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Mogul Development AMA Recap

This post will recap the development team AMA that took place on the Mogul Telegram channel on Wednesday 30th June. This was hosted by David Liu (Lead Blockchain Developer). Tune in next week for an AMA with the Mogul Film team!

Question 1, asked by @MarkFacebook.

What will the team be working on for the rest of 2021?

Answer 1

The main products that we’re working on are the quadratic voting and movie NFT module, NFT marketplace, and smart wallet. We work in an agile process, so we break down these tasks to smaller components as well, and within these, we’re building different bridges, polygon infrastructure, smart contracts, fiat onramps, etc. This allows us to have consistent product releases and launch different features over time. 

There’s also a lot being worked on that help support and back-end perspective that a lot of you can’t see when we’re launching products. For example, a back-end system for our support team to help monitor user accounts and give direct support. A lot of this ground work we’ve been working on will start to make a big impact when we launch new features. 

Question 2, asked by @PugMagician.

What Mogul technical development do you think will be the industry leading tech? What will other projects point to Mogul to say ” This is something new!”?

Answer 2
Mogul is the first platform to bring together a proper ecosystem for movie funding. We bring together easy onboarding, Hollywood movie makers, a non-custodial smart wallet and an NFT marketplace for the sale of movie props/rewards/merch.


I think our staking and voting system will be highly regarded among the technical community. Especially because it’s never really been done before where blockchain voting is used to decide an off-chain event as big as making a movie. Plus, every movie is represented as an NFT so there’s another layer of authenticity and auditability that people can track through the blockchain to make sure that the votes are authentic and going to the movies that actually end up winning. 

Question 3, asked by @defiapez.

Vitalik has been talking about quadratic voting since 2017. What was the process like in building these voting smart contracts? Was the audit process extensive? To my knowledge, I don’t think quadratic voting has actually been done yet on a large scale.

Answer 3

Quadratic voting in itself is not complex to implement but adding staking rewards for voters increased the amount of time necessary for design and testing. This is something we added to encourage people to vote and gamify the process

The audit process was quite smooth, auditors reviewed our code and noted some minor vulnerabilities, which were promptly fixed and approved by the auditors.

We work with 2 auditors, Zokyo and Hacken, and our code has passed with flying colours each time it’s gone to audit 🙂

Every contract we put out goes through our own internal testing process where we write test cases for the contract to cover the vast majority of potential vulnerabilities. Then we send it to the auditor and they do manual and automated testing and we work with them to improve the code if necessary. 

The most important thing, as our team discusses daily, is making sure that our products and UI look friendly to people from the film industry. Our business team has a lot of calls educating Hollywood people on Mogul every day so it’s important when walking them through our product that it’s easy to use and understand.

Question 4, asked by @prakashrj.

Can you share your technology stack, including tools used for development, testing and deployment? What is your test coverage and how often do you build and deploy internally?

Answer 4

For the blockchain side: 


Blockchain (Smart Contract integration)

  • Hardhat
  • EthersJS
  • WaffleJS
  • TypeChain

We are using Hardhat because it offers the most customization to build smart contracts. It is very easy to integrate other Solidity and testing libraries, along with built in usage with EthersJS.

EthersJS was chosen for its readability. It tends to keep functionality in one liners instead of doing several lower level tasks to achieve the same goal. This makes our code less bug prone and easy to communicate functionality with our blockchain devs.

WaffleJS works perfectly with Hardhat for testing smart contracts.

For the platform side, our platform tech stack is centered on Typescript for both the frontend and backend. We are running a custom NodeJS application that serves our REST API backed by a Postgres Database. All of our frontend and backend code lives in a single monorepo using Yarn 2 workspaces. We are making heavy use of codegen steps in our build process to reduce repetitive tasks and to establish strict static typing between the database and the React UI layer. A change to any of our database models is immediately reflected in the generated react-query hooks we are using to load data in our components.

The frontend portion of our stack is kept really lean using a (non-ejected) Create React App build. We aren’t using a component library or UI framework – the UI is a mix of fully hand-coded (new and “legacy”) React components with custom CSS module styles.

We also have an internal admin app built using Create React App and Material UI. We have re-skinned Material UI with a custom theme, but all of our style customizations are in a central location which helps keep our various component definitions free of any css or visual concerns. This helps us be very fast and responsive to any requests our business team has for internal features.

We test our backend with a local integration test suite using ephemeral database instances. We follow a “testing pyramid” pattern and invest more heavily in fast isolated tests and checks – we use strict TypeScript everywhere and have a very strict eslint config. This really helps diminish the need for more comprehensive testing further down the line and empowers us to be more agile.

We build, test, and deploy continuously with every commit pushed to our monorepo. Each PR spawns a temporary staging instance of the application that we use to review and test changes immediately. We release to production at least once a week with little fanfare with the batch of incremental changes that we have ready. New features are added in disabled state and “released” to production before the moment we formally launch them. This gives us early feedback on any new issues when the stakes are lower and really cuts down on the pressure of launching new features to the entire user base.

Frontend

  • React, using Create React App
  • Strict Typescript usage
  • Strict static code analysis + automatic formatting (using ESLint + prettier)
  • Storybook
  • TailwindCSS (replacing “CSS Modules”)

Backend

  • Strict Typescript usage
  • Fully containerized using Docker
  • Strict static code analysis + automatic formatting (using ESLint + prettier)
  • TSOA for API layer documentation + request validation + API client generation
  • Custom (domain/module based) service layer
  • MikroORM as a db abstraction layer
  • TSyringe for dependency injection
  • Postgresql for the database
  • Github Actions for continuous integration & deployment
  • AWS Beanstalk for horizontal scaling (new from our previous issues)
  • AWS S3 for file storage
  • Terraform for infrastructure management
  • Jest for unit + integration testing (using supertest)
  • Sentry in the backend & frontend for error reporting
  • Netlify for frontend dev + production deployments

Using Docker we’re able to give developers the experience of a one step dev build which means they can spend more time working on features. This is the first step towards velocity during development.

During the development of a feature we employ strict rules around code review to ensure the whole team is abreast of changes to the codebase & product. We pair programs heavily to increase team awareness of incoming changes, and to generally raise the quality of our changes.

Following basic CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous delivery) principles we are building every commit pushed to Github as well as running a plethora of automated checks & tests using Github Actions against it.

Every frontend commit is deployed automatically thanks to Netlify deploy previews, whereas for the backend it’s up to us to choose when we deploy. All changes are deployed and tested first in a dev environment before we pull the trigger to go to production.

With the automated integration pipeline and one-step production deployments it’s no challenge to do several full production deployments a day.

After each production deployment we use Sentry to monitor error rates in real time, and in the case of any issue we’re able to issue a hotfix within minutes or simply roll back to a known good state.

Question 5, asked by @gbrown135.

