Hey everyone I'm Scott Cunningham aka
@scottcbusiness and today we're here
with Ian Friend
from Ferrum network where he's the
co-founder and ceo
thank you so much for being on the show
and uh do you just want to start off by
giving us a little bit of a introduction
about yourself
sure thanks so much for having me on
scottie it's pleasure to be here
love the uh love flag you have there um
thanks sure i'll give it i'll give a
little back background on myself
um and just sort of seguing into a farm
network what we're doing sort of a high
high level um i've been in uh blockchain
cryptocurrency
for about three years now first
as an investor and then professionally
uh first as a lawyer and then um
ultimately became the co-founder of farm
network back in this was in
mid-2018 is when we got our start
um prior to that i co-founded the
blockchain practice team at the law firm
i was working out in new york
and met my co-founder who is uh sort of
the technical mastermind behind ferrum
at a networking event he was working on
some interesting cross-chain
interoperability solution um
and it sounded uh quite promising a few
weeks really after we met we uh we won a
competition
to pitch the project to the main stage
of consensus which is this big
conference in new york and uh god that
was you know that was in may 2018
and it's kind of been a crazy ride ever
since
yeah wow it feels like so long ago back
in
2018 yeah um so for people who don't
know what pharam network is can you give
a brief introduction to what that's all
about
absolutely so pharam network is
an ecosystem of defy
tools that are designed to help
facilitate the mass adoption of
cryptocurrency
now one of the things that people have
been talking about since
i got into space and probably before my
time even was
you know how do we get mass adoption how
do people actually use this stuff but it
felt like no one was focusing on the
simple problems that everyday
users may face such as you know how does
one send cryptocurrency
right how do you know the this notion of
a
wallet address this is a strange and
complicated thing to refer average
people
so we've solved that problem with some
of the tech we've been we've we have a
lot of technology which i can explain
throughout the interview but
the point is no you know it sort of felt
like no one's been focusing on those
simple yet really you know fundamental
problems
um that would have been impeding
mainstream adoption that's what we're
trying to do so
we have a wallet a fiat on-ramp an
off-ramp in
africa we have a staking
system which is essentially a high-yield
decentralized savings account for all
erc20 tokens
and we have a host of other sort of
valuable user friendly
uh d5 products that we've launched that
are that are coming in the near future
yeah yeah how many uh like projects do
you guys currently have because i
i'm always seeing projects popping up
that are saying you're like yeah we're
now staking with pharam
and i'm seeing that like left and right
so it's pretty wild and that's why i
wanted to reach out to you guys because
i was like wow every project seems to be
sticking with ferum now so
how many projects are you guys actually
working with right now that's a good
quality to check my list it's got to be
over 20 by now
you know this is distinct the staking
thing
um sort of sort of came to us by
happenstance in a sense i mean
we built it we built this technology
which which what it does is it allows
participants to lock their tokens
and earn basically interest rate of
return or rewards based on how long they
stake for
but it's very flexible it's very
customizable so the aprs and
the length of time staking and all these
details can be customized
based on what the projects want so we
launched it for ferum back in
november and we did another round in
february
and we realized it's great for newer
projects it might not have their own
technology yet they might not have their
own utility but may have just done a
raise
and that's what a lot of this market is
right now and so
as soon as you started advertising that
hey you know we have this flexible
staking
mechanism for erc20 tokens it really
just took off like wildfire so now
i mean about it's been about a month of
us we're putting this out there and i
think we've signed up
over 20 client partners and uh there's
many more in the pipeline and
we want to keep this thing uh keep this
thing rolling as long as we can
yeah yeah yeah that's awesome that's
awesome so
what problem exactly does ferum set out
to
be the solution to
so like i was saying i mean i think
we've been talking about
mass adoption for years and years and
there's no simple
solution of mass adoption it needs to
happen on the layer one side with
scalability
issues of ethereum and bitcoin and i
think it needs to happen on the um
product side with making you know uh
things like onboarding people easier to
crypto
it needs to happen on with respect to
fiat on-ramp and on-ramps because you
still need
