Q1 2021 Progress Report

Note: below is the summary transcript of the quarterly report, there might be minor grammatical discrepancies as we have decided to follow the original video transcript for the best understanding. For the original video, you may watch it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7GWBVEaN_c

Dear Pundians,

Thank you for those participating in the Q1 2021 video report session. We’re going to update you on the progress we made and the outlook of Q2.

Here’s the agenda:

Introducing Danny Lim

Danny Lim, Co-Founder and CFO of Pundi X, is the special guest of the Q1 2021 report session. Danny has a background of Finance, Accounting and Legal, and working experience in Baidu, the largest search engine in China, and Lenovo before co-founded Pundi X.

Danny and Zac met in 2014, with the similar background and same aspiration in FinTech, he decided to join Zac’s startup after a few meetups and the two of them have been working together ever since. Pundi X is their third startups.

Known more as the person behind the scene, Danny as the CFO of Pundi X deals with numbers to make sure the company is up and running and help the management team to make the right decision at the right time.

XPOS

We have extended the XPOS from hardware devices to software deployments by integrating with the major point-of-sales companies including Verifone, Ingenico and PAX.

Take PAX for example. Anyone with an Android POS device powered by PAX can simply download XPOS software from the PAX app store and enable crypto payment along with VISA, Master card, Apple pay and Samsung Pay. We are doing the same thing with Ingenico which is soon to launch its own app store.

XPOS also powers softwares including PayPal Here. Using PayPal to accept payment to buy crypto currencies is already possible with XPOS.

XPOS deployment

One of our deployments is working with Maker Foundation’s DAI-Agent project, which is made for merchants who are interested in spreading the usage of stablecoins and cryptocurrencies in local markets. This project is active now in Ghana.

In the US, we are getting good momentum from merchants and users, thanks to not just our existing distributor, but also our new distributor Arro Foundation.

Our other distributor, BTCKing, works hard on pushing XPOS usage in the US and West African markets.

In UAE, we are working on activating 100 XPOS Handy with ZPAE.

We are also seeing interesting uptakes in the Japanese market, where XPOS are seen and used in comic festivals, restaurants and more.

New collaborations with companies are in progress. After communicating closely with the custom office, now XPOS is officially in the Turkish market.

These are some of the groundwork that we do to comply with the local regulations and the compliances of Singapore. We work very closely with our distributors and hope to build a strong relationship with them. We work on making sure the XPOS is fully compliant and the distributors can work with us with peace of mind.

Here are some sharing on XPOS transactions made in Q1 2021.

Here is an infographic that one of our dedicated community members, Claudio, shared with us. There is a big increase in social media engagement. Thank you to our long time supporters and welcome new comers.

  • Incentivize Crypto Usage

The idea to make XPOS a node has been discussed for a long time, a mining device, a device that can earn rewards for actively participating in transactions and governance.

We think that XPOS is able to play the role as a validator or a delegator to the Function X mainnet. Which means, the more XPOS are powered on, the more secure the mainnet is.

With the purpose to incentivize XPOS as a mining device, we will be able to announce a date in Q2/Q3 2021. The merchants can start mining FX and PUNDIX when their XPOS are powered on and run actively.

In sum, XPOS merchants not just earn from the transactions, but also from the token rewards. The reward period will be 180 days.

We may also increase the XPOS price for the new distributors, not for the existing distributors. The new pricing of XPOS will be announced when ready.

PUNDIX token

Redenomination Swap

The discussion of token redenomination has been going on a while internally and we have asked the community’s opinion regarding this and have got much support from the community.

There are only two things changed after the token redenomination:

  1. The token ticker is changed from NPXS to PUNDIX
  2. The total token supply was 258 billion and it is now 258 million after the token reduction

The value has not changed.

One of the reasons why this token redenomination took place is that we’d like to accelerate the DeFi journey. By doing this, we are able to tap into the existing decentralized financial structure easier and fit better to the future development of our mainnet.

