AMA #4 With Apollo
by Marvin Dumont
Here are questions and answers from the AMA (Ask Me Anything) session held on Jan. 28, 2020. Follow Apollo’s official Telegram for more AMAs.
COMMUNITY QUESTION #1
You said before [that] Knox will start with 6 coins. To gain traction you will have to have a decent amount. Say 10-50 at the least.
Steve McCullah, Director of Business Development, Apollo
We are starting with the most popular, like [what] Coinbase has done, and will be adding more nearly every week. By the end of 2020, I would be surprised if we did not have at least 100 tokens and coins.
COMMUNITY QUESTION #2
ERC-721 tokens are relatively easy to add. How many trading pairs do you aim for towards end of year?
Steve McCullah, Director of Business Development
Between 50 to 150.
COMMUNITY QUESTION #3
Will all coins/tokens have APL trading pairs eventually?
Steve McCullah, Director of Business Development
Yes, this will certainly be the case in our later version. We are starting in a simplified way and expanding with volume.
COMMUNITY QUESTION #4
What is the goal? Are many coins/tokens and trading pairs possible? How will you establish what is quality?
Steve McCullah, Director of Business Development
We will start by introducing voting competitions so that the community has a say. But we will do our best to do our own due diligence to nominate the best projects.
COMMUNITY QUESTION #5
Will there be leverage trading?
Steve McCullah, Director of Business Development
Yes, eventually there will be. This is not for our sake but for the sake of speaking to large traders.
COMMUNITY QUESTION #6
Will one of the nine products be DeFi?
Steve McCullah, Director of Business Development
It depends how you define decentralized finance. If you are asking if we will offer products that replace traditional ways of moving money with decentralized options, like bank-to-bank transfers and peer-to-peer payments, then yes we are.
COMMUNITY QUESTION #7
Will customers be able to sell their data, and earn on that data? Or is there no data collection at all?
Steve McCullah, Director of Business Development
We have not planned on creating a system where users could sell their data but it’s something we may look into someday. We will not be collecting their data in the same way that companies like Facebook and Google do and we will certainly not be selling their data.
Their revenue model requires that to be profitable. Our revenue is mostly generated by offering simple access to services that they use anyway, with the goal of offering them cheaper, better and more convenient services. All accessed in one place.
COMMUNITY QUESTION #8
On the new platform, will we do one-time KYC? Is it still possible to have anonymous accounts?
Steve McCullah, Director of Business Development
I definitely want to clear up this misunderstanding.
KYC is not necessary to sign up for ANY of the platforms, even the exchange. What KYC does is unlock the obvious regulated features, like withdrawing fiat over a certain limit. But it also unlocks some fun and convenient things only accomplished by verifying the identity of the user.
When we referenced KYC from the exchange being used on the other platforms, we meant that once the user decides to take the few minutes necessary to complete KYC (to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars to their bank account, for instance) it unlocks all features on all platforms that would require it.
Some fun things it does on social media platforms, for example, is put a blue checkmark on your profile. Verifying your profile and allowing everyone to see that you are the person you claim to be. This adds a significant amount of trust to the individual. So essentially we are opening up validated profiles so that they are not just restricted to celebrities.
COMMUNITY QUESTION #9
Many of the more experienced investors often see other projects as a legend, and don’t even look at what Apollo is realizing. What are you doing to succeed and to change the mindset once and for all?
Steve McCullah, Director of Business Development
We do understand this. What we have accomplished so far is nothing short of revolutionary in terms of the technology released. The issue for a lot of people is they haven’t been able to tangibly touch and use these accomplishments, outside of DEX and things like vault wallet. We have always been competing with decentralized platforms, building decentralized products and with blockchain development the complexity is 1,000 fold.
For this reason, we have set out to not only create the best blockchain technology, but have made user friendliness our main focus. So that when we release our newest accomplishments, they won’t just be the fastest or the most powerful, they will be the most usable.
The most impactful change that we have made to remedy this is by competing with centralized technology. We are doing this by developing products that have better features than our competitor, but also utilize blockchain and cryptocurrencies in ways [where] people can see the immediate value.
What this does is move our user base from the small crypto market to a worldwide, mainstream market. It then introduces those users to cryptocurrency, especially Apollo, as a convenience instead of a confusing technology they don’t understand. In our opinion there is nothing that will accomplish mass adoption (making crypto normal) faster than this.
