On 29th December, Shin Chan Community held an AMA with Matt Arney, HOG of Fidora & Ken Berniklau, Director of product management to talk about how Findora can add value to the blockchain industry. For those who miss this event, here’s the recap.
Intro
Elson: Can you please have a short introduction of Findora and the team behind it?
Matt Arney: Certainly — from the beginning, we set a goal to leverage blockchain technology to revolutionize financial services. We believe that the financial services industry infrastructure is outdated and needs to change. We envision an open, fair, and transparent financial infrastructure that can serve billions of people, providing true financial democracy. In the future, we hope that Findora’s technology and its democratically run network will be the backbone of Web 3.0, providing the necessary transparency and protection for everyone. Our plans rely on developments in the following areas:
- General community awareness and the adoption of Findora utility assets
- An active and vibrant developer community
- Breakthroughs in enterprise business applications and mass adoption
My name is Matt Arney — Before joining Findora as their Head of Growth, I co-founded and successfully exited from three international startups (In Japan, China, and the USA) in the enterprise language & technology space. My expertise is in corporate development, partnerships, and revenue generation. In my free time, I enjoy hiking, mountain biking, and playing tennis.
Ken Berniklau: Hello — my name is Ken Berniklau. I’m the Director of Product Management at Findora and happy to answer some questions about our product. My expertise is in launching early-stage start-ups, product development, leadership, and managing in a growth environment. In my free time, I enjoy motorcycles, golf, and off-roading.
Elson: thanks Matt and Ken for the introduction ;)
so for the questions 2
I see some special keywords on your website, can you please explain to us about Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs)?
Ken Berniklau: A zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) enables one to convince others that a statement is true without revealing any information on why this is the case. For example, one may want to prove that a number lies in a specific range without leaking the value of the number itself. Zero-knowledge proofs are the core technical tool behind many of the privacy, policy compliance, and selective disclosure features in Findora. Findora's cryptographic library contains many advanced ZKPs, some of which are based on peer-reviewed inventions by Findora’s research team.
Elson: Thank You. Can you explain a little about $FRA in your ecosystem? Also, what are the advantages of $FRA token hodler?
Matt Arney: As you mentioned today is actually Day One of the Findora public sales and it is off to an exciting start! In the past few weeks leading up to the sale, our team has been hard at work conducting KYC and making sure those interested can easily participate in the Findora sale. Thousands of individuals were approved for purchase before the sale began this morning and we will actively approve applications throughout the duration of the sale. While we can’t yet disclose details about how many tokens have been sold, we can share that we are completely sold out of Option C. We are also committed to sharing more when options A, B, D, and E are sold out. We are witnessing record high volumes in this sale and are looking forward to growing the Findora community. Stay tuned for more updates!
Our token is the ultimate source of the network’s utility, and we have a lot of ways to increase the token value both intrinsically and with regards to the utility. For instance, we have hard-wired deflationary burning mechanics into the TRX fees. We have also designed many use cases where you have to lock and stake large amounts of Findora tokens to access mining, application building, and premium features.
All the info regarding requirements, supply, and allocation can be found on our website here: info.findora.org
AMA begins
Q1: When looking at FINDORA roadmap, a lot of great updates are coming in near future, what are the most important upcoming Milestone? Does Your Project Have a Great team and Financial support to achieve those milestones?
Let's tackle this great question about our plans
We have some exciting plans for next year! Our main roadmap items for 2021 revolve around launching our mainnet which will occur in Q1 2021. We also plan to focus on phase II which includes RSA accumulator based storage optimization and our DeFi infrastructure. We plan to deploy ZK Rollup, Accumulator based storage, confidential liquidity bridging, and Dark Pool Dex. We will also optimize ZKPs for different use cases, hardware acceleration, and MPC for blockchain use cases.
Q2: I am a professional vulnerability finder on the web, do you think Your system is secure enough from hackers? Does your project have a program that rewards individual vulnerability detection of the system?
Findora is decentralized in the sense that no single party can manipulate and censor the network transactions. Second, unlike the most transparent blockchains on today’s market such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, there are no transaction data at all on Findora blockchain — — this sounds strange, right? Let me try to explain: Findora is a zero-knowledge blockchain. The Findora blockchain nodes process and verify the zero-knowledge proofs of the actual transactions. These proofs are secretive so that no nodes and 3rd parties can read into the content. Because no actual transaction data on-chain, users’ data privacy is fully protected. If you transfer 100 dollars on Findora to your friend via confidential transfer, no one can see this transaction through a block explorer.
Q3:DeFi and Dapps are two pillars primed to rule cryptocurrencies, what’s your strategy to DeFi and Dapps?
