On the last day of 2020, we conducted an AMA with Co-founder & CEO, Logan Brutsche and Co-founder & COO, Schalk Dormehl of Foundry to talk about how they can solve today’s blockchain issue.
Intro
Ivan: Good evening to everyone, Welcome onboard Co-founder & CEO, Logan Brutsche and Co-founder & COO, Schalk Dormehl from Foundry！ 🥳🥳🥳
Elson: Welcome @coinoplogan @schalkdormehl to our channel ❤️
Schalk: Hey guys! Great to be here!
Logan: Thanks!
Elson: before we start the live AMA session, can you please have a short introduction about Foundry?
also, do you mind to tell us how you guys start the crypto journey and The Foundry’s team background?
Logan: Sure. Foundry is a DAO under development, which is built to be able to pursue products that are profitable and ethical even if they are illegal. Specifically, we target freedom-enhancing tools, such as SmokeSignal and DAIHard, which we can talk more about later.
In the longer term, this could be challenging extremely abusive governments, like Zimbabwe with their abusive economic system. We want Foundry to show the world that DAOs can play with the big boys, and not just be told to go home.
Schalk: I first heard about Bitcoin back in Dec 2009 and arrogantly dismissed it before really hearing out what it was about.
LUCKILY I got a second chance in 2010 and was able to become involved in mining in 2011.
In 2014 I was fortunate enough to be able to interview Vitalik Buterin for my Youtube channel about what would become Ethereum.
I’ve been an investor in Crypto throughout and entered smart contract development full time in 2018.
I love crypto because it doesn’t give anyone the opportunity to control it. It flows like water as Bruce Lee advised.
Here’s a breakdown of the interview with Vitalik.
Elson: that is really amazing that you can interview Vitalik!
Logan: I got into Bitcoin about 6 years ago, and wrote my first smart contract about 3 years ago just before going to devcon2 — the first prototype of a burnable payment (this is the predecessor to the DAIHard contracts). Since then I’ve been focusing on simple contract code with strong game theory, and Schalk and I have been working on Foundry or Foundry related products for 2 years now.
At first, this was DAIHard. Then when we realized it would be too scary to market DAIHard directly, we started to build something that could do so without being so scared — that brought us to Foundry.
Elson: that’s where Foundry comes from!
Schalk: Yes indeed. The stuff in crypto is so revolutionary that it’s not wise to attempt to construct it unshielded.
Elson: Can you guys also explain a little more about DAIHard & Smokesignal?
Logan: SmokeSignal (live now at https://smokesignal.eth.link/ — but a redesign is coming soon!) is really a pretty simple dapp. All it does is make it easier for people to post things to Ethereum and read such messages, including metadata like replies. It then displays this in a UX similar to Reddit, with topics and nested replies.
SmokeSignal posts are uncensorable, permanent, and pseudonymous. When you use SmokeSignal, no one can “deplatform” you — not even us! In these days with ridiculously rampant censorship, this is at the moment our flagship product, the thing we’re trying to bring to market first.
Currently, you need DAI and ETH to post, but after the current redesign, you’ll only need ETH. Then you can let your words be free! SmokeSignal and similar applications are really going to change the way we in the modern world think about free speech and information.
Elson: looking forwards to the redesign! as just need the ETH, it’s convenient!
Logan: Btw, both SmokeSignal and DAIHard have profit mechanisms, and both of these are directed toward the Foundry Treasury. That is our general strategy for making sure FRY holders benefit; they control the Treasury that receives the funds from any Foundry products
Schalk: OK, let me take DAIHard:
I first met Logan in 2017 at Devcon 3 and he told me about his project “ToastyCoin”.
Essentially ToastyCoin rested on a concept he termed a burnable payment.
A burnable payment is a method by which two parties, who have no prior relationship, can interact in a game-theoretical way that keeps both honest.
Basically, Party A lists a contract on Ethereum and specifies the real-world criteria they want to be fulfilled: eg, I want my lawn mowed.
Then Party B, who might own a lawnmower and wants to earn some money can pick up the contract.
