[START OF AMA]
1–Can you introduce yourselves briefly and give some details of the team behind Cardwallet?
Victoria: Hey all, great to speak with you here 🙂 I am Victoria, Co-Founder and COO of CardWallet. I have been in the industry since 2013 and was a CEO of Cointelegraph for many years, actually building it from scratch. I am thrilled how the industry has grown during these several years and looking forward to bringing new great products to take the leading positions and provide outstanding services. I believe CardWallet will make a real change. We have a very strong team of industry professionals, I am proud to be a part of it.
Tiago: Hi everyone, it is a pleasure to be here, thank you for having us. I’m Tiago, co-founder and CEO of CardWallet. Been in crypto professionally since 2012, and have had the pleasure to work with several high profile projects, like Dash and Cardano. Now with CardWallet, I am extremely excited to bring a team together, and along with Victoria and our suite of high profile advisors, to make CardWallet one of the leading crypto wallets in the industry, and not long from now with the explosion Cardano is about to have, become the world’s #1 wallet app download in the world on GooglePlay and iOS AppStore!
About our advisors… One is Florian Bonhert, ex-Emurgo CMO … for those who don’t know, EMURGO is one of the 3 pillars of the Cardano network.
Other is Fernando Gutierrez, we worked together to bring Dash to from unknown alt-coin to Top 5 marketcap at one point. Another is Jesus Gonzalez, world class UX/UI, comes from Cisco, Oracle, 6 years at Dell, and now working at PayPal on their next gen digital wallet.
2 — One of the main aspect of the wallet is that it will be multi chains. Which chains will be integrated at launch? Will we be able to cross chain swap inside the wallet? If not, what will be the MVP? Also will the wallet be launched downloadable when the token launches?
Victoria: At MVP launch, we will support Cardano, Ethereum and Bitcoin, as well as ERC-20 tokens and CNT tokens (Cardano Native Tokens). At a later stage, we are eyeing to integrate Binance Smart Chain too. So all the major DeFi chains.
Swap capability will be available in the MVP version, plus we will enable fiat on and off ramps — customers will be able to buy crypto with debit/credit cards, apple pay.
We have a 13 week sprint for the MVP, and currently at week 7… so only 6 weeks left for launch. MVP will focus on the core structural element. Non-custodial wallet with fiat gateways. From then on, we have another 8 week sprint where we will start implementing our tokenomic model, which will include all the DeFi features we have in our roadmap.
We have not decided yet on the IDO date, but I think the token most probably will be available slighly before the MVP launch. As we raised a seed round, our main target is to deliver the product, not just the IDO 🙂.
3 — A huge part of the Cardwallet tokens will be kept to reward users of the wallet. Can you explain briefly the different ways for users to get these rewards ?
Tiago: There will be several ways to earn extra CW tokens.
The usual suspect is direct staking. But you will also be able to become a liquidity provider, as well as rewarded for just trading and interacting with the platform. The more you participate, the more rewards you will receive. For example, voting. We will have other mechanisms that will reward our Community. Some are super secret for now, that we hope will blow people’s mind! The article with details on the tokenomics model will come soon. Like, in a day or two max. We will also include regular token airdrops, not only CW, but many others. That is all I can say for now, until official tokenomics are announced
4 — There is a real incentive for staking CW tokens. Stakers will get bank cards, ada cashbacks, access to order routing DeFi engine and… Yield optimization. Can you explain what this yield optimization feature will entail??
Victoria: Yield optimization is the next step up from yield farming. Yield farming permits you to receive dividends from providing liquidity to both sides of the pair in a DEX, for example say ADA/CW.
Now imagine there are several competing liquidity pools that offer different return rates. You can manually remove your liquidity and move to the other pool, and check daily for the best offers. That is a long and tedious process. Yield Optimization is an algorithm that does all the heavy lifting for you. You just provide the liquidity, and the optimization engine will search and allocate your funds so you receive the best returns possible.
Speaking about the card itself, that is way into the future. Having a physical card without having a rock solid, tried and tested product, is shooting oneself on the foot. So our plans are to guarantee that the app works flawlessly, is extremely intuitive, and make other wallets jealous — then we will start thinking about issuing a card. In the meantime, you can always buy or sell your crypto straight to your favourite VISA, Mastercard or ApplePay, so it is just one virtual hop to a physical card.
5 — From thegreypilgrim: You mentioned the VISA or card payement. What kind of fees can we expect when using the card payment feature in Cardwallet to buy crypto? Can you use this opportunity to detail the partnership just announced with Simplex?
Victoria: Simplex is one of, if not the most reputed fiat to crypto to fiat processors in the world. As of this moment we cannot disclose any actual figures. We have indeed signed a partnership with them, which speaks volumes about CardWallet’s team and development work so far.
However, there is still a lot of testing to be done, and calculations to be made. It is too soon for us to disclose numbers, because if we do so now and do not fulfill the target — the Community will naturally become offended if it turns out to be higher.
Our goal is to make is as low as possible of course, but please understand that it is just too soon, and this is not dodging any bullets.
6 — From Shabbir H: Are you planning to add support for tokens on newer chains like AVAX, HECO, Solana, and L2 solutions (i.e. Polygon/Harmony)?
Tiago: Depends on the definition of “planning”. We absolutely do have plans, and those names and many others are on our whiteboards and on our brainstorming sessions. But first we must tackle what is the hardest, the core product MVP, then our unique DeFi solution and tokenomic implementation, and then open the discussion to the Community.
Through the CW governance model, our users will be able to vote. We plan on implementing such a process through the CWIP — CardWallet Improvement Process — where the Community will have a say on future development priorities. So when the time comes, we may ask you guys — Do you want X, Y or Z next, and depending on the collective preference, we will follow the Community’s wishes.
7. Regarding wallet security, how will the seed phrase work ? Kind of like metamask? Also will it be possible to connect hardware wallets to cardwallet?
Victoria: Very much like MetaMask and so many other hierarchical deterministic wallets do. Adding hardware support is indeed on top of our priority list, but after the MVP stage. Ledger S Nano Mobile is Android only though… there is no current support for iOS devices.
One of our principles and ideals and implementation goals is user safety! Be it through biometric authentication alongside PIN, to hardware wallet integration, as well as comprehensive educational content plan so newcomers to the crypto space can buy their first Bitcoin, Cardano or Ethereum is just a few minutes, from download of the app to receiving their first tokens.
NDS: Okay. Victoria, Tiago, thanks a lot for your time answering these questions, you guys gave pretty comprehensive answers 😊. I encourage everyone to join Cardwallet on the social media:
