KuCoin AMA With Proton — The Payment Blockchain

Dear KuCoin Users,

Time: September 14, 2021, 10:00-11:24 (UTC)

KuCoin hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with Marshall Hayner, founder of the Proton blockchain, in the KuCoin Exchange Group.

Proton is a new public blockchain and smart contract platform designed for both consumer applications and peer-to-peer payments. It is built around a secure identity and financial settlements layer that allows users to directly link real identity and fiat accounts, pull funds and buy crypto, and use that crypto seamlessly in apps.

Official Website: https://www.protonchain.com

White Paper: https://www.protonchain.com/proton-white-paper-en.pdf

Follow Proton on Twitter and Telegram.

Guest:

Marshall Hayner — Founder & CEO of Metal (Metallicus Inc.), founder of the Proton blockchain

With extensive experience in the cryptocurrency and FinTech industries, Marshall has worked on numerous notable blockchains, including Dogecoin, Stellar, Metal, and Proton. Marshall is an outspoken proponent of cryptocurrency, the decentralized web, and the countless ways that it can improve the lives of billions of people by achieving a perfect blend of TradFi and DeFi. Passionate about achieving harmony between all areas of the financial system, Marshall is dedicated to finding a way for regulators, innovators, and everyday consumers to cooperate with each other to live in a better world.

Marshall: Thanks for having me in the KuCoin community! It's a pleasure.

Q: What is an overview of the Proton blockchain?

Marshall: Proton blockchain is a delegated proof of stake blockchain built to handle decentralized identity, payments, smart contracts, and in particular, the payment messaging layer between blockchain and banks. In the same way we have ACH, SEPA, or SWIFT, Proton is attempting to create a universal messaging layer to bridge traditional and decentralized finance.

It is a blockchain that can handle over 4,000 transactions per second and relies on human-readable names up to 12 characters, utilizing C++ as its native smart contracting language. It has a decentralized identity protocol that can allow fintechs and banks to connect to the blockchain, authenticate logins without passwords, trustlessly trade (protonswap.com), lend (protonlend.com), NFTs (protonmint.com), and more.

You can read more about it at protonchain.com and join the Telegram community here https://t.me/protonxpr

Oh, I almost forgot the best part - no gas fees.

Q: What are some of the more unique aspects of the Proton blockchain, besides just low fees and fast transactions?

Marshall: We are a very unique team based out of San Francisco, CA. Beyond an extremely flexible and fast L1 solution that can handle decentralized identity, traditional payments, wrapped xtokens (XBTC, XETH, XMT, XBNB, XKCS, etc.), smart contracts, NFTs that has no gas fees for new users, RAM cost is extremely affordable. We've pioneered a unique governance model based on Hedera Hashgraph. You can read more about this on our governance page: https://www.protonchain.com/governance

We have an incredibly beautiful mobile wallet for iOS and Android and recently, as of this evening, launched WebAuth.com, our new implementation of WebAuth protocol on the Proton network, allowing users to create wallets, send and sign transactions with Face ID, MetaMask, Yubikey.

I think what makes Proton unique is our vision for banking and cryptocurrency and how they can integrate.

In the future, we can have interoperability between blockchain and traditional financial institutions, and we are seeing the very beginning of this with the emergence of the world's first crypto banks.

We imagine banks, payment processors, and financial institutions integrating the Proton network to have lightning-fast payments, stronger regulation technology, and custody support through wrapped xtokens.

Q: What is Proton’s way to do NFTs?

Marshall: Proton believes NFTs have not only a future in art but also in legal contracts, property, access, DAO governance, and beyond. We are excited to help pioneer this space and build the technology for the future of NFT marketplaces. Recently we released an open-source marketplace for NFTs, sort of like WordPress for NFTs (https://blog.protonchain.com/proton-market-goes-open-source-unlocking-nfts-for-billions-around-the-world)

That inspired some members from our community to start building their own community-driven version of the marketplace, which you can see today at Protonmint.com

We are really excited to work with the community in building these technologies in the true spirit of open source.

