Dear reader!
Cryp2Gem team was honoured to host Frontier’s Co-founder and CMO Palash Jain and get a chance to do a live interview with him in the open forum in our Telegram Cryp2Gem chat on the November 11th 2020.
Lots of interesting and essential topics were covered during this live event, so we made a summary for all that were not able to attend the event or anyone who just wants to go through the content again.
Frontier is a DeFi aggregator — an all-in-one chain-agnostic non-custodial solution. You can read more about the startup in our research article.
C2G: “Let’s go to a brief intro Palash. Could you please introduce yourself, and tell us shortly how did the journey with Frontier start for you and your two other co-founders Ravindra Kumar & Vetrichelvan Jeyapalpandy?”
Palash Jain: “Sure. My background has been in Marketing & PR. Got into Crypto 2017, Just before the bitcoin bull run. Started reading and learning about multiple projects, trading etc. Worked for companies and projects on Community and PR fronts. That’s pretty much a quick tl;dr its been a long journey in crypto.
I know Ravindra from past two years, we have been exchanging a lot of ideas with each other. Back then he used to work as CTO @ InstadApp. I was introduced to DeFi by him, the first-ever DeFi App I used was InstadApp and it changed almost everything. So, we were into DeFi before the “Trend” or “Hype” started. The Idea behind Frontier was to build something on Mobile. There was no App/Product back then when had native DeFi on Mobile. So, last year, mid-April, we started working on Frontier to make DeFi accessible on Mobile, by focusing on best user experience, Non-custodial, and compatible with all other Mobile wallets.”
C2G: “Quick shill! Why would anybody want to use Frontier? What makes you different from your competition? Please convince us.”
Palash Jain: “The focus is Mobile-first for DeFi. A lot of Aggregators are just a read ( tracking) App on Mobile and are mostly focused on the Web. Frontier does Track + Manage + Portal to DeFi on Mobile.
The USP is:
- Chain Agnostic
- Wallet Aggregation
- DeFi Aggregation
All of the three in Mobile, in a single App.”
C2G: “Frontier is a DeFi aggregator — an all-in-one chain-agnostic non-custodial solution.
One of the main problems of DeFi today is that you have scattered assets in a fragmented space. Staking, yield farming, LP, swapping and even asset management mostly done on several DApps and platforms. So bringing all the protocols, platforms and wallets that offer different DeFi features for its users under one roof, covering different chains even, is the way to go. The future must be simple.
So kudos to you to choose that path ;)
What enables you to be a cross-chain layer…tech-wise? Could you explain that briefly?”
Palash Jain: “There’s a lot happening outside of ethereum, you see Polka, Solana, Cosmos. These ecosystems are growing a lot of wallets to start supporting these chains. For example, Trust supports all of these chains, soon other wallets will follow. Frontier being a Wallet Aggregator, and also aggregating all DeFi across chains. It becomes super easy for us to support DeFi protocols across chains, as Wallets we aggregate support these chains.
The image gives you a visual representation of the chain agnostic and composable ecosystem stack.
C2G: “One of your accomplished achievements was wallet composability with the TxLink Middleware which functions as a chain agnostic connection to all the wallets that are built on the already integrated blockchains. Mobile wallets included.
What are your security precautions that TxLink doesn’t get compromised? How much chance is there for any breach? In the end, it is all about security as well right?”
Palash Jain: “Nice question! First, let me explain TxLink, This is Frontier’s own Wallet Connect solution to connect Mobile Wallets with our App. We built this to solve the problem we had to natively connect Mobile Wallets. Wallet Connect works to connect your Web browser + Wallet. TxLink works to connect mobile wallets to Frontier.
TxLink is basically like a data carrier between Frontier and the Wallet you connect. It is instant, one-way communication from Frontier -> Mobile Wallet. Until the user approves the transaction nothing is going to happen. On the Wallet side before confirming the transaction.
User can see all the details of the Transaction. How much Eth or asset, the type of transaction (Allowance or sending). You are always in control.”
C2G: “Frontier has its focus on being a mobile solution. You have your app available for some time and quite some users already. DeFi needs a Mobile all-in-one solution.
There were some policy issues with some wallet Apps last year on Google Play which banned Metamask and Apple who removed Coinbase mobile wallet. Do you think such issues might be a problem in the future for “harmful financial products” as Google described Metamask?”