a means of of interacting with sort of
the old you know traditional
um world of finance so um
we we tackle those problems chiefly
through
uh our wallet which is called the
unifier wallet
we built technology called link drops
which allows users to send crypto
anywhere
over any medium using a link and what
this
does essentially means
that i can now send crypto over twitter
or telegram
or facebook even email and i don't need
the recipient's wallet address in
advance
what happens is the recipient clicks the
link they
they either download the wallet if they
don't have it or
um if they do have it they just click
accept and then i as a sender get a
notification that they've accepted and i
counter accept
essentially this solves the problem of
the fear everyone has when sending
crypto
you know because it's your transaction
in most cases
but we've built in what we call it a a a
double confirmation
which basically means that i'm gonna i i
can confirm that i'm doing the right
person you you confirm you're dealing
with the right person and only then does
it do i send the transaction on chain
yeah it's that kind of simple tool
that's very user friendly um it's
platform agnostic
uh doesn't require people to know wallet
addresses
that's the kind of thing that we're
focusing on
in our sort of is our quest to
help solve that problem of mass adoption
yeah yeah and i think that's actually
really really important because
uh for most of what i see trying to
solve that issue
is uh human readable addresses um
but you know there's still you know only
certain wallets work with that
et cetera et cetera so i think that's
really a really
unique interesting solution that you
guys have created and it also makes
sense because then
you know just anyone could be sending it
around on twitter and stuff like that so
i think that's
really really fantastic that you guys
are doing that um
so so in what ways is ferrum involved in
d5 is it mainly like staking or do you
want to just kind of uh
elaborate on that a little sure so
i mean we you know we've been focused on
the financial aspects of cryptocurrency
before d5 was even a term right i mean
we launched uh
fiat on-ramp and off-ramp with some sort
of defy
esque features back in 2019 which is
still a thriving business by the way in
in nigeria and
expanding into ghana uh but the the
um i think the primary examples
of our sort of defy arsenal so to speak
is
of course the staking right which is a
uh smart contract based staking works
for any erc20 token
um but we've just launched a new feature
into the unifier wall that i think is
just squarely within the
um sort of province of of d5
um and we call this swap drops it's the
same
concept as link drops and that it's a
transaction embedded in a link
but instead of a one-way send it's a
two-way
atomic swap
why is this unique and important for one
again this is done through a link that
it can be shared anywhere
so you can now enter into these swap
transactions over telegram
and and for two um you know i think
there's been a recognition in the
industry now
that we need we really do need to move
away from these centralized gatekeepers
centralized exchanges and
in the case of otc which is really what
the swap drops
product is solving the escrow right
middlemen
and so what swap drops allows you to do
is is enter into a risk-free otc
transaction using a shareable link that
can be shared anywhere
and by the way it's less gas fees and
uni swap
um and and it's you know it's completely
uh anonymous completely risk-free to
both parties
and um i think it that that to me
has the power to really change the otc
industry and that's what we're working
on now is really
marketing this product um showing people
um really what it can do and what it can
replace
and i'm excited to see where we can take
it
yeah yeah that's fantastic yeah i've
always said like i
i really appreciate swap exchanges and
how easy it makes it for everyone
um so being able to do that with a link
again is just absolutely fantastic and
especially that you can do without kyc
restrictions and all the other things
that come along with exchanges
so how exactly does the staking
uh work on ferrum i want to just dive
into that because i know a lot of
people who follow my channel are really
all about passive income so
let's talk about the like the staking
aspects and how that all works
yeah absolutely so you know ferrum
staking
is is really designed to be flexible and
customizable so
depending on what uh which project is
using the staking it might be slightly
different but
uh essentially it is what i you know i
would call
lock and earn type smart contract where
uh again participants um they
they uh uh opt into the staking it's
fully decentralized
they do it through metamask connecting
the smart contract like you would
connect to
you know unit swap um
they uh follow three or four easy
automated steps to stake you know how
many tokens they want to stake
and then they send it to that uh the
