On 11th of June 2020 Ferrum Network conducted an AMA in Crypto Revolution Telegram group. Our guest was IAN FRIEND, the COO of Ferrum Network. We have about 100 questions posted on Twitter and more than 250 questions from our Community during the Live AMA. Interest about Ferrum was really huge! Let’s take view of the most interesting parts from our conversation with IAN Friend.
INTRODUCTION
Danny | Crypto Revolution: Ok guys Let’s welcome the COO of Ferrum Network IAN FRIEND
Ian Friend | COO Ferrum Network: Hello everyone! Happy to be here
Danny | Crypto Revolution: IAN Could you please tell us more about yourself. How did you get into Crypto and Ferrum Network?
Ian Friend | COO Ferrum Network: Yes absolutely. Nice to meet everyone. Im Ian, the co founder and COO of Ferrum Network. Prior to founding Ferrum I was working as a lawyer in NYC where I co-founded the blockchain practice team at my firm. I met Naiem (other Ferrum founder) at an event in New York and we hit it off. A few months later Ferrum won a competition to pitch the project at the main stage of Consensus 2018 NYC (probably the biggest crypto conference in the world) and from there things really took off.
The mission of Ferrum Network is to empower individuals with blockchain technology. Despite crypto being over 10 years old, there has not been much in the way of actual adoption, mostly just speculation. This is largely because the tools are still too technically complicated and the perceived risks are too high. We are solving those fundamental challenges with user facing products like UniFyre Wallet and our African exchange/payments app First Kudi, as well as our DAG based interoperability network that can connect to any blockchain and enable the near instant transaction of any digital asset. By making this technology easier, faster and more scalable, we can finally help bring crypto into the mainstream.
Danny | Crypto Revolution: What challenges did you face in the beginning when you start?
Ian Friend | COO Ferrum Network: We started Ferrum about 2 years ago, in April of 2018. We were newcomers to the industry and did not have many connections. So everything we have done we needed to prove ourselves along the way. Many things were challenging especially in those times because the bull market was nearly over by the time we were prepared to raise funds. But through hard work, sacrifice and working every day for the past 2 years , and with the help of great team memebrs and community, we have now managed to have launch two successful products, connect with top industry partners, and even make our early investors and supporters happy b/c they also shared in the success. Its been a long journey but we are really just getting started.
Danny | Crypto Revolution: Yeah I can see that. You guys are doing really great and Ferrum is very well Community Driven
QUESTIONS FROM TWITTER
Q1 from Twitter user @namichi143
What are the features that can attract the new user of Unifyre?Why should we choose to use Unifyre instead of well-know wallet like Trust wallet?
Ian Friend | COO Ferrum Network: Great question. With UniFyre Wallet we wanted to build something completely unique and useful. There are so many wallets out there but they all mostly do the same things. We needed to be diffferent. And from that mindset came three major innovations: 1) Link Drop technology (sending crypto anywhere to anyone using a link) 2) Community rewards for holding FRM and listing projects; and 3) a P2P trading platform for altcoins/fiat, powered by our smart contract (coming soon to UniFyre)
Link Drops are the main feature now that people are excited about becaues they are extremely fun and also solve HUGE problems that have been plaguing the industry for 10+ years. Has anyone ever been afraid of sending crypto to the wrong person?? I know I have actually done that and it sucks losing your money because of this mistake.
Link Drops solves this problem because both sides confirm the transaction before its sent onchain, and there is a note box to make sure its the right person, so there is now no risk of sending money to the wrong person.
Also a huge problems with sending crypto is that before UnIFyre Wallet, you could only send money to someone if they already had a wallet address. This means we were not spreading adoption outside of our little echo chamber.
BUt with Link Drops you can send crypto to anyone using a link, over telegram, facebook, whats app, SMS, etc. You can even send crypto to your grandma in an email! They click the link and get the money and a new crypto wallet in 4 quick steps.
There is no other wallet on the market with all of these features, and next we are adding a fiat gateway and more innovations like “Pool Drops” (more on that soon)
Danny | Crypto Revolution: Sounds really great. How do you secure the Link Drops. I mean let’s say from hackers
Ian Friend | COO Ferrum Network: So to make Link Drops even more secure, we recommend that the sender and reciever agree on a secret password to include in the note box. So that way, even if the LD was somehow intercepted (has not happened btw), the hacker would not know the secret password and the sender would just cancel upon seeing the wrong note.
Danny | Crypto Revolution: Chat follow this advice when you use the Wallet!
Q2 from Twitter user @toanphamhd83
Dapps and DeFi are absolutely 2 hotshow in the crypto space. What roles do Ferrum play in DeFi and making blockchain solutions highly adaptable at global?