The token redenomination is also part of our plan for the token mining.

Details of token reduction Q&A see here.

As for the question of when the price of PUNDIX will be shown on different platforms, we have been communicating with relevant parties. We cannot dictate when but to expect their decisions to announce when the time is right.

Also special thanks to CoinGecko for supporting us and helped to compile everything as much as they can. We have been communicating with the exchanges and there are sometimes things that we cannot say because we have to let the exchanges make the announcement first. Rest assured that it’s been proven that all the major exchanges have come out to support.

I would like to thank the team for really getting the job done and very importantly to thank the community for being so patient.

Reminder for the on-chain swap, which means that there will be transaction fees charged by the blockchain, which Pundi X and Function x Foundation don’t take a single cent. So please also prepare some ETH if you do the swap on-chain.

How to swap NPXS to PUNDIX see here. The token swap is available from now to Mar. 29, 2022 at the ratio of 1000 to 1.

It’s fair to say that the recent value increase is a global phenomena. We see the growth in Korea, in Central America, in the U.S., and thanks to the longtime supporters and newcomers to our community, a statistic shows that we have been the best performing token in 2021 for the top performing tokens.

Thank you for believing in our vision, what we have done and what we’re gonna launch in the future.

Quarterly burn and Buyback

The token buyback is voluntary action by the management and the founders which we have been doing in 2018 and 2019. We restarted the token buyback in 2020 and four of the token buybacks have successfully hit the target. This happens when the price of the PUNDIX token or FX token hits a particular price and then we’ll go into the market to buy a certain amount of token that reduces circulating supply.

We are planning to conduct the fifth token buyback of 2021 once PUNDIX hits 15 dollars and FX to 75 cents.

The token burn (token removal) is something that we do quarterly. According to a third-party, community monitoring report, we have now burnt about 100 million US dollars worth of NPXS tokens. The next token burn will be on the 10th of April and the amount is to be announced.

f(x)Wallet

f(x)Wallet, the blockchain wallet that allows users to own their private keys, is launched officially in the App Store and Google Play. Here are the 5 interesting features of f(x)Wallet.

  1. Function X testnet: It is still showing testnet and will switch to mainnet as we launch mainnet sequence;
  2. Swap: You can swap ERC20 tokens.
  3. Crypto Bank includes our own token re-denomination swap for NPXS to PUNDIX. It is on-chain so there will be fees for the ethereum blockchain.
  4. Deposit: It’s also part of Crypto Bank where you can deposit tokens on f(x)Wallet to earn interest.
  5. Purchase: this feature allows users to purchase cryptocurrencies via various payment methods such as Apple Pay, Google Pay etc. provided by Ramp Network.

Staking

We have published the staking guide and the introductions of staking in the last two weeks.

Function X: March Hash Out- Part 1- The journey of Decentralized Finance and Staking

Function X: March Hash Out- Part 2- A guide to participate in Function X staking

We want to take this stage as the entry stage as the education and adoptions once we incentivize our community to embrace decentralized networks and decentralized finance. This is our first goal.

The second is to cultivate the necessary risk and reward mindset. Nothing is free in the network so you need to have the right mindset about risk, reward and responsibility.

We are designing a series of staking stages, such as entry stage, government stage and participation stage. Right now, we’re about kicking off the entry stage.

The main purpose is to make people get used to what it is like when using the decentralized network, how to set up staking, harvesting and collateralization of assets. That’s our goal for this entry stage.

We have allocated 10.5 million FX tokens which today’s total value is around 4 million US dollars. This 10.5 million FX is from the leftover portions of the 2019 FX staking.

10.5 million FX tokens will allocate 66% to PUNDIX holders and 34% for FX holders.

Around 400,000 US dollars worth of FX token will be distributed to the PUNDIX and FX token stakers per week during the staking period.

