Thanks a lot for actively participating in the Polinate AMA held on 21st Oct 2021 at the Game of Bitcoins Channel. We really appreciate all your support. This post is a recap of the entire session held with Polinate
We have with us Babar and Azeem
I'm Babar the CEO and Co-Founder of Polinate. I've been in the crypto space since 2017 helping a multitude of projects from concept to market.I have developed an extended network in the emerging technologies space creating vast exposure and links at governmental, corporate and professional levels. Some of these include guiding the FCA on regulations in the crypto space in the UK from 2018-2020, helping the expansion of large exchanges into the European market between 2018-2019 and helping projects turn their ideas into products.
Hello everyone, I'm Azeem. I am a co founder and CCO of Polinate.
I got into the crypto space sort of as a joke back in 2014 when I tried launching Kim Coindashian. It ended up being the earliest precursor to mentions of Social Tokens to date and it definitely got me interested in the space. All I really did at the time was put up a landing page, get a logo made, and make a Twitter account. We got massive traction with the press getting coverage in Newsweek, CryptoCoin News, Daily Dot, The Escapist, and Crikey, among others. Since then I’ve been curious what the intersection of entertainment and crypto would look like.
Prior to all this I spent time in the sports and entertainment industry, mostly being around mostly hip hop people. I was a contributor with the Huffington Post for years and started to build great relationships in the space. Some of the people I interviewed were Mark Cuban, Big Sean, Bun B, Talib Kweli, Jermaine Dupri, TI, DJ Drama, and more.
Then I ran a web/mobile development shop for a year where we did work with Kanye West, Teyana Taylor, Rae Sremmurd, Bryson Tiller, and so on.
Spent some time after running an esports agency that was co-founded by an executive at Roc Nation, which is Jay Z's sports and entertainment company. We were our own separate entity but got to partner with them.
Then for a year before this I spent time as the head of growth and partnerships at a mobile game company called Aglet, which is like Pokemon Go for sneakerheads. Been quite a journey to get to being here today.
The idea of Polinate was conceived in a discussion with Terra Virtua whilst we were discussing the discovery of creativity and we realised that everyone is so busy in the efforts of pushing out NFTs that there was no real solution in helping creativity thrive. There are multitudes of creatives out there with untapped potential just because they don't have the social or financial capital shouldn't be a barrier for anyone not to get a chance. However, we didn't want to cap Polinate at only discovery of creativity and Azeem being from the entertainment and creative industry introduced the topic of the difficulties of people in the entertainment space and having rights to their IP, masters and so on and that's when the concept of Polinate came together as a whole and became what it is today.
Q1. What are the ways for #PoliNation to generate revenue in the long run? What is the progress of business development and what are some of #PoliNation commercial partnerships?
Polinate has a multitude of ways to generate revenue through the platform, primarily through the creators. We have discussed the model with a multitude of industry professionals and creatives to ensure fair value.
In terms of business development progress:
- We have already completed the first every raise on Polinate for a creator called Jake James (Rapper)
- We already have 4 creators ready to raise on Polinate with a host more that have applied who we're contacted shortly to get them onboarded. You can keep up to date with upcoming projects on app.polinate.io or by visiting our website www.polinate.io and launching the app.
- The website for non crypto natives will be live in the coming weeks as well and the distribution of the NFTs for those who have been locking tokens in the Social Hive is in the works 🐝🍯
Regarding partnerships we already have:
Polygon
- on which the Polinate ecosystem runs from the dApp to staking
Terra Virtua
- Polinate's first marketplace partner to bring a smoother experience to creators who have raised funds and now wish to move to a market place (Polinate is agnostic to all blockchains and NFT Market Places)
Alliance Block
- We're currently running an LP mining programme on Quickswap using Alliance Block and I believe the current APY is around 900% (polinate.defiterm.io)
DAFI Protocol
- We will be whitelabeling DAFI's Super Staking to allow more methods of staking within Polinate.
Polkalokr
- Polinate will be using Polkalokr's smart contracts for distribution of tokens as per our tokenomics but also to provide transparency to our community, as well as having something interesting lined up for INOs (Initial NFT Offerings)
ArtWallet
- ArtWallet is like a MetaMask for NFTs and we'll be working with ArtWallet to ensure the journey of our creators and users is more seamless.
