In AIKON’s first Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Telegram, our CEO Marc Blinder shared what’s new with AIKON and discussed trends in decentralized finance (DeFi) at large and thoughts on what the future holds in the blockchain industry.

Below is a recap of the discussion. 

Securing Partners and Building Cross-Chain Solutions

AIKON is building real-world solutions that can be used across multiple blockchains. We don’t believe there will be one chain to rule them all, so it’s important to create solutions that are interoperable. This is one of the reasons that AIKON received an Algorand grant a year ago. To date, the AIKON team has completed the grant requirements through the integration of AIKON’s blockchain identity authentication platform, ORE ID, and developed the Algorand plugin for the Open Rights Exchange (ORE) Chain JS library.

“The Algorand blockchain allowed us to provide speed and price stability to our customers. The fact that our customers know the price of a transaction before executing is so important for usability. That’s set at the chain level and isn’t bid like most blockchains. We also love the native multisig functionality, which is key for ORE Vault,” explained Marc.

ORE Vault is AIKON’s ultra-secure, cross-chain multi-signature (multisig) wallet, which now includes an Ethereum version. 

“Interestingly, native-multisig was already built into BTC, but ETH doesn’t have it, so that was a big win for Algorand in my view. They also do re-keying, which is great for long-term usability,” Marc stated during the AMA.

The Algorand Foundation is still taking grant submissions, for anyone interested. 

Moreover, AIKON is working on adding non-fungible token (NFT) features to ORE Vault.

“Our expectation is that users, teams, etc., will want a single wallet for NFTs across many different platforms, and we’re building towards that. It just makes sense in the long run.”

On What’s Coming Up at AIKON

Marc also chatted about the next big integration for AIKON: WalletConnect — an open-source protocol for connecting decentralized finance apps (dApps) to mobile wallets with QR code scanning or deep linking — which will “make ORE ID much more widely compatible across different projects.”

“We’re always focused on usability and cross-chain compatibility, and this is a big step there, since we launched Algorand first with [ORE] Vault, and we’ve been working on big customer integrations as well.”

And WalletConnect isn’t the only extensive integration in the works. Marc shared that he’s excited about upcoming work with AllianceBlock, which aims to automate the conversion of any digital or crypto asset into a bankable product.

On What’s Coming for DeFi

Although lack of tech knowledge is hindering progress in the DeFi space, Marc acknowledges, it’s far from an insurmountable issue. The DeFi ecosystem can seem closed in this regard, but Marc sees promise instead of a problem.

“The closed nature of the traditional finance system is a feature of the system, not a bug. So it’s not going to be fixed using traditional means, in my honest opinion. Better business models from DeFi are much more likely to work.”

In fact, Marc sees a lot of potential for NFTs in the DeFi ecosystem.

“We already see a lot of NFTs are basically a small pointer on-chain to metadata that’s stored off-chain, which means there’s a huge incentive to start doing NFTs cross-chain, since it can save on gas fees, storage costs, etc.”

No matter what ends up happening in the cryptoverse for DeFi, Marc’s vision of its possibilities is clear. For example, he looks forward to the potential of more integration between app-based neo banks and decentralized finance protocols to allow average consumers a better yield on savings and lending. Ultimately, integrating public and private blockchain identities stands to make a huge difference.

“So much of past blockchain development has been done on private chains, and I think we’ll see public chains replace those private chains — if we can make things compatible — just like the internet replaced the corporate intranet years ago. The more people and more assets are using public chains, the more incentive there is to make companies adopt, and that’s when we (hopefully) can change the balance of power a little bit.”

Ultimately, though, the vision of decentralized finance and AIKON has an even greater reach and meaning.

“What excites me about DeFi is that ‘power-to-the-people’ ethos. As it stands, our global system prioritizes the well-being of privileged individuals and unfairly distributes opportunities worldwide. I see DeFi changing this status quo by removing the middleman and opening a new world of financial opportunities.”

Come along for the ride as AIKON helps make the future of blockchain a bright one. 

Join us on the last Monday of every month for Mondays with Marc!