ErgoPad AMA — 4 December, 2021

Hi everyone! On Saturday, 4 December, we held our very first AMA and had a blast doing it! We love any chance we can get to interact with our community, and — of course — our fellow Ergonauts. Vince, our CMO facilitated the discussion, presenting each of the community’s questions to Martin, our CEO.

The community asked a total of thirteen questions, which are listed below for your reference.

1. I would like to know what you will do to encourage more people to develop and build on ergo, and also will you encourage people to build certain types of projects, for example where Ergo has the strongest use-cases? In other words, what is your strategy to get people to start projects via Ergopad. I assume you won’t just wait for them to come to you?
2. Are you guys doing it all from scratch, or are you using some existing Ergo code, like the assembler used for the Auction house?
3. How do we sign up for whitelist and what do you need?
4. Where do you see Ergo in one year or five years? And, here do you see ErgoPad in the future?
5. I’m a developer and I want to be a part of ErgoPad, how can I do that?
6. Would you be open to pushing for open code standards, proof of development, development tracking or independent community auditing for projects launching on ErgoPad.
7. I have an idea for a project. Is there a Council or something? I’m assuming the person asking how they can get their project launched with ErgoPad?
8. How do I describe Ergo Pad to my grandma?
9. How will Ergo Pad vet each project that it launches?
10. Will you only support projects that build on the Ergo platform, or will you support projects on other blockchains like Cardano, for example?
11. What will the use cases be for the Ergo pad token?
12. Have you had any projects reach out yet that want to launch on Ergo?
13. How are you going to solve the incorporation problem? License prices?

To listen to the recording, visit the video below:

The text transcript of the AMA is found below.

VINCE:
Welcome everyone to the first of many AMAs — or ASK ME ANYTHING — for ErgoPad. My name is Vince and I am the marketing director for ErgoPad, and I have with me, Martin, our CEO. As you know, ErgoPad is a new project in the Ergo Ecosystem. We are a launchpad and our goal is to bring you the BEST new projects and to bring to ERGO the best new investors.

Okay Martin, shall we begin?

MARTIN:
Absolutely! Welcome everyone! Let’s do it.

VINCE:
Excellent, okay, the first question is: “I would like to know what you will do to encourage more people to develop and build on ergo, and also will you encourage people to build certain types of projects, for example where Ergo has the strongest use-cases? In other words, what is your strategy to get people to start projects via Ergopad. I assume you won’t just wait for them to come to you?”

MARTIN:
Definitely we’ll be taking a pro-active approach! I’ve already been reaching out to devs to put together some projects so we have at least a few ready to go for the ergopad IDO. I have been focusing a lot on p2p style projects like social platforms, gaming, etc but you’re right about ergo having a lot of potential in B2B and more commercial applications. Saas or blockchain as a service has a lot of potential, and we’ll be exploring those options with interested devs. I’m in the process of reaching out to people and put together some teams that are interested. I think there’s a lot of good things that we could build, like Escrow services. Ergo is great for things that require multiple signatures. So legal contracts, things like that. We can definitely start looking into things like that at. So we’ll keep an eye out.

VINCE:
Very good. So as a follow up to that question, we had another question, which is: “Are you guys doing it all from scratch, or are you using some existing Ergo code, like the assembler used for the Auction house?”

MARTIN:
Right. We are definitely using some of the existing Ergo code right now. I think anon_real built out assembler, maybe him and a team. Yoroi isn’t quite there yet as far as the DAPP connector, it may be getting close, but I think the assembler is the most reliable way to interact with the Ergo blockchain right now. So we’re going to use that. We’re going to leverage that service right now. I also find it’s nice, because when we use the assembly service, you don’t actually have to connect your wallet to anything. When you go to our website and you press the Connect wallet button, you’re just basically sending us your public address and that’s it. And then we’ll build the smart contracts. We’ll compile them for you, and you’ll actually be interacting directly with the blockchain. So it gives you that extra level of security. So we really like this one service we’ll be using that for now.

VINCE:
Awesome, okay, great. Let’s go on to the next question. “When Ergo Pad goes live, will there be projects ready on day one?

