Charting New Territories in Secure, Smart Contract-Based Exchanges
Jan 24, 2024
Brian, Epoch, Jenny, Lido, Block Jock, Noodz
Ready to witness a revolution in crypto exchanges? Tune in as we sit down with the team from Ekival Labs, to unwrap the story of Ekival, their groundbreaking peer-to-peer marketplace on the Cardano blockchain. This isn't just another crypto platform; Ekival is trying to set a new standard for non-custodial, smart contract-powered trading, where security of assets is paramount and middlemen are a thing of the past. We delve into how this innovative approach is poised to slash remittance fees and why it could be a game-changer, especially in Africa. they also share tantalizing updates about their upcoming testnet and the strides they're making with their Fund 11 catalyst proposal.
Join us on a journey through the world of peer-to-peer platforms where regulatory navigation meets cutting-edge technology. We'll uncover the complexities of legal compliance, the empowerment of users through KYC/AML documentation, and the potential of integrating secure chat protocols for transparent user communication. From the exciting future of Cardano native tokens to the integration of goods and services marketplaces, this episode is a treasure trove of insights. Plus, get the latest on smart contract audits and the legal landscape shaping the future of decentralized exchanges. Don't miss out on this in-depth conversation with Ali, where we explore the frontier of financial inclusivity and innovation on the blockchain.
Ready to witness a revolution in crypto exchanges? Tune in as we sit down with the team from Ekival Labs, to unwrap the story of Ekival, their groundbreaking peer-to-peer marketplace on the Cardano blockchain. This isn't just another crypto platform; Ekival is trying to set a new standard for non-custodial, smart contract-powered trading, where security of assets is paramount and middlemen are a thing of the past. We delve into how this innovative approach is poised to slash remittance fees and why it could be a game-changer, especially in Africa. they also share tantalizing updates about their upcoming testnet and the strides they're making with their Fund 11 catalyst proposal.
Join us on a journey through the world of peer-to-peer platforms where regulatory navigation meets cutting-edge technology. We'll uncover the complexities of legal compliance, the empowerment of users through KYC/AML documentation, and the potential of integrating secure chat protocols for transparent user communication. From the exciting future of Cardano native tokens to the integration of goods and services marketplaces, this episode is a treasure trove of insights. Plus, get the latest on smart contract audits and the legal landscape shaping the future of decentralized exchanges. Don't miss out on this in-depth conversation with Ali, where we explore the frontier of financial inclusivity and innovation on the blockchain.
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Speaker 1:
Welcome everybody to Cardano Over Coffee. We got a great show for you today and remember you can join us live on X Spaces Monday through Friday, 9.30am EST, 2.30pm UTC. We got a great show for you today. Joining us is Knievel Labs. We're trying to build a decentralized, non-custodial peer-to-peer crypto-theodic exchange on the Cardano blockchain. Listen in to find out what they're up to and find out a little bit about their Fund 11 catalyst proposal. And remember, voting opens tomorrow.
Speaker 2:
Oh, snacks. I'm excited to be here and I'm really happy to have a coffee and connect with you all today, absolutely a pleasure to have you join us.
Speaker 3:
Who is behind the PFP? Who are we speaking with today?
Speaker 2:
This is Ali, aka MIX. I'm normally known as MIX in different ecosystems, for example, gimbal Labs, where I normally talk and teach politus, smart contract, design patterns, security stuff there and, of course, auditing. But here I'm the co-founder of EQL. Also, I'm with Jean-Tier he's in the audience, I think. Jean-tier, if you can hear me, please do a request as well for us speaking. So, yeah, today we are happy to present you all, as we call it, the first crypto-to-peer, decentralized, non-costal, the all-in-permissionless P2P marketplace on Cardano. But without further ado, if you follow me, I will start talking about what is EQL.
Speaker 3:
So, yes, please give us an introduction to the platform that you're building here. We do have Jean-Tier coming up that will join in the conversation, very excited to learn more.
