Polkastarter and NiiFi AMA Recap

AMA with founder of NiiFi, Jacobo Toll-Messia, and Andrew Keys, NiiFi lead investor.

Polkastarter
Polkastarter

You can see the original AMA conversation on Polkastarter’s Telegram channel here.

Polkastarter‌‌
Hi everyone and welcome to another exciting Polkastarter AMA, this time with the founder of NiiFi, Jacobo Toll-Messia and Andrew Keys, NiiFi lead investor. Welcome both, and thank you for taking the time today to join us! 🎉👋

Alright! We will first have a few questions to Jacobo and Andrew directly, before we open it up for community questions. Let’s get started! 🕺

Jacobo and Andrew, could you please first introduce yourselves?

Andrew Keys, NiiFi‌‌
Andrew Keys here- Co-founder and Managing Partner of DARMA Capital and former head of global business development of ConsenSys. I've helped bring Ethereum to market, IPFS/Filecoin to market and Dfinity to market and now I'm laser focused on the best Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution, Nahmii and its flagship DeFi use case NIIFi.

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi‌‌
CEO & Founder of nahmii. Background in software engineering, been building systems for 25+ years. Our previous platform was serving 50m users a day and most recently we have been working on scaling Ethereum. Our protocol nahmii has been live on main net since 2018 and we are currently building nahmii 2.0 which will go live this summer. Now, it is time to take DeFi to mainstream adoption via NiiFi!

Polkastarter‌‌
It's great to have two crypto OGs like yourselves here today, and really looking forward to diving into NiiFi!

Can you tell us more about the vision behind NiiFi, and why are you launching it?

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi‌‌
NiiFi is DeFi ready for commercial adoption. It is also the key use case & implementation for nahmii 2.0 There is untapped potential on the DeFi space taking the technology mainstream due to the limitations of the Ethereum blockchain. That is fixed with nahmii and that is why we are building NiiFi.

Polkastarter
‌‌Taking DeFi to mainstream adoption is what we all want to see 💫, and no better people to build it and address the limitations of Ethereum than a bunch of Ethereum veterans 💪💪

Can you tell us more about the rest of the team behind NiiFi, and how your experience has led you here? Polkastarter are big believers that the team and talent behind the project is one of the most important factors for success. 👯‍♀️👯‍♀️

Andrew Keys, NiiFi‌‌
This was an area I was particularly interested in from an investment standpoint. When meeting the co-founders Jacobo and Mark I saw technology veterans.

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi‌‌
Thanks Andrew :)‌‌
The background of the key team members consists on a variety of experience with the common denominator of having built systems used by millions of users across several industries such as Telecom, Investment banking, Media and Oil & Gas. We have been working around scalability in blockchain since 2013 and most recently with nahmii.

Andrew Keys, NiiFi‌‌
Jacobo already referenced the 50M plus users in a previous software stack he developed and Mark is one of the most familiar people with layer 2 scaling solutions having worked on and learned lessons from the creation of Bitcoin's lightning network and Plasma.

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi‌‌
True: our previous platform was used by mozilla, Alcatel, Panasonic, Telenor and several other large companies where we were serving content to users from all over the world in 200 countries.

Polkastarter‌‌
Wow, working on scalability since 2013 — that's two years before the Ethereum whitepaper even came out. Bringing that kind of mainstream tech experience into  DeFi is exactly what the industry needs, that's exciting — sounds like you've assembled a top notch team that knows how to build at scale 💫

We'd love to know more about NiiFi's competitive advantage. What differs you from other similar projects?‌‌‌‌

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi‌‌
Thank you for that :)‌‌
So, there are two key aspects: the technology we use and our commercial strategy. Without nahmii you cannot build NiiFi with instant finality nor tools around it that ease adoption. With regards to the commercial strategy, the founding team has years of experience building products and taking them to market to millions of users as mentioned before. We are targeting not only the crypto community but also several commercial use cases of which we will be disclosing more details in the weeks to come.‌‌‌‌

Andrew Keys, NiiFi‌‌
Low latency, instant finality and aspects of KYC/AML are table stakes for institutional investors to participate in this space and these are key points NIIfi is addressing.‌‌‌‌

