On 6th October 2020, our team had a Live AMA session with Ayhan Gungor CMO of Gather Network.
We thank you for all the interest and those wonderful questions. We’ve summarized it for others to read for those who’ve missed it.
Intro
Ayhan Gungor: So, Gather is a platform that allows publishers to monetize without ads, provides businesses & developers to access cheap and reliable processing power.
- Gather Online (Layer 0) allows web & mobile developers to monetize from their user's processing power.
- Gather Network (Layer1) is the protocol layer, a hybrid proof of work and proof of stake blockchain, where stakeholders are incentivized to maintain transparency and security.
- Gather Cloud (Layer 2) provides affordable processing power to enterprises and developers.
Gather Enterprise provides consultancy services and tools for developers, businesses and crypto networks.
Our team and advisors include high profile executives experienced in their fields, with deep roots to the blockchain ecosystem who took active places in launches of the well-known projects, such as:
- Viacheslav Shybaiev, ex-senior level executive of Opera ($370 Million web browser) / Status (STN), 20+ years of experience in design, development and support of IT and mobile solutions
- Narendra Nag, ex-director of Publicis ($18 Billion marketing firm), 20+ years of experience in Marketing & Communications
- And many others with an average 10+ years experience working with big companies such as NCR, KPMG, NOV, MSL group and Nexans.
Q1: As I see, Mobile apps, dapps & apps can be Monetized,
How does it benefit any application owners?
Answer: So, great question and quite relevant.
1) With Gather Online, application developers can integrate our code easily to their applications and they can start generating additional revenue as their users spend time on the application. When their application is opened, our banner will ask for users’ explicit content to share their processing power.
2) Using Gather’s loyalty program, developers can reward their users for the time spent on their applications by sharing a percentage of the revenue they generated with Gather Online. This is an important aspect from an adoption perspective as developers would be able to reward their users with cryptocurrencies, where the users can be first-time crypto users.
3) If there is a native token used by the developer, it can also be integrated into Gather Online as a payout option
Q2: What are the main use cases for the GTH token on the Gather platform? What is the most important use case for you?
Answer: In my opinion, all use cases are very important from different perspectives.
Basically, GTH’s value is derived from being as a medium of exchange within the ecosystem along with providing holders with the opportunity to vote on the future of Gather. The specific features that use $GTH as a medium of exchange include:
1) Gas Fees and network interactions charges, settlement and processing power-related charges for the Gather Cloud, and Settlement of Gather Online Rewards.
2) Providing a financial incentive to nodes to act honestly.
3) Entitling Staking holders with the right to participate in the governance and future of the Gather ecosystem
Q3: Gather Network is operating on a multi-layer ecosystem and it might seem a bit complicated on the first look. How does Gather Network gain revenue from all these layers and what kind of a role do they play to your ecosystem?
Answer: Gather generates revenue from all layers of the network, which includes publishers/websites/applications at the start and enterprises using gather cloud at the top. Gather will charge a commission to websites/publishers/applications using the Gather technology. The processing power generated from the websites is then redirected to child chains through merge mining and/or enterprises on gather cloud.
Hash rate leased out to child chains to increase their security will be lower than market price. Enterprises that are using Gather cloud will also be charged at a discount to market rate (determined by google/AWS rates) for the processing power used by them. The majority of this revenue will be redistributed back to the publishers with Gather keeping a small portion as the commission, and thus keeping profit linked directly to the growth of the network. This creates a positive feedback loop where increased publishers using Gather online means more processing power can be redistributed through Gather cloud which in turn increases the revenue of Gather online users, attracting more customers to gather online leading to more processing power and so on.
Q4: What kind of content can be monetized with Gather Network? Only those related to cryptocurrencies or is it possible with any topic?
Answer: Any website or application can integrate Gather Online easily. Integrating our core product is very easy and straightforward, it’s a line of javascript code for websites and an SDK for applications. These websites or applications do not have to be crypto-currency or blockchain sites, it can be a news/blog site, a streaming website or app, a mobile application, basically, any option is viable. Gather Online rewards the publishers/users for the time spent on their website or applications.
Q5: How many countries/regions/jurisdictions are Gather targeting to implement its solution?
Answer: Sky is the limit here :)
As I mentioned, any website or application can integrate Gather Online regardless of being crypto or non-crypto sites. Our payout system currently allows $GTH, $BTC, $FRM, $DEC, $DIA and local fiat payouts.
That said, the regions of both South and East Asia are very important to us, along with regions in Africa. The reason we are targeting said regions is that the payouts from advertising are much lower compared to the rest of the world. So it is easier to attract new websites and application from these regions.
Q6: Where can we exchange #GTH coins? Are there be a large market for listings? or currently only focus on the project?
Answer: Gather is listed on Bithumb Global & Uniswap:
- Bithumb Global: https://www.bithumb.pro/en-us/exchange/professional?q=GTH-USDT
- Uniswap: https://uniswap.info/pair/0xb38be7fd90669abcdfb314dbddf6143aa88d3110
Contract Address: 0xc3771d47e2ab5a519e2917e61e23078d0c05ed7f
For sure, GTH will be listed on other exchanges, however, due to non-disclosure agreements, we are not allowed to talk about upcoming details. Please follow our announcement channel to be aware of coming news here: @GatherAnnouncement :)
Q7: What your plans in place for global expansion, are #Gather Network focusing on the only market at this time? Or focus on building and developing or getting customers and users, or partnerships?
