Hi everyone, I’m Alex, CEO of DEIP network. I have been working in Web 3.0 for a while, as you might know from my bio on the website.
I am pretty sure that most of our community already knows about what we are doing, so I wanted to do this AMA session to start a kind of next wave of engagement in the community; we want to talk to our community more and want you to ask questions. We also want to be more aligned with what the community needs from us. So consider this as the beginning of deeper community engagement, and expect more and more community work done by us in our community.
DEIP is a Web3 protocol for the creative economy which is designed to tokenize intangible assets. It is based on three pillars: NFT, DAO, and DeFi. NFT is for the tokenization of creative economy assets. DAO is to unite creators and stakeholders of the industry into decentralized organizations, and DeFi is to unlock the liquidity of these assets. And we have developed technology for all these fields.
I’m happy to start answering the questions you’ve provided, so let’s start.
What is the motivation behind the DEIP project?
The motivation behind DEIP is to let all the creators in the world access capital and resources to realize their potential. It’s our mission to help people realize their potential.
We believe that in the current economy, it’s very hard to get access to capital and access to opportunities. We believe that all people should have equal access to capital and equal access for opportunities. So we created a protocol specifically to unlock the power of the creative economy and unlock the potential of every creator in the world. We consider ourselves as creators, and we have been working in different industries, mostly as developers, and we have really extensive expertise. Even though creators from this industry have decent access to capital, it’s still not as good as it can be.
So this is how we started DEIP. We started to work on it already more than 4 years ago with my co-founders, and we came up with this project, with this idea, and started to gather a team. We invested our own capital at the beginning and then also raised external capital. And now we are getting closer to the release date, which will be in February together with IDO.
What are the project’s milestones so far?
Yeah, so the biggest milestones we have achieved so far are: first of all, we have developed the network protocol already. It’s available on GitHub, so you can take a look. We actually developed it twice. The first implementation of the DEIP protocol was done with the Graphene framework, and then we migrated to the substrate chain. Now it’s on the NEAR and Octopus network.
These milestones were crucial to the basic development of the protocol itself and migration to the substrate chain. Another very important milestone we had was the launch of some use cases.
As you might know, we have a couple of use cases already built on the top of the protocol, which operate on a private testnet, and they were built with our constructor. So the launch of use cases was a really important milestone.
It’s important that we have developed the constructor. It allows people to easily build applications on top of our protocol. It’s now still in private, but we will release it soon. We will hold a private release even before the network launch, and we will have a campaign to attract beta testers and beta testers also from our community.
Another important milestone was the presale. This was kind of the first time when we allowed a wider audience to enter our cap table, and we are really happy that so many people were able to participate, that there was so much interest from our community and from the investors, and we just see this as a very good signal for us as a company.
Why is DEIP so unique?
I think there are a couple of things. So first of all, the thing that makes us unique is the fact we focus on the organization of intangible assets, basically creative economy assets, so this focus makes us choose the building tools and applications for this industry. And we believe this industry is one of the biggest opportunities of our time because we believe all the resources will be commodities in the future, except intellectual human capital, and that’s why the creator economy is now in a very attractive position for both founders’ perspectives and investors’ perspectives.
Another unique advantage we have is our constructor. The constructor allows us to accelerate the adoption of the protocol, basically providing tools to easily build applications on top of our protocol. An important concept in the network is our portals: basically how we plan to crowdsource different use cases, because every portal is formed for a specific asset or class. Some portals are focused on music, some portals are focused on inventions space, some portals are focused for some art, and so on, and these make them to address their market specifically and unlock the potential of their market.
Who is your main competitor and which added value do you propose compared to them?
There are some competitors, competitors to the protocol itself, other protocols, protocols focused on NFTs. NFT is also a very important part of our protocol, but it is also important to understand that NFT is just a technology, and use cases come first from an adoption perspective. It’s very important to find a market where this technology will be useful and will bring some value to this industry.