Palash Jain: “According to AppStore and PlayStore, Wallets cant has dApp browsers in their App. Either remove dApp browser or we will kick you out of the Store.
We don’t have that issue, as we don’t have dApp browser in our App. We are in fact complement product to all other wallets out there. For example, Trust Wallet iOS doesn’t have dApp browser anymore. Users can connect Trust Wallet with Frontier and access Staking, DeFi Apps, Trade on Uniswap, Track all Assets etc without having to import seed/Private. Same for other wallets.
We have been working with Wallet teams to come up with SDK, to bring better experience when connecting wallet and signing the transaction. With Trust Wallet, we are using Trust SDK to connect and sign transactions.”
Did You Know?
Frontier Beta Apps for Android and iOS were launched in November 2019 — they have a live product for 1 year already! And quite some users.
5k+ Frontier App downloads on Google Play (+ downloads on iPhone and AppleTV)
There are 63 reviews on Google Play with an average score of 4.3 with very positive overall feedback on UI/UX and performance.
C2G: “What are the actual revenues for the company here to grow on? The DApp is free to download, there are almost no fees.
Palash Jain: “The revenue model for our flagship product Frontier App, We get revenue from integrators. Most of the integration we have done is paid integrations. Protocols are ready to pay for integrations. As they are good in terms of building the protocol itself. We have leverage in terms of mobile. Also, we will expose the new integration to all of our existing users.
We will have some of the premium features as part of the App with the $FRONT pay/stake wall such as DeFi Tax Module, DeFi Analytics Module.”
C2G: “How is Frontier developing? How do you retain users and attract new users to your platform?”
Palash Jain: “From the product side, we have been working on a lot of integrations. Staking, DeFi protocols etc. Our App has good MOU and DAU. We support smart DeFi Notifications which gives updates to users w.r.t DeFi positions, contract interactions etc.”
C2G: “What is $FRONT token used for? What is the role of $FRONT token in your ecosystem? Do you have any plans to scarce and increase the value of $FRONT token?”
Palash Jain: “We have several utilities. In short, $FRONT is to incentivise DeFi Participation across the chain.
- Liquidity provision
- Gasless tx
- Incentive Protocols
- NFTs
- Staking on Frontier chain
in detail here: https://frontier.xyz/front/.”
C2G: “Gasless tx. How can that be? I mean we pay fortunes now for ETH?
Palash Jain: “We will be using relayer infra for this, to say in layman terms, there’s a smart contract with eth, and it pays fees on behalf of users. here the user will be the ones who are holding $FRONT.”
Did You Know?
Frontier is minting Limited Edition NFTs on Solana-based marketplace solible.com build by Bonfida and have recently listed two exclusive NFTs on Bonfida. Need for Speed and Unlimited Energy are the two NFTs. Unlimited Energy is the NFT which shows the friendship between Frontier and Bonfida. Frontier is capturing the highlights of their journey via NFTs which will be airdropped to the community. Some new partnerships are eternalized in a form of NFTs already ;)
C2G: “There is so much happening with the NFTs…also outside of Ethereum Ecosystem. So NFTs with a connection to Solana and Frontier is very interesting to say at least.”
Palash Jain: “Yep, we recently listed two exclusive NFTs on Solible, the first NFT marketplace on Solana. Ecosystems are growing, we are happy to support each other. That’s how we grow in crypto.”
C2G: “Frontier has many important milestones to reach in the following year. In early 2021 you have a Testnet launch in plan with Mobile Support and SDK available. The next important goal is the Mainnet launch planned for the first half of 2021.
Fingers crossed you reach those essential milestones in the proposed time frame. So what follows when the Mainnet is up and running? Staking and new gov token (gFRONT)? Any additional highlights we can look forward to? What is the main purpose of your mainnet?”
Palash Jain: “We have a lot of exciting things coming. October has been a bang, we have shipped a LOT of things, and doubling down every month on releases, marketing, and community events.
Incentive protocol and Frontier chain are in works. We will be releasing docs in coming weeks for validators to onboard and also incentive protocol design.
With $gFront, I won’t comment at the moment, we are still working on it and is an early stage. No governance is perfect. We are trying our best to come up with a decent architecture.
