PawnHouse Japan Community AMA Review
This is a review of the AMA event in the Japanese community on September 21, 2021. The link to the Japanese version of the manuscript is: Pawnhouse × CryptoKudasaiJP AMA内容まとめ
1 Would you mind introducing yourself, telling us about your background and the team working on PawnHouse?
Since even before idea inception, our founders have always admired the efficiency and wonders of a decentralized workforce. The ability to aggregate knowledge and skill sets from people all over the world and utilize specific techniques was astonishingly effective.
From this principle, the establishment has always been decentralized, with teammates spread amongst various countries worldwide. Our teammates include analysts at top financial institutions, leaders from the most prominent crypto/blockchain companies, and artists and media specialists.
A portion of our team remains anonymous and provides specific contributions based on their expertise. We also view the community as an influential aspect, such that the entire community is part of the overall governance in our Pawnhouse ecosystem.
In terms of leadership, one of our leaders, Meruto, has had many years of crypto industry and investment experience, as well as being deeply involved with NFT platforms. He is also an avid NFT collector for quite some time now. Our technical and operational personnel are also well versed in both traditional and blockchain fields. We gather together and hope that through standardizing NFT pricing, this niche can be more accessible and accepted by society.
That’s about most of why we started to do this and the core people involved
2 Can you tell us about your PawnHouse project? What problems does PawnHouse solve that existing competitors haven’t and what is its competitive advantage?
The number 1 issue is that the NFT market lacks good liquidity, and the reason being is due to an insufficient price discovery mechanism.
Because of this, we find it interesting and crucial to build a new mechanism to handle the liquidity issue.
That is the core focus of PawnHouse.
Regarding competitors, in fact, many people have asked us whether other NFT marketplaces pose a threat to us. What I would like to convey is that we are not actually a market. We are more like the infrastructure.
We introduce brand-new mechanisms into encrypted auctions, aiming to build a price discovery system. This can help each NFT sale be more accurate and precise based on market demands.
We provide data support and cooperation for existing markets. The NFT marketplace, artists, and even NFT games are all potential partners.
In fact, we will not have actual competitive relationships with them. Instead, we will synergize with them and help promote their ecology, supply-data for precision, as well as helping raise the values of NFTs.
Long story short, we provide accurate data-mapping, pricing demands, and we can actually provide support for all of our competitors.
3 Did your team build technologies or protocols that are specific to this project? Or are there any notable technologies the team is applying?
Sure this is an important question, and this is one of the elements at the heart of our project that make it all work
We have adopted the theory from the 2020 Nobel Prize winners in Economics and introduced SMRA to the blockchain.
Moreover, we have also created a new NFT pricing mechanism that is different from any current project through “private value” and “common value.” Under this pricing mechanism, the value of NFT assets cannot be controlled by certain large organizations or powerful individuals.
The codes and smart contracts that we use are actually unique. After all, the core value of our platform is to provide NFT collectors and creators with a better, more comprehensive, and fairer pricing mechanism, as well as a way to discover the value of NFTs.
4 What obstacles has your project encountered so far? How did the team resolve them?
Of course, during this time, a lot of things here and there have popped up but we can go over the main obstacle. The exact problem we are trying to solve.
PawnHouse is a platform that was born to solve the problem of NFT pricing. We have seen the problem of regular auctions, and fortunately discovered that the SMRA model can solve this problem with more quotations and more information.
The project in the V1.0 stage can be said to be relatively smooth. However, in the V2.0 stage, the realization of our SMRA model in the DeFi environment is indeed challenging. In the absence of a centralized organizer model, there are some difficulties in completing simultaneous auctions of 3–5 NFTs with comparable information of the same kind.
So with this we thought
How do users from all over the world follow the multiple auctions of this system throughout the whole process?
This was a major issue that put us in a deep conundrum at first glance
So, we rallied our team’s minds together to try different ways to ensure accuracy while balancing risk control
In the end we successfully solved this initial problem through the quotation system and bidding transactions.
While ensuring the efficiency and high value of the auction, more information and public values are presented to the market and bidders
I believe that the launch of V2.0 is worth looking forward to and will be amazing for everyone in the space!
5 Can you give an overview of your Tokenomics and the utility of $PH Token?
Sure, again I’m sure many of you are closely following this one
The PH token is another edge we plan to integrate in our platform to ensure the healthy development of the PH ecosystem
I believe many of us have seen the picture of the token economy posted earlier. You can also refer to it here.
The total supply of our platform’s native token PH is 1 billion. Now we supply about 650,000 daily through mining.
The specific listing price is not yet available, there will be a few factors involved but it is foreseeable that we will soon be listed on an exchange.
Regarding the network, our initial distribution is on BSC, and then we will start to distribute it on HECO soon. Other blockchain networks may also be included in future. This can help gather different types of communities and users.
Regarding market value, our current valuation has reached $50 million US dollars.