And I think we are really lucky to be able to find this way, how to do this in the creator economy, how to apply this technology to tokenization of intangible assets. This is why I think that our competitors like other NFT protocols, NFT infrastructure are not in as good a position as we are. But there are some protocols who are doing the same thing like the UNIQUE network, for example, and some protocols focused on tokenization of assets can be considered as our competitors.
I read about the portal creation program in the ecosystem? What is the revenue mechanism and how do you profit from it?
So the portal building program is our internal program to bring companies that want to build portals in the network. The revenue mechanism is pretty simple. This portal building program is aimed to bring new projects to the ecosystem. And since this accelerator will be investing in this project, the revenue stream for this accelerator is pretty simple — they will be just getting profit from their investments. But it’s also important that we allocate a significant amount of tokens — DEIP tokens — from the treasury to support this portal building program.
Why will we do this? — because the portal building program’s main aim is not actually to make money — it’s actually to grow the ecosystem, to grow the amount of projects, who are building on top of the DEIP network, how many projects it attracted to the ecosystem, and how many projects started to build on the top of the DEIP network.
What are the protocols designed by the DEIP team to unlock the liquidity of intangibles?
This is a very good question. So I have already mentioned a little bit about our dynamic liquidity protocol; this is basically the main protocol to increase the liquidity of intangible assets. Besides this, we have a fractionalization protocol on how to fractionalize NFTs, which increases the liquidity of the underlying asset. But the dynamic liquidity protocol is the main one for this purpose.
In simple words, we call it a “decentralized bank for creators”. The main use case for this bank is the ability to borrow stablecoins against tokenized intangibles. So imagine you are a creator, you will be basically able to come to this network, tokenize your assets, and use this asset as collateral to borrow stablecoins.
So, for example, if you are a patent office or technology transfer office and you have a lot of patents which can be worth, for example, 10 million dollars, with DEIP, you will be able to put this tokenized asset as collateral to borrow stablecoins for example, 5 million dollars, and these assets will be locked in the smart contract before you return this money back. But when you take this money, you can already use it for the promotion of these assets, to create more intangibles, more patents if you are a technology transfer office, or music if you work in the music industry, or films if you are in the film industry.
We believe this is the biggest innovation in the industry to unlock the liquidity of any intangible assets.
Could you tell us what exactly DEIP is referring to when you talk about creators? Which person could be considered a creator?
It’s also a very good question. So there are many creators in the world, actually anyone can be a creator, but we perceive a creator as a person who produces intangible assets in their day-to-day work.
Creators could be musicians, creators could be people who create new business models, for example, who create recipes, films. They are filmmakers, scientists, inventors who can be creators, well, they are creators, and we perceive them as creators in the network. Even teachers can be creators in the DEIP network because they basically create human capital which is also an intangible asset.
And we just design the protocol that will be universal for any of these use cases. In order to bring these use cases to the network, we just need someone who can facilitate the development of the protocol in the industry, whether it is movies, music, and so on. So to answer this question, there are many types of creators in the industry and we are focused on a couple of these industries already and trying to bring partners from each of these industries, and there will be more.
We are sure our community will help us crowdsource different use cases not only from industries that I already identified but also some more industries in the future.
Back to last October we have seen some tough and no less interesting discussions on Twitter between DEIP and members of NEAR and Octopus community regarding the announcement of the born/dead initial date for the IDO (Oct. 28th). How are the discussions today and how does it affect the technological Stack for DEIP AppChain? Will there be any change meaning Octopus staying the preferred Relay Chain?
This happened in October, we had our first plans for IDO on October 28, and our original plan was to issue a proxy token, then launch the network, and migrate to the network. But in the last couple of days before IDO, our partners strongly advised us not to do this because it would just add complexity to the whole process.
We at first did not pay attention to this advice, but we eventually realized that it was a good idea and that we would follow the current process of the launch on the Octopus network. Octopus and NEAR are still our main partners, and we are still focused on launching the network as an Appchain on Octopus. The network is NEAR plus Octopus chain infrastructure.