However, there are a few problems A doesn’t know if B will be guaranteed to complete the mowing of the lawn, and B doesn’t know if A will actually pay him if he’s mowed the lawn.
So Logan’s creative solution was for A to put down the payment for the contract upfront and insist that A put down some percentage of the total contract value. Then, upon completion (or default) of the work needed to be done, A would decide to either, release all funds to B or to burn all funds.
Long story short, if you work through the game theory of this, it means both parties only have an incentive, to be honest, and complete the work.
Logan then got the additional idea from Kain from Synthetix to turn the concept into crypto-fiat on and off-ramp.
The elevator pitch would be:
A crypto-fiat on and off-ramp that doesn’t require any KYC and has NO centralized infrastructure that could ever be shut down.
AMA begins
Q1: Your website says that right now the management of foundry below to team Toast and then this Power will be passed to FRY holders, but when this is gonna happen?
We have to build Foundry Governance to really hand control over to FRY holders, but first, we’re focusing more on getting products to market. A real profit stream guarantees that when the DAO is built it can do very interesting things.
Q2: 1. It is currently known that the Zimbabwean economy is in trouble, how will you try to convince Zimbabweans that FRY is a solution to be able to save in the short and long term in an environment where for years this has been very difficult? .
2. What kind of limitations did you have to overcome in order to carry out this wonderful project and thus try to change the lives of many people who currently do not have sustainable savings or investment mechanism?
1. The idea is not to introduce $FRY to them as a currency, but rather to serve them with useful products that produce a lot of value. The problem for them is that their digital money systems (all of them) have essentially been declared illegal in favor of paper fiat. DAI along with xDAI and DAIHard is a solution that could REALLY work for them.
2. The real challenge is getting users onto nascent systems like xDAI, this is why we require funds to both iterates the products and market them.
Q3: I find it interesting that FoundryDAO is building a platform with the characteristics of freedom of expression such as SmokeSignal. What differentiates this platform from others in which the content that is shared on them is not censored either?
If you know of any platforms that are truly uncensorable, let me know! I think what we have at the moment are more like Parler, which specializes in free speech, but still has “community guidelines” or some such that they enforce. In other words, they do censor, just not as harshly. With SmokeSignal, censorship is literally impossible. There are no community guidelines.
Q4: What can we expect to see from this project in the short-term (at some point in 2020) and 2021 and beyond (long-term goals)?
By next month the SmokeSignal redesign should be implemented, and we will start marketing it. We expect to get a lot of interest.
Q5: With your idea of liquid democracy and whales delegating to more knowledgeable people, how do people in the FRY ecosystem get to find out who’s knowledgeable and worth listening to on DAO decisions?
So we’re building a set of off-chain tools that will aid the discussion.
For instance, there’s our forum (forum.foundrydao.com) which we plan to integrate into $FRY token holdings so that people can see who influential $FRY whales are but also act as a place for people to discuss various topics and for the reputation to be formed through natural means.
There’s also the dashboard for sentiment voting at dashboard.foundrydao.com where people can use their $FRY to indicate their opinion on various topics without having to spend gas. This will grow into a system where people can indicate how strongly (or weakly) they support proposals that might come to an eventual vote.
Overall the emergence of the reputation we expect to be an organic one.
Q6: Usually the project only tells about their strengths. Can you tell us honestly about the weaknesses of your project? And what are your plans to solve it? What all the rules that must be obeyed in Foundry DAO, can explain a little. and does the Foundry DAO platform have security or what is called KYC ??? Thank you!
Foundry is sort of built to break rules or ignore them. We have no KYC.
Q7: Really what characteristics do conventional projects have that make them vulnerable to kill? and as Foundry is impossible to kill? is it just because of decentralization?
- Identifiable leaders (currently we are identifiable, but Foundry will have decentralized leadership)
- A legal entity that can be sued or shut down
- Technical reliance on a server or other centralized structures, which can be shut down with violence or litigation
I’m really interested to see which side of this DAI/MKR falls on btw if the US gov really tries to go after them… It will be very instructive for the crypto industry ;)
Q8: What are the benefits of holding and staking $FRY tokens? And What plans do you have to help drive demand and scarcity for FRY tokens?
