On the 22nd July 2021, the GIFT co-founders Dan and Hugh hosted a live voice-chat AMA in the GIFT Telegram group. Questions were submitted by community members in advance, and the AMA covered a range of topics including the future of GIFT, the newly-developed ecosystem, and the marketing plans for the rest of the year.
The three best questions, winning 5000 GIFT tokens each, were submitted by the following community members:
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Read the full recap of the AMA here:
Hugh
Question 1: We will be able to send not only gift, but also Ethereum, Bitcoin and some other cryptos through the platform. How will that work?
Dan
Initially, we were just going to have the ability to send Ethereum, Bitcoin, etc. through the current gifting protocol in the same manner, which is by email and where it gets transferred from your wallet over to the gift mechanism. We’ve actually now improved upon that, so we’re also gonna have another product which will allow you to share crypto via custom links. Based on our research, this is going to be a far more effective way of utilizing the protocol.
Hugh
So on a step by step basis: somebody comes to the GIFT platform, and how do they send their friend Bitcoin? Do they have to hold Bitcoin or what do they pay for that Bitcoin with?
Dan
They have two options: 1, send through the current protocol by email where they need to hold Bitcoin, approve it, and send it through. The second option instead will be the custom links. And in this case, people will pay in BNB, and they’ll be able to select which cryptocurrency they want to give their friends.
Then it’s just a simple payment in BNB through MetaMask, and then everything goes on behind the scenes. So the Bitcoin or Ethereum is market-bought and then funnelled into the gifting protocol for your friends. This is all done to simplify the experience for the user.
Hugh
Yeah, I really like that, actually. And I think a lot of people are going to like it too, because it’s a lot easier for me as somebody who doesn’t necessarily hold a lot of these coins. Or maybe if I do hold them, I don’t want to be sending my coins away to a friend.
If I can just come to the platform and send my friend or family member a Doge gift card or DOT gift card or whatever — and I can pay for that in BNB — I think it’s just a much more fluid user experience. So what’s the timeline with that being done? Like, when do we think that that’s going to be live?
Dan
It will be live soon. The actual product itself is actually already functioning code for the smart contract, but it’s the other elements that come into the ecosystem which we’re going to expand a lot further on here, which are going to take more time to arrive. So the overall time for the full platform ecosystem is around mid-September. That’s the estimation.
I’ve been able to cut that down by selecting a number of smart contracts which are already audited and kind of running a mix and match between those with just some small modifications here and there. But we’ll expand on that in the next question.
Hugh
Nice. So question two is as follows:
2. $GIFT will be used for staking and maybe voting. Any other ideas for $GIFT token usage and will there be any actions that cause $GIFT burning ?
Dan
Okay, so this is the fun one, and it’s really what we’ve been working on. So just to clarify, it’s been a bit of a quiet period, and I’ve got in the sense a lot of people have gone worried that we’ve stopped working on the project, which is absolutely not what’s going on. There’s clearly been a bit of a reduction in communication with everyone else, which is our bad, really.
However, we have been really working on the whole ecosystem. So, $GIFT will be used for staking. We do plan on having numerous votes and snapshots in order to make certain decisions according to the direction of the platform and what we’re going to be doing with it.
Hugh
And we already had one of those votes recently, that was for the tokenomics change. Right?
Dan
Yep. Which will go through once the LP farm is live. So there’ll be staking, they’ll be farming. But I’d like to explain the grand vision, I guess, of what the GIFT ecosystem would allow people to do. So there’ll be the GIFT protocol, which will be, I guess, the product and service that we’re offering to onboard new people.
Then there will basically be a system where every time that someone utilizes the protocol, there is a GIFT buyback mechanism which goes and buys GIFT from the liquidity pool. What then happens is that that GIFT is redistributed within the staking pool.
Dan
A lot of people aren’t great fans of the redistribution of native tokens. However, this isn’t through emissions. This is basically, instead of you staking and getting BNB, you’re staking and then you’re getting more GIFT in relation to how much you stake.
The reason why I opted for this mechanism to redistribute profits is mainly because it allows us to keep the reflect fee on there, whereas other approaches would make it very tricky for the reflect fee to be there. And I would have to develop a new smart contract and then get that audited, which would increase development time a lot.
Dan
This mechanism has that benefit where there’s this smart contract that’s already audited by Certik, etc, and which works great for our use. And more importantly, the other benefit it creates is that by creating continuous buy pressure based on the product use on our platform, we also paint a very nice chart which could then further attract more investors.
There are two benefits to this approach. And for the users who would be worried about the fact that we’re giving native tokens — it’s basically the same as giving BNB, except that there’s the swap occurring and then the GIFT tokens are coming back to you. So the value of your GIFT tokens are going up and your holdings aren’t getting diluted either through this mechanism.
