AMA with LetsExchange, Ontology and MRHB

Solving the issue of identity theft and identity cloning on Web3 or building a Halal Web3 ecosystem to enable all people to use crypto in their daily needs? Or bridging all these solutions? In an exclusive AMA session with LetsExchange, Ontology, and the MRHB ecosystem on Twitter spaces, all three companies’ representatives shared some insights on these matters and gave more information on the projects.

Ontology, a project that works on delivering trust, privacy, and security to Web3 through decentralized identity and data solutions, was represented by Jeff, head of the ecosystem.

MRHB, a project focusing on building the Halal Web3 economy, was represented by Naquib, CEO and founder.

LetsExchange, a go-to crypto exchange hub supporting over 4,500 coins and tokens, was represented by Nadine, head of BD.

Below are the key takeaways from the conversation.

Claire, the AMA host: Hello and welcome everyone to today's AMA session, where we will do a deep dive into the world of Web3 with a special focus on Ontology, LetsExchange, and MRHB. I'm Claire, I'll be your host for today's discussion.

Jeff, do you want to do a brief overview of Ontology? Let everybody know about our vision, key features, and value prop.

Jeff from Ontology: Yeah, absolutely. Ontology is, we've been around, we're into our seventh year. So, I've been around the blockchain and crypto worlds for quite a while now.

One of the things I really like about Ontology is this commitment to cross-chain solutions. We have our layer-1 blockchain, the Ontology blockchain.

We have an EVM to make it easy for Ethereum developers to build with us using the Ethereum virtual machine. We incubated a layer-2 in Goshen Network to work on that. And they themselves are looking at Bitcoin EVMs as well.

We have this beautiful solution that incorporates many opportunities regarding cross-chain usage. On top of that, we developed OntID, which is a decentralized identity. And that, again, can be deployed across multiple chains, giving people control of their identity, pretty much wherever they want to use it and wherever they want to control it.

A lot of this is done with Orange Protocol, which works on reputation and decentralized reputation. And, of course, there's Onto Wallet, which is the gateway to using things like OntID across multiple different things. Onto Wallet is a cross-chain wallet that manages digital assets and your decentralized identity.

Lots of things, lots of different protocols, lots of different building blocks for people to use with Ontology. So yeah, pretty cool. I always find it really exciting.

Claire: Nadine, we would love to have, you know, an overview of LetsExchange, looking at the mission and any services that you guys provide as well. Could you touch on some of the advantages of using your platform?

Nadine from LetsExchange: Yeah, sure. So we are an instant exchange that supports cross-chain swap for anything to anything. We support 300 plus blockchains with a KYC-friendly approach, 15 million pairs.

One of the solutions we provide is B2C, where you can directly go to our website and exchange any crypto for any other crypto. Our second direction is B2B1, where we provide our API for cross-chain swaps that can be integrated into any wallet, token, or NFT marketplace. We are redesigning our website. So many things are happening, and we would be happy to share more about partnering with you to do it, too.

Claire: Awesome, I look forward to hearing more. And then, Naquib, I'd love to know more about your mission. You touched on it briefly in your intro, but if you guys could give more information on any products or features, it would be really great for the community.

Naquib from MRHB: Absolutely. So, we started with a vision to address the gap between the need for ethical solutions in the ecosystem. And by ethical solutions, I mean solutions that adhere to Islamic finance principles.

So, Islamic finance is a way of doing finance per the Sharia rulings. It is termed as ethical finance. I mean there are seven categories of finance, including ethical finance.

So when decentralized finance really took off in July 2020, and the TVL suddenly started shooting up, there was a need in the market where it would suit the Muslim community as well in the entire world, which is like almost 25% of the global population. And there was none. So that's when we started building it, not just for others, but for ourselves, so that we could use it. And so that's how we began formulating different products in this system, different ideas we started putting together. So, we started with a non-custodial wallet, which would be multi-chain and chain agnostic.

Any token that's listed on the wallet, that's available in the wallet, will go through a screening from the Sharia scholars, making sure that the protocol does not have any yield-bearing mechanisms, it doesn't interact with gambling protocols, all those practices that are prohibited as per Islamic finance.

Apart from having Sharia-compliant and screening tokens in the wallet, we started introducing products that would basically be useful to the global community or the people who are not faith-sensitive. I mean, it's just not about Muslims, but people who are not faith-sensitive, so it would address them as well.

We built a commodity exchange, decentralized, peer-to-peer commodity exchange called Tejarex, where you can trade gold and silver and buy, and sell gold and silver on the spot. And then, we created a product roadmap called Empower, which stands for empowering with crypto. So Empower enables you to use your crypto directly to recharge your airtime, buy gift cards for e-commerce in your local stores, and use eSIMs to help you travel globally and stay connected. The last one, my personal favorite, is Visa MasterCard, a debit card that you can buy directly from crypto.

