Interview with Alexandra Pestretsova (Wavesplatform) about the blockchain technology and business tokenization
At the White Nights Moscow 2017 conference , the CEO of Getloyal , Alexey Pisarevsky, spoke with the marketing director of the blockchain platform Wavesplatform , Alexandra Pestretsova.
Wavesplatform is a cryptocurrency project launched by Russian entrepreneur Alexander Ivanov in 2016. The campaign to launch the blockchain platform raised $ 16 million, becoming one of the largest in terms of funds raised through crowdfunding. Now the total capitalization of WAVES exceeds $ 500 million, and according to this indicator, the token is in the TOP-15 cryptocurrency in the world.
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In an interview discussed:
Read the full transcript of the interview.
About Waves and ICO
You have a big background in the gaming industry, in marketing. Recently, you have been working with YouTube, bloggers, and quite successfully. How did it happen that you threw all this and came to the blockchain and the Waves?
You are now provoking me to some revelations regarding YouTube. The YouTube market is wildly interesting, fast-growing. In general, video content is the future of all content on the Internet. But at the same time, it is very difficult to make a big monetization history out of this, since serious players are needed in this market, you need a parish, for example, Google itself, as the organizer of a certain business structure for YouTube and bloggers who will organize them, install working conditions, correctly consider the result and connect them with a potential employer.
Do you think Google will eventually do it or someone else?
Google bought a FameBit. FameBit is the largest platform, such a Uber for YouTube. On the one hand, the employer connects and he places a certain offer on the YouTube YouTube Exchange, and on the other side there are YouTube users who see this offer, they already make content on it and receive a cash reward. This all goes. In Russia, as far as I know, Yoola and GetBlogger are now spinning very strongly.
Are there many different agencies?
As far as I know, agencies also make their platform, which will scale the whole story. The problem with the agency is that you will not manually cover ten thousand YouTube and tens of thousands of requests from advertisers. It needs to be automated. Therefore, all are now going towards the development of such platforms that are able to select, sort, rank YouTube. For example, in the same gaming industry there are shooters, there is Minecraft and there is Candy Crush. For all these three games you need a completely different audience on YouTube. And you will not go into the same YouTube with three different games.
A huge number of bloggers. There are those who review the entire gaming market, and there are those who review a particular niche. Youtubehubers - this was the best application of my marketing abilities, so I failed my head there. I worked there for a year, I realized that everything was very interesting, but hard: it was hard to scale up, plus the lack of agreements with YouTube, the lack of a normal market, the lack of understandable tracking efficiency. I find it difficult to take responsibility for the money that I take from investors. And I told myself that there is no, probably, I am not ready to raise my company and do this, as this is still an immature story.
Alexandra's speech at the White Nights Conference 2016
Blockchain is a topic above. And I, too, understood very mediocrely up to a certain moment, just read the news. But then significant events occurred for me, several high-level people called me. I didn’t get out of reading about the blockchain. And then I realized that the blockchain as a technology is really a new Internet, I don’t want to sound pathetic.
Are the technologies similar? That is, if developers from gaming go to the blockchain, do they need to learn cryptography?
There is a front-end and back-end. On the front-end, you need to understand your main specialization, and now, as I understand it, the most popular front-end vendors in the blockchain are Java script-players. Of course, it will take a couple of months to spend on learning the basics of cryptography. But there is no rocket science in this.
So you think that this is not just a hype? There was HYIP around VR, around chat bots. But it did not become mass. Now such a hype around the blockchain. Where does all this go?
HYIP happens at the beginning of any innovation. Of course, HYIP is largely due to the fact that the companies themselves, which consider innovation to be innovation, are trying to attract market attention. Blockchain ... There are so many iconic events on the market that happened only this year. They say that the blockchain is not just not going anywhere, but it is already beginning to penetrate strongly into our lives.
For example, in April there was a legalization of bitcoins in Japan. The adoption of bitcoins at the state level now happens very often. Dubai recently announced that it is releasing its own cryptocurrency. That is, in fact, Dubai produces some kind of measure of value, which will no longer be just money, not just paper carriers of values, but a kind of digital value, which in Dubai’s economy will become an independent unit, and will be supported by government institutions, and children’s gardens and everything in the world.
There is news that several top Chinese banks, including American banks, are merging and creating their own blockchain platform for synchronizing digital assets and exchanging assets among themselves. That is, banks start conglomerates, which exchange data with each other and transfer their databases to the blockchain.
