Cardano has become the third largest token in terms of marketcap, after BTC and ETH. This year's return on investment is very excellent, reaching 1421%. Cardano will officially support smart contracts in September, its ecology has begun to develop.
At 5 p.m.(UTC+8) on August 27, PANews successfully held the 55th PANews AMA. We have the honor to invite the heads of several core projects of Cardano ecology.
Guests:
Navjit Dhaliwal, Founder and CEO of Iagon
Duc Luu, Chairman & Co-Founder of Spores Network
Elliot Hill, Head of Communications of Occam
Three guests talked face to face with the community about their cognition of Cardano and their prediction of future development. Can't you wait to hear what they're talking about? Come with me and find out~
The following is a record of the AMA, for Chinese version please check out here.
Host:
It's our great honor to have three special guests with us today! As key contributors to the Cardano ecosystem,they’ve started to develop Dapps on Cardano in a very early stage. Without any further ado, please introduce yourself and give us a brief introduction on your project.
Navjit:
Hi everyone,
Glad to be here and have the chance to introduce myself. I started my career as a dentist in the healthcare sector, however I do have some technical background from high school, where I learned C++. I came in touch with Blockchain by thoroughly reading the Bitcoin paper. At first, I was a little skeptical about “virtual currencies”, but the more I read it, the more I realized the impact this technology could have on the world.
Afterwards, my thoughts shifted to how I could implement some parts of this technology in my profession, or the Healthcare Sector in general. After all, this sector handles a lot of sensitive information and needs to address patient privacy as one of their most important pillars. That’s why I directly made a connection between the usage of Blockchain technology and this sector. However, starting narrow-minded with the healthcare sector in mind, the idea shifted in what became Iagon, namely a decentralized cloud service platform managed by decentralized AI, where anyone can benefit from shared resources. By using our platform, retail and corporations will be able to lend out or rent spare processing and storage capacities. By renting out spare space people will earn Iagon tokens, while people looking for additional space will contribute to the system by paying for these services in Iagon tokens. We will also introduce an enticing staking solution to combat price fluctuations and incentivize loyal holders.
Duc Luu:
I come from an edtech, proptech, and marketplace POV: I built and sold an Edtech startup in Hong Kong, sold it to Bain Capital Private Equity China and then took the parent company public on Nasdaq in 2017 for over $1 billion valuation. I spent the next two years as Chief Strategy Officer looking at Edtech M&A and incubation opportunities worldwide.
The last two years I moved back to my homeland of Vietnam to build the country. I served as COO of Propzy, a proptech play, where I helped raise $25 million from Softbank Ventures Asia, Gaw Capital, and Insignia Ventures. The company currently has over 20 stores in Vietnam. Soon I was poached by One Mount Group’s venture OneHousing to lead strategy and operations as COO, looking to scale another proptech play with backing by Vietnam’s top two billionaires of Real Estate and Banking. I am a contributor writer for Vietcetera, TechinAsia, and keynote speaker in Edtech, Proptech, and now Crypto.
Eric and I met during our time working at Proptech and decided that Blockchain and NFTs are our true passion and started Spores together.
Spores is an Asia-premier NFT marketplace with supported De-Fi & Interoperability Tools
Spores Network founders deeply believe that a digital “metaverse” is being built today that will revolutionize our thoughts and behavior with respect to living, owning, sharing our physical and digital lives. Spores seeks to empower creators to create, exchange, and communicate their life’s work.
We believe in a future that is creator centricity, frictionless, borderless, community driven and we want to be at the epicenter as an ecosystem with a marketplace, de-fi tools, and venture fund that seeks to create value through project funding and support for our community
Elliot:
Hi, I’m Elliot Hill, Head of Communications at Occam.fi. Occam.fi is a suite of DeFi solutions tailored for Cardano. We designed Occam.fi to deliver market leading launchpad capabilities, DEX tools, and liquidity pools, and Occam.fi is the first and most significant addition to Cardano's rapidly expanding DeFi ecosystem.
