Hello TokenPay and EFIN Community,
I hope you and your families are doing well with the recent pandemic. It has been a crazy time for everyone, please stay positive since negativity never helped anyone. 😊
The past few months have been a trying time for the TokenPay ecosystem, and COVID has not made it any easier. I take responsibility for the tough decisions that were made, and given the optimist that I am, I do believe it is possible to turn things around quickly.
For the past few months, I have spent a considerable amount of time reflecting on a lot of the decisions that were made over the past two years. In summary, not only did we focus on businesses that would be incredibly difficult to execute on, but we also faced significant headwinds in adoption given the technology choice and the crowded market compared to projects that were started from 2013 to 2016. To become very differentiated these days you either need:
- A unique technology that is created by a team of people who have an INCREDIBLE amount of experience in the blockchain space.
- Lots of capital and a lot of #1.
- An easily scalable technology and business, 100% browser-based.
Nevertheless, below I will highlight the following plan that I believe will quickly get us back on the right track and will provide a detailed follow up to each decision as it does warrant detailed explanation.
- TPAY coin adoption will be the focus going forward. We are going to shift our focus in building less directly, but grow with partners who have specific skills and experiences, and expand the adoption of TPAY in as many other ecosystems as possible.
- TPAY blockchain update. The TPAY blockchain, which has never had an issue since launch, has been upgraded to the latest Bitcoin fork and in a private repository in our GitHub. It will be released when we have executed on many of the below new initiatives and will keep the community posted on these developments. The current blockchain works and is receiving a very high staking award for the time being. When the new blockchain is released, the staking rewards will drop significantly. So, take advantage today of the staking rewards.
- Status of EFIN DEX and details of pivot. Building a DEX with all of the features I felt were needed to succeed is a difficult task, I still believe in the future of DEX’s as we continue to see more hacks of digital assets and data. So, we have postponed the development of the current DEX and decided that the best future for EFIN to succeed is to pivot its entire business model, which should then fund growth to improve the DEX. I will explain in the #4 bullet point the new version of EFIN, but first, I would like to tell you why we made this decision as I owe that explanation to you in detail.
- The current EFIN DEX was not only an expensive build. It was going to cost a lot to maintain and continue the development.
- The perfect version of a DEX is that it has the following components
- Support every digital asset in the world via the wallet function.
- Trade every digital asset in the world via the trade function.
- Every trade should be Peer to Peer with fast transaction speeds.
- Make it incredibly easy user experience for new users.
- Make it accessible to every user in the world given different devices, internet, etc.
- Servers should be run by the users and not as an entity so that it can continue to run without our full support.
I believe with EFIN, we were able to solve most of the goals above, but technology today makes it difficult to execute, given many factors. Also, it is costly to support every digital asset in the world as you would have to run nodes for each coin on a server if there are no public ones available. The trading engine we built was done from the ground up and was not using atomic swaps which still today is mostly used on ETH or ERC coins (hence why ETH dexes are doing well) which is not the same as swapping BTC to an ERC; it is like being on two completely different highways with different signs and even direction you need a strong bridge to make sure the transaction works flawlessly.
I do think we tried to make it easy for new users. Still, given people had to download software, we found that many people had issues with this given the computer/hardware resources it took to run, which made it difficult to be accessible to everyone. Finally, servers cost money if you want a fast system, and we were spending close to $5,000 a month and would be more as the DEX grew. The number of transaction and fees needed to cover the costs of staff, servers, maintenance, new development required at least 2 million a day in trading volume which is hard to achieve since a cross-chain dex today on average are getting maybe $100,000 a day in trading volume. Nevertheless, I do believe there is a future for DEX. Still, I think it is essential to build something that people can use easy and fast today, leveraging other technology and then use the success of that to continue on the mission of launching a better version of the DEX that meets all of the goals stated above.
- 4. EFIN.com’s new product launch and new website, Summer 2020. The new EFIN will have the following features:
- It will be 100% browser-based and accessible via desktop and mobile responsive.
- Will allow users to perform three actions — store, Swap, and Buy Crypto with Fiat.
- 100% non-custodial ownership and swap transaction execution. You will send and receive the coin you wish to swap for; we will only hold your assets for minutes as the transaction is completed and then sent to you.
- Support over 100 coins and will add more every month to eventually cater to a significant number of projects globally.
