Q & A with the Team
Staking Rewards sat down with Robert Miller, Marcom Director at Fuse to discuss the latest news and developments within the Fuse ecosystem.
Fuse is enabling users to build community-centric, mobile-first payment systems with zero coding experience on a low-cost, DeFi platform.
Let’s hear more from Robert himself.
Q: Fuse has been described as The Infrastructure for Open-Source Money, can you introduce the mission and goals for Fuse Network and the Fuse Token for the short, intermediate, and long term?
A: Our mission, as we see it, is to build the infrastructure to power genuine mass adoption of crypto payments and decentralized finance. We see Fuse competing with organizations like Visa, Paypal, and Robinhood in providing the rails for the global financial system.
Q: Can you introduce your team to the readers, what relevant experience do they have and what projects have inspired you in your designs of Fuse?
A: Our core tech team has been working together starting with the Colu project that was aimed at bringing local currencies to the blockchain. Our Co-Founder and CEO Mark Smargon has been in the blockchain space since the colored coins era. The experience at Colu that initially tried to build on top of Bitcoin and then Ethereum had shown that a fast and scalable EVM-compatible blockchain and a convenient additional infrastructure were needed for powering payments, which is why Fuse was born.
Q: How did you achieve your funding requirements, was it from a token sale exclusively, private funding, or were you granted by a Foundation?
A: We have conducted three funding rounds: a seed round, a private sale, and a public liquidity release on the Mesa exchange. We have not received any significant grants, so far.
Q: Let’s talk about your Staking model where a user can configure metamask for Fuse Network, connect to a simple staking app, and stake their Fuse Tokens with a validator. Can you elaborate on those?
A: Our network consensus relies on the delegated proof of stake (dPoS) model. This means that in order to participate in publishing blocks, validators need to freeze a minimum number of FUSE tokens. Any FUSE holder can also stake with their preferred validator whom they can choose based on the information provided on the staking portal and, of course, the FUSE profile on Staking Rewards.
Q: In regards to your Farming solution, it enables users to pick various networks like Ethereum (uniswap), Fuse (FuseSwap), and BSC (PancakeSwap) to deposit liquidity for specific Fuse LP pairs in return for some great yields. Can you please provide more details on the incentive designs and dive into how sustainable these incentives are without compromising on inflation?
A: We have indeed been using Fuse Network’s native FUSE token to power liquidity rewards programs on DEXes on Fuse, Ethereum and BSC, as well as on Fuse Lending Network. For the moment, those are mostly classic yield farming programs where users provide liquidity on a pool, receive LP tokens in exchange, and deposit them into the rewards contract.
However, we recognize that the use of the network token for DeFi rewards is not optimal and plans are in motion to phase this out by means of an upcoming project. Stay tuned for more details soon.
Q: Your Fuse Studio product allows anyone to create their own custom branded wallet and currency in a few simple steps. Can you provide some case studies and examples of how this product could be used?
A: Fuse Studio is part of Fuse’s mobile infrastructure that also includes the open-source Fuse Wallet. Fuse Studio is a platform that allows anyone to issue an ERC20 token on Fuse Network and create and manage a community around it. You can think of Fuse Wallet as a convenient frontend for interacting with Studio communities.
Concerning case studies, one of them was the use of Fuse Studio and Fuse Wallet during the Mystic Valley festival in Thailand last November. The Bitazza team created a token and a mobile app for the festival and those were smoothly used by the attendees for all the in-festival payments. This allowed festival organizers to improve customer experience by reducing queuing and to reduce costs.
Another project that deploys our mobile infrastructure is Kolektivo. Kolektivo has created a stable local currency and a wallet (both called CuraDAI) for the island of Curaçao and is currently in the process of rolling them out. The goal there is to boost the local economy through offering people an alternative payment system.
You can read more about the potential use cases and how Fuse Studio and the communities it powers work in the dedicated section of our documentation.
Q: FuseSwap is fully equipped with a bridge to bring assets between Fuse Network, Ethereum, and Binance Smart Chain. How much are the costs associated with bridging assets and is there a whitelisting or waitlisting requirement to filter out assets?
