LBank AMA Recap with ZAKZAK
Introduction:
GUEST:
Brian ZAK:
From KJ…Sure. I am a developer and software company owner from Japan. I have been involved in software development for many years and during the last few years, I have become very interested in the developments in blockchain.
Our project is called ZAKZAK, it is a crypto ecosystem, that we have designed from the ground up that allows for high-speed, low-cost transactions specifically for online entertainment such as casinos, live streaming and game payments. We have been in development since 2018 and have recently unveiled the system…hence the initial listing on Lbank
First five AMA Questions (First Part):
QUESTION 1:
Can you share the background of $ZAKZAK founding team? Why did the team decide to do the project?
GUEST:
well, I had been paying attention to Bitcoin as it increased in popularity but it was the major hacks of 2017/2018 that caught my attention. The 58 billion JPY hack of CoinCheck was a big deal here in Japan and affected several of my friends. As I am very interested in computer security I started looking closely at the management of private keys.
For my first venture into the blockchain, I devised a secure system for managing private keys. I presented my idea at several conferences and introduced it to some associates, who gave very positive feedback so I went ahead and developed a crypto wallet that featured a unique distributed key management which I patented…
Our team formed during the making of that first wallet. Hiroki, our CTO, had a ton of great ideas and became very involved in the development and expansion of its functions. So did Tetsuya, our COO. I was spending a lot of time traveling between Tokyo and Shanghai, where Brian our development manager was based at the time and I brought him on board as he was a longtime cryptocurrency enthusiast who knew a lot about the crypto scene…
When we started working as a group we then started looking at challenges we could solve in the blockchain. Along with the importance of key management, we thought it was necessary to solve the issues of transaction speed and scalability, which is why we developed our own DLT called ZAKChain which solved a lot of the issues we saw….
It was also important to us to find areas that had real use cases. I feel a lot of blockchain companies are building projects that are theoretically very nice but there is no immediate use case for their product. Since we have some relation to the online casino business from previous development work, we thought that online gambling, and digital entertainment like esports and live streaming, is an area with huge potential for crypto so that is where we decided to focus on the ZAKZAK project.
QUESTION 2:
Your project is totally new, I just want to know why should we trust this project?
GUEST:
Well, to be fair it is not totally new! Development on our first iteration of the ZAKchain started in early 2018 and since then we have presented at Blockchain conferences in Japan, Hong Kong, and Boston. This is documented online. But you are right that this iteration of the project appears new. We have been privately funded the entire time and have only brought the project to light now that most of the development is complete…
As for my background, as well as running software companies, and am still a senior researcher at Keio University in Japan where I have been involved for many years. Keio is one of the most respected research universities in Japan. it was the starting point of the Internet in Japan before it spread countrywide. Some great minds are working on blockchain research at Keio right now and we are lucky to be able to use their input and feedback on the development of ZAKZAK…
I would say a good reason that you CAN trust our project is that we have a fully viewable working product that we are happy to demonstrate to anyone who wishes to see it. I absolutely understand people being suspicious of new projects because I have watched the crypto scene for several years now and have seen a lot of shady behavior and flashy webpages and whitepapers but no product. And lots of shady ICOs….
But, anyone who has a decent grasp of computer development can see that we have put in a huge amount of work on our product, all independently funded. If we did not believe in this project, it would not have come this far already.
QUESTION 3:
What are the plans of this project to expand and be successful?
GUEST:
Right….The online casino sector is huge and casinos and gambling sites are constantly adopting new trends to meet the ever-changing demands of the market. The ZAK system has a ton of advantages for online casinos and entertainment sites so we predict that once the ZAK system is officially launched in November on the first of our partnered online casinos, there will be a major influx of interest. We have a very good working relationship with Asia Gaming, which dominates the online gambling industry in Asia so we look forward to working closely with them on and integrating the ZAK system on more of their casinos….
…our initial focus will be on Asian gambling as the market here is huge but as regulation sorts itself out in other markets like Europe and the US we will be expanding there too…
…Once the casino project is up and running we will be expanding the ZAKZAK ecosystem to add more value to token holders, allowing them to profit off the current trends in Defi. We will be launching an NFT marketplace where, among other things, users can purchase part ownership of online casino games like slots which can generate their passive income. We will also be using this platform as a showcase for Japanese art including Anime, Manga, and NFT’s created by Japanese celebrities and artists we are in talks with..
