On 22 February we held an AMA with the Dubai Community Group, hosted on their telegram channel. If you missed this telegram session, here’s another chance to get a full transcript of the AMA event.
Q: Can you please introduce yourself and your project?
A: Sure, I am the founder & CEO of Venue One. My background is in trading & fintech. Venue One is a non custodial decentralized prediction protocol built on Algorand that allows participants to take positions on the outcome of real world events. The protocol operates on a set of smart contracts that govern various prediction mechanisms including binary outcomes, pari mutuel pools and index predictions. The focus is on short to medium duration events in sports, esports and finance. Venue One aims to revolutionize the prediction markets space. The team feels that the user experience should abstract away as much of the complexity as possible so we believe we will definitely offer the most exciting & usable prediction market available currently on any chain. Our vision is to create a dynamic predictions protocol that can accommodate multiple ways of participant positioning and interaction.
Q: What problem are you trying to solve with your project?
A: We are looking to create a novel and finally usable predictions exchange experience for users. Prior efforts in this space have been difficult to use, slow and substandard vs the experience available in the centralized universe. We aim to change that.
Q: What is the biggest advantage of Venue One?
A: The biggest advantage of Venue One will initially be our focus on faster and more engaging prediction events and also the ability to onboard stablecoins as collateral from most chains, not just Algorand. In the medium to longer term we want to be innovating continuously in creating more types of predictions and community interaction with the protocol.
Q: Please share with us the background of the team behind this project. What are your past experiences?
A: I have over 20 years experience in trading and fintech ventures & our head of development Thanos has 15+ years of software development experience and we are surrounded by an amazing team of builders. I have worked in the City of London and Wall Street, trading systematic strategies and Thanos has built enterprise applications with millions of users. There are currently 9 team members and we are planning to be 15 by the end of this year.
Q: Before a project is born, lots of brainstorming activities to get a befitting name for the project must have taken place. Any significant reason for choosing the project name? What reflection & significance does this name bring?
A: Venue comes from “trading venue” as traditional exchanges have been known between professionals for some time. Our name reflects our ambition to create the best prediction protocol in Web3 by creating the No1 non custodial predictions trading venue/exchange !
Q: Most of the time, project that are deployed today are being built on BSC, ETH, Solana and Polygon networks. Why did Venue One decided not to choose either one of the four and go with Algorand? What makes Algorand Network compatible with your project’s needs?
A: We decided to build on Algorand as it allows us to provide a great user experience. The team had previous experience developing for the Algorand blockchain and we felt this was a natural choice. Having said that, our core technology is based on Algorand but from the point of view of the participants we are already a multi chain product ! Finally we feel Algorand is a super promising emerging DeFi ecosystem.
Q: The hard reality is that some projects remain half way because their developers abandon the concept because they cannot achieve the desired capitalization in the long term; how do you plan to make this project sustainable for its development?
A: We have raised institutional funding that allows the team to concentrate on building out as per our roadmap for at least 24 months if not more. As such we are not going to be abandoning our effort like other projects which focus primarily on token capitalization as a metric of success. The team is also locked in for 2 years post TGE which creates an additional layer of stability. Finally the protocol will make fees as an exchange, unlike other projects that have no path to create revenue.
Q: Staking is very important for every project to attract users. So does have staking program? If yes, how can we stake your token? Is these any requirement for users?
A: You will be able to stake the token in the platform. Participants which stake their tokens will receive staking rewards and reductions in trading fees according to holding tiers. The requirement is to be a platform participant and keep your tokens staked with the protocol. There will be staking rewards for the first 5 years of the protocol’s life at least.
Q: What are the most highlighted feature on your platform that can make it stand out in the market? Is this project is open for beginners or only for crypto experts? How would you welcome non-crypto natives to explore in your platform?
A: Apart from what we believe is a great user experience, the protocol is fast and ideal for instant trading. The project is open to beginners as well, not just crypto natives and we have designed a user onboarding flow for everyone. Our users do not even need to have an Algorand wallet, own ALGOs or do complex wallet signing procedures. We can onboard USDC from any chain so any user that holds the stablecoin can participate. Later in the year we will have also direct fiat onramps.
Q: What are the steps to become a part of your community, and start getting revenues? Where do we buy, where do we sign up? This looks like an amazing project!
A: We will be opening an ambassador programme in the next few days — please follow our socials and apply ! We are looking for a global reach and multiple languages to support our community.
Q: Which one of these aspects is Important for you?
1-Increasing Token Price & Value
2-Empowering Platform Development
3-Building Community Trust
4-Expanding Partnership Globally
In what Order?
A: These are all important but community comes first. I believe a strong community that accrues value not only from the token but also the utility of the platform is paramount. As the saying goes : “Build something people want”.
Q: Can you explain what your tokenomics distribution is like? And how many tokens can be minted? And how many tokens will the team lock?
A: We will publish details of the tokenomics before launchpad subscriptions. At a high level there are 100mil tokens with the majority allocated to the community. The team is locked for 2 years.
Q: Many projects have problems with UI / UX and this one turns off new users. How do you plan to improve the interaction with new users and with users outside the crypto space?
A: Great question — UI/UX is pretty bad across web3 for now in the same way it was pretty bad in web1 and early web2 days. We focus on a very simple user onboarding experience and user flows that will not alienate non crypto users. Our team has built consumer UIs that are used by millions of users currently in the mobile space.
Q: Current NFT is a hot topic, but are NFT not just for art. Does your project think that more real world use cases will emerge for NFTs as time goes on, why should we take NFTs seriously?
A: NFTs are part of the roadmap for us, not only as marketing and community engagement mechanisms. Without going into a more basic discussion about their value — I am just saying they will represent a bigger part of the decentralized future for all of us. We will be having prediction markets on NFTs and novel exchange mechanisms in the space.
Join our global community Telegram : https://t.me/venuemarkets
Follow us on Twitter : @VenueMarkets
For more information and the $VENO whitelist go to : venue.one