Ian Friend | COO Ferrum Network: Yes so DeFI is definitely a hot buzz word right now, but for Ferrum, we have been focused on the financial applications of crypto and blockchain since day 1. For example, our African fiat gateway and payments app uses innovative technology to allow users to send money to eachother over whats app. https://firstkudi.com/
UniFyre Wallet is adding all sorts of DeFi features, like our P2P trading platform that allows users to buy and sell alt coins directly for local fiat. Its similar to Local Bitcoins but for ERC-20 tokens and instead of escrow, the transactions are secured by smart contract. This platform has the potential to change hte industry because no longer will you need to go thru an expensive centralized exchange and altcoin exchange to buy alt coins for fiat. Just buy it peer to peer over UniFyre and sellers can even earn fees from it! So i guess you could say our DeFi approach is to bring crypto back to its roots and empower the individual with our technology.
Q3 from Twitter user @Animos24
After the recent hacks on Vechain, IOTA, and Steem, How do you provide a better and good security to the project? And how can Ferrum Protocol protect its users from hackers?
Ian Friend | COO Ferrum Network: Our motto when it comes to security is “be paranoid about security”. This mindset permeates everything we do and all our products. For instance, we built our token bridge from the ground up because we needed it to be ultra secure. We tested UniFyre Wallet for nearly 6 weeks working out all sorts of small bugs and making it ultra secure. We added features like multi layer security to the app that allows you 3 different layers to back up your private keys. And of course we are availble 24/7 for user support in case anythign comes up. Security is an issue for all tech companies, but it certainly helps that Ferrum’s founder and lead dev has a phd in distributed systems and had a 10+ year career building secure technology for the biggest tech companies like Amazon Microsoft and Bloomberg. its not something we take lightly.
Danny | Crypto Revolution: Especially for the UniFyre as one of the Beta Testers I really can confirm that. You guys did a great work.
Q4 from Twitter user @Ritchdan
When the p2p trading platform will be released and we can use fiat to buy alts? Will there be a way to purchase the fiat with credit/debit cards or do we need to transfer our own?
Ian Friend | COO Ferrum Network: So we are currently testing the version 1 fiat gateway in UniFyre Wallet. This will enable you to buy crypto with your debit card (and later ACH), and also sell it for fiat (once that is enabled). Our beta testers are literally buying ETH right now using UniFyre Wallet, so the launch of the v1 fiat gateway is quite soon.
In terms of the P2P trading platform that is still a few months away. Its a lot of work because we needed to build a smart contract to ensure both sides perform their end of the transaction, and the front end platform that connects buyers and sellers and also provides a rating system, among other things.
But that feature has the ability to take Ferrum to incredible heights. A P2P altcoin/fiat trading platform powered by ethereum smart contract. Its never been done. And it will add so much value to millions of people around the world who are sick of going thru Coinbase and then to another exchange just to buy an alt.
Danny | Crypto Revolution: Well, I am sure great times are ahead of us with Ferrum and UniFyre.
Q5 from Twitter user @Waxxiii1
What are your strategies in building a big and strong community? Do you agree that the power of the community will lead your project to grow globally? What are the services you offer to the community?
Ian Friend | COO Ferrum Network: Community is everything to Ferrum. We have been fostering it since we started Ferrum in 2018 and still many of those early supporters are still with us! We do so much with the community, from initiatives like Social Mining, to our Ferrum Soldiers group, to our Link Drop campaign. But at the end of the day it comes down to customer service and relationships. The team knows and has relationships with hundreds of supporters. We are like a family. In fact I probably spend more time interacting with them than my own family! Its that mindset that really sets us apart from many projects who pay lip service to community, but dont put in the hours to foster it.
TELEGRAM LIVE QUESTIONS
Telegram User:
I was reading a little review about Ferrum, and I see that there is Unifyre and Subzero wallet, what is the difference between one and the other? Are they for different types of clients? What are the potentialities and particularities of Africa that allow the Ferrum Network to not only grow but also to change lives?
Ian Friend | COO Ferrum Network: Thank you for doing some research on Ferrum. Thats important before making any decisions about us. To answer your question, UniFyre is a “hot” wallet meaning its connected to the internet and is meant for everyday transactions and use. It has unique features like Link Drop techonlogy, fiat gateway, and communtiy rewards for FRM holders. Sub Zero is a cold storage app which is an offline “cold” wallet. But ours is very unique because its actually an app that you install on an old android phone and then remove the SIM card taking it completely offline. This makes it the most secure and easy to use cold storage device out there (far easier than a thumbdrive based cold storage app). But its also far cheaper and more accessible, which is key because a large part of our market is emerging marketst where people cannot afford a $150 cold storage device. So we are trying to bring cold storage to the masses with this app. It will be out sometime next year.
Telegram User:
Can you tell us what benefits UniFyre has for FRM Holders and how this affects the value of FRM?
