On Tuesday, April 5, FMFW.io team hosted a live AMA session with Director of Ecosystem of The HBAR Foundation — Elaine Song.
Hedera is the most used enterprise-grade public network for you to make your digital world exactly as it should be — yours. $HBAR is the native, energy-efficient cryptocurrency of Hedera that powers the decentralized economy.
Whether you’re a startup or enterprise, a creator or consumer, Hedera goes beyond blockchain for developers to create the next era of fast, fair, and secure applications.
And now, let’s dive deeper, so you can learn more from our AMA recap!
AMA session with Hedera April 5, 2022
Bogdan Popa — marketing manager of FMFW.io
Elaine Song — Director of Ecosystem of The HBAR Foundation
Bogdan Popa: Hello everyone! I’m Bogdan Popa, FMFW.io’s Community Manager and I’m excited to be to host of today’s AMA along with no other than the HBAR Foundation.👏
Our guest for today’s AMA, representing the HBAR Foundation, is Elaine Song, Director of Ecosystem.
Elaine, it’s an absolute pleasure to host you today!
Elaine Song: Happy to be here!!
I think this might be my first Telegram AMA so I’m looking forward to it!
Bogdan Popa: It’s an honour for us to host your first Telegram AMA!😎
We will proceed to the predetermined questions shortly, and we will open the chat to our community‘s questions once our guest has finished answering my questions.
Make sure you have your questions ready, we are giving away $100 HBAR to each of the top 5 questions asked! 🙌
Let’s roll! 🚀
First of all, Elaine, would you please introduce yourself to our awesome community?
Elaine Song: Hi everyone! My name is Elaine. I’m the Director of Ecosystem at the HBAR Foundation and manage the Crypto Economy Fund. My goals are to continue to build the HBAR economy on Hedera, with a specific focus on exchanges/listings, defi, staking, etc.
We recently published the broad strategy of the HBAR Foundation here: https://www.hbarfoundation.org/blog-post/the-hbar-foundation-2022-strategy
and the strategy for the Crypto Economy Fund here: https://www.hbarfoundation.org/blog-post/introducing-the-hbar-foundation-crypto-economy-fund
Take a look at the blogs and I’m happy to answer any questions about those as well!
Bogdan Popa: Thanks a lot for sharing these resources with us, Elaine! I’m sure our community will dig deep into your 2022 strategy, myself included!💯
Now, before diving deeper into the Hedera ecosystem, could you please expand on what Hedera is about and what your project’s mission is?🧠
Elaine Song: Absolutely!
Hedera is a third generation smart contract platform. It is built using the revolutionary hashgraph technology, which allows it to be faster than a classic blockchain.
Fees are reliably low at $0.0001 per HBAR transaction and transactions reach finality in a matter of seconds. It can also withstand up to 10,000 transactions per second. Essentially, its an enterprise-grade network that is made for the power-user.
The Hedera network has three major services. The first is the native asset, HBAR, which is currently listed on FMFW.
The second is the Hedera Token Service, which is native issuance of Hedera-based assets. Examples of this are NFTs and USDC on Hedera.
The third is the Hedera smart contract service, which is EVM compatible but takes on the benefits of the Hedera network.
Our mission as the HBAR Foundation is to raise awareness of the Hedera network, in addition to support founders building on it.
Bogdan Popa: Transaction speed + low fees + a strong mission = A reliable Network!🚀
Elaine Song: Yes, absolutely!
Reliability and scalabity are whats needed for a network now. That’s what will enable and support development
Bogdan Popa: I couldn’t agree more. These are qualities that we as community members, traders and investors seek at the end of the day!
Now that you’ve mentioned some of the use cases, could please expand on why Hedera is seen as “the public network for everyone”?
Elaine Song: We consider Hedera as a public network for everyone because it is enterprise-grade. The Hedera network is governed by the Hedera governing council, a diverse group of up to 39 organizations that are stewards of the network. The governing council includes organizations such as Ubisoft, LG, IBM, Google, DLA Piper, Avery Denison — all diverse organizations that are using Hedera and either HBAR or the Hedera Token Service.
So we feel that these use cases have proved that Hedera is enterprise-grade
And because it is enterprise-grade, then it means that the network will be able to facilitate and supprot a diverse group of uses cases for users around the world. Hence “public network for everyone” :)
Bogdan Popa: With such a powerful and select group of entities behind your network, I can definitely see now why Hedera is such a trusted network, within our industry and beyond!
Now let’s jump into your token, HBAR. Could you please share some insight into the HBAR tokenomics?
Elaine Song: Yep! HBAR is the native asset of the Hedera network. It has two major functionalities — network fuel and security.
HBAR is a capped supply asset. It has a current circulating supply of approximately 20B HBAR, with a fixed total supply of 50B HBAR.
Bogdan Popa: A token with important use cases and a capped supply, that’s quite a powerful combination!
