AMA Transcript: Portal x CryptoDiffer

Learn more about Portal through an exciting AMA session, successfully concluded with the CryptoDiffer community. Our leaders, George Burke, Co-Founder & CMO, Dr. Chandra Duggirala, Co-founder, and Hanson So, Partner, B21 Capital, joined this session to represent Portal and answer all the questions.

About CryptoDiffer: CryptoDiffer is a social group with over 257k followers on Twitter prominently known for bringing cryptocurrency news, updates, opinions and analysis and more for cryptocurrency/blockchain enthusiasts.

Read this Transcript to learn about all that transpired during this session now!

SEGMENT I: INTRODUCTION

Q1. Can you introduce yourself to our community?

George: My name is George Burke, a co-founder at Portal. Our team started working on this in 2018, but I’ve been involved in bitcoin since early 2013. Always a believer in censorship-resistant, egalitarian technologies.

I built a bitcoin/altcoin exchange in 2013, which was sold. I later went on to build the first bitcoin debit card in the US called FreshPay. Prior to crypto, I launched the first “Netflix for Books” subscription club. I also currently run the first-ever bitcoin meetup – Silicon Valley Bitcoin – SVBTC.org – first started by Roger Ver and Andreas Antonopolous.

Q2: Can you introduce Portal to us?

George: Our company, Portal – https://portaldefi.com – recently announced an ~$8.5M raise to give birth to DeFi built on Bitcoin. We believe financial applications should be built on the protocol that is most likely to become the base money layer. Portal makes DeFi unstoppable with anonymous, zero-knowledge swaps via the first true cross-chain DEX that’s genuinely trustless. Unlike Uniswap/others, Portal eliminates minting wrapped coins (ie wBTC, wETH) or risky staking with intermediaries. Trading across incompatible blockchains is now just 1-click, trustless and private.

Fabric protocol, our layer 2 & 3 technology powering Portal, enables building censorship-resistant communications, media and one-click cross-chain swaps, all on Bitcoin (along with all its security advantages).

Q3: Let`s now talk about the milestones you have achieved so far and about your upcoming plans?

George: Before the roadmap, let’s start with accomplishments so far: We invented zero-knowledge swaps, which fix the Layer 1 “Tier Nolan” atomic swap problems. In addition, our CEO invented the Fabric protocol (the protocol Portal uses to build p2p ZK circuits for Fully Homomorphic Encryption), and has been used to build peer-to-peer communications and decentralized other apps.

With the atomic swaps integrated into Fabric, we are rebuilding the Web from client server model to an uncensorable, decentralized architecture.

As for roadmap:

1. We can announce that in only a couple of weeks we are launching our public sale on one of the most prestigious launchpads in the world, Republic, and unlike most other high profile projects, we are allowing investors from the US. If you’d like to participate, you’ll first need to be on the whitelist, available at https://go.portaldefi.com/whitelist. Can you believe there’s already almost $300M in investor interest!!??
2. We will also be announcing a number of partnerships with other tier 1 blockchain issuers over the coming weeks.
3. On the regulatory front, we have been seeing SEC lawsuits to various token projects for raising on an unregistered security; potentially fraud. This can result in a fine of millions or send teams to jail. Any issuer who promises an investor tokens is irreparably tethering the network token to the fundraise and will forever make that token a security. We will see any tokens deemed securities to be banned from trading on non-brokerage exchanges (which is pretty much all of them). Our fundraise is specifically designed to preserve the non-security nature of a digital asset that runs on the decentralized network, and therefore is never sold, given away, airdropped, etc. This way it can always be as freely transferable as BTC itself.
4. Last, with regard to the roadmap, Portal is a completely community-driven development. The community will determine the roadmap and features post-launch. We’re excited to see where the community drives the project as they push the bitcoin interoperability ecosystem forward.

SEGMENT II: LIVE Q&A

Q. Most of the new investors only focus on the price of the token, and the short term benefits of the project rather than understanding the true value of the project. Can you tell us about the motivations and benefits for investors to hold your tokens long term? What major partnerships does your project intend to use or how does your project bring its products to the average consumer – especially non-crypto users?

George: Convincing investors to invest is not our primary objective. Obviously it is a great side effect of our efforts, however we are not in the business of soliciting investors. We are more concerned with developing a product that the community trusts, uses, and, most importantly, embraces. Portal the network doesn’t depend on us, and is not controlled by us – the ultimate security. You want p2p systems to be secure against any 1 point of failure. The participants in the Portal network make or break the system- not us. Once it is live, because the community is the wind in the sales, the decentralized community has complete authority over the network. Our roadmap is community driven and they will be the ones to direct the development team down that path. I’m excited to see what you – Portal’s community – wants to be built!