Speaker 2:
Thank you, thank you. So EQL is a DAP and we are building on it. Of course, we propose as a concept in Catalyst, but we are about to launch our testnet on, I think, two months from now. So the idea is a user who has assets any asset in a crypto, namely ADA, and the other user who have fiat currency. The fiat currency normally would be like, for example, us dollar. They want to exchange their money and they have to normally do through the centralized exchanges. So they have to send their money, asset, whatever, to their account and they have to lose their custody and trusting that centralized exchange or the people there in order for them, first, to keep their asset and money secure and, second, once they are ready, they can trade and find these other users they want to trade with. So in EQL we are targeting this exact big problem, as we believe, as well as other problems which I'm going to back to it. So in EQL, user comes, create an offer, advertise to the marketplace that I have a certain amount of asset or fiat currency and I'm willing to have a trade with someone, and that's advertised, will be broadcast and takers, which we call them, can come and see all these prices, exchange rates, all these things, and once they choose one offer, they can start a conversation with that person and says that yeah, I have, for example, this fiat and you have this asset and I like the price you or the exchange rate you proposed and you are supporting this payment provider or payment system as well. So let's start the trade and from that, that offer become an order and everything from that will be handled by a smart contract. And here's the thing, that a smart contract is completely permissionless and non-costodial. So once people send their asset inside that smart contract not only EQL, no one else has the ability to change not only the amount or withdrawing anything, but the terms and condition of that trade as well. For example, what would be the exchange rate, the collateral and there are also the cancel fee, if anything, that something doesn't add up and one of the party wants to cancel the trade, all of them, at the moment of creating that order, will be settled by this party and will be sent to that smart contract and they will move forward. And then EQL will provide other means to verify that off-chain transaction as well. So we are connecting and implementing payment providers inside our platform. So once people send that money or fiat currency to the user account by just pasting the transaction ID we can confirm it, but we are going to have to to support Cache P2P as well and that's a thing that inside our platform. We are not just want to be bound with some payment provider, although we want to provide as much as possible, especially in regards to our African user and mobile money, but user have the ability to choose their own system if they want.
Speaker 2:
And the other kind of big problem is about, as I said, mobile money, so mobile money exchange in crypto to mobile money, which is a sort of payment system or a currency system mostly adopted in South-South African countries. We don't have that much of gaps or apps or whatever even exchanges to provide people there to exchange their asset and let alone a cardinal ecosystem in general. And we are almost missing about 800, as I read some news, $832 billion of transaction per year in that mobile money system in our ecosystem and some countries, for example Nigeria just in past year I was reading the chain analysis they just did $45 billion in P2P marketplace, just alone in P2P marketplace, and they are doing this in that centralized exchanges, namely Binance, coinbase and all these things, and again, they have to trust them. But that's not the issue actually. The issue is the remittance that they have to pay. It's about 15% at maximum, comes to even 2.5% at the minimum. So if someone wants to just send money, then I want to send Fiat to somewhere, fiat to some Congo or Nigeria or Kenya that person has to pay around starting from 2.5% up to 15% of that amount as a transaction fee.
Speaker 2:
So that's another problem in Equivalent we want to address, and how? By providing an adaptation of our stablecoin, namely JET IUSD and, of course, that MRGO stablecoin. I hope we are going to see that soon. So, yeah, these two are the problem, and the platform is going to provide the service for marketplace and also servicing for swap. So if the users say, you know what, I don't want to go with marketplace or stuff, we are going to provide the service for them so they can swap their Fiat or asset with mobile money or the payment provider that we are going to support as well as, for example, I know someone from another country but I want to use Equivalent as my escrow service and we are going to provide that as well. So in Equivalent there are these three services. I hope I kind of covered all this area. But yeah, hit me with your question.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I was just deep in your website looking at your idea scale and proposal and checking out the services that you're offering, and I think that your problem area that you're looking to address is most definitely one that complements many of the solutions that blockchains, cryptocurrencies and web threes seek to resolve specifically for the remittance economies. So very cool to see that, and so, with this in mind, I'm curious to know what is the state of development for the platform thus far, because I had gone on the website and it says trade a stablecoin or exchange ADA and I click the link and it just refreshes me back to the main page. Is there any operating services or is this kind of base level foundation what you are putting forward in your catalyst proposal?
