It’s been a considerable time since I last spoke to Ritesh Kakkad and as we all know last year (as of November 24, 2020 ) has caused an upheaval in each aspect of everyone’s life. Thus, it was obvious that when I decided to speak to XinFin (XDC) Network co-founder once again, I was bound to get some amazing insights into the blockchain industry and XinFin’s future. To start with the most important news first,  XinFin Network crossed the market cap for USD 1Billion just a few days ago. Needless to say that this marks one of the biggest milestones in XinFin’s progress chart and we are excited to hear from Mr.Kakkad Ritesh who has generously agreed to talk to us once more. Today, we’ll be talking in detail about the organizational roadmap and taking a few questions from the community members.

Ruslan Wing: Congratulations Mr.Kakkad, for achieving the magnanimous feat of USD 1 Billion market cap in such a short time. It’s great to see that XinFin (XDC) Network has also been added to the top100 blockchain project as per CoinGecko Data.

Ritesh Kakkad: Thank you so much Ruslan. This was neither easy nor possible to achieve without the belief and faith of 145+ master node holders and thousands of active community members. This milestone was a dream which was envisioned in 2017- to create the Billion Dollar Network and when it has become a reality, it dawns upon me that it’s the collective efforts and support from the hundreds of community members which has actualized it.

Ruslan Wing: That’s absolutely wonderful. In our last meeting we mostly talked about the basic details of the business but this time, I would like you to speak more about the XinFin Network’s future roadmap for 2021? 

Ritesh Kakkad: We have already shared Roadmap 2021 with the community members http://xinfin.org/roadmap  and account holders. For now, we will be sticking to the same roadmap as the previous year and will keep focussing on adding more liquidity and exchanges while expanding the ecosystem around XinFin Network. The agenda is to gain control of all possible integration like wallets, custodian integration, and cross-chain bridges that strengthen the network in the fin-tech space.

Ruslan Wing: Quite perfectly explained and I am observing wonderful progress in Q1 already. 

Ritesh Kakkad: That’s true, Ruslan. Now that community participation has increased considerably as compared to last year, we can clearly see the effects. We are working round the clock with the community from different time zones and that’s reflecting in the results. Our governance team has also announced a handsome reward for the most integral community contributors. Therefore, I request the community members to help us achieve the end goal of Roadmap 2021 and in exchange win an enormous XDC bounty. Currently, the bounty is being rewarded for protocol enhancement,  Custodian or wallet integration, or Referral section where community members have to connect and coordinate at the right time, in order to win.more details at :  https://xinfin.org/bounty 

Ruslan Wing: I am sure that message will reach all the eager community members out there. Talking about the whole, we have a few questions from them- Is there a possibility in the future that we will do staking from our D’CENT portfolio, for more security or any other reason?

Ritesh Kakkad: We have already started the work on staking and XDC yield but we are much more eager to get the real yield by supporting the small, medium enterprises (SME) using TradeFinex Network. As of now, we are piloting transactions at a very small level through funding societies and Validus but we will soon be scaling it up. We are also working along with multiple wallet providers and touchpoints like exchanges to start skating provision for the users. In short, we have multiple pipelines in action that are working to get staking facilities for the XDC. 

Ruslan Wing: When will XDC be coming on major exchanges? It is already being counted in the top-100 coins as per market capitalization (as per CoinGecko)

Ritesh Kakkad: Our philosophy has been very clear from the beginning. The more exchange listings we onboard, the more liquidity we will achieve. Our RoadMap is already in play and as compared to the last year we are making really good progress. So much so that we expect to go live with many exchanges in near future as well. We are also looking to get access to more regional country-specific markets as well like we already have proven with Indonesian and South Korean markets where we have a larger community base. 

Ruslan Wing: When can we expect to see major advertisements and promotions on online channels for XDC?

Ritesh Kakkad: I was expecting this question and quite frankly even though it’s very obvious but if you look at decentralized networks like bitcoin then you’ll understand that it’s majorly promoted by the supporters and not choreographed advertisements by Satoshi Nakamoto. Thus, we want to request every XDC holder and supporter to help us spread the word about the network and educate their peers about various technologies and tools like wallet, custody, etc. available at their disposal. Just to drop a reminder – educate people about the decentralized network, and we will sponsor your bounty amount for the educational activities as well. The activities can be supported either by creating a blog or a nice video and post to social media.

Ruslan Wing: When will the two banks that you mentioned earlier and FINEON be going live on tradefinex?