We also believe transactions with NFTs should be gas-less and lightning-fast, and minting them should be extremely affordable.

This is a problem we have seen plaguing NFT adoption and is a comment we frequently hear in regards to Proton blockchain, how easy it is to mint new NFTs, new users can mint the first few NFTs for free, and all new user accounts are granted with enough RAM to send a considerable amount of transactions - this makes it extremely simple for new users.

If you need more RAM, you can check the prices at protonresources.com, and it's extremely affordable compared to any other L1 out there.

Q: What are Proton-wrapped cryptocurrencies, and why are they special?

Marshall: We've seen the popularity of WBTC on Ethereum and BTCB on Binance blockchain, but something we noticed was that very rarely was there a platform with a large number of blue-chip mainnet cryptocurrencies wrapped on any specific L1.

Furthermore, we haven't ever seen a blockchain that supports such wrapped assets that could allow staking of those wrapped tokens natively through smart contracts and oracles.

There is a lot of excitement for IBC interblockchain communication with Cosmos and Parachains with Polkadot.

We created our own wrapped tokens that are custodied by Metal (Metallicus Inc) in the same way WBTC is custodied by BitGo, we call them xtokens.

You can see them here on Proton Scan https://www.protonscan.io/tokens and get information on their market cap and token holders.

One of the things that makes this technology so special is that it allows, for example, micropayments of BTC and other top cryptocurrencies, and the ability for them to communicate in smart contracts on an extremely fast, relatively fee-less blockchain.

A good example of this is a startup that recently launched in El Salvador and is complementing the national "Chivo" wallet and Strike called "Bitcoin Libre" that uses XBTC for super fast fee-less micropayments https://www.bitcoinlibre.io

We think it's great for new users because when you expose someone to cryptocurrency for the first time, the concept of gas is usually foreign.

Q: Is there a way to earn passive income on the Proton blockchain?

Marshall: Yes, several!

Currently, you can earn XPR via liquidity and farming pools on Proton Swap https://www.protonswap.com/swap

liquidity pools: https://www.protonswap.com/pools

yield farms: https://www.protonswap.com/farms

And soon we will be launching Proton Lend https://protonlend.com

which will allow for DeFi lending and borrowing similar to COMP/MKR on Proton blockchain relying on $LOAN token for the governance of the protocol to determine lending, collateralization rates, and feature prioritization, among other DAO decisions.

Additionally, you can earn XPR through staking

https://www.protonscan.io/wallet/shortstaking/stake

You can see current staking rates here on Proton Scan protonscan.io

Q: What’s so special about Proton @names?

Marshall: We think this is a really unique and awesome feature of Proton, oftentimes users can't believe it - we've fielded a lot of questions when users are withdrawing Proton from KuCoin, they can't believe it was that easy.

The username is up to 12 characters and human-readable. You can try to quickly create one now without downloading any software using Web Authentication protocol via WebAuth.com

This is absolutely critical for user adoption when it comes to cryptocurrency, are you @steve or are you 0x3ej…? We think the former is much better.

And adding the concept of decentralized identity attestation this creates for foolproof addresses and stronger authentication into the future. This means better authentication, passwordless login, one-click painless signup, and beyond.

If you download the Proton Wallet for iOS or Android and you are in the US, you can try to verify your account and get what we call the blue checkmark of blockchain, which you can see visible on Protonscan.io and supported blockchain browsers

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/proton-wallet/id1516536231

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.metallicus.protonwallet

https://www.protonchain.com/wallet

Q: What are the future plans for Proton? Are there any updates you can share with us?

Marshall: We are really excited to begin to announce this week some of our new partners and investments from our core developer Metal/Metal VC into the Proton ecosystem who are planning on integrating Proton across various industries and very excited to roll out our new platform for payments and identity on Proton WebAuth.com which you can read more about here: https://twitter.com/protonxpr/status/1437634686440943618

Q: Revenue is an important aspect for all projects to survive and maintain the project. How have you been able to build a complete project, and what is the way to generate profit? What is the income model of this project?

