Solana Network Seems Extremely Promising but Isn’t Yet Battle-Tested

Ishan Pandey: Hi Frederic Beeg, welcome to our series “Behind the Startup.” Please tell us about yourself and the story behind Crosswise?

Frederic Beeg: Hi Ishan, thanks for having me and I’m excited to share the story and vision behind crosswise. I have a strong background in creating large platforms in the Gaming and Ecommerce niche. At the age of 19, I founded a leading marketplace for digital video games and over the last couple of years, I created several leading brands on Amazon.

My interest and own user experience in DeFi led me to start work on crosswise. I simply wanted more from a DEX, so we started development around 6 months ago. Currently, we have 6 developers and 5 members in the core team working full-time. Crosswise is trying to combine the best of worlds: an advanced experience you are used to from a CEX and the trust and infinite possibilities you are used to from a DEX.

Ishan Pandey: What, according to you, are the implications of the recent boom in DeFi (for example, in terms of Blockchain gaming, etc.)?

Frederic Beeg: First of all, I think we are only just starting to discover the possibilities of blockchain and smart contracts. People have seen crypto as a store of value for years. But now we are discovering that it’s possible to create active ecosystems now with real use cases.

With DeFi increasingly gamified, we will see more teenagers become millionaires overnight while playing their favourite games! It opens up new sectors of the economy to a new set of people. Take Axie Infinity as an example. Entire villages in remote parts of the world have discovered new ways of making money. Crypto has this wonderful potential to recognize everyone’s time and reward them for it in ways that seem fairer than have previously been possible. This is quite fundamental and profound.

Ishan Pandey: Could you share with us your thoughts on the present condition of crypto’s security? What needs to be done to dispel the widespread belief that investing in or holding digital assets is a security risk?

Frederic Beeg: One major priority is better educating and supporting users. For example, influencers recruit users often without educating them properly. You can’t let someone trade Futures without properly teaching them how to do so and informing them about the risk involved. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of outright scams, and the best defense is education, in my opinion. One thing crosswise will do, is bring back a focus on customer service and support. This allows us to educate our users and help keep them safe.

Another huge factor is the lack of accountability, such as with anonymous Defi projects.

We have seen a lot of rug pulls, soft rugs, or the facilitation thereof, with decentralized dApps.

What we need are clear rules and projects protecting their users. The industry has yet to find the right balance between decentralization and accountability.

Ishan Pandey: Bitcoin has broken the previous all-time high and reached a new milestone of $67,000 approximately, drawing worldwide attention to the cryptocurrency market. This came after it was listed as an exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States. What will be the overall impact of this sudden boom on the global economy?

Frederic Beeg: We are seeing a gradual shift in behavior as institutions adjust their investment strategies and prepare to incorporate blockchain technology in other areas as well. I think it’s just what was needed. For the moment, crypto is a tiny part of the global economy, but it is developing at an impressive pace. I have no doubt that DeFi will reach mass adoption in the coming 10 years, which means future market movements in the crypto space will have much wider implications than they currently do. More and more people realize that crypto and DeFi offer attractive alternatives to investing in the stock markets or real estate.

Ishan Pandey: China’s Ministry of Commerce, recently came up with the 14th Five-Year Plan for Service & Trade Industries which explains how China will integrate blockchain into various areas of trading. Do you think soon we will witness mass adoption of blockchain technology?

Frederic Beeg: Many sectors, such as banking or energy, are discovering the use of blockchain as a decentralized way to store data. I’m pretty convinced that more and more businesses will adopt blockchain as part of their tech stack to store data and create transactions within their applications. It’s obvious that this way of storing and accessing data has a lot of perks and advantages.

Ishan Pandey: What role has the pandemic played in allowing traders to profit from cryptocurrency investments? Also, what do you think the post-covid-19 scenario would look like for the blockchain ecosystem?

Frederic Beeg: I honestly doubt the COVID-19 pandemic has had any significant effect on trading opportunities or the industry. One perhaps discernable effect of the pandemic was that it may have boosted adoption a little, as a number of people invested covid related welfare payments in crypto. Overall, I don’t think it’s significant for crypto.

Ishan Pandey: What are your views on Solana and its infrastructure?

Frederic Beeg: Solana network seems extremely promising but isn’t yet battle-tested. As we saw with the recent outages, there are still some teething problems. That’s why we chose Binance Smart Chain. It‘s stable and we don’t need to expect small investors to pay a hundred dollars just to make a few hundred dollar investments, as on Ethereum. Solana is on our roadmap in Q4 2022, but we will first set up on Polygon, ETH, and Avalanche.

Ishan Pandey: In what ways do you think Covid-19 has affected decentralized finance and what has been the overall impact of the pandemic on global finance?

Frederic Beeg: As mentioned above, I doubt COVID-19 has had much impact on the crypto world, perhaps only speeding up adoption somewhat. On the other hand, the impact of COVID-19 on the global economy is certain, yet the implications are poorly understood. One sure thing is that governments across the world have printed unprecedented levels of money. The inflation time-bomb is real. In the coming years, crypto and DeFi may go from being seen as risky investments to being perceived as financially safe-havens.

Ishan Pandey: Please tell us a little bit about Cross-Chain DEX Exchange- crosswise and how it exactly works? (Please give technical explanations only)

Frederic Beeg: Crosswise uses an architecture of nodes on each and every blockchain. Every node has its own liquidity pools so that every coin is tradable by routing those LP pools. We are following best practices to ensure security and stability by integrating with Chainlink, The Graph, and Biconomy with more to follow. We are connecting those nodes through our bridge so that all assets are tradeable across chains. This is achieved through our bridge contracts and our Bridge API: users deposit tokens on the chain they send from and receive tokens on the desired chain.

Disclaimer: The purpose of this article is to remove informational asymmetry existing today in our digital markets by performing due diligence, asking the right questions and equipping readers with better opinions to make informed decisions.

The material does not constitute any investment, financial, or legal advice. Please do your research before investing in any digital assets or tokens, etc. The writer does not have any vested interest in the company.