CryptoSlate recently had the opportunity to chat with Ralf Gerteis, the co-founder and CEO of Scaleswap, a Polygon-powered launchpad that will be conducting its IDO on June 25th.
What is the professional background of the Scaleswap founders and what is their previous experience in crypto?
Ralf is the CEO of Scaleswap and an entrepreneur at heart with 20 years of experience as an executive, management consultant, board member and angel investor.
After exiting his consulting company in 2016, Ralf was keen to dive deeper into digital transformation and emerging technologies. Blockchain finally caught his attention most as he was not only fascinated by the new technical possibilities but also the transformative potential of blockchain for business models, whole industries and even society. From then on, Ralf worked full-time with a number of projects, organizations and service providers together, mostly as a hands-on advisor for all strategic and economic aspects and as a confidant for the CXO circles.
Stan, CTO of Scaleswap, is the driving force behind our technology as a physicist and technology entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in digitalization, IT security and project management.
Formerly a research scientist at the University of Bonn, Germany in the field of experimental quantum simulating and computing, Stan was part of the renowned group of Prof. Meschede, working on the realisation of a quantum simulator with multiple qubits. Since 2013, Stan has focused professionally on IT Security and spent over five years as an independent consultant of some major industry players like Deutsche Bank, Insurance ERGO, and others in various IT Management roles. In early 2016, he founded a blockchain project, Photochain, dealing with the license management on blockchain and being the first pre-NFT project of its kind.
What problem is Scaleswap solving and what is the biggest challenge in building a layer-2 launchpad?
The IDO launchpad space isn’t revered for its fairness, transparency, or lottery schemes. There’s also the issue of Ethereum network congestion and high transaction fees. We’ve set out to change all of this in a big way.
We are the first truly fair IDO launchpad on the scene. We stand for transparency, a community-centric approach and with the long-term vision to transform the fundraising scheme and go-to-market strategy step by step to a more sustainable construct that’s here to stay.
We also use the latest technology in our Ethereum layer 2 scaling protocol (powered by Polygon).
But first and foremost, we value our community and offer everyone the power to earn influence in our DAO and guaranteed access to launch pools of the highest-quality projects by their continuous loyalty, regardless of their budget.
The most challenging part of building a layer 2 launchpad is the luck of integrations. So the team was required to be creative in that matter and to develop their own concepts to overcome the limitations. The interlinks between blockchains, for example, between Ethereum L1 and Polygon L2, require careful planning processes as the goal is to catch all the transactions on the L1 and to push them carefully on to L2. For example, one of our USPs, the ability to participate in the Pools on L2 being on the L1, utilizing so called Metatransactions, is a difficult yet innovative way to enhance the UX.
We also encountered a challenge, that testnets were not working as expected and thus we made the decision to test directly on the mainnet. This was the biggest challenge and the same great chance to go “directly in the real fight. 95% of our testers did not experience any problems.
We are working on the next integrations (other L2s) and the challenges differ from L2 to L2. For example, ZK solutions like ZK Sync and ZK Stark require the pools’ smart contracts to be written in their own languages and this means not only learning these novel tools, but also innovating in terms of security testing.
How many people are working on Scaleswap and where is the team located?
The Scaleswap family consists of 2 co-founders, Stan and Ralf, 6 highly dedicated and skilled team members, and a board of 7 exceptional advisors such as Lester Lim and Garlam Won that are just as passionate about our mission as we are.
We are spread across all major continents, with team members located in Switzerland, Germany, Singapore, China, the United States, and Spain.
What technologies were used to build the Scaleswap platform?
We believe that layer 2 scaling is essential for the Ethereum ecosystem and we’ve chosen Polygon as an established partner with a proven L2 technology. The decision was made after researching each of the emerging Layer 2 solutions extensively. In the end, it was clear to us that Polygon was one of the most advanced, but also offered the most production-ready solution and largest network effect.
Also, regarding UX, we are working on a very smooth user experience, where you don’t need to switch the RPC to another network. You can enjoy the benefits of interacting on Layer 2 (low gas fees, instant execution of transactions) with the ease and simplification of a Layer 1 transaction. We just completed our public testing round and received amazing feedback from our testing community about the L2 experience.
At the same time we are evaluating further L2 integrations and bridges to other protocols. Our first candidate should be Solana and we are also evaluating CasperLabs, Avalanche, and others.
Which types of crypto users would benefit from using the Scaleswap launchpad?
Any user that wants to participate in launch pools of the highest quality projects but is fed up with unfair selection processes, lottery schemes, lack of transparency, and excessive gas fees.
Scaleswap shifts from pure lotteries and valuing only the amount of tokens that are held to a multi-dimensional loyalty scoring system (ScaleSCORE) where anyone can earn guaranteed participation in pools over time. In contrast to our competitors, holding our token is only one of six dimensions that are used to measure loyalty and participation.
ScaleSCORE will be the core element of our platform and the deciding factor for unlocking all of the benefits in our ecosystem — private pool participation, advanced platform features (ie. autopilot participation feature), determining voting power in our DAO, being considered in weighted airdrops from our partners, and more.
Where do you see the DeFi ecosystem over the next few years? What will be the major milestones?
DeFi has huge potential. To be very transparent with you, there are for sure some dependencies from regulatory as well as from the political side. That’s one of the reasons we are working hard to have a transparent and compliant setup. DeFi as a whole will need to continue maturing and becoming more sustainable in order to continue its path to success over the long run.
At the end, there needs to be a co-existence of the existing financial system and the DeFi world, but DeFi can play a key role and not necessarily the one of a small brother.
Apart from these external factors, I see the whole DeFi sector as one of the main drivers of blockchain adoption. I believe old business models, complicated middlemen structures and fully centralized governance are a topic of the past. And our launchpad V1 is only the beginning. We have big plans and will surprise the markets in the future with true innovation.
What is the utility of the Scaleswap (SCA) token?
The SCA token plays a key role in our ecosystem. It is a driving factor for determining ScaleSCORE which enables guaranteed pool participations, unlocks new features, is the basis for weighted airdrops and which determines your voting power in our upcoming layer 2 DAO. Considering the various dimensions, your budget and the number of tokens don’t play the most important role.
Apart from that, the pool fees need to be paid by the project in our native SCA token and will be burnt after usage (but no buy-back and burn mechanisms). In addition, we will incentivize liquidity provision in a very attractive way. We believe that this is much stronger than short-term and non-sustainable staking rewards.
What can you tell us about the Scaleswap product roadmap?
We have a challenging yet exciting roadmap! We will launch on our very own platform with an already overwhelming demand. External IDOs will begin shortly thereafter and we are already in advanced discussions with some very exciting projects in that regard. We’ll always continue to grow and enrich our most precious asset – our strong, committed and loyal community. We list on a second prime DEX and will have two strong CEX listings. We plan to grow our liquidity to the strongest liquidity wall in the launchpad scene.
On the technical side – implementation of the new features (eg. autopilot feature), integrations with other protocols, as well as continued improvement on the UI/UX side. We are already working on Scalesawap version 2 in a parallel workstream and are continuously researching the evolving state of L2 solutions.
What is the best way for those interested to learn more about Scaleswap?
They can visit our website or read our articles on Medium. We would also encourage everyone to join our Telegram community! We would love to meet you, answer your questions, and it’s also the best place to keep up with the latest news and updates.
Connect with Ralf Gerteis
Like what you see? Subscribe for updates.
Credit: Source link
