AMA 2nd June 2022 Recap
Yesterday 2nd June, we hosted an AMA on our Telegram Chat and we are so happy with the outcome. Our CEO, Jonathan Camileri Bowman sat down to answer a few questions from our community members about new updates and changes at Sekuritance. A lot has been happening with Sekuritance this year, so this AMA gave a chance to our community to ask questions about this.
This blog post provides a comprehensive recap of the live AMA session and features the questions asked by community members.
[CMBDO] Good morning, good afternoon and good evening for some!
May was a great month for Sekuritance where we released a ton of new features, updates and also announced a few products we’re developing right now for the next year or so!
With all of these announcements our team felt the community deserved an AMA from our founder and project visionary: Jonathan Camilleri Bowman. Today is the day, I know y’all have a lot of questions for Jonathan to answer, be patient and all will be answered.
We’ll be having a few pre-determined questions to be answered in the beginning of the session, once those are answered we’ll get down to the community questions. Without further ado, let’s go!
Hey @DGCTO!
[CEO] morning / afternoon / evening to you all
[CMBDO] Hey Jon! Let’s get going then :)
First question… Jonathan, perhaps we’ve gained a few new peeps in the community, would you be able to go through the vision behind Sekuritance, to refresh the memory of our community?
[CEO] sure thing — and expecting a ton of questions later given all that has been going on with the markets and the company
I think I’ve said this a bazillion times till now — but it’s always good to refresh the memory of our community — Sekuritance is a CeFi DeFi RegTech ecosystem, providing compliance tools for businesses and individuals. The $SKRT utility token is the key that unlocks access for businesses and users to perform compliance checks through the Sekuritance Portal. By the end of this session, a presentation will be shared to demonstrate the new utilities of SKRT and we have no intention of stopping the innovation.
Previously, new crypto projects needed to build and use many different solutions to fight fraud and check for money laundering concerns, whitelists, blacklists, politically exposed people, sanctions, screening, 3D secure, check multiple chain addresses for mixing and privacy, etc and so many rules on the transaction itself — it was a lot to manage and track. But these are all very important to keeping a business compliant with the regulations and guidelines issued by the various authorities. Sekuritance was born out of a need to streamline these solutions and help businesses and projects around the world who will face these issues now and in the future. It is also important to note that our solutions are not only good for the crypto markets but for several other verticals — and whilst not all services make use of the SKRT utilities I think it is very important that participants in SKRT understand and feel that they are backed by a solid and professional company with a responsible outlook to the future and not a “now here — now gone quick crypto project” irrispective of crypto market conditions per se
We have ambitious plans for $SKRT in the future, but for now, the main benefits for users who hold $SKRT in their wallet are related to the portal: portal.sekuritance.com — giving power back to the users to be in control of their own data, and to analyse who they are doing business with, be it another individual, or even a business. These tools include — both traditional verification and on-chain checks. The portal has been updated and staking is now available for $SKRT holders. Users are able to utilise their $SKRT to do checks on individuals and businesses across the world directly through our platform. This applies to individuals and businesses alike, large or small.
[CMBDO] Thanks Jon!! Pretty sure that gives users a refresher on what Sekuritance is and what it’s up to.
Q2: It’s been a little bit over a year now since Sekuritance public sale, and subsequent launch, how do you feel the company has evolved since then and what are the milestones achieved?
