A few days ago, Khal of @LeoFinance was interviewed by @scottcbusiness and I admit it was a great interview :) I also posted about it on my blog because I was very excited to be one of the first ones to see it.
However, in my comments section there were 2 users who asked if there was a 'written version' (or transcript) of the interview. One of them who (like me) prefers to read than watch and the other user prefers to read because it is difficult for him to understand everything in English.
I am tagging here @st8z and @tin.aung.soe because I promised to do so ;)
Before you read below, please note that I am not a native English speaker. I tried to take the automatic youtube transcript and transform it in a way that it is better understandable when written. Of course the verbal language spoken is different than its written version, but I hope that I made everything clear without leaving anything out.
Please forgive any errors and please let me know below if you have any remarks.
Thank you for your understanding
p.s. The content belongs to Scott Cunningham, this transcript is being shared with his permission.
An interview of Khal by Scott :)
Who are they??? But of course, Khaleel Kazi is the LeoFinance Founder & Scott Cunningham is the creator of the show "Crypto & Things". Make sure you follow Scott to be in the know for all things crypto >> https://twitter.com/ScottCBusiness & LeoFinance on Twitter >> https://twitter.com/FinanceLeo
Scott Hey everyone I'm Scott Cunningham aka @scottcbusiness and today we're here with Khal from LeoFinance. We're gonna be talking about what it's all about, the hive network and how you guys can get using it and take advantage of that as well. So without further ado...
Introduction
00:14
Scott Thank you so much for being on the show
Khal Thanks for having me
00:20
Scott yeah absolutely. So for people who don't know anything about you, can you just start off by giving a little bit of an introduction about yourself?
Khal Yeah, so I got started in crypto back in 2016.
Just kind of buying bitcoin and ethereum. I think how most people get started. Generally you know i came for the money just kind of like everybody else.
But then what I stayed for, was this whole ecosystem of people that are basically working to make a better world through crypto by handling it and using it for regular things.
Generally that's how I got started in the space and why i stayed here. I think everybody has unique reasons but the way we get started is usually pretty similar.
01:05
Scott Yeah, I would agree because I definitely got started thinking i could turn a profit and then I stayed because I was interested in the tech and I actually got started on steem as kind of the first real in-depth experience i had with blockchain technology.
01:21
Scott When did you actually start LeoFinance?
01:28
Khal It started about 16 months ago on the steem blockchain actually. It was started as steemleo. So I actually saw your interview with agro (Aggroed) He was talking about steemmonsters which is now splinterlands so kind of had the same progression there. You know, started with steemleo and then moved it to LeoFinance. Now we're on the hive blockchain.
Scott Yeah yeah so are you still on steem? Or is it just exclusively for hive?
Khal Now exclusively for hive.
What is LeoFinance?
01:59
Scott Okay. So i guess for people who don't really know what Leofinance is all about, can you just break that down for them?
02:03
Khal Yeah, so it's basically a second layer blogging application on hive. It lets people connect to our interface and they create content just the same way you do it on hive. But instead of just going to hive interface, it's also going to leo's interface. This way you're earning Leo tokens in addition to hive tokens. So basically you earn more rewards, you're on the second layer. It provides kind of a more tailored experience to crypto and finance content as opposed to hive where it's just like a meeting pot of different content creators and artists and all this different stuff. So generally it has better curation and engagement, and then of course we're expanding it beyond hive and linking it to other blockchains and that's the cross blockchain vision.
How is LeoFinance different from other interfaces?
03:03
Scott Do you just want to explain the caveat of how it's different from just another interface? Because I'm sure some people might be like ... it's another UI that I can use kind of like peakd or hive.blog? But leo finance is definitely a lot more than just another ui to access hive content.
03:19
Khal Right, so you know on the back end it looks very similar to something like peakd or hive blog where all the content is stored on the hive blockchain, but then you know displayed on our ui. The difference is that with the second layer tokenization that all that content is basically earning hive and leo and then also you know the blade of the way that users can engage with it. Τhat's that's all in the second layer and that's the unique value proposition of leo. That you can earn a token that's meant for creators that are in your niche as opposed to hive which is just that big melting pot. The main thing that makes it not just another ui is the leo token economy itself.
About Leo tokens
Scott Yeah yeah and you want to break down how that works? Because you know i find it interesting that it's actually worth significantly more than than hive token itself.
