NFT Stamps @ SwissPost
The interview was conducted by Christian Handtrack, Jan Heinemann, Tomal Kanti Ganguly and Wolfgang Krämer.
Part 1 of the interview
Innovations with huge potential seem to be an adventurous journey most of the time. What went well on the crypto stamp journey? What were the major challenges, especially in terms of cybersecurity? Your elaborate experiences with version 1.0 could give many insights.
The most remarkable success on this journey was after the launch: the stamps were sold out in a matter of around five hours which we did not expect. The market response was astonishing: people really liked the idea and bought our product. Furthermore, this year, the communication shifted into another direction: there was a lot less skepticism, internally and externally with all kinds of stakeholders. It is great to see that there are so many early adopters.
But there are still people we would like to get on board. Some skepticism remained. We are trying to diminish borders by bringing more clarity into this topic. We provide content on our website or help in gathering more information so that all people can understand it better and have less fear of technologies they do not fully grasp. It remains a global challenge, and the biggest of them all is how to overcome these challenges.
Taking a deep dive into the technological side of crypto stamps, you decided to use the standard Polgygon ERC-1155. There are considerable advantages to this standard, some of them being efficient in speed and costs. We are now facing outages of Polygon. Why did you decide on this, anyway? Are other options on the way, maybe for version 3.0?
With the momentum we got with our unprecedented success with the crypto stamps, we decided to look where else the journey could go. We are constantly examining further developments, so the Polygon ERC-1155 seemed to fit best. It also made sense the most, considering the properties of NFTs. Currently, Polygon ERC-1155 is still one of the fastest blockchains with low transaction costs and a broad community. For now, we are going with this standard, based on our own selection criteria, not knowing what the future will bring to us.
Could you elaborate on your selection criteria?
We had different offers from different companies. They pitched their ideas for this project, and we selected the ones who seemed to make the best match, based on their persuasiveness, competence levels regarding blockchain and NFT and their conceptual offer.
Have you thought about fraudulent activities in general?
In an environment like this, one must always consider these issues. We tried to minimize the possibilities for a fraudulent attack with different measures. For example, the contract was audited, by an external firm, and deployed in a way that only the deployer can mint new tokens. We provide hardware wallets to secure the private key. These hardware wallets are secured and stored at the post and then can only be accessed by surpassing strict security measures.
