VersoView Tokenomics AMA (06/04/21)
Welcome everyone to the VersoView Tokenomics AMA! I am Dr_Gemhunter and I will be moderating the AMA with the team today. I have prepared some general questions based on my research and afterwards we will open it up for anyone in the community to ask anything they wish.
Steve: Thanks Doc!
Julian: Thank you @Dr_Gemhunter for agreeing to moderate this AMA session with the community.
Dr_GemHunter: It’s my pleasure!
Julian: You have been a tremendous supporter of the project since almost the very beginning and your research into the Garuda partnership was quite impressive! We are glad to have a supporter like you promoting our work, while also holding us accountable to deliver at a high standard
Dr_GemHunter: Thank you for the kind words, Julian!
Let’s start today by doing a high level overview of the key metrics for the VersoView Tokenomics that you released last week. When you launched, you promised the community that the 40,000,000 circulating supply would remain constant through the first six months
Do you still think this commitment to no new emissions is possible?
Julian: Yes indeed, absolutely.
We have no plans to release additional tokens before June, exactly as we committed to on day one.
Our team is a talented group of professional entrepreneurs and executives who spent years planning VersoView, and that includes the detailed budgets that guide our operations.
We have the funding we need to execute our goals this quarter, without releasing any additional tokens.
Dr_GemHunter: Sounds great, Julian!
What can we expect for token releases in June when this commitment ends, and for the remainder of 2021?
Steve: I’ll answer this one. Our primary focus is always on delivering an optimal VersoView platform that will maximize value for our clients, our community and our team.
This year, that means driving hard to meet, or exceed, our development production goals for the existing clients using our Alpha program, leading up to Beta release this year that will allow us to onboard more clients across a range of sectors.
It means maintaining a robust VersoRewards Staking program throughout 2021 — and beyond — to incentivize and reward VVT holder loyalty, and to release new initiatives that showcase our focus on rewarding engagement, such as the VIP NFT program.
And lastly it means growing our team and properly incentivizing their work in meeting our objectives.
Alex: By the numbers this means in June, the circulating token supply will go to 43,800,000. This is a result of the Gold Staking Pool rewards hitting circulation.
The remainder of 2021 we project a total circulating supply of 69,000,000 at the end of the year, with the emissions coming from four pools, Marketing & Exchanges Pool, Development Pool, Staking Rewards Pool and Team Token Pool.
Dr_GemHunter: There is a lot to unpack in there! I caught you say “existing clients in our Alpha” Steve and we are coming back to that in a minute…
Steve: Ha! Yeh, I thought you’d pick up on that
Dr_GemHunter: hehe thats my job, Steve 😉.
Steve: Still impressed you put 1 and 1 together to get to Garuda. Made me smile
Dr_GemHunter: Everyone is really excited about the NFTs we keep hearing bits and pieces of as well, but let’s try to stay on track…
The emissions you are projecting are really low, and you have never held a traditional token fundraising round such as private, presale, IDO and ICO.
You mentioned running a Series A funding round which reduces the need for token emissions. Can you tell us more about this?
Tommo: I’ll take one. Sure!
I can’t get too detailed about it for legal reasons, but the general idea is that our Singapore based parent company of VersoView, is conducting an equity offering to qualified investors who also bring strategic value to the business (important!)
This will give us the capital we need to meet the financial demands of the next chapter in our corporate lifecycle :)
It’s quite common for blockchain projects to just ‘sell off’ tokens to meet these demands, but we decided to not do that.
Since day 1, we’ve always tried to reduce negative market pressure as much as possible which is why we launched in silent mode last December with no VC or private sale tokens deal in place which ultimately unlock at some point and could create a massive dump on the community
Dr_GemHunter: I love that, and the community appreciates it I’m sure!
Has it presented any challenges doing it this way?
Julian: Everything is a give and take and has pros and cons
We have had to be selective in our spending, and manage budgets to prioritize certain elements of the business at specific times, and the biggest area this has impacted is marketing thus far.
Tommo: Buttt, that will change. We know marketing is important and we are allocating more funds towards marketing. The community has been vocal about it, and for good reason.
It’s been a bit of a challenge, from a narrative point (we had feedback that we tried to say so much that it wasn’t comprehensible) so we’re tweaking that but will keep our integrity as a company. We’re pretty far along, it’s great.
Dr_GemHunter: Great! Okey, let’s circle back. You indicated multiple Alpha clients:
Is there more than Garuda Indonesia?
Alex: You don’t miss anything, do you? Yes, there is more than one..
Dr_GemHunter: I do my best 😄
Julian: We have several other projects running on the Alpha client currently.
Dr_GemHunter: Wow, thats amazing, guys!
Julian: These are still bound by NDA, and several are running on internal corporate servers for security reasons, but it won’t be like that forever.
