Amasa’s AMA with Idena, 9 March 2022 — Recap and Prize Winners

Thanks so much again to our partner, Idena, for hosting Amasa for an AMA in the Idena Discord on Wednesday, 9 March 2022.

And thanks so much to the fantastic people who turned up and participated. We were really impressed by the calibre of the questions and how engaged people are with the projects, our partnership and your fresh ideas.

Couldn’t make it to the AMA? We’re pleased to share a text summary of the conversation below.

We’re also pleased to share winners of the 10 prizes for best questions at the bottom of this article!

AMA Recap

The AMA was held in the Idena Discord #amasa-ama-discussion channel.

Part 1 — Idena interview

Rioda (Idena):

Hello everyone and welcome to ask me anything session with Amasa.

We have Will Birks and James Herlihy from Amasa here with us today.

First of all, welcome, thank you for being here.

Can you please introduce yourself to the Idena community?

James (Amasa):

With pleasure! Will how about you go first…

Will (Amasa):

Thanks Rioda! Sure thing James — and thanks to everyone here for joining us!

I’ve been involved in the space since early 2017, and I developed the initial idea for Amasa in early 2018. There are 5 Core Contributors who came together to form the initial project team, and we each work across complementary aspects of the project. My focus is on project management, product development and ecosystem development.

James (Amasa):

I fell down the crypto rabbit hole in 2017 along with a group of friends. One of the other Amasa core contributors, Scott, and I started investing together and mining BTC in a couple of different countries. Then after the 2018 crash we decided to focus more on investing, and it’s at that point that we came into contact with Will — who came up with the original idea for Amasa — at a blockchain meetup in Sydney. I was immediately struck by Will’s vision for Amasa and how it merged with decentralisation and the value provision of web3.

My background is in digital marketing and I oversee that area for Amasa.

Rioda (Idena):

About same time I got in, mid 2017.

Great thank you for that, let start with couple of questions.

James (Amasa):

💪

Rioda (Idena):

How did the idea for Amasa come to life? Can you explain what that core idea is, and what was the inspiration for it?

Will (Amasa):

The inspiration for Amasa came from looking at the value proposition given by some of the very first dapps, the potential for what has grown into the web3 space we now know, and seeing that in order for mass adoption globally to make the shift to web3, things needed to be more user friendly for users. For web3 as a whole to provide the most amount of value possible to users, there needs to be simplicity, ease of use, aggregation of value, and reduction of price volatility.

Amasa’s aim is to empower anyone, anywhere in the world to capture and capitalise on the wealth-building potential of web3 micro income streams and DeFi.

We’re doing that by building the world’s first micro income stream investment app. The Amasa app will make micro income streams easy to capture, combine and access as a stabilised income, then amplify through user-selected DeFi investment options.

We call this “investment streaming” 🙂

James (Amasa):

And this second infographic expands a bit on how we see the key steps in the AMasa platform as solving key problems in the web3 space that Will mentioned above.

Rioda (Idena):

That sounds good and it makes sense for Amasa and Idena to join forces.

Will (Amasa):

Agree!

Rioda (Idena):

Can you explain to people new to Amasa where you are in your project roadmap, what you’re currently focused on and how the project has developed in the last year?

Will (Amasa):

For the first half of 2021 we focussed on ecosystem development, building our network of potential backers, building and engaging our initial community, and optimising product and conceptual foundations.

Then in the last 6 months, a lot of that activity came together in key project developments.

In September 2021 we announced closure of our $1.5 million funding round led by Animoca Brands. Here is the full list:

• Animoca Brands (lead investor)
• OKEx Block Dream Ventures
• SkyVision Capital
• Spark Digital Capital
• Momentum 6
• Sandeep Nailwhal, Co-Founder of Polygon (angel)
• Gabby Dizon, Co-Founder of Yield Guild Games (angel)
• LD Capital
• Double Peak
• Maeve Ventures
• ZBS Capital
• Moonwhale Ventures.

Then in early October we concluded a successful $AMAS IDO on Trustpad, Chainboost and Genpad.

Since then, we’ve been focusing on product development, ecosystem development and further community development and engagement.

James (Amasa):

Product development of the Amasa platform is tracking well for alpha and beta testing in June 2022 and a v1 Amasa platform release in July. We published a product update just yesterday: https://amasa.medium.com/amasa-product-development-update-8-march-2022-e1762f16b065

We’ve run many community engagement and growth initiatives in the last 6 months. These include a number of native token and LP token staking events. The last native token staking round closed in early February, and we anticipate further staking opportunities in the future.

