Klever CTO Bruno Campos Shares the Latest Developments in the Klever Ecosystem — KuCoin AMA Recap

Dear KuCoin Users,

Time: August 25, 2021, 10:00-11:40 (UTC)

KuCoin hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with Bruno Campos, CTO and Co-Founder of Klever, in the KuCoin Exchange Group, where he shared all the latest developments in the Klever ecosystem.

Klever app is a simple, fast, smart, and secure crypto wallet, serving as the epicenter of the Klever network with over 3 million users. The Klever ecosystem supports the world's major blockchains such as BTC, ETH, TRX, BNB, BSC, XRP, LTC, and many others for storing, sending, receiving, charging, and swapping cryptocurrencies. The Klever team, consisting of over 90 developers and 120 total staff, is building several platforms under their in-house development entity, Klever Labs, including Klever Hardware Wallet, Klever Browser, Klever Bank, and Klever Blockchain, which will function as the foundation of the entire ecosystem.

Official Website: https://klever.io

White Paper: https://klever.io/downloads/Klever_Exchange_Whitepaper.pdf

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Guest:

Bruno Campos — CTO & Co-Founder of Klever

Bruno is a Security Architect and Full Stack Architect. He has decades of experience as a Software Development Coordinator with a history of working in the insurance, financial, banking, and blockchain industries. Bruno has a strong engineering background in Security Tech. He is professionally skilled in Blockchain, Java, nodejs, Ruby on Rails, golang, .Net framework, Docker, k8s, Openshift Container Platform, Kubernetes, IBM DB2, Oracle Database, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Amazon Web Services - AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Scrum. Bruno is a passionate technical leader whose positive energy is contagious and cares deeply for every member of the Klever family.

Bruno: Thank you KuCoin and the entire KuCoin community for having me!

Q: For those who are new to Klever.io, can you please tell us what Klever is and KLV’s role in the Klever ecosystem of products?

Bruno:

The goal of Klever is to create the most secure and easy to use crypto products and accelerate the adoption of decentralized finance by empowering people to equal economic opportunities.

Klever app is a simple, versatile and secure self-custody crypto wallet ecosystem, supporting the world’s major blockchains. The app offers access to 10,000+ tokens, 300+ swap pairs, and direct access to ETH and TRX-based DApps in Klever Browser. Klever is a decentralized p2p and self-custody wallet, putting the private keys in the hands of our users.

Klever Roadmap (https://klever.io/en/roadmap) is an ambitious plan and the Klever team is working hard to scale our products for the growing demand of new crypto users entering the blockchain space.

KLV token is the fuel of the Klever’s ecosystem. It is Klever’s only and main utility token used to pay fees among all services of the ecosystem as well as many other use cases including burn-mining of new project tokens and utility through our partners such as Travala.com. More than 51% of all KLV is today staked by the community, which is an amazing testimony of trust from the community that we value highly.

Q: The Klever Blockchain is set to have its Testnet go live in September, with an official Mainnet launch in December 2021.

Can you tell us more about Klever Blockchain, its development and future vision to provide a simpler and more powerful crypto experience for both regular users and businesses?

Bruno:

Klever Blockchain (https://www.klever.finance/) is a permissioned network powered for transactions and staking by KLV which validator candidates need to stake to master nodes in order to be eligible to become a validator. And the governance token KFI will be used to propose and vote for changes in the network, while KFI holders will receive Application fees and DeFi system fees.

The Klever Blockchain will have built-in native features and triggers at the blockchain core level, eliminating the need for vulnerable smart contracts while enabling all essential features that smart contract blockchains support today. Those features include stake, delegation, freeze, unfreeze, swap, loans, to mention a few.

So called Klever Apps (kApps) will be approved by KFI holders through a governance process (proposed and voted), and developed by the Klever team natively in the blockchain.

All kApps available in the blockchain will use Klever's Security Measures to avoid security breaches and remove the threat of scammers' attempt to enter the ecosystem.

Klever Blockchain uses a rotative Delegated Proof of Stake with Simplified Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) consensus mechanism, powered by 21 validators per epoch. Each validator needs at least 10 million KLV staked to be eligible, out of which at least 1 million KLV must be self-staked by the validator themselves.