We really appreciate the help and guidance received from Octopus and the NEAR team, so we continue to collaborate with them and discuss the further launch. The only thing is that we had to move the IDO because of the new model, meaning we don’t need a proxy token, and will have a proper token when we launch the origin main network, so we can do IDO immediately after the main network launch. So now we are preparing everything for the main network launch in February, and the IDO will happen right at the main network launch.
It was stated in the pre sales FAQ that there will be necessary to “register a DEIP Wallet first” in order to receive the Tokens. Do we already know on which network it will be? NEAR?
It’s important to understand that DEIP has its own network. And it is just integrated with NEAR through Octopus. It means that you can definitely have your wallet on the DEIP network. In order to create this wallet, all the investors will be provided with guidance on how to create the wallet before the network launch so they can have their accounts on the Genesis block of the DEIP network. If they do not do this, they still will be able to do it after the network launch, but I think it is a very good idea to have your name in the Genesis block so you will have the honor to have an account even before the network launch.
Because of our model and the bridge to the NEAR ecosystem through Octopus, we are able to distribute to you tokens even in the NEAR network. So if you have a NEAR account, you can also specify it, and you will also receive the tokens on the NEAR account.
Can we have an updated roadmap for the project?
So we have already updated the roadmap. You can see it on the website, as well as the IDO scheduled for February, the same as the network launch.
Will we have an IDO held this December as initially communicated?
The IDO has been moved to February together with the network launch. More announcements on this are coming soon.
I see crypto projects here and there that tokenize real estate like vave realT etc. . Is the DEIP project going to be content with tokenizing only music videos or will it expand to all fields of society?
Yes, so it’s a very good question whether we will be focused only on tokenization of music and videos.
Well, it’s important that we are not just focusing on these specific fields, they are not narrow, but they are still more narrow than the creator economy. So we are focused on the creator economy, and there are many more industries, not just music and videos.
Therefore, answering this question, yes, we will be expanding to more industries; we want to cover them all. For every industry, we need a partner, so we already have strong partners for some industries, but we will definitely need more partners for every industry.
We know that marketing is a key point for the evolution of a project. Do you have a defined marketing strategy? If so, which one?
Our marketing strategy is based on our portals program and Hackathon, so we have a very comprehensive marketing strategy crafted by our team. First of all, we launch the Hackathon, we attract people to the Hackathon — creators and developers to build projects on the top of the DEIP network.
Also, we are partnering with different projects in the industry and accelerators. For example, we have recently partnered with the Paralect accelerator and will be bringing projects from Paralect to our chain, and we will be sponsoring the creator economy track in the accelerator. So it is basically a comprehensive marketing strategy which covers all the sides of how we can address the market and penetrate the market.
There are many launchpads that DEIP could consider for the IDO. Why have they not considered some of the larger ones with wider audiences to help bring exposure to the project. Sech as MakerDao, Polka Starter or Thorstarter?
Again, the IDO will be held in February, and now we are considering more launchpads, and maybe there will be multiple launch platforms.
We found partners who will help us with IDO and also with different launchpads. We will announce this partnership soon. And yeah, we are not limited to just one launchpad, we just need to structure this launch in the way that it is aligned with our strategy because, for example, our main launchpad, which we need to use in order to launch on the Octopus network is Skyward and they have dynamic price discovery. That means we cannot use a fixed price model together with it unless we do it a little bit before the Skyward launch with dynamic price discovery.
So when we are exploring more opportunities and we want to have multiple launchpads for the launch but we are also limited to the model we use. Dynamic price discovery is very important so we understand what the market thinks about the price of DEIP token.
Why is big marketing not starting after presale?
Yes, so we took a pause after the presale to restructure our marketing processes and also community management. So this AMA is a signal for the next wave of marketing and so on but in order to make this new push we needed to restructure a bit and hire some new people, new agencies, onboard agencies.
And this is what we are working on right now every day — new marketing activities, new marketing activations, partnerships, like with Paralect. We put a lot of effort into this partnership. We are trying to make a meaningful partnership which can bring really a lot of value to our ecosystem. We are not big fans of just partnership for the sake of partnership. So that is why it may look a bit slow but trust me, it will pay well in the future.
