FNDZ AMA Recap
FNDZ is the social trading platform making copy trading simple by connecting retail investors with an ecosystem of highly experienced traders using a DeFi based on transparency and smart contracts.
Today we have Valentino Cremona as Operations & Tech of FNDZ joining us to answer our questions for the next hour.
Valentino Cremona, FNDZ Operations & Tech
He is in charge of operations and making sure that all departments operate smoothly and frictionlessly.
Previously he was the CEO and founder of AMDAX, the first cryptocurrency company in the Netherlands to obtain custody and exchange licenses from the Dutch central bank. With an academic background in both business and psychology, he launched his investment and trading career at a young age in the early Bitcoin days.
Question from the CryptoRank team
#1. Could you please tell us more about yourself and your experiences?
Valentino Cremona: – Sure, I am a total crypto head for pretty much a solid decade now. I’ve been trading crypto actively for a long time and have also built a successful company in this space prior to FNDZ. I founded and ran the first licensed crypto broker in the Netherlands (we were the first to receive the exchange and custody license from the dutch central bank). I have been busy building compliant FIAT on- and off-ramps into the crypto space for a while now, and after doing this for big capital transactions, it’s time to help more retailers get into the space in a safe and easy way.
#2. Can you tell us about FNDZ ? What problems do you solve, both in the space and for the community?
Valentino Cremona: – Sure, it’s quite straightforward. We are not reinventing the wheel here, we looked at very successful traditional finance models on copy trading (such as etoro for example) which has seen an incremental growth for years. Etoro reported that they ended 2020 with $600 Million in revenue and their trading volume reached $1.5 trillion and had a total over 17 million traders active. So clearly copy trading is a thing, but so far we have not seen an easy to use and simple defi copy trading solution. We are helping to solve the very real problem of mass adoption of defi / crypto products. Most crypto products are built for big brain users or people that are familiar with the space. A product that is accessible for everyone and very simple and intuitive to use, especially for the retail masses, is something that is still missing.
#3. Could you shortly describe the milestones FNDZ has achieved, and about your upcoming plans?
Valentino Cremona: – We have gotten various things ticked off, we have completed the legal transition to a DAO, we have started coding out smart contracts and are currently in the audit process with Zokyo. We have finished the dark screen design of the total product and have started coding up the frontend (the demo is ready at the end of week), so we will be showing that soon. We are ongoingly working on the tech big time, building out the smart contract controls (our secret sauce), building out the trading module and have started planning our marketing campaigns for pre-IDO, pre-product and post-product. We are also currently structuring governance and highlighting the risks and processes that need to be mitigated. All in all, there is plenty of stuff happening.
#4. When will the IDO take place? What is the launch price of the FNDZ token?
Valentino Cremona: – The FNDZ IDO will be on Trustpad very soon (date TBA). The launch price is 0.24$ and will be available after IDO on Uniswap and Pankekaswap. Our initial starting market cap is 1.87M MCAP.
Join our Telegram group and stay tuned!
#5. Why should we invest into the FNDZ project, instead of other DeFi’s?
Valentino Cremona: – We are not going to tell you what to do and why you should or shouldn’t do it. We are happy to lay out the benefits and the vision of FNDZ though. By owning $FNDZ, you will get access to discounts and services on the FNDZ platform. And also, the more the platform is used, the more the burning mechanism takes effect. This reduces the supply and circulating FNDZ tokens, meaning they will become more “rare” with time. The burn is related to the utility of the platform. To compare, most other projects just burn without any real sense. All our utility and mechanisms are well-designed and can be modified by DAO voting proposals.
We don’t want to go into detail and technicalities, but your fees are reduced in proportion to the number of FNDZ tokens held or pointed to. Those staking a large number of tokens will see their fees drop by up to 50%! On top of that, vault operators who hold or stake FNDZ will get 15% of the performance fee. Those who chose not to, will only get 10% of that fee. Stakers in particular are also given a big cut in other fees. They for example get 2% of the 20% general performance fee, and with half (1%) of the 2% management fee. In both cases, all stakers share these cuts across all vaults. In addition, we have more exciting news regarding the staking to share at a later stage as well, as we are introducing (as far as we are aware) a new mechanism that hasn’t been seen before in the markets.
Questions from Twitter
#1. By what criteria are the best traders ranked on your platform and how is fairness and transparency ensured in winning the prize pool which is renewed every week?
Valentino Cremona: – We have an algorithm that ranks this (that we deleoped in house), this includes but is not limited to: Volume, PNL, vault size, average deposit sizes, number of depositors, etc. We are taking into account all the parameters that are necessary and making sure you won’t be seeing old outdated or inactive vaults.
#2. Can you tell us about the background of your team members in trading, derivatives and trading risks? What background do your team members have in trading?
Valentino Cremona: – Team members have their own licensed brokerage in the CFD space, as well as having built one of the first compliant and licensed crypto brokers in the EU. Furthermore, we have in depth experience building aggregative CEX systems. We also have very sophisticated and well known developers onboard that have built trading systems prior to this. We also know what it’s like to develop SIRA models (risk and analysis) and how to mitigate these risks. Most of us are traders for multiple years already and have had various experiences with different exchange engines, aggregating liquidity and process flows.
#3. Could you tell us how the FNDZ project will contribute to the development and expansion of the DeFi ecosystem? What will you do to attract traders of all levels to your platform?
Valentino Cremona: – Of course, we are literally building a platform that mom and pop can use. It’s simple, if you ever wanted to help a friend or anyone else get into space, you make a vault and let them follow you with 1-2 clicks of a button. Of course, we are also talking to FIAT onramps so that users can directly deposit from credit and debit cards to their wallet and follow their friend or favorite trader. Our goal is to hit at least 1million users by 2023.
Questions from Telegram
#1. Security & User Interface is the most important aspect that users see on a platform. FNDZ has performed on this platform. Is this platform suitable for newbies in the crypto world?
Valentino Cremona: – Yes, we care deeply about security. Both on the smart contract as well as on the platform side. Rest assured we are working with security professional to take care of that on both fronts.
#2. What is FNDZ mining with FNDZ and what are its advantages? What are the advantages of dual mining with FNDZ?
Valentino Cremona: – There will be no FNDZ mining at all, we are not a POW system.
#3. Auditing plays an important intermediary role in the development of DeFi projects. What audit methods has FNDZ applied in project development? Can you talk more about it?
Valentino Cremona: – We are currently doing the first audit with Zokyo and then plan to do a community bug bounty.
#4. Apparently, many blockchain projects are not solving any real problem, they just exist to sell their tokens. What problems exactly is #FNDZ solving, and solutions are you provide?
Valentino Cremona: – We are making copy trading easy without all the exploitative fee models from Tradefi solutions.
#5. What advantage does FNDZ have over other similar projects? Why is Native Protocol better?
Valentino Cremona: – We are vault based copy trading, which means you copy all the actions of the trader as a whole vs selecting individual trades to copy.
#6. Does your great project support staking program? If yes. how is your stake system work, what is the requirement for user if they want to stake in your platform?
Valentino Cremona: – We will have staking functionality coming out after we ship the product, thats the next step.