KuCoin AMA With VAIOT — Digitizing Business Processes by Combining Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain
Dear KuCoin Users,
Time: April 6, 2021, 10:30-12:29 (UTC)
KuCoin hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with the VAIOT team led by its COO Pawel Andruszkiewicz in the KuCoin Exchange Group, where they shared information about how their project is combining two major technological trends: artificial intelligence and blockchain to digitize business processes.
Project Introduction
VAIOT’s aim is to change the way we do business and handle legal contracts globally. VAIOT is cooperating with IBM to utilize IBM Watson components along with their own proprietary AI technology on blockchain to deliver AI assistants capable of producing Intelligent Contracts. The utilization of intelligent contracts guarantees speed, affordability, and security. VAIOT’s services are based around their three business lines: an AI-backed digital service distribution channel, an AI insurance broker and aggregator, and finally, a virtual AI legal assistant allowing you to skip all of the red tape and fees associated with traditional legal processes.
Official Website: https://vaiot.ai/#/
White Paper: https://vaiot.ai/assets/files/VAIOT_Whitepaper.pdf
Follow VAIOT on Twitter and Telegram.
Guests:
Pawel Andruszkiewicz — COO at VAIOT
IT Project Manager & Operations Manager with Information Security, Audit & Compliance and Transition & Transformation (T&T) background. At VAIOT, Pawel is responsible for the overall, operational project management, coordination across all functional areas and implementation of the project management framework and good practices.
Anthony Blackburn — Marketing Manager at VAIOT
Anthony Blackburn is a marketing executive based out of Toronto, Canada. He has represented an array of large brands such as Pepsico, General Motors, Cadillac Fairview, Bacardi, and more. Anthony is responsible for the development of marketing strategy and branding, as well as coordinating and delegating the day-to-day marketing operations at VAIOT.
Michal Szachno — Lead Blockchain Expert at VAIOT
An early adopter of blockchain technology and digital assets investor since 2015. Specialist in blockchain technology and ICO industry. From the beginning of his professional career, Michal has been working on systems utilizing distributed registers for various business applications such as e.g. product and document authentication. He specializes in token economics modeling, product design, and management, trading strategies as well as the development of ICO marketing strategies. In the supported projects, he focused on the effective use of technology along with ensuring a high level of usability.
Jakub Kobeldys — Lead Developer at VAIOT
IT systems architect, security expert, open-source enthusiast. Studied cryptology at the Military University of Technology in Warsaw. Worked with multiple blockchain technologies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Hyperledger Sawtooth, and lastly, Tendermint. Took part in numerous projects related to public service and blockchain as developer and architect. Big fan of cloud and container technologies.
Q&A from KuCoin
Pawel: Hi everyone! A pleasure to be here!
Anthony: Hello everyone!!!
Jakub: Hi community! Glad to be here!
Michal: Hello, glad to be here today!
Q: We want to learn about the professionals behind the project. What brought each of you to VAIOT?
Pawel: Just to introduce myself shortly again: I’m a COO at VAIOT and a project manager by training and experience. I’ve worked for big companies in Poland and in the UK, managing IT projects and teams in the areas of network infrastructure, app development, compliance, infosec, R&D, etc. I also managed an infosec department for one of the Polish IT companies. I worked for BNP Paribas, Atos, Royal Mail Group, Aviva, and a few more. One beautiful day when I was tired of living my corporate life, my former business partner asked me to join a new-forming startup called VAIOT and lead the operations and general project management. That’s how I got here. I loved the idea about building an innovative solution combining two big technological trends as VAIOT does and the fact that the project was going to be regulated sounded like a challenge for my project management skills!
Michal: I am happy to be one of the Co-founders of VAIOT company. The idea of enhancing the smart contracts and blockchain capabilities with AI was really exciting for me from the very beginning. Happy to be a part of that. On a daily basis I am a Lead Blockchain Expert dealing with all matters related to that.
