Thank you to everyone who joined AMA Blockelite x TerraCredit DAO on 1st May at 3 PM UTC I 10 PM (UTC+7). Here is the recap for those who missed this AMA.
Our special guest today is Dan Ronchese – CEO of TerraCredit DAO
Segment 1: Introduction about TerraCredit DAO and Dan Ronchese – CEO of TerraCredit DAO
Q1: Can you briefly introduce yourself as well as about TerraCredit DAO?
Dan Ronchese – CEO of TerraCredit DAO: My name is Dan, Daniele Marco Ronchese to be exact. I am a South African born Italian citizen, currently living in South Africa. Growing up in Johannesburg is quite a unique experience and affords one a highly contrasted split view of life. I grew up in Sandton, the richest square mile in Africa
Our political transition happened in my early teens and by the time I was ready to join the work force, things had changed a lot.
The reason I started TerraCredit was primarily due to the inspiration bitcoin ignited in me, back in 2012, I loved the transparency and control it presented and instantly saw the value of it over bank services. I wanted to use blockchain to address the issue of bank worthiness amongst the vast majority of my fellow countrymen, women and children by making CREDIT open access and decentralized in design.
By 2017 our research advanced and we were able to draw instant similarities between the issues on our doorstep and those that face any human in a developing country. Endemic greed and corruption are accepted as normal, the same as poverty and hopelessness. Living in informal settlements means no chance to fulfill a banks FICA requirements and an income so small bank fee’s make it a bad option.
So at the end of the day there are 2Bn adults around the world who are unbanked and a further 2Bn adults who are underbanked. We see these individuals as our target user and we aim to use blockchain and decentralized applications to delivery a digital wallet and services that feel just like a bank account.
As CEO I will only be satisfied that we have achieved our goals, when I am able to close all of my bank accounts and use my own product for every aspect of my payments. I am dedicated to unbanktheplanet which means every person. Which means we seek to unbank the banked as much as we seek to bank the unbanked. Because the coin able to achieve this will indeed achieve mass adoption. Most high value investment in the prices of today are from companies, investment firms and indirectly rich private individuals who are investing fiat with no control or direct access to their coins. There is a much bigger issue at play here one that we have taken seriously for a long time, we need to bring every person to crypto to ensure its ultimate safety.
We are the coin designed for mass adoption and because of this we have an organic process that is forever adapting whilst staying true to some core principles. Accessibility, low fee’s, fast transactions and decentralization.
Q2: What benefits will “CREDIT 3.0” bring to users? What makes TerraCredit DAO special than other blockchains?
Dan Ronchese – CEO of TerraCredit DAO: Credit 3.0 is our 4th blockchain and it’s completely unique, the most notable difference is we are adding the EVM (Ethereum Virtual machine) to allow for CRC20 smart-contracts. Our new chain will be the same as before, essentially BTC fork using POS allowing for instant transactions. CRC20 smartcontracts are submitted to the CREDIT blockchain using the same code, tools and logic as with ERC20. The stark difference will be found in the low costs, even when compared to other smartchains.
Our chain will instantly benefit from over 60,000 distributed nodes as we have developed a large community over the last 3 years, a community we have trained on how to run desktop wallets.
Our version of POS has always been to reward the producer for larger commitment and this will be true again in CREDIT 3.0.
Apart from the benefit of staking, our chain comes ready for Defi and NFT, even though they are fads and come and go quickly, our instant interoperability using the EVM means those developers don’t need to learn anything to work on CRC20 dapp’s.
I believe that after Ethereum will be the 2nd most decentralized smartchain, with the lowest costs.
Q3: Can you explain how TerraCredit DAO works? What role do CREDIT tokens play in the TerraCredit DAO ecosystem?
Dan Ronchese – CEO of TerraCredit DAO: Our new DAO will be setup as a CRC20 smartcontract and holders will play a role in the governance of the project, including easy adjustment of blockrewards and other specs without the need to hard fork.
Allocation and distribution of foundation funds is also delegated by holders, who care to participate. These are all features we are retaining from the previous DAO which was delivered as a complete blockchain solution.
The CREDIT token is used for GAS, fee’s and to facilitate fast payments.
Q4: TerraCreditDAO Limited Token Sale has just started recently. Can you introduce a little bit about it? What are the conditions and benefits of joining?
Dan Ronchese – CEO of TerraCredit DAO: It’s a not a typical token sale, let me tell you why. Our project is launched with a live blockchain in 2018. Until this sale there has only been one direct investor, me 😊
After 3 years you learn a lot about your business and where you want it to be, the token sale was suggested by the community and mulled over for about a year.
Last year September I said to myself, when the market pumps then we must do the sale.
