Last week, the COTI team participated in no less than 17 AMAs!
For those who didn’t get the chance to join, here is a recap of the top questions and answers.
What are the milestones achieved to date by COTI?
COTI was launched in early 2017.
To date, we have achieved the following:
1. COTI is already listed on 5 exchanges
2. Strong partnerships (Cardano (ADA), LINK, DAG, FTM, Japan’s biggest internet conglomerate — Recruit, and more)
3. MainNet launched with 10K TPS
4. Superior technology (Universal Payment System, Global Trust System, Trustchain, MultiDAG)
5. Already generating revenue from real world clients, processing a few million USD every month.
What are COTI advantages?
1. Huge 20$ Trillion market
2. Real proven business model that is already generating revenues
3. Utility for holders: price increase as the network grows, running nodes to gain more coins
4. Superior Tech — high reviews by experts
5. Proven team with a track record of success
6. Strong partnerships with Cardano (ADA), LINK, DAG, FTM and Recruit (Japan’s biggest internet conglomerate)
What are the benefits of holding COTI in the long term?
1. HODL to enjoy incentives
2. HODL to enjoy increase demand of the token
3. Run a node to take profits from all transactions
4. Staking for profits
5. Very low market cap for such a superior technology (such market cap is an opportunity)
6. High scalability for the long term (DAG)
How many token holders does COTI have?
We have 3 tokens on 3 networks. The numbers are around 5,000 wallets, not taking into account exchanges, that have about 20,000 more, to the best of my knowledge. Also, note that we require KYC procedure to open a MainNet wallet, so it’s a bit harder than other platforms.
How different is COTI in terms of Security, speed and reconciliation comparing with leading giants?
Well, transaction flow within the COTI network works very differently. First PoW within a DAG base protocol is more a way to prevent spamming and balance incentive within the network. In our protocol the transaction gets full approval only after receiving the majority of DSP nodes — which are high trusted nodes in the network. Also, the architecture of the network is built in a sharding concept which does not require all nodes to participate on every transaction confirmation process.
Close to how many merchant partnerships do you have?
We mostly operate with the online merchant on a different risk level. We currently have a couple of dozens of different industries.
I think the right question shouldn’t be about the quantity but about the processing volume of the merchant. We currently have processing volumes of $5 million USD/month.
We decided a while back to never give merchants names unless they ask us to (like Cardano). We decided so by observing how the famous payment providers operate, they don’t just feed their competition. This industry is very competitive.
What are your partnerships to date?
CARDANO (ADA) partnership is a big deal and a great vote of confidence. We have been chosen to build AdaPay and have recently completed the solution. There have been some praising feedback about it, including an article associating ADA’s value increase by 24% after the release of AdaPay. We have received more requests from well known projects and brands to build their solution and we’ll announce more of it in the coming weeks and months.
We also have a key partnership with Simplex, the same company that provides Fiat to Crypto processing to Binance, KuCoin, BitMax, and others. This partnership allows us to build a bridge to traditional finance and build and even more robust universal payment system.
We have a Defi partnership with one of the leading crypto banks that allows our users to gain interest for their deposits. We’ll announce the partner’s name early next year.
We have also announced earlier this year about deploying our global trust engine on Chainlink. This will add support for trust-based events in smart contracts, enabling user incentivization in line with a predetermined trust score threshold.
We keep a close relationship with other DAG based protocols. This includes Fantom (FTM) and also $DAG (constellation). With $DAG we also share the Scalable Protocol Alliance to encourage enterprise adoption of DAG based protocols.
Lastly, we have received both an investment and strategic partnership from Recruit Japan, the biggest internet conglomerate in Japan, to help us penetrate this promising market.
How is COTI Pay better option for businesses than other crypto payment services?
A merchant would prefer COTI Pay to his traditional solution because COTI gives him everything that he gets with his previous solution (like credit card processing) but adds some very important benefits like INSTANT payment, low transaction fees (sometimes 90% cheaper), Defi based Savings account and global access to the underbanked.
When compared to a crypto processing solution, like BitPay, we offer a complete solution by allowing credit card processing, which is most of the merchant’s business and access to loans and savings. We are the only true universal solution out there.
