On July 26th, 2019, The Ferrum Network team conducted a live Q&A session in the official Ferrum Telegram group. We’ve compiled all the questions and have made some edits for our future Ferrum Network community members to read seamlessly. Some of the questions, answers, responses, and sequence of questions may have been edited or modified for clarity and readability. Questions were answered from several community members.
We want to thank our entire Ferrum community for watching or participating!
Main Participants: Ian Friend COO of Ferrum Network, Dominik Swierkot CMO of Ferrum Network. Naiem Yeganeh — CEO of Ferrum Network could not attend due to an important business meeting.
- Introduction -
Dominik Swierkot — Our COO Ian Friend is ready to take your questions; the community Q&A starts now!
We encourage you to come up with deep questions and ones which will also help other community members understand what Ferrum Network is all about.
Unfortunately, our CEO Name Yeganeh is on a business trip; But Ian is here and ready to take as many questions as possible.
Ian Friend — Yes let’s keep it high level and not too much about logistics of the ICO.
— Q&A Begins -
Why did the team choose 1.12m as the hard cap? And more precisely, why is the ICO segregated with 300k towards the public sale and 800k for the private round?
Ian Friend — We looked at the market and saw that crypto projects that raised too much usually had negative performance on the exchanges. We then looked at our own approach, which is to be extremely frugal. We did not need more than 1.12mil to do everything we set out to do and a low hard cap felt like a successful strategy over the coming months and year.
How does one participate in the Primablock ICO after being KYC approved?
Dominik — Exact instructions will be communicated to the community on Monday (7/29/2019), stay tuned!
I noticed this week that there were critical questions about keeping lots of FRM in reserve and potentially diluting the market with these FRM tokens. Is there already a clear rate with regards to the burn of tokens? Meaning: how many FRM will be brought to the market out of the reserve for every burned token?
Ian — Excellent question. So, the Traction Based Reserve Model is designed in such a way that it will not increase supply. This is because the number of tokens released corresponds to the amount burned that month (keep in mind, the FRM is locked for a year to begin with). The exact ratio of burned to unlock has not been determined yet, because we don’t know how much we will be burning and we don’t know our capital needs this far out. It will be less than 1–1 though.
Aren’t you afraid you do not have enough capital, to spend on an efficient marketing campaign, post-ICO?
Ian — Ferrum Network is a lean organization; we actually can do a lot on very-little capital. Everyone who has found out about Ferrum thus far, was due to proper planning and our all-star team. We’ve only spent like 10k USD on marketing (maybe even less) up until this point. However, we did allocate a sizeable amount of funds to marketing in Asia which we will do with the help of our exchange partner, BitMax.
After releasing the last planned product Infiniti Dex, are there any plans on creating any other product?
Ian — We always have ideas for more products and also improving the existing one. The products after Infinity DEX will probably be more fiat gateways around the world, which we view as critical for blockchain adoption and our success.
Which blockchain network will Infinity Dex be utilized on? (Ferrum, ETH, NEO or BNB). Will the DEX be able to have the trading pairs against, for example: BNB/ETH and NEO?
Ian — Infinity DEX will run Ferrum network’s main chain, which is an interoperability network. So, it will launch with a number of different pairs. More details about Infinity DEX will be communicated in the near future.
Which countries are you planning to launch Kudi exchange to before 2020?
Ian — Kudi Exchange will expand into Ghana in the next few months. We are also looking at Kenya, and a host of other African countries. The timing of when we expand to these other countries is still being worked out. In Africa, it will all be Kudi.
We are looking at launching a similar product in Europe, Specifically a fiat gateway with payments app for Euros. We haven’t decided on a name.
Any plans for South Africa?
Ian — South Africa is a bit trickier because our main competitor Luno has a tight grip on that market. That being said, we will look to expand there once the Kudi brand has grown.
Any plans on creating two fiat gateway exchanges like Kudi for Balkans countries like: Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kosovo, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia; and for Eastern Europe: Belarus, Russia, Moldova, Romania and etc.?
Ian — My understanding is that we can secure a fiat exchange license in Estonia which would then apply throughout EU countries. Some of those are not in the EU so I don’t want to speculate on how we would approach that at this time. In general, we want to get a license and launch in every country where there is a good market opportunity for growth. If people have connections in particular countries, we would love to speak with you.
We want to finish the main net after UniFyre so I doubt we will launch a fiat gateway product until mid-2020. Fiat gateways are a big priority for us so trust me, we will not be sleeping on it.
Can you address the issue of Gas limit during Tier 3 of the Sale?
Ian — There will be no gas limit, this is due to the smart contract we are using and because we think it’s more exciting this way. All decisions with respect to the ICO have tradeoffs.
Hello, on what platform will the sale be held?
Dominik — It will happen on Primablock, exact instructions will be communicated on Monday.
How are things going with the Asian campaign? I see Africa is doing quite good. Will we see more Asian related marketing at the launch of UniFyre?
Ian — Asian campaign started yesterday. BitMax has done a great job. 100,000 people in China saw the post about the Ferrum BitMax partnership!