So we watched and waited and once we received the confirmation we set about making it happen. Its no secret you need money to make money and I guess by now some of you might be shocked that you did not know about us before.
That’s totally normal, we have always been underfunded or at least on a shoe string. We have lacked the funds to execute a global viral campaign to ensure everyone knows about us.
And we have achieved a lot on that shoestring. One of the biggest issue with CREDIT is peoples love for it, staking earns well and most coins are out of circulation.
This poses an issue at exchanges, liquidity or the lack of it means that even a $1000.00 buy would pump the price 25% plus.
The token sale allows us to do a few things effectively, 1. Raise money 2. Improve liquidity . 3. Lock up coins All of these factors combine to give us a strong market position https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/credit/
We are confident in our plans to the point that. On the day we deliver the blockchain (TBA) we will remove all discounts associated with the sale.
NB: Which means that any coins currently available, which have a discount applied are pure profit in a few weeks when we go live.
Q5: What is your market strategy to help you build a great community and attract more users to join your project?
Dan Ronchese – CEO of TerraCredit DAO: This is an ongoing conundrum, the market is ever changing and a large amount of money is often wasted. We have noticed that stop start campaigns based on limited funds have little to no effect.
We have our own decentralized exchange and wallet, called TerraBit, which is incentivized and shares trade fee’s with users based on referrals. terracredit.app
The new DAO is being setup with a large fund for marketing and advertising etc but for now the focus is on the sale and raising the money needed to go viral.
After 3 years we benefit from many more users than we thought, they number over 100,000 active users and more than 3 x that on our old centralized app. We have at times over 30,000 solo producers, directly supporting the blockchain via POS staking. We always try to leverage that power first by asking the community to engage in active promotion of our project.
So far its the key to success for us, but we endeavour to maximize exposure at all times.
Once funded, we intend to do a major overhaul with a qualified partner, to formulate a marketing plan and execute a largescale global campaign to grow our users. Until then we will continue as the tortoise, slowly edging forward, gaining ground and growing.
Who win’s that race again, was it the tortoise or the hare ?
In our short time we have seen many come and go, but we are still waiting for our tipping point.
Speed=money 🙂 We are working out the money part so I guess speed will come.
Segment 2: Twitter questions
Q1: The current fee of the TerraCredit Network is very cheap, So, where will the project’s revenue come from to maintain the project? Does this have too much influence on maintaining funds to continue developing and upgrading technology?
Dan Ronchese – CEO of TerraCredit DAO: In the truest sense of decentralization we seek to design a blockchain that rewards producers through block rewards. Our current block reward is 50 coins and just like Bitcoin its set to halve every 4 years. This deflationary mechanism ensures that the new supply is always decreasing and that producers play a role in driving the price up.
We are in the process of crowdfunding the new DAO, we will be well funded
Our focus is to make staking CREDIT an easy and rewarding activity, which incentivizes users to stake and HODL rather than trade. Which drives demand by removing coins from circulation. and improves decentralization by adding thousands of nodes.
As a previously unfunded project we have done a lot, developed a lot, many products, ultimately we combined the ones work keeping. We have never had issues related to development, founded in l;ack of funds, we are developers this is what we do, but yeah marketing etc needs a lot of money.
Q2: At this moment, which one the most Necessary for your project: 1. Investors 2. Community 3. Market/Exchange and why?
Dan Ronchese – CEO of TerraCredit DAO: The answer will always be 2. Community, it’s a simple truth. Every community member brings a portion of their income, into the blockchain by hedging their fiat or exchanging their crypto to CREDIT. This is essentially the market cap, based on price and supply.
We like to use basic math, simple truth’s in our goal orientation. In my opinion its easier to focus on growing the userbase to 10m then it is to try and get into the top 10 of all coins.
Naturally there is a lot more that go’s with it. l in both cases, but essentially 10m users, our goal, is the catalyst needed to compete with the top 10.
We are where we are thanks to our passionate community. Their testimonies and personal referrals within their social structures both on and offline is how we have grown to this point. And a very passionate group of people we are, a genuine love for CREDIT is displayed by the majority of holders.
Q3: Currently, NFT is very hot, do you think you will apply NFT technology to your products in the future?
Dan Ronchese – CEO of TerraCredit DAO: The new CRC20 smartcontracts allow for instant NFT creation, custodianship is another story but the platform for creation, exchange and transactions is there.
Our opensource platform allows unlimited access to full functionality of the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) so developers can cross over instantly. Our hackathon scheduled during the open beta will definitely create some hype about the possibilities and the bounties for Dapp creation will bring a large following. NFT and Defi its all possible on the new chain.
Blockelite Host: NFT, why not?
