welcome back to another AMA.
We know it's been a while there's a lot of catching up to do
We've compiled a list of questions that have been coming our way from our community and
today we're peeling back the curtain to share the exciting road ahead with none other than
our founder and CEO, Pinaki.
Welcome Pinaki, we're excited to have you back on another AMA.
Hey Shrey, thanks a lot, great to be back, so I'm logging in through the official account
Hey everyone, thanks for coming.
Hello Pinaki, can you hear me?
Hey, yes I can hear you, I can hear you perfectly.
Or maybe Shrey, you might want to log in and log out again.
Thank you for being here, it's been a while.
Hey guys, it seems like there's something wrong with Shrey's connection. So we're just waiting for him to come back
Hey guys, sorry, I think that was a little bit of a little bit of a disconnect there
I'm just gonna start speaking
Hi Pianaki, can you hear me?
Hello Pianaki, can you hear me?
Hey straight, can you hear me now?
Hello Pianaki, can you hear me?
Hey straight, yeah, I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yep. Yep, I can. Alright, let's just
Thanks again for everyone, you know, it's just we had like some technical issues
So straight, I think what we should do is just start from the top and then we'll use this as a new start time
Okay. Okay. Perfect. Awesome
Welcome back to another AMA
You know, it's not been you know, it's been a while and there's a lot of catching up to do
So today's AMA is not just any regular crypto chat. It's your backstage pass to the AFI Network's master plan for the year and
Today I'm on your side. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not asking as an AFI Network employee today
But rather as a community member who's keen to know that what what's in store for AFI Network
So we've compiled a list of questions that have been coming our way from our community and today we're peeling back the curtain to
Share the exciting road ahead with none other than our founder and CEO Pinaki. Welcome Pinaki
We're excited to have you back on another AMA
Hey, Shrey, it's awesome to be back. Thanks
Yeah, so, you know, I think there's been a lot of technical difficulties. Let's just get straight to it. Uh
Please can you tell us how does blockchain help the affiliate marketing industry?
Yeah, absolutely. So the affiliate industry is actually one that has a lot of issues
You know all the way and you know from web to you know, we have issues such as you know
Payment processing you have issues such as ad fraud and these are you know, massive pain points
You have issues like management and efficiency
And so this is where blockchain comes in right? So blockchain
Poses as a as a great solution to the problems that you know, we face in the affiliate industry
So some of the things that you know, the blockchain can do is, you know enhance the transparency
for the affiliate industry and at the same time increase the security and also the efficiency for all the
Participants in the network. So this is where blockchain comes in and this is where a few network comes in
You know with an application leveraging blockchain technologies to solve the pain points addressed in the affiliate industry. I
Hope that answers the question. Sorry
Okay. Nice. Well, thanks. Thanks for thanks. That's not you. Sorry. It was just a little bit of a delay
So can I ask who was a few network partner with so far?
So with regards to partners, you know a few network we've partnered with a lot of our partners our agencies we partner with
You know blockchain so polygon we did a partnership with polygon studios. So they support us with some marketing activities
We did a partnership with coin telegraph. So we're part of their accelerator program and they also provide us with you know
we partner with blockchain a
blockchain security company called veyosin and so they did our smart contract audit for v1 core contract and
Yeah, we're engaging them now for several things. So we keep a close relationship with our partners
So those are some of the partners we've partnered with, you know, this is excluding, you know, our ambassadors excluding our investors and whatnot
These are strategic partners. Yep
You just mentioned investors
One question that was asked a few times which by the way
You know, I've been very keen to know is who are the investors behind happy network?
Are you a lot to share or disclose some of this information? Um, yeah, so actually
a lot of our investors are you know made up of an angel that our operators within the space so we have
I'm not gonna take their names, but we have people from you know, several
Companies, right? We have people
That are on board from from internet computer protocol. We have people on board from Facebook
We have people on board from Deloitte Branka's McKinsey
Several private investors and also operators within the space
So what we see is really interesting is that you know
They they find you know that there's a use case for maybe that the project that they're working on or they see that
You know, we have you know
a low fdv or you know, and then they want to participate in a certain way and so this is how they're
Joining the journey and some of the people that have you know came on board as investors
So just to share with you. These are investors on on our pre-sale. So they have purchased tokens
You know early on in advance
Yeah, so yeah that that's you know, just a high level of you know, who's involved in on the investment side
Well, that's exciting that's new information for me too
And I guess that just builds to the credibility going behind
So one thing I've seen recently is that we just released a new white paper
Can you talk to us about maybe the differences between v1 and v2?