BitMax has a massive campaign planned. I am talking about huge numbers, like using 100 influencers! Things are just bigger in China.
Explain staking on Ferrum and how can one benefit from it and how to start.
Ian — Staking will be done quite simply using your UniFyre Wallet. You will select the number of tokens you wish to stake and for how long, and get a corresponding reward at pre-determined intervals (to be decided). When we start the staking, how much will be rewarded and those details are still being worked out.
So, no minimum token amount to begin staking?
Ian — There might be a minimum, I don’t know we haven’t really even discussed it internally in any major detail if I am being completely honest.
When mainnet is released, will you still keep a fraction of tokens in BEP-2/ERC-20 or will all tokens be migrated to the Ferrum Network mainnet?
Ian — That’s a good question, I think we will need to make a decision at that time. If things are going well on Binance Dex then it would not make sense to pull them all off of there (I would think). But the majority (most if not all ERCs) will become main net tokens.
How long will social mining rewards program run?
Ian — Social mining is basically an advanced, community driven form of bounties. Basically, for all your value-added things you do for Ferrum (articles, videos, tweets, dev work, design work, etc.) you will be rewarded in FRM. But instead of the project acting like a dictator and deeming what was valuable, the community are the ones who decide.
Social mining will run for as long as it is beneficial for the project and our community. I’m personally really excited about social mining. For anyone who has not checked out the article, I suggest you read it. It’s going to be revolutionary IMO. Keep a lookout for an announcement about that this weekend.
Why would you keep ERC20/BEP2 tokens at mainnet?
Community Answer — BEP2 would help with Binance listing and earning Binance community to join Ferrum community and learn about Ferrum.
ERC-20 is basic for most of projects, abandoning Ethereum the platform where you started your projects does feel painful and harmful to the Ethereum ecosystem.
In terms of revenue, what is the point of you making profit? I read that Kudi Exchange generates little profits currently. In the long run, at what point does the business becomes self-sustainable?
Ian — Yeah Kudi does earn some revenue even though it launched about 2 months ago. Once we get to 20k users we will be at a more sustainable level. We are getting there but these things take time. We just started our Kudi marketing campaign of going business to business to signup merchants. I’ll have a full Kudi update for in about 30 days.
(Revised Community Question) Will you make any changes to the Tier 2 (whitelisters) to allow for more participants?
Ian — We won’t be making more changes to the ICO structure. It’s really too late in the game for that. We did our best to be fair and yet keep it interesting (no one wants a $60 allocation) decision had major tradeoffs.
Dominik — Tier 2 will not be reduced any further, it holds a good balance for many.
Can anyone build on-top or on Ferrum Network’s mainnet? (Open-Source Question).
Ian — Yes, Ferrum Network will be open source. We decided to build our own products on top of it so there will be immediately utility instead of taking the “field of dreams” approach. But yes, anyone can build on top of the mainnet.
Can you explain the current focus of the Ferurm network team, in a broad-sense and in a business sense?
Ian — We will be releasing an article soon about why we took the approach of focusing on products and users first, then migrating them onto the Ferrum Network but basically it comes down to the fact that value in tokens is driven by 2 things. Hype and utility. Hype only lasts so long. So to get utility we knew we had to build useful products, aquire users to those products, then migrate them to the network where each transaction uses FRM as gas
Can I use your technology, to create a gateway similar to Kudi Exchange, in a different region?
Ian — That is a bit trickier. A fiat gateway requires a license, conducting KYC on all your customers, and a host of other issues that only come when you are dealing in fiat. You add the utility to the fact that every time a(n) FRM is spent, it is burned, and you have a decentralized ecosystem with real value. This is our goal.
I thought that Ferrum was about integrating blockchains into the Ferrum Network? This is the opposite. Spreading FRM over different kinds of blockchains in the case with BEP-2 and ERC-20 tokens?
Ian — Ferrum Network itself can connect with any blockchain. Having our token on 3 different chains, while a bit cumbersome, is not exactly related to our network’s cross-chain functionality. Although the goal is one day just having FRM in our own network and having all the networks connected to Ferrum and all crypto transactions running on Ferrum rather than their native chains.
But, I can’t make any promises or predictions about where the token will be in a year from now. We don’t operate that way. We look at the facts and circumstances at the given moment in time and make the best decision. Making promises for something that happens in 1 year is a good way to piss a lot of people off.
Will the Ferrum Network GitHub be open-sourced?
Ian — Yeah out GitHub is open source but I don’t think a lot of code is on there. Our plan is to build a dev community and start putting more on GitHub. We need to get that going again but have been busy with other things.
We will start putting more stuff on GitHub soon.
T.k. Hamed (Ferrum Advisor) — The current dev community: https://t.me/Ferrumdeveloper it’s relatively small and has been pushed aside at the current time due to the ICO, but once the sale is completed, there will be a bigger focus on building this communication outlet up and getting users involved in the development of Ferrum.
Regarding Prima doing ICO; Would they
- Take care of distribution and the vesting?