So the idea is that the $FRY treasury will receive proposals for projects and that $FRY holders would then vote on those proposals. If $FRY holders are rational they would expect that either 1) the project charges a fee which is then sent back to the treasury 2) the project someone burns $FRY with its fees, increasing the value of 3) the project increases the liquidity of FRY (and consequently the price).
It’s also possible that proposers actually come up with even more creative reasons why their project would benefit $FRY.
Q9: Too many projects promise magic but never release any working product or prove any revenue, Within a short/long time of release. Is your project also like this? If not can you tell us, What interesting topic makes your project different from other projects?
We already have two functional, working products: SmokeSignal (https://smokesignal.eth.link/) and DAIHard (daihard.exchange). Now, we still have to market them — but this should at least show you we know how to push products to functionality.
Q10: Truly, you’ve done AMA in many telegram groups, so what next, what another way will you make your project more popular?
The next step will be marketing SmokeSignal and getting users to that. That should really get us a lot of exposure. Especially once people start getting spicy on it.
Q11: Most investors hit and run during the sell and sell sessions right after being listed on the first exchange. How has your project prevented $FRY investors from selling their tokens early? And what benefits will you bring them?
We don’t seek or control listings on CEXs at all. The only reason we want anyone to invest in our token is that they believe in what we’re building and think it might make money. This way we might have a slow start but we keep everyone sincere with very little dumping risk. We aren’t the kind of community that just want XYZ CEX to list us, only to dump on the noobs. That’s also in part why our sale lasts so long. It’s whale resistant, it’s very hard to acquire a large amount of $FRY and then just dump it.
check out sale.foundrydao.com
Q12: Consider the chance that Foundry would do meta transactions with multiple posts gathered as a single post, how would you determine who pays for the aggregated post?
That’s a tough question. The problem is that you’d have to have a “ghost queue” of posts that haven’t been posted yet but can somehow be “seen” by whoever ultimately posts the metatx… And that would require a server somewhere holding them. That would seriously threaten the decentralized nature of SmokeSignal.
Q13: Can you please say what you do to stop early whales from controlling the whole #DAO and only supporting the projects they like? Is it one token one vote, or are there measures to stop the richest community members from getting much more voice than others?
Whales want competent management, that’s why big investors invest in things like TSLA, they don’t actually want it to be chopped up for parts and sold. They want to ride to Mars with Elon. The problem is that pure token voting doesn’t give them this. It incentivizes cash grabs. Liquid democracy, we believe will give whales an opportunity to invest in the INTELLIGENCE that more knowledgeable people can provide on the topics at hand.
Q14: Which market are you focusing on? How do you rate the Asia market? Do you have any plans to develop in the Asia market?
One reason the Asian market is interesting (btw, is that a Vietnamese name? Love Vietnam!) is because of the tendency toward censorship and thought control of some of the Asian governments. Foundry is built to challenge that kind of stuff, so could find a lot of popular Asian support.
Q15: Most of the farm coins suffer from high APY and are constantly printing new tokens. For example,,, I farm $FRY I Receive more $FRY and throw away my extra tokens. Most of the farm coins have failed and will fail on Token Metrics only. How do you offset the selling pressure?
The ONLY way any project can ever offset selling pressure is by providing REAL value to REAL users. No amount of tokenomics can ever offset that. However, having said that, we do employ the permafrost and we also have only community-provided liquidity, which means that the only people supporting the price are those who believe in the long term value, as opposed to those who believe in the short term pump and dump and will rug pull.
Q16: In the bad situation of the Covid-19 epidemic, every industry was heavily affected. Does it affect the growth of Foundry project team and its?
The censorship and centralized control responses only increase the need for something like Foundry.
Q17: Is there some kind of a direct mechanism/linkage between the treasury and FRY ownership? Do you plan in offering some kind of dividends along with income tied with the FRY holders?