We know how busy and eventful your ecosystem is. Are there any news or moves that we should be aware of?👀
Elaine Song: Yes!
There are a few initiatives we’re especially excited for! First is staking that has been launched through Stader. Stader is a modular staking platform that provides HBAR holders with liquid staking options. We anticipate it will go live soon and you can follow along with their progress on their Twitter.
We’re also excited to see more defi activity like DEXs come to market soon!
Bogdan Popa: Staking HBAR and DeFi activity, more than enough to keep our eyes on the Hedera ecosystem! 😎
Could you please share with our community some of the use cases that the Hedera blockchain offers?
Elaine Song: Hedera has a number of major use cases. The first is USDC on Hedera, which is native issuance of USDC on the Hedera network. We believe this asset is a perfect example of the speed and low fees of the Hedera network, making the USDC asset a reliable asset for transactions.
The second is on gaming. We recently announced a partnership with Ubisoft, which will allow for the gaming giant to use the Hedera network to advance blockchain/crypto gaming.
The network is also well-suited for ESG initiatives like carbon offsets, because the chain itself is carbon-negative.
Bogdan Popa:
All these 3 use cases are impactful, but the one that stands out the most in my eyes is the partnership with Ubisoft. I personally feel like the gaming industry has some catching up to do when it comes to implementing blockchain technology in the overall development.
Elaine Song: I agree! it’s definitely an exciting place and one we’re hoping to make good progress with.
Bogdan Popa: Elaine, before passing the torch to our awesome community members, I have one last question for you: How do you see 2022 unfold for Hedera? Can you give our community a sneak peak on your future plans and events?🗓
Elaine Song: I think 2022 will be the year of enterprise-grade Defi and accessibility, on Hedera! We have some use cases, whether they are staking, DEXs, lending, gaming, and other retail use cases coming to market this year.
It’s also the first year that the HBAR Foundation is actively providing support to the ecosystem, and we hope to see an explosion of founders building on the Hedera network!
Bogdan Popa: The year of enterprise-grade DeFi — I love the sound of that and I will definitely not be the only one interested in witnessing how 2022 will unfold for the Hedera ecosystem and HBAR Foundation!👏
Elaine, thank you so much for answering my questions!
Elaine Song: Of course, Bogdan!
Bogdan Popa: Now, it’s time to allow our fantastic community members to ask their questions!
We will pause the chat to give Elaine the time needed to answer your questions.🙏
Community members, ask away! 🎤
Community question #1: Community support is one of the biggest aspects of a project’s success. Most projects have programs that interact with their users. what are your specific plans to attract or expand the community and improve the user experience? And does your current project take into account the various inputs and demands of your community?
Elaine Song: Couldnt agree more that the community is so important. We’ve been doing more to communicate with our community (like doing AMAs like this!) We also recently started publishing our strategies on our blog as a way to keep people up to date with what we’re doing.
We also are really active on Twitter and always like hearing feedback
Community question #2: Partnership is always an important factor for every project. So who is your partner?are the benefits you get from those relatiionships?
Elaine Song: We believe that interoperability and partnership with other networks is really important.
Chainlink is actually a member of the governing council, and we’ve partnered with Filecoin as well.
This year, we’ll look at more ways to partner with ecosystem, either through new iniatives, bridge, etc.
Community question #3: Which area are you focusing on at the moment? (DeFi, Stake,Dapps,Nft, Metaverse,gaming..) and what is your goals in this year ?
Elaine Song: I focus on crypto econom — basically defi, staking, lending, etc. We have other funds that are geared towards other goals.
We have the consumer engagement fund, devoted to NFTs, Metaverse, gaming.
We have the payments and fintech fund, devoted to API-based payments, CBDCs, etc
And we have the sustainbility impact fund, which is focused on ESG.
These four funds work together to support more broad based growth of the Hedera network.
Community question #4: Each project has its own story. Wondering if you can share your story or inspiration for Hedera? What were the early days of the project like?
Elaine Song: Hedera had a different focus from our peers. While our peers focused on specific crypto use cases (trading, defi, lending), Hedera focused on strengthening the base protocol to make sure it can be a reliable DLT network.
There is no right or wrong way to grow, just that our objectives were different.
Now, we see that convering, which is awesome. We can now bring our enterprise grade tech to retail use cases, which is awesome!
Community question #5: Many projects have problems with UI / UX and this one turns off new users. How do you plan to improve the interaction with new users and with users outside the crypto space?
Elaine Song: This is sugh a great question! UI/UX is so important, especially in crypto.
First, from a protocol level, Hedera uses an account ID structure, rather than an address. So that makes it a bit more friendly for the user.
Second, the Foundation works with all our grant recipients to promtoe user experience as an important concept. So we hope that the products and services coming to market on Hedera take this seriously!
Bogdan Popa: Thanks a lot everyone for your questions! We’re building a very nice community 🥳
And of course a special mention to Elaine Song, it’s been great having you!
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