O3 Swap AMA: The cross-chain protocol that sources liquidity from multiple networks

Welcome, everyone. I'm your host, Giovanni. Welcome to another Cointelegraph AMA. This time we are here to talk about O3Swap. O3Swap is a cross chain aggregation protocol built by O3 Labs. It allows users to access liquidity sources from multiple networks on one platform and find the best price available. So I'm here with Matt Powers, the communications director at O3Swap. How are you doing, Matt?

I'm doing well. Yeah. I'm really happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Likewise. So, before we start, I would like to remind our audience to like the video and subscribe to our channel if they haven't already done it. And also, this is an interactive show, so everyone who is watching, don't forget to write your questions in the chat. If any question come up to your mind related to this project. Project. And I will immediately ask it to Matt, who is here to answer all your questions about his project. So I guess we can get into it. So, Matt, would you like to give us a broad overview of what is O3 swap?

Okay. Yeah. So O3 swap, as you said, cross chain aggregation protocol, it's built on top of O3 wallet, which was founded in 2017 in Tokyo. And we're basically connecting all the decentralized exchanges, sourcing liquidity from separate decentralized exchanges. Using O3 Swap, you can connect your MetaMask wallet to O3 Swap, and with the click of a button, change from something like Ethereum to something like Heco. And there will be a small fee which will go to O3, and that fee will be used to buy back O3 coin, which will be on the market starting today. Actually, we have our IDO for O3 coin, and then that coin will be burned. You'll also be rewarded some O3 coin in the future, and that's sort of your incentive to swap using O3 swap. Yeah.

All right. So this is a pretty new project as far as I understand. You started it this year, right?

Right, Yep. It was built starting in 2020 and into 2021. We're in the test phase now. If people want to test our product, O3Swap, they can connect their MetaMask wallet to O3Swap.com and we have a $20 limit right now because we're just in the test phase. And we invite users to come try swap and really report if they have any issues, give us feedback. We'd love to hear it for sure.

Just to give a little bit more of background to our audience about what is the function of O3 swap within the DeFi ecosystem. Could you maybe give a bit more of a background information regarding the type of service that you offer, Also comparing it to other types of liquidity providers that are available.

Right, okay. So I would describe it to people as 1 inch meets Dao. So we have this swap protocol, and you're going to have a target coin, and you're going to have your source coin, and you're going to connect it to the protocol. And yeah, it'll show you your route. Like, the protocol might change hands, like, five different times, but our protocol is going to get you the best price, and it might also use separate decentralized exchanges to get you that best price. Because as we know, the price per coin varies depending on the. On the exchange. So our aggregation protocol will take your input, look at your target coin, search throughout all the different decentralized exchanges, and find the best price. Even if that means, like a trade takes place five times, it'll show you the trade route. It might go like Ethereum, Ethereum Classic to Neo into something like heco. It might be something strange like that, but in the end, you'll end up with Heco for the very best price.

All right, I think we already have some questions from the audience. So Ken E. Is asking, how can I get into the ipo? I guess this is not the right term to define your.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Ipo, I think, is used for stocks. We have an ido, all right, and our IDO is on seven different platforms, including we, Starter, Duckstarter, BSC Pad. Hold on, let me get the whole list here. There's seven different platforms that we are listing O3 Coin on. So let me check here. BSC Pad, Restarter, MXC, Duckstarter, Kobach, Bounce, Gate, IO and Duckstarter. And it will be listed on those platforms today, May 12th. Or one of them might be May 13th. But I can send our Medium Channel into the comments once we post the video. Well, we're live right now. You can visit our Medium Channel. Our handle is O3Labs. Or you can separately visit our Twitter O3Labs. We're listed on seven different platforms, so I think that's quite complicated, but those are them. BSC Pad, we Starter, Duckstarter, Gate, IO, Bounce, and Coback. Yep.

Okay, cool. I think that we can get more deep into some of the specific features that you're offering. So as far as I understand, your product is focused on permissionlessness, so you're providing permissionless services. So can you explain in what this permissionless consists?