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What are your plans for the future?
1. Our MainNet is live since June 2019. We are now working on adding Nodes and staking in the coming weeks so COTI holders can benefit from that. Read more here.
2. Another key release coming on our MainNet is the MultiDAG, the first-ever DAG that lets you issue tokens on top of the base protocol, like ERC20 on Ethereum.
3. We are already processing $5 million USD every month as can be viewed on our block explorer. Credit Card processing will be live soon, and we expect to process over $10MM USD / month in less than a quarter.
4. With that ready, we can start working our way to make instant settlements on our Trustchain, and Defi elements of interest to holders and working capital loans to merchants.
5. The Universal Payment System is well underway with the Crypto processing elements in place for BTC and ADA, with more to follow soon.
What is the plan for the prepaid cards
Prepaid virtual cards allow the use of crypto balance everywhere accepting credit cards. A related partnership is already in place and will be announced in due time. It will be released next year with the consumer app.
What is your plan to attract more users in the near future?
We are already processing millions of USD every month as can be viewed on our block explorer.
We work both on direct merchant acquiring and on big partnerships.
We work directly with merchants by offering them to test us as a credit card processor with added benefits (instant settlement, savings etc) and benchmark us to what they already have. We have a very nice pipeline of merchants as it’s a win-win for both parties.
We work on major partnerships, like Cardano, by offering parts of our technology to benefit what they already have and their user base.
The last element that we are about to add is the MultiDAG, they ability to issue tokens on our infrastructure, that will really open us up to be adopted by developers, projects and financial enterprises around the world that would like to issue a tokens for transactions, stable or not.
What is the company business model in order to sustain itself through the upcoming years?
Our business model is straight forward: we take processing fees from transactions and our native coin is used as gas to power the network.
Whenever a transaction happens, now or in the future MultiDAG, the merchant automatically converts part of it to COTI native coin, hence increasing the demand. The more transactions, the more demand. At a fixed supply state, this leads to price increases, just like with any other utility like power or gas.
We have also expanded the token utility from just transactions to a whole ecosystem of financing and processing. The UPS runs on our DAG-based Trustchain, which means that all payment processing, whether coming from credit cards or crypto, is delivered and settled using our coin.
We then power financing options, like interest for savings and loans, and this is also based on the Trustchain and Trust Score Nodes to assess risk. It comes down to having new transaction volume originating from fiat payments turning into digital assets and raising the demand for the COTI coin.
Holders of the coin can benefit from the success of the network and can also manage nodes, to actually take some of the processing fee granted to them for their contribution to the process.
What is the leading Utility of COTI token? And what is Tokenomics of it?
The value of any commodity-type currency arises from its usage as a means of payment and exchange. The greater the utility, the more valuable the currency will be. The COTI network offers a wide spectrum of possible payments and other applications. Payment usage contributes directly to COTI’s utility, while running COTI network infrastructure requires depositing a network fee in COTI and, in some cases, staking a sufficient amount of COTI.
Transaction fees are the main income source for a sustainable economy. A payload-agnostic fee is either equal for every transaction, or case-specific, but is only possible for non-payment applications. In the case of payments, we cannot define fees both large enough to recoup the system and small enough to make micropayments possible. For this reason, COTI PAY, COTI-X and the COTI Arbitration Service use value-based pricing.
COTI’s Full Nodes are fee collectors In the COTI ecosystem, the stakes and interests of users with different roles in the network are well defined and equitable. The COTI network core is made up of a constellation of user-run Full Nodes, DSP Nodes and Trust Score Nodes. COTI Full Nodes can define their own price list and compete for users based on their performance and price. Consequently, COTI Full Nodes are responsible for collecting fees for protocol usage and transferring the network fee to the COTI network pool. All fee collections and payment distributions are denominated in COTI tokens.
COTI can best be described as a multi-layered system as depicted in the chart below:
Security is considered a very important issue for users, how does Coti protect user information and ensure asset safety?