We anticipate a number of further key developments in coming months, including:

• Further exchange listings
• Introduction of a special new Amasa initiative aimed at boosting adoption of Web3 income providing platforms (news launching April)
• Alpha and beta testing of the Amasa platform, followed by a v1 release.

I think that’s enough on that question (unless you have any follow-ups!)

Rioda (Idena):

That sounds great. During my reading about Amasa I have seen you have very active medium page full of useful articles where people can stay up to date with everything going on.

James (Amasa):

Indeed we do! Please check that out if you haven’t: https://amasa.medium.com/

And our other socials are a great source of updates:

• Telegram announcements: https://t.me/amasa_updates
• Telegram community: https://t.me/amasa_community
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/home

Rioda (Idena):

Can you tell us a bit about your team? How many people are actively involved in Amasa and what are their main roles?

Will (Amasa):

For sure @Rioda — The Amasa project team currently consists of 5 core contributors, a design and development team, a marketing and partnerships manager and a team of advisors.

The core contributors are:

• Will — project management and ecosystem development
• Chirag — technical lead
• Scott — investor relations and partnerships
• James — digital marketing and community
• Sylvan — content and analysis.

James (Amasa):

The core team is supported by the marketing and partnerships manager mentioned above.

Our design and development team consists of the following roles:

• Lead Developer
• Solutions Architect
• Senior Developer
• Developer
• UI / UX Designer
• Product Manager
• Project Manager.

Our advisors are:

• Sameep Singhania, Co-founder Quickswap
• Reza Naeeni, Co-founder and CEO Swash
• Niki Ariyasinghe, Chainlink Labs
• Tim Bass, Co-Founder and CEO, Block8 Technologies
• George Samman, Co-founder Geora.io.

Rioda (Idena):

Seems to me like a good, diverse and strong team. Thank you for that info.

James (Amasa):

It’s a great team to be a part of. We’ve got a really comprehensive and complementary skill-set supporting the main product development.

Rioda (Idena):

Sounds like a good recipe for a successful project 🙂

We can see a lot of partnerships on Amasa’s website. Can you tell us a bit more about your partners?

Will (Amasa):

Partnerships are a big focus for us, one of our main objectives is to increase adoption of Web3 projects that share value with their users, and accelerate the growth of the space as a whole. So by partnering with great projects we are better able to connect communities together, work on shared visions, and get input and feedback on technical considerations that will help us to build a platform that is optimised to suit the needs of projects and their users.

James (Amasa):

Amasa is partnering and integrating with a range of key projects across the gaming, privacy and identity, social media, Layer 2 technology, Dex, and DeFi sectors, including:

• Polygon
• Polygon Studios
• Idena
• Enjin
• REVV Motorsport
• Swash
• Animoca Brands
• Permission
• IoTeX
• Nine Chronicles / Planetarium
• Hive
• Chainlink
• Quickswap
• Boson protocol
• Enzyme
• Sapien
• Attrace
• Staked
• dHedge.

We’ve got more great partnerships in the works that will continue to add value to the Amasa ecosystem.

And of course we’re especially happy to be partnering with Idena! 🙂

Rioda (Idena):

Great job guys. You are doing a hard job in finding good projects to partner with which will enable people to focus on good projects all in one place, from the Amasa app and documentation.

Taking into account how the crypto space is evolving in a fast manner, this is great to be able to have some filter for all these projects.

Will (Amasa):

For sure, there’s always evolution happening and it’s great to see.

Rioda (Idena):

In every project governance is one of the most important aspect. Can you tell us a bit more about your plans for Amasa governance?

Will (Amasa):

For Amasa decentralisation is a very important part of what we are building. It’s something that we’ve been working on concurrently to building out our MVP, and we’re looking forward to sharing the progress around our initial approach to launching the first take on effective governance pretty soon.

We’ve had some great input from advisors and others with experience in DAO creation, it’s such a new and rapidly growing space with lots of great new tools being built to provide a good starting framework — we just want to make sure we introduce the best governance model we can to start with and improve it as we go with the help of the community.

Rioda (Idena):

Great to hear that. As Idena is still new, we also are in process of exploring organising governance. It is both challenging and interesting to say the least.