The first component of Occam.fi’s ecosystem is its decentralised funding platform, or launchpad, called OccamRazer. Through this launchpad, the next-generation of disruptive Cardano applications can undertake significant capital raises through OccamRazer's IDO capabilities.
An interoperable NFT Defi platform is the foundation of the future of digital “metaverse” that we envision, it allows for frictionless and borderless NFTs economies transaction to take place
Host:
As early supporters and practitioners of Cardano Eco, could you tell us how you guys knew about Cardano in the first place? Compared to other public chains, what advantages does Cardano have to develop your project ? Let's start with Navjit Dhaliwal. Could you please tell us about the story between you and Cardano.
Navjit:
As I, myself, am an academic, as are most of the core team members, we were impressed by the careful academic approach Cardano has been using over the past few years. We know that not everyone likes this approach and that they’ve been promising things for years, but from what we’re experiencing such a careful approach will eventually prove its worth.
Shifting back to what makes Cardano the perfect partner for Iagon, we need to highlight the speed and scalability of the ecosystem, resulting in vast amounts of transactions that could be processed at once at low fees. In addition, we were impressed by Cardano’s goal of solving real problems of the modern era as we are trying to do the same at Iagon.
Duc Luu:
Cardano is bringing smart contracts to its blockchain, we're their first nft marketplace through our cardstarter launch. so we're going to be very important to their roadmap. We will look to work closely with IOHK and the Cardano Foundation to incubate creative NFT art and NFT games to the Cardano ecosystem. One of our investors called us the Ferrari of NFT marketplaces. I guess that’s one way define us :)
As we’ve been using the system for some time now, we can only conclude that we’ve made the right decision and that the use cases of Cardano will only grow over time. We strongly believe that we, together with the Cardano ecosystem, can make a significant contribution in order to create a world where anyone can profit by joining a massive processing and storage platform and where users have a real control over their data and resources.
Elliot:
Many of our team members held roles within the Cardano ecosystem, and our Association President, Mark Berger, has long been an active entrepreneur in Crypto Valley, Zug - the home of the Cardano Foundation. There’s certainly a lot on the horizon for Cardano with the launch of smart contracts through Alonzo in September. But most importantly for us, is Cardano’s potential to reduce the costs and transaction times for DeFi protocols compared to Ethereum, which we believe will cause a huge influx of value to move to Cardano.
Host:
Centralized Cloud Services such as AWS charge with comparatively high fees. As the first decentralized cloud computing platform on Cardano, how were you able to provide users with high performance cloud services and at the same time with lower fees?
Navjit:
It is generally known that this ever-evolving market is heavily dominated by five major players, namely AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft, IBM and Alibaba, which all utilize central and less trusted storage and computation facilities. There are many issues with centralized services that people are concerned about more and more on a daily basis, which in essence are privacy, security (data leaks), compliance (example: GDPR), and costs.
Centralized competitors are lacking, namely privacy, security, GDPR-compliance and low costs.We are developing a one-stop solution for decentralized cloud services, which will eventually be open for all users, ranging from retail to highly-demanding corporate users. These services will offer the same quality and even more as our integrated AI-solution will direct computational tasks to the right persons at the right time to prevent extensive pressure on the protocol. In order to facilitate these demanding computational tasks, we will offer a tiered system that caters to the needs of a wide variety of users. Furthermore, our patented technology offers one of the most secure ways of storing data due to our 'Secure Lake''-technology, which is fully GDPR-compliant. So our main differentiators are those which ourCircling back to the question of how we are able to provide this at a lower cost, we need to mention the possibilities of decentralization. Where our centralized counterparts are bound to use expensive storage facilities, we will be relying on our network of decentralized participants, cutting the need and costs of storage facilities and expensive server (hosting) costs. Instead of spending millions of dollars on these facilities, we can redirect those funds to the development of our platform as well as incentivizing our network participants that are providing resources. In addition, we reduce CO2-emission significantly as we don’t need any facilities and use the unleveraged spare storages of devices that are already made and running.
Host:
At this moment,the NFT market is hyped. However, nowadays most NFT marketplaces only support single public chain NFT trade. NFT purchased on each public chain is like an isolated island. Providing a cross chain trading market is a very important development direction for the vigorous development of Multi Chain parallel in the future. As a cross chain NFT market, what problems does Spores Network solve and what are its core competitive advantages?