Yeah, sure. Sounds good. So
So our new white paper that we released, you know, it's called the evolution of
Decentralized affiliate marketing, right?
So essentially it outlines our 2.0 vision and in a very simple way to think about you know
The difference between 1.0 and 2.0 is the transition in in our R&D focus, right?
so with regards to a few network 1.0, you know, we went out initially to
You know conduct research for affiliate marketing for NFTs and you know, we were like, how could we build an architecture?
That would be decentralized. How can we cater to you know, NFT users and also participants and allow them to you know
Contribute or you know participate in certain campaigns in a decentralized way
so that's the you know, the first challenge and you know, the first white paper that we kind of addressed and we
you know tested with users and whatnot and
I think I work 2.0 division here is you know, we're expanding outside of our NFT focus. And so we see that
You know, there's a lot of
requirement from different, you know
Categories of companies, right? So we have categories like defi we have categories like social phi
We have categories like gaming phi and all these different companies are also looking for user acquisition
And they're looking to acquire users in a lean way, right?
So where they can manage their customer acquisition costs and this is where a few network 2.0 comes in
It pretty much marks the transition between you know of our R&D focus from you know
Decentralized affiliate marketing for NFTs to decentralized affiliate marketing, you know for web 3 and beyond
Yeah, I think I think that's really exciting moving on to next like this coming year
you know, it's gonna be very busy you're in the web 3 space and
It's gonna be it's gonna be very exciting. So coming do having enough
Protocols so that we can cater the needs tools is something that is very exciting
Do you mind walking us through a high level of what 2024 has to offer?
Yeah, so 2024 is a you know, as you mentioned extremely exciting year for us and you know
The reason for this is because you know, the token market is active again
We have several catalysts events that are happening this year one that just passed by so we had you know
the ETF approvals of Bitcoin and then we have the Bitcoin having event coming up in a few months and
You know there are rumors around you know
Whether there's going to be an ethereum ETF and you know when that's gonna take place that's gonna act as another catalyst
Essentially more people are coming into web 3 and that's really what's required for this industry
And so for us we kind of timed
You know certain events around these catalysts as well
Right like our token launch and the timing for when the distribution is gonna happen and whatnot so for on a high level for you
2024 we definitely want to boost our community engagement
That's something that you know, we want we need to do and we're constantly, you know working on that
We have our you know public community sales coming up. We have you know, our TG is coming up
We're looking at increasing more partners, right that we're working with
We want to dive much deeper into you know, working with projects and the categories of DeFi and gaming and SocialFi
We have features that we want to release later on this year
Such as staking features. We want to release governance features for voting
We also want to release our revenue share feature, which enables token holders to have a share of revenue earned in real time
So in case you didn't know that 50% of our revenue is going to be distributed to token holders
We want to list on you know, multiple exchanges
We want to release our 2.0 testnet and then ultimately mainnet as well. We have airdrops that we have planned
So, you know, there's a whole load of things that we have planned
Yeah, it sounds like it sounds like a very busy year ahead. Honestly, that's a lot of things planned
But sounds very exciting nonetheless
It's an exciting road ahead. Now you mentioned that you were
Going like you mentioned earlier that you know, you have to partner with people's and have strategic partners
So, you know a frequent question we do get asked is do we plan on partnering with other companies to solidify our
relationships for the upcoming bull run
Yeah, absolutely. No, it's funny that you're you're you're wearing the community member hat today because
otherwise, you know, we'd be talking about this at work, right and so
Yeah, I mean in terms of partnership there's one initiative we recently rolled out
It's called the AFI Alliance program and the the Alliance program
What we're trying to do is really just you know partner with companies that can bring strategic value to our ecosystem
So that's extremely important right and and who these partners, right? These are different guilds
These are agencies marketing agencies PR agencies
these are other web 3 studios right that are building and
What this partnership really is is essentially a barter of services in exchange for token allocation, right?