Anthony: Well, my start with VAIOT is kind of a funny story. I was originally a member of our social mining club (Check it out, it's a great way to earn VAI tokens and spread the word ). Eventually through producing some VAIOT-related content and my contributions to the Telegram community got me an interview. The rest is history.
Jakub: I always wanted to work with state-of-the-art technologies and when I got the occasion to work on the blockchain project from scratch with the idea of merging blockchain and AI together with a legal world, there was nothing to wonder about - I'm in.
Q: Could you provide us with an elevator pitch for the VAIOT Project?
Pawel: First of all, VAIOT is delivering a portfolio of blockchain-based AI Assistants around its 3 business/product lines, for both consumers and businesses, that are supported with a token economy. With our first AI Sales and Customer Service Assistant being now at beta stage (beta testing round 2 available for our community) we already secured our first commercial client – a big retail shop network in Belgium that will use our Assistant as a Voice Commerce solution; and the AI Legal Assistant delivering both traditional and blockchain-based contracts being our ultimate goal.
You need to know that we are the first-ever regulated crypto project in Malta (VFAA-regulation). We prepared our PoC in cooperation with IBM, we partnered up with Grant Thorton, ChainLink, PAID Network, CoinFirm, DAO Maker and a few other companies that support our cause. We did our regulated token sale in cooperation with DAO Maker in the form of rSHO.
Q: What was the inspiration behind VAIOT?
Michal: Everything started from the idea of having an AI Legal Assistant as we all struggled with the current difficulty level, time, and cost of traditional legal services. We wanted to have relatively easy tasks done in a short period. We thought that AI has so many possibilities, allows for the automation of repetitive tasks, and can quickly analyze data from many sources. We figured out that the AI Legal Assistant is something that could work and help many people who cannot stand or afford currently offered traditional legal services. Then we thought about blockchain and how it can be used for legal purposes. That is how the idea of Intelligent Contracts came to life. When we started designing VAIOT, preparing the Whitepaper with business and technological concepts, we wanted to have a model that could be easily adjusted and customized for many business purposes. This allowed us to create our gradual development with AI Legal Assistant delivered in 3 phases as the most advanced of our solutions. That way, we built a product portfolio we can already offer to the market while working on our target solution. That is why we now have the beta version of our AI Sales Assistant and our first commercial client.
Q: How did you manage to become the first regulated crypto project in Malta? What does it mean to you and why did you decide to apply for regulatory status?
Pawel: Well, this was a pretty tough one. Right from the start, we were looking for a regulatory framework. We always knew that we wanted to deliver full compliance to ensure credibility of the Project for our investors as we knew how much crypto investors need more credibility and certainty. The process was demanding and took us nearly a year. We were extensively monitored, audited and we had to prove that we have proper AML/CFT procedures. Our Whitepaper had to be closely analyzed by our VFA Agent Grant Thornton and approved by Malta Financial Services Authority before it could be shared with a wide audience. Our business plans, prepared together with Grant Thornton, were audited as well. What is more, our VAI Tokens hold the status of Virtual Financial Assets (VFAs). It makes VAI Token the first-ever, regulated digital asset in Malta. The so-called Blockchain Island was the first country to implement a comprehensive regulatory framework for ICOs.
Being a regulated project affects the sale processes but allows us to build a trusted ecosystem that ensures transparency and security to our investors, token holders, and business partners. The project is now closely monitored and audited by relevant Maltese Authorities and auditors and our VFA Agent, Grant Thornton. And since our actions are carefully checked, we need to deliver what we promise.
Q: What are the plans for VAIOT’s future development? Do you have any milestones to achieve in the near future?
Michal: In terms of development, we have to balance between implementing solutions for our clients (like Supra Bazar) and developing our Business Line 3 (AI Legal Assistant) where we already moved a significant part of our resources and started the implementation of the legal database and the legal assistant itself. We are still working on the functional and technical specs for different modules, but we already started developing parts of the software that we can build based on our current achievements.
VAI Token is currently based on Ethereum and will eventually be migrated to a proprietary blockchain, based on COSMOS-SDK which is also in the development process right now.