The whole staking program will take 203 days, which is around 29 weeks, and will be divided into two periods. The first is the staking calculation period and the second is the staking unlock period.

From 6th of April until 15th of June, users can stake PUNDIX and FX tokens. The staking rewards will be accumulated. And there’s the unlocked period. If you claim your tokens between 6th of April to 15th of June, you claim your 5% tokens immediately and the rest 95% of them will switch to the unlock token account. The locked tokens will be released every 7 days for 5%, so it will take 19 weeks to be fully unlocked.

Here’s an example of how it works:

Assume Alice claims 100 FX on day 1, 5% which is 5 FX will be released immediately and 95%, or 95 FX, will be unlocked in every seven days. On day 8 of the first week, 5% or 5 FX will be unlocked, then on day 15 another 5% will be unlocked and so on.

During this unlock period, users can choose to claim the unlocked tokens any time before week 19. Let’s say Alice didn’t claim her token on day 8 but on day 22, she can claim 15 FX at once.

For your information, since it is based on the smart contract, every action needs a transaction. In short, no claim, no token.

There are also deadlines for the periods. Please read our article Function X: March Hash Out- Part 2- A guide to participate in Function X staking to find out when is the last day to claim the tokens and when is the last day to claim the unlocked tokens in order to protect your rewards and not let it forfeited.

For the entry stage, no impermanent loss nor penalty placed, so users can choose to opt in any time without obligations. We are trying to get this thing done as easily as possible and try to lower the barriers for everyone to participate. Please bear with us for the clumsy baby steps at the beginning of this DeFi journey.

Last but not least, please do your own research to be safe with your investments.

This is a rather big topic. Let’s take the point-of-sales system for example. When users make transactions, the pos systems or device needs to upload the transactions to the network through the internet and later on confirm the transactions through the payment gateway.

If we divide the processes into two parts, the first part it’s the uploading part, which needs to go through the internet or the network. The second part is to go through that network and send the transactions for the payment gateway to go through. In this example, with every transaction, we will send a request through our Function X network to the PUNDIX network, and then we will go through a payment processing process, which is a payment gateway or authentications.

In this case, we can see FX token as the network or the internet fee and PUNDIX token is used for the payment gateway, which is more like a VISA transaction fee.

The potential of course is huge as everyone needs to make transactions every day. We want to extend this so-called decentralized strategy of how blockchain grows to our upcoming XPOS growth strategy. As mentioned, XPOS mining will be possible and the deployment of XPOS is growing, more transactions will be made. And, with the launch of FX mainnet, users will be able to enjoy a faster, cheaper and more accessible network served by Funciton X while creating more utility of both FX and PUNDIX tokens.

Faster payment processing speed and clearer payment gateway could bring crypto payment and the crypto adoptions to the next level.

In short, with our upcoming functions of FX mainnet and mining on XPOS, more PUNDIX tokens and more FX tokens will be used.

Function X Mainnet

FX mainnet launch will not be delayed anymore. Right now, we are preparing for the launch, we, as me, you, and every FX holder.

We will collectively launch the mainnet.

The security of the network is the most important thing because if a malicious attacker attacks the system, everything that we built for, including the value of the token, will go down like a waterfall.

So how do we secure the network?

We will launch the network by securing it together with all the token holders. The magic number is 75 million FX.

Once we can get 75 million FX staking in the pre-governance staking, it shows 20% of FX token holders are participating in the staking, which means that the reward is good enough (right now the collective reward is 4 million US dollar worth of FX for 10 weeks) to mobilize

20% of the token to go into on-chain staking as so to secure the network.

More tokens securing the network the better, but to be realistic, we believe that for one out of every five tokens participating in the network is a good enough figure. We have used several blockchain as reference including Ethereum 2.0.

On the 6th of April, Tuesday next week Singapore time, the staking will commence and once we have over 75 million FX being staked in the staking pool, the launch will happen. This 75 million FX will be moved to stake on the validator on the mainnet, meaning that everyone that participates will help to secure the mainnet, by then, we will be creating and confirming blocks together and the first block will be introduced right away.

