The Making Cents team had the honor of hosting Luke Kim, CEO of Vite Labs on Discord yesterday. This is the first AMA attended by Luke since he returned to Vite Labs as CEO. Luke is clearly not a stranger to the Vite community, having held the role of CMO from Sep 2018 to Dec 2019 and pioneered a lot of the ground-breaking innovation during the time such as working with the Mayor’s Office of Syracuse to pilot municipal utility tokens and smart contract microbonds.

For those who missed the live AMA, the following article recaps the highlights and key topics discussed, which have been edited for brevity. The full AMA exchange is available in the #ama-with-luke channel on Making Cents’ Discord server.

On FTX and Increased Regulations

When the AMA with Luke was first announced on 8 Nov, no one could have anticipated the massive upheaval in the crypto markets brought about by the FTX crisis. As expected, the AMA started off with a discussion on the events that transpired in the past few days. Luke expects increased regulatory scrutiny following FTX’s demise, with “code is law” becoming increasingly compatible with written laws. While regulations have often lagged behind technology innovation and can be counteractive to private sector progress, Luke believes that they are necessary to safeguard the interests of community members and encourage businesses to be built more responsibly in Web3. He also shared an article with insights from the FTX implosion.

On Leadership and Organizational Changes

With Luke assuming the role of CEO of Vite Labs, Charles Liu (former CEO of Vite Labs) Richard Yan (former COO of Vite Labs) have both stepped into roles as advisors and are still very involved with the development of Vite and the greater ecosystem. Since becoming CEO, Luke has been occupied with strategizing with his new team, optimizing operations and public communications.

He shared that similar to other deeply technical projects, Vite relied on its founders and startup crew in the initial phases of development. However, as the community grows over time, there is also a greater readiness and shift towards decentralization. The recent changes is aimed at achieving that and also bringing in new energy to the ecosystem. To that end, Vite Labs is encouraging more ecosystem projects to be built and for more to contribute as Snapshot Block Producers (SBP).

On Future Plans and Vision for Vite

When asked where he sees Vite in 2 years, Luke’s reply was plain and simple — “who knows where Web3 will be in two years?”. Rather than focusing on an uncertain future, Luke and his team intend to bring on as many projects as possible, to build on Vite and to trade on ViteX. They want to focus on engaging developers, to build a vibrant and fun community with a shared purpose and sense of belonging. He highlighted several ways to achieve this, such as the Vuilder Launchpad program and the SBP Sponsorship Program for DAO builders, which Making Cents was recently a recipient of.

On Partnerships and Increasing Adoption for Vite/ViteX

When asked about partnerships with other crypto projects to increase awareness for the Vite blockchain, Luke believes that as a zero-gas Layer-1, Vite offers many opportunities for web3 teams to collaborate. As a member of RaidGuild, a DAO and developer agency, he is also actively involved with developer communities around the world and has access to the best technical options and learning resources possible.

He reiterated several real world use cases of Vite, citing examples of being an L1 and the ViteX DEX.

• Firstly, Vite can be used anywhere Ethereum is useful, but it’s faster. DeFi use cases such as borrowing/lending, payment rails, NFTs, Web3 gaming would be relevant for Vite.
• Secondly, ViteX, the flagship product and DEX of Vite, needs to increase the number of gateways and listings. It will also need to improve its order-book depths. Additionally, user-friendly trading tools could also be added to allow users to deploy easy trading strategies.
• There is a detailed description of Vite’s innovation and advantages in the Vite FAQ for anyone who wishes to read up more.

Luke also highlighted that Vite Labs is also always on the lookout for use cases closer to traditional industries and Web2 to increase mainstream adoption. An example was the partnership with Evvio, an e-commerce fintech company, to enable efficient and feeless payments for merchants and customers, ultimately making commerce on the internet more inclusive and cross-border.

Public finance blockchain is also something close to heart for Luke. Having piloted the first-ever city token economy (consisting of municipal utility tokens and smart contract micro-bonds) with the Mayor’s Office of Syracuse and working on proposals with the Macroeconomics Department of the West Africa Monetary Zone in Nigeria. Besides partnering with government organizations on adoption of blockchain use cases and crypto-assets, Luke also believes in healthy regulations to safeguard people in a rapidly changing world. He is interested in engaging policy professionals, legislators, researchers, and academics to achieve these.

Regarding the common question of when and where $VX would be listing next, Luke commented that the BEP-20 version of $VX is already available for trading on PancakeSwap. Any future listing of $VX will depend on the market conditions.

On Community and the Vite Ecosystem

During the AMA, Luke paid tribute to some of the popular community dapps and DAOs such as VITCSwap, Viva, Viterium and Vita Inu, which are building and contributing towards the growth of Vite ecosystem.

In spite of the bearish market conditions, the Vite ecosystem is actively building. Luke pointed to the 20 strong projects and a Vite Discord community size of ~5000 people. In addition, Vuilder DAO is also gaining traction, having fielded over 30 bounties on Gitcoin with a combined value of more than $200,000.

Luke and the Vite Labs team are open to feedback from the community and invite anyone with fresh ideas to engage them via their socials.

• Vite Forum: https://forum.vite.net/
• Discord: https://discord.com/invite/CsVY76q
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/vitelabs

Free Fire Questions and Answers

The following were some additional questions the community posed to Luke during the AMA.

Question: Although vite coin is a one-of-a-kind project, why isn’t it so popular, even though it’s free and very fast?

Luke: Vite is an undervalued project, I agree. With the death of projects that are unsound and projects that are centralized, DeFi will take over Web3 more and more. In line with this market trend, Vite will be creating and delivering solutions that are both secure and useful. That’s how we become more popular for builders and that’s how Vuilders proliferate Vite among mainstream people looking to enter Web3 (as well as crypto-natives).

Question: When will we get dark mode in the vite wallet?

Luke: We have so many priorities but this seems to be a consistent request haha — I’ve personally conferred with the team about this feature and we’ll get on it when we can.

Question: How is it going with the NFT marketplace?

Luke: NFTs have brought onboard so many non-crypto people to Web3. It’s here to stay. We are now exploring multiple approaches to NFTs on Vite. We could do a native or non-native approach, monolithic or separate approach. This is under active discussion.

Concluding Remarks

We thank Luke for taking time to attend the AMA and shedding light on the work that goes on behind the scenes in Vite Labs. It has been a rough week for the crypto market and community as a whole, but what was undoubtedly clear from the AMA is Vite and its community are here to stay and we will never stop building.

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