And so, you know an example would be like a media company that be like, you know
We'd give you X amount of media credits, right which might be press releases might be articles in the form of
You know and then we would exchange it in the form of a fee tokens and these tokens are also vested over a period of
Time and so what this does is it encourages, you know various partners?
Participating in future governance events to be staking for revenue share and whatnot as well
So the Alliance program is something that we're you know
We're just kicking off and you know, we've started a partner with a few companies and these conversations are ongoing right now
So if you're a company in web 3 anywhere around the world, you have a service that could be offered
You know and you're interested to partner with us do feel free to reach out send a proposal, you know to a community at
Afi network and we'll get back to you as soon as possible
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. That's not key. I mean that is very exciting
You said like, you know media everyone wants to get a lot of coverage and eyeballs on on what they're doing
so yeah, that makes that makes sense, but
One thing that I do have to ask is that although it is important to have new partnerships, you know with it
Within the web 3 community. Is it equally as important to build a community around the product and
What steps are a few network taking towards that to make sure that you know, we have a strong community with us
Yeah, so aside from all the partnerships, you know that we're we're forming with you know, various media companies and whatnot
We've been also building very much internally our ambassador program. And so I actually see here that we have some ambassadors with us
On the call and actually just before this we were having our weekly ambassador meeting and
yeah, I mean our ambassador program is something that we're you know, we're trying to grow by one to two ambassadors on a weekly basis and
You know, we have been doing that and so there's there's some momentum and right now
We're seeking ambassadors from different markets around the world. So we're looking at some key markets like, you know, China
We're looking at markets like India Indonesia Philippines Brazil South Korea right now
we do have some ambassadors that are working with us already from Philippines Pakistan Nigeria and so on and the idea is really that we want to
Build a big enough ambassador community so that you know, we can address
You know concerns of new users in their local languages and that's that's the idea that we're trying to do and and build it completely
Well, yeah, I mean that's amazing because you know
Everyone all projects do need affiliate solutions and even people who don't have aren't you know
Influencers they could always they could always you know help join be an ambassador and help spread the word
so I think I think this is this goat relates can relate to anyone any of the listeners who were keen and
now for question of the year to Naki when is
Importantly what is the utility behind this coin?
So what is the token ring live
This is a question that we got asked a lot
guess it's a good thing right because we there's a lot of anticipation and people are interested and excited and
we initially did actually want to launch the token last year, but
You know, we decided to kind of move it too early this year due to you know
Certain cycles and and macro sentiment and whatnot
But you know to answer your question in short
We're aiming to to roll out within around March to April, right? So within home each one twenty twenty four
You know within within a very few months right or one to two months, you know, we should have our token
Live and so this is actually a very very exciting time for us
We have in several conversations right now with like various launch pads
We're having several conversations with market makers and exchanges as well
And we have a lot of proposals that we're reviewing as well
So we're just kind of you know, I guess digging through everything and you know
We just have to make a decision that makes the most sense for us in our community
And to your second point in regards to utility of our token
So, you know our token is we have you know, one one main utility is payouts, right? So these campaigns
You know advertisers would be able to launch these campaigns and use a fee as a payout mechanism
So right now the payout mechanism, you know is USDT USDC and die so we support stablecoin payments
But you know if if advertisers use a fee as a payout mechanism
Then we have an incentive mechanism which allows
more incentives from using a fee as a payout mechanism and so essentially that's gonna create some buy pressure, you know get
I get advertisers to you know utilize a fee instead and at the same time, you know
We're hoping that publishers would also be interested to join campaigns that are paying out in a fee tokens
For the potential upside that could come with it. So that's one utility
governance so governance is something that
You know, we're moving towards like a Dow vision, right? So essentially allowing everybody to have a
You know a piece of the company in the sense where they can actually vote and also create proposals around, you know
New activities, right? So how are we going to use?
You know the funds in our treasury, you know
Which features should we actually be building next and so these are things that we want to also
Empower our community with right the option to not just vote but create proposals that that ultimately get voted on and then another
Utility is revenue share. So I mentioned this earlier
But token holders would be getting an access to revenue share, right? So 50% of our revenue goes directly to
Token holders. So if our platform makes a hundred million dollars a year that will be distributing 50 million dollars a year to all token holders
Another utility and another one is incentives, right?