COMMUNITY QUESTION #10
During the initial announcement of Apollo CEX initiative, it was said that the CEX will come in two types: a Coinbase type and a Binance type. Which one is being set up for launching on the 15th of February? Or are both being launched that day?
Steve McCullah, Director of Business Development
Both options should be launched consecutively on that day. If there is a delay on one, it wouldn’t be very long. The main Knox website will allow the user to access both, and so will one of the apps. But there will be an additional app that is solely the Coinbase model, allowing anyone to buy in a very simple way.
COMMUNITY QUESTION #11
Which platforms (web, mobile, desktop) will the upcoming Apollo all-in-one social platform be supported on?
Steve McCullah, Director of Business Development
Phase one will support Web, IOS and Android. We will be launching additional applications, such as Window phone, eventually as well.
COMMUNITY QUESTION #12
Can you provide some more real world uses. For example, will we be able to order our ride share, food and life insurance through Knox? Will we be able to be automatically insured when we rent a U-Haul or go skydiving?
Will I be able to play music from Knox rather than four different apps? Will my insurance claim after a car wreck be processed immediately to a body shop, car rental, and notify work I’ll be late, call a ride share, and shop for my parts? With all the free time, will it tell me what vacations I can afford, and what vacations are best suited for me?
Steve McCullah, Director of Business Development
This is my favorite question so far.
The thing that gets me the most excited about this project is the near indefinite impact it has the ability to make on a large number of industries.
We had little intention of mentioning anything more than we have already described in phase one, in terms of features and functions at least. This is because it may not sound possible. In reality, not only is it possible, it is the very beginning of our vision.
I will just say this, honestly it’s harder for me to name a use case that is not planned than one that is. There are a few things you mentioned that haven’t been planned yet, but much of it is planned in one of our next phases. To give you an example, as far as automated insurance, that’s not planned. But the ability to hit a tab and secure insurance with one click, is.
That is why having one universal KYC and one wallet is an important part. Once you complete KYC, if you decide to, and put your payment info in, it’s like unlocking an unprecedented world of convenience. The person will be able to accomplish virtually any daily task near instantly.
The benefit to a social network is that it is a medium where people spend a great deal of time. It is the ultimate method for continuous exposure and the best core to an ecosystem like this. The more services we offer, the more incentive the average person has to sign up for an account. Once they have an account there is a much higher likelihood they will use other services. If they use any one of the social network platforms regularly, they will be exposed non-stop to a world of services that can be immediately accessed.
So the simple answer to your question is that I can’t name every use case we have planned in this AMA. For one, we haven’t made our phases public yet, but the biggest reason is because I just wouldn’t have time to write them all out.
COMMUNITY QUESTION #13
To cater to younger demographics, will things like Instagram stickers, live video, filters, etc., be incorporated to the social platform to make it fun to be part of? What are the features big brands will love about the platform? If there won’t be limits to what people can post, do you have any worries of the platform becoming full of hate speech?
Steve McCullah, Director of Business Development
Absolutely, I can’t go into detail regarding every feature, but I can tell you now that early on we will have live streaming, video calling, filters, stickers, encrypted messaging and some really fun new things that have never been done.
I think one of the most important things to remember is that this is an ecosystem of platforms that includes many social networks, not just one. I believe the most amazing thing that we are accomplishing, and the thing that has never been done, is that although these social networks are separated for simplicity, they are still interconnected.
For example, we will be providing the functionality of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in phase one. This is not some clunky super platform that tries to fit many things into a small box. On the contrary, it allows for separate access so that each can be utilized conveniently with their own individual features on a connected website platform but individual mobile apps. While also allowing access to one wallet, one KYC, one account and all or most of the services in the ecosystem.
Apollo (APL) all-in-one currency combines nearly all features of mainstream cryptocurrencies into the fastest blockchain in the world. Boasting features and advancements such as the first implementation of database sharding, as well as adaptive forging, atomic swaps, two-second blocks, encrypted messaging, decentralized marketplace, decentralized exchange, decentralized applications, and decentralized file storage, Apollo stands as the most feature-rich cryptocurrency on the market. And one of the most advanced.
