BlockTalks x CryptoLocally AMA Transcript!
Hello! BlockTalkers & Blockchain Enthusiastic!
We recently hosted an AMA with CryptoLocally, on September 22nd at 2 PM UTC. Many of you might have participated or many of not. But we make sure no one missed out from the knowledge shared by Hugo Campanella, Co-founder — Product and design of CryptoLocally. So here we are up with the AMA transcript, for those who missed the live session, this blog post will be a saver & feeder of knowledge for them.
INTRODUCTION
Hugo Campanella — I’ve been working in tech teams since 8 years now, started my professional life at UBS and AXA, then left the corporate world for an online gaming company in Berlin, helped startups as a UI/UX consultant in Paris and finally moved to Hong Kong where I leaded product teams for a couple years. This is where I met Jae (co-founder) and we decided to start a business together. We first launched a block producer team (hkeos.com) on the EOS blockchain, built bloks.io; now the most used block explorer for EOS.IO chains and finally launched CryptoLocally together.
Introduction Questions Asked By BlockTalks
Q1. Could you please introduce CryptoLocally $GIV to our community in layman’s term?
Ans — CryptoLocally is creating the easiest and most accessible fiat gateway to DeFi and its tools for everyone. Our goal is to empower all people with the tools to take control of their financial future.
By eliminating the middleman, CryptoLocally enables people to bypass the onerous fees, interest rates, and other restrictions traditional financial institutions impose.
CryptoLocally is already a trusted provider of a peer-to-peer (P2P) digital asset marketplace with no middle-man; it offers out-of-band payment methods and a revolutionary smart contract escrow.
People can meet in person, send a bank transfer, or use KakaoPay, AliPay, WeChat Pay, Venmo and more — all in a currency the buyer and the seller decide to use. All the while, their digital assets will be secured in an escrow that is safer than a traditional bank account.
Q2. What are the advantages of CryptoLocally $GIV to other alternatives in the Blockchain field?
Ans — Great question 🙂
CryptoLocally is non-Custodial, we upgraded traditional escrow systems (used on other P2P platforms) by using smart contracts. This feature completely removes the third party from a trade while keeping a tight security layer throughout the trading process.
No KYC needed to trade P2P or use our DeFi wallet, you can create an account with an email plus password and start trading right away. High privacy as we don’t ask for any personal information.
Large range of altcoins listed, we all know how much hassle it is to go from FIAT to a specific altcoin, we are removing those hurdles and making it a one step process. We are now supporting ERC20, BEP2, TRC20 and EOS.IO tokens and the list will keep growing.
Same process for our DeFi wallet, you can deposit or buy USDT, USDC, GIV, ETH or DAI on CryptoLocally and start earning interest in one click.
Finally, we are building a decentralized, non-custodial P2P trading platform that will soon be managed and governed by the $GIV community through GIVernance.
That’s pretty much it 😄
Q3. What are the major milestones CryptoLocally $GIV achieved so far & what are in the future pipeline?
Ans — Couple things here;
The platform has been online for almost a year now, we started with a marketplace for EOS.IO token exclusively and then added other chains like BEP-2, ERC-20 and TRC20. CryptoLocally was built from the ground up from our team. We have a real platform with 15K+ users and it is still growing month to month.
We recently released our Finance Wallet, which provides a one-step fiat gateway to DeFi for everyone on CryptoLocally.
On top of this we are currently building two major DeFi features around $GIV;
First, CryptoLocally Vaults (CLVs) which are non-custodial, smart contract based algorithms deployed across multiple chains. The CLVs will work in the background and apply strategies that optimize yield for users that invest into the vault pools. This will allow users to earn maximum yield on their crypto assets across all chains, all in one place, with the click of a button.
The second one is GIVernance; as mentioned earlier, GIV will evolve to be a governance token on the platform, offering a truly decentralized solution. Voting rights will offer GIV holders the ability to control the level of inflation, interest and free float (by way of token burns), vote on CLV strategies and finally vote for new listings on CryptoLocally.
We have a lot more game changing features we want to build, you can find our detailed roadmap here:
Questions Asked on Twitter For CryptoLocally team!
Q1. Most P2P exchanges take custody of funds by using a centralized deposit/withdraw interface. What is Cryptolocally doing different eliminate this?
Ans — At CryptoLocally we upgraded traditional escrow systems (used on other P2P platforms) by using smart contracts. This feature completely removes the third party from a trade while keeping a tight security layer throughout the trading process.
Smart contract escrows enable users to trade among themselves without having to deposit their funds on an exchange wallet. The assets are directly sent to the smart contract address and released only when the seller confirms the payment reception. CryptoLocally doesn’t hold custody of users funds.
Q2. It’s quite unfortunate that many projects have infiltrated the market with just white papers without having any genuine use cases. What are the main utilities of your coin?
Ans — Right now you can earn $GIV while trading on CryptoLocally, after each trade, both users are awarded GIV based on the traded amount.
You can also earn interest on your $GIV holdings directly on the DeFi wallet.
There’s a couple more cool features like boosting your offers or buy fees rebates with your $GIV.
On the Finance Wallet iself you can also earn interest on cryptocurrencies like ETH, DAI, GIV, and USDC in the easiest and fastest way possible, right from the CryptoLocally platform! And on top of those current use cases we are working on CryptoLocally Vaults (CLVs) and GIVernance; GIV
Q3. Is there any way to qualify users after a purchase/sale has been made? How do we know they are reliable and that our money is not at risk? Is KYC necessary?