Speaker 2:
Well, to be honest, that website, that landing page, is not good, I mean, if I'm being honest. But the focus actually we are putting it is on development side. We are already finished the UI, UX and we already wrote the backend and transaction building and testing the small contract, all these things. So the stage we are about to, about to see in the next couple of weeks, would be the first launch of the testnet on a card out, of course. But there are some other stuff, for example, auditing the small contract, the formal verification of the whole system. I mean it would be the certification level three. So all these things still hasn't happened and by the fund of that proposal we are seeking to fund these things as well. So we hope to launch the testnet of the QL about several weeks, but bad or worst case scenario, just let it two months from now. But the thing is we actually wanted to propose a proposal and solution but the thing is because we didn't, launch or testnet.
Speaker 2:
We weren't eligible to be there, but we are almost a year like we just spent around a year for building this and I'm really happy to announce that we are about to end of that building phase.
Speaker 2:
But first it is, of course it's complex, but not only the complexity, but we had to kind of cover different edge cases and some cases, for example, or namely the dispute case. So how should we handle the dispute case, or how the user should handle the dispute case, and we were researching the different marketplaces finance, corn base, like all these things, and as well as some other Fiat to Fiat P2P market but how they are doing these disputes with regards to regularity, legality and crypto and, of course, morality. Should be this fair or not? So these things and I think maybe you guys can guess that there is this big part of legality issues always with exchanges, doesn't matter centralized or decentralized. So that was the thing that put us a lot of pressure, but we are happy to say that we are going to, we have found some solution for that and, yeah, we are kind of ready to go.
Speaker 3:
That's exactly my question that I was going to get into at some point in this conversation is what does your legal team look like? Because, for at least here in the United States, in terms of transacting Fiat or even cryptocurrencies, as a platform that you're facilitating it, I think here people would probably need some kind of money transmitter license, so it seems like you guys are trying to address that as well.
Speaker 2:
Indeed. So after some research. By the way, jean-tierp is located in Canada, but after some research and he also here studied business and all like, he was 15 years and it makes.
Speaker 4:
I can even reply that we do have a money service business license in Canada. It's still. It's applicable in this case. Yes, for my exchange, even selling ADA personally, I still have to log in whatever exceeding 1000 per individual requirements, and we do have experience in that area. However, there is an issue again in the US. Again, p2p Fiat is actually not allowed.
Speaker 4:
However, equival is also has the aim of having more than just Fiat. The DEX is the first. However, there are many exchanges like a thing of Equival is like a Craig list with a smart contract in the future. So the money is the easiest implementation. However, there is more to that. People trust the smart contract, even in Africa, for example, when people are selling to each other ADA, they can see each other, they know each other. However, they may not be trustworthy. You may. Somebody can tell you okay, send me a, I'm going to send you the money afterwards, and then they just go and you just send them the ADA. Well, you were together in one room, but once you depart you, there is no way to follow up. So this smart contract is more like about trust than the implementation of the solution, because people will have still been able to contact each other.
Speaker 2:
Indeed, also, as you mentioned, in our platform we are going to provide all means and all sorts of terms and conditions for users. So if, for example, a user needs KYC or ML reports or any sort of legal compliance or any authority needs like that place needs, they can ask those users and they can choose whom they want to trade. It's not like we force those users. You have to follow this user. As I said, it is non-custodial, so they don't send their money to a QAL and their account or something. So we have to handle them now. Let those money, everything will be their wallet or in that smart contract and they are the boss of that trade and they can say that, hey, I want KYC. If I don't get the KYC, I want to start or initiate the trade with you or ML report or anything. So it is and you might wonder okay, what's the deal with this?
Speaker 2:
It should be usual, but I should say, like in Binance P2P, there are, as I read in some articles, there are really difficulties with this, just even the KYC. So even people cannot share pictures. Okay, I just took a picture, I'm just going to show it off, this invoice or this KYC report or something or document I just want to send you so you can confirm it. You can just print it out and attach it to your invoice or whatever. They can't, but the Binance doesn't allow that, although I wonder if they fix it or not, but we don't want to do that.
