3air AMA SUMMARY
Many people in our community have asked us, what exactly is 3AIR? Various answers have been given, but who can really present the project concept and idea best, if not you? So tell us what #3AIR is, what new things are you planning to launch? In which area do you operate?
Sandi Bitenc
3Air’s mission is to connect the unconnected so the unbanked can be banked. There’s lots of projects trying to bank the unbanked since the inception of Bitcoin and they are doing a good job but still, there a huge overlap with the unbanked and unconnected, and today to do anything with blockchain and crypto you need to have a stable internet connection. And this is where we shine the most. We have developed a technology and it took us over 10y to perfect it. We can beam a stable stream of broadband internet over air on distances of up to 50km and speeds up to 1gbps. If you know a bit the situation in emerging economies, Africa in particular, you will know that broadband penetration is below 1%. Literally nobody has real broadband and this is due to lack of cable infrastructure for the last mile. And we do not need any cables. So there are billions of people waiting to be connected and we will be the one connecting them. And it’s not a dream. we are doing it already. We have over 10.000 people using our services in this moment in time. True, this is not yet fully blockchain enabled, but the blockchain part is coming now, starting with the token and then the connectivity NFTs and then all the rest.
Piotr
As we know, although it’s hard for us Europeans to imagine, there are areas of the world that don’t have access to the internet and the people there don’t know what investments are, what markets are, and how they can use such a simple thing as banking, this is where 3AIR comes in — it’s a very noble goal but very difficult to achieve, I’m impressed that you’re trying to do such a job
Sandi Bitenc
This is true and the majority of my time from home this year I spent in Africa. Things are different there. They need such a service and as said, we have solved the major thing that it’s the obstacle of connecting people and it’s already working in Sierra Leone, btw just last week we have connected a school with 450 students to the internet for free. We fully believe in giving back to the community
our workers connecting the school, this happened on wednesday last week
They were so happy! So in regards to new things we’re planning to launch probably 2 things stand out:
Connectivity NFTs and this means you will buy an NFT that will be a carrier of your internet subscription. You will stake it in your device and that device will communicate with our towers and grant you instant internet connection. this also means you will own your internet subscription because right now you don’t you will be able to sell it, gift it, donate it, send it to your family or friends, or rent it out and right now you cant do that. You’re going on a vacation? what do you do with your internet subscription? Just think about it.
We are creating something like an “uber” of broadband. We allow each user that has an internet connection from us to run an access node and share it with others. The nodes connect to each other and create a field of wi-fi. Once users connect to that wi-fi you will earn revenue that usually is reserved for the telecoms. Additionally everyone can delegate their stake in the nodes and earn a share of the telco profits, afterall you are then all owning and maintaining the infrastructure.
Piotr
This is clearly something truly revolutionary, you mean to tell me that I will be able on the other side of the world, with an NFT reflecting my network subscription, to be able to use the internet as I wish?
Sandi
Well this will depend and will be bound to our network. so currently we are expanding and building out in Africa, but we are planning to go global and then yes, this should not be a problem. Let me find you some links so you can read a bit more on this if you wish:
https://blog.3air.io/become-3air-access-point-operator/
You want to create a market by building out broadband infrastructure in Africa, developing the blockchain ecosystem and expanding the platform with additional functionalities while connecting different internet providers, please explain to us what an ordinary user who is not tech savvy will be able to do together with you?
Sandi Bitenc
We fully understand that and we fully understand our target market. We are running our testing ground like a business for 2 years now. We will have boots on the ground in every country and city we connect people in and everyone is welcome to visit us there or call us and we will get to their home to connect them and explain everything, In a sense it should not be more difficult as you have it anywhere else in the world and probably even easier so we will create a digital identity for you and connect you, we will help you set up a wallet and provide custodial options for it, just until you are ready to take care of your own keys, and then you will have a marketplace, just like the one we have already up and running at app.3air.io you will choose your subscription level and then you will have an simple graphical interface where you will see your devices. And you will just click on them and sign a transaction with the wallet you hold your nft in and it’s done, of course there will be more functionality that will be a bit more technical but at the most basic level this should do it we are doing a lot of work on our UX to make it as simple as possible but on the other hand also doing a lot on education users and also incentivizing it for instance we plan to stake some tokens on behalf on every user we connect and these tokens need to stay staked at least 1y then the user has an incentive to educate himself about what crypto and blockchain and staking are.. And after a year.. if he’s still our customer, he can unstake. And from the staked tokens he’s able to pay off any HW he gets from us and keep the rest of the tokens.
The power of the platform then comes with all the onboarded users. And just imagine you are without internet, wouldn’t you want to join and get connected and then with one of the most advanced tech ever that will also give you some revenue streams and financial tools built in?