Let me chat a little about DeFi
DeFi has been one of our “key focus areas” and we will solve issues such as a lack of financial inclusion around the world, over-collateralization, and a lack of interoperability and scalability. We believe that DeFi is what blockchain is all about, and in the future, people will only care about the DeFi applications themselves, rather than the underlying chain. For now, DeFi is all about ‘DeFi on Ethereum’ and/or ERC20 tokens. Findora participates in the DeFi space in two ways:
- We have added ZK-Rollups and confidential transaction capabilities for existing DeFi apps on Ethereum, which means that that running DeFi apps on Ethereum can be better, faster, cheaper, and can realize a lot more features that would otherwise be impossible without confidentiality;
- 2. Findora is based on cross-chain and verifiable computation technology. Therefore any Ethereum-based assets can atomically transfer and transact on Findora. We can provide scalability and cost advantage to apps built directly on us.
We will be releasing a series of new private DeFi applications, including ‘Dark Pool Dex’ (for secret large ticket crypto transactions) and ‘Confidential FX pool’ (for confidential cross-border money transfer), just to name a few. These products will launch alongside our mainnet.
Q4: Do you have any Coin Burn / BuyBack systems or any Token Burn plans to increase the value of Token & attract Investors to invest?
The quick answer is yes. We do have a system-wide token. Such token is the ultimate representation of the utilities on Findora blockchain. Our token economics is designed by experts in game theory, computer network economy, and financial engineering. The goal is to make sure the token will directly reflect the growth of the network and the aggregated asset scale on the network while keeping reasonable scarcity. In addition to the common use cases of the tokens such as staking, gas fee, block creation rewards, etc, such tokens are also being required for L2 liquidity mining, asset pooling, deployment of commercial applications and side ledgers, and more. For instance, the enterprises that deploy side ledgers for multi-party supply chain finance, trade financing, equity swap trading, and KYC management will be required to pledge our system tokens.
Q5: You organized an AMA session very rewarding and received a lot of questions related to utilities and technology, future vision, …So now I want to ask what do you want to receive from the community?
Tuang thanks for this question.
We view the community as the key to our success. We divide the community into several sub-segments: general crypto community; developer and researcher’s community and enterprise users as a community. We believe these communities should be equally strong and benefit each other. On the general crypto community side, we have teams around the world to raise awareness of Findora brand and services, deploy all kinds of growth programs including incentivized participation, gamified application experiments, bounty program. We also have a privacy-preserving stable coin project that is designed to help solve the lack of banking access and cost-efficient international remittance issues.
On the developer and researcher’s community side, we have Advanced Findora Research Institute consisting of established researchers, economists, and computer scientists. We have specialized funds to sponsor and support research projects for both the private and public domain,s especially cryptography. We are willing to invest and flourish a developer’s community, an ecosystem fund is being set up to invest in Defi and other applications
Q6: Tell us about your plans for 2021, what are you currently working on, and are you going to expand the list of big exchanges?
As mentioned, and to take it a bit further: 1st Testnet with confidential multi-asset operations and anonymous transfers 2. Address Identity layer implementation 3. Phase I asset policy language and restrained virtual machine; Planning for the end of this year/next year! — — Launching mainnet! We are ready to go!!! In 2021, we will focus on phase II mainnet (RSA accumulator based storage optimization) and the DeFi infrastructure. We will deploy ZK Rollup, Accumulator based storage, confidential liquidity bridging, and Dark Pool Dex. In 2021, because of a significant improvement and reorg of our research, we will be able to pool more resources to optimize ZKPs for different use cases, hardware acceleration, and MPC for blockchain use cases.
Q7: Fidora owns the open zero-knowledge blockchain. Does that mean it will be a privacy coin? Do you think we need another privacy coin on the market? And has Fidora been audited?
This is a timely question — we were audited just today:)
Findora also implements auditability tools, without sacrificing the privacy of users. What are these tools, how transparent they are? When would an audit be necessary? — — We have a huge toolbox of auditability tools, including proof of solvency, range proof, proof of whitelisted assets; proof of accreditation; identity selective revealing tools, confidential asset tracers. These tools are all designed with one purpose: to allow public or certain privileged auditors to understand and verify certain statements on a transaction while still keeping the raw data confidential. Such fine-grained audits are very necessary in many cases (and protect the privacy), not just under a regulatory circumstance.
Q8: The name “ Findora “ is interesting…. ☺️. What inspired this name?
I can share a little about this since some might be interested
We chose Findora since it had global appeal and could be pronounced well in several languages. It’s been said it means “The Pandora of Finance”
Q9: Can you list any unique that #FINDORA has that your competitors don’t have? give the reasons why we have to choose your project and what are the benefits for us?
Findora solves the following core problems inherent in blockchains today
Confidentiality
Findora uses zero-knowledge proofs and secure multi-party computation to support many privacy-preserving features.
Auditability
Specialized zero-knowledge proofs allow Findora to be publicly audited, while data remains confidential.
Scalability
Findora features a high-throughput ledger design and reduces storage requirements through cryptographic accumulators.
Interconnectivity
Findora breaks open data silos for easy interoperability between the main- and side-ledgers.