Hugh
Yeah. And this is a kind of a decision that we’ve taken based on discussions with a lot of partner projects and other like projects that are having a lot of success with similar models to this. So it’s not like and essentially risky move or anything. It’s actually working very well for some close partners of ours. And I think this leads us pretty well into question number three, which is:
3. Are there any special benefits or advantages available for long term holders of GIFT? Why should I hold?
Dan
Going back to what we were talking about: as a GIFT holder, you are you directly earn from the actions of the platform. The products that we put up are going to have a profit margin. So basically, 5% of every GIFT sent through will eventually will go and buy back GIFT and then be redistributed. So you’re going to be a shareholder within the platform. And as we add more features to the platform, we want to keep integrating this mechanism of buyback and redistribute the staking pools.
If you take a look at the roadmap, we’ve got other features that we want to add to the platform. Right now, I’m actually thinking also of adding a Dex format. Those are things you have to look forward to. Really, the main revenue generator that we envision are going to be these GIFT products because they’re one of the kind products. Binance is getting into the gift card game. However, it’s fairly different to what we’re offering with regards to being on chain. But I think I’m jumping to another question here.
Hugh
That question is coming up next. So question four here is:
4. How will the team on board users and increase usage of the gifting protocol?
I guess this is where we kind of talk in depth about the transition that we’re going to make from the current email based solution that we have on platform towards the kind of link based solution within which basically you, as a gift user, will purchase whatever crypto you want to send to your friend. And then you’ll get a link, like a unique link that you can then share with that friend. And then all they have to do is click on the link and they’re brought to one landing page, which includes all of the info and the videos about setting up your wallet. Finally at the bottom of that custom page, they’ll be able to redeem their tokens, and it’s just a lot cleaner and easier to use.
Hugh
The email-based solution that we initially devised is like, it’s very clean and it works really well. But I guess like email fundamentally, although it is used for a lot of traditional e gift cards at this point in time, email is a bit of a dinosaur. And particularly because crypto is associated with this kind of new and upcoming tech, we kind of feel that, like this link sharing system is a lot more kind of in tune with the needs and wants of people in the crypto space, particularly younger people. Do you want to talk a bit more about the tech there?
Dan
Yeah! So the tech will allow people to simply get a link directly. And upon clicking that link, we want the new users to have a variety of language selections available to them. So we plan on supporting all of the major languages, English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Indian. So that’ll be the first thing that we offer users, to select your language.
Then there’s going to be both video guide and a Scroll down walkthrough of the steps. Having talked to various people who have used the current protocol and got the video, they were saying it’s not too convenient because they had to keep pausing it, and then they had to go to a different website, etc. So we want to keep it all on the GIFT platform.
As people scroll down and they create a wallet, add their tokens, etc, then it’s also easier as far as copy pasting goes too. Then at the bottom of the page is where they get their pre-filled redeem instructions, and then they connect their wallets and boom, the process is completed. After that, they get redirected to the Academy and the personalized sections based on the token.
Hugh
Nice. Yeah, I think that sums it up pretty well for people. Question five is:
5. Binance launched their own email gift cards a few days ago — what does GIFT have that the Binance gifting system doesn’t have yet or can’t have it all? Have you come up with new ideas after this news?
Dan
Yeah. So my kind of counter question to this is, what does GIFT have to offer that Binance doesn’t? And the thing is that when you gift through Binance, you’re gifting onto the Binance platform (which does have a lot of DeFi features actually that you can utilize), whereas when you gift through GIFT you’re actually getting someone onboarded onto the actual blockchain. You’re showing them what an actual blockchain wallet while it is and what holding crypto in that wallet is. And there’s a lot more applications with regards to utilizing DeFi apps.
Dan
So say you gift someone BNB or ETH. You could then guide them over to a site like Bunny and be like, here you can stake ETH, you can do this, etc. You can bridge over to other blockchains. So you’re introducing people to the actual technology and the actual experience of, you know, using crypto rather than just allowing someone to hold crypto.
There’ll be plenty of people who want to just hold crypto. But for those people too, it’ll actually be a lot simpler for them to redeem that crypto on MetaMask in our opinion, than ending up an account in Binance.
Hugh
I think that’s the main thing that sets us apart from Binance — if you send somebody a Binance crypto gift card at this point, like, they’re going to need a Binance account in order to access that crypto. And that is that entire process, KYC and so on, as we all know, is a bit of a complicated process. And in a lot of different countries like in the US, there are different rules, also in the UK there are different rules with Binance right now. And we just feel that we’re like a completely DeFi gift sending system with totally unique products as well, because when you get sent a Binance gift card, it doesn’t come with any of the instructions about how to make a MetaMask and so on.