Right, exactly. Yeah. So we're sourcing liquidity from decentralized exchanges like nowhere via the swap do centralized exchanges like Coinbase, Bittrex, Binance. We're not sourcing from any centralized exchanges like that. Our wallet is completely non custodial and users have their private keys. The swap is built right on top of the wallet. So we never have control of your coins like say a Coinbase would. Or Coinbase holds the keys. You have your keys, you're in full control and you could trade like directly or swap rather directly from the wallet in a decentralized platform. Some decentralized exchanges obviously don't have certain coins or certain offerings. In that case, you would have to go to a centralized exchange. But we envision a time when in the future when you don't have to do that, because these decentralized exchanges are becoming more and more and more, let's say rich and offering more and more options. And O3Swap is just seeking to be like the connector to connect all those sources of liquidity without having to visit a centralized exchange at all. Because we're passionate about decentralization and we don't think it's cool to have to register, upload your passport, get your tax filings and all these sorts of things as you would on something like Coinbase, where they're privy to U.S. regulators. We envision a future where you're able to trade directly from your decentralized wallet and you never have to give up your keys at all.

Yeah, for sure. The topic of interoperability is something very popular right now in the defi space. So the possibility of a single product to connect separate blockchains, different protocols and make them work together, that seems one of the main challenges of the defi sector right now. And that leads me to the following questions. So if you had to explain our audience, what are the main problems that are existing now in the defi space and that you are aiming to solve?

Okay, yeah, so one of the biggest problems is the fees. The gas fees on the Ethereum network are very high, so that leads people away from there. And also the congestion on the network O3 swap seeks. Like, our fee is going to only be like 0.3%. But when you do swap with O3 coin, with O3 swap, rather you'll be rewarded O3 coin. So there's going to be an incentive to swap in addition to that very tiny fee. Also that fee is going to be used to buy back o3 coin on the market and burn it. So then we imagine what we envision in the future, that the value of O3 coin will go up as the supply slowly but surely diminishes as we continue to use the fees generated by our users to burn O3 coin. So you're simultaneously like transaction mining. So yeah, we're bringing interoperability, but we also realize there has to be another incentive for users to use the protocol.

All right, and if you had to explain our audience, what are the main competitive advantages of your product over other that are doing the same thing? So I know that there are other products in the defi space that are also working on interoperability. So what would be your competitive advantage if you had to name a few?

I would say the best price for sure. Since we're sourcing from different decentralized exchanges, our protocol can query the best price and get it to you fast. It's also very user friendly. You don't have to be a crypto pro to use our protocol at all. It's right on top of the wallet. It's very easy to use. I've used it before, I've tested it before and the fees are very low. I think those are the three competitive advantages. So one, best price, two, user friendly and three, low fee.

Those seem to me like quite attractive advantages. So now I would like to invite our audience to continue writing questions in the chat. If you have any questions come to your mind about how O3Swap works, bring it on guys. Especially if you are passionate about the growing defi space. If you are trading on definitely decentralized exchanges, maybe you are curious to know a way to get the best prices over there. So if you have to mention a few of the blockchains of the different protocols you are sourcing prices from. What are those at the moment?

Okay, wait, let me pull up the schematics of the. Hold on. Yeah, the first one to come to mind is mdex, but we've got Binance, Smart Chain and Pancake Swap. One inch. There are many. Basically the chance that we're connecting our Ethereum, Neo, Huobi, Solana and Polkadot. Those are the main ones right now, so.

And do you plan to add more?

Yes, we plan to add Layer two networks in the future. Layer. Layer two networks. And yeah, we do plan to add more, but right now those are the few.

Okay, so I was, I was wondering. Regarding this token that you're launching today. So you said that people can access it right now, right? They can already get their hands on it?

Yes. Yeah, today. Today is our ideo.

Okay. And if you had to explain a new user that doesn't have much experience in participating in these offerings. What should this person do in order to participate in this offering and get some of those tokens? In simple words, how to do it.

So the public sale is on the platforms that I mentioned, Duckstarter, We Starter, BSC Pad, there's the public sale. I think it's a $200 limit. So it wouldn't be like, you know, we're not asking for users to support with a lot of money, but just $200 to support our cross chain Aggregation protocol native coin. And the incentives provided by that coin will be that you'll be able to vote. There will be some governance usage for the coin vote on changes to the network. And as we said, we expect the value of the coin to go up. But you wanted basic instructions on how to buy it. I can send that. It's quite complicated because there are seven different platforms and they all have their different steps in order to buy on O3 coin. So I'll send that once the live is finished. Yeah.