Polkastarter‌‌
Can you tell our community a bit more about your $NIIFI token, particularly about the token utility and your upcoming token generation event (TGE)?‌‌‌‌

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi‌‌
Sure. There will be fully decentralised governance over protocol changes, parameters and upgrades. We also believe that trading fee discounts will be an important way to reward users for their governance. We will of course also explore all other models for similar tokens. Similarly for the lending platform, we anticipate preferable lending/borrowing rates and governance functions. Many of these decisions will be based also on the commercial adoption that we are obtaining. A lot of the possible token benefits will be brought forward as proposals to be voted on by the community.‌‌‌‌

Polkastarter‌‌
Great, thanks for that overview.‌‌We'd love to hear a bit more about your upcoming product roadmap. What key features are you developing for NiiFi?‌‌‌‌

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi‌‌
We started the development of the platform in Q4 last year. We built a PoC involving on/off ramp and a basic wallet managent system for companies using on/off ramp and treasury management. We are now working on the on/off ramp which is scheduled for mid June. Swap and Lending will come in Q3 once nahmii 2.0 has been deployed. During Q4 at the very latest we foresee commercial adoption of the NiiFi ecosystem.

Polkastarter‌‌
So much has been built since Q4 last year! Great work to the team, and excited for what comes next.

Andrew Keys, NiiFi‌‌
Lots of upcoming tricks up the sleeve... not to be meta or wear a mask...

Polkastarter‌‌
👀👀👀

Before we open up the chat for community questions, could you please share with everyone your website and social media channels, so they can make sure to follow you and be kept up to date on your progress?

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi‌‌
Absolutely!

- Website: www.niifi.com
‌‌- Telegram; https://t.me/NiiFiDAO‌‌
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiiFiDAO

Looking forward seeing you there :)

Polkastarter‌‌
Woohoo! Will be sure to follow along for more cheeky hints :)

Great, thank you Jacobo and Andrew. Let's open the chat for a brief window to give our community a chance to ask their questions, and don’t forget, that after the AMA, NiiFi will choose the best question and hand out one allowlist spot for their upcoming IDO (don’t forget you will need to KYC fast and on time) 💫‌‌‌‌The chat will now open up for Qs !‌‌‌‌

[QUESTIONS]‌‌‌‌

Polkastarter‌‌
Wow 🤯🤯🔥🔥 that's a lot of great questions, thank you. It's always so great to see this community in action!

Jacobo and Andrew will read through quickly and pick some questions to answer now (they learned how to read questions quickly after so many centuries in crypto haha).‌‌‌‌

Andrew Keys, NiiFi

> Why is NiiFi still using ETH to build on? This week we have seen really high gas fees causing turn off to many investors hence causing issues to the projects...   Niifi will be built on Nahmii, which is an L2 Ethereum scaling solution. In my opinion Ethereum will be the global settlement layer for the digital economy and the gas fees will be ameliorated with L2 scaling solutions and a smooth transition to PoS.

> How has NiiFi managed to be attractive to investors? How does it manage to stand out among so many Blockchain projects? Instant Finality and Low Latency, best L2.

QUESTION: @psidock
‌‌What will NiifOffer to the Retail Financial Industry?‌‌‌‌

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi‌‌
Compliant DeFi. No financial institution will be able to enable DeFi to their users unless the comply with regulation.

QUESTION: @makromann‌‌
NiiFi has been built with the future in mind. How do you actually take this into account, make it happen? How do you expect what is happening in future?‌‌‌‌

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi‌‌
Building systems/products it is ultimately about "what the user/customer wants". Hence, you have to comprehend which way the industry will move and provide solutions to those problems.‌‌NiiFi is not only fully scalable but also allows commercial adoption due to the ability to enable, for example, KYC/AML.‌‌‌‌

QUESTION: @awesomedivya‌‌
In your opinion, which next-generation DApp killer will appear in the Niifi ecosystem in the near future... Can you see this, is it Games, Finance, social networks or in another category?‌‌‌‌

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi
100%. All the verticals you indicated will benefit from a first mover advantage. They just cannot get into the space yet because they are lacking a solution like NiiFi (fast, cheap, easy to use and that complies with regulation).