My question is regarding the BSC, ETH and Polygon network integration. We know these 3 networks are going to be used together. How will this look when they are all released? Will we have a pool of STARS with a certain amount of STARS on each network? If this is the case how will fees differ between the networks? And is there a seamless mechanism to transfer between them?

Answer 5

A certain amount of the STARS total supply will be deposited on Mainnet and minted on BSC and Polygon, and added on Pancakeswap and Quickswap. Using the Anyswap bridge, users will be able to transfer the STARS between BSC and Mainnet, and Polygon bridge to transfer between Polygon and Mainnet. Gas fees will be close to very low as BSC and Polygon are Layer 2 networks.

In the future, when there is sufficient demand to make it easy for our users, we’ve talked about building a BSC <---> Matic bridge and have done research into this already so that we know the proper way to do it. In addition, Gas will be free when transactions are done on the Mogul Platform on the Polygon network due to our partnership with Biconomy and building relayer technology to allow users to sign transactions and execute them securely and trustlessly still. 

Question 6, asked by @RonnieDacey.

I think the fiat on-ramp and smart wallet will be really beneficial features of the Mogul platform, how is the process going? Any hurdles?

Answer 6

Smart Wallet smart contracts are finished, audited and in progress with platform front end and robust back-end integration.

Fiat on-ramp is going to be added shortly in the future. In the meantime, users can connect with Metamask and buy ETH with their credit cards via Wyre or MoonPay.

One problem with Wyre that our business team is working on is that they only have about a 50% ‘approval’ rate for users using their checkout product in making a transaction. That’s because of the amount of fraud prevention they have in place. So our team has been in touch with other payment providers, even Layer 2 fiat onramps, such as Transak and Moonpay to make sure that when we launch a product we have sufficient geographic and technical coverage for verified users (from the film space) trying to onboard to Mogul and STARS. 

Our development team is experienced with payment rails so there are no hurdles in adding features like these from a technical perspective.

Question 7, asked by prakashrj. What goals were considered when the platform was designed and architected?

Answer 7

To lead the DeFiFi industry, by bringing Movie Productions into the hands of the fans, with the power of blockchain technology. We are highly focused on user friendliness, especially for those new to blockchain and DeFi.

On the architecture side we prioritized stability, robustness and testability with the goal of being able to develop at speed while still retaining confidence in the system. That means almost zero tolerance for technical debt, which in turn means proper architecture and design of features before development.

The result is that we can release features which are more stable, at a faster pace, and still with a high degree of confidence that we’ve not introduced annoying or potentially risky bugs to the system.

Question 8, asked by @jbarcel

Are NFTs a market that mogul would be aiming to get a good market share?

Answer 8

Yes we are aiming to be the top marketplace for movie props, rewards and virtual NFTs related to movies. We’ve built / are building the front end of the technology to support this so we can work with many more artists and film industry professionals to launch really cool NFT drops more efficiently through auctions and direct listings. 

Super excited. Our business team has a lot in the pipeline when it comes to NFT opportunities!

Question 9, asked by @defiapez.

When writing smart contracts, how often are you looking at competitors or blue chip projects in the space? Which projects does Mogul take inspiration from when making smart contracts?

Answer 9

Mogul, and our development team, are hyper aware of the crypto space and look towards successful projects depending on the feature. The majority of our development team has been participating in DeFi for the last few years. The space moves so fast that you need to be studying the trends to develop quicker and cleaner. There aren’t many “standards” in smart contracts, so you need to pave your own path and find the standards that the best are using and add your own knowledge. 

For voting, we study Compound, for Staking we study Sushiswap and for NFT marketplace, we study Opensea. All 3 of these systems are considered to be leaders in their respective areas (governance, farming and NFTs), so we want to be following best in class standards and make sure that we’re seen as innovators in the space.

In terms of the UI for the NFT marketplace, we really liked the simplicity of the new FTX Exchange NFT marketplace and took inspiration from there as well. They offer rewards as NFTs too. Things like a FTX hat or pair of socks and they’re all limited issue. So when having product discussions with the team, that’s the direction we wanted to take, and then as a user, if you buy the NFT you can choose to give it to Mogul or burn it to redeem the reward. Recently we also added the ability in our NFT contracts for the holder to burn their own NFT too to give more flexibility. 

Question 10, asked by @defiapez.

Blockchain (and all) developers are in high demand. As a developer on the project, what drew you to working on Mogul?

Answer 10

Sir, I like the coin lol.
With high funding, connections, skills and team dynamics, Mogul will inevitably dominate the DeFiFi space. No way I’m going to pass on such an opportunity to join in!

There aren’t many projects out there, where as a developer, you are working on cool smart contracts in governance, NFTs, staking, and wallets at the same time. It’s a really talented team and we get to work on things that are going to be used in the real world.

I’ve been approached to work with a lot of projects, but most of them lack either funding, business connections to bring the project to the next level, or marketing expertise. Mogul has all of that and as developers there are a lot of “sh!t coins” that try to hire you but the good projects stand out easily. 

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Mogul Partners with Biconomy

Mogul to launch using Biconomy to simplify blockchain experience for new, everyday users

Mogul Productions, the decentralized film financing (DeFiFi) platform, has partnered with Biconomy, an industry-leading blockchain relayer infrastructure network, to increase the usability of Mogul’s blockchain-based technology in preparation to onboard everyday users from the film industry inside the Mogul community.

Biconomy is a developer platform that helps augment Mogul’s technology and creates a simplified Web3 transaction and onboarding experience for film industry users. By using Biconomy, Mogul is able to offer its users free, sponsored transactions. This partnership increases the user experience and reduces the total cost of running the Mogul platform by over 50%.

Mogul’s vision is to be an innovative and progressive film financier and production company by leveraging blockchain technology for voting, film financing and rewards. With its proprietary platform, Mogul is looking to engage audiences and financiers across the script-to-screen process, with the mission to promote financial transparency in independent film financing.

Through engaging an audience in such an intimate way and entering an industry as large as film & entertainment, Mogul expects to support a significant number of transactions. Mogul’s platform has been built so film industry users can start using blockchain with ease within seconds, requiring no “cryptocurrency proficiency” or paying of transaction fees.

“When a user logs into Netflix, they don’t need to pay a transaction fee every time they watch a show, but these users benefit from using decentralized, Web3 applications like Mogul,” says Ahmed Al-Balaghi, Co-Founder and CEO at Biconomy. “We’re excited to work with Mogul to provide usability infrastructure to Mogul’s platform.”

“With Mogul, we’re connecting fans, creators, and financiers in a transparent and decentralized ecosystem to get better movies made more efficiently. Blockchain is the perfect foundation for a new film ecosystem, but most people are not familiar with the user experience hurdles that come with using blockchain,” says Gagan Grewal, CEO of Mogul Productions. “That’s why we’re partnering with companies like Biconomy — to create robust blockchain-based infrastructure with the familiar usability of a platform like Netflix.”

