April 14-th held an Ask Me Anything session at ICOSpeaks telegram chat. From the Findora side there was:
Before we go to the first set of questions, could you please do a short self-intro?
👨💻 Warren | VP of product | @warpaulz
By way of introduction, my name is Warren Paul Anderson, VP of Product at Discreet Labs. I got started in the crypto industry as a hobbyist Bitcoin miner in 2011, back when one could still mine a block with a CPU. I parlayed my passion to jump into blockchain full-time in 2013, starting with the co-founding of Hedgy, one of the first (and only) DeFi platforms to have built smart contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain. I joined Ripple in 2016 to lead product across a variety of different crypto products, platforms, and protocols, including the XRP Ledger. While at Ripple, I picked up my first patent, as the co-inventor of On-Demand Liquidity, an enterprise payment API that uses crypto to settle cross-border payments in seconds. I joined Discreet Labs in 2021 as VP of Product to lead the development of scalable blockchain privacy systems, such as Findora. I am a frequent public speaker, and have also guest lectured at institutions such as Stanford, Northwestern, UC Berkeley, Wharton, University College London, and University of Zurich on topics related to blockchain, cryptocurrency, fintech, and technology more broadly.
Let’s get started!
Q: Could you tell us more about the Findora project?
A: Findora is a cost efficient, scalable, EVM compatible, layer-1 public blockchain with ZKP privacy for stablecoins, tokens, NFTs and DeFi. It is one of the most decentralized delegated POS blockchains by measure of Nakamoto and Gini coefficients. Findora uses a novel multi-chain architecture, which consists of a UTXO-based blockchain for privacy and scalability (called Native Chain), and an account-based EVM-compatible blockchain for programmability, interoperability, and composability (called Smart Chain).
The multi-chain architecture is intraconnected via a trustless atomic swap protocol called Prism. Findora’s multi-chain architecture parallelizes the best of ZKP for scalability and privacy with the best of EVM for programmability, interoperability, and composability.
Q: What’s the privacy feature of Findora?
A: Findora Native Chain uses zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), namely Bulletproofs (live) and PLONKs (test) to support private transactions. This enables users with an option to send / receive transactions privately by hiding the amount, the asset type, and (soon) the address. It also allows users to issue private tokens, such as stablecoins. This ZKP privacy can extended to EVM based blockchains as well.
Q: What is triple masking? What does it do?
A: Triple masking is an upcoming ZKP feature that extends Findora’s current implementation of private transactions, which currently masks transaction amounts, to also include the ability to mask the sender and receiver’s addresses. Triple masking uses an advanced form of ZKP called PLONKs, which allow more complexity. Triple masking will unlock enhanced use cases that can be developed on Findora. Imagine private stablecoin remittance, private DEX transactions with no front running nor MEV attacks, private DAOs, private NFTs, etc.
Q: Besides privacy, security is also an important issue in crypto. Could you tell us how you deal with the security threats of your project?
A: The Findora project has an active bug bounty program for security researchers to responsibly disclose vulnerabilities, and for core developers to investigate and escalate security remediation procedures. The Findora platform, Findora wallet and Rialto bridge (a fork of Chainsafe Chainbridge) have all passed extensive independent security audits of the open source code.
Q: Could you give us some current use cases which are running on Findora? And what is your plan in the near future?
A: Findora Mainnet Beta was launched in April 2021, and spent several months in a stability phase. At that time functionality was limited to the use case of private payments, and the more novel use case of issuing private tokens, such as stablecoins.
Open staking with delegation via POS was launched in October 2021. Users can currently stake and delegate FRA to earn yield.
Findora EVM was implemented in December 2021, and spent the past few months in a stability phase. EVM compatibility has added programmability and composability to Findora. This added functionality has expanded more use cases on Findora such as DEXs, Dapps and DAOs.
Findora interoperability with other blockchain ecosystems was recently introduced through the launch of Rialto, a trustless cross-chain bridge connecting Findora with both BNB Chain and (soon) Ethereum.
Multiple native DEXs have been announced, including FairySwap, a community driven fair-launch DEX that aims to support privacy against front-running and MEV attacks.
Findora DAO / Medici DAO is working on adding more privacy for funding projects (ie: Constitution DAO) to reduce front running.
A $100m Ecosystem Grant Fund was launched in October 2021 as part of a multi-year community-led commitment to support Findora ecosystem research, development, infrastructure, and liquidity projects building upon Findora.
