AMA with Aditya Khanduri (Biconomy): Summary

Namaste Tribe! We had an amazing AMA session with Biconomy, in WazirX Telegram group as a part of the Grand BICO Giveaway on Monday, 14th February 2022. Here’s a quick summary. 

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Hi Aditya, please tell us about yourself and Biconomy.

I am Aditya. I lead the marketing & community teams at Biconomy! Have been working in the crypto space for 3+ years. Passionate about web3 & bringing mass adoption to the next billion users

Biconomy helps web3 DApps to become super easy to use for all users. We work with 100+ DApps partners to make their DApps as easy to use as Youtube or Twitter!

Q1. What amazed us was the gasless transaction feature! No doubt this is novel and very attractive. However, if there is no gas, how does Biconomy avoid saturation of the network? Or seen in another way, with gasless, who pays the bill?

So when we say gasless, it is indeed gasless for the users. However, the gas bill is paid by the DApps! Why? Because DAppss want to ensure a seamless experience for their user. They know nobody likes to pay gas every step. So by sponsoring the gas, DApps can ensure the users use their DApps more and become loyal users!

It’s like an investment for the DApps. And if you think in the current internet, websites pay for their server bills, right? It’s the same with us. DApps will pay the gas bills just like paying for server bills. And we make a profit from these bills!

Q2. I see! So there’s no gas involved at every step. In the end, can the user pay gas in tokens other than USDT, USDC, or DAI?

That’s another feature! Not all transactions on a DApps may be completely gasless, it’s up to the DApps. However, they can still make your life easier by letting you pay gas in the tokens you already have.

Let’s take an example. You like a blockchain game on Avalanche. You want to play it. So you send your funds to Avalanche using the Biconomy Hyphen bridge in seconds. But you can’t play right away. You need AVAX tokens to pay for gas! And you can’t swap the tokens you sent as even for that you need gas in AVAX tokens! 

But if you could pay gas in whatever tokens you sent to Avalanche like USDT and didn’t need to have any AVAX tokens, that will be a much smoother experience! You can just start playing in seconds and not worry about AVAX gas. So that’s what we enable: DApps can let their users pay gas in the tokens they have.

Q3. Since you mentioned Hyphen bridge for paying gas fees in stable coins, can you please explain the process? Also, how is this different from Polygon’s “Gas Station Network”?

Hyphen is the fastest bridge to send funds between Ethereum, Polygon, & Avalanche! Another product we have is Gasless, which I explained before. 

While it works on some similar tech concepts as the Gas Station Network, we are a lot more business-oriented. We work directly with DAppss, are more customizable, and offer customer support. That’s why we do 80-100x more than the number of transactions the Gas Station Network does! We are the absolute standard when it comes to gasless transactions and all DApps, big or small, think of Biconomy if they wanna integrate Gasless.

Q4. How does Biconomy deal with gas price fluctuations? As indicated on your website, gas prices can be reduced up to 40%. What’s the mechanism behind it?

What we do is analyze millions of transactions to estimate the right gas price. Then we try to bid the lowest amount and then slowly increase to make sure the transaction goes through. This way, on behalf of the user, we make sure that the lowest required gas was paid! You can read more about it here.

Q5. What expectations do you have with Web3 and the Metaverse? Any news you could share?

One of the most important things to note is that the two of the biggest metaverse projects – The Sandbox & Decentraland – both use Biconomy! They are our partners.And it makes sense if you think about it. Would you really like it if you were paying gas every 2 min in the metaverse?! By making the experience seamless, we think we can help bring lots of adoption to the metaverse. Even Normies who aren’t into crypto will be able to appreciate the metaverse!

Q6. Can you tell us more about insta-exits and why are they important?

So Insta exits is renamed to Hyphen. It’s the fastest cross-chain bridge!

The reason it’s important is that Web3 is going to be multichain. So DApps are going to be on various chains but you can’t expect users to use 15-20 chains and wait for half an hour to move funds. The user needs a simple UI and then the DApps does all the bridging. That’s where Hyphen comes in! Thanks to Hyphen soon you won’t even know which chain you are on! You can just use any DApps on any chain without using a bridge. 

Q7. As your upcoming feature, you guys mentioned sponsoring a percent of transaction fees. How is this possible?

So imagine how on Paytm you get cashback. What if you could do similar with gas costs on DApps!

DApps can say if you are a loyal user, I will sponsor 50% of all your gas fees! And if you are a new user to the DApp, they can sponsor 80% of your gas bill for the first 5 transactions. This way users will become loyal users of the DApps.

Q8. So finally, what is the strongest advantage that you think will make this team lead the market? In contrast, what weaknesses do you have, and how does the team plan to overcome them?

The strongest advantage is that we have products that clearly there is demand for. We have 100+ partners, and there is little competition in what we do. Most people in Web3 understand Biconomy as critical infrastructure for any DApp. The other advantage is that our team is really hardworking; non-stop we are building and shipping new stuff.

Questions from WazirX Telegram group members

Q1. Are there any DApps that use Biconomy? What is your traction?

Yes, 100+ DAppss use us! You can see it here. 

Q2. What are your future plans considering that ETH 2.0 will come out in the future solving the issues that you are solving or even replicating your business model and how you plan to stay a competitive player in the crypto space considering the likes of MATIC are also a huge competitor in the market.

I don’t think these are competitors. In fact, ETH 2.0 & MATIC help us! Because as gas fees get lower, every DApp will think about sponsoring them using us. So the lowering of gas fees is better for us.

Q3. What are some of the biggest challenges for operating nodes?

Our node operator program will start in June-August! Stay tuned for that. We will share more details and how to earn BICO by contributing to Web3!

Q4. What plans do you have to reach more people? Do you plan to launch an Ambassadors’ Program? I’ve remembered that you said before that your project has one of these programs.

Yes, we do. It’s been not possible before for various reasons. But we are going to invite ambassadors soon to be a part of Biconomy. 

Q5. Will Biconomy be able to play any role in our current UPI-based payment system apps?

That’s an interesting question! If someone builds a UPI-type system on the blockchain, Biconomy is going to be very critical for this to be a success!

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