The closest milestone to be achieved, the one that is expected by our community, is the Binance Smart Chain bridge for VAI which, if we manage to get all the regulatory approvals in Malta, should be delivered by the end of April.
Q: What can you tell us about your cooperation with IBM and the role it plays in your project?
Pawel: Regarding the cooperation with IBM - it was a big start for us and gave all the right pace for the project at the very beginning.
VAIOT’s cooperation with IBM has resulted in a joint development project – Proof of Concept (PoC). You can see us talk more on the PoC project itself here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tof3qs-7YB8&feature=emb_logo.
Combining the development teams’ competencies from both VAIOT and IBM allowed us to deliver a verified version of VAIOT’s Assistant serving two concrete and narrow use-cases — a C2C transaction between users to sell a car and a B2C car insurance sale process. The PoC level experience allowed our Team to move further in the development process and develop a beta version of VAIOT’s AI Assistant to offer this solution to businesses across different sectors in a B2B2C model.
VAIOT utilizes many of Watson Assistant components in almost every area of the project, from contract generation to the development of intelligent distribution channels. One of the examples is engine, which ensures the highest level of user experience while interacting with our intelligent assistant.
Q: Tell us about the utility of VAI tokens and their role in the ecosystem.
Michal: The VAI Token is set to incentivize the users to utilize VAIOT's solutions due to, e.g., Payback Program fueled by VAIs and is crucial for the proper functioning of the underlying VAIBC technology.
VAI Tokens can be used as:
- Payback Bonus after a purchase is completed by the user in one of VAIOT's business lines (line 2 and 3), part of the transaction value is denominated to VAI Tokens, bought back from the free market and delivered to the users Payback Bonus Wallet that encourages the user to keep the token and utilize it for further purchases within VAIOT solutions.
- Payment method for goods and services offered via VAIOT solutions,
- Staking rewards - by depositing funds, one can set up a network node and get rewarded with VAI Tokens in return,
- Collateral for the Price-Stabilizing System (VVAS),
- Bonding system - deposit in VAIOT's bonding system to access certain functionalities or use them on preferential terms,
- Unit of account for transaction fees and Intelligent Contracts execution.
We also recommend reading the article on Medium, where we explain everything: https://vaiotltd.medium.com/the-vai-token-economy-b81e5aeaf9fd
Q: Are there any updates from a marketing perspective? What should the community expect in the coming days in terms of marketing activities?
Anthony: VAIOT’s Marketing has never been better. Since our public launch, we have been heavily focused on producing more fun and creative content for our current and future community members, investors, and partners. We have started this process by releasing a new weekly update called the “VAIOT Weekly Brief”, that gives all of you the opportunity to catch up on what you missed, and get a closer look at what the VAIOT team is currently focused on, whether it be developments, AI software updates, etc. You can find our weekly brief in a condensed version on our Twitter and an extended version on our Medium page (https://vaiotltd.medium.com/). We’ve also made our “Meet VAIOT” series a weekly episodic. Meet VAIOT is set up for those interested in getting to know our team. It’s fun, informative, and paints a better picture of all of the great characters behind the VAIOT project. Trust me, these guys are great.
For those who want to be more involved in helping VAIOT grow and spread the word, we have partnered with TIXL for our Social Mining Club!!! Sign up right now at vaiot.socialmining.club and earn VAI tokens by creating fun and informative content on Twitter and YouTube. You can also earn rewards for activity in our Telegram channel. The more helpful your comments are, the more rep other VAIOTeers will give you which earns you more VAIs! We also have our Beta Testing round 2 which is officially live. 100 approved testers are currently testing our business line 1 – “The Merchant”, our AI Sales assistant. The sales assistant provides a new and effortless way of accessing services by consumers and businesses from all different sectors.