What do you think about the ICO, which is now being held en masse, about which everyone is talking? Agree that most companies simply do not represent anything?
I want to send everything in the right, constructive direction. It is clear that chaos is created in any Wild West in the absence of rules. Without regulatory legislation, there will be a lot of companies that are not serious about their obligations, that is, declare some intentions, raise money, but then produce products unsuccessfully or not at all. Yes, there are projects that use this and cheat.
Let's just say - you need to look above this foam. Innovation lies in what is called tokenization in our market. This issue is not just some kind of securities for the money that you collect; This is a release of tokens that you can knit into the economy. And you can provide these tokens not only with money. You can provide this token in games, for example, the player’s time or his activity in the game, or game currency. That is, you can launch a token to the market and say to the players: “The more you play, the more tokens you earn. And then you begin to use these tokens inside the game as a means of sharing values. You can sell tokens in a game or give benefits for tokens, or in eSports, for example, to allow players to participate in tournaments for tokens.
Is this something that could not be done without tokens, without a blockchain?
All loyalty programs and game currency is an analogue of cash. The token is stored on the blockchain, you write to the database and transparently store all the information about the transactions of this token. Also, these tokens begin to be traded on cryptocurrency exchanges in relation to other cryptocurrencies, in relation to the same bitcoin. That is, a person who has come into the game and earned some money for himself can sell them for bitcoins and put them into real money. That is, it turns out that you are tying the economy with the real economy, with the economy of real money.
"Burger King", for example, created a cryptocurrency on our platform. It is called pervoy. You can come to “Burger King”, eat a burger, and you, for example, for a check that you have deposited, for example, for 300 rubles, automatically transfer 300 points to your cryptocurrency wallet. Essentially, loyalty points. And you can get burgers for these points again.
Hyponuli is simple.
But the interest is not in this, but in the fact that you can sell tokens for bitcoins.
OK. The “Thank you” points from Sberbank are about the same, without any blockchain. Cashback? Same.
Once again, mechanics. You come to Burger King, eat burgers, earn Coins, and then get them into real money. Cashback is a special case. Here you can cryptocurrency, this token, wrap up your business as you like. You can make loyalty programs, you can use tokens to distribute to users, to vote for some decisions in your product, you can collect crowdfunding. That is, the mechanic set is endless. The fact is that this is a certain unit of values ​​that you integrate into the economy and link to the economy from the real world.
Do I understand correctly that there are a lot of platforms like Waves? But at the same time, Waves, at least according to capitalization, is included in 20 tokens. What makes you different from others?
First, there are not very many such platforms, few have their own blockchain. As a rule, the platforms are all centralized, these are servers that stand somewhere and are hosted, and the platforms have the option of trading with cryptocurrencies or wallets or some other functionality. But all data is stored on the server of the company that develops this platform.
Our platform is decentralized, that is, we have our own blockchain to which all data from the platform is written. It is completely transparent, it is open source. The wallet that you make on our platform allows everyone to see your transactions. Information on tokens that you release on our platform is visible to everyone, it is open and transparent.
Source: www.facebook.com/wavesplatform
And we position ourselves as a decentralized solution for all. This is the first. The second thing we are working on is mass adoption. The task is to make the platform as transparent and understandable as possible for the mass market. Now tools that are understandable to the average user are just beginning to appear, there are still very few of them. And our main task is to make a platform that will not differ from the bank, from PayPal, from Yandex.Money, from Forex, from Kickstarter, with a clear and transparent interface that can be accessed and done in two clicks.
This was the main manifesto of Sasha Ivanov, the founder, who in 2016 gathered investments for this product. At that time, it was the third ICO in the world.
We are in the top 15, because our course is driven by our actions. Every month we release updates to the market, we transform the platform, we have new partnerships with large and pro-state structures and businesses, and technological partners, and with legal organizations. In fact, we act as one of the leaders who organizes this market around itself.
The capitalization of the Waves token or the Waves company is about half a billion dollars now?
Yes. But this is not the limit.
As a person not in the market, I look at it all and think: “There is nothing behind these numbers, behind such big ones. It can't cost that much. ” Why is that?
"This is all" - what is that specific?
The word "bubble", it begs. Will it all fall? Cue ball course.
