Our CEO, Marshall Hayner, recently sat down with the team from WazirX to celebrate them listing our first cryptocurrency, Metal (MTL), on their exchange! WazirX is one of the largest and most trusted exchanges in India; adding MTL to this exchange gives over a billion people access to our highly useful cryptocurrency and brings new people into the Metal ecosystem.
Marshall’s AMA with WazirX was one of the most active he’s ever participated in. Not only did Marshall give an excellent overview of Metal and Proton, but he also offered some new nuggets of information about both of these projects that our users will find exciting. Here are his answers to the 10 questions he was asked by the moderator:
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Marshall: What’s so exciting about [Metal] is it started with two dreamers trying to build a better PayPal. Now, almost 5 years later, companies like PayPal, Facebook, and other tech giants are copying Metal. We’re moving at light speed faster than ever with a team of over 50 people, venture funded, and PayPal is lagging behind – trying to catch up – not understanding the true value, which is: YOU.
Community drives cryptocurrency and the decentralized networks that power it. Together we are bigger than any tech company, any single entity; we build together, we fight together, and in the end, the crypto community wins together.
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Question 1: What are the best characteristics of Metal and Lynx that when merged produce an excellent project like Proton Chain?
Marshall: Lynx was a startup we acquired earlier this year, they were essentially the top EOS wallet at the time and they had started to build a network called Lynx Chain which I found really interesting. First and foremost it had the ability to get up to 4,000+ transactions per second. Second it had the ability to scale unlike Ethereum and many v1 smart contract networks. At the time, I had written a whitepaper for a blockchain I had planned to launch called “XID” – this was a blockchain that would embed identity and communicate with traditional banks and payment processing networks
Thinking back to my origin in crypto, I thought it so strange: if blockchain is a decentralized chain of messages, why not have traditional payment processing messages for card processors and banks?
I called up the CEO of Lynx, Fred Kreuger, and asked “I know I was talking about making a personal investment, but what do you think of this crazy idea – let’s talk about a merger.” Fred instantly said “YES!” So we rebranded Lynx Chain and XID as Proton and we got to work.
Today I’m happy to say we have really cracked the code on the future of money. As I anticipated, we can’t exactly have all the cool elements of traditional money; if we are to be viewed by the governments as such, we need to comply with existing laws and rules around currency, aka anti-money laundering, anti-fraud, and so forth to protect consumers and businesses.
So ultimately some of the best things came out of the Lynx <> Metal merger and the launch of Proton chain. Earlier this year, XPR was airdropped to MTL holders, and going into the future we plan to do more activity like this around MTL with more digital assets and rewards for MTL holders.
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Question 2: What new features will come to Metal Pay in 2021?
Marshall: In 2021 we’re really excited to launch a world version of Metal Pay that will be live not only in the US but also India, so we are coming! Among some amazing features you can expect is the Metal Pay debit card with integration for Apple Pay and GPay – this will be a hybrid custodial and non custodial version that can host Proton and Proton assets like XMT (MTL on Proton) as well as XBTC (wrapped Bitcoin moving faster than lightning).
We’ll also be unveiling banking support for Europe, Canada and potentially one or two more countries (India 🤞). Additionally, you will begin to see the Proton authentication features as well as more enhanced capability of XMT (MTL) inside the Metal Pay app. Currently holders of 10k+ MTL inside Metal Pay get zero fee trading across all pairs! Forget Authy, Google Authenticator, and separate apps for MFA, we’re making it crypto-based with PSR (Proton signing request) inside Metal Pay 3.0 – that means higher security, and one tap authentication with biometrics.
I’d say more but I don’t want to spill all the secrets, but expect lending/borrowing in Metal Pay 3.0 in 2021 as well!
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Question 3: MTL is on ERC20 now, and Metal is planning to convert it on to the Proton chain. The question is: what are the benefits of the Proton chain?
Marshall: Proton chain (XPR) is really incredible; it’s MTL’s sister blockchain and functions like a bridge between existing blockchain technology and banking/card processors. So think of all the dApps we know and love today; where can you enter your credit card or bank account information to interact with these? The reality is that you can’t, there is no interface for such things – that access is permissioned and walled off from the blockchain world.
We frequently refer to crypto as a “walled garden” – that’s one of the reasons it’s difficult for newcomers, because they may not know about WazirX or Metal Pay yet, or maybe we are not live in their respective countries. What is very cool about Proton is now your dApp can talk to your credit card, debit card, or bank. Your dApp wants to add 5000 INR to your account from your bank? It couldn’t be done before, but now imagine this: using the Proton network, WazirX, Metal Pay, Coinbase, or really any processor, can utilize the Proton network to receive that payment request and top up fiat funds directly into the blockchain.
Proton is the bridge between the old financial world and the new; it replicates Visa/Mastercard and traditional bank payment messaging on the blockchain and allows anyone to interact with anyone.
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Question 4: What benefits does Metal Pay bring to merchants and service businesses?
Marshall: Metal Pay really opens up the potential for traditional merchant services; with the ability for anyone to send or receive crypto, it introduces the concept of seamless digital cash. In a post-Coronavirus world, we are now realizing the real potential for this as cash is really seeming outdated. In India alone, we have seen the government confiscate large bill notes, causing all sorts of undue stress on the public.
With Metal Pay it is a true crypto PayPal that is about to become global. Want to set up your merchant account with no merchant approval? Want to accept payments globally? Want to take an irreversible bearer bond (digital cash) over the web? No problem with Metal Pay!