What is the primary benefit of being connected to the NEAR ecosystem? Are you planning to connect with other ecosystems (besides polkadot)?
The primary benefit of connecting to the NEAR ecosystem is that all the tokens issued will be immediately available in the NEAR ecosystem. But yes, we will be connecting to all the other chains, and eventually, through bridges.
We have plans to become a multichain, it will be a multichain from the DEIP one. But multichain means that we will be onboarding more and more chains as our partners and integrations, building bridges to other chains.
Are there any exciting new partnerships that havent been announced yet?
Yes, we are now working on a couple more partnerships which will be announced soon, but as I said before, we have our own approach to partnerships. We put a lot of effort in every partnership and build a roadmap for every partner on how we will work together.
Why choose skyward for IDO? As per i know many projects got damage after launch in skyward
Yes, I agree that Skyward is a kind of new launchpad, but there are some very successful projects launched on this launchpad, like AURORA, for example, and this is just the beginning of this launchpad.
It is important for us to have at least one launchpad. Even if we have multiple launchpads, we still want to launch with Skyward because it’s a launchpad of our partner’s ecosystem. It also gives very cool features like price discovery, and in general, it is linked with the Octopus network, so once the Appchain is launched, we can make the tokens available on the Skyward platform right away.
When is the IDO? Any specific schedule?
Well, I think I have already answered this question, but I want to make it very clear. So again, as our partners asked us to move it to later, to February, and first of all to undergo the full audit.
We decided to listen to our partners and make it in a way that we first launch the network together with IDO, to reduce complexity, and now we don’t need a proxy token. So this was the main reason why we wanted to move IDO. But because there was a lot of interest to participate, we decided to do the presale so people can enter our cap table and can invest in the DEIP network in very early stages even before the IDO
You talked about DEIP’s main features, which allows to use intangible assets as collateral to borrow stablecoins. So one part of it would require the intangible assets to be valued somehow. So is it the function of DEIP to call to do that or with that already valued outside and then comes to the DEIP protocol and the value is already assigned to?
Thank you, it’s a great question. Actually, we will develop a couple of models of how the protocol can evaluate assets based on the transactions and based on references in the industry from this asset.
There are several main models.
The first one is based on sold fractions of the asset, which gives price discovery. Another one is based on the license. For example, if we have NFT inside of some intangible asset, for example, patent, and if there are licenses on the network, a reference to evaluate this asset compared to the other assets in this industry.
Another one is a reference of pre-use batches. So in some industries, these portals issue assets in batches and if you don’t dissolve these batches in parts, you can have a more accurate reference price of this asset based on previous batches prices. And what we envision in the future is that some other DeFi protocol will be using this data which is coming specifically from our network, so people will be able to use this data in their assets to participate in other DeFi protocols in other networks which we will be bridged to. So not just use this asset on our decentralized bank, but for example, maybe in the future, it will become available in DAO to borrow stablecoin against the assets issued.
Will there be a production marketplace at launch?
This is a very good question. So when we launch the network, there will already be a couple of portals launched together with the network in the Genesis block. So we ourselves don’t launch marketplaces — our partners will be launching marketplaces on the network.
We have two projects which we incubated, and at least one of them will have an NFT marketplace ready before the launch of the network, so the network will be launched already with these marketplaces.
Answering in short, together with the main network launch, there will be a couple of NFT marketplaces launched right away.
At what stage is the project currently?
This is a very good question. So, as you might know, we are now in the process of an audit by the Octopus network team. It is a necessary audit for network launch, and this is actually one of the reasons why we had to delay the IDO. We decided to first go through the audit process. A full audit process of the network and the launch of the network itself. So you can track the audit on Octopus network testnet and Octopus network mainnet observers, and our team will also post the links to the audit process, so you can keep an eye on it.
Since you are going to be partners with Octopus and NEAR, will it be necessary to buy tokens to move on that Genesis network? Are there going to be any staking pools available for token right after launch? What can we do as first investors with this token? Will we just be holding them or is there any staking pool going to be available?