So incentives is something that I did touch upon a little earlier on the payouts
topic with incentives essentially means that
so 33% of all our tokens, right so a third of all our supply is actually going towards incentives and
Incentives are you know, we we kind of look at it as like a
You know like a secret weapon to acquire and retain users, right? So our incentive
33% of our tokens our incentive tokens are actually distributed over 60 months plus and so we have pretty much five years
Where you know, we can kind of tweak and toggle where these incentives go and you know
Depending on what we need users to do, right? So for example, we need more advertisers to create campaigns
We can then gear incentives that way or we need more users to join campaigns. We can also, you know
Tweak it however we like and so, you know
This is essentially another thing that the Dow could vote on later as well. Like how are we gonna use our incentives?
Yeah, so, you know on a high level, you know, I hope I covered all the utilities of our token. Yeah
Yeah, I mean, thanks. That's that's super interesting. You know, I haven't seen many many models like that
Especially in the affiliate in the affiliate world. So that's that sounds really exciting before I open the floor for some Q&A
One thing I do want to ask you is what can some of our community members do now?
what what's something that they can all you know do something to get involved and to get and
Just get into the whole group for this upcoming upcoming run
Yeah, so in terms of what community members can do right now
It's like if you're not already part of the community then definitely join the community, right?
So we have an active discord. We have an active telegram group, right where we share updates and announcements, right?
So that's something that you know, you should definitely follow. So just a few days ago
We also did a community episode right under our brand colony X without getting into that too much
You know we we we organized so far we've been doing a monthly spaces and we've been inviting, you know, several
Yeah, I can hear you can hear me
Anyways, um, so we're gonna invite, you know various community leaders we've been doing that and
That's something that's you know, been really interesting. So
Definitely follow us as well. Right? So, you know, you're not just gonna get afi network updates. You're also going to be exposed to
educational content within our within ours
Environment so joint join our community. That's one thing that you can do for sure
stay tuned for our upcoming token sales and at the same time also
You know have a look at you know, our docs have a look at our white paper
Yeah, so that's those are some things that you could do right now
Thanks, thanks that panaki
Now we're gonna open the floor to some Q&A's
We have a little incentive for this one for those of you who are stuck by where we're doing ten dollars for the best question
So go ahead if anyone has any questions to ask panaki then
Then please go ahead and you can comment we are looking at the comments right now
Yeah, actually, I see a few people requested to speak. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna I'm gonna open it for them
Yeah, the first the first person would be Salim
Hey Salim, can you hear me?
Hey Ronnie, can you hear us?
Hey, I'm not sure if we can hear any of the speakers I'm gonna add Salim again
What you guys could do as well is just drop your questions in the comments section and then we could we could answer it based
Just checking if anyone can hear
Don't know why that's happening
Yeah, it's okay you I can hear you
For the new listeners, especially um, it was really cool to hear you speak
But all the incentives about the coin, but in regards to the NFT
In regards to the platform. What are the benefits for NFT users when using afi network compared to any other affiliate
That's that's a great question. Yes. Thanks. Thanks for that
Essentially we're decentralized. So unlike all the other affiliate marketing platforms
We they do not have real-time tracking and real-time payments unlike us and since we're decentralized is you know
full there's no need for this full transparency and
You know, we don't we have no no hold over your money. It's kept up
It's basically locked up in an escrow and every time of affiliate payout happens you get your money there and then
So unlike other affiliate payouts
You might have to wait into the week on the end of the month for them to manually do it where there can be
some mistakes and mishaps
that's one reason another reason why
I would recommend people to get NFTs at afi network is because for buyers you get a you get a buyback you get some cash back
Oh if you're an influencer
then you get your cut as well from it and if you are an advertiser a project NFT project and you
Are wanting to pay on a performance basis rather than having to pay KOLs upfront again
Decentralization is the way to go and that's why you know, what everyone's adopting web 3 decentralization is a huge part of it
So yeah, that's why I'd say that we are
That's what's our USP. That's what sets us apart. And that's why I would also recommend everyone to
Use afi network for affiliate payouts
Okay, great. Thanks. Thanks for that. Sure. Yep. No worries. Thanks. Thanks for that question
Let me see we can have jr jr here
Yeah, yeah jr is here honey. Hey, yeah, I can hear you
all right, so I just want to know if the afi network has them carried out hackathons and
Continues in order to check for vulnerability and also if you support the developers in your network
Sorry, I didn't I didn't get that can you can you please repeat that please I you broke out for me for a second
All right, so my question is if the
Network has carried out any sort of event, you know
In order to look for vulnerabilities in the network and also if we support developers on the network
Right. Okay. I think I let panaki answer this one. Hey, so can you hear me?
