Hotbit AMA Recap: Shadows Network Head of Product — Patrick Kim
Brief Information
Shadows is a hub for issuing, trading, lending and borrowing synthetic assets. Hotbit is a cryptocurrency exchange founded in January 2018, currently supports 6 languages and has accumulated 1,000,000+ registered users from more than 170 countries and areas all over the world.
Hotbit AMA Host — Cyrus: Hello, everyone. I am sure you all are very excited for today’s AMA session. Let’s welcome Patrick Kim, Head of Product of Shadows Network to introduce 【Shadows Network: A Synthetic future on Polkadot】to us in AMA.
Here is our AMA session today,
1. Online interview.
2. Free Q&A session by Patrick and Community members. Patrick will pick some good questions with 10 USDT each.
Patrick: Hey everyone! Thank you for having me here today.
Online interview
Hotbit AMA Host — Cyrus：Welcome to the Hotbit Community Patrick. Thank you for being with us today. Let’s begin!
Could you introduce yourself and the Shadows Project in Layman’s Term?
Patrick：Hey everyone. Excited to do this AMA and officially connect with the Hotbit and Shadows community. As some of you know I joined the Shadows team as head of product.
Quick background on myself, native Californian that loved tech and business as a kid. Life took me to NY, where I started my career to pursue these two passions on Wall St. starting with JP Morgan. Over the past 18 years, I’ve worked on countless number of exciting technology projects in the wealth management, fintech, and private banking industry for companies such as Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Credit Suisse, TIAA-CREF, IBM, AdvisorEngine, and others.
Shadows is an extraordinary DeFi project aimed at bringing more financial investment options to the crypto community. Specifically, derivatives, which can also be called synthetics. I’ll try to make this as easy as possible to understand. First of all, the current derivatives market is an estimated $1.4 quadrillion global market. Talk about massive potential. Second, a derivative is a financial instrument that allows investors to hedge or speculate against a real asset without actually holding it. The most common products you may have heard of are futures, options, and commodities.
Let me provide a real-life example. Let’s say you’re the CEO of a ship building company and one of the core materials you use is steel. If the prices of steel were to increase significantly in the future, it would hurt your business profits. That’s where a type of derivative called a futures contract would be used for steel to hedge these types of risks. The contract would protect your company in this scenario. However, if steel prices were to go in the opposite direction your company would be paying for this contract and the counterparty would benefit from this contract. So in summary, we would open up the world of derivatives to crypto holders such as yourself. As a user you could buy Gold, TSLA stock, or any other derived product without actually holding it.
Hotbit AMA Host — Cyrus: Thanks for the introduction. Let’s start my questions. I understand that you come from traditional finance. How did you get into crypto & DeFi?
Patrick: 2013 was the first time I started looking into bitcoin and the concept of a decentralized digital currency made a whole lot of sense to me. I was interested in the inner workings, so two friends and I invested together to make a few mining rigs to mine BTC and LTC in my NYC area apartment. With overheating issues of the rigs, busy personal/work life, and crypto regulation, I lost track of the personal project.
Until recently I was blind and unaware of all that was happening with crypto. The rise of BTC and a conversation with an avid crypto friend triggered me to research. It started with curiosity but the more I dug, the more I was intrigued. ETH as a platform for DApps, DeFi, alternative networks, …. ?! I was just blown away by how much space had grown. I was hooked from there.
Hotbit AMA Host — Cyrus: Okay,let’s move on to the next question. What do people from traditional finance think of crypto & DeFi?
Patrick: Most people have zero idea how revolutionary decentralized technology really is. I was part of this crowd myself. Finance or tech background doesn’t matter. I think people from traditional finance are more skeptical of crypto because they’re used to investing in traditional means and the media paints crypto in a negative way. They think all crypto is a digital currency with no utility. We all know how far that is from the truth.
We now see that the tide is shifting, with tremendous investor pressure on asset managers to add crypto exposure to their portfolios. Currently it’s just from an investment perspective of stable coins, but it’s a matter of time Wall St. starts to understand DeFi and the rest of the decentralized movement.
Hotbit AMA Host — Cyrus: Next question. What drew you to Shadows of all projects?