Q. Many platforms are currently developing cross-chains technology. How would your Platform take this as the core of the technological activities? What advantage would users derive from using this to exchange BTC to other tokens and vice versa?

2. Can you discuss FABRICS which is the underlying technology of Portal Finance ?

George: The problems we’re solving that will give Portal a huge leap over today’s DeFi and DEXs are:

1. High gas fees: We utilize layer 2 for cross-chain swaps by which nodes can communicate hundreds or thousands of messages/transactions prior to settling on the main chain.
2. Poor UX: We agree the user experience for DEX trading has been awful so far. We have a beautiful non-custodial wallet that is as easy to use as Coinbase but self-sovereign and trust-minimized, where you can store coins and trade from within the same interface. We’ve worked years on developing this.
3. Asset locking & asset replication: The wrapping and locking of funds onto other chains by these so-called “cross-chain” DEXes are neither trustless nor decentralized, nor are they even cross-chain! BitGo custodies the majority of the billions of locked up BTC. As we saw with the recent $600M hack, these DEXes are honeypots waiting to happen. Atomic swaps solve this. Wrapping tokens becomes a thing of the past since coins of incompatible chains can be traded natively and without a risky middle-man. Each party’s funds are only locked during trade execution and not re-bonded or replicated onto other chains for eternity…

Q. Portal Finance will be launching its public sale in 2 weeks time on Republic Launchpad and this will be available to investors around the world including the US investors. Why have you chosen Republic for the public sale? Many projects restrict US investors from participating in their public sale because of some regulations but why do you guys include US investors in your public sale? How can we participate in this public sale?

George: Luckily, Republic, the launchpad hosting our public sale, does not have many restrictions for participation. We’re even allowing in US investors (these days, due to heavy regulatory burden, this is rare). That said, investors will still need to pass KYC. Republic will handle this for us.

If you wish to participate you’ll need to first be on the whitelist here: https://go.portaldefi.com/whitelist

Q. Portal looks like such a great project. I wonder who are among the Early Backers of Portal? Can you please list the partners and investors of Portal?

George: Angels who backed us are allstars: There are senior executives and founders from Ethereum, DFINITY, MobileCoin, Tether (USDT), Galaxy Digital, Bitcoin.com, Republic, Centre.io (USDC), Polymath, Æternity, Hedera Hashgraph, Reef Finance, GlobeDX, FIO, Portion, Ankr, Bounce Token, and 4K.

I’ll list several institutional investors too, both large and small: GenBlock, Taureon, ArkStream Capital, Republic Capital, Lotus Cap, RenGen, Shima Capital, OKEx Blockdream Ventures, Perpetual Value, Garthowen Capital, ArringtonXRP, LD Capital, Krypital Group, AC Capital, Æternity, Wave7, Damo Labs, WealthUnion Ventures, a41 Ventures, RR2 Capital, MarketAcross, CryptoDiffer, Supra Oracles, NetVRk, Kyros Ventures, BigCoin Vietnam, Moonwhale Ventures, Titans Ventures, Krish1, Exnetwork, X21 Digital, Formless Capital, Gate.io, Banana Capital, Criterion VC, MoonBoots Capital, B21 Capital. So many! Sorry if I’m missing a few…

Q. Wow, this is interesting, I saw something like portal Defi is built on Bitcoin, on which CEXes or DEXes will this be available for trade and which wallets will it be compatible with?

George: In our roadmap, the product is not just the cross-chain atomic swaps DEX, but also a non-custodial multi-coin “trading wallet”. The software is in private alpha and allows users to trade on centralized exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, and even DEXs like UniSwap in 1-click, right from within the wallet. It helps find the path of best execution (exchange with the best price and liquidity), sends your coins to the exchange from your wallet, executes the order, and withdraws back to the safety of your Portal wallet right after execution… all this in just 1 click.

This is a huge draw to adoption. Why? Because once atomic swaps go live, the wallet can choose Portal as the best path of execution. For users of the wallet, instant adoption. Oh and it’s the only app in the Apple App Store approved for atomic swaps.

Q. How is Fabric’s privacy and security guaranteed? What is Fabric’s contribution to web scale, security and efficiency? How does Fabric provide all these powerful features?

George: …For some background, a layer 2 is a sequence of unsettled transactions on the main chain done for a purpose. For example, Lightning Network is a layer 2 system for peer-to-peer micropayments. However, lightning transactions – until settled – are not broadcasted to the main chain.