You just need to realize the full scale of the technology, and then it will be clear where so much money is in this market and where it came from. In fact, the current rate of Bitcoin is a course of trust of people to Bitcoin. As soon as bitcoin was introduced into regulatory legislation in Japan (they introduced some restrictions, that is, they recognized the means of payment, but with certain restrictions), the rate of all cryptocurrencies increased by 2 times during that month. Entering cryptocurrency in the white legal field will have a positive effect on all courses.
New Internet - pathetic words. But this is really in terms of innovation, a technology that will change the attitude towards information storage and the processing of this information in the coming decades.
About blockchain
Three of the coolest projects on the blockchain?
As I have already said, now there is a consortium of banks that are starting to develop their platform on the blockchain for operating information. Of the current ICOs, the most famous is Filecoin, they have raised $ 250 million. This is cloud storage, data storage on computers of ordinary people. You create a global public cloud to which any computer can connect, and which can store any data on itself.
Now with NSD (National Settlement Depository) we are transferring all their digital assets to the blockchain. This will be a system that stores bank data and traders' data in a transparent, decentralized form.
How blockchain can be used in the advertising industry?
The blockchain's philosophy is that you can store and process data decentralized and transparent. Any database that requires it in the advertising industry can begin to operate on it. DSP platforms can begin to collect all data on user behavior, add it to the blockchain and give advertisers access to this information transparently, openly, quickly.
A small futuristic forecast from you for 5 years ahead. What will the world look like in 5 years?
Everything will be fine! The very attitude to data storage and to centralized systems will simply change. The token that you create allows you to wrap it up in your own business, and then make your digital money out of it. Each person becomes a carrier of their currency. And to this we must begin to somehow relate to the state.
Finally, a question that interests everyone. Buy or sell? The cue ball I mean.
Buy. Obviously.
Do you have a cue ball?
Of course.
Waves tokens?
Everything is. I have several currencies: I keep and trade. But honestly - I'm not a trader. I'm not trying to cash in on them somehow. I act as an investor who believed in the technology itself, believed that this technology is at the very beginning of its development, and that after 5 years it will really be used everywhere in any business. Therefore, I am convinced that cryptocurrency has a great future.
Watch more interesting interviews on the Mobio Talks youtube channel. Subscribe to our Habra blog.
Wavesplatform is a cryptocurrency project launched by Russian entrepreneur Alexander Ivanov in 2016. The campaign to launch the blockchain platform raised $ 16 million, becoming one of the largest in terms of funds raised through crowdfunding. Now the total capitalization of WAVES exceeds $ 500 million, and according to this indicator, the token is in the TOP-15 cryptocurrency in the world.
')
In an interview discussed:
- the blockchain industry and what stands behind it;
- tokenization trend;
- methods of using blockchain in business;
- Waves platform working principle;
- capitalization of the Waves token;
- the coolest projects on the blockchain;
- much more.
Read the full transcript of the interview.
About Waves and ICO
You have a big background in the gaming industry, in marketing. Recently, you have been working with YouTube, bloggers, and quite successfully. How did it happen that you threw all this and came to the blockchain and the Waves?
You are now provoking me to some revelations regarding YouTube. The YouTube market is wildly interesting, fast-growing. In general, video content is the future of all content on the Internet. But at the same time, it is very difficult to make a big monetization history out of this, since serious players are needed in this market, you need a parish, for example, Google itself, as the organizer of a certain business structure for YouTube and bloggers who will organize them, install working conditions, correctly consider the result and connect them with a potential employer.
Do you think Google will eventually do it or someone else?
Google bought a FameBit. FameBit is the largest platform, such a Uber for YouTube. On the one hand, the employer connects and he places a certain offer on the YouTube YouTube Exchange, and on the other side there are YouTube users who see this offer, they already make content on it and receive a cash reward. This all goes. In Russia, as far as I know, Yoola and GetBlogger are now spinning very strongly.
Are there many different agencies?
As far as I know, agencies also make their platform, which will scale the whole story. The problem with the agency is that you will not manually cover ten thousand YouTube and tens of thousands of requests from advertisers. It needs to be automated. Therefore, all are now going towards the development of such platforms that are able to select, sort, rank YouTube. For example, in the same gaming industry there are shooters, there is Minecraft and there is Candy Crush. For all these three games you need a completely different audience on YouTube. And you will not go into the same YouTube with three different games.