All right. I guess that people will have all the time to read through those instructions. So now we have some questions from the audience. We were talking before about other competitors and other products that are trying to accomplish the same kind of things.

So.

So we have a question that says, are you scared of Swipe Swap or any thoughts on the competitors? So I'm not sure you are familiar with this Swipe Swap?

No, I'm not familiar. I don't know. I mean, we're not scared of any competitors because we're focused on building the best product that we can, regardless of our competitors.

Yeah, I guess that's being scared of competitors is not the right step to start with.

Yeah, that's not our mentality. We're just really right now looking to build a community of users because we are quite new to the space. As I said previously beforehand, we were just a wallet and we built our protocol on top of our wallet. Our wallet does have over 150,000 users and if they all jumped on to use the swap once we're out of the test phase, that would be miraculous. But we don't anticipate that and we're looking to build a community of more users and passionate users. Sure.

And right now you mentioned this wallet that you already built some time ago, and maybe it would be interesting for me to understand what is the kind of interaction between this wallet and the new platform O3Swap. So in what way this wallet that you already have is going to interact with this platform.

Right. Okay. So yeah, Once you download O3 wallet on the app Store and it's offered on all the major app stores. Yeah, what is it? The Play Store? I think they changed the name of the Play Store.

Right.

Apple Store and all the major app providers. There will be a tab where you can connect your O3 wallet where you ideally would have already deposited funds. And from that tab on the wallet you'll be able to get quotes and ideally swap. From there you can always see what the trading path is. As I said before, your coin might change hand hand several times into several different assets before you receive your destination asset. You'll be able to see the routes, you'll be able to see the fee. It's very clear for from the O3 wallet using O3Swap. As for using our O3Swap.com and connecting a MetaMask wallet, it is a little bit more tricky because you do have to connect that MetaMask wallet. But it's also pretty straightforward at the same time. But it's simply just not within the same tab as it is within the O3 wallet.

Okay, so you would recommend that for a person that starts using your product, better to download your wallet first and then go from there. Right?

Right, Exactly. Yep. More user friendly that way.

Okay, so now I'm addressing again our audience. I would like them to ask any questions that come to your mind about the AutoRespap platform, which is an aggregator protocol that is going to source prices from different sources and provide you with the best prices available. And one of its strong points is the cross chain feature which allows them to gather this liquidity from different chains, which is very important. So please ask questions and I will ask them to Matt. Now, Matt, I would like to go a bit more further into exploring the risks because we all know that using decentralized platforms, you don't have a centralized entity that is guaranteeing for your funds. And so there is still risk in using a certain amount of risk in using decentralized platforms. And there is some sort of, how.

Do you call it, vulnerability or disadvantage?

Yeah, vulnerabilities and disadvantages. So would you be able to lead us through, through some possible vulnerabilities that you are concerned about or that you plan to improve? Maybe.

Right, sure. So first of all, I just want to start by saying that O3Swap is open source and we accept anyone's review. We've invited professional organizations to conduct security audits on our projects. Currently, some security data security companies that are auditing a project are Certik and slowmist, and they're going to Provide audit reports. In the future, we plan to organize security events for developers to find the vulnerabilities in our service and sort of report them to us and they will be rewarded with O3 swap coin. Finally, a cross chain pool in the future will be deployed on the Poly network protocol. At present, Poly has more than US$4 billion in assets and we believe that it's a mature cross chain solution in the industry and we believe that Poly Network is secure and they're one of our partners. So that's how I would address that question. Secondly, I would say that, that I think in a way that the decentralized space is more secure than certain centralized exchanges because users do have full control of their keys. O3 swap. We don't have your keys, we don't have control of your coins. We never ask you for that information, we just Reward you with O3 coin and we get a small fee when you use O3 swap. So it's not like even if we wanted to and we don't want to, we can't run off with your coins. That's not going to happen. There's no way for us to do that. And yeah, that's, that's the way in which it's more secure.

Right. And that's the advantage of being decentralized. So being trustless so you don't, you don't have to, to entrust your funds to a centralized entity. That's definitely one of the best point of decentralized products like yours, on the other hand.

That being said. Go on. Sorry.

