KuCoin AMA With bitsCrunch (BCUT) — Breaking Chains: AI-Driven Decentralization in NFTs

Dear KuCoin Users,

Time: 12:00 PM ~ 1:49 PM on February 21, 2024 (UTC)

KuCoin recently hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session within the KuCoin Exchange Group featuring Vijay Pravin, the Founder and CEO of bitsCrunch, alongside Diderik van der Graaf, the CMO.

Official Website: https://bitscrunch.com/

Whitepaper: https://bitscrunch.com/bitsCrunch_Whitepaper.pdf

Follow bitsCrunch on Twitter, Telegram and Discord

Vijay: I’m Vijay Pravin. I am the Founder & CEO of bitsCrunch, a Blockchain Analytics and Forensics company focusing on securing the NFT ecosystem. Living in Munich, Germany for the last 10 years, and am originally from India.

● Previous Work Experience: Siemens, Volkswagen in Germany

● Education: Masters-Graduate in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Munich. TEDx Speaker - the first Indian to be invited for a TEDx talk in Germany below 30

● Awarded as ‘Top 40 Data Scientists under 40’ in India

● Nominated as ‘20+ Inspiring Data Scientists to follow on LinkedIn in 2020’ by AI Time Journal from the United States

Feel free to join my 50K+ LinkedIn account and you may also follow me on my X.

Diderik: I'm Diderik, CMO at bitsCrunch. You may also join me on my LinkedIn account.

Q: What is bitsCrunch, and what problems does it solve?

Vijay: The landscape of blockchain analytics and forensics is currently overshadowed by centralized systems and a fragmented blockchain analytics landscape. While general blockchain analytics platforms like Nansen and DappRadar offer valuable data insights, they’re designed for a broader scope. Such platforms excel in tracking cryptocurrency trends, but often lack the laser focus needed to capture the nuances of the NFT world,

bitsCrunch’s decentralized, AI-enhanced data network delivers unmatched analytics and forensic data for NFTs, wallets, and other digital assets on the public blockchain. Accessible through user-friendly APIs, this platform lays the groundwork for diverse application development. Distinguished by its commitment to a community-driven ecosystem, bitsCrunch empowers individuals to contribute code or content, thus continuously enhancing and broadening the network's capabilities.

Pain points we are tackling:

⁃ Rampant Washtrading to manipulate NFT price or gain undeserving rewards.

⁃ Challenge to price and value NFTs.

⁃ Track and view your favorite NFT collections.

⁃ Digital art forgery stealing other’s work and profiting from it.

Q: What are the inherent use cases of the BCUT token?

Diderik: The BCUT token is the native utility token for the bitsCrunch Network. Its primary function is to facilitate smooth operations within the network. The secure and efficient functioning of the bitsCrunch ecosystem relies on a fusion of cryptographic techniques and economic incentives, aimed at fostering adoption and upholding network security. I will enumerate the Core functions and utility:

Incentive Alignment: The token serves as a motivational tool, compelling Operators, Delegators, Indicators, and Contributors to stake their tokens, fostering a vested interest that encourages collaboration and dedication.

Network Security: Through mechanisms like staking, the $BCUT token can bolster security measures, making malicious activities prohibitively expensive and thereby safeguarding the network's integrity.

Independence: The token’s existence ensures the network operates autonomously, diminishing reliance on external entities or tokens.

Economic Design: The introduction of the $BCUT token empowers the network with the flexibility to sculpt an economic framework that aligns with the distinctive demands and ethos of the ecosystem. For instance, managing $BCUT issuance allows the DAO to regulate its availability, ensuring it's aligned with growth milestones. The DAO could incentivize early adopters with a more generous distribution initially, then gradually adjust issuance rate to manage inflation, or introduce deflationary tactics such as token burns to enhance value of the network as it matures. All these decisions will be formally addressed through the governance process.

Decentralized Governance: The token facilitates decentralized governance, empowering token holders to propose and vote on network protocol changes and proposals.

Discounting Mechanism: Data consumers can stake the token to access discounts on query pricing, incentivizing engagement with the network.

