AMA Between Trevor Laird & Nimera CEO Andrew Zimine
January 23rd 2021
How do you feel the Nimera rebrand has gone? And do you believe this project will finally make profits for the company and its investors in 2021?I’ll be answering in Russian according to our tradition. In my opinion, the rebranding to Nimera was very successful. There are a few things out of the spot, a few things I personally wanted to change, and we are in the process of changing those little issues, but generally, I am satisfied.
Secondly, answering the second part of the question of whether I believe or not - I prefer to work and deal not with the questions of faith, but with the question of knowledge. At the end of the day, blockchain is knowledge, not faith. With the very high chances, 2021 will bring the rewards for investors and those who believed in Exscudo and now believe in Nimera, and we have the reasons for that.
There has been talk of Virtual Cards for our services, will Nimera provide physical debit cards for those that want them?I’ll probably share some non-ordinary news now - Nimera and Exscudo is not fully rebranding in a common sense. Nimera is a step forward to decentralization not in favor of the whole DeFi buzz…. We were partially solving the user concerns (that I personally agree with) about the KYC issues. So Nimera is moving forward to decentralization, while Exscudo remains as a gate between old and new finance.
Therefore, when the cards release they will be called Exscudo cards. We are working on virtual cards and not setting up a goal of issuing the physical cards. Let me explain the difference.
From the perspective of the bank that issues the card, there is no difference whether the card is virtual or physical. What’s important is the network protocol that connects the card with the ATMs and terminals, how easy for the bank and the partners to work with it, its NFC coverage etc.
From the security point of view, the AML policies, governance over certain procedures, and generally the focus of the banks and governments interest around the physical cards - there is the difference.
Let me explain what we are guided by investors to have a better understanding of our logic. In our opinion, the average user of the Exscudo card is a crypto enthusiast, a person who interests in cryptocurrencies, technology, and blockchain. He/she earns certain amounts of cash in this sphere and pays for the expenses from the profits earned from crypto. This means that he sold BTC, ETH, or EON, received fiat on his account, and paid for his purchases using the Exscudo crypto card. Usually, an average user spends less than $11,000, which lies in the current paradigm of banking and will not cause any additional questions or concerns from the banking services. Such an amount is easily covered by the virtual card standards. We do not consider issuing the physical cards right now, but perspectively, if there is enough interest in physical cards we may add this option, as for the banks there is a little technical difference whether the card is virtual or physical.
Now that we are in the new year can you give us an update on NION 2.0 release timeline?Very soon, I think in the matter of a couple of weeks, we will post a document that will tell about the fundamental changes in the NION 2.0 network. We will add documentation and project Wiki. So, in a couple of weeks, you can expect a document, and a week after it is posted we plan to begin rolling out the test net.
Globally, the need for the 2.0 iteration of the network was natural - we understood that in one way or another we will have to move this way. EON 1.0 was the infrastructural blockchain solution with the goal of solving the tasks of the Exscudo ecosystem. Right now, besides accumulating a lot of experience of network use through the last 3 years, we also broadened the basic functional and unfolded the part of the services to make it easier for the developers and regular users to use and integrate into the blockchain we developed.
Are there any plans to get us listed on any exchanges which would help us get listed on CMC? We said in the past that NION ERC20 was the reason for this, but we have not seen it used yet?Sure, we have some ideas and pre-arrangements about the NION listing and other types of partnerships with exchanges. It is more of a goal rather than just a plan, and right now it is one of the most significant goals we have in the marketing field. We did not list NION until the New Year to avoid conflict with the new NION ticker. If we have listed EON on an external exchange (we have the gate that works with EON ERC-20 and the EON token version with the same standard), then when transferring to NION we will create confusion for new users. The mechanics here are simple - more users, more engagement, higher the price and higher the demand for the technology. We did not want to break that rule. If the Testnet will start in the 1st quarter without problems, then in March we have every chance to trade NION on fairly large platforms and therefore list it on CMC.
Can we have a development roadmap which outlines the vision of where we are going and what we are trying to achieve? And when could we expect this?Yes, the roadmap will be presented in the following 2-3 weeks.
The thing is that in the last half a year we had the structural changes in the team as we divided into inter-project dev groups - one team does Channels, the other does Multibroker, the other develops the blockchain and etc. There are also those responsible for the communication between projects. Therefore we assemble all the timings, establish and approve the dates to make sure our roadmap 100% matches the reality.
