Last week, January 8, we held the AskMeAnything session with our CEO, Dyma Budorin. Most questions were related to tokens and the DeFi market. Also, Dyma shared the information and plans about the products and future activities. Please, read the text for more information.
Transcript and highlights of the AMA
Q: The one thing that seems to be lacking in the roadmap is interoperability. All use cases/services could be provided by Hacken in more or less blockchain agnostic way. Are there plans to integrate f.e. ETH-payments through faucet, portal or bridges to make Hacken services more accessible to users outside the VET-ecosystem?
I think it’s a problem of all blockchains. If you are speaking with specialists from a non-crypto project, they have no idea of how to pay using a meta mask. In most cases, they don’t even use browser plugins, thus, it’s almost impossible. In December, we launched the marketing campaign that was focused on motivating crypto currency exchanges to use bug bounty services. Some were telling us that they didn’t want to make any deposit to exchanges. 2 exchanges accepted the offer which resulted in ~ 600K burnt tokens.
Q: So, what is interoperability?
We don’t want to disclose all cards yet and what is around the Hacken foundation. We have already agreed with some projects that they will enter the Hacken foundation. One project is related to the onboarding aimed at developing the system which will allow us to build a decentralized exchange working with VeChain and Ethereum.
We are going to do it, we understand the benefits and problems of not being present on the most popular networks.
Q: We saw Stellar and Ukraine Government entering into a partnership a few days ago, similar to what Hacken did. Is Hacken in contact with Stellar for cooperation?
This project has laid in the National Bank of Ukraine since 2015. I know it very well.
The country is very young and is ready to experiment. It’s also open to new ideas. In any case, I’m in very close contact with ministers and we know what they plan to do. We are ready to start the smart contract audits.
Our strategy related to cooperation with the government has 2 directions. The first direction is called cybersecurity and we have not announced it yet. The second direction provides for active promotion of tokens and crypto. I’m not interested yet in diving deep there. The focus will be made on the Ukrainian economy and cybersecurity.
Q: HAI has a trading volume problem, what are the plans related to marketing and listings to mitigate this issue in the Q1 2021?
We have realized the issue and agreed to hire professional market makers and allocate more resources for marketing purposes. We have enough resources reserved to start conducting such activities and actively approaching new marketing partners. As for the listings, we will get there but if you don’t want to waste a massive amount of funds then this will require some patience. Hacken is always focused on first-tier exchanges and new listings. This is an ongoing task and, unfortunately, a waiting game.
I’m not satisfied with Bithumb and Bitmart and I consider the possibility of delisting from these exchanges. In terms of new exchanges, we are building the gateway to participate in all Ethereum DeFi projects, it’s currently under construction. Of course, there are only a few CEX that you want to list on.
We need to build a strong community, the project, direction and partners are already in place and we can now add more value to the token and build relationships required for first-tier listings and much more.
Q: I think Hacken should focus on DeFi projects.. since security is mandatory for them.. how does Hacken feel about this?
Of course, we had enough expertise to build an oracle for Chainlink with connection to DEX exchanges. I see right now that there are a lot of protocols which let you find out how data can circulate in the blockchain. We see a big potential to work in this direction. Not only to do security audits but also to build an oracle that has a lot of information about the blockchain in terms of cybersecurity. The history of tokens has to be made public. In terms of smart contracts and token contracts, there should be an oracle that tells us which smart contract is audited and which is not audited. The integration with the DEX’es is also possible. We are thinking in this direction. If you know people working in this direction, please contact us, we are extremely interested in working in this field.
Q: According to Hackenomics, Hacken plans to build a new DEX with $HAI pairing. When it is true, would you consider adding more than just the top tokens, like DEFI´s that are audited by Hacken and/or VIP180 — ERC20 functionality. This would increase the use of $HAI. We all know that many market players have the same problem related to the need to pay a lot of money to be listed on CEX.
We don’t want to create a DEX to trade other tokens. We want to ease the pain for b2b clients and new traders that need HAI. A lot of influencers I am speaking with are saying that it would be great when you had a Uniswap pair. We will help the token go up. They say that it’s extremely difficult to push a person to go, deposit, and trade. We are losing traction because of it. The DEX we are going to create will be used only for above-mentioned purposes. I can say that the method will constitute something like wrapping the ether assist into VeChain assets and integrating and connecting with a meta mask. We know what to do, we have the plan. Similar to harvesting finance.
Q: How much HAI will you burn annually?
This week we have burnt 600k HAI from 2 exchange clients, a good beginning of the year.
There will be different ways regarding how and why we burn HAI. It will not only be our job but it will also depend on the community contribution from the Hacken Club members. We will provide a yield to our users and partners. Like earning the passive income when they deposit and lock HAI. But there will be certain rules. One of the options is related to the unlock process. Immediate unlock requires community contribution. These tokens will go to the burn account.
This inflation model will depend on you as well.
Q: Being an early investor in $Link, I really consider cross-chain protocols highly needed and valuable. What are the future plans for Hacken Security Oracles!? Will you offer a “standard solution” and begin a partnership with it!?
Bingo, this is the next big thing, we are in a very good position to lead this because we are not in the Ethereum ecosystem and VeChain is much closer to Ether then any other blockchain is. We don’t need an oracle only for the sake of it. We actually need it, we are a security company and we want to succeed in this niche. It will be like CoinGecko style partnership, but maybe even better.
Q: How many audits does Hacken do monthly/annually?
5–8 audits per month.