Duc Luu:
I am sure the communities have seen a fair number of NFT marketplaces around. We believe one of the key differentiators will be content, 'content is king'.
Our strengths come from our business network that enables us to bring large mainstream IP to our platform. Especially from the NFT side, content like digital art, gaming, animation, celebrity, and e-sports are fertile ground that NFTs haven’t really scratched the surface yet. With major hires like Allen, our chief Content Officer that will put us in close conversation with many major IP/Franchises to bring onto our platform as NFTs.
Spores is a NFT marketplace with Defi and cross-chain features, our focus is bringing awesome contents and IPs onto our platform as NFTs.
We choose to be primarily Asian-centric and is willing to focus on and promote industries with heavy Asian participation such as:
- Digital Fine Art - we are bringing back elements of the gallery experience and focusing on upper-mid end to high end price points. Our curated artists will have had a solid reputation in the digital art or commercial art world.
- Gaming & eSports - we want to be the number one marketplace for in-game items and digital art for blockchain and traditional games, where gamers of all games can trade their collectibles.
- Animation/Anime - we are huge fans of animation and anime and look to work with legends and top animators to NFT publish their archives, new works, or even commission works/projects that Spores will own and self-publish.
- Film/TV: we will work with film and tv studios and celebrities to promote both artistic mediums.
- Music: We will work with musicians, movie studios and music publishers to NFT archival music as well as the newest releases.
- Influencers - we hope to work with all types of influencers to help promote their missions, charities, or fund-raising projects.
Host:
As a suite of DeFi solutions tailored for Cardano, could you kindly elaborate what you are aiming to achieve? It would be great if you could share with us OccamFi’s current progress and key achievements. Thank you.
Elliot:
We’re already achieving and delivering on our core business proposition, which is the delivery of the hottest IDOs for the Cardano ecosystem through the OccamRazer launchpad. With the launch of smart contracts in September, we will also be releasing the first components of our decentralized exchange, called OccamX, with a live demo coming soon. We also have our Occelerator incubator, which makes funding and support available for the most innovative projects building on Cardano, and we will be expanding this in the coming months.
Host:
Cardano will officially support smart contracts in September. In the foreseeable future, could you please tell us respectively what strategy and incentive mechanism you’ve developed to attract more users and make your project stand out?
Duc:
Spores Network and Spores Capital (our crypto venture fund) will seek to do the following:
- our token will work to offer incentives across our ecosystem such as our marketplace to ADA holders.
we will invest in and support numerous projects that seek to build on Cardano, from venture building to accelerator, to post IDO marketing and operations support.
Navjit:
Our product offers the only decentralized cloud computing service in the Cardano ecosystem so for now, we think it stands out by itself. However, we don’t expect to be the only provider forever and we need to factor in that there are projects on other chains offering similar services. So taking those into account, we try to stand out by offering solid solutions. Most of our competitors are still living on a promise, while we already have a live product that is open to enterprise-grade resource providers. Furthermore, our decentralized storage solution is open to everyone, meaning that everyone can benefit from our high-security cloud solution in order to secure their files.
Shifting to other components, we are aware that a solid product isn’t the only thing that is needed to succeed in this industry as marketing will be a key component as well. Concerning this aspect, we have some things sorted out as we have a direct connection with some of the most well-known influencers and marketing companies who are actively assisting us in bringing our product to the masses.
For example, we got featured on a lot of crypto related websites and are making web appearances on Fox News and other big media outlets, which only proves that people actually believe in our project as they are willing to actively support us on our journey. And with the Cardano launch just around the corner, we can expect a big marketing push for all Cardano-based products, including Iagon.
Another key component, which we briefly touched on before, is our staking mechanism. We’re currently working on a solution where people can stake their tokens in order to receive BTC, ETH, USDC or Iagon depending on the staking solution they prefer. We’re developing this with the help of one of our partners, which is a highly reputable firm in the crypto scene, but due to NDA reasons, we can’t disclose any additional details as of yet. But we think people will be pleased once the solution hits the market, which will ultimately attract the attention of a lot of people.