staking contract
and depending on how long they stake for
typically the longer they stay for the
more
interest or rewards they will earn and
then there will come a time
when the staking period ends or they
have the option to
withdrawal early and they just simply
unstake by following again simple steps
and they get their principal plus their
returns back right senpai automatically
sent back to the wall
they stake from uh so it's super simple
anyone could do it um and the great
thing is it's customizable so
you know you know we've had some
projects that they
you know they they they saw the merit in
long-term uh staking pools like a year
long and
with very high uh rewards so up as high
as 85 percent
we have some clients that prefer you
know a little bit of shorter period
with some you know lesser rewards right
and then so there's
there's sort of a flavor for everybody
but uh yeah hopefully that's a nice
nice overview for for you and your uh
your user uh
followers yeah yeah so like
i just want to make sure that everyone
is fully aware and uh and
able to get on and just get going right
away so it's just
you you get the application you can put
your
uh erc20 tokens on that are stakeable is
it only certain ones that your um
currently partnered with or or what does
that look like
right so you know
it would be great if we could just
enable staking for any any token kind of
like how you swap you can just
any tote and then someone can contribute
liquidity unfortunately doesn't really
work that way because you need
someone to contribute the rewards
um the essentially interest that people
will be earning from staking
and in all cases that's going to be
coming from the projects themselves
basically using some of their
the tokens and the reserves and the in
their marketing uh category of tokens or
what have you
um to provide those rewards for the
staking so
yeah you you it needs to be a
relationship with the project so it's
um you know we're working very closely
with the projects we you know
they're sort of like clients of ours but
it's also partnership in most cases
and we work with them to help structure
staking that's going to be the most
impactful and beneficial for them in
their communities based on you know
their token metrics and things like that
but um yeah it's uh it's been it's been
quite the ride this past four weeks just
by
seeing all the demand for for a product
of ours it's
really humbling and it's been great to
work with so many awesome teams out
there and i'm looking forward to
continuing to do it
that's awesome that's awesome so is it
mostly uh projects reaching out to you
or do you guys have projects in mind
that you're kind of looking into that
you want to have on farm
what is that process like right now yeah
so
um typically we uh
we actually get leads from the community
itself
you know ferom has an amazing community
built over the past
two years um they're really passionate
they love the project
um and they want to see us partner with
with different other projects that
they're that they're
part of we also offer a referral uh fee
um because we feel like anyone who helps
us
bring in a new staking partner a new
client um and we get some you know we we
ultimately do get um
money from this that they should share
in that by the way all the um
all the fees we uh earn from the staking
are
uh used to buy back ferum off the
secondary market
and we've bought back probably about
nearly sixty thousand dollars with the
firm already from the market
from this sitting in a wallet it's
verifiable we we publish the address and
everything so
um this does provide utility for ferrum
token you know we weren't really sure
early on whether it would take off and
so we were thinking okay should we make
stakers whose stakes say you know defy
pi which is one of the
clients we just worked with if they
stake d pipe should we make the users
also stake ferrum
and we thought ah i'm not sure we need
to add that that
sort of um that friction
or that requirement quite yet so let's
just do this sort of intermediate step
of okay well anyone you know
projects are paying for this let's use
it to to provide some firm utility and
it's uh turned out quite nicely i think
for everybody
yeah yeah it definitely sounds like a
win-win um
so how did how did ferum network
actually get its name
and or like what was the uh the idea
behind the name
and uh the original creation of it in
general
yeah so um pharam
actually means iron in latin
and we haven't talked about this at all
but
really what we're building towards
slowly but surely is an
interoperability protocol that runs on a
dag
so it's basically a high-speed uh
cross-chain network that will allow
users of say the unifier wallet
to exchange and transact any digital
asset
in milliseconds for near-zero fees um
fees are paid in ferrum as gas
uh so that's what we're building towards
right and that was the vision from
early early on when a name and my met in
you know new york back in early 2018.
um we've we've taken a bit of circuitous
route
but that's by design because we really
feel strongly that
launching a mainnet without any users
um and no products on it is is
essentially worthless
because you're not going to have anyone
using the mainnet like the vast majority
of mainnets out there
so what we wanted to do was build our
own useful products
like first cootie our african product
our african exchange
um you know fiat on-ramp and unifier
wallet our non-custodial mobile wallet
scale those up and then
launch the main net migrate those
products on top
and then provide the users the options
to either run transactions over the
ferrum network
or they can continue to run transactions
over ethereum we're not going to force
anyone to swap we're not going to do
that
that thing which i think is often a a
big mistake for project
but the benefit of um
running a transaction on the firm
network is you can use an erc20 token a
raptor synthetic version of
a bitcoin or rhapsodic version of
ethereum or ripple or binance chain
token et cetera
but the transaction is all running on
the same underlying dag based network
which is inherently faster and cheaper
than a blockchain and use as foreign as
gas
so uh how this relates to um and by the
way we're going to launch this mainnet
in ho
uh it should be early 2020. um we have
so much
on the roadmap and stuff coming up and
with staking taking off things have been
a little slower than we wanted
but how this relates to the name
okay how does this relate to the name
pharah ferro means iron
in latin and iron has a unique property
which essentially um causes
other elements to sort of fuse into
becoming iron given enough time
and so we kind of liken that to
the feral network itself which is
interoperably
network bringing networks together
all right so fi iron brings elements
together ferum network brings networks
together
that's that's the idea behind the name
yeah that makes sense yeah that's
awesome
um and and what are some of the like
next
big updates that you guys have in the
works i know you've uh you've been
talking a little bit about that but like
what are some
big updates that you got in the works
and maybe like the next six months or so
sure so um you know
we've been talking about staking for a
long time but the truth is we haven't
actually launched the staking
platform within the unifier wallet yet
but that is coming apparently next week
um and we'll start rolling out and we
have a backlog of so many clients that
we need to actually launch the staging
for so it's going to be
day after day of just boom like this
product launched our steak and the next
day that you know boom they did it
and i think we're getting a ton of users
and a ton of um
excitement uh just deriving from that
um shortly thereafter we're gonna launch
an initiative that i've been working on
along with um
a lot of very well connected people i
know in the space and it's going to be
this really
really exciting and valuable initiative
i can't tell i can't tell
folks too much about it but um it will
provide
um more benefits to holding ferrum token
right right now there's numbers of
benefits we're holding firm token you
essentially get
dividends um based on a number of
activities we do but that generates
tokens we we then send those tokens out
to anyone
who holds a hundred thousand more ferum
in their wallet this
is going to provide even more value even
more
monetary benefit and gains to those who
hold ferum
how that's going to happen and what it
is i'm not going to say yet
but it is very exciting i think it's
going to make a lot of noise
um really in the industry just based on
the partners we're bringing on board
with it
so that's coming shortly after the
staking by the way
um the the third thing that we're that
we're working towards
is a um
sort of the evolution of the swap drop
technology
which allows you to do risk-free otc
transactions of
the erc20 tokens we're going to enable
this such that you'll be able to do
risk-free odc transactions of erc20
tokens and fiat
so you will finally be able to sell your
altcoins
for real money
true that i think is huge um it
solves a huge problem in the crypto
space because as
everybody knows buying and selling all
coins is a huge pain you can rarely do
it with fiat
um and then when you want to uh you know
sell
when you want to sell your altcoin
position you have to go through a series
of exchanges and
do all those steps ease and everything
like that so we're
eliminating all that risk-free
otc of fiat and all coins
i think it's gonna be huge and it's
we're gonna launch that
um hopefully the next uh two
two three four months awesome yeah
because
um yeah just even just the amount of
like fees
for all the conversions that you have to
make to actually get it out is just uh
even that alone is is going to turn some
people off so having direct to fiat is
is going to be huge absolutely huge