Khal so you know Leo is basically its own token and it's modeled after hive so it has the same kind of rewards pool set up which is proof of brain. Basically users create content and then users can upvote content and earn rewards, so you know the same author curator split that's happening on hive. The difference is that it's basically a separate rewards' pool and it's kind of modeled in our own way in terms of that we can do different things with the economy because it's a lot smaller than hive. So with hive you are going back to that melting pot point you've got all these different people converging and discussing what they should do next but with leo we have a take charge way of looking at it where we can just take the token wherever we want. So a recent thing we did was make wrapped leo which basically moves leo into being a cross-chain token You can trade it on ethereum, so one of the reasons why i think it's worth more than hive, in dollar terms is basically because it's a more it's a more usable economy. It's also smaller so in terms of market cap.
05:25 It has a more limited supply. So, generally good tokenomics is why it has more value.
What question does LeoFinance Answer?
05:34
Scott True true. So what problem does LeoFinance try to set out to solve?
05:40
Khal Yeah so when i got started in the space you know in 2016 it was so hard to use crypto. I mean Ι'm sure you remember, it's like setting up your first blockchain wallet. You know getting a bitcoin address .. "How do i store the keys for this thing.. Uh it's so difficult.." So one thing I liked about steem when I found it back then is that it was social media but on the blockchain. So it was like you download a bitcoin wallet but it's not exactly a bitcoin wallet because it's not like this ridiculous address. Υou know it's my name on a blockchain and that's what i saw as the opportunity where steemit kind of failed in a sense. To capture the home page of crypto-idea that they set out for. So LeoFinance is my way of saying steemit failed at this I think i can take a crack at it, and make the home page of crypto, and make crypto usable for the average person. So get a social account (it's like social media). You earn crypto. It's easy to use. You know that's the whole point
Scott Yeah, definitely. Αnd i would definitely say that LeoFinance makes a great use case of being able to build on top of the hive network and have that second layer to it and i think it's just a very good use case to show that's actually a viable thing to do and it works really well.. So what really gives the LeoFinance token its value? Where do you feel that the value is derived from?
Khal Generally with all cryptocurrencies there's a lot of value that comes from speculation.
So i think a lot of the value for Leo comes from you know users speculating on it but then there's a good amount of value that comes from people who want to stake it and to curate content. You know basically you can stake Leo and have more power on the platform very similar to hive. There are also ads on the platform so we have an ad program where attention is generated, which makes ad revenue. Then we take all the ad revenue and burn Leo with it. So that's very similar to brave's model where they buy bat and then redistribute it. So that's kind of the rough tokenomics of how Leo would gain value is that, more content, more users equals more people who want to buy it and stake it. But it also means more attention, which leads to more ad revenue which burns the token itself.
Where did the name LeoFinance come from?
Scott Okay okay cool. Yeah so it's like a nice merge between hive and the brave. Sort of like model. Okay cool, um so how did you get the name for LeoFinance? How did you end up with that name and what was kind of the idea behind that?
Khal Way back when it was steemleo, some of my friends gave me this nickname. That was you know “Leo”. Just kind of a play off of my full name which is Khaleel. So I got Leo from that you know. Lions are cool, you know that kind of stuff. So the logo is a lion. So it's got that kind of Leo branding and then when we rebranded from SteemLeo to LeoFinance we were looking for a broader way to describe the general mission, goal of LeooFinance .. so we looked to things like yahoo finance and you know funny enough it was before this whole defi crave uh crazy where now everybody's got finance in their name. So it's kind of funny because people think we are a defi coin especially since the uniswap listing so people are just like.. “Oh Leo Finance you’re defi you know like yfi or whatever” But I look at it more like yahoo finance but on crypto.
About Leo's updates...
Scott True true, okay cool. What are some updates that are in the works for LeoFinance? Is there anything coming out in the next six months or so?
Khal Yeah, we're always releasing updates. Actually this morning we pushed a UI update. So we generally have these month-to-month roadmaps where we just do short-term updates on all the different projects we're running each month. And then we've also got this longer term roadmap and one of the things that most people have been waiting for is launching December which is micro blogging The basic idea behind that there's so much censorship on twitter, there's so much opportunity for this web 3 experience of crypto twitter. So basically our app that's coming out I'd say probably in about four weeks is gonna be crypto twitter but on the blockchain on hive. I think there's just a ton of opportunity there and a lot of that,is gonna be you know cross-posting features so that people who are on web2 on twitter they don't want to have to post on two different places, post on six different places so we're going to make it really easy to just post on one place and it gets posted everywhere. So it's kind of the general thing that's coming out that most people are waiting for.
