Blockchain

A Decentralized Ecosystem for encouraging Blockchain Industry Self-Regulation: Interview with Daniel Vieira, CEO of Eqwity.

Daniel Vieira is the CEO of Eqwity,  a Decentralized Ecosystem for encouraging Blockchain Industry Self-Regulation by finding solutions to fundraising issues, blockchain company governance and equity token trading. Daniel will be discussing the Eqwity ecosystem with us in this interview.

1) Please tell us your name and about yourself?

I’m Daniel VIEIRA, the CEO of Eqwity. I spent most of my life in Paris.

Early lover of the Internet era, I’ve always thought it could make the world better and more equitable. Following my passion, since 2005, I’ve built my career in the tech industry and startups world learning progressively to master many disciplinaries, from art to coding, without forgetting project conceptualization and business strategy.

These last 15 years, I had the opportunity to build many startups and research projects between Paris and London, without forgetting the 5 marvelous years I spent in Tokyo.

When I discovered the blockchain technology, I’ve immediately been convinced that it’ll be the next revolution after the Internet. Attracted by this new technology breakthrough, I decided to focus my researches on solving issues avoiding the industry mass adoption. That’s what gave birth to the Eqwity ecosystem.

2) What is Eqwity Ecosystem?

Eqwity is a decentralized ecosystem build on EOS blockchain, it aims to solve the main issues of current ICOs market. This ecosystem will encourage blockchain industry self-regulation by: introducing a new ICO standard, promoting company governance decentralization and opening doors to tokenized shares trading.

The first step will be to introduce the ICO.E, a new ICO standard, meaning Initial Coin Offering + Equity Airdropping. An Equity Airdropping is a free distribution of company shares initiated by project founders for returning the trust to first-backers.

The principle is very simple, for each utility token purchased each investor receives a company share as a FREE « THANK YOU » GIFT. Having these company shares will give them voting right in a decentralized company governance, as well as dividends.

Once investors will have regained their voting right, the second step of Eqwity ecosystem will be to implement Community Voice, an online platform for decentralizing blockchain company’s governance.

In a third step, we need to give the opportunity to investors in possession of company shares to trade them. That’s why we plan to launch the first blockchain Stock Exchange dedicated to most capitalized blockchain companies having tokenized their equities.

In a last step, to close this virtuous circle, we want to help propelling new blockchain based projects and lead them toward success. This will be achieved through The Block, the first London based incubator only dedicated to mentor teams for helping them reaching a viable blockchain project.

In short, our main goal is to promote blockchain industry self-regulation thanks to a decentralized ecosystem bridging on-chain and off-chain worlds, to make our industry stronger, better and massively adopted.

3) What main issues are you solving?

We isolated three main categories of problems related to the ICOs market that delay mass-adoption.

First, we have the problems discouraging investors from contributing: e.g. the risk of scam or the fact that there is no “off-chain rights” attached to the tokens bought.

Then, the ones related to founders: I’m thinking of hacking proliferation or the high rate of fails due to inexperienced teams.

Finally, you have a reluctance linked to the market conditions in general: the pending regulations favoring the replacement of ICOs by STOs that would make them fall under securities law, or the absence of secondary market to trade these tokenized securities.

In order to solve these recurring problems affecting the ICOs market, while preserving the industry decentralized, the solutions need to come from the blockchain community itself, agreeing on few formalized processes and check points.

With the Eqwity ecosystem with its four stages of development, that’s is what we are offering to achieve: each part of the ecosystem has been thought to involve the community in solving few of the current issues. Thus, the ecosystem in its whole, involving the blockchain insiders, should bring a global solution to all the encountered problems of the ICOs market.

4) Could you explain shortly what means self-regulation for you?

As I explained, the ICOs market is suffering from few dysfunctions currently remaining without solutions. These unsolved issues explain and favorize the interference of governments and regulators pushing for restrictions.

As strong advocate of self-regulation, I think that the blockchain community possesses enough resources to overcome by itself all the obstacles slowing the mass adoption, while preserving both the innovation effervescence and the very essence of the industry, the decentralization.

Who better than these defenders of decentralization could find solutions avoiding an enforced recentralization?

5) You talk about bilateral transparency: how will it materialize?

Until then, we’ve heard a lot about the verification of investor identity, through KYC and AML processes, but what about founder’s verification? Looking for bilateral transparency, this KYC needed a pair. That is why, we added a new KYC standard named KYF (Know Your Founder) dedicated to founder’s identity verification, background verification and police record checking (if necessary). In this manner only we reach a true bilateral transparency allowing in the same time to avoid scams on founders.

6) What do you mean by decentralized company governance and how does this work?

Currently, when investing in a project by buying tokens, you don’t get any right to participate to the decision-making process.

To rectify this situation, we are proposing to give back their voices to investors by restoring their voting right, but this will be based on a simply and fair principle: one investor = one voice.

In this way, we create a real decentralized private company governance where the number of shares owned by founders or first-backers has no incidence on the decision-making process.

More specifically, we plan to launch as step 2, Community Voice, a platform allowing investors to participate to online referendums from all over the world, for any key decision, meaning a decision impacting the future of the company or changing the original fundraising promise.

7) Where do you see the progress of the ICO market in 2019 and beyond?

The ICOs market is currently undergoing great changes since the 2017 boom. Many people had predicted the death of ICO but the growing craze surrounding the blockchain investment despite its numerous unsolved weaknesses is giving them wrong.

Personally, I think that the investors will become more and more knowledgeable and less incline to invest in projects without making sure of their viability.

This change has already started. Just remember that not long ago, a website and a simple white paper were enough to raise several million dollars in record times. This is not true anymore. You need a lot more than that today to convince the blockchain community to participate to your fundraising.

Times are changing and the ICO market is progressively professionalizing. I think that the year 2019 will be a pivotal year for the crypto-world that will be taken between self-regulation solutions favored by the community and those coming from governments and regulators.

Let’s make sure that today’s solutions that will become tomorrow’s standards are in favor of a still decentralized and self-regulated industry.

8) Where do you see the adoption of blockchain technology in 2019 and beyond?

We are currently at the same stage the Internet was during the bursting of the Internet bubble. The main difference lies in the time elapsed between the ICOs market boom, its downfall and its awaited comeback: only a question of months in my opinion.

If we now succeed in perpetuating this fundraising system by solving its dysfunctions, many innovative projects will continue to nurture the industry’s advancements. More than that, many big players, eagerly awaiting these remedies, will bring to the industry their marvelous financial support. This will be the last signal before mass-adoption.

9) At what stage of development is the Eqwity platform and what is next on your roadmap?

We have already finalized the conceptualization stage of the project and validated its viability. Thus, we are now raising funds in order to make this ecosystem a reality and play our part in promoting the industry mass-adoption.

10) Could you tell us more about your team?

What can I say? We selected experienced talents having already participate to entrepreneurial adventures. Some are self-taught men with high-value profile, others come from renowned organizations, bringing with them strong working processes. I’m very proud of the team we managed to gather. I think that both their experience and motivation will be the key of our project success.

11) Do you have more information for our readers?

I invite them to be a part of blockchain industry mass-adoption by participating to our ICO.E that will be both our MVP and our bias to get funds to launch the Eqwity ecosystem.

It will start on November 8th by the private sale, will continue with one week of pre-sale from November 17th to 23rd and will end by the public sale starting on November 29th.

For more information, visit: https://www.eqwity.io/

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