The PBFT algorithm consists of a three-phased protocol: Pre-Prepare, Prepare, and Commit. Together, they form the core of the PBFT consensus algorithm:

Pre-Prepare: Primary node is responsible for verifying the requests and generating corresponding pre-prepare messages. Then, the Primary node will broadcast pre-prepare messages to all Replica nodes. After receiving the messages, Replica nodes will verify the legitimacy of those pre-prepare messages and then broadcast a corresponding prepare message.

Prepare: Gathering prepared messages. After a certain node gathers 2f+1 prepare messages, it will announce that it is ready for block submission and start to broadcast commit messages;

Commit: Gathering commit messages. After a certain node gathers 2f+1 commit messages, it will process the native requests cached locally and make corresponding changes to the system state.

Based on the Proof of Stake (PoS) network consensus mechanism, Klever's blockchain chronology is organized into slots and epochs.

A slot is the minimum time delay between each block where an elected Masternode will be proposing a new block. The initial slot time is 3 seconds and can be updated by a network proposal.

Epochs are sets of slots defined by a fixed time, each epoch lasting 1 hour. This parameter can also be upgraded by a network proposal. At each epoch end, a net set of masternodes will be selected as next Epoch validators.

When an epoch starts, initially 21 (this number can be changed by network proposal) masternodes are chosen randomly according to the previous hash to be the validators for that epoch. A masternode can be chosen to be a validator more than 2 times in a row.

The Klever Blockchain will function as the foundation of the entire Klever ecosystem, and is a project we have been researching, developing and working on for many years, honed by our extensive experience of operating and maintaining 100s of nodes on dozens of blockchain networks for our wallet and exchange operations.

Klever Blockchain is a game changer for KLV and the entire Klever ecosystem.

Q: Wallet security is an area that Klever has focused a great amount of energy to develop and become market leading in. Can you explain the security measures that go into securing the Klever ecosystem?

Bruno:

Security in Klever is done by all teams and collaborators as securing our users' funds permeates every aspect of our product development.

We have a strong company culture that empowers each member of the development team to be the watchdog of our products from a security perspective.

Our Cyber Security specialists are focused on keeping all the systems and infrastructures safe and compliant with the Klever products’ business needs. So they do constant and repeated penetration tests, ethical hacking and code analysis to ensure that we are safe!

An essential part of our cyber security architecture and a crucial component in keeping our global users secure. On code analysis, each line of code that is submitted to our git repository, is searched for security vulnerabilities through SAST and DAST cross tools.

Each line of code used in the Klever ecosystem of products is built in-house and proprietary only to Klever for security reasons and not to depend on 3rd party sources for our operations and safety measures.

We are also focusing on strong user awareness and education inside and outside of Klever to make sure we stay ahead of scammers attempts to defraud our users and mitigate against any type of malicious attacks.

On the proactive measures we take, our Devsecops Team is always searching for ways to improve our security standards and technologies, hardening our infrastructure and services, performing training and searching for the best tools to fit our security needs.

We are also committed to be compliant from a regulatory standpoint and insured to protect our users around the world, our greatest asset by far.

Q: Speaking of security, your Klever Hardware Wallet development is in full swing, and pre-sale of Klever Hard Wallet will commence in Q4 2021. Tell us more about why the Klever Hard Wallet excites you so much personally?

Bruno: We are developing the Klever Hardware Wallet from scratch through one factory assembly line. This means developing the tech from the design to the machines that will produce the hardware, all in-house. So the project is so exciting in tech terms. The whole team just talks about bit and byte literally nonstop!

A hardware wallet is a special type of crypto wallet which stores the user's private keys in a secure hardware device, without being connected to the internet.

The connection between the Klever Hardware Wallet and the Klever app is done via a USB port or Bluetooth connection, the choice is up to the user. Both interfaces support a Custom HID profile, which provides the flexibility of a standard driver in all operating systems, eliminating the need to develop a specific driver for each operating system.

The Custom HID profile offers the possibility to use the interface with any custom device with only the limitation of 64 bytes per transfer for full-speed devices, making the Klever Hardware Wallet very versatile and able to be used by all.

Klever Hardware Wallet applications are not meant to run standalone, but rather assist a host process (on a computer or smartphone) to perform a secure task, such as signing a message, transaction, encryption, decryption, etc.