Scott Yeah yeah, because you know as someone who does a lot of reviews for different blockchain social platforms I can't quite say that i found the twitter alternative. I don't think
there is one that's really taking that slot. Like, there's definitely a YouTube alternative, facebook-esque alternative but not really something for really just quick little status updates, that also rewards you for all of them so while there are you know some things like minds and flote they don't quite really reward you very much for those posts. So i think that's going to be very very interesting to see and i definitely think there's going to be a lot of demand for something like that. How do you feel that LeoFinance fits in similar projects on hive or elsewhere or how is it unique in its own?
Khal I think generally on hive you have a lot of these different communities that post, where they've got their their own tokens and ways to post content and all that. I think what sets the finance apart is that it has a more crypto focused token economy and user base. So whereas a lot of these other projects are about different topics and they're not exactly trying to connect to defi and all this stuff. I think Leo is generally more forward in trying to connect with defi projects and ethereum. So recently we added that metamask integration and then the uniswap listing so the whole idea is generally that LeoFinance is a social platform but it's also one that's connected to defi, ethereum, crypto, not just blogging.
What is hive network?
12:38
Scott Yeah yeah absolutely. I guess we probably should have covered this at the beginning but real quick for people who aren't super savvy with hive & what hive is all about, you want to just do a quick breakdown of what hive network is all about?
KhalSure, so you know hive is basically, the way that I've always looked at it , is that it's the fastest, the most scalable, the easiest to use blockchain that's out there and it's super underestimated and under utilized by developers and app projects. So the way i look at hive is that you can use it as this back-end infrastructure that's incredibly powerful and users can sign up with their username like i mentioned, rather than having this ridiculous address that's impossible to remember. So it kind of brings this social nature to blockchain and it also allows an app like LeoFinance to build a second layer that can be utilized in a super easy way. Users can sign up with metamask, users can sign up with an email address or a phone number, so generally i think hive is just a blockchain that's actually usable compared to things like ethereum and bitcoin which are a lot harder to use. Obviously there's a lot more value in those blockchains but you know i think hive kind of serves its purpose of being easy to use and scalable.
LeoFinance & the future...
Scott Yeah yeah absolutely. I would definitely agree and like i said when i first got into blockchain seriously it was with steem and you know that obviously progressed on to hive. Where do you see LeoFinance going in the next year and then in the next five years?
Khal Obviously it's hard to look that far ahead with crypto, being as volatile and crazy as it is but we'll say in an ideal sense, In an ideal world we launch microblogging and really just continue our developments on the Leo UI and just fulfill that mission of being on page of crypto.. so where i see it in a year, two years, three years from now we will have a lot more users, we will have a lot more content, the organization of that content is even better and we can seamlessly bring people in from facebook, twitter, google – just make it extremely easy to sign up and get started blogging and earning crypto. Ι think that's a major a major point for crypto, it is like an entire industry. If we could be this, basically this gateway for people to just easily sign up, earn just a little, a couple dollars worth of crypto and then you're interested you know just like you did with steem. You 're interested to dive deeper into blockchain because you're like "Oh this is actually something Icould use every day” So in an ideal world, I see LeoFinance that onboarding you know on-ramp.
Scott Yeah yeah, I agree and I've always said that I believe that social media on the blockchain will be one of the main driving factors to adoption, because if you're asking people to do all this new stuff it seems like a lot of work, but if they get a few dollars in their account they're like “Oh well how do I get this” and then they'll start to put in all the work to actually make that happen. How important do you think social media is for blockchain adoption and what role do you think that is going to play for that?
Khal To me it's a central role for blockchain, social media has spread. If you look at web 2 it has spread everywhere, I mean there's almost nowhere you can go in the world where people aren't using social media in one form or another. So I see it as, if you can build kind of a hybrid platform where it's very similar to the web 2 experience but on the back end it's web 3, the users own their keys, they own their data, they're getting rewarded for their content rather than the facebook or the twitter are taking all the value, so I see social media as really being the .. You know even if you just go beyond LeoFinance, social media is the on-ramp to me. Whether that's LeoFinance or another platform, I think social media is the way that we get the masses onto blockchain.
Staking Leo tokens & APR
Scott Yeah yeah absolutely. You know I’m big on on passive income so I like that powering up my hive I can earn you know, 3.4 percent on that. Is there something similar like that for when you stake your Leo as well?
Khal So, hive works interestingly because there's proof of stake like you said where there's about three percent APR. With Leo we don't have that proof of stake model, instead it's only proof of brain and then we also have proof of liquidity. This is something we added more recently which is a more defi related thing where basically if you want to stake your leo and be active on the platform you can curate and earn an APR which i think is around like 20. If you want to use your Leo and earn a passive APR you move into the defi space and you provide liquidity on uniswap and then you can earn proof of liquidity rewards like that. So that's the way that I see, that rather than just giving more tokens to people who hold it, we can actually give tokens to the two groups of people who bring the most value; which is the content curators and the liquidity providers.