Not yet, but once Governance is built FRY holders will be the sole owners of the Treasury.
Q18: Where is the “ Foundry “ name coming from and what is the logo representing?
It comes from the idea of a Foundry where raw materials are melted and then forged into useful tools by the minds of men.
Q19: Which area are you focusing on at the moment? (DeFi, Stake, Dapps..) and what is your goals in this year ?
Usable dapps to end-users is the main goal; SmokeSignal providing free unstoppable speech is a big part of that.
Q20: Why did you choose DAI as the core token for the SmokeSignal? I understand that it is important to have a decentralized stable coin, but why not allowing for other types of volatility? For example, what do you guys think about YFI and its vaults as a core token?
I designed SmokeSignal with DAI simply to make the UX easier to parse for mere mortals. To see that a post has “$120 burned” in support means a lot more than to see that it has “0.1 ETH burned”. Especially for non-crypto nerds.
SmokeSignal is about signaling free speech — no need to introduce other tokens or volatility into that. The redesign will remove the reliance on DAI, but keep the UX reporting burn amounts in $usd
Q21: -Can you tell us about Foundry referral program and what are the benefits/incentives if we refer our friends to partake in the token sale?
For projects in need of funding, what steps are to be followed in submitting a funding proposal? Can any project apply for funding or is it limited to pro-liberty projects?
Wrt referrals:
You can create a referral code, which you can share with friends or actively promote, and you will receive between 10% and 20% of the purchase value of the people who end up buying FRY via your referral code from sale.founderdao.com
Wrt proposals:
Right now you can make a proposal right at forum.foundrydao.com and the sentiment voting tool will be employed to gauge the community’s excitement about your proposal. Over the next year, as we build governance, we will make this whole process entirely “automated” and provide the relevant dashboards, etc.
If you have a good idea PLEASE come tell us about it!
Q22: Which area are you focusing on at the moment? (DeFi, Stake, Dapps..) and what are your goals this year?
We will mostly be focusing on SmokeSignal and then DAIHard. We have a Defi experiment we’re doing, but unless it really blows up it won’t be our main focus.
Ethereum can do WAY more than just Defi, you should view Foundry as a diversification in the kind of freedom that can be invested in on the blockchain.
Q23: What is your strategy for marketing and for Mass Adoption? What message do you want to send to the community through AMA today?
Our main strategy will soon be to get real users on SmokeSignal and build Foundry to be a champion of free speech.
Q24: Have I understood correctly that to immortalize the OP can pay or the reader can pay by tipping/upvoting… will at this point the funds are burnt and the post lives forever, thus the good content would be made immortal easier by the users?
Any post on SmokeSignal is immortal. But the more that is burned for it (either by OP or others), the more visibility it will get.
Q25: If a competitor should arise today providing the same services. What would you do to stay and remain relevant?
In crypto, there is often an opportunity to actually work WTIH rather than against. I’d probably open a dialogue and see what resources we could share, and in what ways we would differ.
Q26: Projects that are not traded on major exchanges remain unnoticed. What do you think about listing the token on the leading exchanges?
In the age of DeFi, this is no longer as true as it once was ;) And if we can market a successful product, thereby growing Foundry’s Treasury, that will be a much more sustainable attractive force for new funding than any listing could be.
Q27: Can you provide an overview of your tokenomics? Will the design of the token increase and decrease with the success of the platform, does it include any scarce pathways, such as equity, storage, or burning?
So we have some really novel experiments ongoing wrt this. We’ve learned a LOT from when we started.
- There may be a very mild dilution of like 2%-5% which will be paid out to people who participate in governance. If you don’t want to suffer this dilution (or even make some extra $FRY) join the governance and simply delegate to a knowledgable delegate.
2. The capital structure will be protected. IE you will not be arbitrarily diluted.
3. We have the PermaFrost which is permanently locked Balancer liquidity. It is unclear what the total outcome of this will be, but it guarantees a minimum price and a perpetually available market to either enter or exit $FRY.