Integrating Biconomy will allow Mogul to make its DeFi platform user-friendly for film industry participants while they still maintain full control over their token assets at all times within a non-custodial wallet environment. Mogul users will not need to worry about problems that typically plague first-time blockchain users (such as needing to purchase ETH to make their first transaction, stuck transactions within their wallet, and a confusing onboarding process). Mogul’s technology, through its partnership with Biconomy, becomes horizontally and vertically scalable to support the anticipated new wave of users unfamiliar with blockchain, including film industry participants looking to use DeFiFi.

About Mogul Productions (Mogul)

Mogul Productions is a decentralized film financing (DeFiFi) platform that connects creators, movie fans, and film financiers in one space to ensure the best films get made by giving everyone a voice. By leveraging blockchain technology and a tokenized system, Mogul incentivizes participation and rewards engagement. Using the Mogul in-app payment and utility token (STARS), users can vote on, greenlight and participate in key decision-making aspects of production. Mogul’s continuous financing ensures constant liquidity, allowing financiers to redeem their stake at any time. Mogul’s production team and advisors are award-winning Hollywood veterans who have written, directed, acted in, and produced a wide range of films and TV shows.

About Biconomy

Biconomy is a technology company building transaction infrastructure for the next-generation Web3 applications. Through Biconomy’s powerful and easy to use APIs, developers can enable a simple and customized transaction journey so that their end users don’t get frustrated by blockchain complexities. By solving key pain points at the crypto transactional layer, Biconomy is on a mission to simplify Web 3 experiences that will drive mass adoption.

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Mogul Marketing AMA Recap (2/3)

Welcome to part 2/3 of the Mogul Marketing AMA. You can catch up on part 1 here.

Q6) Collaborations and partnerships are some of the most important cornerstones to help improve adoption. Can you tell us about Mogul current partners, plans for partnerships and what everybody stands to gain from these partnerships?

A6) We’re partnered with some of the best companies in blockchain, including Chainlink, Polygon, Biconomy, GD10 Ventures, Blocksync Ventures, Moonwhale Ventures, Avisa Ventures, ChainGuardians, and more. Their role in partnering ranges from key infrastructure partners to advisory and incubation and marketing services to help Mogul reach its goal of onboarding the masses of the film industry to blockchain technology.

From the film industry, we’ve partnered with film festivals, software companies, and a bond agent to make sure that we have the support to make films more transparently. We have some other key partners in the works from the film industry, but the reality is that we’re working to get the film industry to work at the incredible pace of the blockchain industry, and there are more checks and balances that need to happen at a corporate level to sign partners from the film space. 

We’re working on partners to assist with promotion, procurement, and distribution right now. We have a handful of major film partners in the pipeline, but unfortunately sometimes we’re playing by Hollywood’s rules to announce things and need to piggyback off the official press releases that go out.

But we also have our marketing partners, such as Rogers & Cowan PMK, which you all know about. Media partners like them and others help us get into amazing publications such as Variety and Forbes, and when big time names like that are talking to you, it’s no wonder someone like Ivan on Tech would then write a big piece about us on his own! And yes, we would also love it if they did a video of Mogul!

(@ Ivan, we’d like to talk to you after our call with Ryan Reynolds)

Q7) Gorav mentioned in a previous AMA that he thinks the Asian market is a bigger opportunity than the North American market. Does that mean that more marketing dollars will go towards attracting film fans based in Asia to Mogul’s platform, and promoting Mogul-produced movies to audiences in Asia?

A7) Short answer, yes. But we don’t want to exclude the crypto side when looking at this. This can be looked at two different ways – the crypto side and the film side – and the short answer is basically the same for both, because we don’t want to exclude any aspect of Mogul when targeting different regions of the world.

Hollywood has long seen the Chinese market, for example, as a major growth area for film revenue, and we’ve even seen major sports leagues like the NBA see massive growth there. It’ll be no different for Mogul. 

In general, when we’re looking at what films to include in our showcases, one of the criteria the selection committee uses is mass market appeal. And part of mass market appeal is global appeal, so yes, in this case we absolutely look at what will be appealing to Asian audiences, be it the story, the actors, etc.


Lastly, we talked about partners a few times already, and we do have marketing partners based around Asia that help get Mogul seen by people we wouldn’t be able to reach on our own. This includes translating our press releases, articles, and tweets, but also introducing Mogul to various online publications and other potential partners.

Q8) It was…. somewhat…. leaked by Gorav that Mogul would be using BSC… (talked about in unofficial channel). It is different to just go on BSC and to do a launch campaign on BSC. Can we expect a full marketing campaign with influencer promotion to go on BSC and Pancake? Why, as a token holder, should we migrate our tokens there?

A8) This is another thing that we’re obviously very excited about! We all know the reach and mass market appeal that Binance has, including the Binance Smart Chain. Tokens that perform well on BSC often make the migration onto Binance.

So yes, I’m happy to announce that the STARS token will be migrated onto the Binance Smart Chain! We are currently working with a lot of partners in order to make the most of this launch. 

You’re right, there’s a difference between just saying “hey we’re on BSC” and having a full campaign to draw the interest of current BSC users and BNB holders to participate in the Mogul ecosystem. We are planning a global, event-driven, influencer and organic marketing campaign to celebrate our token migration onto BSC and will have a full-fledged plan in place before an official announcement is made. 

There’s also something to be said about market timing – we want to have the marketing and plan ready to go, so that when it’s executed, we have broader market euphoria to help amplify our marketing rather than market depression, if that makes sense. I would expect to hear a lot more about STARS and BSC in the very near future. This is a big priority for us, but as of this second, we can’t really say much more than what’s already been leaked, so to speak 🙂

I have to imagine that STARS will be one of the first projects, especially in the “ranking” range that we’re in on CoinMarketCap, to ever launch on the 3 most popular blockchains: Polygon, BSC and Ethereum. How about I ask YOU all a question now: Does anyone else know of a project, outside of the blue chips, to do this?

Q9) Once a film has been selected for funding, how will the marketing team leverage the community that voted for the film to help promote it?

A9) Well, our hope is that when a movie wins the fan vote to get funded, that our ENTIRE community will want to help promote the film! You might own Apple stock even if you don’t have an iPhone 🙂

I think it’s safe to say that if you’re reading this conversation right now, then you’re probably interested in the success of Mogul as a whole. You want to see the company succeed, but you’ve also purchased some STARS tokens (or are considering doing so) and want to extract as much value from that as possible.

When a Mogul produced film starts making money – whether through ticket sales or by selling it to an online streamer – STARS token holders will benefit from that to the tune of 50% of any profit we make goes to purchasing STARS tokens on the open market, and YOU the token holder will decide what gets done with those. That could be a burn, ecosystem development plan, or another campaign that you all will decide.

So, just as you all already do now, please continue sharing, retweeting, writing about us, introducing us to your friends and family, and spreading the word about Mogul! This is how our movies will succeed.

