Live AMA recap with Team Coti in https://t.me/tehMoonwalkeRs

-Hello Team Coti! Nice to have you here!

let’s start with a small intro?

• Hello everyone, I’m Shahaf Bar-Geffen, COTI’s CEO.
• When I first joined COTI, I was an early investor and part of the board of advisors. I was a co-founder of successful companies in my past and have two exits, so for me, it was natural that a few months later I was asked to take the helm as CEO. I was impressed with COTI’s vision and promise in solving real-world issues, so I came on board and haven’t looked back since.
• Hi Everyone, I’m Dr. Nir Haloani, COTI’s CTO. I’m a math Ph.D. from Israel’s top institute, hold 14 patents, sold a company to IBM and was their head of research.
• I was first attracted to COTI mainly because of blockchain’s technological challenges and because it takes a holistic approach to solve fundamental problems in today’s payments landscape. I was an early Bitcoin adopter a few years ago and maintained small mining networks for experimental purposes. I was looking for the right opportunity to join a company that could tackle the challenges faced by traditional cryptocurrencies and deploy solutions that could be of use and be adopted by the mainstream.
• Hi everyone and thanks for having us here! I’m Efrat Bar Lev, and I have been working in the digital media sphere for the past 7 years. I met Shahaf (COTI CEO) while working at WEB3. When he joined COTI as CEO, I was asked to come on board as the VP of marketing and was more than happy to.

-These are some impressive resumes!

honored to have you all in here!

let’s start with the $coti ecosystem, what’s special about it, how does it work?

Efrat Bar Lev:

COTI is a fully encompassing “finance on the blockchain” ecosystem that is designed specifically to meet the challenges of traditional finance (fees, latency, global inclusion, and risk) by introducing a new type of DAG-based base protocol and infrastructure that is scalable, fast, private, inclusive, low cost and is optimized for real-time payments.

The ecosystem includes a DAG-based Blockchain (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSdRxqHDKe8), a Proof of Trust Consensus Algorithm (https://coti.io/files/COTI-technical-whitepaper.pdf), a multiDAG (https://medium.com/cotinetwork/introducing-the-coti-multidag-b353793cf582), a Global Trust System (https://medium.com/cotinetwork/introducing-cotis-global-trust-system-gts-an-advanced-layer-of-trust-for-any-blockchain-7e44587b8bda), a Universal Payment Solution (https://medium.com/cotinetwork/coti-universal-payment-system-ups-8614e149ee76), a Payment Gateway (https://medium.com/cotinetwork/announcing-the-first-release-of-the-coti-payment-gateway-4a9f3e515b86), as well as consumer (COTI Pay (https://coti.io/coti-pay) ) and merchant (COTI Pay Business (https://gateway.coti.io/dashboard) ) applications.

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

To this, I’ll add that we are a chain that is fully focused on finance and optimized for that.

-what is the marketing strategy for coti?

focus on business? retail? crypto? would love to get an insight

Efrat Bar Lev:

We are already processing millions of USD every month as can be viewed on our block explorer (https://explorer.coti.io/).

We work both on direct merchant acquiring and on big partnerships.

We work directly with merchants by offering them to test us as a credit card processor with added benefits (instant settlement, savings, etc) and benchmark us to what they already have. We have a very nice pipeline of merchants as it’s a win-win for both parties.

We work on major partnerships, like Cardano, Fantom, etc. by offering parts of our technology to benefit what they already have and their user base.

The last element that we are about to add is the MultiDAG, the ability to issue tokens on our infrastructure, that will open us up to be adopted by developers, projects and financial enterprises around the world that would like to issue tokens for transactions, stable or not.

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

we’re looking for the big fish. A major enterprise that can lead a change, governments and merchants with high volume who need solutions. We aim beyond the crypto space, though we have some key partnerships and clients like Cardano, Fantom, DAG, etc.

-How big is the financial runway regardless of the token price?

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

We are not reliant on selling tokens for runway nor on fundraising. We are generating revenue and control our faith

-how big is the COTI team? Including developers etc?

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

We are 25 strong

-Constellation DAG? How are they a client exactly?

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

Partnerships and clients as I have mentioned, sorry if that wasn’t clear.

-Sorry, it was clear. I meant, how are they a partner? How do you guys help each other?

Efrat Bar Lev:

Here is a bit of information regarding our main partnerships:

CARDANO (ADA) partnership is a big deal and a great vote of confidence (https://bit.ly/2oTN2KR).

We have been chosen to build AdaPay and have recently completed the solution. There have been some praising feedback about it, including an article associating ADA’s value increase by 24% after the release of AdaPay (https://bit.ly/2YGm5ru). We have received more requests from well-known projects and brands to build their solution and we’ll announce more of it in the coming weeks and months.