So in the following two, I think closer to three weeks, we will present a roadmap. And as I said before, we will try to step aside from the classical boring style of roadmaps and make it interactive.
We don’t want to do standard things anymore, and the experience we gained over these years shows that the development of any services, no matter how cool they are, is a complicated process where many voices have to be heard and taken into account. We want to develop products along with the people who will actually use them. They will have a chance to participate in the development process, not as a developer, but as a community member with his/her own position about the products. This means that we will give our users the opportunity to vote for the higher dev priority for the features they like the most.
You mentioned in the last AMA that EON/NION needs value and a reason as to why users need to hold it. You mentioned use cases would be published but nothing has been of yet. Can you share some of the thoughts that will bring about value to EON/NION?Fairly, this is my fault. We, I, didn’t want to publish the document with the hypothesis, or better to say the draft of this document, because I personally prefer not to post raw things that have not yet been tested, which is why we have not shared this information. Right now we take a more careful and thoughtful approach to what information and plans we share in the community, even though it is not very big yet, we can not afford to fool the trust of our users. I promise that these documents will be released before the next AMA.
Right now we are at the final stage of active testing of the hypothesis. And also, expanding the answer to the question, there are multiple reasons to keep and use EON (NION). We did not want to create the blockchain just to create the blockchain, for it to be something separate from the actual products. So if we imagine that there is no EON blockchain, all our services will just not work. By this, I say and mean how deep is the integration of blockchain in our technology. And in 2021 it is something we want to share not only with users but also with business - the cases of how to use blockchain technology can be used to reduce costs and optimize the business processes.
Nimera is a private company, however there is growing concern within the community regarding the current market price of NION and the liquidity to the Nimera company. Should we be worried if NION cannot establish itself as a player in this space throughout 2021?In short, no, I can say with full confidence that there is no need to be seriously concerned. I do not even consider the situations where Nimera does not become the so-called “player on the market”.
There is a saying that Russians are slow to harness, but then they go fast. I think it fits us perfectly. We had a lot of mistakes, got a lot of bums, and we did a lot to analyze and fix them. Patience and hard work is the key to success. We are here, we are working, we are not planning to leave. Our goals are not limited to just earning cash - we create a product, a product that I truly believe in.
Nimera has high fees and high barriers of entry. Eg, KYC restrictions compared to other exchanges. Are there plans to reduce this?Unfortunately, this is true for KYC. The good news is that we have already worked out and drafted a solution for this problem and simplify onboarding and sign-up process. It will be implemented in the near future (it is currently in the testing stage).
Again, February is a determining month. This Fall we rebranded and changed the focus of the product development. Now it's time to go forward and simplify the KYC. Q1 of 2021 has to show our community that we have managed to find the solution to a certain situation which did not depend on us.
It's hard to say now was that a mistake to go on full regulations. We were convinced at the beginning by the partners in the banking sphere that a licence solves any issues. Then they say the KYC and AML solves any issues with bank interactions. Well, according to my data, only a very few exchanges on the market are working closely with banking institutions, most of the others (I will not call their names) work with so-called “kitchens” to flow fiat one way or another.
Summing it up, we solved the issue of the entry barriers for users, which you will be able to see in the nearest future - users be able to access the trading in our services with minimal personal data revealed.
On the other side we have issues with fees - we already have a solution, which we've been actively testing and implementing from December. This will be on the roadmap as well.
Are they any new projects that are actively being built on the Nimera blockchain? What happened to crypto tickets? Do we have any partners on the horizon?
About CryptoTickets - they have changed the technical director who has a different view on technical realization and they switched to Ethereum. Right now they do not work with Nimera in terms of technical integration, but they keep up their work and we wish them all the best.
About the new partners, since this fall we’ve been working very closely with one project. I can not disclose any information due to the NDA agreements. I see good perspectives with this project and they should be able to present their work around March. It will be built on NION, as EON does not meet the basic needs of their product, while NION suits them well.
The goal of Nimera is to be a new era like bank, how can you protect and secure the assets and data of users, when for instance Nimera would go bankrupt or in the future another CEO would run? Basically, old fashioned banks have the 100.000€ bank security as does Kraken for instance. Also how does this work in combination with Multi-broker?It's amazing that these questions are being asked, as in the very beginning of Exscudo we’ve been thinking over the same questions, but we haven’t spoken our position publicly.