A huge number of bloggers. There are those who review the entire gaming market, and there are those who review a particular niche. Youtubehubers - this was the best application of my marketing abilities, so I failed my head there. I worked there for a year, I realized that everything was very interesting, but hard: it was hard to scale up, plus the lack of agreements with YouTube, the lack of a normal market, the lack of understandable tracking efficiency. I find it difficult to take responsibility for the money that I take from investors. And I told myself that there is no, probably, I am not ready to raise my company and do this, as this is still an immature story.
Alexandra's speech at the White Nights Conference 2016
Blockchain is a topic above. And I, too, understood very mediocrely up to a certain moment, just read the news. But then significant events occurred for me, several high-level people called me. I didn’t get out of reading about the blockchain. And then I realized that the blockchain as a technology is really a new Internet, I don’t want to sound pathetic.
Are the technologies similar? That is, if developers from gaming go to the blockchain, do they need to learn cryptography?
There is a front-end and back-end. On the front-end, you need to understand your main specialization, and now, as I understand it, the most popular front-end vendors in the blockchain are Java script-players. Of course, it will take a couple of months to spend on learning the basics of cryptography. But there is no rocket science in this.
So you think that this is not just a hype? There was HYIP around VR, around chat bots. But it did not become mass. Now such a hype around the blockchain. Where does all this go?
HYIP happens at the beginning of any innovation. Of course, HYIP is largely due to the fact that the companies themselves, which consider innovation to be innovation, are trying to attract market attention. Blockchain ... There are so many iconic events on the market that happened only this year. They say that the blockchain is not just not going anywhere, but it is already beginning to penetrate strongly into our lives.
For example, in April there was a legalization of bitcoins in Japan. The adoption of bitcoins at the state level now happens very often. Dubai recently announced that it is releasing its own cryptocurrency. That is, in fact, Dubai produces some kind of measure of value, which will no longer be just money, not just paper carriers of values, but a kind of digital value, which in Dubai’s economy will become an independent unit, and will be supported by government institutions, and children’s gardens and everything in the world.
There is news that several top Chinese banks, including American banks, are merging and creating their own blockchain platform for synchronizing digital assets and exchanging assets among themselves. That is, banks start conglomerates, which exchange data with each other and transfer their databases to the blockchain.
What do you think about the ICO, which is now being held en masse, about which everyone is talking? Agree that most companies simply do not represent anything?
I want to send everything in the right, constructive direction. It is clear that chaos is created in any Wild West in the absence of rules. Without regulatory legislation, there will be a lot of companies that are not serious about their obligations, that is, declare some intentions, raise money, but then produce products unsuccessfully or not at all. Yes, there are projects that use this and cheat.
Let's just say - you need to look above this foam. Innovation lies in what is called tokenization in our market. This issue is not just some kind of securities for the money that you collect; This is a release of tokens that you can knit into the economy. And you can provide these tokens not only with money. You can provide this token in games, for example, the player’s time or his activity in the game, or game currency. That is, you can launch a token to the market and say to the players: “The more you play, the more tokens you earn. And then you begin to use these tokens inside the game as a means of sharing values. You can sell tokens in a game or give benefits for tokens, or in eSports, for example, to allow players to participate in tournaments for tokens.
Is this something that could not be done without tokens, without a blockchain?
All loyalty programs and game currency is an analogue of cash. The token is stored on the blockchain, you write to the database and transparently store all the information about the transactions of this token. Also, these tokens begin to be traded on cryptocurrency exchanges in relation to other cryptocurrencies, in relation to the same bitcoin. That is, a person who has come into the game and earned some money for himself can sell them for bitcoins and put them into real money. That is, it turns out that you are tying the economy with the real economy, with the economy of real money.
"Burger King", for example, created a cryptocurrency on our platform. It is called pervoy. You can come to “Burger King”, eat a burger, and you, for example, for a check that you have deposited, for example, for 300 rubles, automatically transfer 300 points to your cryptocurrency wallet. Essentially, loyalty points. And you can get burgers for these points again.
Hyponuli is simple.
But the interest is not in this, but in the fact that you can sell tokens for bitcoins.
OK. The “Thank you” points from Sberbank are about the same, without any blockchain. Cashback? Same.