Q: What are the major milestones achieved so far?

Vijay: Let me answer this question. Here’s the milestone we have achieved so far:

- We Onboarded 50 dynamic start-ups to bitsCrunch Start-up Program, fostering innovation and growth!

- We won the Best Startup Award in 'Creator Economy and NFT' by PwC Germany.

- We also won the Accenture Tech Next Challenge winners in Metaverse and Web3.

- UnleashNFTs' Case Study featured in Binance Research.

- Honored as "NFT Start-up of the Year" & "Top Web3 Innovator."

Diderik: Not just that, we have few more!

- Introduced Historical Price Data API for Ethereum Tokens, a game-changer for crypto enthusiasts and traders.

- 170K+ community members in the past year, making bitsCrunch a vibrant and thriving ecosystem.

- 60,000+ Testnet Customers, 320K+ Transactions, 420M+ Queries and 84,000+ unique wallets and a strong community of 160,000+ members.

- Setting the stage for an exhilarating 2024 with the mainnet launch alongside 15M BCUT tokens to vest linearly over 6 months, offering exciting rewards in Pioneer, Elite, and Merit pools.

- Launched our own NFT collection with the collaboration of top NFT communities

- Now, gearing up for an even more thrilling 2024 with the listing and mainnet launch.

Vijay: And I forgot to mention - bitsCrunch just graduated from EY (Ernst and Young) Start-up Academy!

Working with Mastercard, PwC, Accenture, and EY had been the best that happened for bitsCrunch in this 2.5 years of BUILDing.

WAGMI

Q: You have forged strong partnerships, can you please tell us more about them?

Vijay: Since the early days, we wanted to work with companies that try to solve real world problems. We therefore developed several partnerships, discussions, and even proof of concepts with big web2 players such as EY, Mastercard, PwC, and Accenture.

In the case of Mastercard we were working together on a POC to develop a feature that enables credit card buyers to have insights on the NFTs they are about to buy, with the aim to protect them from potential risks. You may refer to here.

We also have onboarded big Web3 clients that are using our Analytics and Forensics today, such as DappRadar, Unstoppable Domains, Ethernity chain, and a few more who use our APIs and dashboard. We are here to stay for a longer run. I can keep naming them, but that’s it for now.

Q: What is the motivation behind launching a decentralized network?

Diderik: Decentralizing the bitsCrunch network reinforces the robustness and trustworthiness of its NFT data and insights by enabling a permissionless, censorship-resistant environment.

The quality of analytics is dependent on the reliability of the underlying data - including how it’s acquired, stored, and processed. On bitsCrunch, all of this will be secured by a network of incentivized participants without any single party having control over the network - enabling users to access NFT data and insights that are bias-free.

In addition, we believe with that the amount of data we are indexing, decentralization is the only way to market this data in a cost effective way, but of course, to successfully transition to a decentralized model, the bitsCrunch Network must first ensure its infrastructure is robust, scalable, and capable of handling a variety of real-world.

Q: What prompted the decision to launch your own NFT collection?

Diderik: As an infrastructure project focused on NFTs, we believe it is important to give back to the NFT community. By creating our own NFT collection and partnering with the best NFT communities out there, we wanted to give certain utilities and perks that are tied to these NFTs, such as:

Lifetime FREE access to premium Unleash NFTS

- Exclusive bitsCrunch Network Role access

- BCUT Token Giveaway

- Future Ecosystem & Platform perks

- Partner Whitelist Allocations

And there’s more to come.

We would like to attract NFT communities to take part in our ecosystem and contribute through our various roles. This NFT collection is a gateway to this. Stay tuned to bitsCrunch’s Genesis Pass NFT holder.

Q: What does the future hold for bitsCrunch?

Vijay: There is a long road ahead. Going beyond NFTs, we already have historical price data for 220K ERC-20 collections.The inception of this feature was driven by a clear gap in the market, (i.e, the lack of accessible historical price data for many gaming projects’ ERC20 tokens.) In response to this challenge, we developed an algorithm capable of retrieving historical prices for these elusive tokens.