We will be sure to leverage our ambassador program more formally when the time is right, as well.

Q10) Will there be a dashboard available in the Mogul Production website to show the details and progress of each film script selection process (e.g. submission phase, initial evaluation phase, community voting phase, funding, completion etc)? Can you elaborate?

A10) The answer is… well, yes AND no.

I’m going to be a little nit-picky for a moment… with ~200 scripts received (by my estimation), that’s a lot to work from. There will not be a dashboard for EVERY submission, only those that pass our selection process, which itself exists to ensure that every film that eventually makes it onto the showcase meets the strict standards put forth by us on behalf of YOU. 

As mentioned before, we want movies with the best scripts, best directors, best cast, best producers.. Etc, etc. But also movies that can be made NOW! So you guys get the benefits ASAP! This all plays a role in deciding which movies make it to the showcase and, to tie it back to your question, make it to the dashboard.

Once they have passed this process, every movie will be easy to follow on our platform, and you can login and check out the updates from the project you voted for, from vote all the way to release…

Within the dashboard, after a movie is voted in, we want to work directly with the project owners to provide (hopefully) weekly updates about what’s going on with the project and keep you all notified of all ongoing campaigns and milestones for the movie, including ways that you can get involved!

Throughout the voting process, there will be informational pages to get you all of the info about the movie that you’ll need to make an informed vote, including the producer, director, A-list talent, etc. But also, what is the movie about? Why did Mogul’s team like the movie and put it in the showcase? Why does the cast and crew want to be involved in the project? What else are people saying about the movie?

All these data points will give you information as a voter and can help decide what you’ll vote for. Will it be because of the great script? Or is your favorite actor attached? Maybe it’s a director you’ve been waiting on a next picture from. Whatever your reason for wanting to vote on a particular project, you’ll find it in the showcase details page.

You see why we’re always encouraging your participation? It’s because we want YOU to see YOUR favorite movie get made with help from the Mogul community!

You might never meet Ryan Reynolds (or even Terry Crews…) in person (why do I keep coming back to this name?!) but maybe one day you can say “I played a role in getting a Ryan Reynolds movie made!” And no one will be able to take that away from you!

Seriously. Ryan. Let’s meet up.

(Editor’s note: Ryan Reynolds is NOT currently attached to a Mogul production, this is just wishful thinking from one of our employees)

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Mogul Marketing AMA Recap (3/3)

Welcome to the final post recapping Mogul’s Marketing AMA. You can catch up on part 1 here & part 2 here! This post contains all of the questions that were asked during the live Q&A period.

#1 (Answered by Cory)

Question:  Asides from Indie films,  how is the team pushing forward to make Mogul versatile to other movie genres and locations? How can movie producers from around the world (Africa)connect to this project, or is it streamlined to a particular audience or region

Answer: Hey Eva, first let me preface this by saying I am not one of the great movie producers on our team. But keep in mind that indie doesn’t always mean small, and it also doesn’t always mean Hollywood! In fact, you may have previously seen that our movie Bonded was filmed in Mexico! Maybe one of our lovely admins can find the article on our blog???

As for African projects, or anywhere else in the world, keep an eye on the mogul dashboard when we do calls for submissions. Qualifying projects from anywhere in the world will be considered.

#2 (Answered by Nathan)

Question: As Mogul is duly the first organization model to bring DeFi to film,what’s is the next phase of evolution Mogul is preparing in the future that will seem acute and beneficial

Answer: I can hopefully answer this one! We’re working hard on the benefits that come along with the Mogul Access Passes and STARS holding. There will a huge range of these that are unique to Mogul and the high level of access we have to hollywood decision makers. For example, meeting / chatting with the movie stars, getting involved in filming, and much more. 

We’re also working on an NFT marketplace and Smart Wallet, so expect lots of other innovations from Mogul making use of our film industry background, and innovative blockchain teh

#3 (Answered by Cory)

Question: When can we expect to see a detailed guide of how the vote will work for token holders? I remember reading before (maybe litepaper?) that people will be rewarded for voting. When can we expect to see the details on that? Rewarded with an NFT? STARS?

Answer: Voters are rewarded with STARS tokens for staking their tokens to vote. We’re also considering an NFT, but it’s not official yet. We’re cognizant not to over inflate our NFT marketplace with NFTs and to continue driving value for them. 

Also, with STARS, many users have expressed that they would like to actually wait to have more farming / rewards tokens distributed. So for this first vote, there won’t be that many STARS distributed through the voting module to respect these wishes

Maybe someone else can jump in for the second half of your question. But the way it’ll work is STARS holders will benefit from 50% of profits earned from sales of the movie – so theatrical or streaming distribution deals, among other things – and it’ll involve using those profits to buy back STARS from the open market and having the STARS holders actually govern what happens next

#4 (Answered by Nathan)

Question: What is the value of each access pass? Will the owner of the Red Capet Pass actually visit Hollywood?

Answer: We cannot speak to the value of the Access Pass, that’s up for the market to decide. All we can do is work as hard as we can to ensure that Red Carpet Pass holders (and everyone else) is getting genuinely desirable services / rewards. 

And in terms of rewards, yes, the Red Carpet Pass rewards will include access to premieres, screenings, red carpet events, and more!

#5 (Answered by Nathan)

Question: When will the migration to BSC happen?

Answer: Not got an exact launch date for you at this moment. Suffice to say it’s coming soon, keep your eyes out for a specific date being announced! We’ll make sure it’s hard to miss 

#6 (Answered by Cory and Nathan)

Question: You mentioned marketing partners. When did these partners come on? There were many announcements about PMK. I think a lot of people expected price increases from that. I am sure you cannot comment on price, but I wonder from a token holders perspective, are these marketing companies marketing the business or the token? I am sure they go hand in hand in some ways, but I would like to hear that these marketing companies (if they are not crypto centric) understand the importance of token price when it comes to marketing. 

A rising token price is probably likely to be your best piece of marketing…. People will feel the fomo all over the world

Cory’s Answer: Well, you nailed it, can’t speak on price or anything pertaining to it.

However, we do have partners aside from PMK working on every aspect of the business. They were a big announcement because they are one of the biggest and best in their field! Remember that article in Variety? You can guess who helped with that 🙂 

All of our partners are doing equally great work, but obviously in different ways and different arenas. Collectively, we all expect positive effects all around!

Nathan’s Answer: We are not just partnering with traditional media firms. We also have contracts with a number of crypto specific engagement / marketing teams. They have tons of experience and they are preparing to boost awareness on what we’ve  got going on with a focused crypto-first methodology.

#7 (Answered by Cory)

Question: How is Mogul using the article in Variety to help STARS holders?

Answer: Variety is one of the top 2 or 3 entertainment publications in the world! Mogul has now been seen by every actor, producer, director, and crew member in the film industry. If Mogul is trusted by the most trusted people in the film industry, EVERYONE wins

#8 (Answered by Cory)

Question: Marketing team seems like doing great work. Lots of exciting things. Now let’s get the token up and going and lots of crypto marketing!