- Connects with 10 to 20 of the top exchanges of the world
- Finds the lowest price of all the exchanges with the EFIN Smart Algo, which aggregates order books and matches the size of the order to the best route execution.
- Include access to liquidity pools of projects that are not listed on large exchanges.
- Will eventually allow users to trade from pairs that are not listed on any exchanges to make it easier to trade. For example, if you have LTC and want to trade for TPAY, the system will take your LTC then sell it for BTC then to buy TPAY, which could be in 2 different exchanges. This will be seamless to the user.
Why did we decide to make this switch? 99% of users today trade their crypto in centralized exchanges. Although the goal is for that to go to 98%, 97%, etc. over time with the use of a DEX, it is crucial to participate and leverage all of the technology and market-making efforts being made on all of these exchanges. People who want to get into crypto want fast and secure service. We believe this new product will allow us to reach a much broader audience and grow significantly faster than the current model. We believe this model is financially more sustainable given we will not have as much running costs, and we will be able to charge a premium for the service given the convenience. There is competition for this today, no doubt, but competition never scared us it validates that there is a market and need for this type of service. In the end, the best marketer and tech stack wins.
Phase 1
- Release the new version of EFIN.com with the Swap and Buy Crypto function only then at a later date the Wallet function.
- Review feedback from community and users to determine roadmap that can help growth.
- Monitor trades and traffic volume and do small marketing tests.
- Generate revenues that will help build a fund for marketing and tech development.
After we have successfully completed Phase 1 we will provide an update on Phase 2.
We expect the new version of EFIN to be released in the Summer of 2020 with the Swap and Buy Crypto feature and the Wallet feature at a later date.
- 5. TokenPay and TPAY will embrace and join the Ethereum ecosystem via an OPTIONAL SWAP. We have decided that in order to grow the adoption of TPAY globally and aggressively, we must make it easy for TPAY to be added to as many projects and services available. Given the size and rapid growth of the Ethereum ecosystem, we will partner with a company and eventually a custodial provider to institute an OPTIONAL SWAP program where TPAY can be swapped for TPAYw, which is an ERC20 version of TPAY. This will be a 1:1 swap where you deposit your TPAY and receive 1 TPAYw. You can swap back and forth as freely as you want so you can still stake TPAY and use the features that the original TPAY blockchain has.
There will be a fee of 0.25% to 1% Processing fee, depending on size, for every SWAP that occurs and Partners and Platinum members will receive 10% fees generated from each swap until the end of the membership period. The rest of the fees will be used to provide support, tech updates, and be used to list the on new exchanges which are willing to add an ERC faster than a non-ERC.
An additional blog post will be released to go into further detail with a confirmed release date.
- 6. EFIN Partner and Platinum members update.
- Partners of the EFIN Partner will have their membership extended until December 2020 and Platinum members until December 2021.
- Both will receive 20% of the EFIN fees collected after an appropriate internal budget has been funded. The funds will be used to pay for all operating costs, marketing, and budget to relaunch a better version of the EFIN DEX which depending on the success and growth of this web version could be re-leased at the end of 2020 or beginning of 2021.
- Partners and Platinum will receive a discount of at least 10% for using the platform.
- Partners and Platinum members will receive 10% of the fees collected for all of the TPAY to TPAYw (erc20) swaps. This is a new benefit being added to encourage users to SWAP some of their TPAY to add liquidity to other projects.
- Once we have accumulated fees to receive up to 5 EUR worth of TPAY per member is when we will send to Partners and Platinum members.
- At the end of the year we will re-evaluate the progress of the projects, benefits and economics of the program.
- 7. CryptoBet Development. After over a year of negotiating, I have finally made a deal with a past Advisor named Charles that many in the community seem to despise for various reasons. The exit is amicable and there is no bad blood between us. Owing to the settlement, CryptoBet.com will become part of the TokenPay ecosystem as originally conceived. More on this to follow. Among many other features, TPAY will be permanently and meaningfully integrated in to the gaming platform. Additionally, there will be a one-time distribution of CBET tokens to Partners and Platinum to compensate for the past intended Airdrops. We anticipate this to occur later this year. Finally, and most significantly, there will be a distribution of up to 2,000,000 TPAY to players of CryptoBet. Details will be released soon.
I want to thank you all for your support, and I am optimistic that the focus and direction of TokenPay will be positive for the community and the world.
Sincerely,
Derek Capo