You wrote, "We do not build a bank, we are inventing banking." There are a lot of projects on cryptobanks on this site. What is the difference between your project and other projects?
We took a step back to look at truly fundamental issues were up against in the crypto-economy and traditional finance. The biggest takeaways we decided to focus on were speed, reliability, support and experience.
Speed. Our second layer is being built to compete with lightning and raiden. Assets need to move at the speed of WiFi if we’re going to compete with consumer fintech products but keeping inline with censorship resistance and decentralization were very important. Sending bitcoin across chain works great but we can improve upon that experience while maintaining possession of our keys we’ve leveled up.
Reliability. People use banks for a myriad of reasons but the most important reasons are two fold. 1. Is trust. A bank customer knows the deposit made will be there when they return. 2. It just works. We don’t have to think about paying a bill, moving money, saving funds, writing checks, or swiping cards. The system has worked for 2 centuries now. We’re approaching everything we do as something you don’t have to think about. It just works and it can be trusted, even in a trustless ecosystem.
Support. Customer support is horrible in this industry. Even the biggest company in the space has some of the slowest and most unreliable customer support. Our customer support team is as much our product is the app. Email, chat, and soon will offer phone support (once we can afford it). I don’t want a single user to feel left out, labeled as a ######## our forgotten about.
Experience. Probably the single most important element is our user experience. While we integrate with banks, we do not want to become one. I worked for one for many years and know both sides of their experience. We have no plans to offer checking accounts, credit and loans, debit cards, ATMs, or brick and motor stores. We’re disrupting this space by not building band-aids like crypto cards. We’re introducing tech anyone can use, any business can benefit from, and any market can absorb. Combine his with private transactions with zero knowledge proofs and we’re a viable option for both the average consumer and the crypto OG.
Lastly, our fiat system enables us to move cash at the speed of WiFi too. Faster than any bank and faster the any crypto-bank. Visa takes 3-5 days to settle for a merchant. We settle in 1 second. Most crypto-banks rely on blocktimes, we’re developing a second layer to move assets as fast as cash. I’ll end with this. We’re open source and available to contribute to, fork, test and audit. Name me a bank willing to give that up?
Thanks for the question. A really great one.