[CEO] Let me just start by asking a rhetorical question back to all our users and community — how many crypto projects have you participated in where a project is yet to be launched — where real customers are yet to come onboard — where no utility is active and the token is the subject of pure speculation and nothing else — maybe hyped by influencers or figure heads, etc — I am sure we all know the answer to that question
Well, this is a question we get asked a lot and one must differentiate between the “company” and the “token strength” — the company hasn’t stopped evolving. Sekuritance started out as a company that started catering for compliance on a launchpad level, given our first partner was TrustSwap, and our clients were provided to us through their launchpad — as time passed the Sekuritance platform started getting noticed by more and more prospects beyond the realm of launchpads, although we did integrated with a few others, and also acted as a base for new IDOs for a stint. The company started evolving. Sekuritance is just over one year old and so far we’ve participated and exhibited at over 10 events in 4 countries. We’ve launched over 30+ public sales, 40+ private sales, and verified $80m+ in funds. We’re also starting to cater to projects outside of the crypto sphere. We’ve also expanded the accessibility of our token by going multi-chain. This was done back in December, with the $SKRT token also becoming available on Polygon.
We’ve also been working on ancillary products that help projects within the blockchain space develop a token project from ideation and pitch deck review, to listing on centralized exchanges. The team is looking to the future and building out tools and strategies to support the entire crypto and FinTech sector.
[CMBDO] Perfect, thanks Jon!
Next question, what were the main challenges faced in the past year, within the business, and outside of the business?
[CEO] The Sekuritance solutions were built with traditional technology using REST-based APIs connecting to a bunch of technologies and data-sets — each specialized in their niche (KYC, KYB, geo-IP checking, device-id checks, blacklists, etc) and originally focused on the traditional finance industry. We observed that there was a huge need and gap in the crypto space for these solutions and the need to be prepared for the upcoming tightening of this space, so we wanted to be at the forefront of this race
now the good thing is that we are experts in what we do and our tech team is second to none, having built banking solutions, card solutions, acquiring, issuance, anti-fraud, biometric and soo much more. There is no such thing as a blockchain engineer — once you have a skilled software engineer, they can easily take up the necessary tools and building blocks of blockchain languages and tools
that is what we did — for all our CORE stuff, we are using 0 contactors — all inhouse engineers to ensure nothing gets compromised and if we do a mistake, we own up to it and we fix — that is who we are… we do not want to have to blame third parties and so far we are doing ok 🙂
We are a business enabler. The market is full of individual solutions targeting the traditional finance industry but we have yet to find one like ours which not only bridges the two financial realms but also is more individually inclusive as a solution whilst bringing all partners under one roof to deliver a more holistic solution — a true one-stop-shop for managing Regulations, Risk, and Compliance.
Internally we faced multiple challenges, one of them being time and resources, but together we actually managed to build a crypto project with working products — the crypto sphere is littered with projects that only sell dreams, but although the company is small our product has grown immensely, and we’re proud to say that our working product is completely unique within the crypto industry, and also within the traditional industry.
[CMBDO] Thanks @DGCTO! And perfectly described — the whole industry is full of these projects that sell dreams, at least Sekuritance is providing something tangible!
Aaaand onto the next question: The #7day7announcement campaign was big enough to gain quite a bit of outreach within Sekuritance, and also a few potential partners were interested in what is to come, would you be able to describe each of these announcements and what they mean?
[CEO] The company became PCI DSS Level 1 Certified (A PayTech security standard of the highest caliber of security and compliance). This was something the team has been working on for quite some time, given we are a compliance platform there was no way for us to be seen as a bigger authority in compliance and security than getting ourselves a PCI DSS Level 1 certification across the board — this will help us attract bigger institutions that would want to work with us, while also providing peace of mind to those individuals that want to use our platform and hold their data on there.
The previous MD of Airbnb UK Payments joined Sekuritance’s ranks as the company’s Chief Strategy Officer (CSO). This was a very exciting announcement for us. I have worked closely with Quent for over 12 years. Together we have helped build several industry leading technologies and businesses in the compliance, payments and banking industries. His extensive knowledge of the regulatory landscape is second to none, combined with his experience leading cutting edge, innovative organisations in emerging markets, makes him the ideal partner to champion the Sekuritance vision. As we continue to expand our position in the RegTech, Blockchain and FinTech market, Quent’s expertise in building successful businesses and his extensive network of contacts will be invaluable to the growth of Sekuritance, I’m excited to see where 2022–2023 takes us!
