Guests of the AMA:
- Carlos M. Parada, CBDO of Tokenomika
- Artem Kalikhov, CPO of Waves Enterprise
C.: Alright, community, thanks for being here and sharing this AMA with us. We know there are some questions regarding how Waves Enterprise and Tokenomika have been spending the last couple of months. We are happy to fill you in as much as we can.
In this AMA I, Carlos will speak for Tokenomika as a legal Waves Enterprise representative in SEA/Singapore and a promoter of the mainnet. Artem, CPO of Waves Enterprise, will represent the Waves Enterprise headquarters in Moscow.
WEST token and its future
— Are there any plans for the locked tokens after 2022?
C.: The list of signed and potential partners to develop real-world usability in Waves Enterprise ecosystem is growing each month. Said partners will have a chance to buy packages of WEST if their operations require this, so they have an important role for the locked tokens. Of course, the eventual release won’t harm the actual holders — Tokenomika is one of them and we will do our best to protect a healthy market price range.
— So the partners will be able to buy packages of WEST from the amount locked till 2022. The circulation supply will increase, so will these buys impact the price? Or the packages will be partly bought from the exchanges?
C.: The partners that need WEST for operations will have access to the packages at close to market price but off the counter in order not to impact the market. WEST will definitely not be dumped but used for the partners’ purposes, thus increasing the flow in the chain.
— Does it mean that people who stake and own a node will get more rewards? Will more transactions result in more fees?
C.: This is the goal and it is also important for us, since a noticeable part of the expected income for Tokenomika will be generated from the tokens that we will stake. But don’t worry, we don’t have plans to become a pool.
— Will the next projects be built on a private node or will Tokenomika support decentralization?
C.: One of the benefits we offer to our potential customers is the decentralization power of public blockchain. Contributing to centralizatiowould be against our own interests.
— Why is WEST so cheap?
C.: Currently WEST doesn’t have a big flow, but if you dig deeper, you will discover where WEST is already being used. It is not difficult to conclude this is quite a gem, in my opinion.
— If the price keeps growing, the required amount of tokens to host a node (50k) will become too big for the newcomers. Will this limit change if the price grows?
A.: Yes, it may change. Let’s say, if the price hits 2$, we will lower the limit to 15–20k.
C.: Everything will adapt, of course, and Tokenomika will push this process since the question of price is important to our customers.
— From a one-year perspective, how can you evaluate WEST token, Carlos?
C.: It’s really tricky to predict something like this objectively, but honestly, an x4–x8 growth won’t be impossible within a year. It will obviously depend on the number of customers who use the mainnet actively. We are working on some initiatives that would involve Singapore’s government; as long as one of them goes through, I think these growth levels would be easily achievable.
— Any new exchange listings soon?
C.: Exchange listing is a never-ending task in the crypto world, and we know how important it is for the community to have more and more platforms to be able to trade on.
What we all have to understand here is that to achieve certain tiers we need a certain level of liquidity. This will come eventually with the increased usage of the mainnet and therefore more demand for our token. This is what has to grow naturally — again, again, artificial pushes always backfire in the end.
— Any chance of token burn in the future to boost the price of WEST?
C.: Since we in Tokenomika have been buying WEST from the market, at market prices, like all you guys have been doing, I do not imagine us burning our dollars so fast :) But we will provide them a good use, that’s for sure.
Tokenomika development
— How things are settled In the new office?
C.: We are ahead of the game really, talks with the landlords are finalized, and the only thing that stops us from fitting out is legal pesky tasks that anyway must be finalized before the workers can go in.
Actually, I recorded a video of the office space yesterday and wanted to release it today on the AMA, but the team decided to wait a little more. The office design is done and ready to show, I think next week I’ll start dropping information in this channel, stay tuned!
— Will Tokenomika be building other DeFi products? Will there be collateralized loans on top of the EAST/WEST?
C.: Absolutely yes, but it is necessary to walk before we actually attempt to run.
— Can you maybe give numbers on potential customers that could make sure of the mainnet, how many conversations are in the pipeline etc.?
C.: As I’ve mentioned earlier this week in the channel, we cannot disclose names yet, but the location of the office gives away some hints. If someone checks what activities are being taken in the Triple One building in Somerset, Singapore, the level of our neighbors is worth noticing ;)
Currently, we are working in a joint venture with a big holding here in Singapore that has a major role in shareholding big pharma and luxury fashion brands in Southeast Asia. Some of them are bigger than you guys could imagine. If everything goes fine, it is definitely going to be a big hit.
— What is Tokenomika actually, and is it limited to working with Waves Enterprise?
C.: Tokenomika is the legal entity in charge to promote and stimulate the growth of Waves Enterprise mainnet worldwide. Also, Tokenomika provides legal representation and is responsible for the deployment of Waves Enterprise tech in the Southeast Asia region, starting with Singapore.
Initially, Tokenomika was open to all distributed ledger technology but recently we have decided to fully focus on Waves Enterprise.
— How is Tokenomika doing fiscally? Where are you getting your funds for buying WEST?
C.: Funding comes from private investors who believe in the project from a long-term perspective. Therefore they have no intentions to burn tokens at least till certain goals are achieved. Current investors will be more than happy, there is nothing to worry about. The investors who have acquired private-chain-based services do not profit from WEST, they run their own operations independently of the public chain.
— How big is the team at the moment?
C.: Very small, to my personal despair… I carry on most of the negotiations and responsibilities nowadays in Singapore, I have 17 applicants waiting for my decision to select a Product Manager for Singapore — people from companies such as Hewlett Packard, Vodafone, OCBC, Cision, Air Arabia, Lenovo, etc. But I am holding my horses till the physical office is set.