No, I just wanted to. No, go on, go on, go on. First you want to say something?

No. Well, that being said, of course there is risk, there are hackers and attackers that are looking to always exploit these networks. But we're doing our best to keep things secure and inviting these companies to audit our code and keeping things open source and trying to always patch our vulnerabilities whenever we spot them.

And I also heard that in these decentralized platforms you also have a problem which is slippage. So sometimes due to the low liquidity, these decentralized exchanges sometimes suffer of slippage. So because of the low liquidity, the price can be victim of this phenomenon. So do you have any solutions in place for avoiding your customers to be victim of this slippage phenomenon?

Yeah, we do. So later on in 2021, we're looking forward to releasing O3 Hub. And in the O3 Hub, we're going to invite users to stake their coins and provide liquidity, their own liquidity. To O3 swap. And that should make things a little more stable in the future and prevent something like slippage. Just providing more like we're going to have our own liquidity, our own pool, so to speak.

Okay, and when is this step going to be implemented in your roadmap?

Our roadmap shows that in Q3 of 2020 01:03 hub will be deployed.

All right, and we're going to talk more further about your roadmap in a bit. But first we have some questions from our audience. So Leonard Bander is asking which symbol is traded? So which symbol your token is going to be traded?

Oh, that's slam dunk. 03. 03.

Yeah.

O3 coin. The symbol will be 03.

Okay. That's pretty straightforward, of course. So another questions, we have Kugami asking what's the coin price? So what's the initial coin price?

Yeah, Today during the IDO, the coin price 103 coin is US$1.

Okay. And that's the starting price or it already increased?

That's the starting price. It hasn't increased. I think it's dropped a small amount since the opening.

All right. And the same viewer is asking also when your coin is going to launch on PancakeSwap, if ever is going to launch on that.

That's a good question. We hope as soon as possible. Right now our focus is on the ido. We hope to be on all the major players like PancakeSwap, if you can consider PancakeSwap a major player, as soon as possible. Yeah, we have a lot of work to do, I think, before we get to that level. It's a good question.

And so this is my curiosity. Basically your token now is going to be available on what platforms? Just, I mean, what are the platforms that your token is going to be.

Available right now to trade or to buy?

Let's do buy and then trade.

Okay. Yeah. As I mentioned, bsc, pad, duckstarter, we Starter. What is it? Kobachs. Sorry, lots of partners. So let me find it. Oh yeah, Kobach, BounceCertified, Gate, IO and MXC. Those. Those are the public sale platforms where you can buy O3 coin.

Okay. So I recommend our audience to have a look and check the.

Yes, please support us, guys. We could use it. Yeah, Just telling the audience to please go ahead and check that out.

Yeah, guys, don't be shy. It seems like an interesting project, so you can ask any questions that you want to know in order to be prepared in case you want to decide supporting it. So this is the time to ask questions to Matt he's going to ask them. He's going to answer them. So we have another question from our audience last Scuba is asking, is this the same O3 wallet built couple of years ago? I guess. Yes.

Yeah. Yes, it's the same O3 wallet built a couple of years ago to house Neo Coin for the. It was originally built, originally launched in 2017 for the Neo community to store Neocoin. That was back when Neo was being referred to as the ethereum of China. O3 is a big partner of Neo and an offshoot of nio. So it's one of our big, bigger partners. Yeah, it's the same O3 swap that was built a couple of years ago. O3 wallet that was built a couple of years ago. Sorry.

Okay, so I guess that you are already well known among our audience if we have already these questions.

Yeah, that's awesome.

You already built a good brand. So now I would like to ask you, because one of our viewers mentioned PancakeSwap, I would like to ask you if you could explain our audience what is the difference between O3 swap and AMM protocols like Uniswap, PancakeSwap and others. If you have to draw a difference between your platform and those automated market makers protocols.

No, they're pretty similar. Yeah, I wouldn't say that they're identical. I'm sure their tokenomics are very different. Will be one of the of the few that are using transaction mining where we reward people with O3 coin who use the swap. I don't think pancakeswap does that. So that's one of the major differences if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I would say that's one of the major differences is being rewarded with a coin as a, as an incentive for swapping using our protocol.