The purpose of mainnet or Frontier chain is to Decentralised Key Management — Introduce seamless onboarding for users to crypto, without going through the hassle of copying down the private keys. The key is split into multiple fragments and is stored into the chain and can be only retrieved by that particular user. Think the Web 2.0 onboarding experience but decentralised. We are using Cosmos SDK to build Frontier chain so that we focus on Decentralised Key management module and rest everything is handled by Cosmos SDK
Frontier SDK will be made available to Wallets, exchanges to seamlessly integrate and onboard users to their products and services.”
C2G: “We are well aware that the gFRONT is quite far at this point…we will probably learn more about after testnet next year.”
Palash Jain: “That’s a nice chart isn't it? People are loving NFTs. Marketplaces are seeing a surge. 2020 good times.”
C2G: “And most startups building around NFTs will go live in 2021. Happy times.
And the future only gets brighter, we are seeing movement from 2d images/animations to 3D models to real estate and other real-world assets becoming tokenised through NFTs.”
Palash Jain: “Yep, a lot of projects are doing cool stuff with NFTs. combining NFTs + DeFi, using it as a bridge for real-world assets.”
Community Q: “Could you please enumerate the development stages of $FRONT? Which stage is the most important one for $FRONT?”
Palash Jain: “On our token side roadmap, we have been pushing on getting $FRONT into the ecosystem. LuaSwap, SakeSwap, Serum Swap pushing this further. Working on incentive protocol and Frontier chain. details to follow soon.”
C2G: “You have some interesting partnerships already. One of those is Matic, who is also your backer. Are you planning to use Matic layer-2 for better scaling of your upcoming Frontier blockchain?”
Palash Jain: “Frontier is a Staking interface for Matic on Mobile. One of the key features of Frontier is Native Staking. We have Matic, BAND, Harmony, Kava and more assets coming this month.
Frontier chain is on Cosmos, I don’t think we will be using Matic L2 for scaling, there’s nothing to scale for Frontier chain. The use case is totally different.”
C2G: “One of your latest partnerships is probably even the most interesting one. You will be working with Altonomy, one of the digital asset and cryptocurrency market leaders for liquidity solutions, OTC trading, advisory and asset management services. So that is CeFi + DeFi bridge in the making. What is the collaboration with Altonomy aimed to — market-making service for FRONT? Anything else?
Palash Jain: “Altonomy is our liquidity management partner. They make sure $FRONT is easily available to buy/sell on DEX’s and CEX’s. The CEX <> DeFi bridge is something else. Coming Soon.”
C2G: “That is great. CeFi + DeFi!”
Did You Know?
Frontier will enable and provide gasless transactions for all interactions in its App as well as contribute with incentive protocol. This will be enabled with the integration of Biconomy which facilitates a seamless transaction highway for DeFi Apps and ops through the use of meta transactions and a relayer network.
Frontier Gasless Relayer is planned for Q4 2020.
BTW Biconomy and Frontier share a common partner — Matic.
C2G: “Can we talk about your integration of Solana? Currently supported are DeFi Applications which are built on Ethereum, Cosmos, and Binance chain. Polkadot Ecosystem integration follows soon, while the support for Solana and Serum is already being researched.
I am personally quite excited about your upcoming Solana blockchain integration (https://twitter.com/frontierdotxyz/status/1300757373896679426?s=21). You are working on this already right?. FRONT is also listed on Serum DEX. You can farm Serum’s token SRM by providing FRONT liquidity on Serum Swap.
Will we be able to access Serum through Solana? And you have also minted some of your NFTs on the Bonfida’s Solible NFT marketplace built on Solana. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Frontier might become an important part of Solana’s Ecosystem (by connecting all the other protocols, wallets and chains with Solana in a way)?”
Palash Jain: “We are working on Adding Solana support in our Apps. Thanks for sharing the teaser :D $FRONT is listed on Serum DEX and also Serum Swap the first AMM on Solana. Users can provide $FRONT + $SRM liquidity and farm $SRM.
We also recently listed two Frontier exclusive NFTs on Solible, Solana’s first NFT Marketplace.
https://twitter.com/FrontierDotXYZ/status/1320702021683458049?s=20
C2G: “I have to admit….I really like Solana and what they are building. They have probably the fastest chain.”
Palash Jain: “It is fast! Like super fast. Our QA tries multiple blockchains, and he says all the time “Man, Solana is much faster”.”
C2G: “Maybe we can talk about the team? How big is the team now?”