Ian Friend | COO Ferrum Network: UniFyre is unique in that we are probably the only wallet in the crypto space that shares the listing fees with our community. Specifically, projects pay to list on UniFyre in their native tokens. We then Link Drop those tokens to anyone who is holding 100,000+ FRM in their wallet. Last week we Link Dropped $33 in VRA and LINK to our holders. Tomorrow we will Link Drop ANKR to our holders. And next week it might be another project…so its a nice benefit to our holders and creates great cross marketing opportunities like this: https://medium.com/@ankr.network/abca1c036609
Telegram User:
I am a fan of FRM, so I really worry about some issues in recent AMA, you said FRM doesn’t have enough budget for marketing and listing on more exchanges, so how did this problem solve? And if FRM doesn’t enough money to rent good engineers how will FRM’s products catch up others?
Ian Friend | COO Ferrum Network: No one ever said Ferrum does not have enough money for marketing…look around twitter, telegram, youtube, reddit, medium, 4chan, etc…does it look like we dont do marketing?? We are probably one of the more active proejcts when it comes to marketing. I think I did 3 AMAs this week….what I may have said is that Ferrum will not spend excessive amounts of investors money (which was given to us to build and scale the products on our roadmap) and hand it over to some greedy exchange that charge $200k-$500k for a listing. Doing so might satisfy short term speculators, but its not how you sustain a project that intends on being here for the next 5–10–20 years. That said, we are still working to get on bigger exchanges, but we are looking to leverage our strenghts like our community, products, and user base to do it. We are always working on such things quietly in the background.
Telegram User:
Do you have any plans to attract non-crypto investors to FRM because it is the success of a project to get more investors who are still not in the crypto world? What are the plans to increase awareness around FRM in non-crypto space?
Ian Friend | COO Ferrum Network: Attracting non-crypto people to crypto is one of our core missions. Its why we built the first and only technology that allows you to send crypto to someone who does not already have a wallet (Link Drops). Its why we are building a platform that allows you to buy alts with fiat currency peer to peer, like a decentralized crypto ebay. Its why we have a private key back up option that utilizes Google Cloud for those who are confused or scared by writing down a 24 word seed phrase. Its why our products are extremely easy to use and accounts can be set up in a few seconds. Everything we do is ultimately designed to move the industry forward and attract new users and investors. but we cant do it alone, we need your help! WE encourage evreyone to take some of the FRM they win today and send it to someone in a Link Drop. Show them how easy it is to send money around using this technology. Thats how we achieve main stream adoption, winning hearts and minds 1 person at a time.
Telegram User:
Firstly Thank you for taking the time to do this AMA & glad to join… I really appreciate it and thanks to the team and congratz all for the project and the efforts made until here on this project. I believe a lot in this project.Then my questions here:
Q1.Explain staking on Ferrum and how can one benefit from it and how to start?
Q2.Can anyone build on-top or on Ferrum Network’s mainnet?
Q3.Can you explain the current focus of the Ferurm network team, in a broad-sense and in a business sense?
Ian Friend | COO Ferrum Network: Thank you for your support Sachin! I encourage everyone here to join our community and download UniFyre for themselves. Ill quickly answer your questions. 1. FRM Staking is unique and beneficial because its is highly flexible and rewarding. Our staking tech enables multiple staking configurations (long staking, medium staking, short staking etc) all with different structures. plus we dont limit it to large holders. Anyone with 5,000 FRM can stake. We will open up another round in UniFyre Wallet in the nearish future. 2. Yes anyone will be able to build on top of Ferrum Network but we are not relying on that. We are building useful products ourselves and then migrating them (and therefore the users) onto the main net. So that way our main net is guaranteed to have utility. 3. The current focus of the team is building kick ass products that solve real problems, acquiring users thru innovative marketing campaigns, and onboarding new partners and listed projects so we can grow the ecosystem. VRA, LINK and ANKR are just the start. We will open up the next community listing voting next week — so you will all have a say in who we list next!
CONCLUSION
Danny | Crypto Revolution: Thank you for your time IAN. It was really awesome to have you today with us. Would you like to address something to the Community before I open the chat?
Ian Friend | COO Ferrum Network: No other than to say if you have more questions or interest in Ferrum Network, please join our community and try out UniFyre Wallet! And stay tuned for all upcoming developments. Ferrum is still an early stage project so its never too late to get onboard with us!
https://t.me/ferrum_network ; https://twitter.com/FerrumNetwork
For more information and future AMAs, join our Social Media channels:
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Our Partner:
Ferrum Network Official Telegram group: https://t.me/ferrum_network
Ferrum Network Twitter: https://twitter.com/FerrumNetwork
Ferrum Network Telegram Soldier Group: https://t.me/ferrumsoldiers
UniFyre Wallet Official Telegram group: https://t.me/unifyrewallet
UniFyre Wallet Twitter: https://twitter.com/UnifyreWallet