Right. But also as far as I understand you have this cross chain interoperability. While I'm not sure If Uniswap and PancakeSwap have that. Isn't that also one of your characterizing features?

Right? Yeah. Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. We, we can change between different decentralized exchanges And Uniswap and PancakeSwap are just on one decentralized exchange.

Right, right. So that's something I think people should.

Oh yeah, that's huge.

But yeah. So let's see if we have more. Ask more questions from our audience. Let's see. See, I guess we have one viewer asking, so not yet on mxc. I guess MXC is another decentralized platform, I guess. Is it available on that platform mxc?

No, I believe he is talking about the ido MXC is one of our partners to for the public sale. So yeah, MXC I believe will be tomorrow, May 13th will be the public sale of O3 coin on MXC. Most of the platforms the IDO is on May 12th. MXC is one. That's May 13th.

All right, now I would like to extend explore a little bit more the fees issue. So you said that you offer particular advantages regarding fees. So we have one of our viewers who is asking, does this project skip the Ethereum fees? Maybe it's worth for you to cover a bit more that aspect.

Yeah, primarily it will skip the Ethereum fees and it will just be our fee. We're sourcing liquidity from different decentralized exchanges. So. But I guess they are built on the Ethereum blockchain. So yeah, when I've used it, I haven't had to pay like a separate gas fee on top of the O3 swap fee. So yeah, I believe it skips the Ethereum fees.

Yeah. Okay. All right, so I will remind again our audience to continue asking questions maybe you want to know about. What are the next milestones that O3Swap has in mind and what will be the roadmap that we will see in the next months? Because this is actually the next question that I'm going to ask you.

So.

What are the main milestones that you plan to achieve in the upcoming months?

Okay, so the past two milestones that we've hit recently are we launched our website o threeswap.com and got the test aggregator in place there in addition to directly on O3 wallet. Then today and tomorrow we are having our IDO and publicly selling our coin. That's a big milestone and achievement for us. In the coming months, O3Swap will go fully live. So we won't be testing it anymore. There will be a higher limit on transactions, much higher than the $20 that's in place now that's just used for testing. And then later in the year we plan to launch O3 Hub, which is a pool. It's different from our aggregation protocol in that it will be pooling coins, for instance, stablecoins. Let me pull that up real quick. Okay. Yes. This will allow O3 users to provide liquidity and pool tokens together and they will receive rewards for that as well. So say somebody wants to trade US dollar token for BUSD. That US dollar token would enter the pool and BUSD would exit the pool and that will be our O3 hub.

Okay, so as far as I understand, basically at that point, once you will launch that pool users won't be just getting liquidity from those different sources that you aggregate, but also they will get liquidity from your kind of in house liquidity pool.

Yeah, our in house liquidity pool. Yeah, well said. I couldn't have said it better myself. Yeah, that's exactly it. And that launch is planned for Q3 of 2021 and then after that in Q4, we're looking forward to deploying O3 swap on a major Ethereum layer two network, Poly Network. And they're one of our partners.

Okay, cool. Maybe we want to expand a little bit more on this partnership issue. So if you want to remind our audience what are the main partners that you secured so far? If there are many, maybe you can mention just a few of the most renowned, the most famous.

Right. Okay. We recently secured an investment from SoftBank of Singapore. Box Mining has invested in us and we have a lot more. But those are the most famous as of now. SoftBank of Singapore and Box Mining. I'm sure our users have heard of SoftBank.

All right. And maybe you want to also give some information about where your team is based. So we know that probably it's a decentralized team. So I guess you are all over the world.

Our developers are primarily based just out of Shanghai in a city called Ningbo in China. So that's our main base. The O3 wallet was founded in Tokyo. The company has since changed hands. It was sold to our CEO and founder in China. And yeah, we do have other people in London, New York City and Singapore as a part of our team. Oh, and one person works out of Dubai. So yeah, we do have people all over the world, but most of our team is in Shanghai and Ningbo, which is in China. Okay.

And of course I guess that it's not worth to remind people that are already familiar with like DEFI projects, but I guess that we need to remind that like differently from centralized exchanges, you don't have jurisdiction. So you are, you are accessible all over the world.

Right? Right. Yeah, exactly. We're not under anyone's thumb. And if you want to use O3 swap from anywhere in the world, we welcome that. We would love to have you on board.

