Thank you to the NanoNews Community for participating in Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Xend Finance March 31, 2021. This guest star Chima Abafor, CTO of Xend Finance. If you were unable to join the live AMA, no worries, here comes our 110th AMA recap!
We are glad to meet here:
Abafor Chima, CTO of Xend Finance
For taking your time out from busy schedule for the AMA!
Host: How are you feel today sir?
Abafor: Thank you… Great to be here..
Host: Nice, Our community hopes to talk and learn more about Xend Finance
Introduction Session
Q1. Could you give an introduction of yourself And how you can play an important role in Xend Finance?
I am Chima Abafor, the CTO for Xend Finance, and I mainly focus on the Technologies used in Xend Finance, such as Google cloud, Web Apps deployment and management, the product and its design as well as technologies used to enhance the teams operations.
I’m very much interested in cryptocurrency and building apps that run on the blockchain since 2016. With my team, we have built multiple apps such as a Blockchain wallet for BTC and ERC20 tokens, A database using IPFS, and an NFT based game, called CryptoBarons.
The team is made up of experienced professionals with backgrounds in mathematics, finance, cryptography, and blockchain development, working for some of Africa’s largest employers, including KPMG, Chevron, and Stanbic Bank. They were also part of Google Developer Launchpad Cohort 4.
Q2. What is Xend Finance? And how is the story behind the Xend Finance Creation?
Xend Finance was formed from the need to protect the value of the savings and contributions of individuals who use Fiat currencies from devaluations as a result of unstable economies.
Xend was incubated by Binance Labs and also accelerated by Google LaunchPad accelerator.
We experienced 3 massive currency devaluations in the last 3 years in Nigeria and this is similar to different economies in the world with unstable economies. We realize that despite saving regularly, we were becoming poorer and losing more value for our money.
This gave birth to Xend Finance. Xend Finance is built to save our money in a decentralized stable currency (BUSD and DAI) and also earn interest in that stable currency, hence protecting our assets. It is also designed to extend our contribution strategy called Esusu to a much larger audience without the fear of defaulting and also with the advantage of very high returns.
Q3. What is so exciting about Xend Finance, which might make Xend Finance different from all other projects out there?
Our competitive advantage is built on the following points
- We own a hybrid ecosystem [DeFi + Traditional Finance]. We have an ever growing userbase in the traditional finance space and we are leveraging this userbase by bringing them into our DeFi protocol.
- Our target audience is quite different from the existing DeFi audience. We target non-crypto users, financially underserved users and users in unstable economies that need their assets to be protected by any means necessary. We are the answers to their prayers.
- Easy integration for software developers. We make live easy for software engineers by abstracting the complexity of building directly on the blockchain with our mobile and web SDKs. The SDKs make it easy for non-blockchain software engineers to plug into DeFi.
Host: So, what are you basically focusing on these products and ecosystems for Nigeria Country?
Abafor: Our core target markets include African markets as well as economies with unstable currencies, although the solution we have built is not location dependent and can be used by anyone in any part of the world.
Q4. Please provide some information about your Roadmap, How Xend Finance is progressing so far? And what Xend Finance is currently focused on?
Our long term vision is to give these credit unions unrestricted access to the global money market and have up to 10% of the union members actively using our platform annually.
You can see our roadmap here: https://daomaker.com/sho/xend_finance
Q1 2021
Xend Finance Mainnet launch on Ethereum Blockchain ✅
Web and Mobile SDK for developers for easy integration into existing crypto and fiat wallets✅
More development on Binance Smart Chain Blockchain Development and Testnet Implementation✅
$XEND TGE✅✅
Partnership with Credit Unions and Cooperatives✅
Fiat to Crypto on-ramp and off-ramp integration for Asia and Africa✅
Q2 2021
Partnership with Credit Unions
Listing on more exchanges
Mainnet Launch on Binance Smart Chain
Polygon (Previously known as Matic Network) Integration
Q3 2021
Support for multiple crypto assets
Partnership with credit unions
Fiat to Crypto on-ramp and off-ramp integration for Europe and North America
Governance: $XEND holders will be able to propose, vote and approve proposals
Q4 2021
Support for multiple crypto assets
Listing on more exchanges
Partnership with Credit Unions
Q5. Please tell us more about Token ($XEND) Whaten! What utilities does the token have, and what benefits will tokens holders get?
