July AMA (CEO & COO)

9 min readJul 30, 2019

Hello dear NEXT.exchange community!

To start, we would like to thank you for your support throughout our development and growth path! Throughout July, our team collected questions for an AMA on our social media (Telegram & Twitter). We received a lot of great ones, and now present answers to them by our CEO, Christiaan van Steenbergen, and COO, Gleb Jout.

Q: Will trades on NEXT.exchange be on or off-chain, your WP is not clear about this?

C: All trades will be registered on our Blockchain. NEXT.exchange is a hybrid system, it first stores all transactions in an (off-chain) memory pool and writes them to the chain (NEXT.chain) every 30 seconds.

Q: Will orders over 500 EUR/USD be prevented? What happens if someone attempts to trade more?

C: We don’t prevent orders over 500 EUR. It is up to the customer how much he wants to trade. The only restriction is that when our fiat gateway is used, we need to ask for identification (our banking partner requires that, so we do). Also in case if a customer is not in line with our policies, they can be found on our site, we can restrict his or her account for an investigation.

Q: Are you going to hold trading competitions to attract more traders and increase the daily trading volume this way?

G: Of course, they are ok for building some volume. We will have different types, the exact structures are still to be determined, and contests may in fact be unique to each project.

Along with competitions, we will be holding Airdrops and will allow Proof-of-Stake (PoS) based assets to automatically accrue rewards for users.

Q: Do you see low supply as a risk for price fluctuations? Coin owners with big portions can determine the price easily. Any plan to protect the price?

G: As long as there are speculators, there will always be volatility/ company value fluctuations. We cannot enforce our will on high rollers. Keep in mind that they also take on large risks by occupying significant positions. Current NEXT holders with the biggest positions are Masternode operators, and many of our Masternode holders have been with us since our ICO and through the bear market, dedicated. There is an open line of communication between us.

In my opinion, the best way to protect company value is to build and maintain demand. Product usefulness (building volume on the exchange), clever marketing, and constant improvement are imperative here. Use cases for NEXT are also important, there is already a lot of utility attainable through being a holder — decreased fees, access to fiat (if KYC is complete), trading fee redistribution, using it as collateral for a Masternode. NEXT can be used as a payment method as well, we are looking to implement it in the voting/listing process for projects too.

Our supply is low, yes, but the emission is also a low15 year period. Another interesting thing to look at is the sell-side pressure on NEXT markets, less than 4% of the current circulating supply is up for sale.

Q: How is ITC different from (Z)dag?

C: Let me first explain what DAG technology is and why we chose to implement it into our own blockchain. DAG is a directed acyclic graph data structure which utilizes topological ordering. It is frequently applied to issues regarding data processing, scheduling, finding the best navigation route, data compression. So in short, DAG is used to store transactions in a memory pool, which is produced within a Blockchain by miners. This provides the ability to process a lot of transactions per second. There are other projects out there that use DAG, such as NXT and IOTA. However, what distinguishes us is that we are the only exchange that is built on DAG tech. We are also able to fork the DAG code and add other implementations for specific usage cases, since (Z)DAG is open-source software published under the MIT license. Due to our differentiated use of it, the adjusted DAG solution which we are using goes by Instant Transaction Confirmation. More in ITC in our Whitepaper, section 5.

Q: Quite concerned about liquidity on the exchange. Please explain what market makers do for NEXT.exchange & why other DEXs didn’t do the same before?

G: From the start, I would like to say that we do not plan on creating false demand for our products as a marketing tactic. If we are to engage with market makers it will occur as a contractual agreement to provide liquidity, healthy spread. A lack of liquidity can be a critical issue for a lot of projects. Actually, DEX’s utilize market makers. They can provide you this service directly, this is a fact. IDEX has market makers for example. They vary, there can be two or more accounts trading back and forth, or spread support. But the nature of DEX’s is with such constraints (such as catering to a specific Blockchain), that limit their appeal to users, so volume is a bit less across the map. Sections 1. & 2. Of our new Whitepaper can help with this question, those sections contain relevant information.

Q: In my view, the biggest exchange killers are no volume/liquidity, the question is, how do you plan to bring this to NEXT.exchange and to attract users away from their current exchanges?

G: There are two questions here, one is in regards to liquidity and the other is how we will attract users.