MARTIN:
100%! We’ve already spoken to some people. We’ve got some verbal agreements and commitments from some people, and we’ll have some great promotional material to share with you guys in the coming weeks as we develop it. That’s definitely going to happen. I want to have at least three projects kind of in the pipeline, one of them being a DEX. If we can get a dev team together that’s capable in time. One of them being I was thinking of a social media platform that’s decentralized. With Facebook, you don’t own your data, Facebook owns it. Facebook sells it to marketers. I think Ergo is a great place where we could build a social platform where you own all your data. And it’s similar to the BAT token on Brave browser, the Basic Attention Token — I think that’s what it stands for — where, when you browse around the Internet, marketers can kind of pay you to get your attention to have you look at their marketing. So we want to try and launch something like that on ErgoPad, and then also some NFT games. So those are what we have in the pipeline for now. We might extend that to more things in the future.

VINCE:
Very cool. Okay. Next question: “How do we sign up for whitelist and what do you need?

MARTIN:
Okay, so for whitelist we’re going to have a form on the website that you’ll be able to fill out. Behind ErgoPad is a DAO, so it’s going to be technically a decentralized organization. It won’t be in any one specific country. So I don’t think we’ll need to KYC, as far as the lawyers have told me, so far. For whitelist, we are just going to be checking that you have kind of some kind of social presence. We don’t want people to be able to just make random multiple wallets, and one person could get more than the wax of what we want to allow. It’d be easy for someone just to make a bunch of wallets. So we’re just going to have you send over like…you’ll need to be either in the Telegram or discord channel our Telegram, and then you’ll just need to send us one of your social accounts like LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit anywhere. We can just go and check that you do have an online presence. You do post somewhere. We can just kind of confirm that you’re one person rather than one person submitting a bunch of proposals or a bunch of whitelist applications, but it’ll be a form on the website.

VINCE:
Awesome, okay. Alright, moving right along. This next question brings in a little bit of your feelings around Ergo and not just ErgoPad. And that is: “Where do you see Ergo in one year or five years? And, then: “Where do you see ErgoPad in the future?”

MARTIN:
Ergo has a long way to go because it sort of feels like how Ethereum felt like in the beginning. There are all these possibilities, but we haven’t really built the software around it yet. Or, some of it’s done, but it has a long way to go. And I think we’re right at the beginning right now. So maybe in the next year…2022 seems like a really exciting time for Ergo. Where if you’re in now, it’s just going to go up. Of course, it’ll follow the market like it is now — having dipped a little bit. But I see it just growing from here. We’re going to build what we can around it. So, over the next year, I think Ergo is going to just grow and grow and grow until it has at least as robust of a DeFi ecosystem as Ethereum has, and more. It’s got more opportunity because without the gas fees, the fees are much lower. More people will be able to use Ergo. It has the benefit. I mean, Binance Smart Chain replaced Ethereum for people who couldn’t afford the gas fees, but it’s so centralized, it’s 100% controlled by Binance. So Ergo kind of removes the gas fees while also keeping the decentralization. So, I think it’s going to bring a lot of people who do value the initial philosophies of Bitcoin, and it’s going to bring a lot of people together. So, I see it going a long way in the next year. And who knows, in the next five years, it could be a top ten coin, without a doubt in my mind.

As far as ErgoPad, I think if we can keep the momentum going and keep releasing great projects on Ergo and grow with it, I think we’ll be right there alongside it over the next five years. The emission schedule is set for three years, but if we come three years from now and run out of staking emissions, maybe we’ll have to release a second token if the demand is there and really share another emissions schedule with people and go from there based on what the community asks for. For long term, we’re definitely expecting a lot of growth.

VINCE:
Very cool. Okay. This next question is kind of fun. It is, “I’m a developer and I want to be a part of ErgoPad, how can I do that?”

MARTIN:
Send us a message. I spoke to a couple of people yesterday and we’re just putting them in touch with the CTO. We’ve got people who are pretty new to this as well, and there’s lots of good resources on Ergo. So even if you’re new, if you have an idea, if you’re really learning, come talk to us, just send any of us a direct message. We’ll be happy to get you in the right direction, and also connect you with other people who want to build things on Ergo. So, get in touch.

VINCE:
Awesome. Well, there’s another question that just popped up into the chat, and there’s actually a few kind of on the same line that is around open code or open source code. In fact, actually, one of these questions is from Armeanio, who is, as we all know, part of the Argo Foundation. And he asks, “Would you be open to pushing for open code standards, proof of development, development tracking or independent community auditing for projects launching on ErgoPad.”