Answer: As I mentioned in one of the answers, might’ve been Q1, we have lots going on that we can tell you about, and just as much happening behind the scenes! We’ll just say… stay tuned

#9 (Answered by Cory)

Question: What are your key metrics as you execute marketing strategies?

Answer: Hey JP, thanks for the Q! It really all depends on the campaign – for instance the BSC launch will have a different metric as compared to other campaigns, such as the upcoming vote on the film showcase.

More broadly speaking, for a more traditional campaign we’ll take into consideration stats like site traffic, impressions, engagements (RTs, comments, etc), organic posts like Ivan on Tech and others, how many STARS holders participate in the campaign for the vote…

There’s a lot to consider, clearly, and we’ll always consider everything. Not just when we’re starting or doing a campaign, but also after the fact. What worked, what didn’t, whcih marketing partner is providing the most value (by helping to hit everything I just listed) and so on.

#10 (Answered by Lisa)

Question: Is the maximum number allowed for staking (voting) still 100 Stars / movie (per lightpaper) –  and  would it be per address or per access pass?  

Considerations:

*The more Stars will be staked – the more it will help stabilize Stars price.

*The longer Stars will be staked – the more it could help stabilize Stars price

* More attractive rewards –  means more community participation (although, not necessarily for loyal members).

Answer: Hey Niche, there is no maximum. Cory has started a weekly series lately where he is summarizing the STARS stats each week and has found that currently, 40% of our total tokens are locked into our smart contracts, which is an incredible metric. With the voting, it’s a similar system, where a user can lock their tokens into vote. And if they lock them for the full vote, they get a reward, but if they withdraw early, they do not. 

I know it might sound confusing when I explain it (our marketing team will do a much better job) but you get the square root number of votes (rounded down) according to the number of tokens you have. For example, if you have 100,000 tokens, you’d have 316 votes. If you have 10,000 tokens, you’d have 100 votes. So you can see that proportionally, the smaller token holder has more votes. But they can still lock all of their STARS

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Blog Posts

Mogul AMA Recap – Gorav Seth 06/14/2021

Moderator Questions

Question 1: Would you please recommend Mogul to our community?

Answer: Yeah.  I was interested enough to join the team for Mogul myself.  This project, unlike many others you will online, has a real utility and opportunity to disrupt an archaic film/tv industry.  I think it’s ripe for change and the use case of this is massive – not just in hollywood – but also the entire global entertainment /content space.

Mogul is the first in the world to be taking DeFi and democratizing the film finance side. I think there’s tremendous upside and value to anyone taking a look at our project at the current levels.

Question 2: What are the highlights of the Mogul project? What are you developing on NFT?

Answer: Mogul is a DeFi and NFT platform for the film industry. We have been building this project for over 2 years and recently launched our first iteration of the platform on February 18th.  The token sale just got completed just over a month ago and we have over 50k users that have joined the platform since our launch.

Mogul’s  goal is to help democratize the film & entertainment space by providing better access, transparency and interaction to the fans that consume the content.   Our platform takes submissions of films that are looking for financing, reviews them for creative and commercial aspects and then, puts them up in our showcase for the community to vote on.  Films that receive the most votes get financed by Mogul.  Our $stars token holders consequently can earn rewards, experiences and other valuable things on our platform.

Conversely, the films that are financed by the Mogul community ($STARS holders) benefit by garnering a loyal fanbase that has been involved alongside the project from financing to distribution.  They can also tap a global audience and capital base to get their projects funded, so everyone wins.

We have been building a robust NFT platform that is targeted at the entertainment industry.  It can be used for a variety of functions, but one that is particularly interesting for both $stars token holders and the films we finance, is that we can create NFTs out of any content relating to the films, which helps create new revenue streams for the producers/film makers.  We do things such as posters/art to clips from the films etc and offer that to our community.

Question 3: Does Mogul have its own token? And what role does it play in the ecosystem?

Answer: Yeah – Mogul’s token is called STARS.  It can be bought on our platform or from the secondary markets via exchanges such as Uniswap Bitmart, 1inch and a few more exchanges that are being announced very shortly.

The $STARS token is a utility token that functions as an ‘in-app’ currency within the Mogul platform and ecosystem.  The value of the token is derived from how much value or perceived value our community finds in the use for it.  We help create value by providing users with the ability to become film moguls themselves – essentially, giving them the value to, not only select what films get financed, but also track the film from inception to release.  They can get incredible experiences, assets, behind the scenes access, etc. by using the token and earning rewards.  Our goal is to make the $STARS token the de-facto method of payment for the hollywood and entertainment industry.

We help bridge the gap and connect the creators of film to the consumers of those films (the fans or token holders).  Their is value for both is massive and i think you will be seeing a lot of activity, announcements and marketing from main street publications and crypto press alike. I’d also add we are also talking to some major celebrities about using the token and getting involved, so we are extremely excited.

Question 4: Could you please provide some progress on your Roadmap and what results Mogul has achieved so far? And any sneak peek into 2021 plans for Mogul?

Answer: Following the launch of our token, we have so far been working on providing further integration with DeFi protocols and partnering with groups such as Chainlink as an oracle to bring off chain data from the films to our platform and Polygon, to access scalability to Eth tier 2 solutions.  We are also working with Biconomy to provide optimization for Web3 platforms.

We are working hard to expand the services, recruit new members and execute on new partnerships within the film/entertainment space with studios, production companies, movie stars, etc to help boster marketing and awareness.  The partnerships with some of these talent can be things like celebrity ambassador programs, etc.

We are also getting approached by various exchanges to list our token and provide access to $STARS to a much wider audience.

I’d also note that we have a MAJOR announcement coming up relating to our roadmap, so watch out for that.

Aside from that, the community can expect us to announce a new showcase and finance a film over the next month or so.  From that film, will come all types of rewards, experiences, content, etc.

Twitter Questions

Tweet 1: @ShinPoka9984

How is #Mogul development going? Can you describe current development status, market expansion plans, expected applications?

Answer: The Mogul team is focused on building tools so that our token is usable on several different chains.  The purpose of this is to help expand the ecosystem and provide a broader base of access for the global crypto community.

Tweet 2: @Bochu16153772

Staking programme is very important for any project, Can i stake your token? Do you have any plan of starting staking programme?

Answer: Yeah, we have one that you can access on our platform. www.mogulproductions.com

Here’s an article explaining how to farm our $STARS token.

You can stake STARS themselves or get a much higher return by becoming a liquidity provider with a STARS/ETH pair.  I think the return is something like 55% APR right now

Tweet 3: @TranThuyHa7

What is the role of token in the ecosystem? Where can people currently buy it?what would be its used?