We also have a key partnership with Simplex(https://goo.gl/Fe8gfy), the same company that provides Fiat to Crypto processing to Binance, KuCoin, BitMax, and others. This partnership allows us to build a bridge to traditional finance and build and even more robust universal payment system.

We have a Defi partnership with Celsius Network, one of the leading crypto banks that allows our users to gain interest for their deposits (https://bit.ly/37ifSFy).

We have also announced earlier this year about deploying our global trust engine on Chainlink (https://bit.ly/2YYa7vR). This will add support for trust-based events in smart contracts, enabling user incentivization in line with a predetermined trust score threshold.

We keep a close relationship with other DAG-based protocols. This includes Fantom (FTM) (https://bit.ly/37q1JpG) and also $DAG (constellation: https://bit.ly/2R1vIeT). With $DAG we also share the Scalable Protocol Alliance to encourage enterprise adoption of DAG-based protocols.

Lastly, we have received both an investment and strategic partnership from Recruit Japan, the biggest Internet conglomerate in Japan, to help us penetrate this promising market (https://bit.ly/2YKyjOl)

-Is it possible we will see COTI on a tier 1 exchange before the conclusion of Q1?

Shahaf Bar-Geffen

We rarely comment on exchanges, but we have picked up a lot of interest as you have all seen and exchanges are not different to that

-What technology stands behind COTI and why it’s better than the existing one?

Dr. Nir Haloani

COTI’s infrastructure is based on an innovative base layer called the Trustchain, a proprietary consensus algorithm PoT, which dramatically decreases transaction costs and increases processing speed by assigning trust scores to transactions and clustering it in chains.

The Trustchain lies on a multi-DAG (directed acyclic graph) data structure, which works in tandem to drive up scalability, privacy and security.

-In 2017 when many new altcoins popped up they all kind of went with the generic “create a bunch of tokens and stake the network” approach

2019/20 I see many more sophisticated approaches, very unique forms of inflation, and also a gradual increase in nodes, so the ecosystem grows only as fast as it needs, I would love to hear more about what you guys have learned from the past mistakes of projects.

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

A key understanding is that you can’t just create nodes for the sake of staking when there’s no real financial value behind your transactions. If you don’t create new value, then it’s just a bubble that is inflating. The key thing to realize is that bubbles are short-lived.

With COTI we have created a solid foundation for our transactions as they stand for payments, a real use case. It means that Nodes perform a technical role (verification) and generate real financial value. Then, fees are collected and this represents a true business model that merchants are customed to. Hence, the cycle is complete and as long as the network grows, we can grow more nodes and add more participants, based on REAL VALUE.

-Some claim coti is targeting a very competitive field, what’s the benefit in using or working with coti, compared to other solutions

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

I would have been very worried if I was at a field no one else wanted to be in… Companies in this space generate a lot of value as it’s a 3 Trillion dollar industry

Efrat:

That’s a great question. A merchant would prefer COTI Pay to his traditional solution because COTI gives him everything that he gets with his previous solution (like credit card processing) but adds some very important benefits like INSTANT payment, low transaction fees (sometimes 90% cheaper), Defi based Savings account and global access to the underbanked.

When compared to a crypto processing solution, like BitPay, we offer a complete solution by allowing credit card processing, which is most of the merchant’s business and access to loans and savings. We are the only true universal solution out there.

-“We are already processing millions of USD every month as can be viewed on our block explorer (https://explorer.coti.io/)."

very impressive indeed. can you tell us more about this tx, and from what sort of partnerships they come from?

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

Actually, we can do better than tell you. In a few weeks, we’re releasing a version of the Explorer that allows you to filter by activity, including “sort merchant activity”. You’ll be amazed!

-Do you have a roadmap of switching on more mainnet nodes? Are the test nodes switched to mainnet in the order they became test nodes?

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

We grow the nodes according to processing volume on one hand and tech readiness on the other. We have already added another Node to February and I’m pretty sure there will be another one.

We needed to make sure that Nodes are profitable to owners and according to January numbers it sure looks that way

-Would COTI consider allowing users from restricted countries to participate in the test net for no rewards? I would like to lend my technical expertise and learn the system so that I am prepared to run a node should circumstances change.

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

Absolutely. It makes perfect sense and I can’t see why not. I’ll see to it

-Can u guys talk more about the gradual node onboard and the strategy behind it

Efrat :

COTI’s staking model is built to be competitive to Defi income models and provides a means to generate a steady income from the process of transaction approval in the COTI network.

The economic model of COTI nodes is designed to be fair, efficient and flexible and is based on finely tuned fee distribution mechanisms and staking requirements.