Outside of this we're in discussions with other partners who I hope to get tied up and finalised before the end of Q4
Q2. Can you list 1-3 killer features of Your Project that makes it ahead of its competitors? What is the competitive advantage your platform has that you feel most confident about?
Listing only 1-3 killer features for this project is a bit too easy. I’d love to tell you a bit more about those but in the future, the community should come to us with something a bit tougher ;)
First off, go look at other projects in this space and look through their list of advisors or people on their teams. No one will have anything close to the industry experience required to take part in making this project succeed. People who run record labels to others that are the VP of Entertainment at Fox are not easy people to come by, nor are they people typically even allowed to be part of these kinds of projects simply because their jobs don’t allow it. Well, our list of advisors is stacked to the wall because of the team’s experience and relationships.
Then is the technology itself. We’ve got world class builders on board with people like David Atkinson. The team we have behind us building out the product couldn’t really be better. While the product itself may seem simple it’s miles ahead of other people in the space using things like our balancer for transactions. While it’s very much so a Kickstarter like product, the supply and demand of creator tokens are quite like a DEX for each creative project, which is a brilliant approach if you think about it.
Last not but least, the people on our team are experienced builders and we’ve got a product out there. So many companies have coins that launch only to start building the product after. We’re in a position where we’ve done our first raise already, successfully so at that, with multiple more to go. We came out at launch ready to let a product out into the wild. That’s a killer feature if there ever was one.
Q3. Fundraising platforms in general and creative project platforms in particular are nothing new. Polinate does not share the same market with other well-known platforms, but is establishing its own community. What do you think is the market against whom Polinate competes?
Oh I'll take this one...
You’re correct. The idea of fundraising and crowdfunding are nothing new at all. And it’s even been done successfully by people like Kickstarter and Patreon as well from the Web2 space. We don’t share the same market as any of them though.
The reason I say that we don’t share the same market is because we’re very web3 focused. People interested in using blockchain and furthering blockchain products are a very specific audience that isn’t the same as the ones using platforms like Kickstarter.
Other than that, we’re opening the market to billions of people around the globe with the unbanked and underbanked in places like South America, Africa, Southeast Asia, and more. This gives access to global financing for billions of more people around the globe to take part in using the Internet the way that it was envisioned to be.
If I had to give an answer to on who we’re competing with at this time it’s ourselves. There’s simply so much for us to do and so much we want to accomplish, both of which we know we can do, that it’s just really important for us to prioritize the right way in going about it all.
Q4. Could you provide us a high-level overview of your road map? Which events do you want to emphasise as being particularly significant for the community's growth?
Love it when we're asked about roadmap because we've already gone beyond what was to be delivered! We launched at the end of August and already have our dApp and staking platform live with so much more to come!
Q3 - Platform V1 Launch - Done ✅
- Membership is live
- Liquidity Mining live
- V1 of Token as an Event platform launch
- Ability to distribute product to multiple addresses
- Ability to seed events
Q4 - Token as an Event V2 - working on
- Introduce multiple sales types
- Whitelist integration
- Campaign reputations score integration
- KYC/ID intergation
- Token as an Event V2
Q1 2022
- On Chain distribution
- On-Chain dispute resolution
- Curatable campaigns platform
- Anybody can create, platform curates
Q5. Do your project support staking program? If yes, how does your stake system work, can you tell me what is the requirement for user if they want to stake in your platform?
Our Social Hive is currently live : https://socialhive.polinate.io/ or you can visit www.polinate.io and launch the social hive
The staking here is different to anything else on the market that we've seen, there is no APY as such rather users who stake will get access to benefits such as NFT drops, ticket drops, access to raises and lots more.
Depending on the amount of tokens you stake depends on the level of access to rewards, the platform, the raises and even discord you get!
You can read more about the social hive here: https://medium.com/polinate-hive/polinate-introduce-social-hive-club-1f02f14a9497
Q6. Security is the most important thing to consider want starting up a project, how secured is this project for users and investors?
We had Hacken audit what we're doing multiple times https://medium.com/polinate-hive/launch-of-the-polinate-dapp-8a45b55fa546 you should take a look.