Binance does have an Academy, but the Binance platform (I think a lot of people would agree with me here) is amazing for people who are into crypto, but for a new person, it can be a bit daunting and confusing. So we’re not necessarily trying to compete with Binance directly here. They just simply offer a different product, which is Binance to Binance, peer to peer gift card sending, which we don’t do. We’re like the gift card onboarding platform, I would say. So question six is:
6. How will you handle your platform if something unexpected happens in the future, such as a hack that leaves your platform with your users personal info, is your platform prepared for circumstances like this?
I guess this is just a general question about security and emails and wallet addresses and all of these things. So, Dan, you and the team have worked a lot on this pre-launch. So do you want to just jump in on this?
Dan
So this is actually a very important element because I’ve seen so many great projects get destroyed by hacks recently. So with regards to the personal information, I’m just going to zone in on this bit first. Clearly we had to make sure we were GDPR compliant which we are based on what we’re doing. However, when using the gifting protocol by email, that information is still getting stored by email, which is why we are going through a process of incorporating in order to protect that data legally. However, the benefits of the link system that we developed is that it actually becomes a completely DeFi protocol, in the sense that your information is not getting stored and you’re the only one with the redeem code and a link to redeem your gift.
The other thing that some people may worry about is “Oh, what if we lose a link?” We’ve also taken a look and solve that issue. You’re going to have the ability to withdraw your gift directly from the wallet which you send with, which is something you can already do with the current protocol.
However, we haven’t yet added the UI functionality on platform for that, which is what we’re in the process of doing. So regardless of what happens to the link, etc, you’re always going to have a direct way to retrieve the funds that you gift through the platform.
Clearly with regards to the fees that you spend, you’re not going to be able to get those back. However, the fees are far smaller than the gift itself. That’s what we’re doing there. And that system, the Escrow smart contract/the GIFTing protocol is secure. We’ve had it audited and it’s actually a fairly simple smart contract compared to most, which is why it’s fairly simple to keep it secure.
One weak point we could have is is our server. However, we’re using Amazon Web Services and realistically based on how the system is set up, even if someone hacked those servers which are Amazons servers, there’d be far more valuable stuff for them to get from AWS. And even if they hacked us, chances are that they may be able to steal one or 2 people’s gifts and then that would be it because the information isn’t stored there.
I won’t go into too much depth, but we’ve been very thorough regarding the security of this system and with regards to the smart contracts that we’re using for staking farming, etc. They’re either forks of Certik audited, Peckshield audited contracts or they’re very simple smart contracts. For example, the smart contract I’m appending to the gifting protocol for the market buying stuff. It’s incredibly simple so that’s not actually going to get audited. However, any smart contract which is going to have TVL is going to be properly audited, and I’ll delve more into what that ecosystem in the next question.
Hugh
I guess one thing that I wanted to raise that you hadn’t mentioned yet was, like, in terms of the security of the funds, when they actually get sent, like, they are stored in kind of intermediary vaults that are, like, basically not really hackable in any way. Right. Because you said it would take years to hack one vault, wouldn’t it?
Dan
Yeah. Basically, it would take it would take a very long time for someone to brute force and try and hack a specific gift fault. We estimate between six months to three years, and they would only be hacking that specific vault. For the email gifting protocol, the information is going to be stored. However, for the link gifting protocol, there is going to be no information stored. You simply receive the link and then it’s your responsibility. Really. It’s full DeFi. We allow you, with your specific wallet, to always be able to retrieve your funds.
So that’s our security, it’s a very secure system. Our back-end developer is actually specializing in cybersecurity, and we’re very confident about that. And any contracts which have TVL then are going to be thoroughly audited.
Hugh
Yeah, this is where the audits are really important! We’ve always worked with audits from legitimate auditing firms, and we always would recommend anybody, you know, whether you’re new to crypto, whether you’re a veteran, always look for audits because they’re just the best way to ensure security in any of these projects. Okay. So I’m going to jump in with the next question, which is a bit more of a general one. Question 7:
7. Could you expand further on the importance of the GIFT ecosystem and what you are up to in improving it?
I feel like this has been covered a little bit by what we were discussing earlier about the outline the ecosystem. But yeah, do you want to go over it again then maybe just briefly, from more of a macro perspective. Because the GIFT coin is going to go a lot further than just as it exists right now, where it can be bought and sent in an email gift card.
Dan
Yeah, so the GIFT coin price is going to be linked to the success and use of the platform. So we had to take a look at how our product line works and how we could build the ecosystem around it in order to incentivize customers, GIFT holders, shareholders of the platform, GIFT recipients, as well as marketers.