Sekuritance announced development of a new crypto tax functionality. This was a no-brainer for us — with the Sekuritance compliance suite, tax reconciliation functionality will aggregate and utilise products within its partner ecosystem to provide effective tax and accounting for the tokenized economy, further unifying digital assets tax and accounting across enterprises, consumers, and governments. The purpose is to have a download of an individual, or business’ tax reports in minutes and file with their finance team.
Staking of $SKRT (Polygon) has recently gone live on Sekuritance’s portal. Staking Staking Staking — well you know the drill, we launched staking on Friday and it was a very successful initiative, albeit starting off on a bumpy ride with a few countries being unavailable, but it was a quick turn-around to enable them. 50M $SKRT were staked on the portal till now, and the pool has officially closed, although the company will be releasing another staking pool very soon — so be patient with us guys. Also FYI 50M $SKRT equated to around 6% of total token supply, which is awesome!
On the staking alone — i know many have missed out because of the size of the pool, BUT we are launching a 100M pool in the next few weeks — the staking period will be not less than 24 months, the APYs interesting and a few added perks especially on the NFT train side of things
then …..
Sekuritance announced development of new banking solutions and integrations for clients and users. What’s the best thing to come out of being verified — well on the Monday, Sekuritance announced that going forward, verified users and all new members of the Sekuritance Platform will be eligible for a bank account via Sekuritance’s partners within our ecosystem (subject to approval). Sekuritance has partnered up with a banking partner to provide banking solutions to our verified customers. The integration is planned to start in Q3 and will provide users a seamless process to apply for a bank account and visualise its transactions and functionality from within the Sekuritance ecosystem. and last but not least in the announcement, our first mover flagship Identity Based NFts
Sekuritance announced development of identity-based ntNFTs (Non-transferable Non-fungible Tokens). The final announcement, and one which is practically one of the biggest changes seen within Sekuritance tech stack, is the development of a user digital identifier in a non-transferable fashion to link a user’s non-custodial wallet with their identity, while also confirming via KYC, AML and Onchain Analysis that the user is of good standing — case in point, Sekuritance’s plan is to provide minting of ntNFTs for their users, to be placed in their web3 wallet for smoother onboarding. For example, if one of our partners is a launchpad, and the user wishes to register on this launchpad, before starting to utilise the launchpad’s fiat rails, and/or pledge on an IDO within the specified launchpad the user must verify themselves first, which in some cases might take some time, and is a hassle to some. If this launchpad is part of the Sekuritance partner ecosystem, then the specified user would only connect their web3 wallet and speed up the whole verification process entirely (given that the user has already performed all the necessary checks). As an added bonus, within the Sekuritance portal, the user will also be able to oversee which platforms within the ecosystem are currently processing their data, and if they ever want to remove said access to their data, all one needs to do is revoke access through our portal.
The $SKRT token will be used as the utility token fueling this identity-based ntNFT, and as the main transaction currency on moving certain details across platforms.
[CMBDO] Now that was long answer Jon hehe — keeping it short didn’t really work out did it? Hehe
So, a question that the community has been asking for: After less than 2 weeks, 50M $SKRT have been staked on Sekuritance’s portal, and the pool has been closed — but a lot of users are unsure on what will happen with their tier status and subsequent tier benefits, would you be able to give an outline on the plans for the tiers and Sekuritance stakers?
[CEO] DCTO, [02 Jun 2022 at 13:25:41]:
yeah -
So, and we’re sorry that this has taken us too long to get back to the community on this, individuals will still hold their tier status on the platform if they stake — meaning individuals will still be able to purchase credits on the platform at a discounted rate. One thing which will be removed for the time-being is the tier airdrops — these will be removed due to the fact that these were done as a necessary step before staking was implemented — and with staking now being available, individuals will be able to receive a better APY on their $SKRT holdings rather than sharing the amount of $SKRT rewarded from the discretionary pools.