MARTIN:
I’m 100% open to that. We would like to keep this as a community project and be totally open. I know when you invest in a project like this, there’s been issues on certain other blockchains. Sometimes you get rug pulls and everyone’s worried about that. Right. So, we’re sort of asking for your leap of faith when you do invest early, and we’re totally open to developing open source. The other beautiful thing about that is it’s better to have more eyes on a project and all that experience comes together and you never see all the exploits at once the users that sometimes break the code. So, it’s great to have lots of eyes on it. It’s great to have people with experience looking at it. So yeah, we definitely want to develop always open source. So that’s going to happen for sure.

VINCE:
Very good. All right. Next question, “I have an idea for a project. Is there a Council or something? I’m assuming the person asking how they can get their project launched with ErgoPad”.

MARTIN:
Yeah. We don’t have a specific council in place. The team. We just will discuss any projects that come up. If you have an idea, you can always throw it in the discussion group, see what the community thinks. If you just want to keep it private, you can direct message us. But, yes, we’ll go over any projects. If you have something in mind, if you have a team even better, because then we can just help you get what you need.

Let’s say you have a team of devs and you need some marketing. We can figure out a way to get you the support you need there. So let us know…get in the chat room, see what people think.

VINCE:
All right, let’s see, this one is awesome: “How do I describe Ergo Pad to my grandma?”

MARTIN:
I guess it depends on your grandma and how in tune she is. I think that you could compare it to a project incubator outside of blockchain. Basically, we’re a group that has put together a team that can do various things, such as every project needs marketing, every project needs developers to build it and artists and various skill sets. So, we’re sort of a group that brings that all together. I guess you could tell your grandma we try and connect people with strengths, with other people with strengths, that they need to get things out there. So, we’re just trying to build and I think that’s a good way to describe it to somebody who’s not super familiar with Blockchain.

VINCE:
Cool. Yeah, I know that some people would compare it maybe to, like, a business incubator but for projects on the blockchain, but, yeah, that’s very helpful. Okay, next question. “How will Ergo Pad vet each project that it launches?”

MARTIN:
We’ll definitely reach out to the community. We’ll base it on the team uniqueness of the project going to judge based on does it have a good use case? Do we think there’s sort of competition that it will be able to compete with? Will it be better? Is there something like a unique selling proposition that is really the next step or the next iteration on what’s already out there? How far along the project is if somebody comes to us and they’re like, well, we’ve already sort of half built this. We just need you to help us get to the next step. That would really encourage us to bring on that project. If it’s just 100% concept we’ll have to discuss, can we put together a team? How much does the community want this? The other thing is, our platform is sort of an IDO launch platform. If the project is a piece of software that wouldn’t benefit from having a token or necessarily from doing an IDO, we may have to come up with a different concept on how we raise funds and how we launch that project. So, we’ll have to assess that on a case by case basis. But that’s sort of the idea.

VINCE:
All right, let’s see, “Will you only support projects that build on the Ergo platform, or will you support projects on other blockchains like Cardano, for example?

MARTIN:
I think that right now we’ll definitely be only supporting projects that intend to launch on the Ergo blockchain. And then if those projects transfer well to Cardano, we could definitely do the same. Like, sort of like the ErgoDex is doing where they have a version on Ergo and a version of Cardano.

But of course, I think Ergo would be the first one we released, and then the other nice thing is that the Ergo foundation is building a lot of cross chain bridges, so they’re doing a lot of the groundwork we need to make that happen to do cross chain projects. So, we’ll definitely leverage that as we can. And as it comes up, because there’s huge ecosystems out there that we could take advantage of, so we’re open to it is what I’m saying. We’ll start on Ergo, but we’re open to other things.

VINCE:
Nice. Okay. Last question that we have here and then I think we have one more in the chat. “What will the use cases be for the Ergo pad token?”