Clearly, a big element is having a really good product, which we believe that the links are going to be. They’re going to be way faster to use, way easier to share, and the onboarding experience on the recipient’s end is going to be way better.
How else are we going to incentivize people to utilize the platform and send gifts? We’re going to have a rebate token, which I’ve touched on upon previously. This rebate token — one name that we’re currently thinking of for this is BOX — but the name is pretty much arbitrary at this point. The main thing to note is that depending on how many gifts you send, you’re going to get different amounts of this rebate token, and both you and the recipient are going to receive this token.
Later on, part of the current tax (which right now is the retailer rewards tax) is gonna be geared into another smart contract that’s gonna act as a lottery. So both you and your friend are going to be able to put your rebate tokens in, and there’s going to be a lottery system to reward people who use the system. So that’s our incentive validation mechanism for customers and recipients.
Hugh
And that’s only on a short term basis, right? Because long term, these rebate tokens are going to have application in the NFT marketplace.
Dan
Yes, long term we also want to add other things that people can use these rebate tokens for on the platform, such as an NFT marketplace for partners and also figure out a discount mechanism for them, too. So that’s where we kind of gamify, and we incentivize the use of the protocol from that point of view.
Then there’s the buyback. So every time someone uses the protocol, there’s a buyback of the GIFT token, which is redistributed via staking, and that that pushes up the price of GIFT. So we’re really more focused on rewarding our current holders and investors more so than trying to go out and convince everyone to buy the GIFT token, because this project was always about the platform and what we are building. GIFT holders will completely benefit from the actual products being used, which is the model that most projects have really.
Another element that I wanted to touch upon is the marketing side of things. So we’re actually developing a referral by link system for the platform products themselves, so that basically if someone buys a GIFT product using your referral link, it then sends that information into another smart contract which collects the marketing tax, and you, based on your referrals, earn a share of that marketing tax.
This is our way to incentivize marketers, really, or even just peer to peer use. So if you send your friend your your referral link, then when they buy using the gifting protocol, that’s going to benefit you to. And that’s a big element that I think is important within this ecosystem. In order to satisfy and help out our marketing, we’re clearly going to have other marketing that is going to be driven by us.
However, in the spirit of DeFi and also just as an experiment, really, to see how we can reallocate the marketing tax, it’s a pretty cool thing. But with this kind of ecosystem, it’s taken us some time to mix and match various elements of things, to figure out how we’re going to fit this entire thing together. And it’s a good few smart contracts interacting with each other, which is why the development has taken time.
Hugh
Yeah, me and Dan have been having a lot of long conversations recently about trying to work out how each part of this ecosystem and the platform itself interact and develop together — and how it ultimately comes back to benefit GIFT holders and people who are invested in this project and the platform, because we want to build something that is really robust and sustainable and scalable. And that means that a lot of there are a lot of different iterations. There are a lot of things that get decided and then developed and we move on from them. Do be assured that there’s a lot of this kind of work going on in the background, and this really is still the build phase. Question number eight is:
8. How can the community help with marketing in this bearish market?
And the answer is yes, the community definitely can help. And I want to really give a huge shout out and thank you to all the really active community members that we do have who do help out so much.
Recently we established the Gift Shill group, which is kind of for community members who are interested in helping out. And that was something that was led by the community, which we really love to see. It’s going well, it’s still in its early stages.
Right now, we just kind of share tweets there and people get involved. But I think that, like everything else with this project, it’s still early days, and we’re gonna find our feet with that group because it’s something that we see a lot of other projects doing very successfully: they have a a very strong community behind them, which is kind of structured and different people do different things.
I really appreciate that everybody, or a lot of people involved in GIFT as an investors probably have their own full time jobs or other commitments. But there are definitely small things that people can do every day, just, like logging on, getting involved on Twitter, spreading the word elsewhere, and also just coming to us with your own ideas as well. You know, if you’re seeing a certain trend that you think the team should be considering or a certain channel, those are things that we love to hear.
For example, somebody suggested that we make a shill text document and we made it and we shared it with everyone. So the short answer is, the community can definitely help in a bearish market.
The thing is that right now, the market conditions, as we all know, haven’t been the best. And our focus has turned on the team has turned away from paid marketing and is going more towards organic at this point. The reason for that is, from a return-on-investment perspective, we’ve been running a lot of paid marketing initiatives, and the ROI (the return-on-investment) has been extremely poor.
So the way to look at that is: we have X amount of marketing funds, and if we spend thousands on something, and not only does it not bring any good results, but it’s actually it feels like a complete waste of money, it doesn’t make sense from a business perspective. For us, it feels like throwing money away.