So first of all, no. You don’t need to have other tokens to have your DEIP tokens distributed, so you will anyway get it either to the DEIP account, which you will be able to register before the launch.
There are many staking options in the Roadmap but it is important to understand that at the beginning we need first to crowdsource enough assets to the network so yield farming will be available for the investors. I think yield farming is one of the biggest opportunities in the DEIP network for staking, so you will be staking your DEIP tokens on the specific industry. It can be music, art within the DEIP network, which you believe will perform better than others.
And transaction fees in this segment of the network will be distributed to yield farmers. So you can leverage basically your knowledge, understanding who will be coming first to the DEIP network, and get better turns.
Also, you will be able to stake DEIP tokens towards council members and also vote for validators. Voting for validators will be available right away after the network launch. Voting for the council members will be available a couple of months after the network launch. We will be structuring councils for every industry. You will be able to nominate people from the music industry whom you want to see as a council member, the movies industry, and so on. So this is a use of DEIP governance token.
Also, in the future, you will be able to provide liquidity to the decentralized bank for creators with DEIP tokens, but the decentralized bank for creators will be launched later.
Is the protocol security audited?
Yes, as I said, DEIP is not going through the audit of the network by the Octopus team.
What are your milestones?
I have already mentioned our previous milestones. Our future milestone is the network launch. So we develop the network and spend a lot of time doing this. Now we basically need to get this network launched. Once we go through the audit, this will lead to the network launch, and this will be our first network launch.
DEIP might have more network launches in the future, but it already will be the part of the main network.
Another very important milestone which might come even before the network launch is the launch of the beta tester program for our Web3 constructor. So we will be inviting people and also you all are welcome to join the beta tester program to see how the constructor looks and what you can build with it.
So you are mentioning a lot of area either it is arts, music, film, and so on, that can be very useful for DEIP and this is actually great. But do you want to take all these areas at the beginning of the project or do you want to go step by step to specialise in some areas and then they get bigger and bigger?
Thank you for the question, it is also very interesting.
First of all, I really agree it is important to build community and we are rather new in this because we were in installs mode for a long time and now we want our company to be a community and that is why I am really thankful for all you guys for asking these questions. We want to know better what is on your mind, what we need to answer, we want to give you as much transparency as we can, and we want input from your side to understand what questions bother you.
Regarding industries, we already have some partners in the inventions industry, music industry, filmmaking, who will be basically guiding us on unlocking the power of these industries. We don’t want to do it ourselves; that is why we need these partners to tell us what the best product is for each industry. We need their help to develop some features for the constructor for this industry so this industry can benefit from DEIP protocol better. And of course, we cannot do it altogether but our strategy is crowdsource use cases through our portals, builder program, an accelerator, and Hackathon and see what are the best use cases we have coming from our community.
We will be helping our community using our network. We have a really big network already in business and global business. We will bring the best stakeholders, the most powerful stakeholders in the industry, and bring the resources, the social capital to our community and in specific industries who are building on the top of our network.
The first thing we need to do is we need to go through all this process of crowdsourcing these use cases. We will keep you all updated, we will start this initiative already next year in Q1 2022. We will be doing some polls, some programs, some beta test programs to discover which use cases we can create in the initial stage of the DEIP network.
As we already know DEIP is an infrastructure to work with intangible assets, such as ideas, technologies, inventions and art, haven’t you thought about the possibility of incorporating p2e games in the project?
So the game industry is actually very attractive for us; we just need to find what are the assets in this industry which can be tokenized with our protocol. These can be game items, of course, but we are trying to find something even more unique in the market.
For example, game design can be potentially tokenized with the DEIP protocol. If you have ideas of what we can tokenize in the game industry, you can send a message to our manager, and we will put it in research and maybe will come up with some use cases for the game industry together with our community.
I am very grateful for all our community; please let us know if you want an AMA session with other team members. Just give us an idea, and we will try to address all the proposals you might have to our team.
