Cryptocurrency will grow this much in 4 years. ‘No one can stop it’: Kain Warwick, Infinex

Kain Warwick, an Australian behind decentralized crime protocol Synthetix and now “UX layer” Infinex, says the clock is ticking for cryptocurrencies to grow fast enough to reach a point where they can never be attempted to be shut down again.

In an interview with Magazine at Near’s Redacted conference in Bangkok, Warwick said it would take four years for the cryptocurrency industry, especially his latest venture, Infinex, to go mainstream.

“If we can have mass adoption in the next four years, if everyone has access to the chain and hundreds of millions or billions of users, then the work is done. “We can’t close it down.”

Infinex is Warwick’s attempt to address the risks that come with centralized platforms, as seen in the multibillion-dollar collapses of FTX, BlockFi, Chelsea, and Voyager Digital, without sacrificing the “standards”-friendly features these platforms once offered. no see.

In other words, Infinex is positioning itself as a CEX killer, a platform that pursues the user-friendliness of a centralized exchange with the transparency and user control of decentralized finance. Considering that Infinex operates out of a single office in Sydney, this isn’t a big deal, but it doesn’t mean censorship is actually impossible.

“Currently, the platform is non-custodial, so if someone nukes the Infinex platform, censors it, commits a DDoS, or takes down AWS, they can still go to the chain and get their assets back.”

The ultimate goal of Infinex, or Warwick, any powerful cryptocurrency platform is to scale to a level where the level of demand could actually be greater than a legitimate attempt to “nuke” it.

“It’s the Uber model, right? Make it so useful that you can’t quit.”

Infinex ExtensionBet on a passkey to replace the seed phrase

Currently, the Infinex platform is still in its early stages. Users can perform a limited number of swaps, asset bridges, and cryptocurrency-themed minigames, but they still cannot trade assets like they can on major centralized exchanges like Coinbase or Binance.

But it’s coming soon. Warwick said Infinex will list the top 500 cryptocurrency assets by market capitalization in early 2025, when it launches an updated version of the platform. We just announced a partnership with Near Protocol to use chain abstraction technology to make decentralized cross-chain swaps as easy as pressing a button.

One of the key features Warwick hopes to offer on-chain to retail users is the use of passkeys. He believes this feature should replace the outdated security model of seed phrases across the industry.

The world’s largest technology companies, including Google and Apple, are already using PassKey. You sign up with your usual email linked to your biometric data in a secure area of ​​your device. This means you can safely log into your cryptocurrency account without having to go through the painful process of setting up a cryptocurrency wallet.

A week before our interview, an Infinex user lost 80 Patron NFTs worth about $400,000 to a Trojan virus. Warwick says Infinex now runs entirely on crypto keys, but blames itself for not integrating an NFT marketplace into its platform, forcing users to retreat into the wild.

“So this user took the NFT out of his Infinex account and put it into OpenSea or Blur. While it was sitting in a hot wallet, it ran out because the device had a trojan and was seeded. Enter the text.”

Password concerns

Warwick said that when Infinex first launched, Passkey was still a new security method and they did not want to rely entirely on Passkey, so they decided to also include an “on-chain security element.”

“If we had been more aggressive with our passing keys, they wouldn’t have lost that asset. Right? We will be able to onboard all of these assets and not worry about the risks of the on-chain components.”

Speaking of NFTs, Infinex’s sale of Patron shook up the venture capital landscape in September, raising more than $67 million through the new funding model. Warwick said he hopes the amount is closer to $100 million.

Without offering any kind of revenue at all, the platform’s “Patron NFTs” were marketed solely as a way for investors to support Infinex’s growth.

Unlike most cryptocurrency fundraisings, no special deals or discounts were offered to venture capital firms, early backers, or insiders, and all investors purchased Patron NFTs at the same tiered price.

However, Warwick admits that offering a three-year unlock period to locked backers at 25% of the unlocked liquid backer fee was a big pricing mistake.

“We anticipated that regular community members and even many KOLs would say, “I want optionality and I want liquid patrons.” But it didn’t work out that way.”

“Very few people chose liquid. It was about 2%. It was a really big discount and that was one of the challenges.”

Warwick said it would have been better to find a price on the open market, but it was too difficult.

“It’s an NFT. Doesn’t do anything. As you can see, there are three tiers and there are also discounts. Besides, it would have been too difficult if I couldn’t tell you what the price was.”

“The reality is that we were wrong, so recently the (Infinex) treasury made distributions to those who bought liquid backers of additional locked backers to reduce the purchase price.”

Despite being mispriced and not raising as much money as expected, Patron sales appear to be a clever way to circumvent securities laws. This is because NFTs with no promises attached can hardly be said to be securities. This is true even if the holder is “rewarded” for their sponsorship with some tokens at some point in the future.

Warwick said the idea was not simply a move to circumvent securities laws, but his way of standing up to anti-cryptocurrency politicians and regulators who have done their best to crack down on digital assets over the past few years.

“I think securities law is very important to securities because they are centralized entities that deliver some value, they are opaque, and if you don’t regulate them, people can go broke.”

“But it’s not that regulators and governments are saying ‘everything is securities,’ they’re saying all they need to say to try to kill cryptocurrencies.”

“The moment I realized this was blatant war, I said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m not going to sit there and let you shoot at me all day. I will fight back.’”

“So I looked at this and said, ‘What can we do to optimize the outcome of getting more people using Infinex?’ The answer is: Get more people involved in your project. It’s as simple as that.”

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Tom Mitchell Hill

Tom Mitchelhill is a reporter covering cryptocurrency and fintech for Cointelegraph’s Asia Pacific news desk. He was previously a senior reporter at The Chainsaw, a startup Web3 outlet. Tom studied Philosophy, Economics and International Relations at the University of Wollongong.