Ans — CryptoLocally has a reputation system set in place that helps users determine the validity of a trader. They are expected to do their own due diligence and trade with those who have high reputation and volume. You can also freely check feedbacks from previous trades on a user’s profile page.
Of course our smart contract escrows ensure a bulletproof security layer throughout the trading process. The assets are directly sent to the smart contract address and released only when the seller confirms the payment reception. CryptoLocally doesn’t get full control of any users’ funds.
Q4. For a project development first of all main priority is having enough fund. Does your team financially capable to run this project? Do you have enough fund for it’s developement Can you tell us that how your project generate the profit?
Ans — We have a sustainable business already, we are charging a small fee per successful trade processed on the platform (0.99%). This part of the product has been growing exponentially since the start. This being said, we have a couple interesting features around our fees structures;
First, you can get a silver or gold status by staking GIV on CryptoLocally, having a silver or gold status will give you up to -50% commission fee when you complete a trade on the platform, you will also earn more GIV when you complete a trade and through our referral system.
We also have a referral program, with which you can earn 10% of CryptoLocally’s fee for every successful trade your referrals make, and earn 20% of CryptoLocally’s fee if the seller and buyer of a successful trade have signed up with your referral code.
Q5. The DEFI space is very young and is changing rapidly. My question is, how flexible is CryptoLocally’s design and tools to adapt to changes in the DEFI crypto space?
Ans — CryptoLocally was designed to be blockchain agnostic since day one and we will continue to work in that direction to give the best experience to our users.
While $GIV is BEP-2 token, our product doesn’t rely entirely on Binance Chain, our smart contracts are deployed across multiple chains like ERC-20, TRC20 and EOS.IO.
We are also working on cross-chain and cross-asset communication to facilitate access to DeFi solutions by removing trading and swapping hurdles we witness today. Regarding $GIV in particular, it is currently on BEP-2 (Binance Chain) but there may be 1:1 swaps to ERC-20 in the future.
Questions Asked by our BlockTalks Community Members during live Session for the CryptoLocally team!
Q1. Can smart contracts also settle trade disputes which is common in P2P? Or how will you solve it?
Ans — In case of dispute between the two parties, if the buyer doesn’t pay or the seller doesn’t want to release the escrow each of them can easily open a dispute by clicking on the button “Open dispute”. In this case, the smart contract (Escrow) will be locked automatically and our support team will promptly contact each party to obtain evidence to substantiate the claim. After reviewing each side’s evidence, the support team will release the escrow if the payment has indeed been made. If the payment hasn’t been made, the funds will be returned to the seller.
Q2. What is the future trend of DeFi, in your opinion? What is the biggest flaw DeFi is facing today? And is Your Project looking to solve the problem?
Ans — At CryptoLocally, we absolutely believe that DeFi is a transformational technology. We also believe that it has the potential to disrupt the existing financial system by providing a viable way for the world’s unbanked citizens to gain access to financial services. The problem has been that there isn’t a simple and easy to use solution in decentralized finance, which has been a barrier to mass adoption of DeFi and financial inclusion.
Our new DeFi feature, the Finance Wallet, allows you to earn interest on your cryptocurrency and this feature has been seamlessly integrated with our trading platform. It presents the easiest way to enter the DeFi space and will make mass adoption and financial inclusion possible. In the future, the Finance Wallet will evolve into CryptoLocally Vaults (maximized yield cross-chain through smart contract investment algorithms). We are also building out a way for users to govern and manage the platform by voting with $GIV when we launch GIVernance. You can find more details on what we are planning to do here: https://cryptolocally.com/en/blog/giv-whitepaper
Q3. Are you a global project or local project? Can anybody anywhere use Your project without any restrictions?
Ans — CryptoLocally is global. Anybody from around the world can trade cryptos in their local fiat currency and start earning interest through the Finance Wallet. When you browse trade offers on CryptoLocally, you will see offers from all the countries you can think of. In this way, we make crypto and DeFi accessible to everyone globally.
In other words we are aiming to be a global P2P marketplace by adapting to local needs, users can meet in person, send a bank transfer, or use KakaoPay, AliPay, WeChat Pay, Venmo and many more.
Q4. Is Cryptolocally support Local cash deals? Since all is on smart contract how would cash deals work on Cryptolocally?
Ans — Yes, local cash deals are already supported by CryptoLocally, here’s the process:
- Buyer/seller opens a trade on an offer that has “Local Cash” as a payment method.
- They decide where to meet and then click agree on terms.
- Seller funds the escrow.
- Buyer pays the seller in cash, in-person.
- Seller releases the escrow.
Q5. CryptoLocally has a very interesting wallet (Finance Wallet) but, do you have a recovery system in case I forget my password? Is there any way to recover my wallet or my assets from being deleted?
Ans — If you lose your password, we can’t recover it for you.
The reason for this extreme measure is that you should be the only person with access to this unique password / private key. Not even us at CryptoLocally will have access to it. If someone else has the key, they will be able to steal your cryptocurrency. Your keys, your crypto 🙂
Here are some important links of CryptoLocally👇
Website: https://cryptolocally.com/
Telegram Chat: https://t.me/cryptolocally
Telegram: https://t.me/givannouncements
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cryptolocally