On top of this, we have begun a rather aggressive branding overhaul to update our visuals and bring the VAIOT branding sharper and more recognizable. We have partnered with Flying Bisons to make this possible. Their team is extremely talented and hardworking and will be supporting us with content creation moving forward. Check out their website at https://flyingbisons.com/!! Expect some exciting VAIOT campaigns in the very near future.
Lastly, we have a BRAND NEW WEBSITE!! Check out vaiot.ai where we have added more features, better functionality, and a whole new look. We’ve even added a new visualization of our token, and I must admit, I think it takes the title of best-looking token on the market.
I wanted to share our Telegram channel for those that are interested in joining our community. We have a great group over there and have lots of fun in the chat!! https://t.me/VAIOT_Community
Q: Who is testing your solution? Have you already received some feedback?
Anthony: After a lengthy screening process, we have selected 100 participants to try out our solution and provide us with feedback. People with a wide range of backgrounds wanted to try the beta version of our AI Sales Assistant. We have some AI and blockchain experts and enthusiasts, business-oriented people, and people working for companies that are interested in implementing VAIOT into their business operations.
Safe to say we had many applicants and it was not an easy process picking only 100!
We already got some great feedback regarding the app, and our testers have been instrumental in helping us with improving our AI and preparing us for future developments. We have a comprehensive tracker that helps us log our testing. It shows the progress of their ideas and suggestions, as well as bugs they found, etc.
Q: You mentioned intelligent contracts. Could you simplify this concept for us?
Michal: The concept of intelligent contracts evolved for us when the company was founded. Intelligent Contracts (IC) are a set of technologies allowing us to create both traditional legal, ready-to-sign contracts and their digital equivalents using the power of AI and blockchain. To make it easy for you – we can say that Intelligent Contracts are more extensible smart contracts, enhanced with AI and prepared by Intelligent Virtual Assistant but you can also print them and sign in a traditional manner.
We wanted to offer legal services to individual customers, allowing them to save money on lawyers and simplifying the process of creating contracts. That’s why we came up with an idea of our own, affordable, personal lawyer who could create, analyze and approve a contract based on the specific business guidelines. Users can enjoy the benefits of blockchain without having the knowledge about the technology standing behind it.
We’re implementing our target solution utilizing Cosmos SDK, which is a bit different story than Ethereum and Solidity. As we’re regulated under the Maltese Virtual Financial Assets Act, we need to be audited in terms of both operational and source code security. Our token was audited before we got the VFAA status and our whole proprietary blockchain implementation will be audited as well before going live.
To be up to date with our developments feel free to visit our Twitter page where we post frequent updates and shall have something interesting for you coming soon https://twitter.com/VAIOT_LTD
Free-Ask from KuCoin Community
Q: Why choose Cosmos SDK? Are you planning on using the IBC feature for inter-blockchain communication? Will you be able to support multiple blockchains in the future?
Michał: Indeed, we want to be leveraging the interoperable capabilities of the IBC while making Intelligent Contracts features accessible on many different blockchains. The COSMOS-SDK was our choice because of the modular structure it offers making it easier to actually deploy our vision and make Machine Learning algorithms live on-chain.
Jakub: We really like the concept of Cosmos SDK modularity. It gives us a clean way to implement on-chain functionalities. The IBC protocol is also what we want to use extensively in the future. We want to fully implement the “Internet of Blockchain” idea and not just close ourselves to a single ecosystem.
Q: What are the goals for 2022 at VAIOT? Do you also think about adding NFTs to the portfolio?
Pawel: Well there are quite a few goals there. First of all we want to migrate to our proprietary blockchain solution based on Cosmos SDK. We aim at issuing the first version of our AI Legal Assistant to serve some basic legal services such as contract analysis, highlighting risk provisions, integrating with other services, generating basic contracts, etc. We have some decent sales pipeline planned as well so we will be trying to get more and more clients for our Business Line 1 (AI Sales and Customer Service Assistant) and Business Line 2 (AI Aggregator) - this is important for the company to keep a steady revenue stream. We are looking forward to securing further partnerships with law firms and local regulators in different countries. In regards to NFTs there are some considerations and early plans to introduce NFTs to VAIOT portfolio. We are running this through the Maltese regulators now as we need to be sure what we can and what we can't do as a highly regulated crypto project, and issuing "new" tokens is definitely something to be analyzed. We are definitely hoping to follow the trends on the market and keep up with the latest inventions in the crypto space, without losing focus on our main prize of course (AI Legal Assistant).
