Interview with Flow co-founders Mik and Weilei, answering your key questions in one article!

After hosting the first offline launch event in Asia in mid-September, the new public chain developed by the CryptoKitties team at Dapper Labs, Flow, also set a record for the highest fundraising in the history of the CoinList platform. According to official sources, the blockchain game NBA Top Shot based on Flow has released its public beta version and has already generated over $2 million in revenue during the testing phase.

Flow's Chief Business Officer and Co-founder Mik Naayem and Global Developer Marketing Lead Weilei were interviewed by the Asia-Pacific community Crypto Revolution, BlockTɑlks, and Crypto Daku, addressing many common questions. Flow has officially authorized this translation for a comprehensive guide to address your concerns and expectations about Flow!

Meet the Interviewees: Mik Naayem, Weilei

Mik Naayem is the Chief Business Officer and Co-Founder of Flow, responsible for business partnerships, fundraising, and strategy. Before joining Dapper Labs, he was the founder of a gaming platform with 250 million active users, which was eventually sold to Sega and Bandai Namco in 2016. He joined the Dapper Labs team in mid-2017 and was involved in CryptoKitties.

Weilei is the Global Developer Marketing Lead at Flow, responsible for developer ecosystem growth and innovative marketing strategies. Prior to joining, he was involved in developer relations for another project, Streamr, making significant contributions to technical outreach and the Ethereum ecosystem.

Can you briefly introduce what Flow is?

Mik describes: "Flow is a next-generation foundational smart contract blockchain that brings more powerful capabilities to DApps, games, and assets. If you want to easily develop apps or decentralized businesses and achieve commercial scale, Flow is your best choice."

Weilei adds that Flow was developed by Dapper Labs, the creators of the non-fungible token (NFT) standard ERC-721. Flow has collaborated with many world-renowned brands such as NBA, UFC, Ubisoft, Warner Music, and has attracted numerous independent developers, other infrastructure partners, and institutions.

To learn more about the origins of Dapper Labs and Flow, we recommend reading DappReview's interview.

With so many underlying public blockchains, is Flow necessary?

Mik states that Flow believes the important thing is not just to build a faster blockchain.

Mik believes that another important aspect of blockchain is enabling developers to create successful businesses. They believe four things should be achieved:

1 Development must be both simple and secure. (e.g., not adopting sharding, Flow's programming language Cadence)

2 Scalability - Mik states that Flow's speed is already over 100 times faster than Ethereum and will further improve in the coming months.

3 Easy user and DApp interaction - Mik mentions that Flow has collaborated with Circle and Coinbase to create a seamless wallet that can accept fiat and various cryptocurrencies without the need for additional plugins, and has a simple password recovery mechanism.

4 User adoption - Mik says they have developed DApps like NBA Top Shot that can attract thousands of users and encourage them to visit other DApps on Flow.

Mik believes that Dapper Labs has three years of development experience on Ethereum, understanding the problems developers may encounter. They empathize and are passionately working to make Flow successful. With successes like CryptoKitties and the Ethereum wallet Dapper Wallet, Dapper Labs has a strong and active community worldwide. Mik mentions that there are over a hundred developers developing on Flow in countries such as Europe, the US, China, Japan, Korea, and Thailand.

Is Flow secure?

Mik states that Flow uses the HotStuff consensus proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. Its unique multi-node architecture allows Flow to be scalable without sharding and maintain decentralization.

According to him, in the Beta mainnet, there are already over 150 validators, including industry players like DSRV, Figment Networks, Block Daemon, Bisontrails, Stakefish, and corporate validators like Ubisoft, Samsung, T-Systems TMOBILE, Animoca, and universities like Berkeley, Yonsei, and Purdue.

What can Flow do for DeFi?

Mik believes the most important part is that DeFi on Flow can coexist with other types of DApps without disrupting their business models. In Ethereum, coexistence is challenging as DeFi has driven Gas Fees too high, making it difficult for other applications to function. The ideal scenario is for DeFi and other types of applications to mutually benefit each other.

Mik says: "Our unique architecture allows computation and transaction transmission to be handled by different types of nodes. This allows DeFi to scale without impacting other applications. We expect each transaction to consume less than 0.001 Flow."

To learn more about the detailed node design, you can read the interview with Li Xuan.

What is the utility of Flow's token?

Mik explains: "FLOW" is the native token of the Flow blockchain, which can be used for "staking," "paying transaction fees," "locking to exchange for storage space," and "as collateral for other stablecoins and DeFi projects."

Weilei provides more details about the tokens, explaining that tokens acquired in the community sale will unlock 50% after 12 months, while tokens from the Dutch auction that started on October 6th will allow people to acquire tokens through bidding and will unlock 100% after 12 months.

Weilei states that once people acquire these tokens, they can lock them in nodes to earn rewards, and the rewards can be circulated immediately without the need for locking. He also estimates the annualized return with a chart:

We can see that in the first month, he estimates that 80-100% of tokens will be staked, with expected rewards of 20-25%. In the second month, the staking ratio is expected to decrease as tokens begin to be used for different applications.

What are Flow's recent plans?

Mik states that besides the Dutch auction on October 6th at 8 PM Taiwan time, where the FLOW token will be auctioned, on October 16th, token minting and distribution will occur, and the mainnet will officially launch. He also mentions that staking rewards will be enabled on November 2nd.

In terms of DApps, aside from NBA Top Shot already running on Flow, Dr. Seuss App will be launched in the first quarter of next year, and the UFC App will be released in the third to fourth quarter of next year.

Mik also mentions that "CryptoKitties Gen 2" will be released at some point, and the first generation of "CryptoKitties" on Ethereum can be played in the second generation.

Their partner, Animoca Brands, will bring MotoGP and REVV onto Flow. Additionally, by the end of 2021, their largest centralized game, Star Girl, with millions of monthly players, will be launched on Flow. Recently, they have also partnered with the Thai exchange Bitkub to introduce fan tokens for YouTubers on Flow.