Speaker 2:
So we want to provide as much as possible utilities for user in order to confirm each other. Of course, we care about the privacy, so we are actually working on some solution to not hold any of these information. We have the chat, we're going to have the chat, but we're working to use NUCCHER I don't know. You guys know that the protocol. So it's like a P2P chat protocol, which you know Bitcoin. People love that a lot, so, but providing the means for conversation and communicating user, we are actually mitigating the legal issue as well, which people unfortunately face in very well-known P2P marketplaces.
Speaker 3:
That's awesome, man. We do have BlockJock with a hand up and just wanted to invite any and all people to come join the conversation up here. Just hit the little request button, blockjock, take it away. I do have some questions as well.
Speaker 5:
Yeah, it was surrounding the MPL for Canada, so you currently have a money transmitter license for Canada.
Speaker 4:
It's MSB yes, my service business. It's a FinTrack, which is like the regulatory institution, and for that, basically you register first to your own the business, you register it and that allows you to basically open a bank account. The idea of it actually the license is one year old already, so it is already old. And I do it for small transactions, for example, when in Africa people want to acquire ADA and they have to send it, then I do log in the transactions, given that it's on my account, and I do have to report some transactions. For example, whenever some teams in catalysts get funding, sometimes they don't have the money in Africa and I'm the one who actually funds them. Like they need USD. As I have a business in Africa, I can basically give them the cash and then they will find me after a few weeks. For those amounts I do have to report them Got it.
Speaker 5:
So you're manually doing that, and I was curious because it sounds to me like this is a P2P platform. You develop a smart contract and then makes it trustless so that one party does not have to rely on the other party in order to send back what they've sent over to them, so this way they can operate and know that it will happen. And then the other part of that is, I know, within Cardano you have Cardano native tokens and from that each one can be exchanged, as long as there's a pool somewhere or with a different decks where you can just go ahead and exchange that one for one. But what I'm curious about is surrounding. If someone, like he said, has a particular token that they want to use and they want to turn it into something else and then turn it into Canadian dollars, is that something that you're going to think about providing?
Speaker 4:
the future on. Yes, that's going to require KYC on your part.
Speaker 5:
And you're going to use a KYC provider, I would imagine. Who do you have plans on as far as doing that part of it? Because ultimately, that's the end game. That's the end goal for people to actually have liquidity that can be transferred from one place to another and completely avoid the current money transfers from one country to the other and the fees associated with that and then from there turning in dollars very quickly, whatever dollars that you used to turn it into, Right?
Speaker 4:
But to access it, they will see that we do have a KYC checkbox. Once you click the KYC checkbox, then you go in the process which requires KYC. And for the case of you wanting to have Canadian dollars, let's say you have a token which is new, you kind of heard about it, you know who has it, you want to exchange it and you would like to send the interact in Canada. In this case, to let you know, before you obtain the MSB license, you do have to provide the list of directors as to who are actually doing the proper different roles. You have at least three roles. The license is a personal business but at the same time I do have employees, I do have staff who work in those roles and once you have met the condition, then those people will begin the ones following up on the regular side.
Speaker 4:
But for the user's point of view, once they have clicked that, they will have the options which actually KYC.
Speaker 4:
For example, if you want to send interact money within Canada and you exceed a thousand, yes, you may have to provide more information about your transaction. If it's less than a thousand, you may or may not, but if you want for your own sake, you can still report it. You can still let us collect the information just in case, because accumulatively over a year there are some limits in terms of individual transactions, but also accumulatively. So internally we will still know who actually will have to report it. At one point we may actually tell you that you have reached your limit and we do have to report the next transaction within the period. So there are different stages of reporting and personally I do think that the idea you propose again remember the idea of a QVAL is in the future to be able to exchange more than the heavy fiat If the easiest is the most accessible. However, potentially services and goods as well, and for those then people will be free to have less requirements.
Speaker 5:
Awesome. We're coming from a stable coin provider ourselves, with me and with USDM. We look forward to your success and love to be able to talk to you in the future News. That's all I got.
Speaker 3:
Nice man. Yeah, we are getting close to it, but we do have some time for a little more conversation. Curious to know. So I pinned up at the top your image from your idea scale proposal that you've got going on there and I see in this particular funding round you're looking for about 90,000 ADA or so for a period of six months, and so take us through what is what do you envision the six months looking like? I see that you've gotten your budget a lot of stuff for developers and things. Take us through what it would look like if it was funded.