Will (Amasa):

It really is. But it’s great to be part of something so new — everyone is in the process of working out the best way to do it.

Rioda (Idena):

Ok, for our last question from our closed part of this session, can you share with us one of your user stories which shows how someone can use Amasa in a practical way?

James (Amasa):

Actually yes, we’ve developed a number of user examples that illustrate how we see people using the Amasa platform. We view Amasa as offering transformative potential to people all over the world — particularly in developing countries, where small amounts of Web3 income can go a long way, but also in developed countries. As such we see our user base and community as truly international.

Rioda (Idena):

Very inspiring, great chance for young people who are discovering new and interesting Web3 space.

Thank you for your answers, this completes closed part of our session. I will open up channel so everyone can join and ask a question.

Community Q&A: Questions submitted and chosen before AMA

Following are the five questions chosen and answered by Amasa from the community questions submitted before the AMA in the Idena #amasa-ama Discord channel. Each of these community members will win a prize of $50, to be distributed soon.

Question 1: @Ubiubi2018

How do you plan to integrate idena into your ecosystem?

Which aspects of idenanetwork are most promising for amasa to make use of?

Why is sybil resistant identity an interesting feature for DeFi?

Does amasa trust idenanetwork enough to think about tokenizing itself on top of idena consensus, once idena smart contracts (i-wasm) are available?

Idenanetwork has a stable coin on its roadmap, is it thinkable that you will propose to participating projects to build on it?

James (Amasa):

These are good questions to kick off with! We’ll answer a number of these.

To set the context, Amasa is currently in the product development phase, aiming to run alpha and beta testing in June and launch a v1 platform in July. You can see our latest product update here. The Amasa platform will launch with a limited number of web3 income stream integrations, and we will expand from that point on.

At the moment, the Idena-Amasa partnership is focused on the shared objectives of growing the Web3 space and raising awareness of Web3, growing our common communities, and introducing Idena’s proof-of-person protocols to other Web3 projects and Amasa partners.

We plan to explore technical integration in more detail after launch of the Amasa v1 app launch. Our initial focus for that technical integration would be allowing Idena users to send their Idena incomes from mining, flip creation, participation in validation ceremonies etc into the Amasa app to combine them with other web3 income streams and amplify that value via user-selected DeFi protocols.

Beyond that, Utilising Idena smart contracts and the stablecoin are further items we’d consider and discuss with Idena when those technologies are available.

Question 2: @Adam1

How will Amasa ensure data privacy when consolidating so much information about a person? Most of the examples for income micro-streams look to be giving up different types of data (social media interactions, ads, tracking), and aggregating all of these onto one account seems like a huge privacy risk.

James (Amasa):

We had a couple of questions about this, and it’s of course a key consideration for blockchain and Web3 advocates.

The main answer is that Amasa is committed to decentralisation, privacy and personal data control and ownership. We do not plan on collecting personal user data beyond what users choose to provide to us for communications. The Amasa platform’s key functionality is to allow users to combine value of various Web3 tokens, then stabilise and amplify this value using DeFi protocols. To execute this key functionality, we will like other d’apps require user permission but not extensive user data.

Question 3: @nudesushi

What are some examples of a micro income stream?

What type of entities will be paying for the the end user’s rewards participation, and why would they pay?

James (Amasa):

For Amasa, micro income streams are regular cryptocurrency payments to users of Web3 applications for their online activities. They can be anything from a few dollars up to hundreds of dollars or more per month.

People are already receiving micro income payments for online activities like:

• Privacy and identity validation (Idena)
• Play to earn gaming / GameFi (eg Axie Infinity, Enjin)
• Social networking and content creation (eg Minds, Sapien, Revolution Populi, Tippin)
• Viewing ads and web browsing (eg Brave Browser)
• Data ownership and sharing (eg Swash, Streamr)
• dCommerce (eg Boson Protocol)
• Product input, surveys, microtasking and the gig economy (eg StormX, Earn)
• Sharing HD storage / CPU power on cloud networks (eg Storj, Golem)
• Participation in prediction markets (eg Augur)
• Peer to peer and back to grid electricity trading (Powerledger)
• … and much more.

To read more on Amasa’s take on micro income streams, you can see our in-depth Medium article: https://amasa.medium.com/a-deeper-dive-into-micro-income-streams-656e8f3af16

Question 4: @dsal;jghbafjklag

What kind of future does Amasa envision regarding humanity & blockchain technology, and how do you see your partnership with Idena play out in this future?