COTI has built mechanisms to monitor, detect and defend against any possible network attacks, ensuring network security. An example of such a mechanism is COTI’s Double Spend Prevention (DSP) Nodes. COTI is introducing a double spend prevention solution, which consists of adding a handful of highly trusted nodes to the network with the primary function of reaching consensus on whether a transaction is legitimate or a double spend. DSP consensus consists of a majority of DSP nodes, and when a transaction has more than one half of the DSP Node signatures, then consensus is achieved.
Users cannot connect directly to DSP Nodes. To run a DSP Node, a user is required to deposit a substantial amount of COTI and to demonstrate a high trust score. Node operators will be required to participate in the network as a Full Node operator for a long time before applying to be upgraded to a DSP node. In addition, DSP nodes are assigned to zones (clusters), which prevents any group of DSP nodes to dominate the entire network.
The fact that participants can operate (purchase) the Nodes that perform verification, namely the DSP Nodes, means that an attacker can attempt to buy favor in the COTI network. In particular, it seems that at first glance that all an attacker needs to verify their own transactions are, at a minimum, two Nodes consisting of a Full Node and DSP Node. Since verification requires consensus among DSP Nodes, however, and purchasing DSP Nodes are expensive, we assume that purchasing the majority of DSP Nodes would not result in a profitable attack.
Furthermore, only participants with a high trust score can create a DSP Node and as soon as the Node is found to be acting maliciously by other DSP Nodes, it will lose all trust, be blocked and the owner’s deposit will be seized.
Can COTI be used to serve in the real world?
We are already processing $5 million USD every month as can be viewed on our block explorer. Credit Card processing will be live soon, and we expect to process over $10MM USD / month in less than a quarter.
Cardano using your technology. What’s the benefit for the COTI token ecosystem?
all transactions are put on the Trustchain which increases the organic demand for a fixed supply coin.
If we consider DAG vs Blockchain performances theoretically then DAG considered to be a faster approach. Why did you decide to add Multi-DAG model?
The honest truth is that the DAG structure along with the unique base infrastructure was much more complicated to achieve than just an ERC20 solution. I can still remember the team debating in late 2016/early 2017 on the project path. The answer for us was very simple, even that the markets were hot and we could have gone with an erc20 chain, we preferred to go on the long journey so that future developments could be implemented with scalability, interoperability, security and more. We.now.understand that the base layer that we choose along with the multi DAG functionality will make the difference and will push our success through various industries.
It’s been a big week at COTI with the Binance Community Vote announcement. What’s your thoughts on being nominated for the vote and how do you feel this adds legitimacy to the project in general?
It’s great to be recognized and to qualify for Binance listing. We have been in discussions with the listing team for a long while and they have a really deep and thorough process. They look at everything, from tech to adoption to the community. Ticking all the boxes with such high scrutiny is really exciting for us.
“It’s a great honor to be nominated”, as the saying goes in the Oscars. And if we stay on that analogy, then films that are nominated to win a prize are always good and enjoy great viewership, even if they don’t win.
It is also very important to note that participating in such a contest means that COTI IS QUALIFIED TO LIST ON BINANCE. That’s great news and it means that if we win or not, we’re eligible and qualified to list on Binance if not now then in the future. That’s the bottom line.
How does COTI Pay extend out to other networks?
We see COTI, and the Trustchain, as a base protocol for finance. To that extent, COTI Pay was designed to be interoperable with other networks. To that extent, we have built and are actively building processing gateways that allow us to accept any cryptocurrency as payments (COTI, BTC, and ADA now with more to come) and bridges that allow the conversion of COTI between various blockchains (COTI MainNet, BEP2 and ERC20 now with more to come). Payments, by definition, should be seamless and easy and can’t be limited and siloed to one currency or blockchain. That’s why COTI provides such an extensive whitelabeling solutions to other networks.
COTI Pay reconciles the functionality of PayPal and other online payment gateways with that of the cryptocurrency world. COTI Pay provides a comprehensive payment solution that combines all existing support systems of traditional payment processors with the added value of digital assets.
The stack includes:
- Instant payments for merchants: funds are credited to the merchant immediately and are backed by stable coins, which reduces friction and high costs for all parties by eliminating price volatility and FX costs.
- Buyer-seller protections: COTI’s Universal Payment Solution covers physical and virtual purchases, as well as crypto and fiat payments.