Yep, okay cool. Yeah, I just logged in with my
Personal account is I think there was some issues hearing everyone but yeah
I think to answer your your question juniors, we do participate in, you know various events
We try to attend, you know certain events and challenges. We were also recently part of
Juby's builder demo day and afi network actually won most user-engaged
Project award over there and as part of what we're trying to do here is we don't actually have any like
You know bug bounties or you know internal hackathons that we're doing now
I think as we grow we definitely want to look into, you know
Offering these services. I mean these these activities
But right now no and so one thing to know though from the developer side is that we are building with open source in mind
And so you can actually have a look at our github repository and see, you know our core contract that we built
it's actually fully available you can you can just have a look on github and
The idea there is that you know, we we do expect, you know developers and we already had developers
You know reaching out to us and interested to contribute and saying, you know, we have one way to to make it better
We have one way to you know, enhance this or that so we're definitely open
You know, if you do have any ideas as developer don't hesitate to you know, write a ticket to us
That's the best way to reach out to us
But also some so is there any kind of
Setbacks that I think especially in respect of the network, like is there any challenge or setbacks? I
Think I think for all companies there's challenges and setbacks, right?
I think it's not it's not gonna be easy to build what we're trying to do, right?
So, you know, it's a it's a big project we expect, you know
hundreds of setbacks, I think that's just part of the nature of the game, but
You know, we're happy to tackle them head-on. So that's that's our attitude towards, you know, just building startups
All right, that's all my question so six thanks. Thanks a lot. I think we also have some questions from
Salim so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add Salim as a speaker
Okay, maybe maybe what we'll do is we'll go with ghost in the meantime
Anyways, so I'm just like you I'm just quite curious in fact
How are you trying to keep up with upcoming technologies and like artificial intelligence and the rest?
we know the whole buzzers are going to increase here, but how do you try and incorporate on 24 and
New training technologies that will keep on coming up to try and stay relevant in the space
Yeah makes sense I think for us we just have to prioritize right
there's so many different things happening all the time in this space and you know, there's a lot of
I guess interest for from developers to jump into like the new trending technologies, but for us
We're very focused on on our core technology, right which is building affiliate marketing solutions
using blockchain technologies the AI wave is merely just you know, it's just it's a wave and
There's a lot of hype around it. You know, a lot of projects are kind of raising at really high valuations
We we don't think it makes sense to chase that but
But AI in general, you know, it it's a very strong has a lot of power
We definitely leverage AI right chat GPT mid-journey whatnot to streamline our activities
And we're also looking at ways to leverage, you know AI in our own product
But we're not looking to build, you know of those AI tech, you know ourselves at least not at this time
And I think the way to stay up with you know technology and tech trends is just to
To follow like, you know certain news channels that you like
So I'm personally up to date with like TechCrunch and that's covers a lot of the new updates in the US
And then there's tech in Asia, you know in Asia
And so yeah, you know, just just be part of communities be part of the news and you know
You you you'll basically learn about new technology and I guess for me also
I'm I'm I guess on LinkedIn and I do have a lot of different
Tech players that I do follow and so a lot of times, you know when there's something very new, you know
I would hear about it, you know within within the first 24 hours
and so I think that's another way to kind of you know, stay posted as well as to just kind of
You know follow the people that you know make make sense
All right, well, thanks for your question, let's get
Hey Ronnie you there hello, can you hear me?