Will (Amasa):

We see blockchain changing, and in most cases, improving — everything. Web3 and decentralisation of value, peer network value creation and sharing, DAO models, value-generating NFT innovations, metaverse — what we see happening is a shift on the scale that the internet had originally.

Most of what will come in the next 5 years can’t even be imagined right now, or just the outlines of the potential being put into place. We’re optimistic that this will improve things for humanity as a whole in many ways. Less for the 1%, more for the 99%.

A fairer world through decentralisation. Amasa will help to make this dream a reality. And the partnership with Idena, as a provider of web3 income stream value to users, will be a part of this.

Question 5: @erwin

Could Amasa benefit from a seamless Idena authentication mechanism to facilitate the Combine phase of a person’s Amasa experience?

The proposed vision is:

1. An Idena verified user has micro income stream on platform A they wish to Combine into their Amasa account.
2. User scans QR code on their platform A profile page with a Verifiable Credential wallet app, and swipes to share their Idena credential.
3. Done!

Behind the scenes platform A receives the user’s Credential, which by conforming to the Decentralized Identity Foundation’s (DIF) Verifiable Credential spec, allows A to verify the user’s Idena identity and establish the link for the micro stream to the user’s Amasa account (or they can forward the credential to Amasa for verification and linking).

A variation on 2 could be that the QR code prompts the credential wallet app for the user’s Idena and Amasa credentials together, to facilitate the micro stream account linking.

Another option is that the QR code is scanned from Amasa’s website, and it asks for the user’s Idena and Platform A’s credentials together.

Regardless of the back-end details, the user’s Combine experience is still the same: Scan QR code, Swipe to share, Done. This technology exists and is in use today.

Users obtain Idena, Amasa, and Platform A credentials and add them to their credential wallet app by scanning a QR code on their respective profile pages. This would have to be added, of course, by all three services, but by using the DIF standard they would each add value to their users by enabling web3 interoperability.

Would an integration like this be compatible with Amasa’s plans?

Will (Amasa):

In line with identifying the best 5 questions, this is a great question and we appreciate the thought put into it! We’re always looking for ideas from the community to feed into our internal discussions and development so appreciate it 🙂

The answer to the question is that in principle, Idena proof-of-person and credentials could play a role in a future release of the Amasa platform, whether to validate connection of the 3rd party web3 service to Amasa, or another function. This will not be included in the v1 platform, which is scheduled for July release and which we’re already well into design and development of. But we will discuss for future product developments.

Thanks erwin!

James (Amasa):

Now we’re going to shift to choosing 5 of the best questions sbumitted live during this session to answer…

Community Q&A: Questions submitted and chosen live during AMA

Following are the five questions chosen and answered by Amasa from the community questions submitted during the AMA in the Idena #amasa-ama-discussion Discord channel. Each of these community members will win a prize of $50, to be distributed soon.

Question 1: @erwin

What are the requirements for a user to obtain an Amasa account?

Will (Amasa):

All a user will need to create an Amasa account is a compatible wallet, then to use Amasa, they would need to be earning value on an integrated project — we will be announcing who our first integration projects will be in a little while

Question 2: @Stellar

What are the marketing strategies planned to attract clients to choose AMASA over other competitors?

James (Amasa):

I’ll touch on competition first. We really are the first to market with the idea of combining and amplifying Web3 micro income streams using DeFi. We don’t see ourselves as currently having any direct competitors.

While there are existing projects and DeFi protocols out there that allow you to earn micro income streams, Amasa’s real strength is being able to take the complexity out of the process as the barrier to entry for many of these projects is quite high due to their complexity.

Re marketing strategies, we are raising awareness of Amasa and Web3 opportunities more broadly in three main ways:

1. We are actively networking with other like-minded projects like Idena; building our partnerships and ecosystem with people that share our vision for a decentralised Web. As the network of like-minded services grows, we grow more impactful and reach and engage more people with these ideas.
2. As above, our marketing objectives are to both (a) promote the Amasa project, but also (b) raise awareness of micro income streams and the wealth-building potential of web3. So when we’re putting together content strategies, articles, social media content, press releases etc, we’re always thinking about delivering on both of these objectives.
3. The Amasa app will educate and engage users in micro income stream opportunities that they may not know about. Once someone is using the platform, a key aim will be to support micro income stream discovery. We want our users to discover and get rewarded for more and more of their online activities over time, so their wealth-building potential keeps increasing.