Security is a hugely important thing to us.
Q7. Hi Babar & Azeem, you are competing with the traditional crowdfunding platforms. They must be following Polinate, because you embody the future of crowdfunding platforms. Do you see any possibilities of collaborating with one of these traditional platforms? 🇾🇪 Cheers from Holland
Hey Eveline,
Yes absolutely, we are looking at ways in which to do hybrid raises alongside traditional crowdfunding platforms!
Q8. Collaborations and partnerships are some of the most important cornerstones to help improve adoption. Can you tell us about your current partners, plans for partnerships and what everybody stands to gain from these partnerships?
Our current partners are:
Polygon, Terra Virtua, Alliance Block, DAFI, Polkalokr and ArtWallet with discussions ongoing with others.
We want to make sure our partnerships are of actual benefit to our users and not just marketing hype. We're aiming to have a whole host of partnerships added by the end of Q4, make sure to keep an eye on Polinate as we've got some absolutely HUGE names we're in discussions with at the moment.
Q9. How important is the community to you? and how can we collaborate or help you for the development of the project?
Our community is at the centre of everything we do! If you go in to our community and ask them what we've done they'll respond with 'everything they've asked'.
We try our best to make sure the community gets whatever they ask for as long as it's within our remit to do so!
Q10. Did you consider community feedback/requests during the creation of your product in order to expand on fresh ideas for your project? Many projects fail because the target audience and clients are not understood. So I'd like to know who your ideal consumer is for your product?
Absolutely we do. If you go into our Telegram, which you should ALL join, the team is extremely active in the group. We talk to everyone, we are very public facing and you can find us, we take into account what people are telling us, and utilize that feedback.
Community is massively important overall
Q11. Is your platform suitable for crypto beginners? Or does it only limited for professional users ?
We've created a website that will make the platform more accessible to crypto beginners as well. Should be live very soon!
Haha see, Babar and I both separately both noticed the mentions of community simply because it's drilled into us how important it is.
Q12. How do you make sure the projects that will crowdfund on your platform are really quality projects. Do you have a special standard for accepting statups that will do crowdfund on your platform?
Art is a subjective thing and what one finds great quality another may not find it of any quality. Therefore, our main aim when looking at creators fundraising on the platform is to try and make sure they are genuine creators who will provide the rewards they set out to provide.
Q13. Many investors hit and run in the sell and sell session after listing on the first exchange, How did your project prevent early investors from selling their tokens and what benefits you would give them?
Our investors are mainly from the creative background or have some sort of relationship with the creative industry. They're big believers in what we're doing and are helping us all the way!
Q14. How can I buy this tokens? Is it available on any exchange?
We're trading on Quickswap, Uniswap and Gate
Going back to community we listed on Gate because one of the members asked for a CEX and then set up a vote for which exchange they'd like to see and we followed through on it!
Q15. Most projects have to go through certain difficulties and challenges, what difficulties do you face and how do you overcome them
I'd say the difficulties that we'll face will be consumer adoption of a crypto product when it's still something that is very niche to many people.
That said, it's why we've taken steps to make sure that we have a crypto portal for those more native to crypto, and then one for people who are not as well versed as well.
We want to make sure that the user experience is treated as a top priority because without the users, we can't do what we're looking to.
Q16. What's your plan after presale for the growth of project
We've got some big announcements coming in terms of partnerships, NFT drops to POLI holders and creators raising on the platform. You don't want to miss this
Q17. One of the most important parts of a project's success is community support. Programs that interface with users are present in almost all projects. Is there anything specific #PoliNation planning to recruit and extend the community, as well as improve the user experience?What are the ways for #PoliNation to generate revenue in the long run? What is the progress of business development and what are some of #PoliNation commercial partnerships?
Well we already have a community BETA team who helps test our products before we launch and we'll be starting an ambassador program soon as well.
We want our community to be engaged as much as possible as this is a platform created for them so we'll be implementing lots of different ways for the community to be involved!
Q18. Can you give an overview of your Tokenomics, and the utility of Token?
Check it out here: https://medium.com/polinate-hive/polinate-tokenomics-63b683031851