Q10: How Rust Programming Language runs and what is its operation principle in Findora’s Smart Asset Framework. As far I know it is a multi-paradigm programming language focused on PERFORMANCE and SAFETY, especially SAFE CONCURRENCY. Is it suitable for Findora’s technical solution?
We built an entirely new blockchain-based on the newest ADS technologies from the ground up purely using Rust + WASM; 4. In addition, We completed one of the world’s most comprehensive cryptography libraries- ZEI.
Q11: Findora is obviously very beneficial to crypto users. However- how do you plan for Findora to be useful and beneficial to the majority of non-crypto people?
The Open Banking concept is an answer to the surging needs of banking info revolution under GDPR. Findora will provide a complete set of APIs and SDKs and even sample software stacks to facilitate the move. Under such, consumers will be able to have their traditional banking institutions to safely blind share their information or statements regarding their balance/trx info to designated parties. We will ensure a fully interoperable and private platform can be a great hub for a seamless transition between the rigid old school banks to challenge banks to even, DEFI. We call it a frictionless solution for connecting both worlds.
Q12: Are there any countries banned or restricted from using Findora?
Hi Linda — while I actually don’t know which countries are restricted from using Findora we do restrict some people from participating in our public sale. Details on this can be found here: http://support.findora.org/en/articles/4718207-what-countries-are-restricted-from-the-findora-sale
Q13: Do you have any plans to attract non-crypto investors to your project Because it is the success of a project to get more investors who are still not in the crypto world.
I am confident our token holders will be pleased to see that Findora tokens are providing increasingly valuable utilities.
Q14: Findora promises to solve the central problems inherent in blockchains. But my question is, how will you do it? Many platforms claim to reduce gas rates or increase scalability, but it really isn’t. What tools will Findora use to provide the best services to its users?
Lacking scalability and privacy, a majority of the financial applications cannot work: many applications such as exchanges require a certain performance threshold; without privacy? I guarantee the majority of the population and institutions won’t adopt. We figured out a way to leverage the state of the art Zero-Knowledge cryptography to achieve scalability and privacy.
Q15: Findora and Tencent Cloud partnered to offer World’s First Zero-Knowledge Ledger, could you please tell us how it is going and what major milestones have been achieved?
A little about Tencent Cloud…
In July of this year, we announced a partnership with Tencent Cloud that enables us to provide the world’s first confidential ledger products on top of Tencent Cloud. The integration supports encrypted transaction and asset issuance, processing, verification, and storage.
The relationship with Tencent is strategic. Together we are creating the world’s first zero-knowledge Transaction-As-A-Service cloud, a direct answer to AWS’ QLDB. The TAAS we work on is an auto-scale zero-knowledge transaction platform deployed on Tencent’s cloud. Global small to medium businesses and fintech can skip the costly infrastructure building and directly outsource their transactions to us with no worry of security. The amazing part to our Findora blockchain constituents is that the revenue generated from this service will flow back to our public blockchain as Findora TAAS and ZKLDB are structured as side-ledger/subnetwork of the Findora main chain!
Q16: The $FRA token public sale is alive, so can you share us what are the full requirements that a user must complete before buy tokens?
Any information on our public sale is available at info.findora.org
Q17: Which segments are you seeing early signs of success in real-world usable applications/blockchains? What part of the Findora ecosystem are you most excited about?
As for real-world use cases here are a few…
as far as to use cases there are many we’re working on including peer to peer banking, auditable financial services, cloud banking, and more
Q18: What is Findora doing to catch up with the current DeFi trend? In the next year, what position do you think Findora will be on the DeFi world map?
Private Defi applications include a series of new defi products including Dark Pool Dex (allow secret large ticket crypto transaction), confidential FX pool (that can allow confidential cross-border money transfer), just to name a few. We will release soon with the mainnet launch.
Q19: Findora website says that Findora is “built to solve real-world problems”, but can you explain to us Which types of problems are you meaning?
We can be used by a traditional bank to replace the infrastructure they currently run on, deployed in the cloud, or is a platform for issuing assets of any nature, including cryptocurrency. Findora’s mission is to address the challenges necessary to support this broad class of assets and diverse financial use cases. One of the primary challenges is providing confidentiality while retaining the transparency and public accessibility of other blockchains. Achieving this privacy-preserving transparency is Findora’s major focus and product differentiation.
Q20: How do you think about the Asia market? Does your team have any planned approach to ASEAN which the potential market in crypto, there have many great teams and investors who want to work and earn money from crypto?
Asia is one of our major focuses (population, trade prosperity, robust economies). We believe Findora is a good fit for this market. We are looking for partnerships in SEA in general. Some of the segments are very interesting to us: micropayments, e-commerce related payments, in-game assets, marketplace lending, and privacy-preserving stable coin. We think the SEA market as a whole is one of the most important markets for the industry.
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