And so much of that is to do with the market conditions. This community is so amazing, and anybody who understands this project really believes in the project. But more than that, this is about spreading the word of GIFT.
Back in March 2021, throwing money into marketing was a thing that a lot of projects did. And it was as simple as: you pay somebody on TikTok to to make a video, and then the price goes up.But the thing is that things have changed now, and a lot of new investors don’t pay attention to that kind of marketing anymore, so we have to just play it a bit smart. Question nine is:
9. What kind of marketing is planned in a better or bullish market?
This, again, is something that me and Dan have been discussing a lot, because, like, we’re just as excited as you guys about, like, like really getting the marketing out there in force. I have experience with running organic and paid marketing campaigns. They are very expensive, but they do have good ROI when the market conditions are right.
Those are the kind of things that we’re looking at starting soon. We can’t speculate on when things are going to get better. But it does seem that, like, the summer will be a quieter period for the market, but that we could see an upward trend towards the end of August or September.
But regardless, the plans that we have are to kind of build, build, build right now and also build our products in the background and then to release a lot of paid marketing campaigns. Also, we’re still working on working out sponsorship deals with some streamers and YouTubers.
But again, it’s taking a bit of time because we really want to find people who actually understand and believe in what we’re trying to do. Like, a very common thing that you see in BSC projects is that people on Twitter are just paid to tweet about whatever project, and then it’s just a bit of a pump and dump.
We’re more interested in working with people who really understand what we’re trying to do, like YouTubers, who understand what we’re trying to do and can really talk about the product in their videos. So that’s kind of all still happening in the background.
Another big, exciting development that we have at the moment is like some events that are coming up that we may be involved in the sponsorship for. I don’t know how much we can talk about that then, because it’s not confirmed yet. But basically that’s another aspect of marketing that is in the pipeline for October, I believe.
With the pandemic kind of closing up and some real world events starting to happen again, there’ll be more opportunities for the GIFT team to be going to conferences, sponsoring conferences, having stands, and so on. So that’s all coming up in Q3.
Dan
We have some people who believe in our project right now who are working with on the marketing front, and we’re very happy to be working with those people. As Hugh explained, we’re hesitant about running off to new people because the results haven’t been great in the past.
With regards to stands and other opportunities, as I’ve iterated many times we’re building a new ecosystem, a new product line for the DeFi ecosystem right here. And once we have that, we’re going to be able to market that and a big element of marketing it will be at stands at conferences, where we can really push the fact that we’re bringing a solution to introduce new people to crypto.
Right after the products are up, the focus will be on providing an on-ramp solution. I’ve already started trying to get contact for Transact and researching a couple others. The main thing is that once we have this on-ramp solution, then we can not only market our solution to gift to other people, however, we can also market our solution as a direct blockchain on-ramper for people.
For example, if at a public event, someone wanted to make all the transactions at that event through crypto. So if you had an event where, say, everything was paid for by Bitcoin and you were just a normal non-crypto person, and you wanted to go to this event. Well, at that stage, you could on-ramp yourself, like pay 50 dollars or whatever on our platform, and then you would get 50 dollars worth of Bitcoin in your newly-created MetaMask. And it would be ready to go at the event to then transact with various people there.
Hugh
Yes, which is a lot smoother than having to go through Binance or any of the other major exchanges that people use. So to clarify, on-ramping refers to the process of paying with fiat and getting cryptocurrencies. The idea would be that on the GIFT platform, when you want to send somebody a crypto gift card you’ll eventually be able to pay in fiat as well, if you would prefer.
That just makes it a lot more of a smoother process for people who just show up to a crypto conference. They can just buy $50 worth of whatever crypto they want. And they get it straight into their MetaMask via redeeming on the GIFT platform. They can even learn how to make a MetaMask on the spot if they don’t know how to. So it’s a great way to kind of remove those barriers that traditionally hold people and hold events back from being able to be super crypto friendly.
I think that covers a a lot of the marketing stuff. As Dan said, we have certain influencers or people that we’re partnered with that we’re really, really happy with. What I’m mostly interested in, and what the team is mostly interested in is working with very legitimate and trusted influencers, and also with going beyond that.
In the future, we want to go beyond crypto influencers and into mainstream influencers — so for example, gaming streamers is a big area of interest because we don’t want them to promote gift coin, we want them to talk about the platform and like the fact that on this platform you have the ability to learn about crypto and send crypto gift cards.
The problem is, as you all have seen recently, there have been some really high profile new stories projects involving Faze clan and so on, where influencers basically are getting into big trouble for doing crypto promotion. This generally has meant that a lot of mainstream or non-crypto influencers are a bit spooked now about working with crypto projects.
