Public Mint AMA Recap

Hello, everyone!😁 We are glad to meet here Jorge Pereira, Co-Founder and CTO of Public Mint, (@jorgerpereira)

Hi everyone, glad to be here!

Welcome Jorge, thank you for taking your time today! Our team has prepared 3 questions for you to start with! Let's start from the introduction: Q1: Can you introduce yourself to our community?

Sure! Well, as you mentioned, I'm Jorge, co-founder and CTO at Public Mint. :) I’m an entrepreneur and a software engineer, I have been doing product design & engineering for about 20 years now, in a variety of areas. The last 4 years later I was involved in a few projects. I have my own software development firm for over 13 years now, Seegno.com. I joined decentralized UK startup BABB as Interim CTO for a year, co-founded an enterprise forex company Wayfex and founded Fintech Server, a platform for building crypto-enabled solutions, on top of which we built Slyk.io, a me-commerce platform which helps entrepreneurs get to market quickly, grow and sell. But more relevant, my most interesting crypto project was back in 2013 when I joined as CTO of crypto-startup Uphold.com in San Francisco. I designed the early wallet UI and also architected and built the early multi-asset trading engine, together with an initial group of 4 people, which then grew to 50+ people in about 18 months. At Uphold, my team was responsible for Product Design, UX Development, UI Design, Architecture, Mobile & Web Application Development, Platform Development, System Architecture, Blockchain, System Operations, Treasury Operation, Technical Security, Customer Support and supporting every other aspect of the business. And I don't get tired of looking back at everything I learned those 4 years, working closely with the various units: Compliance, Risk, Fraud, Payments, Security, Legal, Treasury, Finance, Marketing and various Business Units. So, that's a bit about me and where I've been. :)

Q2: Can you introduce Public Mint to us?

Well, sure! So... Public Mint as a blockchain-based platform allows anyone to take funds from their bank account and place them on-chain, then transact with those funds very cheaply and quickly, with anyone, anywhere in the world. It allows any DApp, app or service to take funds in directly on-chain, without having to own a bank account. For instance, our Web Widget a DApp to take on funds directly and without loss (deposit $100, get $100). On top of Public Mint, anyone can build applications that handle fiat money (currently USD, soon EUR and others), with minimum effort, and without having to worry with banks, custody, regulations, chain costs ($0.05/transaction), speed (less than 5 seconds for final confirmation), etc. One such application we're now launching is the Earn program, which will allow individuals and businesses with USD on-chain to leverage DeFi & CeFi very simply, and literally with the click of a button. Hope that makes sense. :)

Thank you, great answer Let's move to the last question from our team: Q3: Let`s now talk about the milestones you have achieved so far and about your upcoming plans?

Well, back in July we launched our mainnet, after a bit over 2 years of work. It currently supports only USD, and you can send funds in/out with wire transfers or by connecting directly to an US bank account (ACH). This includes a beta web wallet, explorer, and developer documentation and tutorials. We'll continue to develop the platform, and we'll be launching a mobile wallet in late June, which will include the Earn program. I also invite you to take a look at a more complete Roadmap in section 6.1 of our whitepaper.

Thank you for such detailed and interesting answers! It is time to move to the community questions part.

Q1. You guys are building applications that handle money, without having to deal with the complexities of banks, this sounds interesting to me, so is it appropriate to say you are trying to make traditional banking sector obsolete or compliment them? Q2. Also, I read it somewhere that Public mint is giving fiat money the same properties of crypto, can you explain further, if possible with examples?

I'd say we're trying to complement them. If you're familiar with the scaling woes of Ethereum, you know how many projects are building Layer 2, which sits above the base blockchain? Well, from a platform perspective, you can think of Public Mint as Layer 2 for both banking and blockchain. :) That's why we say we give fiat the same properties of crypto: you can handle your USD just like you'd handle your ETH, with on-chain transactions, smart contracts, transparency, interoperability, composability, etc.

1. Of all blockchains available amongst which are Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polkadot, why did you choose to build Public Mint on Hyperledger and what does Hyperledger offer that other chains can't offer the platform? 2. Who are those/which countries are exempted from using Public Mint?

Hyperledger is a family of projects, and the one we're using is Hyperledger Besu, which started off as a Consensys backed project aimed at launching an enterprise-grade Ethereum implementation. So, in many ways it's like Geth, Parity, Nimbus and many other ethereum clients, in that it can both run as a node on the public mainnet, but also run your own separate chain with its own nodes. We chose it because it implemented a consensus mechanism that gave us instant finality (IBFT 2.0) and it has well structured code. 2. The question is not as much what countries are blocked from Public Mint, but more what countries are blocked from using certain currencies. For instance, the United States is notorious at enforcing restrictions on USD, and those restrictions may not be applicable if someone is using only EUR. For USD restrictions, here's a list of the items we need to comply with, which are always changing: https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/sanctions-programs-and-country-information.

Who is your target demographic and why would they want to switch to public mint from what they're currently using?