Answer: Per my responses above, the $STARS token can be used as an “in-app” currency within the mogul ecosystem.  It can be used to vote for films, earn rewards, bid of NFTs, experiences within the films themselves (i.e. role in the movie, credit on screen, meet the stars, attend the premier, etc.)

You can buy the $STARS token right now via Uniswap, Bitmart, 1Inch and a couple more exchanges being announced very shortly.  There’s one BIG announcement relating to this, so that should be a very nice catalyst that everyone is happy about.

Tweet 4: @BENSTOCK26

What is your future planning or strategy with respect to compete with growing projects on Binance smart chain?

Answer: We have a big announcement relating to this..😉

Tweet 5: @Thng87161386

What are the priorities of Mogul in 2021? As we are in the bullish phase of the crypto market, are there any exciting initiatives that you’re planning in the pipeline that you can share with us?

Answer: Our tech is one focus.  We have 10 engineers working full time for the project.  We are building things out like our NFT marketplace, voting module, and smart wallet features, etc. . All third party code audits have passed with flying colours, so that’s a priority

Second, we will be having a film financed from our showcase in the next month or so.  That will be a major focus for us getting us lots of press and marketing.  It will provide our users with lots of valuable access, rewards, etc.

It will also help validate us for the big players in Hollywood and show the world the value of blockchain and crypto for a use-case in the film / entertainment industry

Community Questions

Question 1: IF THE BEAR MARKET COMES will your token PROBABLY DUMP? Do you have any plan to prepared for this bear market? How will you handle the panic sell?

Answer 1: We have a real business and use-case for our project.  We plan on being here for years to come and are focused on making this a real, viable and LT business. Other alt tokens or smaller projects are just pumps.  We can distinguish ourselves from them by executing and marketing.

Question 2: How do you keep your platform safe for Investors, and is your platform protected from hackers? And how do you manage if there’s an attack on your platform, including the personal data of your platform’s users? Is your platform ready for this?

Answer 2: Mogul is very much concerned about security and as such, every contract published goes through a thorough audit.  These audits are all published on our website, so you can see for yourself. Security of our users has been a top priority for us since inception and our developers have worked hard to ensure that. Mogul has had audits conducted by firms such as Zokyo and Hacken.

Question 3: Revenue is an important aspect for all projects to survive and maintain the project / company. What is the way to generate profit / revenue of token? What is the income model?

Answer 3: We generate profit from the films themselves, and can also monetize via various value-add services we provide to the film industry such as helping monetize digital assets via NFTs or helping to protect IP, etc.

Question 4: Do you have a Token Burning plan to increase Token value and attract Investors to invest?

Answer 4: Yes.  We burn 50% of the tokens that are used in-app to redeem rewards or purchase things on our platform.  For instance, we burned 50% of the 5.5m tokens that were used to purchase the famous marvel artist, Rob Prior’s NFT art piece that we auctioned off a couple of weeks ago.

Question 5: Where does the project name you found? What does it mean for you and why did you choose that name for your project?

Answer 5: The name of Mogul perfectly captures what we are trying to do.  Democratize the film industry and give access to the fans, so they can become film moguls themselves and get involved in the process of financing film and getting all the perks that come with it.

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Blog Posts

Mogul Marketing AMA Recap (1/3)

We held a marketing focused AMA in the Mogul telegram channel hosted by Cory Ross, Mogul’s Head of Marketing. Because there was so much great information, we’ll be splitting this recap up into three posts.

Q1) Can you give the community a detailed overview and possible timeline on marketing plans for both the crypto and non crypto spaces, what mediums will be used, and will you factor in the overall market sentiment when making decisions?

A1) Of course, starting off with the most loaded question possible! The marketing, starting in the next few weeks, will be the machine that takes Mogul to the next level. Basically, we have a LOT going on right now, and there is a robust plan in place that’s waiting for us to click the big red button. Not everything can be announced in full – and some of it can’t be announced at all – so I’ll try to say as much as I can in broad terms to give you an idea of what’s coming.

I have a feeling it’s going to come up later, but you’ve all heard rumblings about STARS and Binance Smart Chain. Let’s just say… more on that later 🙂

Our film & marketing teams are hard at work preparing the film showcase, trying to get as much “stuff” for the Mogul community as possible. That includes NFTs, A-List actors, distribution partners for the films, and more. The best part is that these movies will be ready to shoot so that after the vote ends, STARS holders and Mogul users will immediately be brought jnto the behind-the-scenes action that you’ve all been waiting for. We are THIS close to announcing this, so stay tuned! And of course – everything on the NFT side, from Access Passes (more on these later, too) to Rob Prior’s upcoming NFTs.

Obviously, when doing any marketing in this industry, if crypto is down across the board, it makes life a little bit harder. But we’ve all also seen examples of coins doing very well and growing quickly while BTC and ETH are in a downturn. So while market sentiment can be an indicator, it’s not always 100% accurate or indicative

That said, and to answer the question, you’re going to see Mogul EVERYWHERE. This includes major publications, podcasts, influencer channels, newsletters, and many other distribution outlets that have a proven track record for growing crypto companies and coin holders. Executing plans at the scale we want takes a lot of planning, but we’re moving quickly.

We were just written about in Variety (THEE publication for Hollywood news), Forbes, Ivan on Tech, Playback Online (the Variety of Canada), Yahoo Finance, and PopHorror, not to mention one of the biggest news publications in Asia (owned by the massive company Tencent). And that’s just in the past couple weeks. 

If market sentiment says that crypto is pointing down, well, that doesn’t speak for us. To us, STARS is always pointing up, so we’re never going to take a break or slow down, we’ll keep pushing and keep getting written about in top publications!

Q2) Mogul has received more than 50 submissions so far for the showcase. How did these filmmakers find out about Mogul? How does the team plan to attract more experienced / acclaimed filmmakers to the platform?

A2) Great question. It’s actually been many more than that – I don’t have the number on hand right now but I would imagine it’s well over 200. As you know, the Mogul team is made up of not just marketing and “business” folks like myself, but also several very successful filmmakers, actors, and producers! 

People like Cindy Cowan, David Cormican, Lyriq Bent, and now Tifanie Acosta, know so many people in the industry between them. It really makes my job much easier! It makes it so that Mogul is only a phone call away from working with some of the top people in Hollywood. I can’t name drop right now, but our business development folks have been working on some very, very exciting NFT drops as a result of these relationships….

In marketing, there’s a generally known fact that word of mouth is by far the best form of advertising. If you’re looking for a new car and all your friends say “buy a Lambo!” then you’re probably buying a Lambo. Okay, extreme example, but the same principle applies to the film industry. 

When Cindy, David, Lyriq, and Tifanie are talking to their peers about Mogul, even if those people aren’t familiar with or previously interested in blockchain, they still listen and still want to get their films made and benefit from participating in a community where they can build a fan-driven experience that helps their project succeed all the way from a script level. That’s the process and offering we’re creating for existing filmmakers.