We invented layer 2 zero knowledge swaps, which fix the Layer 1 tier nolan atomic swap incentive problems, and add speed and liquidity features. In addition, Fabric protocol (the protocol we use to build p2p ZK circuits for FHE), has been used to build peer to peer communication and other apps. Just like lightning is a layer 2 system for peer to peer micropayments, and is therefore fast because lightning transactions, until settled, are not broadcasted to the main chain. Portal is a layer two system for peer to peer cross-chain contracting. Because it’s layer 2, it’s fast.

Portal is building a true cross-chain method of trust-minimized exchange without a 3rd party. But because these chains do not natively interoperate or communicate with another, a layer must be built above the base layer for such communication. Portal is a layer 2 system for peer-to-peer cross-chain contracting. Cross-chain contracting facilitates a variety of in-demand DeFi activities, like spot-trading.

Fabric (https://fabric.pub), the underlying technology Portal is built on, splits contracts into “ZK Swarms” – allowing all network participants to agree to contracts on their own terms. These are “multi party contracts”, with each peer earning Bitcoin for computing their part in the program. It does this at “layer 3", which provides the privacy PLUS fungibility of transactions.

But why zero-knowledge? Why privacy?

How can a decentralized exchange layer be truly censorship-resistant if traders are known and addresses can be traced? So, Fabric technology enables ZK circuit creation which, when implemented, opens the door to a whole host of new methods of obfuscating transactions without losing verifiability.

For Bitcoin to become money, we need a censorship resistant, peer-to-peer trading system that crosses blockchains.

Q. Why was Portal built on Bitcoin as opposed to other chains? And are you guys looking to invent your own Layer 1 chain in the nearest future?

George: 1. Building a secure layer 1 system is incredibly hard. We don’t want to do that; Fabric uses the layer 1 system that already exists and therefore we use Bitcoin as OUR layer 1. In Portal’s DEX, the contracts don’t depend on anything other than the trading pairs’ native chains… say BTC<>ETH. We are harnessing the security already built into Bitcoin and into Ethereum; the atomic swap contracts are minimal. Independently audited and tested to the max by a truly decentralized network before going live over the course of the past 5 years.

Unlike wrappers and bridges, these coins are not re-bonded into Portal and are not honeypots. The community treasury does not contain exposed user’s funds. The exposure is limited only to the token which is being traded – NOT what is bonded. This is the main difference between the Portal project and other so-called false “cross-chain DEX’’ projects. The flaw in bonding/wrapping is double the exposure for a breach in security; be it theft, risk, hacking. It’s like making a duplicate -or a triplicate- of your house key. The Portal project is designed to protect your key- the reliance on simple and native atomic swaps means there isn’t anything to expose. This is possible through the use of Fabric Protocol technology, which is an internet built on the layer 1 blockchain of bitcoin – the timechain itself.

2. Bitcoin provides the security; no need to implement a new system and attempt to garner superior adoption. Bitcoin is the most decentralized and secure system and we think it is the monetary layer. If you want to build functionality, financial contracts, and beyond, it makes sense to build it on top of the monetary layer vs any other layer. More importantly, layers of functionality enable bitcoin to capture the value, but not the risk of a failure of a layer 2 system.

Q. During these days the NFTs are a top tier element that attract users and investors, so can you tell us what are the Portal’s plan regarding to NFTs?

George: Yes, NFTs are hot.

I already see incompatible siloes being problematic because an NFT on one chain cannot be accessed through smart contracts on another chain.

Since Portal is all about cross-chain, trustless interoperability, I can see a future where we may be able to bridge the gaps between siloed NFT platforms. I also see a future where a single NFT can be bonded with several FUNGIBLE tokens being minted for fractionated ownership. Fabric’s technology would enable Portal to build both of these awesome NFT-features… HOWEVER, our roadmap is community driven and they will be the ones to direct the development team down that path. We shall see!

You can follow twitter.com/portal_finance and join t.me/portalgroupchat.

About Portal

The Portal Project is a layer 2 system purpose-built to facilitate cross-chain atomic transactions. It is user-friendly and offers numerous DeFi services built on Bitcoin. Users on Portal can experience the speed and liquidity of centralized alternatives with the trust minimization guarantees of Bitcoin.

The Portal Project is built on Fabric’s market for computations- a free market for De-Fi services. Fabric is a general-purpose “computation market”, in which users can deploy complex programs for blinded execution by a network of peers.

A Financial Internet Built on Bitcoin ✈️

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