But again, like anything in crypto, it’s really important to just zoom out and look at this from the macro perspective. Crypto has such a bright future, and inevitably I feel like right now crypto and marketing is just in a weird phase where legitimate influencers feel like they can’t touch it. But once we kind of get to a point of where influencers are partnering with legit projects and there are no more scams, that will be a better time for crypto and influencer marketing.
I’m just going to drop in the next question, question 10, which is just kind of a general one:
10. How can users stay updated with this project? Are there channels including local communities, where users can get the latest updates?
The best place to stay up to date with Gift is on Telegram. We also do have Twitter, and then Instagram and TikTok. Instagram and TikTok areas that we’re expanding on right now. Those would be the main channels.
I’m going to drop in a couple of questions at once and we can just run through them. So these are kind of more just random, smaller questions.
11. Will you or have you applied for the Finance Fall Incubation program? And why? If not?
Dan
Yeah, we have and we hope to get it, but we haven’t got any updates there. If there are any updates with regards to how that’s going, we will be sharing them.
Hugh
Okay. Next question:
12. Could you tell us about the GIFT team and some of their background, or how many team members are now working in the Gift platform in terms of the team?
We do have a team page on our website, which I would recommend you checking out. So we have nine core team members, and then there are a number of people who work for, or who are involved in the Gift team on an advisor basis. And that kind of the Gift “family” or wider team comprises of you know, maybe 30 to 50 people.
In terms of the nine core people, we’ve got a designer, a really, really super experienced designer who does amazing work, as you sure you all agree. Like you seen her work on the website and on the marketing materials and so on. We’ve got business development experts who again, are very experienced and how years of experience running their own business.
For myself as the chief marketing officer, I did a media studies degree at university. And then after graduating, I work in marketing for a couple of different start-ups, I also have a lot of experience in writing articles. Initially, in became involved in crypto more as an investor, but I feel like I learned a lot from that time about what makes projects work and what makes projects not work.
Dan
So you’ve covered the general team, I’ll just go a bit more into the tech side of things. So right now, besides the UI/UX designer, we have a team of three developers, so that comprises in myself and two other developers.
My experience is that I studied computer science. I graduated about a year ago, and I specialize in the blockchain. So for my thesis, I built a dApp, which wasn’t really linked to Gift, it was based on digital asset Copyright management. I won’t go into detail, but anyways, I built a dApp. It was in Solidity, and I published it on the Hedera hash craft network.
After graduating, I started working for an Italian start-up as a full stack developer, where I learned a lot about entire system architectures. And then GIFT was born, and I kind of came up with the Gifting protocol. It was a bit of a re-adaptation of what I did on my thesis. I just really enjoy smart contracts and what you can do with regards to encoding and developing business logic through them.
On to the other two developers. 1 of the developers is currently doing a masters in AI and machine learning. However, his strong competencies are in cybersecurity server infrastructure. He’s been coding since he was about 12 and he’s an incredibly good developer, he only focuses on backend developing and much more procedural coding. He developed the actual gifting protocol with me, and he worked a lot with regards to the encryption and security side of things to make sure that we weren’t going to lose people’s money.
The other developer we have is a frontend developer. He’s also someone very trusted and who we know very well. He worked about three years in a variety of firms building up frontends, mostly in Angular, and this is actually the first project where he’s working on building dApps.
Our workflow is pretty much: I developed a smart contract, and then the other two developers, one develops a backend to interact with it, and then the other one, our front end, connects the website to the smart contracts, and this workflow keeps getting better over time. One thing that has delayed development on that end is that both of them were doing university exams throughout July, but they’ll both be done in around five days, so then we’ll be back to full force.
Hugh
Nice. Overall, I would say about the team, if you don’t know, we’re just a bunch of young and really, really driven people — for me and Dan and everybody else on the team, really, like, crypto is just everything that we do, and we’re full believers in it. This is a complete passion project for me and Dan particularly, and we’re really beyond committed to this project.
The way we see it is that we’re building something that really benefits the $GIFT coin and its holders. The price right now doesn’t really reflect what we’ve built, but eventually it will. And I hope that other people can share in that vision as well.
I think with any with any BSC coin, you’re going to see a lot of people who invest for a week and then they leave because they get bored or they’re just looking for that infamous “quick 100x” (that they might not ever get.) But the point is that we’re here for the long term. I think it would be good, if you’re worried about your GIFT coins, to bear that in mind. We’re here not just for just this week or this month, but actually months and years ahead.
The next question is:
13. Security and trust are one of the things users are most interested in with the blockchain system. So where is the transparency of GIFT reflected?