Findora is still in the very early days of its ecosystem development. So it’s an incredibly exciting time to be a developer on Findora.
Q: What is the long-term plan for Findora, and why should KuCoin users adopt it?
A: Long-term, Findora will become a liquidity hub for privacy, by combining its multi-chain architecture to extend privacy to other blockchain ecosystems. Findora will accelerate the mainstream adoption of web3 through privacy where users can not only own their crypto but also own their data, and selectively disclose transaction details for auditing, without revealing the global state of all transaction history.
Q: Could you tell us more about the Findora team and community?
A: Findora Foundation is a non-profit entity that helps steward grants towards the research and development of Findora. It consists of several directors with decades of experience building Silicon Valley tech companies.
Discreet Labs was the first recipient of grant funding from the foundation as a leading contributor to the development of Findora. Discreet Labs currently employs over 60 people across 5 continents with 80% of staff consisting of engineers, designers and product managers working everyday on Findora and other scalable privacy systems.
The Findora community is a fast growing ecosystem of validators, developers, designers, operators, ambassadors, and evangelists, working on a variety of projects being built on Findora, including staking platforms, DEXs, DApps and DAOs.
Q: Can you share with us your tokenomics? How much is the total and circulation supply of your tokens?
A: Findora’s tokenomics were designed to incentivize a secure PoS consensus process and this is accomplished by two key algorithmic rules: (1) Dynamic Block Rewards: Block reward rates will adjust higher when the percentage of circulating supply staked falls. (2) Voting Power Cap: A single validator is capped at 20% maximum voting power. Findora’s current total supply is 21B tokens, although the community could vote to enable inflation in the future to continue funding validator staking rewards incentives.
Q: Do the token holders have the right to participate in the governance of the project? What kind of decisions can they vote on about the project?
A: Findora is a POS blockchain with delegation so community governance is a big part of how the network operates. Token holders can vote on changes to the protocol such as fees and core updates to the software.
Q: Are you a global project or local project? At present, which market are you focus on, or is it focused on building and growing to gain customers, users and partners?
A: A Findora global ambassador program was recently launched to help fund local community engagement with tens of thousands of applicants from around the world. At present, there are active global communities on Findora Discord in India, Vietnam, Indonesia, China, Russia and Turkey who communicate in their respective languages. We would love to see many more countries!
Q:Staking, NFT is very hottest, do you think you will apply NFT technology to your products in the achieved future?
A: Findora is an EVM compatible blockchain and supports the ERC-721 standard for NFTs.
Q: Do you guys feel satisfied by seeing your progresses and achievements till now, when you look back to the day when you have started this project?
A: Findora started off as a university research project in 2017 with a vision for building a public blockchain with more sensible, scalable privacy. Since launching Mainnet Beta in April 2021, the Findora network of validators has become one of the most decentralized blockchain projects by measure of Nakamoto and Gini coefficients. As a community project Findora has a track record of consistently shipping new releases and updates to the open source code base, which is routinely audited by independent researchers. In October 2021 a $100M Findora Ecosystem Grant Fund was launched to support research, development, liquidity, and infrastructure projects on Findora. The teams working on Findora and related projects, and the investors backing the project, are committed to the long term vision for Findora to grow mainstream adoption of web3 through more privacy, self sovereignty, data ownership, and decentralization.
Q: Marketing is a central element for every project, so that everyone knows the potential that a project can bring is vital to achieve the goals set. What is your strategy to attract new users and Investor to your platform and keep them long term.
A: Interoperability and composability with other blockchain networks is a key element of Findora’s growth. What that means is, for example, an Ethereum developer can use the Solidity programming language to write smart contracts or even port over existing smart contracts, on Findora with very few changes. Then transactions between Findora and Ethereum become seamless. This expands the Findora ecosystem to include other ecosystems.
Q: How many team members do you have? Do they have enough experience in the blockchain field? Do they have any experience on working in crypto and non-crypto project?
A: In total I would estimate there are over 250 people working on Findora across the world. Most of the people, like myself, have worked on other crypto projects before. Findora also has one of the best Rust engineering teams in the world and one of the largest cryptography teams focusing on zero-knowledge proofs
ICOSpeaks hosted an AMA Session with the Findora Team. That’s all for today.
Thanks to all users who participated.
Thanks, Findora for being with us
Thanks, all and see you soon😉
Cheers 🥂
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