Piotr
Of course I would join, respect for what you do, thanks to such people the world is changing.. It gives opportunities, it evolves, a lot of people think that crypto is just meme coins, fun, they have no idea that it is a powerful technology that has the chance to change the world, in fact it is already doing it now thanks to people like you Sandi, you and your team..
Sandi Bitenc
Thank you for these words. Really means a lot to hear support from someone that is in space so long. I personally think blockchain has so much potential that is right now starting to be explored. We will see a lot of great life changing use cases in the coming years. We will for sure not be alone on this path.
Please tell us more about yourself and your experience, you have quite a large team, we would love to get to know you better, besides your achievements we are also interested in your hobbies, what are your passions?
Sandi Bitenc
Yeah, the team is over 130 people and a lot we employ locally in Sierra Leone, but the core team is mostly located in Europe, Slovenia for the most par, some are in Belgium and Switzerland, and I’m located in Dubai primarily when I’m not travelling, I’m a macroeconomist by profession but a computer geek by heart, got my first computer at 6y and started hacking almost instantly haha, just don’t ask my dad how much money it cost him.. Either way I went on to become a full stack developer, self taught but mostly I’m the one developing products and leading teams, I created a few companies in my life, actually never worked at a standard job. One company even went public. So for the rest of the team I’ll now just leave you with a link as I’d need an hour probably to present them:
https://docs.3air.io/team/core-team/
We have some very talented minds on both sided, the IT and the dev side. It’s amazing to work with such a team of people and they make me proud every day and they also lift me up when things are tough and for sure they are sometimes, as for my hobbies, I really like water, I do all types of diving and I was a competitive freediver in my 20ties, I actually made a freediving world record in 2009 that still stands wait I may find a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XRKyGtewcQ
Your roadmap is impressive, there are things like microloans implementation, V1 platform launch, switching to SKALE chain and much more, so I won’t quote everything, can you tell us more about what you are planning for the future, if you can pick a few of the most interesting points in your opinion and expand on them?
Sandi Bitenc
Sure, so we are doing 2 things in parallel.one is the expansion of our physical infrastructure where we are targeting on connecting DRC and Ethiopia, that will bring us into a 200+ people market. And then there’s the platform development where I already mentioned the NFTs and access point nodes, but we have a team working on microloans implementation that will be huge for Africa. The most important thing there is to find a way to actually calculate the repayments rates and make some good predictions of who you can lend and who not, this is where also the DIDs tie in as they will provide a provable record of financial and other transactions and can serve as a decentralised credit score, and then we have a bit of an enforcing mechanism with partial or cross collateralization, I know a lot of businesses that would love to put a part of their cash flow for such purposes if the repayment rates are high enough, additionally we’re working on increasing security and privacy of telcos systems through blockchain and also create a platform for enabling seamless roaming, there’s also some research going on on full tokenization of bandwidth but that is far away so I usually don’t talk about this short term we will also use the token for all our partners or agents. We work with local resellers and they will need to hold our tokens and staked tokens will grant you discounts there’s also a bit of a secret development ongoing to make our telco tech a level higher and hopefully we will be able to present some ql results within 2 months but the tech is coming form the satellite sector and we will use it on ground in a different way. We have an ambitious plan that’s for sure.. And we need to put 130 people to work, haha.
Btw, we have our docs pages for more info… Docs.3air.io
Nowadays it is a challenge to break through the competition, so please tell us a bit about your marketing plans and the people or companies who will support you in this battle to make #3Air known to as many people as possible! You can also tell us more about the K3 technology you mention in your documentation.
Sandi Bitenc
In regards to marketing we have an in house marketing team that we now tripled for the short term launch. They are working around the clock preparing materials and answering questions. So many things are happening now, we also got some good backers in the likes of Crypto Valley where I’m visiting right now, and also Crypto Oasis, Acacia global VC, Helion Ventures and even some family offices that are usually really conservative in their investments. Our partners range from SKALE blockchain to K3 Telecom, iceaddis, IT TIM, Payway Ethiopia, H3ro3s and the Africa Chamber of Digital Commerce and many more we will be announcing shortly! We are getting lot’s of support locally in Africa up to the governmental level. I’d love to speak about some partnerships in the making but unfortunately they may not happen if I do. But I can tell you there are some prominent organisations that are interested in what we are doing in connecting schools and students to the internet
You have an emphasis on learning, my attention has been drawn to the idea of building an incentive system, ‘learn and earn’ please explain what this is supposed to consist of? I am really surprised by the amount of things you want to offer.