Therefore, the device is commonly addressed using a command / response scheme, where the application sends an output report and the device responds with an input report.

To ensure greater security of data transferred through the HID profile, two security protocols will be used: the RSA asymmetric key protocol and the AES symmetric key protocol.

The following steps show how to assemble the data packets to perform the key exchange.

- Generate 16 random bytes as your AES_KEY.

- Add the AES_KEY in the protobuf payload field and encode the protobuf into Raw_protobuf.

- Add the size of Raw_protobuf (2-bytes wide) at the beginning of the array to generate the Raw_data.

- Encrypt Raw_data with RSA PKCS1_v1_5 to generate the Full_payload to be sent to the hardware wallet.

- Break the Full_payload in small frames of up to 62 bytes (HID protocol limitation) and send them through the HID protocol.

After the key exchange process, it is possible to send protobuf structures through the AES protocol. The following steps show how to assemble the AES packet to be sent via HID.

- Build the Raw_data by adding the protobuf size (2-bytes wide) in the beginning of the array.

- Encrypt the data with AES in mode CBC to generate the Cipher_data.

- Get the 16-byte Nonce generated with AES and add it to the beginning of the Cipher_data to make the Full_payload.

- Break the Full_payload in small frames up to 62 bytes (HID protocol limitation) and send through the HID protocol.

In order to deal with special situations of bit flip or attempted attacks, some fault-tolerant features must be provided to keep data integrity and security under these circumstances. Special features are listed below:

- Maximum packet size: fragmented messages have a maximum length of 1024 bytes. This limit must be checked upon reception of a fragmented message

Sequence of id’s: fragmented messages must start with a 01 id, followed by a limited quantity of 10 id and finish with a 11 id. In any case this sequence is invalid, reception of further bytes must be suspended.

- Sequence numbers: every message, either non-fragmented or fragmented messages, must also comply with proper sequence number, where each following report must feature the sequence number incremented by 1.

- Signature of messages: each fragmented message has a 65-byte signature as the last field in the Protobuf format. After the last fragment has arrived, the signature must be computed and processing of the message should proceed only if the signature is valid.

Q: Klever recently launched Klever Exchange beta for Android and iOS, with a web version launching this month. What’s your vision and plan for this exchange product, and what part does it play in the entire ecosystem?

Bruno:

The idea behind Klever Exchange is to provide a simple, intuitive, safe and powerful user experience where anyone can trade, with unmatched speed and advanced security architecture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y8rnfGw6bc

Klever Exchange was created as a home to users who are completely new to crypto trading by providing a simpler user experience, while enabling reliability and useful features to experienced traders through market-leading speed, ironclad security, market maker opportunities and low fees.

Klever Exchange is built on top of an innovative Microservices Architecture where each component of the exchange infrastructure has its own autonomous responsibilities and functions independent from other components.

Using this architecture, each microservice is authenticated independently in our infrastructure and is identified through their own roles, functions and responsibilities.

The primary reasons for using this approach when constructing the Klever Exchange software architecture are to keep each layer of our exchange incorruptible, autonomous, scalable and immensely more secure.

These interfaces were born ready to support events connections and traditional requests, and are able to interact with user clients (Klever Exchange Mobile/Web) but also through API (Application Programming Interface) keys.

The API keys will allow users to run bots using their own strategy to negotiate in Klever Exchange following the configurations that users make while generating the bots.

And we have the custody service (Kustody) behind our banking microservice. The Kustody is responsible to isolate the private keys from the entire infrastructure, after creating private keys those PKs only exist distributed in-memory encrypted with AES with 256 bits. We are now conducting research to use SGX from Intel and store the PKs inside a segregated area of Intel CPUs.

The Klever Custody consists of three microservices that communicate with each other:

- klever-custody - responsible of basic association for off chain blockchain ops related with users;

- Klever-custody-sdk - responsible for basic blockchain ops;

- Klever-custody-signer - responsible for sign operation using the distributed in-memory PKs.

Q: Klever wallet app has a global user base of over 3 million people worldwide. Where do Klever’s users come from, what real-world problems are the Klever team solving through its products, and what new features are being built for Klever 5?