We also have around 20 candidates already to fulfill 3 positions of Sales Executives and 2 more technical positions, but we have to juggle who to bring from Russia to Singapore. It is not easy and we work remotely so far.
— Is Sasha still the CEO or has his role changed to advisor?
C.: He will be an advisor. Sasha is a great public figure and he has his role in all of this, but he is not a part of day-by-day management in Tokenomika. It’s great to have his help though :)
— Will we be able to visit your office once you move in?
C.: Absolutely, and have some snacks with us as well!
— What are the plans for the mainnet promotion and when will it begin?
C.: Mainnet needs usage. This is a basic principle, and we are working now on acquiring partnerships that will actually make use of our public blockchain. Trying to pump or push this on purpose will never be a good solution, and this is the reason why Tokenomika is already working (quite successfully) on partnering with companies and entities that will give an organic boost to the use of Waves Enterprise public blockchain. After we provide this decent organic initial boost, we can start worldwide PR.
— What about the roadmap at wavesenterprise.com? Is it valid?
A.: No, it is outdated. We will update it in the first decade of September. Last quarter we’ve done a lot of R& D to create an effective roadmap of the platform development. So in the near future, we will launch a number of solutions for private key management in the mainnet, upgrade of smart contracts, deep platform optimization for achieving more TPS in complex scenarios in order to maintain huge enterprise projects, and do some other great things.
At the moment we are rebalancing the roadmap to fit functional and non-functional requirements for implementing blockchain projects. And we are preparing some features for the mainnet. A new tech roadmap will also be presented the next week.
— What’s about a marketplace on Waves Enterprise mainnet? When we can expect it? We need more dapps…
C.: This is a good question and relates to the development in the last couple of months here in Singapore. Among other current projects, we are negotiating a joint venture with a solid local corporation that would allow us to apply for a legal exchange license. If successful, this will result in creating a brand new exchange, most probably Waves Enterprise based, that would cater for the Southeast Asia region area, with numerous ramp-downs to fiat.
Besides, there are also talks about creating a public NFT marketplace in the area, also based on Waves Enterprise.
— What is the main difference between Waves and Waves Enterprise?
C.: Waves is a public-blockchain based project where I have been a co-founder. After some years of development, it became clear that there was demand in the market to create a different entity with tailor-made, focused services for corporations and governments, using not public blockchain tech alone, but also mixing it with a private blockchain approach. This is how Waves Enterprise was born.
— What is your biggest accomplishment up to date?
C.: The biggest private bank in Russia is using our tech for loan activities. This year our voting system was used in two regions in Russia, and next year it will expand to 8-9 regions. The second biggest oil/gas company in the world is using our services for logistics and documents tracking, as well as the biggest electric network in the world (by size in installations/kmsq) using us for billing country-wide. I think we have quite nice feats, but they mostly use the private side of Waves Enterprise… now it’s time to boost the public.
— Is a certain time set to join Gravity? And what about your face recognition system — is it being upgraded or has been abandoned? Did you get any new business/private partners in the last few months?
A.: Gravity hasn’t been performing well recently, so we will wait until it shows some progress. Face recognition was created as a prototype and now is used in some presales. WE.Vote service (e-voting service on the mainnet) is developing well — several thousand people already vote with it in the mainnet. One of WE.Vote clients that I can tell about is the Russian Federation of Practical Shooting. They have many members across different regions of Russia to vote on organizational issues.
— Any plans to evolve into a cross-chain platform? Like what most projects are doing, by collaboration with other crypto projects to enhance liquidity and boost their tokenomics.
C.: Cross-chain platform activity has nothing to do with liquidity directly. Apart from Tokenomika, I am also a part of Ergo core team and I’m trying to develop a collaboration, where perhaps we could use Ergo oracle power to boost cross-chain action.
— Most DeFi projects now focus on best use cases and benefits to long-term token holders, such as the ability to access loans, leverages, leasing pools, and AMM. These allow a more capital-efficient tokenomics. Are there plans to implement these functionalities in the near future?
C.: I think in order to understand Waves progress through all this time, one has to understand how crypto markets have been moving for the last 8 years. Definitely, there have been better and worse times. WEST is such a project that, in my opinion, takes some time to lift off (including the accumulation) and then it never looks back. ‘Whenmoonaiz’ kind of questions are common in the crypto world, nothing new to see here, just mentioning that every project has its own growth and stability rates.
In our roadmap we have some of the projects you described, starting with EAST.Finance. As I’ve said before, it is important to walk properly before we start to run, but you guys can be sure the stablecoin is only a start for our DeFi side.
EAST.Finance
— What was the main reason for the EAST delay? And what got worked on during the delay?
A.: Well, the main reasons are the development and listing of Waves gateways, the Bond Appetite launch schedule, and some new protocol rebalancing features. There will be an upgraded whitepaper next week.
— EAST.Finance launch has been postponed at least twice. Is there a chance of another postponement? What is the current progress on EAST.Finance?
A.: The EAST protocol is already finished, and now the developers are polishing details that could be delayed till the launch. There is a dependence on third-party (WX) gateway developers, which also impacted the deadlines. The main task now is integration.
— Will the Binance and Ethereum gateway be created? In the previous AMA session, Q3 and Q4 were discussed.
A.: There are gateways planned, yes. The real deadlines can move due to the current delay.
C.: We plan to have another AMA within a month and hopefully tell you guys about some BRANDS we are working with, as long as the NDA is lifted! Anyway, if you have questions, please drop them in the channel with a mention of me or Artem, and we’ll try our best to answer once we find a moment. Thanks to everybody for coming and participating!