Sandi Bitenc
Sure, so one I already mentioned it that there will be some tokens staked on behalf of the user and just having the tokens there watching it move it will create an incentive to learn what it is and how it works, additionally there are lots of companies looking for workforce and now that we seen how much can be done online we are in a perfect position to educate users and connect them to companies that need them and want to employ them they may be willing to provide some incentives for some good student in return of later employing them, we have also recently made a partnership with coding africa where such an option exists, additionally we don’t want to have a closed platform. If someone comes with a good idea we will gladly integrate with them and let our users use it directly form our app or guide them to theirs, and there are some some learn and earn projects trying to innovate like Heroes that we also have a partnership already with so we are all about creating an ecosystem where we provide the users and partner up with cool projects. Together we are strong. And my personal mission is that everything that we do in house with our token needs to be sustainable. this is why there’s no token inflation, no new tokens are minted to provide incentives. This should come from the revenues made or from outside partners.
Finally, such a simpler question, where did the name 3Air come from? Since people like the language of benefits, please tell us why it is worth investing in the $3AIR token what will be owning it bring, and how can users earn?
Sandi Bitenc
Haha, that’s an easy one and actually brings us to something important we didn’t talk about before.
So 3 — AIR comes from 3 services that we provide to our users over AIR and they are:
1. Broadband Internet
2. Digital TV
3. IP Telephony
So yes, we don’t only deliver internet but also other stuff through the same link and is a very cool way, and it’s also a gamechanger for Africa as they all depend on satellite TV and that one doesn’t work while it’s raining, and we are not affected by weather at all maybe at this point let me also share a bit something special about our logo, so this is our logo.. What do you see in it?
Piotr
Hmm, WiFi icon, maybe the rooftop of the house?
Sandi Bitenc
So you have the number 3 in then you have the WiFi signal sign, then the share sign and then a smiley, talk about a meaningful logo, kudos to our designer!
Community questions:
Mateo
The current market situation is too unstable, to restrain investors. So can you give me some good reasons why I should buy your tokens in the current market situation? And also why should your token holders continue to hold?
Sandi Bitenc
This is the last question that came in but it is a valid question and a tough one so let me give you some perspective on this. The current market conditions are for sure not too beneficial but there are signs of a potential turn. So my question to you would be would you rather buy a token on top of a bull run or on the bottom of a bear market. I’m quite certain we are not far from the bottom and we may have even already seen it. So we should be riding out the whole of the next bull. Additionally as you can see we have a lot of thing going on and we have thought about how to make the token economy viable long term so that’s why there’s so much utility built into the token and it will get it locked up. Then as the last, do you think the end user that wants an internet connection will care about whether it is a bull or bear market? They will buy and use the internet regardless. We have structured our tokenomics around that and we are certain it’s the right way
Eleonore RItchey
Smart contracts are prone to failure, and many projects fall victim to it, costing user funds and discrediting projects. How reliable and secure are your smart contracts? Did you test it with either party?
Sandi Bitenc
Yes security is for sure a hugely important part of each blockchain project, or at least it should be. After all, we are dealing with a lot of value. We believe that security starts with good developers and I think we have top notch developers with us. We also have security specialists that have been doing penetration tests and other security tests in the past. We’re actually in the process of acquiring iso 27001 and Iso 9001 that focus 100% on digital security. In addition, we have our token contract and vesting contract audited, and will also audit all other contracts by 3rd party auditors. We have already Certik standing by to do it ASAP. In a nutshell, we’re taking security very seriously. And besides auditing, we think a lot of work needs to be done on the user security education level to prevent scams. As mentioned before, we’re all in on education and this will be one of the main focuses for our team.
XEN
Do the token holders have right to participate in the governance of the project? On what kind of decisions can they vote on about the project?
Sandi Bitenc
Yes, we have laid out governance in our WP and you can read about it here:
https://docs.3air.io/ecosystem/community-building-and-governance/
Telcos are very technical so we need users that will slowly grow with us and then maybe start taking over some decisions but we will start with a community pool that the community will have control over. That should be put to good use in funding local projects but it could also be used for burning part of the tokens. It will be up to the community and we will then build on top of that.
Check our socials:
1. Telegram Group https://t.me/my3air
2. YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/3aircrypto
3. Tiktok ID @3aircrypto
4. Twitter https://twitter.com/3aircrypto
5. Discord https://discord.gg/3air
App.3air.io
Blog.3air.io
docs.3air.io
About Synapse Network
Synapse Network is developing a cross-chain investment and start-up acceleration ecosystem based on blockchain technology to give everybody an equal chance to contribute to great upcoming projects and to do so early on. We are bridging the gap between the traditional & crypto market. The idea of the Synapse Network technology goes beyond the standard offer of launchpads available on the market, becoming a true technological brand providing tech solutions.
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