Palash Jain: “Frontier’s core team is 7 members, we have full-time developers, QA, Blockchain devs. The team is 15 members + some contractors. You can find the core team on our website: frontier.xyz.
C2G: “We would really love to hear more about NFTs. How is Frontier related to NFTs? I have seen in one of your updates that you will be able to buy and sell NFTs with Frontier. You are minting your own NFTs which published on Solible? Can you share a bit more about your plans? It would be interesting to see you working on a bridge between ETH and Solana NFTs.”
Palash Jain: “If you look into our Token utilities, one of them is NFT creation and Acquisition. $FRONT is here to incentivize and bring participation in DeFi. Whatever you have been seeing with Frontier doing NFTs is just a teaser, we have cool stuff coming. Tweet thread for NFT lovers.”
C2G: “Yeah, those are so nice. You are airdropping those to the community right?”
Palash Jain: “Yep! we will be airdropping to the community.”
C2G: “Are you planning on allowing the community to develop their own NFTs?”
Palash Jain: “Already too much alpha leaked. would like to save some for PR sir!”
C2G: “Alpha leaks…this is the reason to have AMAs right?”
Palash Jain: “Hahaha!”
C2G: “And how would the community be able to earn NFT, is this by holding Frontier?”
Palash Jain: “If you look into the NFTs we’ve minted so far. For example LuaSwap x Front: its for the LPs who provided LUA + FRONT liquidity into LuaSwap.
Not necessary to hold the Front. Need to be in community, and participate in events.”
C2G: “Where are you minting your NFTs Palash? Does this include your collaboration with Bonfida? Or native? Sorry, we need to keep pushing this topic.”
Palash Jain: “We minted two NFTs on Bonfida, and rest NFTs were on Eth (Rarible).”
C2G: “Does Solana have their own NFT standard?”
Palash Jain: “I would have to check again with Philip, our COO. Aa far as I know, it is like minting SPL version.”
C2G: “As I have read you need to ask the Bonfida team if you want to transfer your NFTs to Solible marketplace.”
Palash Jain: “Bonfida helps you to mint NFTs for free. So, if you are looking for minting NFTs on Solana, they are all hands to help folks.”
Did You Know?
On October 22nd, the team at Bonfida launched Solible, the first NFT marketplace built on Project Serum and Solana. Soluble is an easy-to-use NFT marketplace that takes advantage of the cheap fees and fast latency Solana is known for. New NFT’s are being added daily, and more development is expected in the near future.
The Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong recently listed the first redeemable NFT, Bitcoin Tram. The purchase of Bitcoin Tram gets you a physical Bitcoin Tram model mailed to the mailing address of your choice. Check Out Solible.
C2G: “What is the best farming/LP option right now? I am sure many are interested in this info.”
Palash Jain: “I’ll leave it to you guys to decide. You can farm $LUA, $sake, and $SRM with $FRONT. So many options, more coming, you guys are smart to figure out what’s best.”
C2G: “Okex suspended all withdraws on the October 16th due to key holder Mingxing Star Sue not being available as he was taken by police at least a week before the suspend and hasn’t been seen since. Hours before OKEx’s announcement, significant withdrawals of ETH, TRON and BTC were completed from known OKEx-affiliated addresses.
FRONT withdraws were suspended as well. Was there any panic amongst your community? What do you think about that incident?”
Palash Jain: “We are in constant communication with OKEx team. They have been constantly sharing updates and we have been doing the same to our community. Things are getting back to normal, there’s no need to panic about the $FRONT users are holding on OKEx.
C2G: “OKEx token value dropped a lot after the news came out…hopefully thing go back to normal soon.”
Palash Jain: “Yep! I think folks need to be cautious with how and where they store funds. The first rule of crypto is “Self custody” always.”
C2G: “Palash would you like to highlight something. Maby some upcoming news?”
Palash Jain: “We have a lot of product updates coming this month. Staking, Protocols, improvements in the UX, more Wallets support.”
C2G: We’ll be definitely looking forward to the next monthly update as well as the future progress of Frontier. Thank you for the interview and taking the time to give us nothing but alpha leaks.”
Palash Jain: “Thank you so much C2G team for hosting me today! Had a great time answering the questions.”
Cryp2Gem team is always available for any further discussions in our social media. Looking forward to all the feedback.
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