…We aim to get ZAKZAK listed on Uniswap and several major centralized exchanges as soon as we have enough traction. At the start of 2022, we will be launching the ZAKSwap Platform and throughout next year we will be expanding the cross-chain functionality of the ZAKChain to connect with Polkadot, Solana, and the Binance Smart chain…and whatever other systems it makes sense for us to work with.
QUESTION 4:
When Launch Online Casino NFT service?
GUEST:
There is already a lot of interest in the Online Casino NFT service so we are planning to run a trial operation of the Online Casino NFT service this November and go live in December….then ZAKChain’s NFT market users will be able to own, or part-own, the rights to various online casino games and even trade them as NFTs.
QUESTION 5:
In the current market there are many widely used platforms/projects, so what are your plans to make it more applicable that attracts users’ attention? Currently, what problems is Zakzak facing?
GUEST:
You are correct in that there are several impressive Layer 2 solutions emerging and some, like Polygon, are quite rightly getting a lot of attention. Personally, I don’t see crypto as a zero-sum game. I believe a number of solutions can happily coexist if they solve the problem that they were built to. In our case, we are very confident that no other company has approached the specific niche of online gambling and entertainment, specifically Asian-oriented online gambling and entertainment, in the way we have. We feel we have the idea, the talent, and the business network to make a splash in this sector…
Problems that we face are, of course, the ups and downs of crypto regulation in China, where part of our customer base resides, but we believe that is temporary and will sort itself out. The same can really be said for the legalities and regulation of crypto assets and collectibles in the Western markets which is why the initial focus of ZAKZAK is in markets where regulation is currently more favorable…..
For the moment, our challenge…or more so our focus…. is working on community building and marketing. As a privately funded project, we have spent the majority of our time focused on the technical side of the project and now we must put our efforts into bringing it from the people. I am happy to see you all here today and consider this, and the LBank listing, a major step forward for us. Anyone who is here today who is interested in hearing more or collaborating with the project is welcome to get in contact and we can talk.
Selected five Questions with Answers from the Telegram community (Second Part):
@Baka647
QUESTION 1:
Many blockchain projects are on paper only and don’t have any product or have a product with no practical use case. Please let us know what is Coin ‘s current practical product in use? What are your plans for the product to be better in the future?
GUEST:
Hi Bake. Sure…..as I mentioned, the development of our system is mostly complete and you can see its operations when being run on an online casino on our website https://www.zakswap.org/ For anyone asking about the Whitepaper, it can be found there as well
@Samjang56y
QUESTION 2:
Smart contracts are prone to failure and many projects fall victim to this, costing users money and the project discrediting. How reliable and secure is your smart contract? Have you audited it through any of the parties?
GUEST:
Good question Samjang. As our team of developers is mostly security specialists the team has focused on security in building the system from the ground up. We are currently organizing an audit of the system, possibly with Hacken or OpenZeppelin….if anyone has any audit company they would like to suggest, we would love to hear it.
@Romeo089
QUESTION 3:
Currently, most investors only care about profits at the moment but ignore the long-term benefits. So can you give them some reasons why they should buy and hold your token in the long term?
GUEST:
I like this question Sofia and I think I may be able to answer the questions of several people at once with it….
When we began the ZAKZAK project, we did not approach it as many crypto companies did, meaning that we did not just come up with the idea, quickly draft a white paper and try to do an ICO. In the time that we have been developing, we have had several chances to do that but we chose not to. As we have a successful background in running software companies we wanted to take the approach where build a crypto project in a profit-generating sector that will generate income, rather than raising funds upfront for an untested idea and hoping to find a market fit later. We chose to find a problem, solve it and then introduce our solution to the world. Which is what we are doing now.
@Guginl
QUESTION 4:
Southeast Asia is a very vibrant market and many projects developed here so what do you think about Southeast Asia and do you have any plans to develop here?
GUEST:
I will Yulis question which covers a few questions about the “global” aspect of the project….
Certainly, Southeast Asia is a very important market to us and we will be operating in that area, we have good connections with online businesses there specifically in Thailand and Cambodia but we will seek to enter all markets that make sense. For the people who asked about language support, currently, our team operates in English, Chinese, Japanese and Spanish but as the community grows we will certainly be looking to support our token holders and users so we will be bringing on Community Representatives in other regions
@shakib8904
QUESTION 5:
Do you have any Coin Burn / BuyBack systems or any Token Burn plans to increase the value of Token & attract Investors to invest?
GUEST:
Hi Lakky. Yes, we will have Token burns to increase token value. I don't have the specific chart and numbers to hand in right now but if you join our telegram channel: https://t.me/joinchat/YAmQFvZJnUlhOTVl.
I will post the specifics a bit later.
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