Lets go step by step. First, all our crypto depositories are decentralized. Therefore if you have the seed phrase from Channels you can get access to all your tokens that are stored as colored coins on this address. That's why we developed the blockchain - not only reduce maintenance and service costs, but to also cover the security questions.
About the guarantee deposits, or security deposits, like the banks or Kraken has. I will not say that Kraken’s case of security deposits is fiction or not, I will just say what I know - in most cases the banking security deposits have the tiny text in the agreement where all the sense of such insurance lays. You can just not get the promised money from the insurance company.
That's one point. Secondly, I can hardly imagine that in the current reality of the market some insurance company will work with the blockchain company to secure the user deposits. As someone who is always in the avant garde of communication with the banking and financial institutions, I can responsibly say that they open such accounts very unwillingly and very poorly, creating a ton of complications within the process. Saying that with the help of those companies you can secure the user funds appears more as a fantasy to me.
Speaking of the nearest future, we will include the seed phrase export in our upcoming plan. This will be done for users to have the guarantee and understanding that their funds are their funds - they are not owned or managed by Nimera.
So, we have a solution which can be called a distributed decentralized depository where users store their funds. If this protocol was supported by other platforms, I know that this can’t be done without community, but let's put that out of brackets for now, it would be amazing. This solution would eliminate the scam on the side of exchange, what it shuts down with the user funds or simply gets hacked.
I hope that in the Q2 of 2021 we will release the beta version of this decentralized depository, that will be developed to be used by the trading platforms. All that is in the borders of Multibroker development. In the future, if the experiment will be successful, a lot of things will depend on the community - how much it will be interesting for the communityto use it. For example, Binance or Kraken can use this technology as a protocol to give their users a competitive advantage of storing their funds on the decentralized depository instead of a centralized server. At the same time, the main use cases of exchanges will be covered, as we know how they work - I mean in terms of fund holds for orders and etc, but thats a bit of a different story.
We have blockchain, why do we need any other type of insurance? Insurance is in fact an agreement between people, when they put the seals and signatures. Generally, when something is not working well and the agreement is not fulfilled by one of the sides they go to the bank and solve the issues there. But even this does not give any guarantee that in the future one of the sides that exited the agreement will hold the full responsibility for it. Blockchain eliminates that factor and gives a certainty that it either works or not, so its kind of agreement made in math language. So I tend to stick more to math than to subjective pseudological constructions called contracts or agreements.
Could Nimera Exchange provide staking coins service? This is a bit like the fixed deposit of traditional banks (some POS coins like dash or ETH 2.0)We can, but will not
We had this functional tested back in 2019, we have the instruments and ability to do it, but we will not do staking. Let me explain why. Staking is not our niche sphere. Let's face it, there are a lot of great services that specialize in staking, they have been doing it for a long time and in any case do it better than us. It will be not rational for us to spread our resources on it.
On the other side, the process of taking the assets in deposits with adding interest on this deposit has to have its own math. How banks work - they take the money from one client's deposit and give another client a credit. They earn certain percentages as profits and share a portion of it with the clients which made a deposit. They can increase liquidity because there are a lot of clients who borrow money, bring money, and don’t forget about the support from the central banks. That's how the deposit systems work.
As I said, currently, we have instruments to do the deposit system and make sure it works properly (not like the Ponzi schemes). But, we can only launch it if our audience exceeds 150-200,000 users. In this case, we can introduce the use cases that would really benefit both, the company and the user, by offering p2p lending, by using the user finds for the transactions with high demand etc. We have that instrument, we have tested it, we have a scenario on how to use it, and now our goal is to get enough audience for this service to be mutually profitable.
Are you satisfied with the current volume on the exchange (even know it’s obviously not displaying accurately) and do you think it will grow much more this year/next few months In short, no, of course we are not satisfied.
But again, on my side personally, it would be stupid to expect huge increase in volume without any big marketing work. There are no miracles and I don’t have any illusions about that.
We did not have the rights to release the Multibroker functional without proper testing. We understand the price of a mistake. We are finishing testing, soon we will have a public testing of Multibroker functional.
As for the volumes - we plan that the number of users of Nimera Exchange will be 10 times more by the end of 2021, and we have reasons to justify such expectations. With the upcoming publication of the roadmap much of this stuff will become clearer.