um i can't even stress how big of a deal
that is i'm sure people watching
um we'd be thrilled to have that right
now um but yeah in the next few months
so that's that's amazing
where does uh where do you feel like
ferram network fits in with like
other similar networks and or do you
feel
like you're sort of like unique and how
how are you guys different
from from other like similar projects or
you know other staking
d5 models yeah i mean
you know i i uh i think about this a lot
because we're actually
working on a new website we want to
improve our messaging you know it's
one of the challenges we have as an
ecosystem project that does so much is
that there's no
simple comparisons you can't just be
like oh they're like a low cap chain
link
like because we're because we're doing
too much you know we have an exchange in
africa
we have a staking as a service business
we have a swaps
feature um that other projects that
would be that would be the standalone
projects
projects in a lot of cases but that's
just a feature in
all it right we have we have a
non-custodial wall that's like trust
wallet but with advanced
technology such as link drop so i mean
there's just so much going on
that i think a lot of it gets lost and
unless you're one of these people that's
going to dig deep
into ferum you're not going to pick up
on it when you read the website so
i'm reading the website um but there's
no simple comparison oh and then mainnet
comes out i mean then it's like then
it's like is it is it like a cosmos
because it's
um because it's an interoperability
network or is it like a polka dot but
way low cap
right i mean so there's you know the
comparisons could go on but it's
every every feature or every piece of
the ecosystem has
its own comparisons on competitors its
own markets
so that's our challenge is sort of that
messaging and then also finding real use
cases for this stuff and doing the
things that make sense from a business
standpoint but um
yeah hopefully the next uh week or so
we'll have a new website that's a little
bit more clear as to what's going on
what the value propositions are
because yeah that's the stuff that keeps
me up at night yeah fair enough
so like would you consider like all of
those projects
uh like competitors to yours in a
different
way or or would you only consider some
of them competitors
like like what is your what is your
perspective on that
yeah i mean we certainly have
competitors um across each of the
product lines i mean in africa we have
there's a set of
fiat on-ramp um competitor products
uh that we you know we go against
um you know unifier wallet i think
is probably you know the the nearest
competitor would be trust wallet the
trust wallet is
much bigger than us admittedly right um
so yeah there's competitors across the
product line but i tend to think of the
industry i mean
we're a nascent industry um
we're a small industry if you've been in
this space for long enough you sort of
get to know everybody
and so why not instead of um you know
doing underhanded things to compete
against each other why not why not do
why not find ways to just to help each
other and build each other up
and that's why i think we're doing in
large part with the staking
right i mean we're giving we're giving
staking to some even some newer projects
that may be unknown
a bit of a risk on our part but you know
i remember when theron was a new project
and people wouldn't give us the time of
day and i you know i i
and that didn't feel right to me it
doesn't feel right to me now so
i think as an industry we need a little
bit better is uh helping each other
because if we can
if we can grow the pie all right let's
grow the pie so more people come in
and that's that's better than than
backstabbing and
and trying to and trying to compete for
this small dwindling piece of the pie
that's how i think about competition in
crypto
yeah yeah i know that makes a lot of
sense to me i mean um
gary vaynerchuk has always been somewhat
of a role model of mine and he's always
said to build the biggest building not
try to
tear down the buildings around you so
that your building is bigger
um and um where do you see
pharam going in the next like year and
then maybe in the next like
three to five years i know it's hard to
look that far ahead in the crypto space
because you know it's
it's a wild wild west but um what do you
like what is the
general idea that you guys have going
forward in the next few years
yeah well i love the question because i
think as an industry
we need to do a better job of thinking a
little bit more long term
and that's not just on the product uh
project side that's on the investor side
too
i think there's just way too much focus
on short term returns and oh it doesn't
do
if it didn't do 5x in a week the project
is bad
right that's that's now the sentiment
now that the bull market seems to have
returned
and i'm just shaking my head thinking