I'll focus on Public Mint Earn, seeing as the value proposition is simpler, and the platform as a whole is broader. Part of our demoghraphic are people in the crypto space that adopt more of a buy & hold methodology, because they'd rather spend more time on their jobs, family, friends, hobbies or just don't want to spend their time trading. For those people (which I'd argue there are lots of, myself included), it's just not practical to be jumping from one DeFi project to the next. So, using Public Mint, they can take advantage of the best projects in DeFi (as selected by the community). Another audience are people who have their USD sitting in a bank account that pays maybe 0.25% APY, and who can get at least 30x more using Earn.

I have read of MANY projects oriented to DeFi lately, it is logical to think thay most of think won’t make it to last along time, why should we trust that Public mint can actually settle as a long term platform?

I can't speak for other projects, but we're not just DeFi - we're not just the MINT token. We're a fintech that has been operating for almost 3 years now, and while the past isn't always an indicator of the future, you can at least tell we didn't just start, and it's probably easier to understand that when you've been on something for this long, you're not eagger to let it go. :)

Can you slightly further touch on the different layers on Public Mint, please? I understood that all the fees in your ecosystem are paid in fiat currencies, so why is the MINT token actually required there? Does it have any functions -- as a gas -- or so.

At a high level, Public Mint is built as a series of different layers, which build upon each other. At the bottom is the Multi-Custodial layer, where fiat funds are held on deposit with a series of banks, tightly connected with a Multi-Jurisdictional Identity and Payments layers. Above this is the Blockchain Layer, where those funds are represented (currently only USD), and where they can be transacted with high speed and 3-5 seconds for instant finality, at a tiny fee ($0.05). On top of this we have the Smart Services & Application layers, where we find the Public Web Widget and the MINT Global Earn program.

Do I understand correctly that Public Mint offers a bridge from fiat to the world of cryptocurrencies and DEFI is focused on the US market? Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance US offer the same services, how can you compete with them?

Exchanges don't compete with us. The goal of exchanges is to attract users to their platform, so they can generate trading activity which produces fees. What we do is very different, we allow DApps, services, businesses, individuals to receive fiat directly on-chain, without having to have a bank account. In many ways, exchanges like the above are potential partners, but not at all our competitors.

To which Infrastructures can the Public Mint be integrated? What blockchains can you use interblock communication (IBC) with? Are there any plans to integrate with other blockchain platforms like Polkadot or Solana?

Right now, it's easy to use Public Mint within the Ethereum community, because if you have a private key for an address on Ethereum, you can use the same address on Public Mint to receive USD. Also, being Ethereum technology makes atomic swaps and bridges easy to implement. But we want to go further and offer our services to the entire ecosystem. One way to think about it is as us being a parachain dedicated to fiat, so it's clear why we're particularly interested in Polkadot technology.

If anybody think that your project really likes a scam project, and they can't trust your project. How do you make them believe in your project?

Here allow me to put aside my Public Mint hat, and just answer this like someone who's been in crypto for almost 8 years now. You should do your own research, until you no longer have significant doubts. Look at the track record of the people involved in the project, look at how they face questions and how transparent they are. I personally look for specific traits: clarity, transparency, straightforward answers in AMAs, a bit of humor and avoid inflated egos. Also make sure to hear from people who're really part of the team (C-level, founders) and not people who're paid to write positively about the company. More importantly, look at what is built already. One of the reasons we built for 2 years at Public Mint, was precisely so we'd have significant work out there, and so that people could see that work before trusting on what we're proposing to do next. Finally, crypto shouldn't be solely about joining in on the next token. If you want trustworthy projects to emerge, you need to promote adoption of the products, not just promote adoption of tokens. So that's one way to ensure non-scam projects are successful. :)

How many killer features of Your project that makes it ahead of its competitors? Could you tell us 2-3 features ?

Different parts of our project compete with different projects, and sometimes are also potential partners, but let me try. As an example, imagine you have built a DApp, and you want people to pay you in USD. You can't use Paypal or similar payment services, not just because of their terms of service, because you have no backend to verify payment confirmation callbacks. But you can use Public Mint. So, it's not just "a feature", it's a change in technology paradigm, and there really aren't many projects doing this. So, if you count "DApps can use it" as a feature, then that's a major, major one! :) Ok, going for last question.

In Yield Farming programs,when they mint the tokens it simply causes inflation and devaluation of tokens. How Public Mint Ecosystem will resolved this problem so that the value of token consistently rises.?.By what method will you reduce the inflation?

We do not have inflation of tokens, it's fixed supply. People who stake mint tokens and participate in governance are paid in USD, from the revenue generate by the TVL. As an example, let’s look at a couple years in the future, with a TVL of $500M, and a total APY of 20%. This means 100M in yearly Earnings, which with a 15% Earnings Fee results in $15M, of which Public Mint will take between 10% and 30% (depending on the MINT tokens of each staker). That’s an average of 20% or $3M in revenue fees for Public Mint, with the remaining $12M paid to those who staked MINT and engaged in voting, for their governance work. That's how people are paid for their governance work. In addition to this, during the first 20 months, there is a number of tokens from a Rewards pool, which will be used to compensate people for a period of lower TVL, or to encourage people to bring liquidity, but that will fade out. Anyway, that's the last question for today - other good questions here, but also lots of copy & pasted questions. Hope the above answers help shed some light.

Thank you for your time today! Great answers! thank you to everyone who took part today 🙏🙏🙏