We are also working on unique products that are about to be released:

Wallet profiling and labeling. We are about to release a feature that analyzes the relationship between different categories of NFTs, type of users, their buying/holding habits (such as whales, sharks web3 gaming investors, NFT sports enthusiasts, etc.)

-NFT recommendations: We will be able to send recommendations to NFT holders based on their NFTs, ERC-20 holdings and buying / holding patterns (that’s where we use AI - the hyped word haha)

And also a CRM platform: We are releasing features that enable consumers to identify, reach, and contact their target group using their wallet data, and a lot more! So please, stay tuned!

Q: How does bitsCrunch ensure the privacy and security of its users' data, and what measures does it have in place to prevent data breaches and cyber attacks?

Diderik: So basically, we have various operator roles and layers that are responsible for integrating and managing AI/ML models and related algorithms, which play a crucial role in our network, necessitating stringent security measures.

We have put in place several measures To ensure the highest level of protection, we employ advanced encryption techniques, such as elliptic curve cryptography, to secure access keys and restrict system entry.

Additionally, participants are required to lock the network's utility tokens as a safeguard. In the event of any misconduct or malicious activity, a set of predefined slashing rules will be enforced, providing a robust mechanism for penalizing bad actors and maintaining overall system integrity. This combination of encryption, token locking, and slashing rules establishes a strong security foundation, protecting the layer dedicated to AI/ML models and algorithms from potential threats.

Q: How does bitsCrunch encourage community participation in the development and improvement of the platform? Do you have any feedback?

Diderik: We have several roles as explained earlier:

Node Operator: Stake tokens to participate in the network and earn fees and rewards.

Delegator: Delegate the tokens to operators to secure the network and contribute to decentralization.

Indicator: Stake tokens to become an indicator within the network, shaping content direction.

Community Contributor: Contribute code and content to the network to earn tokens as rewards.

User/Customer/Consumer: Stake tokens for discounted query fees.

Here is an illustration of the network’s journey.

Q: Can you provide details about any security audits conducted on your project? How do you prioritize and address potential vulnerabilities to ensure the safety of users' funds and data?

Diderik: Sure, we have audits from Certik and Halborn. You may check it here or you can also find it on our post on X.

Q: Could you provide a brief overview of your current partnerships and any upcoming partnership opportunities?

Diderik: We have partnerships in the Web2 space with EY, PWC, Mastercard, and Accenture, as we're part of various startups programs with them. In the case of Mastercard we have a POC with them as Vijay explained.

In the web3 space, we have DappRadar as one of our major clients. We provide all their NFT price estimation for them, and basically have between 90-95% accuracy on price estimation and that can be checked. Additionally, we have a partnership with Unstoppable Domains.

We basically have an integration of bitsCrunch's AI and cross-chain forensics tools for owners of 3.7 million UD Web3 domains. The partnership includes integrating Unstoppable Reverse Resolution tools and transforming wallets into user-friendly domain names.

Other notable partnership: Ethernity. We provide our Copymint and IP infringement tech to enable them to protect their brand partners launching NFT collections

Q: Ambassadors play a crucial role in any project. Does your project have an ambassador program? If so, how can I become one?

Diderik: We do have an ambassador program. One of our key successes from the marketing point of view last few months was to get the help for our community to spread the word. This guild is basically a group of users who are incentivized to share great content and rewarded.

Once you have proved you provide great content then you win the chance to be part of our ambassadors. Currently, we have 20 ambassadors and are scaling it in the next few months. Ambassadors have special incentives and are considered as part of the team.

🎁 Participate in the bitsCrunch AMA quiz now for a chance to win 10 USDT!

The form will remain open for five days from publishing this AMA recap.

KuCoin and bitsCrunch have prepared a total of 2,000 USDT to give away to AMA participants.

1. Pre-AMA activity: 800 USDT

2. Free-ask section: 50 USDT

3. Flash mini-game: 400 USDT

4. Post-AMA quiz: 750 USDT

Sign up for a KuCoin account if you haven’t done so yet, and ensure you complete your KYC verification to be eligible for the rewards.

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