This might come off as a little surprise and some users might be a little upset about this, but in retrospect users will be able to reclaim a higher rate of $SKRT tokens by staking. One thing is for certain, new benefits for tiers will be enabled through the upcoming roadmap and products that will be released, which will give users a better advantage than a quarterly airdrop.
Now the staking pool has closed, but we will be releasing 24 & 36 month pools within the next 2–3 weeks so anyone will have their chance to stake their holdings for sure.
[CMBDO] Super, and the big question which will get all of the community excited for sure:
Lots of users are excited about Sekuritance’s plans for the future, would you be able to outline these plans, along with a roadmap to the community? Will we have further $SKRT utility?
[CEO] — Submit Fraud Report: Each time a fraud report is submitted on the portal, once it is verified authentic and acceptable by the SKRT Operations Team and is accessed or viewed by more than 100 verified SKRT holders on the Sekuritance portal, you will receive a SKRT bonus in your primary connected and verified wallet.
— Submit Personal Recommendation to another SKRT User: Any user in the Sekuritance Portal can invite any individual or entity to write a recommendation on his behalf. Should the recommendation be generated and the user agrees to link it to his account, the requester will have to pay a $SKRT value and the recommender will get rewarded for his efforts.
— Participate in any launch using $SKRT Services: A % of all revenue generated from the merchants using the launch and verification services of $SKRT will be sent to all participants.
— Refer new users to Sekuritance: A new affiliate system is being integrated into the Sekuritance portal and all users and merchants that refer new clients to Sekuritance will be rewarded in $SKRT as a token of appreciation.
— Public Identity Profile Access fees: When a merchant or individual accesses the public profile you would have setup and is given the access password, they will pay in SKRT for access and the user is rewarded with a % of the fees collected
[CMBDO] Super, thanks Jonathan — the predetermined questions have closed, we will now be opening up the chat to accept questions for the community! Have at it guys!
[CEO] Here’s the community presentation:
https://link.sekuritance.com/roadmap22
Here’s the medium article keeping it short: https://sekuritance.medium.com/our-18-month-sekuritance-roadmap-921082fe05b8
[Community Member] I would like to ask that why the team prefers fix APY for staking? Current option doesn’t make competition for staking. If the team fix the number of SKRT per block or second to distribute stakers, it can create rush to stake.
[CEO] Hi Snow
so the current pool is closed and 50M SKRT locked — however as mentioned above, new pools are going to be announced and we are considering that option tbh
[Community Manager] Fix Apy is the way to go. Without mentioning Trustswap’s name there are a lot of unhappy long term stakers as they are seeing their APY dropping everyday
[CMBDO] It started becoming v popular not that long ago with DeFi 2.0 and dynamic staking
albeit fixed APY provides a standard reward fix for the stakers — and in total I’d say around 6% of total supply was staked in less than 2 weeks
and we’ve got some more pools to go :)
Any other questions guys? Or have the pre-determined questions been that fruitful that all questions have been answered? hehehe
[Community Manager] Someone asked me to ask, Where are the staking rewards coming from?????
[CEO] Currently from Internal Reserves/Marketing budget
[Community Member] I really wish I had a solid question, i’m racking my brain.. but I’m super confident in the team and their vision.
The big picture I see is Immense… and that’s why i’m here and why i’m invested in the project and team. My only REAL concern…. is that I can invest enough, fast enough!
Keep up the solid work Jon! 🙏
[CEO] a few words on the recent events of this week and last week
We have just literally finished attending, participating, speaking and promoting Sekuritance at the Ireland Blockchain week alongside heavyweights in the European Union, the European Union Parliament, the Ministry of Finance for Ireland, top tier 1 bank and several other heavyweights and the response to our offering and direction is huge.