Bruno:

Our products are used in over 200 countries and regions worldwide, with our Top 3 countries being U.S., India and Nigeria, markets that are growing rapidly in crypto adoption.

We started with the wallet app to provide a p2p crypto wallet enabling people to interact directly with blockchain technology.

The main vision is to provide an easy and user-friendly crypto wallet that even a child or a senior can use and understand the benefits of the decentralized economy. All to empower people to protect their earnings from governments and central authorities that could harm savings from a lifetime simply through irresponsible financial policies.

Klever 5, our next major wallet version, will significantly improve the user experience because it is based on an optimized events driven software architecture, resulting in a more robust, scaleable and stable product.

All features on the current Klever Wallet will be on the Klever 5 plus many new features, including:

- NFT support. (yes, NFTs are coming to Klever!)

- Buy crypto with new partners, in the form of a marketplace (Simplex, Mercuryo, Banxa, Transak, etc.).

- Integration with the hardware wallet.

- Completely new design for UI/UX.

Q: Klever has recently partnered with prominent DefI project Reef Finance and the exciting canary network of Polkadot (DOT), namely Kusama (KSM) network, becoming a validator on both chains and enabling their decentralized features in the Klever wallet app such as swap, bonding (staking), nomination (voting) and more.

How do you see Klever’s role is assisting other blockchain projects to excel and become more decentralized by working with you and tapping into your large active user base of 150k daily active users?

Bruno: We are always open to working with legit and innovative projects in the blockchain and crypto space. Add new communities at Klever Wallet and more than that in the Klever ecosystem is the natural way when you believe building bridges is the only way to develop and grow the whole crypto and blockchain ecosystem.

We are very happy with these new partnerships to provide more features and opportunities to our global user base, and we have many more exciting partnerships to soon be revealed, so stay tuned.

The Klever ecosystem will be a hub for the best blockchain and crypto projects to thrive within, while users get empowered through our featured-packed self-custody wallet solution and ironclad security architecture.

Q: Tell us more about the growth of the Klever team globally, and what your development methodology looks like?

Bruno: Klever is growing very fast.

We were about 45 people in the beginning of this year, and now we are over 120 people globally.

Before I explain the different teams, I would like to add how much we value our community and employees. Klever is more than just a business; it is a lifestyle and a commitment to financial freedom that every community member and employee supports and engages with.

We have numerous squads dedicated to specific products, and other squads consisting of tech specialists and experts in their fields of blockchain engineering, security architecture and computer programming.

For example, the Klever Exchange squad has cross specialists in fields such as #devsecops, #QA (Quality Assurance) and #UI (User Interface), in addition to frontend, backend and fullstack software engineers, as well as product managers.

This exchange squad is fully focused on aggregating value to the Klever Exchange business and have the full power and resources at their disposal to achieve their goals.

Our philosophy is simple:

Q: Klever is celebrating its one-year anniversary this weekend, since the official launch of the Klever wallet app occurred on August 28, 2020.

What milestones and accomplishments have you been able to achieve during this first year as a new app, and what does the future hold for the Klever ecosystem?

Bruno: It’s amazing how fast a year goes by following the launch of Klever, and these are some of our accomplishments over the past year:

- Improved the native p2p wallet swap engine, optimizing speed, security and lowering the price for users by tapping into more liquidity pools

- Klever Wallet 4 development, making it possible to plug-in new chains such as Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Kusama, Polkadot, Reef Finance, and many more

- Klever Exchange (beta)

- Klever Hardware Wallet prototype

- Klever Kustody

- Klever ID

- Klever Workspace Finance module

- KLV now accepted at over 3 million hotels, flights and travel products through our partner Travala.com.

We are working hard to evolve our products: Wallet, Exchange, Blockchain, Hardware Wallet and Klever Workspace. Our roadmap is just beginning and we have a great journey ahead, stay tuned!

For 2022 we have planned:

- Klever Bank

- Klever Subscription

- Klever Browser

- Klever Pay

For 2023 we have planned:

- Klever Hedge Fund

For 2024 we have planned:

- Klever Privacy Phone

To summarize, the future is Klever.

Q: Does your project have any strategic partnerships in the crypto world that you can list?