We aim to become a global financial services company with access worldwide 24/7. Unlike your traditional bank, we never shut off and we provide even better service. As Bitcoin, MTL, XPR, WRX, ETH, etc., become more and more popular, would it not make sense that your bank treated all money equally instead of discriminating against you for being a crypto believer?
We believe that you deserve to be rewarded, that’s why we reward payments inside the Metal Pay app with MTL via something known as PoPP, or “Proof of Processed Payment.”
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Question 5: Does Proof of Processed Payments have any relation to Proof of Stake or Proof of Work?
Marshall: That means that when you pay, you get paid – sounds pretty great, right? This feature has been live for almost three years now in the US, and we’re coming for India and the world!
Proof of Processed Payments is a concept that was first tested inside Metal Pay and will be expanded with the Proton network using the concept of DeID (Decentralized Identity). Once we can begin to embed identity into the blockchain all sorts of digital assets can be minted on different types of financial events or otherwise – such as accessing certain areas of the web or physical spaces.
We believe this is the next big movement unlocking value for human-based things, like making payments or going about your daily life. While the original concepts of proof-of-work and proof-of-stake are used to secure the networks, how do we create minting mechanisms that everyone can participate in? This is how PoPP was born, and we expect to grow this far into the future with MTL and XPR.
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Question 6: What is the difference between Metal Pay and its competitors?
Marshall: If you use PayPal for crypto, the first thing you’ll realize is: it’s not real crypto, it’s just price exposure, and you can’t even pay for anything with it yet. Being visionaries at Metal, we’ve thought far into the future beyond Facebook or PayPal, so we launched far before them. Not only do we have over 40 cryptocurrencies inside our app, we have had mainnet capability and rewards far before the other competitors even thought about launching them.
What you can expect in Metal Pay is an experience like your traditional bank, paired with crypto access, and soon global access and a KILLER UI/UX, which I find to be just beautiful. And with Proton we will be making our system interoperable with every major crypto exchange, wallet, processor, and bank. We are not only trying to innovate in blockchain and crypto, but we’re also trying to innovate in design around financial services, trying to create a more fun and rewarding plus visually stunning experience. Metal in many ways is the Apple of crypto – we’re pulling out all the stops.
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Question 7: Will MTL staking be available in future?
Marshall: MTL staking will become available soon on Proton network as XMT, more to come on this 🔜.
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Question 8: MTL claims that the transactions can be done by anyone, anytime for free. But since it runs in Ethereum blockchain how do you overcome the gas fees?
Marshall: We overcome these limitations in two ways:
1) We use off-chain transactions inside Metal Pay, which easily scale well over 10,000+ transactions per second.
2) We use the hyper-fast Proton network, which can wrap any Ethereum asset via proton.bloks.io and soon directly inside the Proton Wallet as well as Metal Pay.
For Proton, we just did a stress test last week and got up to about 1,200+ transactions per second with no major issues; we could easily push this over 4,000 which is faster than any blockchain we’ve ever seen before. In fact, it was #1 on blocktivity for a few days while we conducted our stress test.
If you want to check it out, download the Proton Wallet in the App Store or Play store and create an @name – you can move XBTC faster than Bitcoin could ever move on Lightning, it’s incredible and you could send a single satoshi with no gas fee. Prior to Proton, I’ve never seen anything like that done before on-chain; but don’t take my word for it, try it out for yourself.
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Question 9: Metal offers a prepaid debit card, which allows us to pay with crypto in our day to day life. But to what extent might this be useful for common people who mostly use fiat currency?
Marshall: We think this is highly valuable for several reasons:
1) BTC, MTL, XPR, WRX and other crypto is rapidly gaining steam in the international spotlight. As they [gain traction] as forms of stores of value, they will become more and more commonly used with money as well as providing a simple stream to move between fiat currencies such as INR to USD or really any world currency.
2) Stablecoins, or what I call “cryptocurrency” (I think there are three types of crypto we see today: commodity, currency and security), will become the future landscape of all digital payments.
In fact you will see the central bank of India, the central bank of the United States issue their own government backed digital currencies within the next few years, and you can quote me on that. As that happens, platforms like Metal Pay and WazirX will become INVALUABLE for processing payments. As existing financial institutions scramble to catch up, we will see acquisitions, new laws forming, and all sorts of exciting things happening. Most importantly, the web will completely transform into what we call web3 – the Internet of Value.
Web1 was content, web2 was social media and interactivity between people, and the third web we are witnessing right now will be built on the blockchain.
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Question 10: How do MTL & XPR contribute towards the current financial system?
Marshall: MTL acts as a cryptocurrency that is really one for the people; a crypto-commodity that anyone can earn by downloading and using the MTL app. Soon it will be interoperable with all platforms thanks to Proton. PoPP works on a concept of issuing digital assets around identity and payment flows. Now, with the introduction of Proton, we can safely store identity on-chain as you have seen.
In this new financial system, we will witness the beginning of universal basic income, decentralized identity, and decentralized financial services. MTL is sort of like the digital gold of that vision, and XPR like the oil in the machine. XPR acts as the underlying network to store consumer and corporate identity, and communicates payment messaging between legacy institutions and eventually devices with IoT capabilities.
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As you can see, Marshall gave some exciting answers to really important questions. We were encouraged by the response and enthusiasm we saw from the WazirX community, and we can’t wait to talk with them again!
If you want to know more about WazirX, be sure to follow them on Twitter here. Marshall is also always active and accessible on social media, be sure to give him a follow! And as always, if you have any other questions or comments, let us know by reaching out to us on social media: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook.
🤘 Your friends at Metal 🤘