I feel like we covered this already in terms of talking about the security of the platform. In more of a literal sense about trust and transparency, like always, you know me, Dan and the rest of the team are very active in the Telegram and we’re always responsive to questions.
We’ve also always tried to be as transparent and open as possible. We’re not a project where the team is not interested in communicating with holders or answering questions. Transparency is super important and we’re not interested in leading people astray or anything. So when we say things like “these things are coming” and then they get delivered, like these things that we’re talking about that are coming in the next few months — they will be delivered. So don’t worry there. The next question is:
14. What things has GIFT done for dealing with scalability, security and compatibility issues?
Dan
With regards to scalability, there’s not much to say — we’re as scalable as the blockchain allows us to be scalable. Once the product is up, we don’t have to worry about manufacturing cost, et cetera, as a normal start-up would. The smart contract is up and the more it gets used, the better it is for the platform.
In terms of security and compatibility issues, I guess we’ve already spoken about compatibility. I guess that may reflect too on our bridging capability. We want to bridge — the only thing to note really is that Ethereum is still too expensive and and we’re simply not going to do it as long as it’s too expensive to bridge over to there.
I don’t mean the actual bridging process, I mean the actual platform and the way it operates is going to be very expensive. We could just bridge the token and allow people to trade the token on Ethereum. However, it’s not really a priority.
What we’d be much more interested in Bridging over to Ethereum where we can capture that market share — so when people can actually use a platform there. And then bridging over to a chain like Matic is still on the table. However, having use Matic a bit recently, the network still has a lot of work to do before we’re confident enough to move over.
There’s also a thought of bridging over to KuCoin, which is a possibility. However, there’s very few people using it and most of the people using it are on BSC. Another big one to bridge over to which I’d be excited to do is Solana. However, we currently lack in the Department of a Rust developer. So any Rust developers here feel free to message me! It’s a language which I plan on learning to developing. However, given the current stage of development, I don’t have the time to learn a new language yet.
Hugh
There are three more questions left.
15. How do you plan on to spread awareness about your project in different countries where English has not spoken? Do you have local communities for them to let them better understand your project?
So the answer is yes, this is something that we’re working on in the background. Basically, the process that we’re following is getting the whole website translated and then releasing that translated website version. And then we’ll make those communities.
The way we kind of envision it is like that will have language communities for, like, five or ten of the most widely used languages, particularly within crypto. The reason that this hasn’t been done already is because, as Dan said, we’re still kind of making some final tweaks on the website.
And from a translation perspective, because the website is not finalized at this point, we can’t actually get it fully translated yet. But as soon as the website is finalized and the link sharing GIFT sending is up, all of that will be done because this is something that we’re really interested in.
We’re really interested in making a GIFT Chinese community for example. But as we’re still in the build phase, it hasn’t been fully done yet. But this is something that I envision being done by August or at the absolute latest, the start of September.
Here are the final two questions.
16. Are there plans to list on any major exchanges?
Dan
Yeah. So there would be very long term plans list of major exchanges. However, given the cost and the lack of any real benefit to us with regards to how that would work, when you list on a centralized exchange, you actually end up white listing their hot wallet. So that means that there’s no actual friction gained from the volume.
Let me simplify: the more trading that happens, the more reflect holders earn. And so the more passive yield you get in GIFT on top of your Holdings.
If we list on a major exchange, one of the main benefits clearly is increased volume. However it’s a very hit or miss kind of thing. So when you consider that you may be looking at around 50k to 100k in costs to list on a major exchange, you have to stop and wonder what the long term benefits are there, because in our opinion, that money would be much better spent on development and marketing than just getting the GIFT token on a major exchange.
Hugh
I think that covers that pretty well. What I would throw in there is that once we expand languages wise, if we find that there’s a lot of demand and popularity in a certain country that uses a certain specific exchange, of course that’s something that we consider.
But I think it’s definitely it’s better to do it based on on demand rather than just as Dan was saying, kind of wasting money randomly. Final question, and then we can move on to some live Telegram community questions.
17. With the surge of news about Binance supposedly not complying with the law in a lot of countries, for example, being banned in the UK or whatever that was, it’s hard not having thoughts about a future where Binance could go down. Since GIFT is based on Binance, what would it mean for GIFT if a collapse of Binance happens? Thanks in advance.
Dan
This is a very interesting question because Binance has been getting targeted by a number of countries, which I think is pretty sad given that they’ve been doing this for so long and they have an excellent product. Everyone knows Binance and uses it, and it just feels like it’s going to end up being the scapegoat for a lot of governments who want to fight back against crypto.
