Gate.io AMA with Interlay-One dApp,All Things Bitcoin

Time: Feb 24th, 2022, 13:00 UTC
Gate.io hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with Alexei,co-founder and CEO of Interlay in the Gate.io Exchange Community.
Official Website: https://www.interlay.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/interlayHQ
Follow Interlay on Telegram and Discord

Guest

Alexei — Co-founder and CEO of Interlay

Q&A from Gate.io

Q1: Can you briefly introduce yourself and Interlay to our community? What are Interlay’s vision and mission?

Alexei: Interlay is a decentralized network dedicated to connecting crypto-currencies like Bitcoin with DeFi platforms like Polkadot and Ethereum. The Interlay network will be hosted as a Polkadot parachain and will be connected to Cosmos, Ethereum and other major DeFi networks.

Our vision is a future where blockchains seamlessly connect and interact: anyone can use any digital asset on any blockchain, trustless and without limitations.

interBTC, Interlay’s flagship product, is Bitcoin on any blockchain. A 1:1 Bitcoin-backed asset, fully collateralized, interoperable, and censorship-resistant. On a high level, interBTC is for BTC what MakerDAO/DAI is for the USD - but better. An algorithmic stablecoin, secured by multi-collateral insurance and 1:1 backed by and redeemable for BTC.

Kintsugi is Interlay’s canary network, an experiment with real economic value deployed on Kusama. Kintsugi and Interlay share the same code base - with the difference that Kintsugi focuses strictly on innovation and will always be ahead in terms of features.

interBTC enables users to invest, earn and pay with BTC on any blockchain the true DeFi way:

• Secured by insurance: users can exit back to Bitcoin anytime they want, or they will be fully reimbursed in collateral assets.
• Radically open: anyone can help secure the decentralized and users cannot be censored.
  
  The process is simple:
  1) Lock BTC,
  2) Mint interBTC
  3) Use interBTC in DeFi - while your BTC are secured by decentralized multi-collateral insurance,
  4) Redeem interBTC for BTC anytime.

Q2: Can you briefly tell us of your updates in the last year and how your team and community grew?

Alexei: Here are some of our most memorable scores!

• From a company of few members, we grew into an extraordinary team of 18 people from all across the globe. We are 100% remote and distributed across the globe.Our team members previously worked at PwC, Accenture, Google, WorldPay, Trivago, TEAM, Morgan Stanley, Hyperledger (open source),and we’re hiring across all department (doubling team in the next 8 months!) https://apply.workable.com/interlay/?lng=en
• Our community expanded from a few hundred to over 30k+ on Twitter (@interlayHQ, @kintsugi_btc, @inter_btc), 6000+ on Discord and 4000+ on Telegram in only 6 months.
• In 4 months only, we managed to launch a solid Ambassador Program, and now over 100 ambassadors are volunteering to test, educate, and grow the community. We have translation teams for Russian, Chinese and soon also Spanish, Turkish, etc. Our on-chain treasury will be actively funding events, content, translations and communities to help people access BTC and use it via interBTC where it is most needed.
• We raised $9.5 million in venture capital via equity funding to boost growth and development, and wrote tens of thousands of lines of code;
• We completed 2 security audits (NCC and Informal s) and are doing 2 more in Q1 2022 (Quarkslab and a first SR Labs “scan”)
• We were awarded 2 Grants: continuing the Web3 Foundation grant on Polkadot and starting a new collaboration with Cosmos’ Interchain Foundation.

Q3: Can you also share with us How Interlay won Kusama’s parachain slot and the progress of the crowdloan in Polkadot?

Alexei: One of our largest achievements, after two years of hard work, we won a Kusama parachain slot with Kintsugi, Interlay’s canary network, with 200,000 KSM (~USD 50mm) locked from 11,000+ supporters.

In December, Kintsugi launched as a 100% decentralized network following our commitment to staying true to Bitcoin’s vision of creating a new, radically open financial . Kintsugi’s KINT has been enlisted already on Gate, Kraken, and MEXC.

In parallel, the Interlay network is participating in the Polkadot auctions via a crowdloan (you can check and support here: https://crowdloan.interlay.io/). So far, our crowdloan has collected 2.7 million DOT from 19,000+ supporters.

And we are a few minutes away from officially winning Polkadot parachain slot 10!!

Q4: How is the performance of Kusama in the last few months? How is the network stability and what projects have joined your eco?

Alexei: Right now, we are preparing to launch kBTC on Kintsugi (Kusama). Kintsugi is already 100% decentralized - governed by the KINT governance token.

kBTC - trustless Bitcoin on Kusama, is launching in March.

The next steps before launch are:
1) Staking activation
2) Start Vaults and allow minting kBTC
3) Integrate with all major parachains on Kusama
We are already integrating with Moonriver and Karura. The XCM channel to MOVR is going live next week, Karura will follow shortly after.
Many more parachains will follow soon: privacy features via Manta’s Calamari network or Khala, more DeFi via Basilisk, Parallel Heiko and Picasso.
In parallel, we are working on integrations with wallets (Talisman, Nova, Fearless), explorers (Subscan) and governance forums (Opensquare).
Kusama/Polkadot are just the start though!

There are essentially no limits to where you can use kBTC/interBTC and we cannot wait to see what the community comes up with.

Imagine you could use interBTC on Ethereum, Cosmos, Solana, Avalanche, … and no-one can stop you. No centralized exchanges or custodians who can lose, steal or have your BTC seized by governments.

This is Interlay’s vision.

We have also just announced our final testnet competition before kBTC launch!

https://medium.com/interlay/kintsugi-whizzes-we-are-running-a-lottery-beacbded2786

Help us stress test Kintsugi testnet and get the chance to earn KINT airdrops.

Q5: When is it expected to launch on Polkadot? And then what are your plans and priorities going forward?

Alexei: As mentioned, we are about to secure the Polkadot parachain slot (in 28 min actually). We have received support from over ten thousand participants.

Once Interlay wins a parachain slot, the main network will go live in March/April with all features.
We are working closely with all major Polkadot teams - the first integrations will happen on Kusama with Moonriver and Karura.

Via Polkadot‘s Ethreum bridges, we will soon also bring kBTC and interBTC to Ethereum - so you will finally have a decentralized alternative to the centralized and institutionalized wBTC.

Finally, we are going to onboard communities which actively rely on BTC as means of payment - where people do not trust the government’s currency or the USD. Here, interBTC will finally offer a fast,efficient, and trustless way to use Bitcoin.