Dan Ronchese – CEO of TerraCredit DAO: Its 100% possible, but with any smartchain its user applications that thrive. We have no intentions to create NFT’s but that does not stop anyone from using our chain to create them.
Q4: Is KYC a requirement to be able to fully operate with this PROJECT?
Dan Ronchese – CEO of TerraCredit DAO: No, it was in the past on our old centralized app. Now with its new replacement Terrabit 2.0 it is fully decentralized and whilst our partners like moonpay or paystack may require it use their fiat service, KYC is essentially managed on their systems and used only for their services.
Our project is open to the world and secured through decentralization.
Your keys your money.
Q5: Can you share your experience and journey with the TerraCredit project? What is the biggest achievement you are most proud of?
Dan Ronchese – CEO of TerraCredit DAO: I started the project alone, literally as one man with a dream. That was a long time ago and now 3 years later I am surrounded by a team we developed organically from community members and many many thousands of active users.
We have so many testimonies over the years, especially during lock down, on how staking CREDIT kept families going.
Other successes in my opinion include:
being officially tracked by coinmarketcap https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/credit/ which adds weight to what I have been telling you all today.
Take a look and you will see that to date we are almost 1,000,000 % ROI, we recently added $10m to our market cap and entered the top 1000 coins.
We also had our ATH at $0.15 which thrust us into the top gainers, making us number 1 top gainer for almost a day.
We are also proud of exchange partners, bitforex, catex and hotbit all of whom support us and work closely with the team over the last few years.
We are officially listed by coinpayments who support CREDIT transactions and offer a free wallet which allows anyone to use their (coinpayments) advanced plugins and services to accept CREDIT for online and instore transactions.
We are also partnered with moonpay and paystack to allow seamless integration between crypto and fiat, all executed on our decentralized wallet and exchange. We were in the first 5 DEX’s to adopt moonpay for credit card transactions.
Terracredit.app is a point of pride, check it out.
A lot of these things may seem commonplace but they are big achievements for a previously unfunded project. Now that we are taking care of our funding we are really set to fly.
Segment 3: Live questions
Q1: Originally the Terra-Credit was a Hybrid ( POW+POS), but now is completly PoS, so Why you don’t keep the Hybrid model? What make you change It ?
Dan Ronchese – CEO of TerraCredit DAO: The initial chain was a hybrid, but the POW blocks served only to move to POS. Once we hit block 10,000 the POW blocks stopped and we essentially ran as a POS only chain for the entirety. POW is good and had benefits, but its just not suitable to our market. Most struggle to afford a smartphone and in some cases may never own a computer. We have always pioneered staking because our users can cold stake via our mobile app, they are currently earning 17.5% annually.
Q2: With the pandemic going on how can TerraCredit DAO say it affected your token?
Dan Ronchese – CEO of TerraCredit DAO: It was quite good for us and I touched on it earlier, first many users without pc’s were staking on their mobiles, up to 300,00 users on terrabit were making use of MiniPOS our CREDIT mobile staking solution. When lock down first hit our reward structure was still on the first instance, credit 1.0 which was POS that paid 100% per year, directly from block rewards. The ability to sell those profits for fiat, in the same place where they are staking (Terrabit) made it a snap shut deal. Easy to buy, stake, sell and spend all in one app.
Q3: What are you doing to gain developer adoption on your project ? Are there incentives or grants for people wanting to build applications on top of it?
Dan Ronchese – CEO of TerraCredit DAO: We have our open beta with bug bounty, prizes for the best dapp’s and the foundation is being setup to pay long term rewards for improving the code and developing dapp’s. We are always focused on training, as we primarily deal with users who are very new to crypto. This ethos will be echoed in the foundation and supporting services, making a token or dapp will take literally a few minutes and is as actually a little easier then most.
Q4: I could not see any information about your team on your website. You probably preferred your team to be anonymous. Is there a valid reason for your preference in an environment of increasing suspicion of anonymous teams?
Dan Ronchese – CEO of TerraCredit DAO: https://terra-credit.com/about/our-team/ we are all there.
nothing anonymous about our team or code, its all transparent, open source and decentralized.
Q5: Where does the project name come from? What does it mean for you and why did you choose that name for your project?
Dan Ronchese – CEO of TerraCredit DAO: Terra means earth, Credit comes from the latin Cred which means to believe.
The coin to achieve mass adoption will be believed in by all people on earth. It is also meant in the literal sense, in a holistic way with CREDIT being the only form of Credit on terra (Earth).
yeah, we aim big but we are dedicated to these lofty goals as much as we are in the day to day running of our 5 international companies, and multiple african based retail banking branches.
We do a lot of work offline in the communities with the unbanked and we, usually but not currently, offer cash handling services to onboard the unbanked.
We were still a small cap 4 weeks ago, now look at us 🙂