Utilities include
👉Rewards users for savings deposit made on the smart contract
👉Generates interest for $XEND holders when $XEND burn occurs
👉Governance: $XEND holders can propose governance actions which are executable codes
👉Lending and multi-level interest
You can learn more on the problem we are solving from the Whitepaper: https://xend.finance/XendFinanceLitePaper.pdf
Q6. What are some achievement that Xend Finance has achieved so far? And what are Xend Finance upcoming plans, Especially in 2021?
We have been able to secure backing for Tier one investors such as Binance, Google Launchpad, NGC, HashKey, AU21, TRGC and other great investors.
- Our mainnet is live: https://bsc.xend.finance
- We have concluded Mainnet Audit on BSC
- We have signed partnerships with real world credit unions
- We have acquired over 55,000 users on our Xend Ecosystem
Twitter Session
Q1. Xend Finance is a Nigerian protocol, based in that country. How difficult has been growing as a platform in Nigeria, what are the regulations for digital currencies there?
Xend Finance is not a Nigerian protocol, let me correct that. The beauty of the blockchain is that it is decentralized and not restricted to any particular geographical location.
Currently we have partnered with local cryptocurrency on-ramps and off-ramps in Africa and Asia and we are working on more partnerships in different regions of the world.
A lot of our staff work remotely from different parts of the world.
On the issue of regulation, it does not stop us from operating, only that users cannot interact with banks. This is fine for us because we dont even as a company bank account. Everything is crypto and our users can purchase assets via p2p methods…
Q2. There are two ways on how to save with Xend Finance, first is to save with Credit Union and second is save as an individual. So can you tell us the advantages of both savings? For investors, what probably is more preferable and profitable as individual or join with credit union?
The main products we have with Xend Finance is Savings
For now, we have 3 savings categories:
- Flexible and Fixed Savings: Flexible and fixed savings are personal savings that doesn’t require you to save with someone else.
- Esusu: In this savings method, users form groups and they save the money together in a savings pool. The interest generated is distributed to each user at a certain period until every user has collected their interest, then the capital is released.
- Cooperative Savings: In this savings method, users form groups and they save the money together in a savings pool. The interest and capital is distributed evenly to all users at the end of a certain lockup period.
Other features include:
- Insurance (Decentralized Insurance)
- Multiple blockchain support (Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain)
- Support for both web 2.0 and web 3.0 web and mobile apps using our SDK
The more profitable on is Esusu and Credit Union. We are promoting saving in groups
Q3. Xend Finance is the first protocol to target a market sector with over $ 2.2 Trillion AUM in global credit unions. What is Xend’s main target this year? Is it only for Crypo and non Crypto people to focus on this project and how do you motivate it?
The global credit union market size is over $1.4 Trillion with over 250m annual members globally. We believe that this industry needs DeFi. These credit unions and cooperatives in the 3rd world countries face problems such as lack of good financial services, stead devaluations and unstable economies. This is the time to use DeFi to cause a major disruption in the traditional credit union industry. By focusing on these traditional credit unions and cooperatives we will be bringing non-crypto savvy users to the crypto space and this will provide a massive amount of funds into DeFi as well as improve the overall crypto market while driving adoption.
We motivate them now by giving rewards in $XEND Tokens for them to save.
Host: Very good, mass adoption will really happen over time. will Xend Finance later open a Mining Pool such as Staking and LP Staking for $XEND Holders in addition to saving those products?
Abafor: Yes.. We have an announcement coming very soon on this
Q4. Is your platform trully accurate, reliable, cost effective, complete and faster forecasts to identify relevant information for crypto investments decisions? And how does Xend Finance plan to be at the forefront of its innovative technology?
