CEO Questions from the Exscudo Community
[2:28] TREVOR LAIRD : #1 What is the status of eon 2.0? A white paper was meant to be delivered months ago but still nothing is released.
ANDREW ZIMINE: Before we start I want to apologize for my English. And I tried to make an explanation for the questions in simple words. [Poor Audio] To your question about 2.0, it is almost ready and the network is in final testing. But it does not mean we are ready to bring this network and node to public. It’s been this we had more work than this. I tried to explain something what we have new in 2.0. It’s the [Poor Audio] library. It’s a log in architecture which our customers, our users to add and change functionality on the fly.
Continues..
ANDREW ZIMINE: The network beyond 2.0 and 1.0 will be fully compatible. After starting the network configuration, we can easily adjust functionality. The old network and new network is fully compatible and users will have easier work and functionality in both networks. Also in 2.0, now we try to solve some problems in Exscudo systems for the 2.0 release. That’s one of the reasons why we haven’t published a white paper beyond 2.0. Also what’s new in this technology and the technology regarding EON 2.0 it’s a new protocol, a financial protocol called [Name Ommited pending release] I will not say much about this. I think we will publish some information about this protocol later. I’m thinking June of this summer.
Continues..
ANDREW ZIMINE: But in few words, what is this Protocol - it’s a special financial protocol developed especially for transactions in the finance sphere. We are not specially testing the quantitive transactions but it’s much more, can make any network in the world. It’s not 10k or 100k transactions per seconds because it’s behond this in the scope relating to our products. This protocol can make and work with so much more transactions than what people think. I think it’ll take about half a year for testing, and this summer we are planning to invite developers for public - not public but private testing.
TREVOR LAIRD: Back testing.
ANDREW ZIMINE: Maybe somebody [Poor Audio] to this protocol. And finally, this summer as I’ve said before, we’re going to publish White Paper EON 2.0.
TREVOR LAIRD: Yeah it makes sense to wait until it’s ready before releasing it.
[7:00] TREVOR LAIRD #2 A major concern that the community has is the current plan for Exscudo to market itself. How important is the marketing of Exscudo and it’s products? What plans do you have to for marketing in 2019?
ANDREW ZIMINE: This is a really good question. I’ll be honest I’ll try to answer on this part your question like it was. The focus of our team and the product is the service. And as everybody knows we had some difficulties in the beginning,legal,regulitory.That’s one of the reasons why we decided to make the focus of developing and on technical issues. And only after that I made more focus for marketing. And as we can see, the community is concerned. Marketing[??] has been the key topic for our internal discussions as well. Our approach is quite clear. Of course we have to develop the product, as I said before, and only after have the product we’ll start with full scale marketing activities. We changed some team members in the marketing department and it’s an improvement. I see his duty after a couple of months. He brings new life to the product. And I think the people and the customers and the clients will see results beginning of this summer. What we’ve developed all this time, I mean last month. After this interview I have publishing some information in text for people to read regarding marketing.
TREVOR LAIRD: Yeah with somebody new on board for marketing I could imagine there’s going to be some new things coming this summer, so that’s exciting. Very exciting. Go ahead.
ANDREW ZIMINE: I would like to say some 0 numbers that will have some final result, that we have agreed upon marketing. Thats the case of mind in this direction. But I don’t have the particular numbers for this marketing plan because only in this month we signed this plan in house, in company.
TREVOR LAIRD: Okay so, the focus obviously was on products and now you’re just starting to move into the marketing now that you’re confident with the products. That makes sense. So we have to wait.
[10:41] TREVOR LAIRD: #3 Are there any plans to partner with any US based banks or get licenses to operate in the US?
ANDREW ZIMINE: It’s not so easy. It’s really complicated to work with the US. Yes, we have plans to work with the US, some states but not particular ones. The work is generaly difficult as I said before, having the opportunity to work with the legal system. After consulting with American lawyers, we decided not to work with the US citizens in a number of other states. I expect that this year we will be able to work as a [Audio Poor] In the US. This is the simplest entry to the American market, because there is a legal system in each state. That’s why is completely realistic. The job applications can be considered [Audio Poor]. For this work, make it one license for all states of the US, this is, like I said before, a simple way to work in the markets and work with people to make service to people in the US and other countries like Canada.
TREVOR LAIRD: Yeah I can imagine the licensing especially with some states like New York and California being different and every state being different it could be fairly difficult.
ANDREW ZIMINE: Sometimes the cost for a license in one of the states is about one million US dollars. And if you decide to work with all states - but not all states in the US work with cryptocurrencies. It’s expensive, you can work with only some numbers, it’s about 20 or 25 states in the US. Just to mention if you work with for example 25 states you need $35 million in entry capital to receive a license.
TREVOR LAIRD: It make’s sense, wow [laughs]
ANDREW ZIMINE: Yes. So work only in 3 or 4 states in the US.
TREVOR LAIRD: Okay, and hopefully Canada is easier.
ANDREW ZIMINE: But, Canada has their own special tariffs.
TREVOR LAIRD: Well we have an election coming up so hopefully we’ll see a change.