- Would they provide any dashboard or similar to view token release date, % of tokens in circulation and future release dates?
Ian — We will be releasing an article re: Prima Block’s involvement in the sale on Monday, and many details in general.
Can you discuss Tier-2 of the ICO? The cap is $180k. The Personal cap is $400, so probably there will be only 450 people will get the allocation. What if we have let say around 1000 people want to contribute? Definitely it is not enough. Will it be FCFS among the whitelisters?
Ian — Yes FCFS among whitelisters. There is still less than 1k people who did KYC, so don’t worry so much about having 5000 people all coming at once.
Even Wanchain (WAN), Icon, Polkadot (DOT) and many others are competing in Interoperability space! How is Ferrum different from other projects in interoperability?
Ian — Ferrum is taking a different approach than these projects. Our interoperability solution involves decentralized proxy tokens, not atomic swaps, which are slow and costly. The Ferrum Network test net is already connected to more networks than most of those other projects. BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB chains all will be connected when main net comes out. Maybe even a few more.
Any future plan for expansion of Ferrum Network? Like first establish the market in Asia and then others continents? Any hope for USA?
Ian — For one, the UniFyre Wallet will be available worldwide. It’s a non-custodial wallet meaning you hold your keys so there are not the same regulatory headaches. For fiat gateways we want to launch one in the US but it’s a longer-term plan because it costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time.
Tier 2 Whitelisters will take part in the sale, via primablock, with FCFS?
Ian — Yes, but you will only be competing against other whitelisters.
What are the other crypto’s are you planning to integrate in Ferrum other than ETH, BTC and BTMX?
Ian — BNB, XRP, maybe EOS. But honestly, we want to
A) Focus on crypto’s with real utility and demand.
B) Get the community involved. This means that for ones outside of top 10–20, we will be doing community voting to see which tokens should be added to UniFyre Wallet.
Another interesting question I have received about KYC, why there was side face picture, and three finger pictures along with regular holding id with paper?
Ian — We had a lot of fake accounts trying to join. We needed to add some more steps to eliminate the problem and it seems to have worked. I’m guessing when it is all said and done 1500 people from the whitelist will have done KYC. Give or take.
Was KYC reviewed by your own team or any outside KYC provider?
Ian — Both. We are required by law to review applications ourselves, but we have a program that assists.
Is KYC data destroyed as soon as approved or stored somewhere?
Ian — I am speaking with our outside counsel re: this issue. We are not interested in keeping anyone’s KYC for longer than legally required but some jurisdictions may have some time limits in case regulators want to review things.
Have you considered legality from the point-of-view of the SEC, specifically for the future? You operate from the land where SEC people takes metro every day.
Ian — We consider the SEC in almost every decision we make. But we have a comprehensive legal strategy that I think reduces the risks of any issues with them. There’s a reason why not a single US person will be approved for the sale. There’s also a reason BitMax excludes US persons (from certain account levels I think). Anyway, we are being very careful.
Can you share some details about the Bitmax deal?
Ian — I can’t talk about details of the listing but I will say BitMax has been an absolute pleasure to work with, and they are complete professionals in all their dealings. Also, very nice people. A shout-out to @BitMax_Admin1
Any big announcements coming in soon?
Ian — I think we all need a breather after this week and the ICO. But yeah there will be big announcements especially involving the UniFyre Wallet which is being beta tested soon.
Regarding uses of Ferrum tokens; Are they used throughout Ferrum eco-system? For example, In Kudi Exchange and next future product?
Ian — Yes once main net is launched all products will run on Ferrum Network. Therefore, all transactions on Kudi, UniFyre, the DEX and Sub-Zero Wallet will require FRM tokens as gas (which are burned when they are spent)
When burn, will it reduce the circulation or will be recycled and used elsewhere?
Ian — No burn means gone forever, so it will reduce the circ. Supply
By the way, how would you make Ferrum DEX to compete with other DEX. There are too many these days, and exchanges are fighting for the volume.
Ian — Well most DEX’s are not cross chain or very fast. Even Binance DEX doesn’t have bitcoin right. So, our DEX will support all assets, and execute transactions in milliseconds. It will also be connected to a whole ecosystem where you can buy, transact, exchange and store your crypto.
Ian, when moon?
Ian — (Laughs a lot) We don’t speculate on price but let’s just keep up the hard work and good things will happen.
Dom — The community Q&A comes to a close, thank you to the community for being involved, we truly do appreciate you all.
Ian — Thank you all, it was a pleasure speaking with you! Our trusted admin team is here to assist from here on out. One more thing — stay tuned here because we are about to publish a video interview, I did the other day where you can learn so much more about Ferrum.
Links:
Website: https://ferrum.network/
Telegram: http://telegram.ferrum.network
Twitter: http://twitter.ferrum.network
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.ferrum.network
YouTube: http://youtube.ferrum.network
Reddit: http://reddit.ferrum.network
Bitcoin Talk: http://bitcointalk.ferrum.network
Facebook: http://facebook.ferrum.network
Github: https://github.com/ferrumnet/
Instagram: http://instagram.ferrum.network