Powering Down Leo
Scott Yeah and that's good because then if someone doesn't want to have to lock up their their Leo for 13 weeks or rather not necessarily 13 weeks, but you know the long power down, then they can do that with liquidity so that's definitely a bonus there.
18:47
Khal So this is kind of interesting; the power down time for hive is 13 weeks, but Leo's power down time is actually four weeks. So it's kind of another point to that broader idea, that we're like hive but we've got our own little mechanisms in place
19:04
Scott
Okay and what was the the thinking behind that? Was 13 just too long? Was there something a little more in depth with it?
Khal So you know on hive there's been this long-standing discussion for as long as I can remember, where people were saying that 13 weeks is way too long, and you know big investors don't want to lock their stake for 13 weeks so generally it was based on proposals by people who are really popular on hive. “Let's reduce this thing to four weeks, and make it easier for investors to get in and out of the token” So that was the general thinking we went with.
Scott That makes sense because yeah 13 weeks is quite a lot and I'm sure that's gonna deter a lot of people from getting in and definitely a month is a much easier, more digestible for a lot of people to actually want to get in.
Some fun questions :)
Scott So those are the majority of the questions that I had around LeoFinance. I have a few more fun questions; If you could choose any crypto influencer or someone to join the team who would that be?
Khal You know, if you dream big, i would say someone like Pomp*. You know, he's obviously, he's a bitcoiner and I wouldn't call him a bitcoin maximalist but he's pretty pretty close. As far as crypto influencers go, he's really awesome guy and i think people in similar categories like you, Pomp and others who have built this brand around teaching people about crypto; Having people like that on the platform is what is going to drive value ultimately.
Scott
Yeah yeah absolutely. I've always said that there's so there's such a lack of education around this kind of stuff and that's what has a lot of people confused and they also don't know which things are authoritative, or what they can actually rely on. So the more that we have out there it's going to make it a lot easier for a lot more people to get involved. And if you could have a superpower what would that be?
Khal That's a good question. Probably to be able to read really fast. I'm definitely a big reader and writer. I guess that that kind of stems into LeoFinance nicely. I like to write, i like to read and I just wish there was more time in the day where i could get through some books and learn some stuff. So it's kind of a boring superpower but that's what i would want .
21:48
Scott Yeah, but hey it works! I mean I remember Jordan Peterson saying that he read a book a day for something like four or five years, which always blows my mind. So is there anything else that you'd like to cover or speak to about LeoFinance?
22:05
Khal I think we covered everything. You know, generally the main thing I like to get across is the vision. I think you did a great job asking the questions about how do people view LeoFinance and get started on it because even with hive it can be difficult to understand what this stuff is. And to educate people on how they can actually use it.
Scott I think it'll be a lot easier for people who are familiar with hive and steem to just dive in. There'll be a little bit more of a learning curve for other people who have to learn the hive ecosystem first, but I definitely recommend doing so. You know hive and just a few other handful of platforms are in my top recommended social platforms. Going forward as I do my reports on where I'm earning I'll definitely be including LeoFinance going forward so people can see, there's definitely money to be made there, obviously on top of the value that it provides. So that is everything from my end. Where can everyone go to learn more about what you're up to and about LeoFinance?
23:22
Khal Leofinance.io is obviously our app and then twitter. Those are the two best places to stay up to date. We're pretty active on twitter so I think that's the best ways to find us.
Scott Awesome. All right well, thank you so much for being on the show; everyone make sure to go follow them on twitter, Check it out on hive and LeoFinance. Definitely check it out because I've been posting there and it's been really good and you guys will see my earnings for next month when I report everything for November.
Thank you all for visiting, I hope that this transcript will be useful to you.
Don't miss...
- Join the Discord of LeoFinance for any questions: https://discord.gg/4uhqt6a3em
- Check out their latest Updates at https://leofinance.io/@leofinance/ and all the #leofinance updates at https://leofinance.io
Your feedback, comments, corrections are always welcome!
Who am I?
I am Katerina from Crete, Greece. An enthusiastic content creator with a passion for photography. Interested in the blockchain technology, in new social media platforms and in trying to educate new users who wish to explore the blockchain social media world and its possibilities!
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My giphy channels - For my city: https://giphy.com/channel/aboutheraklion
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