Mogul doesn’t just offer a unique funding experience – we also have a built in fanbase! Anyone who’s been on our website has seen the popup – join 47,000 users – well, imagine if a filmmaker heard that 47,000 people were already interested in their film, and it hasn’t even been announced yet? That’s pretty powerful stuff and ANYONE would be interested in that.

(@ Ryan Reynolds – if you’re reading this, please call. We’d like to talk)

Q3) Crypto is a fast-paced industry. There are some Mogul imitators; who have emerged and are acting fast to capture the market’s attention. How are you going to compete with them? Do you intend to implement new marketing strategies to effectively increase Mogul’s market share?

A3) Fast-paced is an understatement!

So, without naming names, I will acknowledge that there are one or two competitors out there. Then again, technically, Amazon has competitors 😉

I kid slightly, but there’s really no sense in thinking of Mogul as anything less than the Amazon of film! At least on the blockchain. And our strategies for maintaining the momentum we’ve built up are tenfold. Maybe even elevenfold.

For starters, if you check our Twitter bio (or Reddit, or Medium…) it clearly states “DeFi and NFTs for the film & entertainment industry.” To break that down a little further: decentralized film financing (that’s our film showcase that we’re ALL excited to see… soon) and NFTs for the film & entertainment industry – well, for anyone just learning about Mogul Productions, one month ago almost to the day, we hosted a livestream with the insanely talented Rob Prior, followed by an NFT auction based on his artwork, resulting in a 1 of 1 NFT sale approaching $200k USD!

How did that compare to our competitors? I think it’s okay to brag a little here. We did better than Floyd Mayweather. Maybe you’ve heard of him – the most successful boxer of all time and a known shrewd businessman. Rob’s NFT also sold for more than an entire collection from another person you may have heard of… Snoop Dogg!

The film industry can be slow at times, but the crypto world is fast-paced (there I go coming around full circle again). It can take time to line up everything we need for a film showcase – script submissions, talking to directors, talking to producers, involving lawyers, taking time zones into consideration, the list goes on – but that’s why we can’t have any down time.

Will we have more NFT auctions? You bet! Will we have a film showcase soon? You bet! That’s why we have so many amazing people on our team, working on so many amazing things all at once, so that YOU the Mogul STARS holder (and future Mogul STARS holder 😉) will always have something to look forward to NOW. Not six months from now.

In terms of Mogul imitators, I think there are a few who are looking to raise money and launch products, but our team hasn’t identified any as real competitors due to our competitive advantages of our:

1. Team: Our team has multiple Oscar and Emmy awards. Not to mention many more awards. There are few, if any, teams in crypto that can say they have the track record in their respective industries that Mogul has. Hollywood is all about connections and it’s hard to enter if you don’t have them. Luckily, our team is immersed and we’re working every day to bring Hollywood to blockchain

2. Product: Our product is built (and improving with more features and milestones each week). Our smart contracts have seen millions of dollars pass through them and have 40% of our total token supply locked in them currently for farming. 99% of Uniswap LPs have chosen to lock their STARS_ETH tokens into our smart contracts.

3. Assets/IP: right out of the gate we announced one film, Bonded, that’s going into post-production. In the next month, which seems like it will be before any of these imitators or competitors launch, we will have another film underway. Any movies we do directly benefit STARS holders because 50% of Mogul profits are governed by holders, which exceeds the profit-sharing of many bluechip defi projects, including Sushiswap, which our smart contracts are based off of

It’s going to be hard to compete with what we have in the pipeline, and our team of marketers and engineers love competition!

Q4) Do you have an estimated time for the Access Pass only (using NFTY labs tech) VIP community to be set up and ready?

A4) First of all, we’re incredibly excited for Access Pass users to be able to have the added utility to their NFTs that NFTY Labs brings! If you recall, their founder Ty Blackard was a panelist in our Proof of Origin event – and actually attended the Bitcoin Conference in Miami that Mogul sponsored!

We had a call with NFTY Labs just this week to discuss getting us set up on their flagship product, NFTY Connect, which as you know acts as a sort of key into gated online communities to give access only to those with specific NFTs. Unfortunately, as is sometimes the case with any kind of software development but especially with blockchain technology, the product is still in development.

We’ve been told that July is a big month for their company from a product and marketing perspective, and we’ll be working together more than just as technical partners – doing events in one another’s communities to cross promote and utilize one anothers’ networks. 

I can also say we expect NFTY Connect to be a place where Access Pass holders can have exclusive conversations with a lot of our film partners, for instance. When we’re negotiating with all the projects who are going to show up in our next showcase, one of the requirements we propose is that they – directors, producers, Hollywood actors – participate in these conversations with our community members :). These gated communities will provide further utility and value to Access Passes.

Q5) it’s important to the success of new crypto projects to be able to appeal to the large and small token holders alike, what would you say is the best marketing strategy to achieve this?

A5) Interesting question. Every project is going to have its whales and let’s say more conservative or casual token buyers, but the key is to not treat one any differently from the other because in the end, we all want the same thing – and in this case, that’s for Mogul and STARS to succeed.In our case, we’ve actually built in parameters within our tech stack to make sure that everyone gets a voice in the voting process for movies.

Our quadratic voting system, which you’ll hear much more about soon, is something that Vitalik has talked about since 2017 as a way to make Internet-based voting (and specifically token-based voting) much more fair and representative of an entire audience. It makes it so that a small STARS holder, with as little as 100 STARS, still has a voice in the outcome of the voting round when we are making movies.

With this in mind, it’s also meant to avoid any deterrents in buying tokens! Oftentimes, in blockchain governance, people have a bit of voter apathy if they’re not a big holder, and may not want to get involved. But with Mogul, now every STARS holder can sit in the director’s chair and participate in a community-governed film fund where their voice is heard. And, after the vote, you may even see the movie on Netflix …. (oopps… I may have said too much)

From a marketing perspective, we’re also cognizant about barriers to entry, our target audience of filmmakers, and how it can be difficult to use Ethereum, pay gas, and set up your own wallet. That’s why, as a marketer, I’m very excited for our Smart Wallet to launch and for Mogul to migrate over to the Matic Layer 2 solution so that our users can have gasless, free transactions and immediately have a wallet when they sign up. 

This gives us much more flexibility, especially when it comes to paid marketing from the film & entertainment side, to A/B test how to directly onboard millions of fans from the film industry to use the Mogul product (eliminating the barrier and 5 step process of downloading metamask, saving your private key, funding your wallet, etc.)

Part 2 Here!

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Blog Posts

Mogul Access Passes Information

Mogul is selling, for a limited time, tiered Access Pass packages through our platform. Each package consists of a non-fungible token (NFT), STARS, and a personalized, physical package of merchandise that is sent to the purchaser.