Once again, mechanics. You come to Burger King, eat burgers, earn Coins, and then get them into real money. Cashback is a special case. Here you can cryptocurrency, this token, wrap up your business as you like. You can make loyalty programs, you can use tokens to distribute to users, to vote for some decisions in your product, you can collect crowdfunding. That is, the mechanic set is endless. The fact is that this is a certain unit of values ​​that you integrate into the economy and link to the economy from the real world.
Do I understand correctly that there are a lot of platforms like Waves? But at the same time, Waves, at least according to capitalization, is included in 20 tokens. What makes you different from others?
First, there are not very many such platforms, few have their own blockchain. As a rule, the platforms are all centralized, these are servers that stand somewhere and are hosted, and the platforms have the option of trading with cryptocurrencies or wallets or some other functionality. But all data is stored on the server of the company that develops this platform.
Our platform is decentralized, that is, we have our own blockchain to which all data from the platform is written. It is completely transparent, it is open source. The wallet that you make on our platform allows everyone to see your transactions. Information on tokens that you release on our platform is visible to everyone, it is open and transparent.
Source: www.facebook.com/wavesplatform
And we position ourselves as a decentralized solution for all. This is the first. The second thing we are working on is mass adoption. The task is to make the platform as transparent and understandable as possible for the mass market. Now tools that are understandable to the average user are just beginning to appear, there are still very few of them. And our main task is to make a platform that will not differ from the bank, from PayPal, from Yandex.Money, from Forex, from Kickstarter, with a clear and transparent interface that can be accessed and done in two clicks.
This was the main manifesto of Sasha Ivanov, the founder, who in 2016 gathered investments for this product. At that time, it was the third ICO in the world.
We are in the top 15, because our course is driven by our actions. Every month we release updates to the market, we transform the platform, we have new partnerships with large and pro-state structures and businesses, and technological partners, and with legal organizations. In fact, we act as one of the leaders who organizes this market around itself.
The capitalization of the Waves token or the Waves company is about half a billion dollars now?
Yes. But this is not the limit.
As a person not in the market, I look at it all and think: “There is nothing behind these numbers, behind such big ones. It can't cost that much. ” Why is that?
"This is all" - what is that specific?
The word "bubble", it begs. Will it all fall? Cue ball course.
You just need to realize the full scale of the technology, and then it will be clear where so much money is in this market and where it came from. In fact, the current rate of Bitcoin is a course of trust of people to Bitcoin. As soon as bitcoin was introduced into regulatory legislation in Japan (they introduced some restrictions, that is, they recognized the means of payment, but with certain restrictions), the rate of all cryptocurrencies increased by 2 times during that month. Entering cryptocurrency in the white legal field will have a positive effect on all courses.
New Internet - pathetic words. But this is really in terms of innovation, a technology that will change the attitude towards information storage and the processing of this information in the coming decades.
About blockchain
Three of the coolest projects on the blockchain?
As I have already said, now there is a consortium of banks that are starting to develop their platform on the blockchain for operating information. Of the current ICOs, the most famous is Filecoin, they have raised $ 250 million. This is cloud storage, data storage on computers of ordinary people. You create a global public cloud to which any computer can connect, and which can store any data on itself.
Now with NSD (National Settlement Depository) we are transferring all their digital assets to the blockchain. This will be a system that stores bank data and traders' data in a transparent, decentralized form.
How blockchain can be used in the advertising industry?
The blockchain's philosophy is that you can store and process data decentralized and transparent. Any database that requires it in the advertising industry can begin to operate on it. DSP platforms can begin to collect all data on user behavior, add it to the blockchain and give advertisers access to this information transparently, openly, quickly.
A small futuristic forecast from you for 5 years ahead. What will the world look like in 5 years?
Everything will be fine! The very attitude to data storage and to centralized systems will simply change. The token that you create allows you to wrap it up in your own business, and then make your digital money out of it. Each person becomes a carrier of their currency. And to this we must begin to somehow relate to the state.
Finally, a question that interests everyone. Buy or sell? The cue ball I mean.
Buy. Obviously.
Do you have a cue ball?
Of course.
Waves tokens?
Everything is. I have several currencies: I keep and trade. But honestly - I'm not a trader. I'm not trying to cash in on them somehow. I act as an investor who believed in the technology itself, believed that this technology is at the very beginning of its development, and that after 5 years it will really be used everywhere in any business. Therefore, I am convinced that cryptocurrency has a great future.
Watch more interesting interviews on the Mobio Talks youtube channel. Subscribe to our Habra blog.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/341556/
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