A: Currently, token transfers from Ethereum and BSC to Fuse Network are free of charge, whereas the reverse ones incur a 0.5% and 0.05% fee, respectively, and minimum transaction amounts apply. We are, however, planning to stop paying Ethereum transaction fees for the users who withdraw tokens from Fuse soon.
Tokens eligible for bridging do, indeed, need to be whitelisted, first. This is done particularly because our user-friendly multichain bridge always provides the user with the right version of the token on Fuse. For instance, if a user is moving FUSE from Ethereum to Fuse, they will receive FUSE tokens and not some sort of wrapper that they will then have to unwrap. However, this requires that we maintain liquidity. Currently, the bridge is managed by the Fuse core team, which means that projects that would like their token to be enabled on the bridge need to contact us.
Q: What is Fuse Cash and how can users interact with this product?
A: Fuse Cash is Fuse’s consumer-facing mobile crypto wallet. You can consider it as our answer to Venmo and Cash App. It features a convenient UI and enables users to deposit Fuse-native stablecoin FuseDollar (fUSD) to their accounts at no fee thanks to the Ramp Network integration. Fuse Cash also offers a built-in DEX functionality and a yield program for users holding fUSD on their Fuse Cash accounts. The latter can earn 5% APR on their holdings. Fue Cash also seamlessly connects to DeFi tools within the Fuse ecosystem thanks to the WalletConnect support.
Q: Can you give us your strongest point for why projects should consider building on the Fuse network from the start or as a migration?
A: First, Fuse is a fast and low-cost EVM-compatible blockchain with a lot of independent validators. The average gas used per block is currently far below the block gas limit. This means that projects building on top of the EVM can be relatively confident that Fuse is a reliable decentralized blockchain for them to build and grow usable products upon.
Secondly, our mobile infrastructure makes it very easy to create and manage DApps directly usable in the real world by anyone with a mobile phone. This is helpful for DApp developers who wish to go beyond the small community of crypto enthusiasts and sophisticated traders and DeFi users.
Q: How do you plan to handle governance or network upgrades currently and where do you see this changing in the future?
A: The most important network upgrades are called Fuse Improvement Proposals (FIPs). Anyone can propose a FIP on the Fuse Forum and robust discussion is expected to happen there before the FIP is put to a vote. FIPs are currently adopted by Fuse Network validator votes.
Q: As a project with large ambitions, what new developments and features are you most excited to release in the future?
A: On the scalability front, we are planning to integrate our mobile-centric infrastructure with zero-knowledge rollups via Flutter Layer 2 payments.
FUSE token holders could potentially see FUSE inflation rate reduced significantly in the future. Discussions are ongoing among the Fuse stakeholders as to how to best implement inflation reduction.
Fuse governance is also going to become progressively more decentralized. Already, an independent community governance body Fuse Assembly has taken over the allocation of ecosystem development grants, and more decentralization is in the pipeline.
Q: Are there any exciting updates, announcements, or partnerships coming for Fuse in the immediate future that you can disclose today?
A: NFT activity is a must for any respectable blockchain platform these days. We are thrilled to unveil to the readers that a well-designed, general-purpose NFT marketplace on Fuse is coming soon. Watch this space!
Q: Do you have any advice for other projects looking to build on Fuse Network, whether that’s funding, building, or marketing advice?
A: Fuse is in many respects just like Ethereum or Binance Smart Chain. No permission from the core team or action from our part is required for a project to just start building or porting its solution over to Fuse Network.
Project teams considering using our mobile infrastructure to build a payment token community can also just start using our code but if any advice or assistance in using our infrastructure is needed from our team, they can reach out to us via the contact form on our website.
Projects looking for grants need to send their applications to Fuse Assembly. Grant applications should be submitted on the Fuse Forum.
Q: Where is the best place for the community to interact with you?
A: That would be our main Telegram chat. The full list of our social channels is available here.
Q: Why is Staking Rewards the best partner for your project?
A: The collaboration with Staking Rewards is highly beneficial for Fuse as it is a reputable platform that enables people to easily discover all the passive income earning opportunities provided by our network token.