[13:51] TREVOR LAIRD#4 Do you think the current signup process is smooth enough that users will be able to signup and begin using the exchange fast enough to satisfy their needs? Or do you think improvements can be made to make the process faster and more informative?
ANDREW ZIMINE: It’s a hard question.
TREVOR LAIRD: People say it’s difficult, right?
ANDREW ZIMINE: I’ll try to explain something. For example, the Channels application. Let me start to walk you with the Exscudo proccess and receive picture of which regulators ask of us. There is another picture that we have right now. When we developed KYC for channels we have another product and I tried to say which receive [Audio Poor] If we have more complex KYC procedures what we have. Government asks us to collect all the data about KYC. All this attention we attract, I forget this law, particularly it’s called DPR. We tried to make some user friendly procedures for KYC+ for our users and make easy use working with our services. If you don’t need to make big deposits, it’s not necessary to do all the steps of KYC. When you start to work with the simplest way after this, and after time you work with more deposits, it’ll take more documents or proof of your - I forget this word sorry.
TREVOR LAIRD: Your identity based documents and your income based documents.
ANDREW ZIMINE:Yes. Proof of residence, for example. Proof of your income, proof of - not proof but verification of IDs, have ID or residency docs for that person. Because to decide when everyone will be clear [Audio Poor]
ANDREW ZIMINE: And finally to answer your question - We tried to make this procedure less complicated - [audio cuts out] from me. Unfortunately I can’t this service and this procedure any better , as regulation increases over time it’s harder.
TREVOR LAIRD: Yes because the laws for KYC continue to change and I can imagine the regulation especially in Europe and everywhere else is difficult.
ANDREW ZIMINEL And not so [Audio Poor] In KYC procedures we have good opportunities for our users. When you pass and solve this procedure and pass the KYC you can use this in the future with different products. Users can use them in other services, like tranfers,payments, different services etc.
TREVOR LAIRD: Yeah, that makes sense. And I think that people will get more used to KYC because almost every cryptocurrency product you have to do KYC, so overtime people should get more used to it
TREVOR LAIRD: [18:47] #5 Currently the node system is not profitable due to lack of transactions. Do you believe the current masternode system still makes sense going forward?
ANDREW ZIMINE: Good question, by the way. I think for answering this question we need to start from the beginning. The question is what is the proposal commission, It does not depend on what proof you need.
[video freeze]
TREVOR LAIRD: Should be back in one moment.
ANDREW ZIMINE: The commissions take only one proposal, like some regulatory network laws. The laws grow, the commission grows. The laws go down, the commission goes down. We’ve seen this situation a couple of years ago with Bitcoin. When people, customers paid big commissions because with the coin network it was our law. When we’re talking about EON nodes, in the first stage we decided to use this model of interest for our users. We decieded on many questions on how to set this up. (Audio Poor) The network cannot idealy work without commission. It does not mean we haven’t any amount of inherent nodes. We decided the biggest problem for different networks, I think more information on our website about EON 2.0 will reveal more soon. We’re not releasing the white paper because we wait our other projects and try to solve the problems in the core projects, like merchant terminals, like passport, like exchange, like merchant services. I think It will solve these issues.
TREVOR LAIRD: Okay so there will be more information after that in 2.0. Makes sense.
TREVOR LAIRD: [22:06] #6 Are there any new incentives for users to use our exchange? Referral schemes? Free trading? Things we can use to really encourage new users to flock to us?
ANDREW ZIMINE: About any new incentives, I will be informing shortly about the big upgrades coming, both visual and function an important part of that upgrade is a very attractive referral program. We’ve also introduced a new coin market, Exchange market, a very attractive fee structure and some other options for our new traders. About option I mean the trading terminal. We are in the final stages of testing with some members of the community to see some interfaces to make some orders through the terminal. Also our goal is to become one of the most user oriented exchanges ,I can talk about this for a long time. I think it’s enough.
TREVOR LAIRD: Okay, no problem. I think the fact that you are focusing on the users is the important part.
TREVOR LAIRD: [23:45] #7 What’s the status of the market maker to help with the liquidity?
ANDREW ZIMINE: It’s funny question for me because market maker is already working. But now the technology is still in a small stage and Can be seen in the spreads. And the minimum price in the individial pairs
[Audio Poor]
TREVOR LAIRD: So the market maker’s already starting now?
ANDREW ZIMINE: Yes it’s working on small volumes by the time the volume increases, but people need to understand that market maker makes more balance for the Market price. It does not make volume [Audio Poor] It’s designed for one purpose - to close the order and make a minimum price between instruments and between trading tools
TREVOR LAIRD: Yeah, so people I think get confused and think that the volumes can be faked. But they can’t be faked, it has to be the users who make these volumes.
TREVOR LAIRD: [25:25] #8 What is the next market that Exscudo is going to expand into?
ANDREW ZIMINE: After a year of Russian market and the outlying areas at the same time, We have some connections in India. After this we will go to Asia but we have a lot of work in the Europe market.
