On September 2, 2021, Vera’s marketing director Jason Smith joined the BTSE Telegram Community for an AMA.
Founded in 2021, Vera is the most powerful open financial platform for non-fungible token (NFT) assets. Vera offers decentralized financing, leasing, lending, and other essential financial services for any NFT marketplace, game, or application. Vera’s mission is simple: to build open, secure, and powerful NFT financial products that are available to everyone everywhere.
Vera is planning to launch its token, $VERA, on a major IDO Launchpad and CEX later this month! A $15,000 bounty campaign for $VERA has been launched for those who join our community and promote our project: https://bit.ly/2WDZkI2
Here are the consolidated and edited highlights of the AMA.
• • •
Introduction
BTSE Moderator:
Hello! Please introduce yourself and your team.
Jason Smith:
My name is Jason Lee Smith. I’m the marketing director for Vera. I’ve been in the internet marketing and business consulting space for more than 20 years. I’ve started up and run multiple media companies specializing in things like PPC and SEO.
BTSE Moderator:
Who are the key members of Vera’s team?
Jason Smith:
The cofounders are Denis Lam, who serves as our CEO, and Michael Arbach, our CTO.
Denis has a background in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a serial entrepreneur and full-stack product engineer. He has more than 10 years’ cross-functional experience working with startups, Fortune enterprises, and venture capital funds. He has been on a founding team that took a company from $0 to $100 million in valuation, expanding into several countries the first year. He ventured into crypto at the start of 2017.
Michael’s background is in mathematics and computer science, and he was a software developer for 17 years, building software for fintech, healthtech, supply chain and IoT. He focused on blockchain development (DLT and NFT) for the past six years full-time and worked with world-class enterprises and institutions such as Dapper Labs, BitRail, Daikin, Northern Trust — the fourth largest custodian bank in the world — and NASA.
• • •
Overview
BTSE Moderator:
What is the problem that Vera is solving?
Jason Smith:
The NFT industry does not currently have any DeFi financial products or services. Vera is the first project we know of that provides open-source, secure, trustworthy, and reliable essential financial services for NFT apps or games equally to all developers. The services we are currently building are: Finance, Rent, Lend, Verify.
BTSE Moderator:
What is the problem or the issue that the team is passionate about solving here?
Jason Smith:
Securing the universal right to property ownership. If you create or own something, you should have the ability to perform any financial transaction with your asset in a free market. We are building Vera so DeFi services such as the ability to finance, rent, lease, and earn money with NFTs is truly democratized.
BTSE Moderator:
How is the team solving this problem?
Jason Smith:
One unique feature of all of our products is, for the first time, NFTs gain seller protection, which enables trustless DeFi transactions between strangers. Right now, if you send a stranger crypto or an NFT you may never get it back, even if you agreed to lend them the assets. With Vera, if the stranger breaks the contract, the NFT will be returned to the owner, so there’s no risk.
• • •
Investors and Partners
BTSE Moderator:
Who are the investors and partners of Vera. Are there plans for partnerships with other projects?
Jason Smith:
Vera is backed by many strategic investors and partners such as the #1 NFT company in the world, Animoca Brands, and a marketing technology platform that services celebrities, online influencers, and sports associations such as the NBA or NFL in the United States. We are also partnering with up-and-coming NFT games, metaverses, and marketplaces with a combined active user base of hundreds of thousands of people.
• • •
Overview of Services
BTSE Moderator:
Can you tell us more about Vera’s four NFT features?
Jason Smith:
Vera is building decentralized financial products that are powered by smart contracts on Polkadot and Ethereum blockchains, and our vision is to have our platform able to work with NFTs from any blockchain including Solana, Polygon, and BSC.
Here’s an overview of our four products.
Finance: This product allows creators and businesses to increase their NFT sales by giving people a new way to pay for NFTs, just like how Amazon lets you pay with a credit card or make multiple payments over time when you go shopping. Vera Finance enables a similar service in a trustless fashion, without any reliance on a centralized bank or middleman. Apps and games using Vera can allow their NFT customers to “buy now, pay later” or “pay over time.” Games can also enable “play to own” use cases where the customer does not have to pay for the NFT if they complete specific bounties before a given deadline.
Rent: Vera Rent enables renting and a whole lot more. Sellers can let their customers “rent to buy” — meaning let the customer own the NFT if they pay enough rent. NFT collectors can also stake their NFTs on Vera Network and earn money or rewards. My favorite and most exciting use case is using Vera Rent to enable NFT subscription pools, which make it possible to rent many NFTs at the same time.
Lend: This is our first product we built with support from a Polkadot Web3 Foundation grant. It allows NFT owners to use their NFTs as collateral for loans. Borrowers that lend money to these NFT owners can earn interest over time.
Verify: Vera Verify makes sure that an NFT is authentic and certified by a creator or brand, providing buyer and seller protection. Our smart contracts can also be programmed to only work with certified authentic NFTs to prevent misuse or fraud.
BTSE Moderator:
Which feature are you most excited about, and why?
Jason Smith:
Vera is building decentralized mortgage solutions for the metaverse that mimic real world mortgage processes with built-in buyer and seller protection, eliminating the need for title companies and intermediaries.
• • •
Token Overview
BTSE Moderator:
Let’s talk about Vera’s token. What does it do?