And finally, regarding the utility factor. In the future, PH tokens can be used to reduce transaction fees when using the platform. There are also other further platform token uses to be announced.
6 Will the smart contracts be open-sourced?
Sure that’s an easy one
Of course we strictly believe in the crypto spirit of sharing and openness for all
We want to be as decentralized and inclusive as possible
Before we go to CEX, we will open source some code, but not all of it.
Of course the motive is to protect users
With the development and maturity of the project, we are very willing to fully open source in the future.
7 What is your marketing strategy? How do you intend to attract your first users?
So this is a good question especially for me. I don’t know if there was an intro earlier
But I will actually be leading many of Pawnhouse’s global marketing initiatives
So for marketing. For us, we are truly focused on community.
The inherent spirit of crypto is based on borderless sharing and allowing everyone to work together to make something great. Just like Bitcoin, without decentralized consensus across the world, Bitcoin would not exist
And with this sentiment, we plan to market PawnHouse in the same way.
We really just want everyone across the world to understand, touch our product, and experience it. so of course we are talking with many of our fans today in Japan (my absolute favorite place in the world by the way)
But simultaneously, we will be heavily focused on western (Americas and Europe) users for our next leg of marketing.
Statistics have shown that Asian retail users have adopted more crypto products and applications than “western” users.
We will have a heavy emphasis on user education, teaching users the simplicity and importance of blockchain, crypto, and NFTs, and of course, share with users why PawnHouse’s technology is important to this entire ecosystem
Pricing oracles are crucial for the ecosystem as a whole to develop trust and clarity. With authenticated information from our oracles, every project or user in the crypto space will have access to a safe haven of data
that is how we plan to push our marketing to the western communities
we want to show them that we are here to help them
So with that the core marketing sentiment is: We want to help them learn and understand crypto, and we want to give them a way to own NFTs and be a part of this wonderful community.
Community directly translates to marketing
8 How does the team source revenue to sustain its operations?
As you can see, part of our token economy are the tokens which are used to support the team. This is also to encourage members who enter our team at different stages and reward their contributions.
Of course, for the long-term development of the project, the tokens of this part of the team will be released within a lock-up period of 36 months. We are optimistic about the long-term value
At the same time, the platform itself has its own economic closed-loop ecology. That is, the fee income
A portion of course is the revolve back into the PH ecosystem into our ecology but overall its still revenue
In addition to the planned PH repurchase in the future, a small part of the handling fee will support the daily operation and maintenance of the platform
All actions will be shared and are 100% transparent to the community
9 There have been many incidents of hacks recently. How are you handling security?
Yea good thought, a lot of these have been happening lately
Regarding safety, we have always attached great importance to it. In fact, we have a dedicated tech guy to optimize the security of our platform
In addition, we are constantly improving the contract, introducing third-party audits at different stages, and continuously releasing the code audit results of smart contracts to the community
Also, you may also know that we are deploying the HECO chain recently, and there will be ETH chain support in the future
In supporting multi-chain and cross-chain token exchange, our team has always put safety in the most important position!
User safety is not a one time thing, but always ongoing. We’re always keeping a keen eye
10 Who are your current investors? And have you made any agreements with companies, projects or notable developers?
Sure we can share a bit about or investors
So we chose them based on many different factors but primarily based on fit
How can they add additional crucial resources to our ecosystem that gives the greatest value, rather than just capital
Here is a chart:
Huobi Ventures is a top crypto exchange with presence in Japan and Korea
AnT Capital is also very well known by industry players
And the rest have a strong presence throughout Asia and the rest of the world
All contributing different skills and resources, making them ideal for our future development plans
11 How about have you made any agreements with companies, projects or notable developers?
We have maintained a cooperative relationship with many crypto media outlets, which include even our investors, Crypto Times, the best crypto media site in Japan
The BEST!
And we are now vigorously developing partnerships with more NFT platforms and artists.
Oh, of course, we have agreements with our investors ;)
But yea we are always open to partnerships
People are reaching out to us all the time. But we are closely filtering so see which are the best fits for our ecosystem
12 Do you have any news/updates about PawnHouse that you would like to share with us?
Please follow us for our latest updates
We will be revealing a lot of more special products and functions that will benefit the community directly
And many giveaway events
You are all welcome to follow us on Twitter, medium, and Reddit. We will update our latest progress as soon as we have imminent news
This includes news released by the media, project development progress, and some community and operational data
A lot of recent news will be coming out
We will also deploy on HECO soon, and at the same time, our staking mining feature as mentioned earlier
And of course, very importantly, the loans on our platform have exceeded 200 million USD!
We will work hard to keep this going!
Here are some references
Again all of these updates are on our Twitter
You can also get timely news updates in the PawnHouse JP community thanks to our community members
13 I see you are focusing on the Asian market for now. and you’re in talks with around 30–50 influencers in areas like Japan, Korea, China, Southeast Asia, as well as English speaking areas. My question is, Is there a vacancy to become one of the PawnHouse Influencers? What are the benefits if I become one of your Influencers?