Marshall: We have a very interesting model for decentralized governance, which forms a consortium of the top BPs and contributors to the ecosystem. This consortium is paid 1% annual inflation to the Proton Consortium who makes decisions at the request of the community, BPs, and network participants.

Metal (Metallicus Inc), the core developer, is already generating revenue today with a functional licensed MSB and exchange in the United States (metalpay.com), which is soon integrating Proton blockchain as its core backbone for non-custodial transfers, identity, and signing.

Q: Many projects rug pulled and exit scam recently. Why should investors trust your project not to do the same?

Marshall: Metal (Metallicus Inc), the core developer, has been actively developing in the blockchain space with Metal Pay and MTL token, myself - previously I have worked on such projects as Stellar and Dogecoin, launching my first crypto startup in 2013 https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2014/05/26/facebook-integrated-wallet-makes-sending-bitcoin-as-easy-as-messaging

The decentralized aspect of Proton's governance ensures that it has longevity and staying power. It is owned by the community and not any one individual.

Additionally, having its own decentralized trading and lending protocols ensure it is only reliant upon itself for liquidity, even though we have great exchange partners like KuCoin!

Q: How do you deal with the security threats of your project? Do you have any audits in recent times for trust?

Marshall: Yes, in fact, we completed a full code audit of the entire blockchain with Kudelski security and audit every single contract we deploy on Proton blockchain with partners OpenZeppelin, Peckshield, and reliable auditors

https://research.kudelskisecurity.com/2021/03/02/code-assessment-of-proton-chain/

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?

Marshall: Our new Director of Marketing, Gina Tiriakidou, just joined us previously from Oasis, Cartesi, Near, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and Namecheap. We are working closely in building our international crypto community with new ambassadors for all regions, especially Korea!

Q: How many team members do you have? Do they have enough experience in the blockchain field? Do they have any experience working on crypto and non-crypto projects?

Marshall: We have over 30 independent Block Producers on Proton who are actively contributing to the development and progression of the Proton blockchain. Additionally, Metal (Metallicus Inc), the core developer, has over 60 full-time employees who are building Proton directly and indirectly through open source development and the platform and products Metal is integrating.

Q: Southeast Asia is a very vibrant market, and there are many new platforms under development. So what do you think about Southeast Asia, and do you have plans to grow there?

Marshall: We are very excited to explore Southeast Asia and all of the opportunities in the area!

Q: Can you share with us your tokenomics? How much is the total and circulation supply of your tokens? Will there be a buyback system or token burning in the future?

Marshall: Proton blockchain had 10b XPR at genesis which were granted to the core developer Metal, 3% inflation per year split amongst Block Producers, Stakers and Proton Consortium, you can track here: protonscan.io/supply

Q: Do you have any coin burn/buyback systems or any token burn plans to increase the value of the token and attract investors to invest?

Marshall: Proton has a native burning mechanism built into its native trading protocol, Proton Swap (protonswap.com), which actively burns 0.1% of all trades with the exception of stakers who have discounted trading, you can read more about it here: https://twitter.com/protonxpr/status/1417175147081977858

Q: How important is the community to you? And how can we collaborate or help you with the development of the project?

Marshall: The community is everything to us, we really focus on this a lot, and I think any cryptocurrency project that is not focusing on community is missing the boat. Frequently you will find me in the Telegram, Reddit, and Discord of our community talking with everyone and even helping with technical issues. I believe in a very hands-on approach to community development and fostering an open, inclusive community.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to share or you want us to know?

Marshall: I want to really thank the KuCoin team, the KuCoin and Proton community for coming out tonight and supporting us, and being amazing.

Come and join the Proton community in our Telegram at: https://t.me/protonxpr

follow us on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/protonxpr

and subscribe on Reddit: reddit.com/r/protonchain

Thank you again!

KuCoin and Proton have prepared a total of 215,000 XPR to give away to AMA participants.

1. Free-ask section: 7,500 XPR

2. AMA activity: 207,500 XPR

Activity 1 — Quiz: 150,000 XPR

Activity 2 — Price Guess: 30,000 XPR

Participation Rewards: 27,500 XPR

. . .

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