Jason Smith:
There are many uses, such as paying the NFT seller $VERA tokens equivalent to the price of the purchased NFT when the buyer chooses Vera Network Financing as the payment option. Or using $VERA tokens to pay for transaction fees. Users can hold or stake tokens to earn dividends from our network’s revenues and transaction fees, as well as gain access to the network’s financial services and rewards.
$VERA can be used to purchase ecosystem products and services or pay back outstanding debt. Using $VERA means you may receive product and service discounts
A portion of network fees will be used to buy back and burn $VERA, decreasing circulating supply.
$VERA token holders can vote for changes and improvements to our network. Stake $VERA tokens to become an on-chain curated registry administrator or editor.
BTSE Moderator:
When and where is the project going to launch $VERA?
Jason Smith:
We are planning for an IDO and CEX launch in September! Exact details are coming soon.
We also recently launched a $VERA bounty campaign worth $15,000 for those that join our community and promote our project. Learn more here: https://bit.ly/2WDZkI2
BTSE Moderator:
Do users gain more $VERA by using your platform?
Jason Smith:
We plan to have a program for our supporters to stake $VERA tokens and earn more $VERA tokens and other rewards over time. Our platform also allows NFT owners to stake their NFTs and earn $VERA tokens as interest. Revenue from our financial network platform will be shared to all $VERA token holders. Also, we are building a referral program.
• • •
Unique Selling Proposition
BTSE Moderator:
Who do you see as your competitors?
Jason Smith:
Vera does not really have any known competitors in the space. NFT is really new and we are one of the fist projects to be doing what we are doing. For this reason, many high-quality investors decide to back our project.
BTSE Moderator:
What makes Vera stand out?
Jason Smith:
First, our project won a grant from a big foundation representing the Polkadot ecosystem after they reviewed our code on Github. This means our project is building something unique and different from others, at least in the Polkadot ecosystem.
Second, NFTs are still far from mainstream, so we have more opportunities as a first mover.
Third, our top strategic backer is the #1 NFT company in the world, Animoca Brands. With their support and partnership, we have business insights and adoption opportunities that are not available for many other projects.
Fourth, our credibility. Our team has built several blockchain projects for enterprise clients such as Dapper Labs and Northern Trust. We decided to build Vera because we believe that you should not need to be a billion-dollar company like our clients to have secure and reliable DeFi services for your NFT app or game.
• • •
Questions from the Community
Devon Mosby (@DevonMosby):
How will the demand for your token increase in the future? What steps will you take to increase the demand?
Jason Smith:
Our token’s utility and value will increase as it is widely adopted. Many of our clients and partners work with us because there is typically no upfront cost to onboarding and integrating with their platforms, as we have a team fully capable of performing this function.
Loklau (@EKKDAI):
Nearly 80% of investors only focus on short-term token price instead of understanding the real value of the project. Can you tell us the motivations and benefits for investors to hold your tokens?
Jason Smith:
Our focus is to add value to the NFT industry. Our investors are excited because this is a problem that requires a big solution. We know long term we’re going to disrupt the space.
• • •
Questions from Twitter
@lorutyu:
What areas does Vera hope to develop and decentralize with the important data it acquires?
Jason Smith:
The data we acquire will make Vera the collector of the most accurate financial and valuation data about all NFTs in any marketplace. This data can be used to create new financial products, making NFT markets more efficient and innovative.
@LukasDuong1:
With the help of Animoca Brands, what blockchain game would Vera use and integrate its products with? Do you already have a list of games you may partner with?
Jason Smith:
We cannot discuss details of our partnership with Animoca due to NDAs. We are excited to apply our technology to several metaverses and games in their pipeline!
Some of the partnerships I can disclose here include Highstreet, Totem, and Space Misfits!
@KiyokoSumaru:
As I can see on your website, the majority of NFT protocols are already on Ethereum. What caught my eye was Vera’s lending feature. So the idea is to use NFTs as collateral. How can the value of an NFT be determined if it is not on the market?
Jason Smith:
Ethereum is the biggest NFT blockchain, so it makes sense that many protocols are being built on Ethereum. However, Ethereum has high gas fees. That’s why we built our protocol on Polkadot but still can support working with Ethereum tokens, reducing a lot of the fees. Keep in mind we have more products than lending protocols — Finance, Rent, and Verify — which may not all exist on Ethereum.
• • •
Future Plans
BTSE Moderator:
Vera is built on Polkadot. Will Vera be available on other networks in the future?
Jason Smith:
Yes. But Vera can provide NFT DeFi services on any network — Ethereum, Solana, BSC, Polygon, and more. We also have a Plan B to launch our mainnet on Ethereum or Solana in case our Polkadot Parachain launch is delayed in 2022.
BTSE Moderator:
Are there any other teasers for our audience?
Jason Smith:
Here’s a top-secret teaser for something to be released in around three weeks: Our initial release of Vera Finance and Rent Ethereum smart contracts are ready for auditing. We will begin integrating Vera into our ecosystem of customers and metaverses.
We’re releasing a NFT marketplace solution that allows any NFT business to sell or rent their NFTs leveraging Vera Finance and Rent. This solution will even include Stripe integration, so buyers can buy or rent NFTs with their credit cards.
• • •
Vera’s social media
To keep track of new developments, follow Vera on social media:
Website: https://vera.financial/
Medium: https://blog.vera.financial/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/veradefi
Telegram: https://t.me/veranetwork
Github: https://github.com/veradefi
Discord: https://discord.gg/P3zHpBmbaR