Additionally, as I mentioned earlier we have a solid schedule of key developments for marketing and engagement in coming months, including:

• Further exchange listings
• Introduction of a special new Amasa initiative aimed at boosting adoption of Web3 income providing platforms
• Alpha and beta testing of the Amasa platform, followed by a v1 release.

Question 3: @Fertes

One of the major challenges militating against DeFi mass adoption is barrier to entry. Most DeFi solutions are only accessible to those with high level of understanding of blockchain technology. Could you tell us #AMASA approach?

Will (Amasa):

This is very true and a big part of what Amasa was created for. Our approach is to simplify things for users and enable a smaller range of choices for a user to make, with some levels of selection process and detailed information to help them decide if those options work for them. For example, we’re working to have highly experienced minds within the DeFi space advise on portfolio option selections, and part of our governance will be to have the community involved in voting on which of a short list of options make it into the final picks on the platform — these will be up for review periodically or as proposed by community to be effective in changing markets over time.

What we want to do is give people options curated from the best of DeFi at any given time, but also let users just stabilise into stablecoins, or stake native tokens, if that’s what they want to do. Choices without all the complexity, with some measure of confidence

Question 4: @Tezzz

Amasa is the first project of its own kind in Crypto Space , so my question is , what factors you think will make your dominance more in this segment and what are your top priorities for this year

James (Amasa):

Thanks for this question Tezzz — it’s a good one.

Regarding the dominance part of your question, while the development of web3 provides some fantastic opportunities, there are outstanding problems in the fragmentation, volatility and value of diversified token incomes — as per the infographic below. The Amasa platform will solve these problems and really help people earn more income and have the opportunity to improve their lives. As such, we see a future of widespread adoption.

Following on from that, our top priorities for this year are:

• Bring a high quality platform to market, then
• Continue to expand web3 and DeFi platform integrations and optimise the platform after launch
• Grow and engage our community and the broader web3 community
• Continue to grow the user base.

There’s a lot of scope in all of that! But those are essentially our key focus areas — everything comes back to those.

Question 5: @SimonSaysHello

Micro income streams will be able to be gamed by advances in AI (bots pretending to be humans), which diverts funds away from genuine would-be earners. This places a risk on the entire micro income streaming industry. How will Amasa play a role in fighting this issue, and will Idena play a role in helping you with this fight?

Will (Amasa):

Good question. There will always be bad actors trying to game any system that has rewards attached. There’s definitely a responsibility on the platforms where the bots are operating, to reduce or negate their ability to take funds away from genuine earners. But of course there’s challenges the more decentralised and anonymous you make something — it becomes very hard to prove if someone is genuine. So solutions like what Idena provides helps to battle this issue. Also for games and projects that have bots gaming them, the more they can innovate ways that keep their values intact and stop the problems, the better.

For Amasa, besides direct integrations of solutions like what Idena provides, helping to raise awareness and recommending to our partner projects that they should consider this aspect and solutions is another thing we can do. I agree it’s important to stop this kind of thing taking away from the value of a real network of people.

AMA wrap-up

Rioda (Idena):

Wow those were some interesting q&a’s!

Thank you James and Will for your time and answering questions.

With this I guess we can wrap up current ama.

James (Amasa):

Thank you so much to you @Rioda and to everyone at our partner Idena. We appreciate you hosting us today and look forward to developing our work together and continuing to deliver value to the community in time.

Thanks also so much to everyone who turned up today and submitted questions. We really appreciate the engagement with the Amasa project and look forward to bringing a working product to market mid-2022.

Will (Amasa):

Thanks @Rioda and thanks to everyone who asked a question sorry we could not answer them all. Really appreciate the interest shown and the engagement. And thanks Idena for hosting!

Prize winner recap

There are prizes rewarded for the ten best questions asked:

• 5 prizes of $50 for the best questions submitted in the #Amasa-AMA channel before the AMA; and
• 5 prizes of $50 for the best questions asked during the live QnA session during the AMA.

These prizes will be distributed soon.

Winners — Questions submitted and chosen before AMA

1. @Ubiubi2018
2. @Adam1
3. @nudesushi
4. @dsal;jghbafjklag
5. @erwin

Winners — Questions submitted and chosen during AMA

1. @erwin
2. @Stellar
3. @Fertes
4. @Tezzz
5. @SimonSaysHello