All these products make the wallet a very, very useful wallet. The next offerings we are working on, which will be available in the next three to four months, are crypto vouchers, which are basically solving the first friction point of most of the crypto community globally: how do we onboard people onto crypto? You know, the usual way of onboarding people into crypto is through payment gateways, swiping your debit or credit card, and buying some of it.

There are a lot of places where debit cards and credit cards don't work on payment gateways. For example, in Saudi Arabia, it doesn't work. It's not allowed.

It's not allowed by the central bank. People can still onboard into crypto by buying the crypto cards and redeeming them on the wallet for USDT or USDC or BTC and ETH. So these are a few things that we are working on, along with bringing our physical card as well.

So these are a few of our offerings. We aim to be the payment layer of the crypto ecosystem in the next few years.

Claire: Thank you so much for that. And everyone, thanks for your intros. A lot is happening.

I think there's a lot for the community to learn here. So I'm really excited to see how this is going to develop. So, as I said, I think we're super eager to dive deeper into the dynamics between Ontology, LetsExchange, and the MRHB community. Each entity brings something special to the table, but we're really keen to understand the synergies, right? So, if everyone could touch on some of the mutual benefits. Also, I'd love to hear more about community initiatives.

Jeff from Ontology: So one of the things that attracted me to crypto in general, Web3, whatever name we want to use today, is this idea of inclusivity and getting people involved. This goes into the community as well.

And it's something I like about what we're trying to do with Ontology. We kind of take identity for granted, right? But some people don't have access to a good and trusted identity.

So, bringing a decentralized identity solution gives access to those things. It also links to what Naquib was saying regarding access and inclusivity. You know, having products that people can use and access.

I've worked on projects that try to address the underbanked and the underserved. I'm working with Ontology, trying to address identities that people can use across the board. And so when we talk about synergies, it's whether it be like an exchange, making sure that people can exchange in a permissionless way, or getting involved in the market.

Or whether it's looking at MRHB in terms of whether people can ethically, from their own ethical standpoint, use products and actually get involved in the opportunities in this market.

Nadine from LetsExchange: I think that'll be useful today. Thank you so much for sharing all of that; I totally agree with all the points.

We have been on the market for three-plus years, and we will do a lot of co-marketing and cross-marketing activities, share about our project, and share about our partners' projects. I am super excited about that. We will do Zealy campaigns, take some sessions, and giveaways. And for us, it's really important to work and share it with the community, so they would not only know about us, what we are doing as a service provider, but about our projects and partners, like what they do at the space, because for us, it's super important to connect our partners, our projects, our community to each other. That's why we are working so hard to connect all the points on the market. Right now, for example, we can say that what we are doing at LetsExchange, by providing our services, we are exchanging any crypto for any other crypto.

So, for example, anyone can directly open LetsExchange and exchange ontology for 4,000 plus assets on 300 plus blockchains and do it vice versa. And the same with Marhaba. It's one of the points we provide as a service, and that's why we are trying to connect the communities.

Claire: Yeah, I really like these initiatives. It's like putting, kind of, to learn and earn, right? So you're promoting your product, but you're also incentivizing people to do so. And there's also that element of gamification.

And I think working with Jeff and being on the Ontology team is something we've been focusing on quite a lot. It's kind of understanding what the community needs to know and what we're providing them. So, Naquib, we'd love to hear more about how you've witnessed your community develop.

Naquib from MRHB: Yeah, so look, we have always focused on two aspects. One is community inclusivity and bringing the community on board, providing a gateway to the community. So, one is addressing the community inclusivity.

So we worked on that, building an ecosystem where the faith-sensitive communities can find a home and be part of the crypto ecosystem because one of the key aspects of DeFi is financial inclusion for the masses. So, you cannot achieve that objective if you're not building solutions for 25% of the global population. So that's one area we addressed.

The second is onboarding. Again, one of the greatest problems in the crypto world at the moment is the first step.

How do people come on board and get on the regular fiat rails? So, this is our next step of work that we'll be focusing on in the entire 2020 is solving that. As I mentioned, the first one will be live in the next three to four months. We will be coming up with options where people from anywhere in the world can easily onboard without going through the restrictions of their geographical boundaries. I think that leads us quite nicely into the next section that I'd love to chat about, which is the user-centric aspect of how all of these projects have developed.

Claire: So I think each project has played a crucial role in shaping user experience across all platforms. Thank you to everyone who joined and participated in today's session. I really appreciate it, and until next time, take care.These are just a couple of questions discussed during the AMA session. To learn more about how Ontology solves such issues as identity theft and identity cloning, thus making Web3 a safer space, how MRHB enables easy access to crypto for all people, and what Nadine likes most of all in LetsExchange, listen to the full AMA.