Bruno: We have many strategic partnerships with projects we believe are as ambitious as Klever to provide a simpler and more powerful crypto experience to users worldwide. These strategic partnerships include:

- Simplex for buying crypto with a credit card right in Klever app

- Travala.com that now allows KLV to be used to buy 3 million hotels, flights, and travel products globally

- Reef Finance to advance decentralization of their newly launched Reef Chain and to provide useful tools for our users

- And of course, our partnership with KuCoin, one of the best and most trusted exchanges in the world

To mention a few.

Q: Trust is very important in business. What makes investors, customers, and users feel safe when working with your project?

Bruno: Trust in business and fintech is not only dependent on the technical parts of a project. The human element is as important. When you have an issue or question related to Klever Products, you also need to feel safe to put these questions to the Support Team and get an almost instant reply on your issue or questions. Feeling safe comes with more than tech. Feeling safe that you always will be helped in any case is also important. That your funds are safe in any way. That's the Klever way to build trust.

Q: How do you plan to spread awareness about your project in different countries where English is not good? Do you have local communities like Russia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and Korea so they can learn easily and better understand your project? Or are you planning something that hasn't been developed in other regions yet?

Bruno: Our app currently supports over 30 languages, and we have 27 different country groups on Telegram with local communities and admins educating current and new users. Our plan for expansion in non-speaking regions will include working on building grass-root movements and adapting both communication, education, marketing, and expansion strategies to the local environment. We are incredibly proud of our diverse user base coming from all over the world, but our growth has only just begun.

Q: Can I use a credit or debit card to buy crypto in the Klever app? How can I check the order history? What are you doing to get the attention of big investors?

Bruno: Sure, you can purchase crypto directly and seamlessly with a credit card, Apple Pay, and debit card in the Klever app.

These are the coins and tokens currently available for purchase with a credit card and Apple Pay in the Klever app: BTC, KLV, ETH, TRX, BNB, XRP, USDT, USDC, CEL, and KSM. We are also working on adding more coins and tokens that will be available for purchase in the Klever app, so stay tuned!

The next phase will be to add a marketplace for buying crypto this way through many partners (Simplex, Mercuryo, Banxa, Transak, and more).

All you need to do is download the Klever app at klever.io and follow the simple steps in the video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2Xr1kveUrI&ab_channel=Klever-SmartBlockchainWallet

Q: How to participate in the KLV staking program? Can you explain the procedure?

Bruno: Klever Wallet opens opportunities to anyone with a mobile device anywhere in the world to earn a passive income by staking tokens. You can easily participate in the KLV staking program by buying KLV on KuCoin Exchange and then move the KLV to the Klever App.

A full step-by-step guide is here: https://klever.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4405701286292-How-to-stake-KLV-to-earn-rewards

Q: Your project name seems to be very interesting. Does it have any story behind it? Can you share with us the inspiration for approaching this name?

Bruno: The name Klever is rooted in the desire to manage our money in a smarter way. Getting out of debt and thriving financially through collaboration and not competition.

Our CEO and one of my oldest friends Dio Ianakiara comes from very humble beginnings in the slums of São Paulo, where he was born into debt and had to fight for survival. You can read his entire life story here: https://news.klever.io/p/from-the-slums-of-so-paulo-to-klever.

What we at Klever aim to do is to provide powerful and simple to use tools for everyone worldwide to be smarter with their money.

Q: Is this platform suitable for crypto beginners, or does it only appeal to professional users?

Bruno: The mindset of Klever is to make crypto simple instead of difficult. So we aim to give everyone the ability to access crypto easily. Because today crypto is difficult, but it shouldn't be. So all our products are for every type of user. Are you a beginner in crypto or a well-educated user in crypto, then you can use Klever for your specific purpose, whether to hold, send, receive, charge, stake, browse web 3.0, buy crypto or use the Klever Exchange, we have something for everyone.

Thank you to all who joined. It was an honor!

KuCoin and Klever have prepared a total of 47,900 KLV to give away to AMA participants.

1. Free-ask section: 1,900 KLV

2. AMA activity: 46,000 KLV

Activity 1 — Quiz: 30,000 KLV

Activity 2 — Price Guess: 6,000 KLV

Participation Rewards: 10,000 KLV

. . .

If you haven’t got a KuCoin account yet, you can sign up here!

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