Patrick: I made up my mind to spend the next decade of my career working in DeFi as I saw endless opportunities for new financial innovation. That’s when I came across Shadows and read their whitepaper. As soon as I started reading it, I saw the vision and potential that the Shadows team was embarking on and I knew this is the project I had to be on. I explained earlier about the massive market size in traditional markets. I think the timing of market entry couldn’t be better as it’s the next logical step of financial products coming to this space.
What was extremely important for me was the founding team and their real intent and capability to bring an amazing product to market. As I met with the team, I quickly realized their expertise and their long-term dedication to their mission.
The final cherry on top was the $DOWS token. It screamed THE Wall Street token to me! If you’re not following, the Dow is short for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, one of the most commonly followed indices…
Hotbit AMA Host — Cyrus: What is your role in the Shadows team?
Patrick: I’m leading all aspects of the Shadows product which includes the website and DApp. It’s my job to make sure you have an easy and intuitive user experience when using our platform. I’m also working on strategic initiatives to make us more competitive in the market.
Hotbit AMA Host — Cyrus: What are some of the challenges you see in developing Shadow’s business and platform?
Patrick: A major challenge is that derivatives/synthetics is a sophisticated financial product and many don’t really understand what we do. I’m working with the team to revise the messaging to our community on what our product is and how it benefits them. We want people to understand our value and massive potential.
Another challenge is the rapid growth of our team with the ever-growing list of initiatives. We are establishing best practice processes in our product development to deploy better code, improve product design & usability, and rigorous testing controls to only bring the highest level of product to market.
Hotbit AMA Host — Cyrus: Next question. What makes Shadows different from your competitors?
Patrick: Well one of the key differences are frameworks. It’s essential to recognize that speed and cost of using the platform is all usable while delivering these new financial products.
Many of the current platforms on ERC20 network make the platform too costly for the average retail investor and we are looking at various technology stacks to solve for this to be more competitive. We also have additional suite of derivative products to roll out as the market adopts derivatives to their investment strategy
Hotbit AMA Host — Cyrus: Interesting! What is Shadow’s value proposition to a user?
Patrick: Well now that you got a sense of what derivatives are, let’s see how it benefits you. As an investor in DOWS, you enter a market where you can actively invest in derivative products such as xGOLD, xBTC, xTSLA, and other market indices. All meanwhile having exposure to DOWS which we believe will give you great returns as our investment platform grows.
Hotbit AMA Host — Cyrus : What are you most excited about on this project?
Patrick:I love how there are so many great technologies emerging in this space. One of them is Binance Smart Chain and I see their technology as a potential great fit to our strategic direction. The network is live, has massive adoption, low gas fees, and best of all backed by Binance. We are still considering a number of options, but this is one of the most exciting things in the pipeline.
Hotbit AMA Host — Cyrus: My last question. When will the DApp launch?
Patrick: The million dollar question! Unfortunately, I won’t be disclosing a release date of our product launch at this time.
We have many exciting developments in the works. We are working on a new branding strategy for better fitment of our target audience. This impacts many of the workstreams which include our website and especially our DApp. Furthermore, we are working on a revised roadmap to make clear to our community our targets for 2021!
I can say with confidence that all these streams are on track and we can’t wait to share with you in the foreseeable future
Hotbit AMA Host — Cyrus: Okay,Thanks! Now we move to the last segment of the AMA session public Q&A, brace yourself for the flood, Patrick will help to answer and pick some BEST questions with 10 USDT each. Good luck! You can send any questions about Shadows Network. Please do not send the same questions repeatedly
Patrick: Thank you for the interview, happy to answer your questions
Free Q&A session
Antonietta: What are the benefits of holding DOWS tokens as long term investment? Can you tell us about the motivation and benefits for investors to keep the DOWS token in the long run?
Patrick: Holding DOWS token will certainly be rewarded long term. Current price is reflected only by our mission, core team, advisors, partnerships, and endeavor to bring the strongest derivatives DeFi project to market. We have a long list of product deliverables in the pipeline, which we will be disclosing in the near future. Once our product launches and the market adopts our financial offerings you can imagine the returns for holding. This is just the start, the market size of derivatives is absolutely massive. We aim to be a TOP player in the DeFi space.
Claire: Will you also focus more on Asian market as it arbors a very strong base for crypto currency projects ?
Patrick: No, the focus here won’t be only the Asian market. We are certainly aimed to be a global player in the derivatives market for crypto. Therefore, the team brought me on with my experience and ties to the financial community in NY, the financial capital globally.