TREVOR LAIRD: Yes so start with Europe and think about that first before focusing on other areas. I think people are curious because there’s users from all over the world who are interested in looking at Exscudo so everyone’s wondering if their country’s next.
ANDREW ZIMINE: To be honest we’ve been wanting to work with many countries and many markets like Asia, like Africa and others. But you have some regulatory limitations. On one hand you have classical fiat currencies and on the other hand you have cryptocurrencies which all users can use cross border without limitation. But the governments in all the world try to control all cryptocurrencies. I spoke with some of them - they want it, these countries, but they don’t think about how to do it. We have a blockchain explorer You can see our transactions It’s not a secret. You can try to steal the data from your laptop. Now they try to go from another way. They try to decide this problem by hands of businessmen and crypto enthusiasts.
TREVOR LAIRD: So they’re trying to control it even in that way. That makes sense.
TREVOR LAIRD: [27:45] #9 Can we expect any new products from Exscudo in 2019 and if so what can you tell us?
ANDREW ZIMINE: This year will be hard. The nearest products is the trading terminal. I’ve been doing the user specific application course to help users who want to trade or start interfacing with the exchange, To make it trading. In general, in this year we will begin to see not a final but a functional product. There are trust accounts on the exchange and marginal trading. Also we brought a permit to provide back access to the advanced trading charts. What about Channels? In Channels we testing calling ,that will work with some satellite not from side of connection, but from side of storing the private key, I hope I can give you information in nearest time about it. And also in Channels we hope In nearest future to make group chat.
TREVOR LAIRD: Okay, group chat. Yeah.
ANDREW ZIMINE: Yes there are also a lot of secret options I cannot talk about. I cannot say to much about these things yet. Whats new also , I single cabinet for all services Exscudo and of course merchant.
TREVOR LAIRD: Merchant would be the big one there, for sure
ANDREW ZIMINE: It’s the merchant I think [audio cuts out] soon begin the testing and the terminal is almost ready and after we start the marketing program in May or June, we’ll be ready to publish this specification.
TREVOR LAIRD: [30:18] #10 From your perspective, what do you think about the performance of Exscudo products so far? Where do you see us going in 2019? Is this going to be our year to succeed?
TREVOR LAIRD: It's a big question.
ANDREW ZIMINE: This year will be hard. And we start It’s not simple terms for us and our team, We make some big restucturing in the company for development [Audio Poor] It’s On this side of development. And we have our next strategy - it’s not changed from what it was 2 years ago. The task force to bring the basic functionality of Exscudo platform to a stable state, we have to give a thought towards what we where able to do and what where our plans. We see that in the market there are more requests for more features that we can give our platform and we will do our best to react to this request as quickly as possible. Right now we are working with two projects on the side - not working, in negotiations with two projects to be a part of Exscudo. And if we finish successfully, this year we will see great news. I will not talk about this deal because we have not signed the contract yet. When we sign I will say that everything goes according to plan. Maybe we’ll try to show you in the nearest time, nearest two weeks but maybe longer , we have been working towards this for the last 3 months.
ANDREW ZIMINE: And finally, the community Is very important for us because when you work in some empty bottle Not give you some positive roles. When people say critical things this is normal, And when people say “do something great” or “do something wrong” for the personal opinion we need to correct some services or some functionalities or they found some bugs. And you see people have worked with you, people are interested in what you do. It’s an indicator of success.
TREVOR LAIRD: I think everyone in the community is really excited to see all the updates and all the work and the constant - obviously there is a lot of work on your side. It’s very busy, we know that.
ANDREW ZIMINE: We have many activities in marketing in the community, focusing on PR for this year. Regarding these activities, we make the focus on products and services.
TREVOR LAIRD: Well Andrew, I want to thank you for doing all these questions and answering the community questions, especially in English. I know it’s not your native language so we appreciate it. I’ll do a transcript out for everyone as well and I’m going to get this out as soon as possible because I think the community is really excited to hear your words and hear the answers to these questions. So I just want to thank you again for coming on and doing this.
ANDREW ZIMINE: Thank you Trevor. If the community has questions you can write me. I’ll be honest I don’t have time to read discord daily all the time. In this case I can take time to answer. I think that’s a lot of how our duty is finishing , we have some short time to focus our time on what is done and what needs to be done and developing procedure.
[VIDEO CUTS AND RECONNECTS]
ANDREW ZIMINE: I lost you there for a moment but its back now.
TREVOR LAIRD: Yeah it’s been pretty good, I’m surprised how good it’s been. I think that everyone in the community does appreciate you reaching out and making the time. I know you’re trying to keep an eye on the community as well. And the team members you’ve picked to be in the chat now are really good. We have really good communication happening there and I think that’s been a big improvement this year. I think that was a good decision to bring him on board.
ANDREW ZIMINE: Thank you Trevor we have been working on this.
TREVOR LAIRD: It’s gotten better compared to last year. It’s gotten a lot better. I appreciate it Andrew, as always. I’m sure we’ll talk about soon.
ANDREW ZIMINE: Okay, thank you Trevor.