Q: Have you considered or will you consider the possibility of working closely with the VeChain foundation to offer Hacken products as a cybersecurity solution to their enterprise partners?
Of course, we are considering that and we continue working in this field.
This year, we also see significant potential in crypto, and this is related not only to enterprise and b2b clients. 2021 is a year of HAI token and you probably see that my focus has changed. Previous years, we focused on developing sustainable business models and building the foundation and reserves, we developed new products and conquered a name in the rapidly changing market.
2021 is a year of token, 5 new products and new partnerships.
Q: Does your strategy provide for the development of a Hacken Cybersecurity certification model? In other words, can companies be certified by Hacken like ISO certification? This will make companies confident that their cybersecurity frameworks are adequate, and customers will realize that doing business with them does not create risks.
The idea is amazing and we need to implement it and start pushing. We have already been certified by crypto exchanges but we also need to have other certification models.
The methodology that we use for CER.live is becoming difficult. The ranking has also become fairer. At some point of time, we will definitely start releasing certificates.
I want this to be linked to VTP, vulnerability disclosure problems. We are working on this right now with Hackenproof. Hacken is becoming a SaaS and it will be much easier for the clients to launch a bug bounty on Hackenproof. We think that Hackenproof can become the certification stamp of quality. We are working in this direction, Jane is responsible for this and it is one of the main tasks in 2021.
Q: About Coming lockups and supply movement
We are going to work with the budget that was prescribed in Hackenomics but it does not mean that we are going to use the whole budget. There will be a certain movement of HAI funds at the beginning of the month. We are going to make the first transfer today. This will be 6 million HAI in total. 5 million is locked in time frames of 1–3–10 years. We will send HAI tokens to the team wallets in the coming weeks.
The majority of tokens are in lock-up to 1, 3, and 10-year time frames.
Q: About Ideas Hackathon
Hackathon will be the first interesting event in January.
The approach is led by a community member.
He is very polite, has already developed the website, and is very proactive. We are making up prices for the Hackathon and, I think, we are going to release the website next week or so.
The prices will be USDT and HAI. We will allocate funds to support this project and there will be voting. I cheer you to generate and share your ideas. We get a lot of ideas and we know that engineers have created amazing things. They want to promote the products but they usually lack business development skills. An artist who didn’t see applause from the side of the audience would go to the dark side. We hope we can give you this applause.
We see that Hacken has a high potential to develop great products together with our community, please think with us! We need your energy! For example, decentralized DDOS as a service is probably a good idea.
Q: It’s not clear to me how the VeChainThor Blockchain is still involved. I mean do the products run on VeChainThor Blockchain? Do they burn VTHOR? Or the only involvement related to $HAI as VIP-180 token? These questions arise since, if I correctly understand, the new membership program doesn’t include VTHO rewards.
We are burning VTHO when processing every transaction so that the network is used. But the question regarding how Hacken is involved with VeChain is a more complex question. It would be more involved when we developed the NFT reward system providing for more transfers and VTHO burns. And it would be much more involved when we had a DEX, but right now, unfortunately, we do not have it.
Q: Sustainable growth protection is an amazing idea. This will give stability to the entire ecosystem. 50% of Hacken Group’s fiat net profits are held in a Sustainable Growth Reserve. It will be stored in a wallet with a known address? What are the parameters according to the buy level set?
We will start with the 0.01 price support target, we already support the order book time to time. It’s hard to make it transparent when you work with decentralized exchanges. It’s almost impossible. The plan is to build the DEX and then inject the funds into the DEX.
Q: Can you explain in details the difference between Crystal Oracle and Chainlink Oracle? And regarding the cooperation with Chainlink, what benefits will Chainlink bring for Hacken?
Chainlink is a protocol and they want to have as many data providers as possible but I’m not sure if this is the right way. I think that the focus should be made on the data which tells us what is needed for blockchain projects. There are a lot of oracles that provide prices, and the prices are very needed in the blockchain but, in fact, this is not the only thing. The security and KYC, or what is deposited to DEX, is more important. I know the reason why there are no such oracles yet. It requires a lot of work but we are interested in becoming a very big data provider. We are working behind the scenes to collect as much data as we can regarding the audit. Nobody has ever done what we are planning to do. This will be a massive workload.
Q: Are you planning to develop a VPN and other products for Windows and Linux platform?
Yes. In terms of HackenAi, we are going to develop two more apps for the mobile. One is a big top app which will have VPN. Give us some time. For Linux platform, firstly, you need to go open source and this is definitely my plan and dream. I hope HackenAi will be open source. Yeah, that will be a great idea. We are working hard to accomplish it.
Q: Can you give us more details about the Hacken foundation, “Amazon in the field of cybersecurity”?
This is a vision. No one has conducted research on the cybersecurity products and services landscape yet. If you want to see all penetration tests in a company or all the antiviruses, VPNs, or password managers you will not find the required resource. We will start by developing the cybersecurity ecosystem map of a cybersecurity company that is working in the field of crypto. We have good relations with cybersecurity companies. We already have the website for this purpose and we will keep adding information in our systems. We have a lot of resources in Ukraine which will help with that.
Q: In Hackenomics, the partner members are active players in the decision-making process. How are members involved in the process? Something like VeVote?
Yes, something like the voting system, we are developing it. It will take some time but we are working hard. The workload is huge and we are doing things step by step. We are very committed to accomplishing it but we are just at the beginning of the process.
Q: Is there a plan regarding a browser or a browser add-on?
No, not really. There is a way to be a good cybersecurity product without being a browser add-on.
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