Briefly tell us why we should all love ChartEx
From what I’m told, most people already love ChartEx and that means the world to me, there’s already thousands of users and I see charts and screenshots shared regularly across social media. That being said, if you’ve not heard of ChartEx, understanding the backstory a little will help. ChartEx was born in a trading community, it started out as a chart bot in Discord, providing charts for exchanges that weren’t supported by the likes of TradingView.
There was no agenda to it, I just really enjoyed building things that were helpful. Over time this expanded in scope and evolved into covering Telegram, Discord and Twitter and then eventually the ChartEx website was born.
I like to think this puts ChartEx in a strong position because whilst I might have built it, it was shaped and guided by some highly intelligent and successful traders who helped me get to the core of what would actually help. My core belief is to listen to those around me and this expands into the wider ChartEx community now too – ChartEx will be a collaborative project and aims to serve the needs of its users above everything else.
Many projects are trying to capitalize on the Uniswap mania, what competitive advantages and features differentiate ChartEx from other available solutions?
I’ve not seen any other product that can seamlessly feature new tokens once there’s enough liquidity and volume to deem them ‘somewhat’ legitimate and have them instantly available to chart properly, and I suppose that’s the real USP.
That and actually getting at the raw data needed to produce the candles – Uniswap doesn’t have a direct API which means a lot of time and effort went into understanding how to interface with it and get useful, reliable data.
I suppose getting back to the answer to your first question too, having a strong support network of experienced traders around me really helps in understanding what those yet-unknown USPs could be. Show Trades feature on Chartex.pro
Your token sale was oversubscribed by 600% and you still decided to not only stay within the 1M raise cap but also to exclude VCs. What was the reasoning behind that decision?
I could have easily redesigned the terms of the raise I suppose and let everyone who pledged get their hands on tokens, but the reality is that the fundraising set out to provide enough working capital to deliver what is needed and a sufficient runway to sustain development resources and activity to facilitate this, nothing more, just a realistic figure. I was absolutely blown away by the degree of interest.
VCs weren’t specifically excluded, but for most, the idea of a $5,000 individual cap did not fit their investment profile and I was not willing to compromise on this rule – in fact some people found themselves receiving refunds because they’d tried to invest via multiple means. In my particular example I didn’t feel VCs would have a huge amount to offer ChartEx that our pre-existing network couldn’t already provide so I didn’t actively seek VC investment or input – that’s not really a criticism of VCs rather a reflection of our particular circumstances.
ChartEx also offers bot services – could you expand on what kind of bots are available and how they can be used?
The most-used bot at the moment is the Telegram Chart bot, this essentially provides a snapshot of the chart as you’d see it on the ChartEx site, but maintains support for a number of other mainstream centralised exchanges and is currently the only place you can use our proprietary trendline analysis and support/resistance levels calculations.
Beyond this, the next products to be released will be the Whale and Wallet watcher on Telegram, because the very nature of Uniswap trading is open and transparent, it doesn’t take long to identify wallets of interest, and our alerts will simplify this.
The Whale Watcher aspect will also provide notifications of trades that meet specific user filters such as market, USD value or ETH value. A comprehensive TA and analytical bot will follow shortly after this, for those who would leverage traditional market screening tools such as RSI, EMA crosses and trendline touches.
Your project can already count on the crypto community’s support. How important is that relationship and how do you see it contributing to ChartEx going forward?
Without the Crypto Community there could be no ChartEx. The words of support, the ideas and feedback are what got us here, and I have every intention of paying it forward to the wider community by continuing to build ChartEx, expanding its support for other markets and maintaining our position as a leading provider. The ChartEx DAO which will be launched in 2021 will provide for a direct means of incentivising and rewarding ChartEx users who are providing value to the platform. This could be through answering bounties for tasks relating to ChartEx data, or supporting ideas for products that could leverage our underlying technology for example – it’s part of the circular economy for the CHART token.
Could you guide us through the decision process of creating the token and how is it going to be used?
At the beginning when I’d explored and then compared and contracted the various routes to market, the only way I could see that would allow ChartEx to remain agile and competitive as well as delivering significant investment, particularly in infrastructure, was to seek out working capital.
It was only after significant thought and deliberation that I had outlined a tokenomic model that justified its place and need within the proposed ecosystem that the decision was made to launch a private sale, token and a Uniswap listing.
CHART having real purpose and utility was the key driver behind this – a simple payment token or ‘hodl to use’ was not really my idea of an innovative or appropriate use of a token and I’d been thinking about ways to involve the community and attract developers. From this, the idea of the ChartEx DAO was born. Much like you can make a proposal on most yield farming tokens, the same will be said for ChartEx – users will be able to make proposals for features, grants, bounties or general support in enabling them to add value to the ecosystem, and CHART holders will play a part in the decision making process as to the value of those proposals and pass or deny them based on their voting power.
The subscription products will of course mean there *is* a simple payments purpose for the token, but this is secondary to its main utility in governance.
Every project should have short, medium and long term goals. What can we expect to see from ChartEx?
ChartEx has a vague long-term goal, quite deliberately because the landscape is changing so quickly. The goal is simple. Build a great product that people want to use.
Shorter term goals are to increase user acquisition, introduce premium products to ensure positive cashflow will allow us to operate in an entirely sustainable manner and the most important short term goal, which is to scale our infrastructure accordingly to support the growing user numbers. Finally, staying agile will be key.
The roadmap as published in the pitch deck for example is already outdated because of the emergence of the likes of SushiSwap and Burgerswap which are attracting interest and liquidity. The roadmap is adapting therefore to prioritise support for these as this is what the community demands.
Assuming the token rises in value significantly, are the subscription fees calculated in a fixed $ USD amount, or in a token amount?
The subscription revenue will be reinvested into things like infrastructure, hardware and network costs and these types of goods and service are still paid for in fiat, so we’ll be looking to peg the price of subscription at the point of payment to a USD or other equivalent local fiat value too so the subscription costs remain stable alongside our equivalent income – from a commercial perspective, it’s important that ChartEx products remain affordable so price fluctuations should not mean people end up overpaying in equivalent fiat value.