That is true, there are a lot of small exchanges out there that see minimal volume with poor liquidity. The success of our project and as a team depends on the organic volume which we can generate on NEXT.exchange. What can be done to complete that task — utilize liquidity providers, trading competitions, referral program, provide markets for new and in-demand projects that are limited in their trading platform lineup, provide incentives for respective project communities and their teams to vote for a listing and thus expand mutual brand awareness.

Marketing efforts will also take place in order to support the above. They will vary from paid press to influencer and Ambassador efforts, interviews, and community engagement. We are already carrying out marketing activities, but it is important to realize that their effects and frequency will be greater with our upcoming release

Q: Will NEXT.exchange have both import and export of keys? Or strictly export?

C: Both will be possible, but the customer is always responsible for his private keys. Since the wallet part of NEXT.exchange is directly connected to the Blockchain, we can create instantly, with private keys, an account and make it available for use. For exporting, every user will be able to control his assets even outside of the exchange website. Our exchange, therefore, is not a ‘vault’ to store cryptocurrencies. We are thinking in the near future to make this option available while we will use cold-storage technologies and insurances to ensure that all funds are safe.

Q: Can you please share your plan about e-commerce cms integration? (plugin, API, coin accepted, fees) does merchant will be able to auto-withdraw in fiat (IBAN)?

C: We recently started working with a fin-tech organization which is going to build an API that e-commerce stores can use to accept cryptocurrencies as a payment method. By implementing this plugin into WordPress, Magento, Prestashop etc, we would be able to expand our customer base to be a true crypto to fiat gateway. This can be also offered to white-label construction and much more. We cannot provide more specific details at the moment.

Q: How next exchange will ensure that there’s in no wash-trading will happen?

C: Wash trading is hard to prevent. Everybody can sell and buy the same financial instruments over and over again. To prevent this type of manipulation, NEXT.exchange has a mechanism that prevents a customer from buying and selling the same asset in rapid succession. We will also monitor account activity. Our goal is to be compliant and clean.

Q: Can US citizens host nodes? How and why is this legally possible?

C: Yes. Hosting a masternode is nothing more than hosting a software service. It requires a VPS and some technical knowledge.

How many masternodes does the team host exactly?

C: At this point, the NEXT team hosts 8 nodes. Masternodes can be seen on the NEXT.chain block explorer here.

Q: Do you plan to develop something for NEXT.chain that we can easily use to swap token like ETH to NEO or NEO to BNB something like that. Like an instant swap?

G: Atomic swaps are a planned feature for NEXT.chain as well as a bridge for projects to cross over to our Blockchain and list on NEXT.exchange, more information on page 26 of our Whitepaper.

Q: What is minted in exact numbers for the dev funds, marketing, and circulation?

Supply figures for NEXT once the swap from the Ethereum Blockchain is complete.

Q: The no KYC policy — is that 100% established set in stone? We have seen sites like Bittrex start out saying “no KYC for trades under .5 BTC per day” and then a few months later turn around and require it from all users. Can anyone ensure this will absolutely not happen with Next?

G: We will require KYC for anything involving fiat. This is a must for us to do in order to work with our banking partners and provide our users with fiat functionality. KYC is not needed for crypto trading. But, it is a necessary measure to counteract money laundering. We do not report all of your trades to governments. However, if illegal activities are discovered, we will declare them. This is stated in our KYC/AML policy which can be found on our website.

I understand that there are two camps. One that is opposed to KYC because crypto is decentralized, and the other that does not mind KYC. At the moment our banking partners require KYC, they need to be in line with regulations. KYC is not forced upon all users, but if fiat is to be touched — it becomes a necessity. Our KYC is handled by Trulioo. It is a simple process, requires a government-issued ID and proof of address.

Q: Will the KYC process for IEO’s require full business registrations, articles of Inc, and ID verification or just ID from the issuer.

G: Yes, there will be stringent requirements for IEO’s. There will be a due diligence process that project teams will need to pass.

Q: Will NEXT.exchange be open source?

C: We will open-source some of our software. We run the risk of hackers gaining access to our methods/procedures if we release our entire code. We are an exchange after all, even though we also have our own Blockchain. We simply cannot allow someone to gain unauthorized access to parts of our platform. Our code has gone through security checks and penetration tests.

What is the % completion for the 1.1 updates?

More details on the referral program?