Q: You say in the web page that the list of partners will be growing. I think IBM is a huge deal for any project. Could you please tell us who are you thinking of next?
Anthony: When it comes to partners, we recognize that in this space, we move furthest together. We have several crypto/blockchain projects that we are currently in talks with about strategic and technical partnerships. For our AI enthusiasts out there, stay tuned, as we have big plans in bringing the AI-Blockchain family together in the future. Regarding commercial partnerships, even though we're still in our beta testing phase we are in active discussions with several prospective clients. We are proud to have partnered with Supra Bazar, one of the leading retail chains in Belgium, and have more coming down the pipe. We might even have another commercial partnership announcement coming next week. Stay tuned!!
Q: Is your AI similar to Google and Siri? If it's not, how is it different from them? Is your AI available for everyone to use?
Jakub: User experience is basically the same. You just talk/write with the “AI Entity”. The main difference is that Google or Siri are focused to be personal assistants (read your calendar, manage your HomeKit, etc.), but they can’t answer some specific questions (e.g. from the legal world). Only thing they can do is google it for you. VAIOT AI aims to be your personal LEGAL assistant, so you would still ask Siri to turn off the lights in the living room, but when it comes to all sorts of agreements, thanks to its legal knowledge, VAIOT will be able to advise you and even create an agreement for you.
Q: How can you ensure that your security is strong enough as you are a new company? Was your project audited by any third party?
Pawel: Well we have a CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) who was securing the IT networks for some top-secret government projects. We are audited on an annual basis by the audit company authorized by Maltese authorities. These are both financial audits and Security audits, including code reviews. So we actually have third parties auditing us on an annual basis and these are entities reporting directly to Maltese regulator (MFSA). We are under constant monitoring of our VFA Agent Grant Thornton company who is checking us from compliance standpoint as well. We are all covered and reporting according to a strict framework.
Q: VAIOT is fantastic, but without the proper tokenomics, all incentives for successful growth can be ruined. What are the incentives managed in VAI tokens to make it valuable, scarce, attractive, and usable?
Michał: Token is my fav part as I love these digital economies. I will try to bring you closer to some of the concepts we have planned. Actually, the token economy around the VAI token is designed in such a way that the more users utilize VAIOT solutions, the bigger the impact is for the token (Demand) but I guess that’s obvious. With our payback program, part of each payback is denominated into VAI tokens and bought back from the free market. With the increased demand for services offered by VAIOT, there will be more transaction volume going through the platform - We offer the VAIOT value assurance system that guarantees the stable exchange rate during the payments and needs. VAI tokens as a part of collateral. In the VAIOT Bonding system, one can lock tokens in order to get access to the services in the subscription model. With mass adoption, all of that should lead to a high level of scarcity and usability. We have more utilities to come with our DeFi and DeLAa appearances soon, but that is another big topic to discuss at a later stage.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to share or you want us to know?
Pawel: Thank so much for having us KuCoin community! Have a great day!
Michal: Thank you for having us, looking forward to hearing from you guys!
Anthony: Thank you to everyone from the KuCoin community that joined us today, and we are hoping to see many new VAIOTeers on our Twitter and Telegram channels!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/VAIOT_LTD
Telegram: https://t.me/VAIOT_Community
Website: vaiot.ai
Giveaway Section
KuCoin and VAIOT have prepared a total of 700 VAI to give away to AMA participants.
1. Red envelope giveaways: 292 VAI
2. Free-ask section: 18 VAI
3. Post-AMA activity: 390 VAI
Activity 1 — Quiz: 300 VAI
Activity 2 — Price Guess: 90 VAI
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