Gate.io AMA with XDC-To support a wide range of novel blockchain use cases

Time: December 27th, 2022, 13:00 AM (UTC)

Gate.io hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with the Director of Integration, Jon McBee, in the Gate.io Exchange Community.

Official Website: https://xdc.org/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/XDCFoundation

Guest

Jon McBee—the Director of Integration

Q&A from Gate.io

Q1:Could you provide us a brief overview of the XDC Network?

Jon: The XDC Network is an enterprise-grade, EVM-compatible Layer 1 Network equipped with smart contracts. Our Mainnet went live in June of 2019, and we have been operating successfully as a Proof of Stake fork of Ethereum for the past three years. As a fork of Ethereum, the XDC Network reaches consensus through a delegated proof-of-stake (XDPoS) mechanism, which allows for two-second transaction time, near zero gas fees, and over 2,000 transactions per second (TPS). While we are an open source public network that anyone can build on, we have an overarching focus on disrupting global trade finance as a specific use case, which I can talk more about shortly.

Q2: What are some of the primary use cases and capabilities of the XDC Network?

Jon: XDC Network is a premier blockchain in the trade finance industry. In September of 2021 the XDC Network had the first ever trade finance NFT, which were NFTs minted on the XDC Network that were backed by trade finance assets. This past July a layer two on the XDC Network named XDCTEQ released a security token called TRADA, which is the first ever trade finance asset backed security token. TRADA is interesting because it uses invoice factoring to open up new funding opportunities to companies around the world while also opening up access to a new type of asset to retail investors around the world (more on TRADA in a bit). These use cases have set a precedent for blockchain to play a major role in closing the trade finance gap and in opening up new asset classes for institutional and retail investors.

Today about 90% of global trade finance is handled by 13 banks, and these 13 banks tend to be more willing to deal with large companies making global trade finance had to access for Micro/Small/Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). Furthermore, MSMEs make up for 90% of global businesses, 60-70% of global employment, and 55% of GDP in developed countries. The XDC Network is focused on democratizing access to global trade finance for MSMEs, giving these companies access to the same types of funding that the larger companies have access to, while also opening up the funding side to retail investors. For context, the global trade finance market size is estimated to be about $11.6T USD by 2028.

Q3: Can you talk about some of the projects built on XDC and what industries they are in?

Jon: Certainly, while the network was built for trade finance and enterprise, there are so many more types of projects being built on it. As I mentioned before XDC Network is an EVM compatible layer one with a proven track record of operating our delegated proof-of-stake (XDPoS) consensus, so any EVM compatible project could deploy to our network using the tech stack they are familiar with while only needing to change the network ID, rpc url, and prefix for the wallet address from 0x to XDC.

As I mentioned above, TRADA is a very cool project built on XDC. TRADA token is the first trade finance backed security token, allowing retail and institutional investments in real-world trade finance assets. Specifically TRADA is backed by invoices and takes advantage of invoice factoring to generate a yield for investors.

We also have an on-chain oracle provider called Plugin, which is a fork of Chain Link, that allows people to own oracle data feeds that can be consumed by smart contracts on the XDC Network.

We have a decentralized file storage project called StorX that takes advantage of the decentralization of the XDC Network to offer a secure and decentralized cloud base file storage solution.

We have an ISO20022 messaging platform called Impel that allows banks who have adopted the ISO20022 messaging format standard to provide fast financial messaging and settlement options through a simple API.

We have a project called Comtech Gold that provides retail and institutional access to digitized gold.

Anyone interested can find more information here https://www.xdc.org/ecosystem

Q4: What are some of the major accomplishments the XDC Network has had in the last 1-2 years?

Jon: The XDC Network has unique affiliations with the following global trade organizations. XDC Network was invited to become the first blockchain member (and is currently the only Layer 1 network) of the International Trade and Forfaiting Association (ITFA). It was founded in 1999 as a worldwide trade association for companies, financial institutions and intermediaries engaged in global trade, supply chain and receivables financing. Its members work together to originate and distribute trade-related risks.

XDC Network joined the DNI Initiative in November 2021 and provides the needed blockchain structure and interoperability for financial institutions to communicate across various platforms and ecosystems. The association was formed by the ITFA, and it aims to fully digitize trade documents and negotiable instruments as well as integrate them into existing processes.

XDC Network was selected in 2021 as the first blockchain ecosystem member of the

Trade Finance Distribution Initiative (TFDi), a consortium of the world’s leading banks and non-bank financial institutions established by the ITFA for the purpose of liquifying trade finance.

2022 Milestones:

March - the XDC Network became the first blockchain member of the Blockchain Supply Chain Association.

April - one of only a handful of blockchains mentioned in a World Trade Organization feature entitled “The Promise of TradeTech: Policy approaches to harness trade digitization”

April - Panama officially approved XDC, the XDC Network’s utility token, as one of only several that can be legally used in the country - including paying taxes and private transactions.

July - TRADA Token launch

September - XDC Network featured at ITFA Porto

October - XDC Network named a Fintech Finance Award Finalist

In 2022 the XDC Community created the XDC Network Improvement Proposal (XIP) process, which is focused on decentralization of the decision making around the core protocol.

Throughout 2022 the XDC Network saw 525% growth in smart contract deployment, signifying continued growth in developer engagement on the network.

Q5: What is the outlook for the network in 2023 and beyond?

Jon: In Q1 of 2023 the XDC Network will release the XDC 2.0 upgrade to mainnet after a full year of beta testing. XDC 2.0 brings military grade security to the network with a byzantine fault tolerance capable of identifying bad actors autonomously and slashing them almost immediately. This is an important security measure as node operators must stake 10M XDC in order to operate their node, and slashing nodes burns those staked XDC. This upgrade will also include forensic monitoring. More can be read about the upgrade here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2108.01420.pdf

Also in Q! 2023 the XDC Foundation will be launching a major website upgrade to further aggregate resources for the XDC Community. This website will include easier access to developer tools and resources, enhanced high level network information, and learning opportunities for everyone. The existing website can be found here: https://www.xdc.org/

We will continue our focus on growing our developer community. We have had a strong presence in hackathons in 2022 and will continue that focus through 2023. We will continue to foster increased participation and awareness of XIPs. And we will continue to engage with web 2 developers via developer-facing bounty programs, onboarding them to the XDC Network as they earn money building on the XDC Network.

From a dApp point of view the XDC Network will see increased TVL through an increase in DeFi applications building on the XDC Network. We will also see more dApps being built out that focus on trade finance, ESG, Tokenization, Supply Chain, and other industries.