I really dont know the intention of this question. Xend Finance is a DeFi platform, not a news blog for crypto investment decisions
Q5. On moving forward through your roadmap, what are your most important next priorities/Milestone? Does Your Project have enough fundamental (Funds, Community, ect) to achieve those milestones?
We have the required funds and community support to achieve the milestones that I shared earlier.
Live AMA
Q1. Xend Finance is the first Defi platforms based on Africa so I suppose that your target users doesn’t know much about Cryptocurrencies, so what are you plans to reduce with limitation and obtain a greater adoption?
Education. we are going to educate them and partner with the credit union societies, which we have already started doing.
Q2. Ways to Save with Xend Finance: Save with a Credit Union and Saving as an Individual, What is the difference between these two methods? and which will be more readily available to investors? Would you please tell me, How can I save and stake at the same time?
The main products we have with Xend Finance is Savings
For now, we have 3 savings categories:
- Flexible and Fixed Savings: Flexible and fixed savings are personal savings that doesn’t require you to save with someone else.
- Esusu: In this savings method, users form groups and they save the money together in a savings pool. The interest generated is distributed to each user at a certain period until every user has collected their interest, then the capital is released.
- Cooperative Savings: In this savings method, users form groups and they save the money together in a savings pool. The interest and capital is distributed evenly to all users at the end of a certain lockup period.
Staking features will be announced soon.
Q3. Security is very important and valued by today’s users. Can you describe the security that Your project ??? And if there is a hack, is there insurance for investors? (Because nothing is impossible ,,,, If God said it happened ,, well it happened)
Security is our utmost priority. We are very particular about smart contract hacks and failures and that is why we have the best audit firm auditing our smart contracts and reports have already been published. See Report here: https://medium.com/xendfinance/xend-finances-smart-contract-audit-has-been-successfully-completed-by-certik-20eb6e159569
Our contracts are also protected by Decentralized insurance to protect assets of users. We are going to be working on our developer community where we will organize bug bounties, hackathons etc to help improve the security of our protocol.
Q4. Can you briefly describe what is your project in 3-5 sentences? And what is your Mission and Vision?
Xend Finance is a De-Fi platform for cooperatives and credit unions that provides multi-levels of interest by optimizing and aggregating different De-Fi lending protocols with the aim of providing high stable currency yields and token rewards to the financially underserved living in unstable economies.
We are going to be the first DeFi credit union or cooperative platform in the world and the market size is over $1.4 Trillion with over 250m annual members globally. We believe that this industry needs DeFi as it’s used primarily in third world countries where the Banking systems are not in good shape and are ripe to be disrupted by Crypto
Our long term vision is to have up to 10% of the union members actively using our platform annually.
Q5. Truly, you’ve done AMA in many telegram groups, so what next, what other way will you make XEND project more popular?
Working more with Traditional Media
👉TV Interviews
👉YOUTUBE ADS and Later on TV Adverts Like DSTV, Sky News
👉Key Influencer Adverts or KOLs | Physical ones that people can relate to.
👉 Creating FB, IG, LKDN, social pages to create viral content
👉 Printing shirts and swags for the community in different countries
👉 Country focused / targeted marketing – Need to study the needs of different markets
👉 Collaboration with Local FinTech App Partners and Local media agencies
Q6. Why did you decide that the Xend Finance token will be part of the ETH blockchain? Considering that the operations are much slower and its fee is high
Our platform is live on Binance Smart chain with low gas fees. https://bsc.xend.finance
Q7. What are the plans to educate and raise awareness and adoption among the community to make more people understand about #Xend project easily?
Building Educational content
👉Creating a knowledgebase for anyone to use the platform
👉 Video Lessons
👉 Knowledgebase Articles
👉 Partnership with Educational Content creators / apps to have these part of their lessons
👉 Create a free course on learning platforms for people to learn how to use the platform
👉 Local ambassadors to organize trainings and seminars in their local countries
Thank you for trusting NanoNews as the organizer of the event today, hopefully everyone can understand about Xend Finance
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