Another way we’re trying to attract the attention of the masses is by properly developing the right partnerships. We’re currently working with three pilot projects (academic and enterprise solutions) who are actively participating in fixing all (minor) issues with the platform in order to create the most stable solution possible.
We’re also actively discussing new partnerships with crypto and legacy firms and we believe such partnerships are great marketing tools. Furthermore, if they like the platform and the solutions we have to offer things could spread like a wildfire by mouth-to-mouth advertising and new partnerships could start coming in on a regular basis.
Duc Luu:
We just rolled out our LP staking pool with a very attract APY of 330% at the moment, in the future we will roll out more staking options and cool benefits for our token holders
Lastly, I would like to mention that we're working hard to solve the question of IOHK to create an Dapp that proves the burning mechanism of the ADA token, as formulated by Charles Hoskinson. Of course, we're not sure that our solution will be the chosen product, but if we are able to create this, the attention for Iagon will rise exponentially.
Elliot:
We’re already building out our Cardano-focused components, and our developers are in the Plutus Pioneer Program learning what is needed for a successful launch on the Cardano blockchain with the release of Smart Contracts. Our strategy for standing out in the Cardano ecosystem is to align ourselves closely with the core Cardano entities - such as our official investment by Cardano founding entities EMURGO and IOHK, which gives us a unique position to become the official launchpad for Cardano.
Host:
We’re expecting more and more developers to join the Cardano ecosystem with the launch of smart contracts in coming September. Would you like to share your valuable experiences or give any tips to new joiners?
We believe that this is a very important moment, with Cardano smart contract going live, promising a low gas fees, higher throughput.
Duc:
I don’t think a project’s company building changes much as it points towards the Cardano ecosystem. If you have a business idea, you have to build it well no matter what OS you’re on. The only difference is that you need to adapt to the Cardano community and its values. If you can do that, work with related leadership, then you’ll have success.
Elliot:
Yes I think this one is easy! Join the Cardano Forums on Discourse, there’s some great information there. Head over to the Cardano Developer Portal, where you can find documentation and discussions with other developers, or the Cardano Stack Exchange. Naturally, another great place to start is enrollment into the Plutus Pioneers Program, and once you’ve got some experience, why not apply for funding for your ideas through the Occelerator?
Navjit:
Well I think the new developer portal has made it a bit easier to set up. When we were setting up to follow the Plutus Pioneer program and join the Alonzo white network there was a bit of disparity between the official documentation which didn't always work, and other sources like YouTube tutorials etc, so getting started can be a bit confusing. But the community is very supportive and active on the Plutus Pioneer Program. For details I would have to defer this question to our devs that are on the Alonzo white test net and Plutus Pioneer Program.
Host:
As more and more projects join the Cardano big family, the Cardano ecosystem is bound to explode. Will the three of you please predict where Cardano will be ranked in the next six months in terms of TVL?
Navjit:
That’s a tough question to answer and I guess the other speakers will agree. I don’t want to speculate, but I think the adoption rate and the according TVL is increasing and there is a lot of interest within the space. We’re currently noticing an impressive run on ADA.
I read an article in the beginning of July and according to data from PoolTool, first spotted by Cointelegraph, 71.66% of ADA’s circulating supply is now staked across 2,672 pools. A total of 672,217 addresses are staking their funds. Cardano is now by far the cryptocurrency network with the most value being staked ( approx. $30 billion), as Ethereum is far behind with $11.78 billion. I can only guess how much it has increased from then.
Duc:
Cardano has never had a problem being at the tip of the tongue in terms of conversation about major blockchains, but with the introduction of smart contracts ADA will be at the forefront of building clear use cases like ETH, Solana, Polygon, etc. Managed correctly, it should stand firmly as a third blockchain behind BTC and ETH for commercial and social viability and TVL.
Elliot:
We are going for number one! In the next six months, I think Cardano will slowly start to eat into Ethereum’s market cap, but there’s still a long road to mass adoption and that will only become clearer once smart contracts are delivered.