QUESTION: @Onyejekwe
What all the rules that must be obeyed in niifi , can explain a little?
AND
Does the NIIFI platform have a security OR KYC System ?
Can newbies with little cryptographic knowledge be able to successfully Use , trust & invest on your platform? Thank you!

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi
The rules will depend on which partner might integrate NiiFi. For example if a Bank wants to use the NiiFi ecosystem then users will have to KYC as you indicated. On the other hand, the NiiFi tools can be used by any crypto users to do crypto to crypto swapping without KYC.

And yes! users with no crypto experience can most definitely use NiiFi to get into DeFi. That is absolutely a must for us :)

QUESTION: @ocha112
We all know that there are many problems with the Ethereum network: scalability issues, high gas costs, slow speeds, etc. So, why did you choose to build a token on the ERC-20 blockchain ecosystem? Why not build it on some scalable blockchain?

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi
We are building NiiFi on top of nahmii, a scaling protocol that has been on main net since 2018.
NiiFi therefore will be cheap and fast unlilke all other DeFi tools as you indicated.

QUESTION: @Francois_R02
A big problem today is the cost of developing on the blockchain. This is mainly due to the shortage of programmers who understand blockchain technologies, how could Standard provide solutions to these types of problems?

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi
Our team has been building on Ethereum for 4 years. We got that covered :)

QUESTION: @Baukbadan
Can you list 1-3 killer features of your project that makes it ahead of its competitors? What is the competitive advantage your platform has that you feel most confident about?

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi
Cheap to transact in, easy to use and fast.

QUESTION: @Phankeys
Jacobo you are making me wanting to FOMO!
Will I finally be able to get my salary paid into the blockchain with NiiFi? Since we will have KYC/AML. Will we be able to have something like an IBAN number?Adelante!

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi
Imagine getting your salary paid by the hour....

Andrew Keys, NiiFi
by the minute

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi
😏

QUESTION: @bolertele
I read about your instant finality, predictable fees, low latency and etc.. On paper it makes Niifi into a working product . Also, It is kinda cool to see these things finally coming into action after all the work the nahmii team has been putting in... I would still like to know, what are your plans to make your features work on long-term?

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi
It sounds like you have been following our progress for a while, always nice to hear! We are in a fortunate position to have our own layer 2, nahmii, which has been on mainnet since 2018. Upcoming upgrades add full smart contract capabilities and this is where NiiFi becomes the vanguard product for us.

We have built nahmii to support the requirements that you mention: instant finality, predictable and cheap fees, low latency and high throughput. This means that NiiFi will demonstrate performance unseen before in the blockchain space. The user experience will be orders of magnitude better than alternatives.

nahmii is also patent-pending, which protects us going forwards, which is a key consideration for corporates to consider using our solution.

The whole system is specifically built for the future and to operate at commercial scale, so this ensures the viability of the solution into the future. This project is NOT a short term plastering over the cracks that have emerged on Ethereum. It is a project which fits perfectly over the top of Ethereum where they complement each other for the long term.

Polkastarter
Thanks so much for the great and thoughtful answers NiiFi team!

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi
Please do join us on our social channels:

- Website: www.niifi.com,
- Telegram; https://t.me/NiiFiDAO
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiiFiDAO

Polkastarter
And congrats @bolertele on winning the NiiFi IDO allowlist spot!!! The NiiFi team will contact you in PM and give you all information regarding KYC etc

Jacobo Toll-Messia, NiiFi
Thank you @camillionaire 🙏

Polkastarter
Thank you Jacobo and Andrew for your time and for the illuminating answers on NiiFi. Really looking forward to the upcoming launch of $NIIFI, and to welcome you officially to the Polkastarter Family and continue working together in the future 💫❤️

My pleasure! Thanks to everyone for tuning in today with NiiFi. This will now be the end of this AMA. Like all of our AMA's, you will be able to find a transcript of the discussion on our Polkastarter Blog later today.

The chat will now open back up, see you all around the metaverse! 👋👋


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AMA