So with regards to our strategy, the platform right now is going to be built and deployed on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). The reason why this was done initially is because of the cost effectiveness of BSC and because of the number of people using it. The liquidity for the token is also locked on BSC for another 10 months, and there’s no way we can try and pull that liquidity and redeploy it somewhere else.
The platform itself is coded in such a way that we can move over to another chain. The trading for the token is currently on BSC — once once we have the capital, we can add liquidity on Ethereum and we can bridge a token over to there. And at that stage we don’t have to worry about what happens to BSC so much, because even if BSC and Binance gets taken down (which I don’t really think is gonna happen) we will have liquidity and collateral on Ethereum, which will be matching against Ethereum, and we will be able to redeploy our platform on Ethereum or wherever it’s cost effective at that time.
Hugh
As much as there is a lot of Binance fud right now, they are based in the Cayman Islands or wherever they’re based, they’re pretty safe in a lot of ways. So as much as there’s bad news, as Dan said, it’s it’s coming from more of a macro perspective that includes the fears around crypto and security generally.
Much like the Internet at the start of the Internet, there were a lot of allegations that it was just being used for illegal stuff, porn and weird stuff. And as we all know now, the Internet has become so much more than that. So in the same way, like, crypto obviously has a future. Binance obviously will play a role in that future. I want to come back to this question that Bluehorseshoe dropped in the chat in the GIFT chat. They said:
18. I sent GIFT to my sister and I got no info from her. So I asked and she found the gift mail in her spam folder. Can you solve this?
Yes. So with the gift by link system, that problem will be solved. And that is why we’re moving towards that model, or it’s one of the reasons why. Another way for the emails to not go to the spam is by improving the text within that email, too.
Like, I think at the moment, like, email filters are picking up on certain words that we’re using or certain phrasing. And also, I think as the gift protocol gets used more that email won’t be flagged as much because enough people will flag it as a trusted email. So it’s kind of a balance of both of those things where we can improve on our current product while also moving towards this link based gift sending.
Dan
We tried to figure out a solution, and in the end, the solution lies with the language that we’re using in the email. And the simple solution is to focus on a model which doesn’t rely upon email. Also, emails are are a lot more impersonal than links by text.
Users will still get a receipt email using the protocol. However, the receipt email won’t contain it’ll only contain a guide on how to redeem your GIFT, or on how to recover your gift with your wallet specifically if you lost it. If someone were to hack your email but not hack your wallet, even with that receipt email, they wouldn’t be able to steal the gift. They would need the wallet that you sent the gift with.
So that’s the security consideration that we’ve made there. The problem with emails is an annoying one. And we probably wasted a bit too much time trying to figure out how to fix it. And that’s then when we decided, okay, let’s try out with links and let’s see how these play out, how this product plays out.
Hugh
This is the last question from the Telegram:
19. What do you think about more than 30% of all tokens in developers wallets? I think it’s really concerning for a lot of investors. Dan, do you want to clarify on this?
Dan
So just to clarify, basically, you should think of $GIFT as a share of the GIFT platform. And really our presale and our initial sale was our IDO (initial decentralized offering) or like an IPO of a business. The profits from the platform are going to be shared and redistributed out to all token holders, and that is why we retain 30% of all tokens. Realistically, you should think of it as us retaining 30% of the equity within our company.
Hugh
I just want to jump in and clarify that it’s not like they’re like, Dan is sitting there with a button that says like “sell 30%.” First of all, that 30% is divided between the core team and the wider team, which is a huge, huge amount of people. Also, it’s vested over the next 15 months. So, like, right now, how much of that is live Dan, would you say?
Dan
So far, only 5% of the 30% has been unlocked.
Hugh
Yeah. So if you’re worried from a dumping perspective, like, it’s really not a worry because it’s all unlocks on a phased basis. And furthermore, because of the beauty of the blockchain, you’re more than welcome to go on to any of those team wallets and see if there’s any worrying behaviour happening in terms of dumping. But what you’ll actually find is that pretty much everybody on the team hasn’t touched their tokens at all.
Because we’re here for the long, long run and I think there’s a lot more value in holding GIFT tokens than anything else. Also, a lot of the developers and a lot of the key people on this project are doing insanely high quality work. And in, as Dan, I think you raised before, Dan, that developers, this kind of development work in a like in an office, like, and a typical non crypto job would be, like, extremely highly paid. So the reason that, like, people get paid well for the work that they’re doing, which is proportional.
I think we can conclude there. I really want to say thanks to everybody for joining this AMA. I really appreciate everybody here for being so patient and kind of believing in us, because I think we we’re not just promising on stuff, but we have been delivering and we will continue to deliver.
Dan
Yeah, I would like to thank everyone for joining too!
