. So, Vietnam is a sweet spot. For our focus, Vietnam is our first target, and we also look into Korea market specifically. I think our next move will be in Korea because we’ve got quite strong foothold there.
Q7: I know we have a lot of Vietnamese and Korean users, so you’re on the right show. I know KAI is mostly use for staking, transaction payment, smart contract deployment, and you can also participate in services in the KardiaChain ecosystem. Why do you think that KAI is a good long-term investment, and maybe you can talk more about the limited supply and why you think that might increase the demand?
Tri Pham: I think for the long-term investment, we just look into the supply and demand, where the supply is limited because we choose that way when we build our blockchain. For the demand, it will definitely increase over time because our goal is at least for every person in Vietnam will have KAI in their possession to use in daily life in something. Firstly, you know Vietnam is still not a cashless economy, we really look up to China in that perspective because we don’t like cash anymore, so one of the aims of the Vietnamese government and many Fintech companies is to make Vietnam a cashless economy. Hopefully with our payment gateway in cooperation with the telco in Vietnam will contribute to that aspect. KAI will be integrated into that payment gateway. It has merchants, users, telco, a lot in reconciliation in the transactions. Right now, it takes 6 messages between all the parties and 3 confirmations in each side. If we apply blockchain and use token inside that, it will reduce to only one confirmation in one ledger, so many people will have to use KAI in that perspective to pay for the fee when they use the payment gateway. The second thing is I’m trying to integrate KAI into many communities. For example, we’re working with football community, and we moved to e-sport, streamers, Youtubers, entertainment, and some FMCG products as well. That’s my roadmap to get KAI token to hands of Vietnamese people.
Q8: It seems like you guys have really thought about some key industries to work in. You’re just looking to push Vietnam and slowly push out to other markets. It’s really good because you can see a lot of projects are not focus at all but having a target market enables you to better serve that. For building a healthy KardiaChain ecosystem, how do you see yourself building this, going with a lot more exchanges, expanding in different communities? What’s your plan?
Tri Pham: For exchanges, we want to get to some key exchanges like big exchanges in key markets like Korean, and global exchanges. But we don’t want to go to a lot of exchange, that’s not our focus, we just want to be listed on the key exchange in each market. For example, Gate is one of the best of my choices. For community and business partners in blockchain and traditional as well, I want to have the partners that really related to what we are doing. Also, for traditional business partners, we’re all working on the same scheme that leads the revenue sharing, so even with the big corporate, we still managed to get the revenue sharing deal because even they want to pay us upfront, we know that kind of money is not our goal, instead we need them to go with us in the long way. For blockchain as well, we try to replicate successful case study in Thailand, with Band Protocol, in Indonesia with Tokoin, or in Korea especially with many of my partners like BlockCrafter, Coinplug, Metadium, and LG, they all have very good use cases that already successful in Korea we can bring to Vietnam. We also have some unique insights in Vietnam that we can apply back to Korea and other countries. That’s how we improve our ecosystem.
Q9: I have my last question for you which I have seen some of you guys asked questions around this. And then I will go to the questions in the comments. In terms I know your mainnet hasn’t been launched yet, but you have been testing the first version of the mainnet, what do you want to share with the audience about the technology milestone and about the mainnet launch and all of those things?
Tri Pham: For mainnet launch, we are trying our best to deliver it this year. I think that’s all I can say about the mainnet because it’s involved with other blockchain as well, it’s not just KardiaChain, but we need to try a lot with Ethereum, Neo, and Tron, and we also looking to interpret more blockchain, so that’s really our commitment. For other technology milestone, we have multiple products launching, with our partners to integrate KardiaChain and token to that, so we have a lot in our pipeline. Please stay tuned, I’m trying to avoid making an announcement now which we will do in the future, so just save it until we have it and reveal it to you.
Q10: I’m seeing a lot of people hoping that you’re going to come to Indonesia and Philippines, so you can check to see where your fans come from. As stated clearly above, the two main markets will be Vietnam and Korea, but SEA is going to be a big market for you guys, and it seems that all of our fans are interested. You guys have formed some big partnerships, and you obviously are implementing some of those partnerships into effect, are there any other partnerships that are upcoming?
Tri Pham: Yes, of course. Actually, this afternoon I was talking to one of the new partners because of a coincidence. I was not intended to have partnership with them, but I must not reveal the name right now because we have to wait until we sign the contract. You know that we’re really interested in football, right? I have my own team that won the third place in the national tournament last year, so then we came across this business that they decided to sponsor our national team, it’s a really big news and very strong business. They are looking into digital transformation and applying new technology to their company. We are working in football sponsorship and have a chance to sit down together, and potentially there will be a partnership signing.
Q11: Coming back to the technical milestones, it does seem like Github hasn’t been so active, is there any particular reasons for that?