Awesome. So you said that there is no requirement in terms of identification procedures for anyone to access your services, right?

Yeah, that's absolutely true. We don't request any identification, any passport. There's. If you, if you want two factor authentication on your wallet, we invite that because it's more secure, obviously. But you don't it's not required. It's completely decentralized and you have control of your private keys at all times. We won't ask you for any personalized information. And we like it that way.

All right, so I guess that we are heading towards the end, but we got some new questions from our audience. So Laskuba asks, does O3 still collect gas from Neo and Ontology?

I'll have to get back to you on that. I'm really not clear on these feeds. My feeling is no. That we don't collect gas fees from Neo because they're one of our partners, but I'm not sure about ontology.

All right, and where can our audience find some info about that in case they want to follow up on that?

Right. Yeah, they can go to o3swap.com and try it out for themselves, connect their MetaMask wallet. We also have our Twitter is 03labs3labs. We have a medium. Please tweet at us. Comments. Comment on our medium. Comments on our tweets. We're still growing. We only have about 30,000 followers on Twitter. We think that's quite low at the moment, but we've grown a lot in the past few weeks.

Right. I think we have a question more regarding the name of your company.

So.

Chill stream Moore asks, people here are using 0 instead of O for the website. So can I ask again? Is there no concern about this branding? So what's the O? It's like a number or is a letter?

The O is a letter. It's not a number. It's not a zero. It's an O. A capitalized. Okay. You could think of it like if Neo were spelled with a three. Our branding is like backwards Neo without the N. And the E is a three. So it would just be O like octopus and three. Yeah. That is concerning that people are entering this hero. I didn't think of that.

So is that the origin of your name? Like you invented it by spelling backward the name of Neo? Is that the origin of the name O3Swap?

I've asked around and nobody knows. It's so strange. But that's my suspicion because I don't see. We also just think it's very easy to remember. But as for the origin of the name, that's back in 2017, it was a different group of people running the wallet than it is today, and nobody seems to know anymore. But I do think that it's a good name, that it's easy to remember and that it's catchy. But yeah, I highly suspect it comes from its relationship to Neo, because it used to only hold Neo, but now it holds different coins like Ethereum, Bitcoin, Uniswap, and Heco.

All right, and I see that we have another question here. So there is Ken E. Who is excited about this ideo. So he says, okay, let's go over how to get this ido. I'm guessing I can only pay using Ether either. So is it correct they can only pay using either?

No, no, I'm pretty sure they can use Fiat to Pay to buy O3 coin or definitely US dollar token. Yeah.

All right.

Not just Ethereum.

Okay, cool. So, Matt, I would like to give you an opportunity to mention some final points that you want our audience to know about your product.

So.

Anything important you feel like underlying, right?

Absolutely. I feel the best benefit to our swap is that it sources liquidity from different decentralized exchanges. Interoperability, it's sort of that bridge connecting all the decentralized spaces. And therefore you can get the best price. We. We have low fees and definitely the fact that it's totally decentralized. You always have control of your private keys. We're very transparent. You can see the route it's going through to get to your target asset. I think that those are the big strengths. Yeah. Is there anything I missed, Giovanni?

No, I think that was pretty clear. I guess we have one last question. Maybe you want to remind our audience where you can buy your token.

Yeah. Okay. Bscpad. We Starter. Kobak. We starter. Let me just pull it up here. Hold on. I don't want to miss anyone. Duckstarter, Gate, IO and MXC will be tomorrow. May 13th will be MXC's IDO sale. But all the others are May 12th, which is today. So, yeah, go check it out. You can check out our medium.com handle O3Labs, and all the information is there for anyone that wants to get involved and buy O3 coin.

For sure. And also, yeah, guys, don't forget to check out the website o3swap.com for more information about this aggregation protocol that can aggregate source, that can provide liquidity sources from multiple networks on one single platform and find the most advantageous prices available. So I guess we can wrap things up. Thanks, Matt, for participating in this ama.

All right. Yeah. Thank you so much, Giovanni, for having me. I really appreciate it. And yeah, you were a great host.

And you were a great guest. Also, I would like to thank our audience for being with us and for asking all the questions. I'm Giovanni, your host. If you haven't done it yet, just like the video. And subscribe to our channel. See you next time.