@greg_guccione who was with me has already sent out tons of new NDA, referral agreements and client prospect proposals to new contacts and we are growing the ecosystem every single day — it will not always IMMEDIATELY benefit token price (if that is the question) but this is a natural progression and is bound to happen
[Community Member] Hi, on the bank account & card, it is open to people all countries or limited to certain area?
[CEO] we are choosing multiple partners not just one and purposely to service ALL customers around the world in all the jurisidtioncs which our partners can offer through their varied money agency and licensing agreements with the various countries — of course it will be a stepped approach — we have no intention of being part of the “money flow” but we will be the central point of access for these services making a more inclusive financial secure world
yes it will be a stepped approach — we will have alpha/beta testing going on — but our aim is to be inclusive and not exclusive
[Community Member] The progress of the team is positively alarming. But, i believed we can do better on our social media presence. What are your plans to get more people into the Telegram and Discord community
[CEO] i personally am not that involved in the discord side of things but yes in general we have the SHOUT louder and find ways of more DIRECT consumer and business messaging
i am sure you all have seen the massive article and mentions we have on all prominent news outlets, etc — but it is not enough — we are looking at more direct marketing as well
[Community member] This is probably my only query also… i feel like the marketing and pushing thus far has been aimed at a more corporate level, which is great… but the community does need to grow… people do keep an eye on the articles sure, but bringing the marketing down to ground level and pushing the socials to the “everyday” public in is needed.
[CMBDO] I can take this one — we’re currently focused on ATL (above the line) marketing, but we’ve found just shouting about RegTech, gaining some influencers and putting together a few ads here and there don’t really work — or just work in the short-term, but the return is negligible. We’re now focusing around the lines of BTL marketing — direct messaging, and focusing on narrower target groups to become the thought leaders and partners of our platform — this will then act as a ripple effect moreover than anything else.
Sometimes peeps just want to go big, and shout out to the world — but in this stage, we need to think targeted, and then go to the masses.
[Community Member] How about publishing articles on Cointelegraph, MarketWatch, CoinDesk, Yahoo Finance & Bloomberg?
[CMBDO] RegTech isn’t a sexy subject, without a doubt, but to some it is — once those understand the importance of it, the masses will follow.
We have a few already up there, and we’re in talks with a few more right now on the ntNFT aspect we’ll be launching soon supposedly. Something pretty revolutionary as the first mover in the industry.
[Community Member] Also, i once suggested a Bi-weekly or Monthly bulletin in the name of Sekuritance that will encompass articles from different writers of which can be published on medium and also mailed to all verified members of the portal.
[CMBDO] we do that on a weekly basis on Medium right now
and as an email
and then a monthly recap too
every friday at aorund 5pm CET :)
[Community Member] I bet Oracle services was also not at the beginning and look at Chainlink now:)
[CMBDO] Thing is — it’s no surprise — the project is very early in the ecosystem, the products work and regulations/AML Laws are ramping up — the only thing that we’ve come to see is that it’s not a matter of IF RegTech is heavily needed in the cryptosphere and IF it will be something all projects and crypto-based businesses need to act on… but WHEN.
that’s what we’re trying to tell projects and crypto-based organisations… act now, be pro-active
[Community Member] Was there ever an answer on the rewards program… regarding the current program for active members confined within the communinty chats… also broadening that or doing a separate program for people that are actively pushing and engageing people outside the confines of the TG and discord… people spreading the project around and actively trying to bring in new members of the public and create some engagement out there on the socials…?
[CMBDO] we’ve found, and are working on more ways to reward users that refer individuals and businesses to us :)
[Community Member] Doesn’t really answer my point… i’m purely speaking on public engagement… effort… as it is rewarded for in here…
Not to sound negative at all but the community is actually fairly quiet on the socials… very very little engagemen. The VAST majority of $skrt tagged posts are from the sekuritance twitter page… aside from that we avg less than 10 likes and retweets (that’s being generous) … people aren’t engageing off their own back so encouraging that may help… and someone simply leading the way for that area. Having social engagement encouraged and targeted. Having a community presence daily, and not just a select few liking and retweeting the official pages posts…
We do need to lift in this area… immensely. Just doesn’t seem like it’s anyone’s priority at all, and if not then that’s fine. I’ll keep trying to spread the love on my own.