Tri Pham: We have practice in our engineers in Google is that we have to cut and release so as you see in the Github public right now is the version we’ve already cut and release. We are working on private branches continuously, so when we have a new version, we need to cut and release again, and you can see it on Github. We’re not actually working on the release version.
Q12: What are the unique features of KardiaChain that makes it different from other blockchain projects? How is the hybrid blockchain different from the single blockchain?
Tri Pham: It’s not a hybrid blockchain, but actually the way we implement our technology making into a solution, so our hybrid solution is that a business can use their own private blockchain to store their sensitive data and day-to-day operations, and then they can use KardiaChain’s Dual Node technology which they need to stake KAI token to do that as well, and then they can publish whatever data they want to move to public. For example, in the education application, every school owns a private blockchain to store their student information, record, and review of teachers, etc., but the final exam results need to be public, so they publish it into the public blockchain, and it’s available to the public so you cannot change it. The second thing is the certificate will be issued on the public blockchain, so we need to use cross-chain to bring it from their private chain to the public chain so that the students can use the records to apply for new schools or a job, so that’s the key difference.
Q13: What’s your opinion about DeFi? Do you think that DeFi will destroy the existing financial system? What is KardiaChain’s approach towards to DeFi sector?
Tri Pham: DeFi is a very interesting and complicated subject, but I’m really looking into the future of DeFi, but we find a lot of troubles and resistance from the old system because the financial machine of the world is already too big to be disrupted. This is just my opinion at this moment because I don’t know what the future holds, but it will be really difficult, and we will face a lot of resistance. We are building a payment gateway for mobile payment, so in Vietnam, we have a lot of e-wallet, and in order to have an e-wallet, you need a bank account and tie them together to top up and spend it. It’s not accessible for Vietnamese because 80% of the population don’t have the bank account for many reasons. That’s why we approach mobile balance, this actually have a lot of resistance from the banks because the telco company is taking customers from the banks, you don’t need to have a bank account anymore, you just need a mobile number and go to a convenience store or any places accept cash top-up from mobile balance, then pay for everything more simple. If you compare this with DeFi and current financial system, it’s a small-scale example, but I personally saw a lot of resistance from the banks as they did lobby in order to prevent the regulation on mobile money. Recently, we went through it and implement the infrastructure, so I think there’s a lot of potential, but we need to look for the reaction from the legacy system.
Q14: What will be the Transaction per second once you’re on your mainnet?
Tri Pham: I need to check with my team about the tps, but the whole thing is it will not be hard to reach like 10.000tps. Tps is very interesting because I had a conversation with co-founder back in the day, in the beginning of 2018 there was a new platform that reached 1.000 tps and he compared it to Ethereum which only had 10 TPS, so it was so much innovation. And then some new projects came out with 100.000tps, and I remember another blockchain project of my CTO’s friend reaching 1 million tps. Then, I personally invested in a project in Korea which said they will reach 4 million tps. I think the problem with blockchain is not the tps but the T in tps because we might have no transactions, nobody uses the chain, we need transactions first then when we reach the limit, it’s a good problem to have, there are many measures to easily push up the tps.
Q15: Opinions on the e-KYC in the banks?
Tri Pham: It is very timely as well because if you look up on Google and the internet, Vietnam recently passed the bill to enable bank to use e-KYC. It also matches with the blockchain ID that we’re pursuing because you can use DID and do KYC with the ID very easily.
Q16: I think it’s almost everything from what I saw in all of the comments. I wanted to ask you also, you have a big surge in your price, do you think this is over shot or do you think this reflects how your business is going?
Tri Pham: I’m a bit surprised with speed of the surge, but I’m not surprised with the value though because even when we first listed and the price dropped, I’m quite confused at that time. We are still doing some investigation about the price drop after IEO because it doesn’t make sense at all when we look back at that. We are constantly working on pushing our products, so I don’t want to focus on the price at that moment, we think the price will reflect that we are pushing more products and users. At this point, what we have right now is just 2 products including ON Sports and the e-sport platform. We will release more in the future many products for other businesses that they have already wrap-up and ready to be released. The ecosystem will be more completed, and from now until the end of this year, there will be a mainnet launch.
Q17: I have come across a very good question to end this AMA. Is there any plan from the government to introduce a digital currency, and would you be the main partner for that sort of thing?
Tri Pham: From what I know, the State Bank of Vietnam, they’re looking into this option, but they are still considering the pros and cons of the digital Vietnam Dong, but overall, like I mentioned, we are moving to a cashless society, it’s inevitable to have a digital currency when you truly go for cashless society. This also helps governments control more easily the amount of money flowing such as for tax.
Thank you so much for coming on to the show and for answering all of my questions and all of the questions from the audience. It’s been very enlightening.
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