Ryan Deen, co-founder at KOLNet talks to Ishan Pandey about Digital Assets and Fundraising
Ishan Pandey: Hi Ryan, welcome to our series “Behind the Startup.” Please tell us about your background and the inspiration behind KOLnet?
Ryan Deen: My career with technology goes back 22 years when I decided to switch from economics to computer science degree graduating from Queen Mary’s London. The dot com bubble was just ending and I joined Microsoft writing code and compliance on early Xbox games. In the years to come, I found myself moving on to manage multi-million dollar deliverables for Centrica, a British multinational energy and services company.
Realising the demand from blue chips like Telefonica, CGI, and HP for technologists, I began my own consultancy and kept myself busy through my experience in Public Key Infrastructure deliveries. Then, I became interested in crypto in early 2017. The inspiration for KOLnet came when DeFi began picking up and realising the narratives and communities for many projects were really driven by thought leaders, content creators, and influencers as opposed to research articles and whitepapers. I often asked myself: Why isn’t there a Web3 alternative to enable projects, companies, and brands to drive marketing reach based on DeFi principles of ‘free markets’ and transparency.
Ishan Pandey: What are your views on regulating DeFi?
Ryan Deen: It’s happening whether we like it or not. There will always be an attempt to add control, but the beauty here is that technology will give people choice.
Ishan Pandey: Can you provide your final comments on the recent crash of LUNA (Terra) and LUNA 2.0? How is it going to affect the crypto market and the view of regulators?
Ryan Deen: People coming in need to tread carefully as users of Web3. Crypto is in its early stages and we expect to see failures, hacks, and rug pulls. Ultimately, as believers in this space, we need to take a risk-based approach.
I mean, crashes happen outside of crypto as well and we have seen crashes larger than LUNA in the traditional financial markets. My view on this is whilst some regulation is good and protects against evil actors, it also brings in government control and oversight.
Ishan Pandey: What are the major challenges currently faced by crypto projects when it comes to fundraising and building their communities?
Ryan Deen: Crypto has, to date, operating in cycles, and the sentiment experienced by retail investors tends to be matched by the majority of venture capitalists. This leaves crypto projects with windows of opportunities to showcase their ideas, raise funds, and acquire usership. With the growth of crypto, we are seeing thousands of projects vying for visibility and the myriad of challenges in expressing token utility and USP to gain community traction. This leaves projects risking hard-earned capital in the hands of scammy call groups, fake AMA channels, and unscrupulous influencers.
Ishan Pandey: Tell us about an Initial Marketing Offering (IMO), and how it is different from an ICO/IEO, and IDO? Furthermore, how can this be helpful for new project launches?
Ryan Deen: Initial Marketing Offerings act as a DeFi vehicle to allow projects and content creators, or as we like to call them, Key Opinion Leaders, to connect and transact social media reach for rewards. This means IMOs generate more than just liquidity – they also drive adoption and will allow projects from Ethereum, Polygon and Binance Smart Chain ecosystems to benefit, eventually expanding to other chains through future releases.
Firstly, IMOs are entirely content creator exclusive. So, we enable KOLs to join an IMO without whitelists, lottery spaces, or token purchase requirements. KOLnet’s proprietary algorithms look up social media handles, extracting data measures such as engagement rates, impressions, post frequency, and many more to assess a KOLs account for its marketing potential and allow them to join IMOs of their own choosing. This will effectively remove the barriers to thousands of global content creators, bringing value to project tokens, building adoption through community, and enabling KOLs to access the earliest token sale prices.
Ishan Pandey: What is KOLnet and how is it going to make use of social media? Also, please kindly explain a proof of marketing for the benefit of our readers?
Ryan Deen: KOLnet is an innovative, transparent and fair launchpad that allows early-stage projects to optimise their marketing strategy through the innovation of Web3 by creating Initial Marketing Offerings.
Decentralising marketing requires a consensus to verify the work done. Proof of Marketing is conducted by KOLnet, verifying the Key Opinion Leader’s marketing work via API feeds on whichever social media channels we are monitoring. Initially, this will be Twitter, Youtube, and TikTok.
This data is then transferred on-chain, very much like an oracle, and updates the blockchain with a confirmation to enable settlement. The settlement is where KOLs can withdraw project tokens. It’s the perfect mixture of DeFi and Martech solving a real problem and touching every corner of crypto, because who doesn’t need marketing!
Ishan Pandey: According to you, what is the future of the crypto and Web3 economy in the coming years?
Ryan Deen: I think the wave of a tokenised world is now one that cannot be halted. Investors and industry pundits will expect a much faster pace than what I believe will take place, but that’s a relative position, though. Looking back, it was only the 90’s when we had dial-up, internet, and bulletin boards!
Putting the individual on an even scale to centralised structures, whether that be via decentralised finance, distributed encrypted ledgers, or NFTs. The balance is shifting and younger generations will take to Web3 wholeheartedly in the coming decade.
This interview is mainly about KOLnet. Please do check their IDO at Gamestarter: Registration begins on the 23/06/2022
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