Speaker 2:
So, honestly, actually the milestone one, we already done that, but the funding and the ammo that, especially the time, is regard of the testing, the platform. So we have the whole for launching the test net and inviting user to test this platform and getting all this feedback. But the second concern for us is the audit of the smart contract, the whole application and the licenses or any other Legal compliance that we have to do and not just in Canada, like, well, fortunately, fortunately we have finished that in Canada, but in the case of mobile money we have to do some sort of other license or legal compliance in Africa, in Congo and Kenya especially. So those actually the time for that, like these are the things that we have we had to consider.
Speaker 2:
So the development mostly actually was finished, kind of because, you know, we didn't want to wait until the proposal get funded and also, to be honest, we don't have that much, we didn't have that much of hope in previous fund, like in fund 10, to get funded. So we thought that let's start building, let's continue the building. If we get funding, great, we can even route the funding to the other part. But if not, at least we are in the schedule, we are not far behind that. So we actually really hope to not only finish this proposal as soon as possible, but that she pairs possible as well. So we have this plan to give back extra fund, if there are some leftover, to the community through different means, and there are some some methods that we are discussing. But, yeah, that's, that's all the situation with the proposal right now.
Speaker 3:
That's great man. Yeah, I have pinned it up at the top if people want to check it out.
Speaker 3:
And I would say for people who are sharing their proposals on idea scale, throw some images in those tweets, you know, grab people's attention. A lot of times the idea scale link doesn't even give us a pop up thumbnail or anything like that, and they all look the same right, so it can make it unique and it looks pretty cool. So I pinned up that, as well as another series of different graphics that you guys have gotten your timeline explaining the platform and all of these different invitations for people to check it out. We are reaching now the top of the hour, so I'm curious to know if there's any type of call to action that you'd like to leave us with. What are the things that you'd like everybody to draw their attention to and ways that we can get involved and participate moving forward?
Speaker 2:
Well, the first thing is, we will, we will love to you guys stay tuned for the launch of the test that we will love as much as possible. Any user try out our platform, find in box or issue or the feeling they have the UI, ux feels. Of course, all this feedback, we appreciate that, sure. And also, yeah, if you guys think that our proposal is worth of investment, please give us a vote. But maybe I should mention about this thing and you guys, if you are worried about the security, how the security is I personally, I am one of the co-author of the CIP 96, which talks about Unchained DAP metadata and all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 2:
So, and I am part of certification working group in IOG and it's going to be transferred and transit to InterSec, and I'm also we are working on Cardano Threat Intelligence, cip, which focus on categorizing and standardization of all vulnerability and weaknesses inside Cardano ecosystem not just Cardano blockchain in whole ecosystem. And yeah, we have also the plan and I hope we will share it in the InterSec working group with you all. So, in terms of security and how you secure the small contract will be secure, all this thing, yeah, we take it that very seriously and we tested all sorts of stuff with that. So, but still, if you guys have any question, feel free to ask us and follow us. We have a Discord server but, to be honest, it's not ready that much that we don't have that much people to run in things. So yeah, thank you for your attention and thank you for having us here.
Speaker 3:
Absolutely. Thank you guys for coming by, very excited to see Thank you for your work in Cardano. Keep building it, keep dreaming it and looking forward to all things moving forward. It's pinned up at the top if you want to check it out. We got the Equivalp proposal over there on our real scale, as well as a number of different forms of media that will invite you to check out their platform. Give them a follow and see what they're cooking on Cardano. Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1:
Thanks everyone for listening in and thanks Caneva Labs for joining us. We look forward to what you build here in the future and what happens with Fund 11. Check them out Links down below. We want to give a big shout out to our monthly podcast supporters the wizard, tim, discovercardano, bookio, project Camo, linda from StakepoolTicker, m-a-l-u Twisted Gears, mihan Enigma, stakepoolticker1, monster, stakepoolticker, m-n STR, epochsec, and Psycho is the Cardano card game. We appreciate all your support. If you'd like to have your name or business mentioned in future podcasts or have your logo and links displayed in the description of our podcast, click the support button now. Oh, snacks.