We of course welcome KOLs and influencers of all regions
All you need to do is apply and we will evaluate a myriad of different criterias to make sure you have the reach that we are looking for
Of course we welcome both local small, or international large scale influencers
But different things may be considered such as engagement, average comments, likes, how many fans, how loyal your fans are
For example we prefer a smaller KOL with 5000 loyal fans than a big influencer with 1 million fans but who are unloyal
Just an example that this is for everyone
So if you feel like you are an expert or have a local following in a certain space such as NFTs , DEFI, marketplaces, or even more obscure ones such as supply-chain or whatnot
Come give it a try!
14 Reasonable price of NFT. I think there are several projects that are focusing on the issues here. I understand that they are different in content and approach. Are you considering partnering with other projects like that in the future? If you are considering it, please tell us about the project.
That is a very holistic and integral part of our overall marketing strategy
We need to build this ecosystem from the ground up and as mentioned earlier Pawnhouse is a tool
that many systems can use, even top marketplaces such as OpenSea or Rarible can use Pawnhouse as a pricing infrastructure
So we want to expand our product range, to as many people as possible so they understand the value of what we are bringing
And we are confident in the accurate data, and pricing that we can bring to any NFT ecosystem so we want to get it into as many hands as possible
And of course, we want to bring the hottest NFTs and IPs into our ecosystem so everyone can enjoy the finest asset classes
15 The NFT-based collateralized loan market is a unique product in the world. Doesn’t price discovery in the NFT make it harder for new artists to enter the NFT?
Doesn’t price discovery in the NFT make it harder for new artists to enter the NFT?
Supply and demand is a natural force of life in any economy
For example, a country’s economy, a micro-economy, or a niche economy such as with collectible sneakers, baseball cards, or, of course art
Price discovery gives data to certain pieces of art, and that can help artists create a baseline
Of course what this means is that by having many pieces of data points highlighted and mapped out, the pricing supply and demand streams in the NFT or “art” economy will help artists make art not just a “hobby” or interest, but solidify art as an integral part of society
We are giving your art value, giving it a foundation that others can enjoy, by pricing and sharing and putting them into more people’s hands
So maybe it might be daunting for early artists to see
Like wow APE NFT or a Cryptopunk or a Loot bag is selling for 100 Eth or something
But actually dont let that scare the artists away
It gives them hope, structure, and a motive that one day their piece of art can be recognized and bought and shared by others. That is one way pricing discovery can help the whole ecosystem
16 Education is very important. Is there a tutorial video to get a clearer picture of the project, or is there a YouTube channel, etc.? Can you share it?
we are in development of some graphic tutorials now
And will be sharing it
So everyone please visit our twitter and website to stay updated
And please share when you have the chance
Also your questions are very important
The more you ask, the more we can adjust and make tutorials that help answer all of the issues you may face
17 What is the main focus of PAWN HOUSE now?
For now we want to ensure the functionality and applicative nature of the SMRA system
This is very important because it is this system that allows us to have the most accurate demand price predictions of NFTs
We strive to be an oracle that any system can use so its this feature that helps us collect data points
When there are many bids , you get a more equal sized landscape of what demand actually looks like because the data points are backed by capital from users.
As we know when it comes to money and spending money, humans are very calculative. It is this calculative nature that helps us ensure the precision of quantifying demand
So the SMRA is very important
But overall our main focus in easy terms is
Let’s be accurate.
Let’s make sure it works.
Most importantly, let’s be safe and protect everyone
18 Why use the name Pawnhouse? Does that mean to put it in quality?
Lets talk a little bit about our history
Back in 2019 at ETH dev con we met a lot of friends in the industry. We talked about DeFi and NFT applications. That was when Dapper labs first started to do Flow
Of course no one expected DeFi summer to erupt in such a crazy fashion
And what some considered a bubble or overvaluation in play
There were many projects and assets and NFT products out there
An entire array spreading across countries and regions, through space and time. The metaverse as you kids like to call today
So when we saw such randomness, we wanted to create something to standardize it, and to provide data logic, and analysis or reason behind these things
So that’s when we wanted to be able to price NFTs and that they have value as collateral
Creating a tangible asset value for these things, so just like the pawnshops from earlier days, [people bring things of value and trade it for money, things that THEY believe are of value
They Pawn it for money
Just like the SMRA system which aggregates customer demand
Demand being what humans are willing to pay or trade for something
Just like a pawnshop
And…
We are a house of it
Pawn
House
PawnHouse
We welcome all
Look up Pawn shop
And you’ll know
___________________________________________________________________
Our Social Platform:
- Website : https://pawnhouse.io/
- Twitter : https://twitter.com/pawnhouse_nft
- Telegram: https://t.me/pawnhouseofficial
PawnHouse, The NFT Price Oracle
LIQUIDITY | EQUALITY | ACCURACY