COTI’s staking model allows users to run Full Nodes, which are decentralized servers processing wallet requests, receiving transactions, and performing the required Proof of Trust work (PoT).

When running nodes, operators provide the network with useful resources, including CPU, memory, storage and network bandwidth. These resources are not free of charge, which is why the node operator is compensated and has the opportunity to earn a reasonable ROI.

Full Node operators receive fees collected from transactions. The more transactions a Full Node processes, the more it earns.

You can see the staking plans in the chart below:

We had just launched our Staking Platform, and you can read more about it in the articles below:

https://medium.com/cotinetwork/staking-at-coti-v1-00-guide-ef0dba7aab0

https://medium.com/cotinetwork/coti-annually-staking-rewards-f6108a9ebf10

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

I’ll also add that with regards to inflation and token metrics, there are changes to ours that are coming and we know that it’s long-anticipated. We see these changes as important and we don’t just want to compromise between everybody’s interest but actually come up with something that improves every holder’s position. I think we have found it and we are discussing it now in wider to circles. it’s coming!

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

I think Tim means DAG the ticker, not the math concept… So YES, Constellation has invested in COTI

-Invested how?

Shahaf Bar-Geffen

Backed us by buying our coins when the sale was on

June 2019 that was our IEO. Constellation has been backing us earlier than that and we are grateful for that. It’s more than just money, of course. We have created SPA together and we keep in touch with regards to business development and how we see things progress

-What’s the Max TPS on COTI?

Dr. Nir Haloani, COTI’s CTO:

10K TPS has been verified and benchmarked internally using synthetic transactions and load simulations executed within our TestNet environment (these tests can be replicated by any user). We believe that this will result in improved network scalability as more users join the network. In other words, there is a positive correlation between the number of network users and the rate at which transactions are confirmed. So as our solution expands and is adopted, the rate of transactions per second will also increase significantly.

-Is coti pay already fully integrated with credit cards? and hows the process?

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

We are already integrated and we have our own gateway ready. As credit card processing a very high volume business, we do expect to get to the $100M mark (someone else asked)

-Are there any limitations to where Coti pay can be implemented into a merchant’s OS?

Nir H:

COTI Pay Plugins: allow the processing of crypto payments on any online store (e.g., Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento).

COTI SDK: allows developers to add retail payment features to any application.

-your project has been around for quite some time now. How do you feel you’ve progressed as a project since starting out?

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

Thank you for your question. I’ve been asked this question a bit recently and wanted to say something about this, and actually focus on the word “project” compared to how we see ourselves, as a “company”. It’s going to take me a few paragraphs but it’s very important to set the record straight :-)

When we started COTI back in 2017, we knew ourselves that were starting a company. Our background as entrepreneurs stems from founding and launching successful companies and this is exactly what we have set out to achieve again with COTI.

A few months into the process, we have noticed that people in the crypto space called COTI a “project”. For me, it was odd. Typically, in the enterprise space, a project is something speculative that real companies do with a small part of their operation.

But, when in Rome…

So initially, we were OK with being the “COTI project” and for the past two years, this was somewhat fair, after all, we were still developing some of the ideas behind the project, raising funds for it and building out our tech.

But, no more!

We are a revenue-generating company, a blockchain-based Fintech solution in payment processing and growing as a mobile banking solution. This company utilizes a proprietary protocol we have built and a cryptocurrency infrastructure to improve how payments are done globally. This is not and no longer a “project”, it is the real thing. It is a company.

Why am I insisting on this term and what do I see as the differences between a “crypto project” and a company?

A project has a start and end, a company is built to last

A project usually generates insignificant revenue, a company is continually growing its revenue

A project hurry to flash every client it’s onboarding, a company protects its assets from competition

Projects publish advisors name with endless tenure, a company hires advisors for specific tasks, and when it needs them

A project is careless with regulation, a company adheres to it to ensure its longevity and compliance

A project focuses on token price, a company builds strong fundamentals

COTI is a company.

and I’m sorry for the long manifesto on something that seems so trivial, but I have been thinking about it for a while now

-Are you able and willing to share some photos of your office/s and team?

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

You have asked for it!

-all sounds fine — but why does your company choose to have a crypto token?

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

There are a lot of benefits to a coin in payments. In fact, payments are probably the killer app for blockchain:

low-cost transactions

borderless

instant

etc

also, the crypto token is actually part of our competitive advantage

by being a crypto token that many people hold, you get the network effect

many participants working together to build out the network, to reach the promised lands…adoption!

