Illuminati Round Table Call Notes:
Introducing Nick Odio - Chief Growth Officer for Ferrum Network
Twitter: @crypt_odio
Been at $FRM for 2 years and in WEB3 since 2017
$FRM started in 2018 and raised $1.2M at the peak of the bull run and launched during crypto winter 2019
They had to be creative with how to survive the bear market, especially with their small funding
They deployed a smart contract-based staking program (back when it was novel) for users to lock up their tokens for yield
This allowed them to build an ecosystem of partners - “The Iron Alliance”
Ferrum is the Latin word for Iron
This led them to build Ferrum advisory services - an incubator for new projects, and they've done roughly 3 dozen projects so far
Introduce them to VCs and the Iron alliance to help them launch
This innovative period allowed them to survive 2 bear markets and thrive
Currently building a multichain DEX aggregator that allows you to swap anything for anything anywhere and easily
Interoperability is more profound than just bridges - Interoperability 2.0 = the ability to move arbitrary data across networks
Allows projects to draw on the different skills of all the networks at once
What is Interoperability 2.0?
The lack of knowledge on this comes from a lack of understanding and the focus initially on just bridging and figuring out DeFi platforms
Bridges are very popular for exploits, and then bridging contract is prioritized because it takes in tokens and then pushes out a new-minted wrapped version that inflates the supply
The bridge minting tokens is bad, and then honey traps can occur, as we’ve seen - $2.5B has been lost this way in the last 18 months
People are bridging so they can participate in a different ecosystem
So why not just remove the bridge and make it all one process as opposed to the current 7-8 step process
Multi-swap - multichain DEX aggregator that allows you to swap any token on any network for any token on another network as long as the liquidity exists
This eliminates the need for wrapped tokens, and the transactions are routed through USDC
Interoperability 2.0 is a necessary change to improve how you move assets from chain to chain - they're figuring out how to get the different programming languages to ‘speak’ to each other
Code it in one language, and you can deploy the app on a different network
True interoperability is multichain everything - DEXs, dApps, etc.
This makes the crypto space more capital efficient
Cross-chain VS Multichain
Cross-chain could be more present as you move from 1 chain to another using a mint-and-burn mechanism and wrapping tokens
Whereas, Multichain is omnipresent - the tokens existing on all chains at once and easily movable
Polkadot is leaning more into multichain by allowing projects on their Dotsama ecosystem to exist on different networks
The limiting factor of such a network is the difficulty of breaking out of the box they’re kept in
Dotsama
Polkadot does very well at building a developer-centric environment
Looking at developer activity DOT is the highest of all chains, but on user activity, it is one of the lowest
Dots ecosystem is full of developers, valuable products and builders, but no one is talking about it - they need to improve marketing to make it more known
Polkadot provides a network for people to build networks on but getting people to adopt a new ecosystem is a complex task, especially with EVM reigning supreme
DOT has 3 layers - the internet of networks, the L1s and then the apps, so it's a bit more complex, especially in terms of revenue
A user-friendly multichain wallet is needed to complete the puzzle
The ordinary person in crypto using platforms like Coinbase would struggle to use Metamask, so even the best need to improve
Market prediction
The market will continue to move sideways for most of 2023, and no ATHs until late 2023
In six weeks, BTC will be $18K
In six months, BTC will be $24k
But all are highly dependent on the macro view
Fundamentally, the market is much stronger than it was in the bull market
Any heavy downward movement would have to be driven by heavy-handed regulators or anything massive outside web3
Interoperability & Dotsama