Ritesh Kakkad: TradeFinex has been progressing very well but since it has started connecting real-world instruments and legacy systems, for every transaction, we had to work overnight to check off various regulatory aspects like token issuance jurisdiction, Custodian regulation, Legacy system, and local compliance-related regulation. It takes time but at the end of the day, we are exploring untapped markets worth trillions of dollars. Now we are connecting real-world NFT with De-Fi and hence you can expect to see some major scaling up in transactions. 

Ruslan Wing: If xinfin is so revolutionary then why did it dip so hard after the ICO and never really picked up until it suddenly shot up after the hack.

Ritesh Kakkad: That’s a really good question, Ruslan. But if you take a careful look at the bitcoin initial days or XRP or ethereum or even Binance for that then you’ll notice that each of them struggled for quite some time and worked very hard to get user acceptance. On the other hand, XinFin XDC took around 1 year to cross the benchmark of 100+ Masternodes, and now each of them is a millionaire.  I remember how Hack (ERC20 Coin XDCe) proved to be a blessing in disguise for the XDC since we started focusing more on the XDC chain after this. The masternode holders came together and made a roadmap for XinFin which phased out XDCe plans. This initiative has given new energy and a broader sense of decentralized network. It’s exactly like in the case of  Astronomers where theories of dark energy help the universe to expand at a faster pace. Similarly, the XDCe hack helps XDC to grow at a much faster pace.

Ruslan Wing: when will the XDC Index product by Vinter get ready for the market launch?

Ritesh Kakkad: XDC index is already live and our team has also started the facility of giving feed using API since all our fund managers are currently working on structured products that are just getting ready for market release. As a Regulated index provider, vinter can only provide data benchmarking feed for the audience’s perusal.

Ruslan Wing: According to you, why is Market Cap to volume ratio not exactly proportional and error-free?

Ritesh Kakkad: Interesting question, if you look at the traditional market, the Market Cap to Volume ratio is always very less as compared to the crypto industry. XinFin core members and masternode holders opine that in order to garner organic volumes and not running volume sourced from a bot, we will have to look at the organic growth benchmarks for the last 2-3 years.

Ruslan Wing: When will the institutions be able to use XDC through the Corda bridge?

Ritesh Kakkad: The bridge is already live as per the roadmap. The Cordaite team has done a wonderful job at the sync-up answer. We have received many inquiries around the usage and settlement of large sums of money. As you know, large Institutional organizations and banks take time to make crucial decisions as they have to process them through various criteria, evaluation checklists, and regulators’ frameworks. 

Ruslan Wing: How will XinFin anchor new deployment  (or DApps ) on XDC Network?

Ritesh Kakkad: We have an entire ecosystem and strong funding support for the startups working on new-age DApps or open-source products on XinFin Network. We provide funding support as well as direct access to a large community support which can help them arrive in the market much more quickly. More details: https://xinfin.org/apply-for-funding 

Ruslan Wing: When are you planning to start the Utility feature?

Ritesh Kakkad: Many DApps have already started deployment on XinFin Network while some of these are also listed on the Utility page: https://xinfin.org/xdc-utility. With each passing day, we are seeing more and more DApps being boarded onto the network.

Ruslan Wing: How is XinFin planning to build the ecosystem with its DApps and its Utility Feature?

Ritesh Kakkad: We have already deployed a host of apps that have been listed on the utility page:  https://xinfin.org/xdc-utility.  And we are building an ecosystem of fintech apps that include trading apps, payment gateways, etc and we are empowering young individuals through our educational program and technical drives to develop new DApps that strengthen the system

Ruslan Wing: We have been hearing of a lot of contention surrounding the energy consumption by various cryptocurrencies. Considering the way ahead will only increase the trading volumes, hence what are your comments on it related to XDC?

Ritesh Kakkad: When we started building the XDC coin and the underlying blockchain, our objective was to make an efficient blockchain and cryptocurrency system that doesn’t impact the environment with its trading volume. I feel very proud to share that XDC’s energy consumption is 1/10000th of 1 KWH unit which is an exception feat considering that bitcoin consumes almost 1000 KWH with each transaction.

Ruslan Wing: That is actually brilliant. Tell me something, what is it about XDC and XinFin that builds the loyalty of community members. 

Ritesh Kakkad: The loyalty is built when we take actions through genuine intentions and so far our roadmap, relevance and trading volumes have only amplified that trust. Our trading volume and circulating supply are at an ever high at around 10 million dollars and the tokenomics assure the community members of our new developments which ensure loyalty.

Ruslan Wing: Thank you for your time Ritesh. It was a deeply insightful session and I appreciate your honesty and patience while answering the community questions. Look forward to speaking with you again 🙂

Ritesh Kakkad: Thanks a lot Ruslan for the kind words and we really appreciate you taking out time and making the effort to speak to community members and bringing their questions to me. Thank you.