4. As Defi teaches us more about tokenomics, we may implement value accruing features into how the $FRY price is supported.
Q28: I wanted to follow your project #FoundryDao for the long term. Where I can get all the latest news about your project? Do you have Twitter/Telegram/Discord community? If yes can you share the link here because there is a lot of fake telegram/Twitter groups?
Yes, please join our telegram!
https://t.me/FoundryCommunity
Q29: Marketing is a central element for every project so that everyone knows the potential that a project can bring is vital to achieving the goals set. What is your strategy to attract new users and investors to Foundry Dao Protocol and keep them long term?
SmokeSignal is the main focus in the short term. We’re finishing up a redesign, then will begin marketing it — probably focusing on marginalized communities and de-platformed users
Q30: In your roadmap for 2021 you have planned the issuance of Foundry Stablecoin! What role will it play on the platform? How will it differ from $ Foundry?
No, we have not done that 😂 We don’t really see the stablecoin game as our specialty.
Q31: What kind of projects/startups may apply for the Foundry crowdfunding platform?
Our big focus is on end-user products that increase freedom — not necessarily DeFi products, ideally something more focused on the real world (i.e. SmokeSignal focusing on free speech)
Q32: It is unfortunate that some projects remain halfway because their developers abandon the concept because they cannot achieve the desired capitalization in the long term; how do you plan to make this project FoundryDao sustainable for its development?
By making 100% sure it does NOT rely on our continued involvement. This may sound counter-intuitive, but Foundry is not like Tesla which needs Elon Musk. Foundry will have failed if in 2 years' time it still needs both Logan and me to baby it and it cannot fund projects intelligently on its own.
Q33: As I Know the $FRY / $RFI pair is now available on Uniswap. But Will you set more trading options? Is there a plan to have another pair available soon?
We’re actively experimenting and working with some other communities. We have no solid plans for this, but it seems to be happening organically, so I am hopeful that we find cooperative synergy with many other tokens.
Q34: kindly tell us about your program
⚠️ “THE DREAM — ZIMDAI”,⚠️ does that means you are focusing only on zimbabwe? what other nation in Africa do you expect to be economically and socially strengthened through your project?
Not quite. It’s something Foundry could pursue IF it gets a lot of funding. It’s a dream — not a current plan. The current big issue with the plan is that there is no clear profit mechanism. It’s doable, certainly — and what a dream, to jail-break a crappy economic system! — but neither us nor Foundry is yet at a point where it can do strictly philanthropy.
So, we focus instead on getting Foundry functional, intelligent, and profitable.
Then once it has its own momentum, and gets bigger and bolder — it might start to get involved in places like Zimbabwe (or Venezuela, etc)
Q35: One of the most curious things about Foundry is the delegate voting system, so can you explain what is the unique differences between It and a typical voting system?
Yes, in our system you can delegate to someone you feel is knowledgeable on the topic of DAO governance. Similar to how you would vote for a representative politician. The difference with Liquid democracy is that 1) you can vote for someone who then votes for someone else, effectively the last person in the chain has the voting power of all the tokens beneath them, 2) if you do not like the way a representative is voting you can redelegate and delegate to someone else or vote on the proposal you disagree with directly.
Q36: As Personal Data is very Important, How will You provide total security?
Fortunately, Ethereum does a lot of that for us. We just provide the smart contract logic. We don’t have any personal servers that store anything, other than traditional analytics
Q37: Many DEFI projects are in a hurry to release products with serious errors in the smart contract. Have you performed audits by third parties? Do you think your system is safe enough against hacks and hacker attacks?
Yes, we’ve audited all of our smart contracts with the auditor Adam Dossa.
These audits are linked to in the deployed contract code on Ethereum
Q38: I can see is $FRY farming pool available but I cannot find some APY information, can you reveal some details about% APY when users join Farming? Compared to current projects their APY% get very high do you think will put a higher or equal rate to stimulate user participation?
Our farming program has ended for the time being but will launch (pending a community vote) again in the near future. DM me if you have specific questions about this.
-End-