Steve: NDAs everyone… tread lightly
Julian: You will see more from our clients soon
Dr_GemHunter: Yeah, I see. However, time for me to do some research 😉
Alex: Please don’t! You nearly gave me a heartattack the day you questioned me about Garuda😫
Steve: Unleash the hounds!
Dr_GemHunter: I’m sorry for that! But that’s what I do, and the community expects it! 😉
What about these NFTs, can you tell us anything else right now?
Alex: I can’t disclose a lot right now unfortunately, for a variety of reasons that I also can’t discuss yet… But its coming soon!
The program will be announced before the Silver pool matures this month which is in about two weeks. I’m probably not supposed to do this but no one has fired me yet, so YOLO I guess lol…
Here is a sneak peak of an art draft of the first VIP NFT!
Dr_GemHunter: Holy shit, that is awesome!!! I love it!
I need one of these, how do we get them?
Alex: Everyone who completed Bronze or who completes Silver, Community and/ or Gold earns one of these. And there will be another one available for the next wave of pools that follow Silver, Community and Gold.
Beyond that I REALLY can’t say anymore about it, I’ve gone way past the line already
Dr_GemHunter: Cool, thats great! Okey then back on topic. I think the biggest question I keep hearing from the community is around the surplus supply
The Tokenomics release shows that you never exceed 250,000,000 VVT in circulation so why do you need 2,000,000,000?
Tommo: Yeah I mean, valid question right? If I was an investor, I’d want that cleared up and out of the way as soon as possible, which is why we released the Tokenomics ahead of Whitepaper.
It gets complex when you start to look behind the scenes at how the tokens flow in and out of circulation over the years.
Alex: We do emit more than 250,000,000 TOTAL but the revenue mechanics create buyback, locks and shift over time where the tokens end up, and the result is that the total in circulation does not exceed 250 mil at any one time.
Lots of those tokens will be in use by our platform clients locked in Smart Contracts for their rewards programs, so while we maintain low circulating supply, we still need the two billion tokens for the token economic model to function.
Dr_GemHunter: Yes that makes sense I remember you discussing that with Brad Laurie on his show.
Tommo: Alex talked about it during the Blockchain Brad interview, here’s a 2–3 minute snippet https://twitter.com/VersoView/status/1374346139391123459
Dr_GemHunter: Thanks for the link!
Alex: We discuss bits and pieces here and there
Steve: The Brad interview is well worth checking out as it offers more insight.
Dr_GemHunter: absolutely!
Steve: Yes, initially it seems complex, but we know it creates a well-considered balance between a healthy token eco-system that enjoys strong utility, and delivering a best-in-class solution.
Dr_GemHunter: That concludes my portion of the questions for today, thank you for your answers. I will open it up to the community now if there are any other questions.
Steve: Thanks Dr G.
Tommo: Thanks Dr Gem! I just discussed with the team, the best question gets $500 in $VVT tokens
Dr_GemHunter: oh wow, thats awesome!
Community Questions:
Cryptokong: Hey, I’ve come from UREEQA. I was delighted to see how you’re Garuda Indonesia partnership almost instantly led UREEQA to partner with the same client. Do you think this will be similar for other clients going forward? And, likewise, do you think the same will happen vice versa? With UREEQA’s musicians and creators etc.
Alex: They were connected by us and yes it will be exactly like this, as we work with projects we introduce them to our clients. Similar things are already happening with other partners both those we have already annonxed and some still under NDA
Steve: Sometimes getting a client over the line — esp in blockchain — is a huge leap but once they have made that leap, the floodgats open to their receptiveness
Cryptokong: Bullish
Alex: We have A LOT of clients. I dont say that lightly. And they can benefit from A LOT of different blockchain solutions (far beyond the scope of what our platform will offer them)
We just look for opportunities to add value to both our client relationships and to our partnerships and by doing so, we add value for our token holders!
Cryptokong: Thanks for the good answers guys. I have another similar question. Another partnership I saw you have (as do UREEQA) is netvrk. Could you please elaborate a bit on the use cases of Versoview in the VR space. Would it be used to build up a cyber community? Or could you incorporate your actual application into netvrks universe?
Alex: Yes indeed, we are really close with the NetVRk team, and the usecase is REALLY cool. I cant get too detailed yet because its all under heavy NDA but its focused on delivering education resources. And thats just the project we are working on RIGHT NOW. We also have a list of things to tackle once both platforms are a little bit more along in the dev release.
@F0gel00: That’s really cool
Alex: It is. I cant wait to talk about it more. Soon i think we will at least be able to market the overview of the project collab
@F0gel00: Man, all these Ferrum partners are building a whole ecosystem (FRM, VVT, NetVRk, URQA)
Cryptokong: Very interesting… Versoview does seem like it’s got wide appeal. Do you plan to target a specific “market” first? E.g. education. That could help simplify messaging. Or do you have the resources to target multiple sectors at once?