- COTI Pay Plugins: allow the processing of crypto or fiat payments on any online store (e.g., Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento).
- COTI SDK: allows developers to add retail payment features to any application.
- COTI Whitelabel: enables merchants to issue their own coin and loyalty programs on COTI Pay. Merchant coins and loyalty points will remain internal to the COTI ecosystem.
- TrustScore — The trust in our network is based on a combination of the network participant‘s historical behaviour data and objective datasets. We take this into consideration in our protocol by calculating trust using a unique machine-learning algorithm.
You can read about it more in COTI’s CTO, Dr. Haloani’s, deep article here.
Can you link us to the chart of your current coin distribution schedule?
And is this locked in? Are you open to change this in the future?
You can also view the data here.
We are considering some changes for the benefit of holders.
Why do you have the KYC process in place and what is your response to those who say it is an overly complex and slow process, just to open a wallet?
Any regulated crypto wallet used for payments requires KYC/AML as part of the onboarding process.
COTI follows stringent Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) policies to ensure the network is always safeguarded for all users.
COTI is inherently not conducive to money-laundering, as any user of COTI’s wallets, exchange and processing solutions must undergo strict onboarding procedures. COTI is similarly committed to protecting user privacy and has appropriate consumer data protection mechanisms in place.
That being said, ERC20, BEP2 and any token issued on the COTI MultiDAG, doesn’t require the KYC process.
What tech is up and running now and what’s coming in the future?
Our MainNet is live since June 2019. We are adding Nodes and staking in the coming weeks so COTI holders can benefit from that. Another key release coming on our Mainet is MultiDAG, the first ever DAG that lets you issue tokens on top of the base protocol, like ERC20 on Ethereum.
The Universal Payment System is well underway with the Crypto processing elements in place for BTC and ADA, with more to follow soon. We are already processing millions of USD every month as can be viewed on our block explorer.
Credit Card processing would be live in a matter of days, and we’ll announce it very soon. I expect us to process over 10MM USD / month in less than a quarter.
With that ready, we can start working our way to instant settlements on our Trustchain, and Defi elements of interest to holders and working capital loans to merchants.
Explain to me why payments are such a big deal and why real time payments have been called the holy grail of payment platforms, be they traditional or blockchain based?
Payments are a $20 Trillion industry that is using an outdated technology and systems. Disruption in this industry is the biggest opportunity of our life times and blockchain is the right technology for that.
Real time payments are the holy grail as they give you the benefits of cash on one hand and allow you the benefits of a remote transaction on the other hand. It’s the best of the two worlds. When a merchant is not paid instantly it means that he has cash flow problems, counterparty risk and obviously all the fees that come with these transactions.
Blockchain, at its current state, is not ready for instant payments. COTI is using its own DAG based protocol that was built from the ground up to do real time payments, which means that we CAN do instant payments in a highly secure way that fits with regulation, and this is why people are excited about the Trustchain.
Recent news and articles:
- Introducing Delegated Staking Model and Community Nodes
- Everything You Want To Know About COTI’s DAG and Consensus Algorithm
- Everything You Want To Know About COTI’s Universal Payment System
- Everything You Want To Know About COTI’s Full Nodes and Staking Model
- Everything You Want To Know About COTI’s Partnerships
- Everything You Want To Know About COTI’s Adoption and Usage
- COTI’s closing words on the Binance community vote and our plans ahead
- AdaPay solution is now live!
- Announcing the First Release of the COTI Payment Gateway!
- Cardano Foundation and COTI to offer an ada payment processing solution for merchants
- COTI Opens Full Node Registration and Reveals Staking Model
- How to run a Full Node: COTI’s technical guide
- COTI’s Ambassador Program
- A first look into COTI’s Universal Payment System (UPS)
- COTI Universal Payment System (UPS)
- COTI is deploying its Global Trust System (GTS) on Chainlink
- Introducing COTI’s Global Trust System (GTS), an advanced layer of trust for any blockchain
COTI Resources
Website: https://coti.io
Telegram group: https://t.me/COTInetwork
Github: https://github.com/coti-io
Technical whitepaper: https://coti.io/files/COTI-technical-whitepaper.pdf
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