MARTIN:
So, this is outlined on the website, but I’ll answer you guys. So, what you’ll be able to do when you get an ErgoPad token? You’ll be able to stake it on the blockchain. I think we’ll have approximately 2 million tokens released at launch or maybe a little less, and then 30 million will be the max emissions. So, over the next three or so years, we’re going to give those 30 million tokens out to stakers. The other thing that happens when you stake is if you reach one of the tiers in the pool allocation, you’ll actually get an opportunity to get pre-sale tokens for new projects that we launch. So those will be a little bit cheaper than what the public sale will be — the public presale — and sometimes quite a bit cheaper. So, staking in those tiers will give you an opportunity to be an early investor. So, if you want that opportunity, you can stake your tokens. We’ll take a snapshot and anything you have staked will put you towards those pool allocations.

We’re also considering doing some votes. If there’s — let’s say we have some project proposals and we want to get the community’s feedback on it. We can also put together votes for token holders where you’ll have an opportunity to say “we like this project” or “we like this project over this other project that does the same thing”. So that might be upcoming. We’ll also try and do deflationary mechanics, because I know when you give out that many tokens, it creates inflation. So we’ll try and do things like lottery, maybe games, various ways that you can use your tokens to compete or get something extra compete for NFTs, and then we’ll burn the remaining ones.

VINCE:
All right, Martin, a couple of last questions here in the chat. I think we addressed this a little bit already earlier, but the question is, “Have you had any projects reach out yet that want to launch on Ergo?”

MARTIN:
We’ve had a few — I don’t want to say anything yet because it’s so early, but we’re in talks with a few people and we’re trying to find more. So, there are for sure going to be at least one or two NFT games at launch that we will announce.

VINCE:
And then this last question is let’s see. Well, I think we actually have answered all these questions, so I think we’re good. So that is the totality of the questions. Martin, anything else you want to share before we end this first AMA?

MARTIN:
I really appreciate you guys coming here listening. There’s quite a few here, actually, thanks so much for coming and joining us, I think Balta asked, “will this call be recorded?” We are recording it. We’re going to write sorry, what’s it called? We’re going to transfer –

VINCE:
Transcribe.

MARTIN:
That’s the word I’m looking for. We’re going to transcribe it and post it on medium, so you’ll be able to read it as well. You don’t have to relisten if you don’t want to, but yeah, it’s recorded. We have it, so we’ll share it with you. And then what’s this one? “How are you going to solve the incorporation problem? License prices?”

VINCE:
Oh, sorry, I missed that.

MARTIN:
The incorporation problem license. I’m not sure where this 250K number is coming from, but I’ve spoke to a lawyer of my own who says that a DAO can be considered an offshore Corporation as long as the ownership is less than — from any one country — is less than 50%, so we’re going to go with that — we’re going to create a decentralized, autonomous organization (DAO), and have this be sort of a global corporation if we need to go further than that and register the company offshore, we’ll look into that for sure. But we’d like to use that DAO structure. It really works well with the philosophy of cryptocurrency. So, for now, that’s what we’re going to do. We’re also going to use the code that we build to build the DAO and share that with the community. So, there may be a launch for a DAO platform in the future, too. We may be able to use that.

VINCE:
Excellent. Very good. Well, okay. So, this concludes our AMA for today. This is our first AMA and we wanted to keep it brief. We know that we are new here in the blockchain space, but we have huge plans for where we’re headed with ErgoPad. And so, we would encourage you that if you have additional questions to reach out to us in the chat.

Again, my name is Vince, and Martin is the CEO, and we have others in our team as well, and we’ll be introducing everybody here shortly in the coming days.

Anything else, Martin, that you’d like to share with the community?

MARTIN:
No, we covered quite a bit. Thank you, guys, so much for your support. We really appreciate having you here.

VINCE:
Absolutely. Thank you so much. And we encourage you to spread the word of Ergopad. Please share our community links and encourage others to join. And like you said, we’ll be having great news here as we continue, we’ll keep reaching out and sharing new news as it comes and good things are coming. So, thank you all for joining and we are going to sign off. I’m going to go ahead and post this recording and transcribe it.

MARTIN:
Spreading the word as a community is like the biggest thing. It really goes a long way, and we really appreciate you sharing. I noticed some of the people in the group were sharing our stuff on Twitter. Things like that. It helps us so much. We’re not spending a lot of money on marketing. We haven’t raised any funds yet. It’s so great. We love to do this as a community project and bring people on board in that respect, share with people you think would be interested. It helps us so much. Thank you.

VINCE:
Absolutely. All right. Thank you all. Take care and have a great rest of your day.

MARTIN:
Take care. Bye.