Social encounters

Could the availability of stablecoins have the potential to improve the financial portfolio of a middle-income household in Latin America? Hear what @nestorious828 thinks in this recent edition of Digital Assets Weekly.

DF’s Tomer Weller hosted a webinar for @IDEOCoLab and @Coinlist’s Hackathon. Check out his workshop on Stellar tools, the DEX, asset issuance, and more for Stellar Developers.

Q: How successful was the recent XLM giveaway in promoting StellarX and onboarding, new users? Will there be further promotions and marketing? By the end of 2019, how many users would you like to achieve?

A: Our recent XLM giveaway was really successful in promoting StellarX and growing our user base. The first giveaway was targeted to new users and increasing the awareness of the platform in addition to promoting StellarX social media channel and downloads of the Android app. Interest in the giveaway was more than we anticipated and we successfully managed to attract new users after the giveaway period ended. Our second promotional campaign will be targeted towards our loyal existing clients. You will hear the details about that campaign soon.

Q: Liquidity has been a major issue. What are your plans to increase market makers and improve liquidity?

A: StellarX is technically a graphical user interface that sits atop the Stellar blockchain/marketplace. We do not work directly with issuers to help improve liquidity/market making. Although we do recognize how useful that would be. What we can do is offer our own Anchors via our parent company, Coinsquare, and we know those coins would definitely have more liquidity and market-making that hopefully would have a domino effect throughout the ecosystem.

Q: With the recent purchase of StellarX by Coinsquare and roadmap release, are there more staff working on the roadmap and completing the goals in a more consistent manner? (Took almost a year for the mobile app to be released after being announced)

A: Yes — there’s a fully dedicated development team that’s working on a number of core initiatives. Coinsquare acquired StellarX in February 2019 and immediately began working on the mobile apps in March 2019. We had them in market in late June 2019. As far as other features and functionality, check out our recent Medium post: https://medium.com/@ari.diamond/stellarx-mobile-launch-832916505f1

Q: Any plans to offer more on/off ramp options?

A: ABSOLUTELY! We recently announced our partnership with Cowrie and now offer NGNT (Nigerian Naira) as an on/off ramp method. A few weeks before that, we added 12 additional crypto on/off ramps via our relationship with aPay. Since taking over StellarX, we’ve added 13 on/off ramp options but we’re well aware that it’s not enough. We have a number of 3rd parties that we’re still engaging with to offer more on/off ramps in major market currencies like EUR, USD, and more. Even better- we’re working internally on our own to offer on/off ramp options towards the end of 2019!

Q: With so many other DEXs, what are your plans to set yourself apart and “take over the world?”

A: Here are the highlights of how we are offering more value to end-users vs other DEXs

Having as many anchors for high demand assets would set us apart from other DEXs creating a way to withdraw to off-chain accounts such as BTC, ETH, LTC and fiat bank accounts directly (AnchorUSD, Cowrie NGNT). This is the most unique value proposition over other DEXs we offer to our end users. On a similar note, having multiple options for withdrawal for the same asset (i.e. many anchors for BTC) encourages better service and also creates a unique offering over centralized exchanges as well. Adding the anchors also correlates with markets that have transformed from XLM focused to non-XLM focused markets with high demand currencies front and centre. We’ve also worked very hard to create a better user experience and many avenues to using StellarX via native iOS and Android apps. Features such as path payments allow users to seamlessly convert assets when you are sending funds. For example, you can choose to send BTC to a recipient even if you don’t have BTC…we will give the option for you to select the asset you have (i.e. XLM) and it will automatically be converted.

Q: What steps have you taken or will take to distinguish legit anchors and assets from bad apples and scam tokens?

A: We have a robust regulatory on-boarding process for any new anchor / asset issuer before being on-boarded onto StellarX. We could have more tokens listed than we do, but we’re looking out for our end users and thinking long term. For more information on our on-boarding process, read this link:https://www.stellarx.com/learn/listing

Q: I believe De-Fi is a big usecase for crypto, any plans to add Cel token, or any other defi service tokens on stellar X?

A: Not necessarily, but by leveraging the Stellar network and testing these features and use cases, we can certainly use these to help inform other parties as to how these features have worked on StellarX and what their application could be in their own product ecosystems.

Q: Coinsquare recently bought access to 250,000 atm’s in America and can sell crypto through them with a software update. Can you please advise if this fits into a larger plan going on with Stellar X?

A: We’re focusing on our shorter term plan of rolling this amazing software out to as many ATM providers as possible. Once we achieve scale, we’ll be exploring integrations across the Coinsquare ecosystem, including StellarX.

Q: Love to hear more about what the vision is and how/if you plan to integrate to coinsquare exchange.

A: The early stage synthesis between Coinsquare and StellarX will surround the eventual launch of stablecoins offered on both platforms. This will allow for a series of major assets to be transferred between the two exchanges that offer very different experiences for users.

Q: When we will be able to trade on stellar phone applications ?

A: The goal is to release trading features on iOS and Android around the end of Q3 / early Q4 (September — October)

Q: Coinsquare announced a partnership with SPEDN app last week and now people in Canada will be able to spend their cryptos in retails. Is it possible they will add XLM as another payment method in their application?

A: Our goal through our partnership with Flexa (SPEDN app) will be to ensure everyone in the Coinsquare product ecosystem can leverage SPEDN’s crypto spending features. We only very recently announced our partnership, so getting the core functions working is our preliminary focus. Stay tuned for more updates!

Q: What are the plans of StellarX to bring more people to their exchange ? Many people don’t know about how low are the fees and the other opportunities. More ads on social media maybe to bring more customers?

A: We’re actively looking at a number of marketing strategies but believe we first need to keep building across a number of key areas before aggressive marketing spend makes sense. These areas include: additional exchange and wallet features, addition on/off ramp options in major markets, and a seamless on-boarding, deposit, withdrawal, and trading experience. We’re thrilled with our organic user growth, but know that there’s a lot more users “out there” we can look to target.

Q: Can you guys please open an official telegram or keybase group for the customers ?

A: Great suggestion, we will look into opening official Telegram and Keybase accounts

Q: Last year we were told Stellarx was working on a market makers rewards program is this still happening?

A: This appears to be something connected to StellarX before Coinsquare acquired StellarX. We are not aware of this program.

Q: There is still no secure option to download trade history to a csv file. I know there is one available option to use bitcoin.tax but they state that they share user infomation with third partys in their privacy policy so its not really secure. Also sending people to github to do so is not really practical for the average user. It really is a basic function every exchange should have. Is there any reason this has taken so long to implement?

A: Great news! We launched this feature a couple of weeks back. Go to Activity → History (right hand side) → Download button. Keep up to date with the latest releases by following our twitter account @stellarxhq.

Q: How much time and resources are being committed to Stellarx development?

A: We have an entire development team dedicating 100% of their time to StellarX including: iOS, Android, Web, Product Design/UX, Web Front End / Backend, and 3rd Party Anchor Integrations. We are also hiring, check out this link: https://coinsquare.com/careers