Haha to put it simply, it’s almost like the skrt community are massive introverts and don’t want to talk to anyone outside of this room. (Not having a dig, coz i am one 😅) just a metaphor that seemed to fit… no offence to other introverts 🙏
[Community Manager] A lot of chats are quiet at the moment. When the market is down people tend to stay off the chats. I’m in a lot of the other channels and it’s across the board. Sure we can boost the members like some groups do and have 15,000 people say Nice Project etc but we aren’t like that
[Community Member]
No no… that’s not what i’ saying at all, and i’m not referring to that chat in here being quiet, it isn’t the most active sure but all good… i’m simply referring to level of engagement on twitter eg (i won’t include other platforms for simplicity, but ofcourse they all count)
It’s almost non existent. And it seems to be simply because no one is interested or can be bothered. It’s like we need a catalyst or something to get the community going out there… because we have members in here and discord… but they stay in here and in there amongst ourselves… no one creates public engagement at all and gets public conversations going or simply publically reach out to other “bigger” personalities and familiarise the sekuritance name amongst the socials… i’ve brought it to attention to several people with large following who I respect (not the big bullshit meme-pusher kind of people) and they honestly say “what” or “who”… they’ve never heard of seluritance… that says we aren’t reaching these people… i’m doing my bit to try bring eyes to us out there… but it feels empty almost like no one really cares to get us out there… it’s weird
Happy to just stay idle amongst ourselves as a community…
Sorry got a bee in my bonnet there… i’ll drop going on any further about it. Is what it is… i’ll keep doing it and if people join then they join.
Yes… I use a lot of ellipsis when I write
[CMBDO] Hehe yeah — the thing is, right now a lot of users and platforms are pretty quiet, and when there is this ‘bearish’ sentiment most platforms pretty much stay quiet, and just ride the bull when it comes, and just remain quiet and do nothing — like they’re in hiatus mode when the tone is negative — mostly because they rely on token buy and sell pressure, which isn’t anything bad of course, but we’re more product focused than anything else.
One thing we’ve done, given the bull, given the bear and given any sentiment is that we just continue to build. The company isn’t about fake hype, and short-term gains — but actual tangible partnerships, and actual tangible products.
We want to prove to the traditional space that there are projects within the crypto space which are building something awesome, and for the future, and the ones who stick to the project from the beginning are the believers, and the ones who will be rewarded in the long-term.
—
Of course what you’re saying is right Captain — our life-blood is the community, if everyone follows this approach that the Captain is talking about and starts commenting to personalities, solid personalities, not meme pushers they will realise that Sekuritance is building something to marvel the crypto world in the future. And if you don’t that’s fine too — the team are also working on a few things to get the word out too, especially with the partners we’re bringing on board.
We are young, and we will grow, nevertheless our products continue to grow.
Also we welcome all these thoughts — so please do feel free to share them across the board and to the chat 😊
[Community Member] All good mate, don’t want to come across like i’m referring to being a “hype-train” out on twitter etc like the next $hocuspocuswoofadog token…
Only refer to simply having a presence, a daily and engaged presence amonst members of the community out there and working together to engage/educate further members of the public about what sekuritance is.
It’s an incredible project with a likewise team, been building, still building, and will continue to build but right now there is PLENTY about the project that’s been built thus far that is worth spreading and talking about to the public. That’s all I mean
About Sekuritance
The Sekuritance RegTech provides a single platform for every compliance need within a business, including end-to-end KYC, KYB, AML, vendor management, beneficiary onboarding, investor check, card processing MFA checks, blockchain wallet checks, cyber-risk assessments, and other RegTech and Business Process Management requirements.
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