Let's do this let's go. Yeah, I can I can hear you I can hear you Ronnie. Okay. Okay. Good
I wanted to share that I am working as a happy ambassador
my experience is so far so good and
When will be the app launch in app stores on app stores?
When will a few networks app be launched on the app store? Well, I
Think I'll let nothing on to that one. Yep. So
with regards to our app actually
You know would be one of our product. We actually did roll it out already. So we did we did go mainnet
we did launch mainnet and
There's this thing called magic's where right which has a an app store or a dap store called magic store
And so they're essentially they're building a an app store for the decentralized web
Listed on on their website and we went through a validation process as well
you know where we got various users to come and use our product and these are people from you know,
the magic store community and so if I'm not mistaken, we got a
four point nine out of five validation score, which
you know got there was over a thousand seven hundred people involved in the voting process and
Then we have a four point four or five out of five
User score where people gave us reviews and so we are on on the app store
I guess you can call it that but we're not on the typical iOS or Android app store at the current time
And I think I think the reason for that is you know, it's just
there's still a lot of uncertainty around like, you know using daps and wallet connect and
You know the ease in using so it just made a lot of sense to actually roll it out on web first
Although we have optimized for mobile so users can you know join campaigns by a phone as well
Think knocking maybe if you want to just go through the
The questions there are one or two questions in the comments
So I'll just read it out to you and you you let me know what what you want
To say so one of them is from Mark Henry
He goes are there particular sectors within the metaverse that athlete network aims to explore or revolution allies?
To definitely we're different a lot of the projects that we look to work with will be you know metaverse based projects as well
Because the metaverse essentially is on the blockchain
It means that as an on-chain affiliate platform, we're able to actually
activities in a matter so let's say you know, we had a game or we have a mall and that's a metaverse and
You know, essentially, let's say they want to bring on users and these users might have to you know
Complete a transaction or you know purchase a ticket to enter or whatnot
And all these conversions can actually be tracked and attributed through a few networks
So that's what we're trying to build for but not just the metaverse, right?
We also expect to play around with defy social fine other categories
Metaverse is just kind of like the broader picture where you know, all these things can kind of fit in but in short. Yes
Thanks, thanks a lot lucky
I have one more question from Moon saying what major partnerships
Does your project intend to use or how does your project bring its products to the average consumer especially?
Non-crypto users. So maybe let's say how are you gonna help make that transition from web to the web 3?
Well right now like the way that we're trying to pull people in is through a new earning opportunity
so we found that people are more willing to
You know cross hoops or a certain barriers if there's something for them, you know on the other side
And so that's that's you know, I guess that's an advantage for you know to earn type platform
And with regards to partnerships in web 2, you know
We're looking at partnering with you know
several agencies that operate across web 2 and web 3 and they are also bringing in
You know web 2 brands and experiences into web 3 and so we don't actually need to onboard all the users directly ourselves
We could just leverage those platforms
Thanks for that one last question. I think we'll wrap it up off of this
I actually answered this question, but I don't think you could hear him. So, you know, maybe you want to get a CEO's perspective
What are the benefits for NFT users when using a few network compared to any other affiliate marketing platform?
Well NFT users right there's many different participants, so I'm not really sure
Which specific user they're referring to it
But if it's the buyer then the buyer receives a cash back purchasing if it's the you know
Somebody who has a big NFT following on Twitter or YouTube they could they could monetize from our platform
And then if and if you're the NFT project then essentially you could you know
You could acquire users in a very lean way, but all of this together, you know helps to build the NFT ecosystem
So as an NFT user or someone that's exposed to NFT, you know
The V1 of our product was meant to increase the adoption of NFTs and accelerate
customer acquisition and retention within the space
Perfect, thanks. Thanks for that key. Thanks for your time
Insightful getting getting some perspective which honestly even me as a team member
I didn't really have so it was nice kind of wearing the community hat and and
You know representing all of our our AFI army ambassadors and everyone else. So
Thanks. Thanks for listening everyone and thanks for sharing the plans of a few networks
Looks like it sounds like a really really exciting year ahead for 2024
If any of you have any collaboration requests or any questions
please reach out to us on socials or email us at community at a few dot network and
We will hopefully catch you all soon. Thanks guys. Thanks for tuning in. Thank you very much. Take care