-don’t wanna touch the price topic, but I see the top 30 projects that delivered nothing since 2019 and I see such amazing projects like coti coming up.

is there a hidden factor that’s needed to reach top 50?`or is it only the market in your opinion

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

it’s not longer 2017 anymore, and what we’re seeing in 2020 is a different type of project

if you look in the top 50 projects there are many projects that have ground to a halt, or are simply overpriced for what they are, a legacy of 2017

-we feel that in 2020, the cream will rise to the top, as they say, and that cream are projects that have a working product,

a token economy that fits into that product and behind all of that, a company that generates revenue and supports itself, not by continually selling their own token, like Ripple for example

This plays back on my previous comment on the difference between a project and a company

much of that top 50 is projects, we think that in 2020 and beyond, we’ll start to see more companies in there, and we hope to be one of them. We think we can.

-I fully agree, this comes out of the old crypto days, where open source & fun projects where all around, now solid companies are forming, I agree it’s important to establish what you want to define yourself.

brings me to the question about kyc// privacy

what is the team’s view about it?

Efrat:

This is what we think about collecting KYC: https://twitter.com/shahafbg/status/1206896936793583616

Any regulated crypto wallet used for payments requires KYC/AML as part of the onboarding process.

COTI follows stringent Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) policies to ensure the network is always safeguarded for all users.

COTI is inherently not conducive to money-laundering, as any user of COTI’s wallets, exchange, and processing solutions must undergo strict onboarding procedures. COTI is similarly committed to protecting user privacy and has appropriate consumer data protection mechanisms in place.

That being said, ERC20, BEP2 and any token issued on the COTI MultiDAG don’t require the KYC process.

-I have a question regarding the circulating supply of tokens. According to CMC, roughly 10% of the tokens are currently on the market? Where are the others and how will they eventually be distributed?

Note, though, that we are finalizing a revision of our token metrics, so expects good changes to follow

-What about in kiosks via POS hardware etc? Are there any complications receiving information transactions on existing hardware?

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

We made some plugins to deal with POS per request of a client, it’s not complicated

Nir H:

The SDK is API based and can be integrated into POS or any other platform.

-Where is your HQ located?

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

We’re in Tel-Aviv, Israel

-Updated tokenomics/release coming soon correct?

Or should I say being revised

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

It’s coming indeed. I have promised no longer than a week or two and so it shall be!

-can you tell us more about coti dime?

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

It’s a proof of concept token that we have made, backed to 10 cents USD, to showcase stable coins on DAG. The MultiDag that is coming soon will replace this with a wider range of stable coins

Stable coins are very important for adoption.

it’s the gateway for real merchants that won’t deal with the volatility

we think COTI is the perfect chain for stable coins meant for payments

-aside from usdt none have achieved true adoption so far, what can coti do better?

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

two things:

1. Aim for real-world enterprises and governments that want to issue a currency. Don’t limit your thinking to the crypto space

2. Solve the tech. Current stable coins can’t be widely adopted as they lay on a structure that can’t scale, have privacy issues, kyc issues, and high tx cost. The Trustchain solves that

but it’s important to make clear that our payment infrastructure will support ALL major stable coins. The first and most important thing is to be usable.

-Merchants are required to have a minimum monthly turnover of $50k before being considered by COTI. Will you revisit this to allow for smaller businesses to be considered?

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

We need to be much bigger before we can work with much smaller

though I wish we could

we need to automate a lot of things first

but nothing would please me more than supporting small-medium businesses

-how will we bring “non-crypto folks” in?

any plans to make coti pay even simpler?

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

in terms of marketing strategy, we aim to work where people already are: major enterprises and countries. offer solutions there.

Then, we need to add substantial value to what people currently have.

Last, make it as simple as possible. When technology is good, it’s like magic, and you don’t need to see how it works to love it

-tehMoonwalkeR:

its been an amazing hour, I thank you all for coming to inhere!

thanks for your time and all the epic info!

Shahaf Bar-Geffen:

Before we wrap up, we have one last surprise for this amazing community here

We have been discussing internally and with the great Moonwalker himself and…

he will run the next COMMUNITY node

rewards are very high, so make plans 😊

Well deserved, we have enjoyed this AMA and level of questions. We’ll be back!

COTI has just announced that the next community MainNet node will be operated by tehMoonwalkeR, and his community will have the chance to stake COTI and earn rewards!

Registration to tehMoonwalkeR’s Community Node is now open. Hurry up!
Registration form 👉 https://forms.gle/eYsNSBBUBs1mJP5h6
tehMoonwalkeR Telegram group 👉 https://t.me/tehMoonwalkeRs

Some links to dyor:

COTI is the world’s first DAG-based blockchain protocol optimized for use by payment dApps, merchants and stable coin issuers.

Website: https://coti.io/
Blog: https://medium.com/cotinetwork
Twitter: https://twitter.com/COTInetwork
https://t.me/COTInetwork