Answer: We have around 200 publishing partners via Early Adopters Program so far, including names like ThePioneer (India’s oldest newspaper), TheDailyChain (a crypto news site), Ferrum Network (for staking website and mobile app) and Decentr (as a new web browser). We will be running campaigns to raise the awareness of Gather Online as we get closer to the main net launch but in the meantime, we will carry on and bring more partners with our B2B marketing efforts.
We’re currently testing Gather Cloud with Godrej Industries ($4B+ turnover) and we got ASAP Industries on board for the enterprise side. As part of our B2B business development efforts, we will also continue adding new enterprises. Again for Gather Cloud, we are also building new connections with the other PoW blockchain teams where we can use their algorithms as part of our Merged Mining concept. For example, LUX chain is our first partner on this front.
Q8: Can you tell us the motivations and benefits of investors keeping tokens for a long time? What are your plans to help drive the demand and scarcity of tokens?
Answer: If you check out $GTH token economy, supply and demand mechanics have been designed to ensure that all parties are rewarded for participation and incentivized to help grow the ecosystem. This helps create and maintain a balanced ecosystem. A major demand driver comes from the enterprise side, usage fees and the required node collateral. As we onboard more publishers, the demand side would grow as well.
You can read further here for details: https://gather.network/docs/Gather_Token_Economy.pdf
Q9: What are the competitive advantages of the Gather Network project? What advantages do you have that other competitor? What would be Gather Network’ most similar contender in the market today in terms of scalability, security, features, and adaptability?
1- Gather Online can be easily integrated into websites/apps with no trouble.
2- Gather Online allows website/app owners to generate additional revenue on top of digital ads, or let them go ad-free for an enhanced user experience
3- Gather’s Loyalty program allows website/app owners to reward visitors in GTH/BTC/DEC/FRM/DIA or local fiat currency for the time they actually spend in websites/applications
4- Gather Cloud provides affordable cloud computing costs via processing power coming from publishers (there is no similar example in the competition)
5- Gather Cloud allows PoW blockchain developers to deploy without finding miners or building a mining community first
There is no direct competition in the sense of what we are building as a single marketplace based platform connecting publishers with enterprises & developers.
There are of course variations of the individual parts of the Gather network visible in other projects. For example, Golem is a marketplace for processing power but requires user download and maintenance and large user input. Brave offers monetization but requires their browser to be used while Gather is browser/application-agnostic.
With the modifications we have made to incorporate these individual parts into our platform to operate in a complementary manner, we don't believe there’s any project that is able to offer what Gather does as a complete package at this time.
Q10: What is the mission and vision of Gather Network? What kind of problems/use cases does Gather Network hope to solve?
Answer: Gather has developed a powerful new technology that allows web and mobile developers earn money through processing power contributions.
Our vision is an Internet where web and application developers can generate reliable revenue streams without having to rely on Ads. One that is not reliant on ads, one that is reliable and rewarding. While making Cloud markets cheaper and fairer. We are unlocking a new type of business model for the internet by allowing publishers to monetize without ads and by providing businesses & developers access to affordable and reliable processing power.
We are basically addressing the below problems:
Q11: Where is the Gather road map now? Are all targets in accordance with the current road map? and what are the next steps that will be taken in the future?
Answer: OK, at the moment we are putting a heavy focus on development, and we continue marketing activities to raise awareness about the project. You can see our roadmap on our website technology page, we are just before testnet in this roadmap: https://gather.network/technology.html
We plan to bring our testnet live by the end of this year and move forward to our mainnet by March 2021.
Q12: We all know that many platforms are very co-dependent on views and advertising in order to generate income. How does Gather propose to generate profits to its users without the need for using these conventional techniques?
Answer: So, as we use the processing power based on users’ explicit consent, the measures for us are different than ads. Unlike the number of ads displayed, our system is designed to reward publishers (website and application owners) for the actual time spent on their platforms by their visitors.
When compared to existing advertising rates, Gather Online provides x1.4 better profitability based on the observations on our MVP testing period. Consequently, adding Gather Online to the sites will allow publishers to earn at least x2 of their current revenue or will let them go ad-free for better user experience. These numbers are subject to change based on the number of sessions, session lengths, coin prices and total network usage utilization.
Q13: Currently on the DEFI market is becoming a trend and focus of investors and since then startups are also more about the DEFI trend. First of all, what do you think about this? And $GTH how to compete with other projects what are the specific differences you can detail?
Answer: First of all, I need to underline that Gather is not a DeFi project.
In the means of DeFi, Gather already has passive income elements such as web wallet staking or master nodes.
However, our product adds another dimension to the existing DeFi websites and applications, by adding an option to reward users for using these websites and applications. So, with Gather Online you can actually earn more tokens while using DeFi websites and applications so it’s a completely new approach.
Here are some good articles for some future thoughts on this:
1) https://thedailychain.com/gather-the-missing-link-of-defi/
2) https://bit.ly/Gather_Ferrum
Q14: Does Gather have any Coin Burn / BuyBack systems or any Token Burn plans to increase the value of Token & attract Investors to Stake to invest?
Answer: Yes, as a matter of fact, we have. Part of the amount (20%) received from the enterprise business side will be used for buyback and burn, please see details about this on our token economy for these details: https://gather.network/docs/Gather_Token_Economy.pdf
Q15: While you build your project, do you take into account community feedback and demands?
Answer: Definitely, we do care about community feedback a lot and community feedbacks are going to be part of our routine continuous improvement process. Please feel free to join our channels and share your opinion.
In my opinion, projects are nothing without their communities.
We are also building up our local communities at the moment from the ground up to spread as much as we can.
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