Alex: Corporate publishing is our “low hanging fruit” but we have MoUs for a wide variety of use cases across a range of industries. Education is a big one, we are working with several Unis. Everything takes longer than you think it will though. Signing an MoU is great, but its just a piece of paper and doesnt do much except hype.
We prefer to market REAL development so things are coming but by the time you guys hear about it, its a fully fledged project, not just a marketing gimmick
Steve: There’s so many entry-points for clients. One example would be media agencies who service and communicate with multiple clients… onboarding those will naturally lead to conversations with a proportion of their client base who are then using VersoView with that supplier.
Cryptokong: Great stuff. I agree with that marketing approach. No point announcing announcement’s announcements
Alex: Exactly. Sometimes it means things seem quiet or as though nothings happening but it couldnt be farther from the reality.
Cryptokong: Do you have any initiatives in planning about community led marketing or rewarding it? E.g community mining (reward people with micro rewards for social media engagement). Also, this could be incorporated into your Versoview app right?
Alex: Good question; yeah it’s a bit of a debate. We are opening up a Discord right now (discord has good marketing tools) and I’m always for community involvement contests — in a way the staking pools are also community rewards (extra rewards, whitelisting). For the rest, our entire product revolves around publish, engage and reward. To keep someone enticed you’d need to reward them (simple as that) and once we add that piece to the platform, it’s much easier to do so :).
If anyone here has a good suggestion regarding community based contests, feel free to hit me up!
Cryptokong: That sounds goooood. Like to see you’re open to feedback and suggestions from the community
@JooshuaF: I’m here for everything NFT. What’s the idea on incorporating this into VersoView?
Alex: Reward. It is so central to what we do its part of the tagline Publish. Engage. Reward. NFTs initially will be a primary reward function on the platform, and later will become much more central to how we move and transfer artistic and IP/ information assets on the platform. If you want to sell your story/ art/ report etc, simply NFT it and distribute it.
@CaptainCooked420: Thanks for doing this AMA, just wanted to know how things are progressing with our partners Morpheus Network, Wordproof, Ureeqa, Ferrum & NetVRk
Tommo: They all play a part in our ecosystem, wordproof/ureeqa do something else than Morpheus/Ferrum and NETVRk obviously, but they are giving us access to their rolodex to increase our clients and accelerate growth. The good part is that we’re always talking to them and seeing what we can do for each other, both in present and in the future. We are doing our best to avoid ‘empty’ partnerships, since MoU’s are easy, but doing work together needs commitment and resources.
We are talking to a lot of blockchain projects lately (few a week) and plenty have synergies, but we want to announce these when we, together, get a bit further in :) — for some that’s close, others it’s a bit further away!
@MR_Crypto_No1: Thanks for the AMA! What is your financial forecast regarding subscriptions. How will you be positioned at the end of the year?
Steve: Our long-term funding will come from multiple subscriber levels as well as other avenues, including advertising. We realistically estimate a large user base to initially select the free option, but even that leads to income through advertising as well as other incidentals including band width. At year end, depending on where we are with dev (I have to say that to be conservative) we would realisticlly be ploughing income back into marketing and awareness
@MR_Crypto_No1: Another question: Are there any benefits holding the NFT? Will they be saleable or do you get additional rewards like when you provide liquidity on Uniswap?
Alex: The NFTs are more than just art. They are FILLED with utility. I cant say more on it now.
@F0gel00: What are your plans for international marketing? E.g. with non-English language markets
Steve: We’ve been publishing in multiple langauges for literally decades… one of our first titles had something like 18 languages in it, including some of the ‘harder’ ones such as Sinhalese, Arabic, Cantonese, etc… so it’s not just a case of left to right reading, or right-to-left for Arabic, it’s also displaying and interacting that with empathy.
We currently have TG channels in Vietman and Japan
@F0gel00: Oh wow. Cool answer, as you point out, the context of the language is hugely important. Translation is far more than just a ‘literal’ process (my mind was opened by a translating poetry module back during my Master’s degree). You guys clearly have good experience here anyway
Steve: Yeh, there’s a HUGE difference between translation and transliteration. One kinda spells out the, whiel the other offers the essence of what’s being said.
We’ve done thousands of pages in Arabic for instance (they have the most beautiful alphabet which also gives them the best grafitti) so have so much knowledge around specififc languages that also extend to cultural differences and more… I could go on for ages!
@sebubabu: I love that you guys jumped in creating mobile apps (I am an app developer myself). Is there a strategy regarding the further development of your apps? Will we see more of them in the future or was eColours one of its kind?
Alex: Yes eColours is just a prototype, and MVP basically. The REAL product is in heavy dev led by Rohit Silva and his team. It will be central VersoView branded much the same as the Alpha was more a whitelabel prototype.
It is dramatically more feature rich already and continues to grow weekly.