Once we secure the network and the mainnet will start to mine the first block. We will see on the explorer the first block of the network being created. When the first block is created, there will be tokens being mined as well in every block, which is the nature of proof of state network. The miners, which are the validators and the delegators in our case, will be earning rewards.

Both PUNDIX token and FX token are moving into DeFi oriented tokens whereby holders will be able to earn rewards from XPOS as a mining service. You can also earn rewards by providing liquidity on Uniswap which we have not touched about but will announce it in the coming weeks as well. You will obviously earn FX tokens through participating in governance.

The reason why we choose this step is because the security of the network is very critical. Once we launch the mainnet, we want to make sure that the FX tokens are essentially voting power.

Therefore, we need at least 20 of the community members to be part of the voting powers.

Next week, we will build a countdown timer to count the number of FX tokens being staked in the reward pool that starts on April 6th. Once 20% of the FX tokens are being staked in the pool, we will kick start the mainnet launch. That is the stage one of what we call the governance of the FX core.

The FX Core is the mother of all Function X blockchain.It is the first Function X blockchain and the one connecting all blockchains that will be created on Function X in the future.

The second stage is XPOS on FX core. Right after we launch the governance of FX core and jointly govern the Function X mainnet together, we will then plug XPOS into the mainnet. This means that everything will then be recorded on-chain. This is the second stage and what we call a stepwise launch which we learned through Ethereum 2.0. It is a practical launch solution and a process with huge community participation.

Those that are part of this launch will be rewarded with extra tokens and for those of you that have tried and participated in our beta 1 and beta 2, you will be prioritized.

The third stage is the access to the multi-chain, synthetic tokens and the multi-validator. At this stage the blockchain will not just be secured together by the community, it will also be able to be used in real life. All the transactions whether via XPOS or f(x)Wallet will be viewed on FX Explorer live.

In the next few weeks, we will first publish an article about this multi-stage mainnet launch for a more detailed explanation. Then, on April 6th, the staking process will kick-start. It is a single-pairing pre-governance staking which is a safe staking process. However, you are strongly encouraged to read about it and do your own research.

Once that staking hits 20% of FX token supply, we will start the mainnet.

This mainnet launch could happen in days after 6th of April or 1–2 weeks later depending on when we hit that 20% participation then we switch on mainnet within 7 days of that.

Once we put on the mainnet, all transactions will be public and irreversible, so we need to make sure everything is going smoothly and not controlled or used by malicious hackers. We need to take things step by step and educate new users/crypto beginners as it is very important to our mainnet blockchain and even mining on XPOS. This is a steep learning curve and we have been taking a lot of effort on it. Learn it, understand it fully, and take things in a holistic way.

  • Welcome all of the new holders and new XPOS users. We have been a growing community and thank you for your continuous support.
  • We have seen a growth in XPOS deployment with more master distributors and XPOS will be a mining machine that will earn reward for distributors and merchants.
  • Thank you to the community for supporting and approving our new PUNDIX token through the polls, and we have done the swap successfully with support from the Exchanges and wallets.
  • Next, we will continue our quarterly token burn and the next burn will be next Saturday. We will also continue our voluntary buyback.
  • The staking will start on April 6th whereby you can stake PUNDIX and FX to get FX. Once the FX staking pool hits 20% of the FX token supply, we will start the mainnet.
  • f(x)Wallet is now available in App Store and Google Play. There are lots of DeFi features and you can also stake and receive interest.
  • The Function X mainnet will start the countdown officially on April 6 and we encourage everyone to stake if you have FX. We need 20% of the staking amount to kick-start the blockchain. Together we can help secure this decentralized network. It is very important to have no one, including the foundation, to control the blockchain; therefore we need more stakers in the blockchain.

Happy Easter and stay safe.