Lic: What is Shadows plan to gain adoption fast enough that the market will not be saturated with other similar projects by now and what advantage could you offer?
Patrick: My experiences with successful financial technology product launches taught me that first, focus on the consumer by having the best product experience. We are confident in delivering that. Next, our strategic decisions on network and framework interoperability and speed will be critical for mass adoption. Next, offer more compelling financial products that the market desires. Finally, we have an extensive partner network to help bolster our presence and build strategic alliances.
Jessic: Trust is very important in business. So, what makes investors, customers and users feel safe when working with Your project? And how will you get the trust of many users that have negative thoughts about Blockchain and DeFi?
Patrick: I 100% agree with you. The only thing that builds trust is that we do what we say and we do it exceptionally well. That is why it’s imperative that we have a clear roadmap for our community and we bring transparency to this process. As I mentioned in this interview, we are working on a public roadmap for 2021. Shortly, we hope to earn your trust by delivering the best product and hitting our targets. Furthermore, we are working to open up more communication channels directly with our community for user feedback
I understand that security is a big concern. We also view that as a top priority and have asked Certik to redo their audit to find any vulnerabilities to our smart contracts. It was found that our contracts meet the highest level of security and we will take extra precautions internally to avoid anything that could jeopardize security and your investment in Shadows.
Please see for reference: https://certik.org/projects/shadows
Fari: One of the biggest problems with DApps is the inactive and useless state.People only create DApps but it has no use case or contribution to the blockchain ecosystem.What will you do to prevent and resolve this problem that may occur on Shadows?
Patrick: This is very true with so many failed projects. Many of these projects were doomed from the onset because their use cases were not practical. Moreover, their product may have not been built with intuitiveness and ease of use for the community to experience true utility. This is NOT the case with Shadows. Let me repeat the current financial derivatives market is estimated at $1.4 quadrillion! We are just scratching the surface here of possibilities in bringing these asset classes to market. We strongly believe there is a huge market for the retail investor for these products. Furthermore, crypto has Wall Street’s attention. Although it may take time, it’s inevitable for institutional interest to be in our product offerings. Look at all the major companies that are taking crypto positions. As product offerings mature, these companies certainly will take one more step into DeFi.
Nirnoy: The current BSC as you know is a big trend so does Shadows plan to integrate BSC into the system?
Patrick: I briefly went over this but I agree that this is a big trend for so many good reasons. The real opportunity is that BSC is live and performing well, ripe for DApps to be brought onto the network. Although there are many other competing networks in the works this year, there are risks on building on these frameworks as we become dependent on their release. Therefore, BSC must be considered in our strategy and we will make it clear in our roadmap our strategic direction. Meanwhile, our team aims to be cross chain and interoperable.
Kelly: Marketing is the central element of every project, so that people know the potential that the project can bring. It is also important to achieve established goals. What is your strategy to attract new users and Investors to your platform and retain them for the long term?
Patrick: Agreed, marketing will be a key factor of our success. First, we have a very strong marketing team led by Sue, our CMO. Second, we believe our rebranding and messaging will make it clearer for prospective users to understand our product offerings and how they can financially be rewarded by investing on our platform. Last, we have a strong partnership community to market our product offerings and attract institutional customers.
Xoai: Many new projects initially develop well, but then do not. How will you manage and develop your project to gain a position in the market? Innovation, development, value, from those three things which part do you prioritize the most? And can you explain the reason?
Patrick: Listening to our customers is foremost a critical factor of success and ability to adapt to the market. It’s very rare that an end-product is exactly what was first envisioned. This is part of the reengineering and creative process. We seek to hear our customers, partners, and innovate accordingly.
Lincger : Shadows Blockchain project, Shadows Really very Futuristic ! But- Could you tell us The main role of Shadows Coins in the Shadows Platform Ecosystem?
Patrick: Yes, the $DOWS coin is essential to our ecosystem. Our users will need $DOWS to invest into our suite of derivative products and to take advantage of a number of reward options we have in the works. We believe we have an attractive suite of products in various asset classes that will meet the desires of many investors.
Closing Remarks
Patrick: Thank you for having me here and we really appreciate the support of Shadows Network.
For any questions, you can reach out to Shadows Network via: