STUART: Hi everyone! I’m Stuart, I’m a co-founder of Kadena along with Will Martino! To kick things off, I want to point people at our re-launched team page: https://www.kadena.io/team

Also, I want to formally introduce Francesco (@fmelp) and Jeffrey (@SpaceJeff) as power-members of the team on Telegram!

Slava: What is the shortest period between Bountyswap and full launch of Kadenaswap you anticipate, assuming no bugs found?

STUART: Great question! We’re certainly hoping Bountyswap is as quick as possible, but on the other hand, it’s the best time to find bugs, and hopefully the incentive will really get folks to poke around, make direct smart contract calls, all the things. But launching Kadenaswap is more than just the exchange itself. The assets on Kadenaswap are as important as functioning code.

So while Bountyswap is running, you’re going to see a lot of activity in the bridges and wrapping space. We’re working on a major announcement in that area soon. We want Kadenaswap to knock it out of the park, so it will be important that there be value to work with at launch. So that will ultimately drive when it launches.

Coinmetro_man: What are the plans to incentivize people to provide liquidity to make Kadenaswap a success?

STUART: Well, for one, there’s the built-in incentives for AMMs, which is making money on fees. This model works, although we’re always open for suggestions for improving it. I think there’s another q about this later.

However, we do want there to be a KDAX token to provide additional incentives. We will be announcing shortly the structure for economic development mentioned above, with a decentralized governance, and that will be the vehicle for launching KDAX. Once that is in place, we can start providing additional incentives. This will actually be critical for powering wrapping and multi-chain liquidity, so we’re working very hard on this right now.

Markus: What are the chances that the liquidity provider fees will be reduced if there is more volume on Kadenaswap?

STUART: The fees question is interesting, as the Uniswap model doesn’t work perfectly with low liquidity, or for non-volatile things like stablecoins. Curve and Balancer have innovated here.

However, a lot of the economic puzzle of DEXes like Kadenaswap is all the front-running and oracle-based activity. Incentives don’t really do anything to help with this.

I think suggestions like yours (lower fees for more liquid pairs) could make sense. I guess I want to say that each DEX has it’s own dynamics, and the systems are fairly chaotic. So the approach is to iterate from simple and proven to subtle. But this is an area where we are VERY open to suggestions.

Jason Rogers: What is the current status of the Polkadot integration?

STUART: The current status is we’re working on the Pact Core specification to allow native Pact to execute as a first-class smart contract language on Polkadot, similar to how Kadenamint allows Pact to be a native component in the Cosmos ecosystem. There are some research issues still to be resolved, which is where @emilypi comes in 🙂.

As for KadenaDOT/parachains, that’s part of the above-mentioned tech strategy; we are also in conversation with a well-known project on Kusama to build a bridge. So the answer is, we’re going to pursue ALL of the above, but it may turn out that the best for time-to-market will be bridging DOT/Kusama assets into the Kadenaswap ecosystem as the first step (as well as wrapping KDA onto Polkadot/Kusama).

Floppie: Is Zelcore a necessity to Kadenaswap or are other options coming as well?

STUART: We like Zelcore because they are great and agile technologists who are really passionate about user experience, so working with them on a seamless DEX experience has been really exciting.

But it’s definitely not the only solution planned. Chainweaver is available today and it offers a very nice experience on OSX and Linux.

Going forward, we’re looking to support WalletConnect which would bring more wallets into the picture, like Argent and RainbowWallet.

The larger picture is of course the full spectrum: hardware wallets, browser plugins, a great mobile experience. We’re studying these because we can’t commit to all of them at once. But we’re making our tech strategy as we speak.

BlueBird2023: [I] can’t wait for Kadenaswap, but what are your next plans after Kadenaswap? Any big plans or are you hoping devs jump on board and build for themselves?

STUART: Yes to both! Kadenaswap itself has a long roadmap which we’ll be sharing more about later, which include multi-chain incentives, interaction with KDAX, etc.

You saw our NFT announcement

I hope, so there is where we’re looking to aggressively partner and innovate, so that’s both for Kadena and for devs. But we’ll also be launching new initiatives surrounding economic development — think Consensys for Ethereum, but powered by a DAO.

Crypto Maverick: While we know the q1 roadmap, what are the main goals for 2021?

STUART:

Steven Octoast: Does the team have plans to build any defi products/services on Kadena or do you plan to leave all of that to third party and community? Are you in talks with any of those [lending platforms] on ETH to set up on Kadena?

STUART: It’s both, and the DAO will factor heavily into this. We will leg in wherever we can aggressively, but partners and the community are critical. Developers are everything, but developers come when they see that they can make an impact. We’re showing that you can do that.

Now is the time to get creative and help us by saying what development is most critical, like lending platform, etc. But soon, you’ll be able to do more than just comment, but actually get involved in governance.

Steven Octoast: Ok. I see that we really need to get developers to first of all become exposed to Kadena existence in the first place, but then also be lured to build on Kadena. Currently there’s the grant program, but I feel it’s not known about, can we get this blasted all over dev communities so we can get it some more exposure? I don’t know how to find them, but maybe you do.

JEFFREY: Yes, so we’re planning on releasing an Ambassadors Program that will incentivize people who promote Kadena’s brand, whether it’s creating content, moderating our social channels, or creating community events in community channels. Once we drive more community awareness, we’ll naturally get more developers interested in building on our platform. We’ll announce more details soon!

Roger: Oh, there is a grants program. How is it governed?

STUART: The developer grants is centralized behind Kadena. But we’re going to help launch a larger organization soon!

Steven Octoast: How does kswap differ to Thorchain DEX?

STUART: I’ve studied Thorchain a little, but they seem very focused on their PoS security model. I know their DEX tries to do something about impermanent loss, but it seems to not be very effective (quoting them here, correct me if I’m wrong).

For now, we’re most like Uniswap, and the first big innovation will be multi-venue initiatives.

Steven Octoast: Can you elaborate more on what multi-venue initiatives are?

STUART: See the Kadenaswap article, I’ll quote from it:

David: I know the USCF was pushed back on the roadmap, is it still in the books?

STUART: USCF is in the books but the timeline is suspended while they continue to navigate the space to make their unique concept about crypto assets a reality. We’re hoping that in Q2/Q3 we’ll see some movement.

A F: What are your goals for the future of KDA mining? Can you give any updates on where things stand with IbeLink or other companies that you are talking with?

DOUG: iBeLink has told us that they are working on a second-generation ASIC miner for Kadena. Last I heard the preliminary estimate was that this new miner would mine at around 11 TH/s, but I don’t think we’ve gotten definitive numbers there. I believe they are targeting to ship in March. Also, we have talked to other ASIC manufacturers that reached out to us to discuss making other miners. Of course we can’t discuss details of those conversations. On the whole we’re very excited to have an ASIC securing the network less than a year after launch and about the interest we’ve seen from more manufacturers.

Robert: How is the relationship with JP Morgan. Is it likely that they will experiment with using Kadena in the future?

STUART: It’s good. We’re really impressed with what Christine Moy has achieved with Link and we stay in constant touch. We see our role as “making public safe for industry”, and by safe I mean scalable. Public cryptocurrency has HUGE value to the corporate treasury space, but it’s going to take careful footwork to get there.

John Guevara: Will there be opportunities to provide KDA liquidity for APR [interest]?

STUART: That will be under the initiatives we were talking about with KDAX, lending platform, etc. We’re working very hard on this and will have some exciting announcements soon.

David: What kind of marketing plans are in the works for Kadena besides ambassador program?

STUART: We continue to be determined to drive Kadena to become the leading platform in the coming decade, so marketing is always a focus. We are currently refocusing marketing on community and direct efforts as we feel those are more appropriate to the maturity of the product right this second. Last year we were all about brand, and we laid a strong foundation for our current laser-focus on interop, defi, and value. We want all marketing to come organically from that.

That concludes our AMA. However, if you are interested in reading the post-AMA discussions, feel free to join our Telegram and view the discussion starting here. To get announcements about Kadena’s progress in creating the best multi-platform DEX, follow us on Twitter, Discord, and Telegram.