god people need some patience
but gripes aside um
you know ferom has so much coming down
the pipeline
um aside from everything i just talked
about with the staking and then this new
initiative and
the fiat swaps
the mainnet to me is is going to become
the real game changer
because i think there is now
an extremely strong demand for dexes
for cross-chain um solutions
that i think is the next evolution of
the industry and we're actually
perfectly positioned
um to capitalize on that because the the
main net will come
sometime early next year and then we're
going to build a dex
on top of it and what that will mean is
um the industry will finally have a dex
that can compete
with the centralized exchanges which
have no problems doing cross-chain
exchanges because it's all centralized
but
um so the ferrum infinity dex we call it
is going to have those same capabilities
same features
but be far faster
um than say uniswap be far cheaper than
use ox it does not run on ethereum
uh it's gonna have an interface similar
to the centralized exchanges that
everybody
um is familiar and comfortable with
but it it won't have the scent you know
won't have the downsides of
centralization that are so well
documented so i think
that to me if we can if if we and it
doesn't have to be pharah by the way but
if the industry can build a dexter as
good as the best centralized exchange
it's it's going to be a huge game
changer and huge for for the industry so
that's what i'm most looking forward to
for those things the main net in the
decks
but it's a long way to go it's a long in
three to five years i mean gosh it's
hard to say but i mean we're
we're already building out an ecosystem
of of projects coming on
to ferums using our technology whether
it's staking or
we have we were talking another project
now about using some of our other tech
um so we're already thinking about d app
type um projects building on ferrum
so that's gonna be coming right i mean
we're you know we're a small
cap but we have huge aspirations and i
think um
given our track record of building
useful tech
being able to generate uh serious
revenue
onboarding many thousands of users um
you know i think i i'm hopeful that
people see that
um you know we're here to stay and we're
here for the long term
yeah awesome awesome well uh those are
all the uh
questions i had for uh regarding ferrum
i just have one last little like fun one
which is
if you guys could get any crypto
influencer to uh
to join fareham who would you guys uh
pick if you could if you could have
anyone join the team
join the team um that's a that's a great
question i mean i got i deal with
influencers all the time
um some i like better than others
uh that's a real tough one um
but i gotta i gotta give it up to
someone i'm very close with
he's been really good uh to pherom even
before people were giving us
much attention and and and he's become a
close friend of mine so
uh bitch shaman if you're watching
that's for you i would definitely
uh uh if anyone would would uh would
come on board it would be him
he's a really good guy he supported us
for a long time
um and and and i appreciate that forever
so uh
that's who i would choose he's an
unknown he's not really a known
influencer by the way he's
running okay fair enough but uh um
just just uh you know the big guys
forget the big guys you know i want to
go with the guys that are
that have been good to us and loyal to
us since the beginning so that's who i
would uh i would choose
that's awesome that's awesome i mean
it's always good to uh
you know stick with the people who stick
with you um so
where can everyone go to learn more
about uh pharam and where can they
follow ferum on social media
yeah sure so um we uh have twitter
a twitter account um at ferrum
pherum.network i believe it is our firm
network
we have our unifier wallet uh a twitter
which is at unifier wallet
um the most active place you can find us
is the telegram channel which is
uh just i guess foreign network official
i think um and you can also find me on
socials
um i'm i'm at ifriend05 pretty much
across
all the socials so you know you like
what you heard and you want to learn
more you can reach
out and um you know we'd love to have
you in the community
awesome awesome all right well everyone
uh make sure to go check that out
let us know what you think about ferrum
and everything we discussed today
make sure to go follow ian in the farm
network and
join the telegram and all that good
stuff again thank you so much for being
on the show
and um i'll i'll probably have to take
i'll probably have to look into it a
little bit more myself maybe
maybe grab a few bags of affair myself
no financial advice but i i i would i i
wouldn't be opposed if you did
awesome all right well thank you so much
for being on the show all right
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signing off cheers