The Access Pass NFT represents your level of access within the Mogul platform; each level of access will have different experiences and rewards available to them related to Mogul-produced movies. For example, Red Carpet Access Pass holders will have exclusive events curated specifically for them, such as private screenings. The NFTs are transferable and the benefits are given to the holder of the non-fungible (NFT) token.

The STARS token is required for access to the Mogul platform. Each user must have a minimum of 1 token. STARS are used as in-app utility and governance token.

The Access Pass Sale will occur from March 25th toApril 8th and tiers will be sold on a first-come-first-served basis. Passes must be purchased directly through the Mogul platform. There are only a limited number of passes available.

CAUTION: Any offers to get any Mogul tokens or passes to you before April 8th outside of Mogul’s Platform, including on Uniswap, are NOT genuine.

STARS tokens will be immediately distributed to user’s wallets during the sale and will unlock 1 week following the end of the sale.

There will be an initial supply of 400M STARS tokens with the following distribution:

  • 10% Early Reservations → tokens sold to early Mogul users
  • 40% Access Pass Sale → sold through Access Pass tiers
  • 5% Mogul Growth Farming Campaign → in collaboration with the Uniswap protocol
  • 10% Incentivized Growth Farmingdetails below
  • 20% Operations & Development → tiered access over 3 years to support the product growth roadmap and incentivize the team
  • 10% Marketing → used for rewards, influencer partnerships, and more to market the Mogul ecosystem
  • 5% Ecosystem Development Fund → on-platform earning through trivia, challenges, and referrals to grow the Mogul user base

The supply of STARS tokens will inflate by 4% each year. These tokens are allocated to the Mogul Ecosystem Development Fund to support the continued growth of the Mogul user base and STARS holders.

Token Use Cases

STARS is an ERC20 token on the Ethereum blockchain

Access: to access the Mogul platform / network, users must have a minimum wallet balance of 1 STARS token

Governance

  • STARS holders will govern aspects of the Mogul platform
  • 5% of profits accruing from Mogul-produced films are shared with an escrow pool. The usage of the funds will be governed by STARS holders

Voting:

  • STARS tokens will be used to vote on which movies are going to be funded in the Showcase; users will stake their STARS to vote on a specific film. To encourage voting, voters will collectively claim STARS tokens after the voting round according how long they voted for the project (i.e. if the voting period was 14 days, there were 1m STARS tokens to be distributed to voters, and a user had 1% of all Voting Shares, the user would get 10k STARS tokens that would be claimable after the voting round — these tokens come from the Ecosystem Development Fund)

In-App Currency: STARS tokens are used to pay for specific in-platform actions. STARS are burnt after use for in-platform actions and removed from the circulating supply of tokens

  • Submitting a project
  • Purchasing a reward
  • Access Pass NFT holders have access to purchasing higher tiers of rewards within the platform
  • More to be added in the future

Mogul Growth Farming Campaign

To grow the STARS ecosystem and encourage Uniswap protocol users to become Mogul community members, 40 million STARS will be distributed to early farmers for the first 600,000 Ethereum blocks (approximately 3 months) after STARS are unlocked. The announcement of the creation and audit of the staking contract for Mogul users to participate in this campaign will be shared soon.

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Mogul will continue adding DeFi products and features that increase the utility of the STARS token within the Mogul platform and ecosystem. From the Ecosystem Development Fund, STARS will be used to encourage users to do actions within the platform that advance the Mogul suite of products, including backing films, referring their friends, completing challenges, contributing to the development of movies, and more.

Logistics of the Access Pass Sale

Summary: there are 4 tiers to purchase from during the Access Pass Sale, governed by an audited smart contract. Each tier has a different cost of ETH/STARS token. Users must purchase 1 tier at a time (users may purchase more than 1 tier, but they would be separate transactions)

There are a finite number of each tier available for purchase; each tier includes STARS and an NFT, where the NFT represents a user’s exclusive Access on the platform — the NFT will be displayed in your Mogul Profile upon delivery. NFTs will be delivered to Access Pass purchasers on April 27th.

There is also a general contract for users to “top up” their tokens. This is for users who want to purchase a custom number of STARS; for example, 100 STARS to submit a project. These tokens are sold through the Mogul platform and the smart contract is designed for users to purchase any amount of STARS tokens that they require.

Red Carpet Access Pass NFT Package

  • Only 25 available
  • 50,000,000 STARS ERC20 tokens distributed total
  • 2,000,000 STARS / purchaser
  • Includes a personalized, physical package of merchandise: a Mogul hat, clapper board, and director’s chair

Backstage Access Pass NFT Package

  • Only 100 available
  • 50,000,000 STARS ERC20 tokens distributed total
  • 500,000 STARS / purchaser
  • Includes a physical package of merchandise: a Mogul hat and clapper board

VIP Access Pass NFT Package

  • Only 250 available
  • 25,000,000 STARS ERC20 tokens distributed total
  • 100,000 STARS / purchaser
  • Includes a Mogul hat

All Access Pass NFT Package

  • Only 2000 available
  • 10,000,000 STARS ERC20 tokens distributed
  • 5,000 STARS / purchaser

“Top Up” (no Access NFT included)

  • Users can purchase any number of STARS ERC20 tokens
  • 65,000,000 STARS distributed
  • 0.0003 ETH / STARS token as the fixed price

If the Access Pass Sale ends before all passes are sold out then the remaining tokens will be locked into the “Top Up” contract and the NFTs will go up for sale at a later date.

Prices of access passes can be viewed within your Mogul Dashboard. Sign up to reserve your Access Pass now at https://my.mogulproductions.com/

Key Dates

Today: Users can reserve an Access Pass through their Mogul profile and become waitlisted to purchase Access Passes

March 20th: Mogul to publish audited token and Access Pass Sale smart contracts

March 20–23: Early Adopter Distribution Program (200k tokens distributed to 10,000 users who sign up during this timeframe; distributed through a raffle system)

March 25th: start of the Access Pass sale

April 8th: End of Access Pass sale

April 10th: Smart wallet and mainnet deployment

April 15th: STARS tokens unlocked with immediate in-app utility as an in-app currency

April 19th: Mogul growth farming campaign Phase 1 begins

April 20th: Early Adopter Distribution Program STARS distribution

April 27th: NFT marketplace launch & distribution of Mogul Access Passes

April 29th: Mogul Genesis NFTs distributed

~ May 3rd: Mogul growth farming campaign Phase 2 begins (after 100,000 Ethereum blocks)

~ May 31st: Mogul growth farming campaign Phase 3 begins (after 200,000 Ethereum blocks)

June 1st: Governance contract launched

June 15th: Staking contract launched within the Mogul platform

July 12th: Mogul growth farming campaign Phase 3 ends (after 600,000 Ethereum blocks)

*Dates subject to change due to any technical difficulties that are outside of Mogul’s control.

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Miami Crypto Group x Mogul Productions AMA Recap

This post will recap the AMA with Lisa Sun, Mogul’s Founder and President, that took place on the Miami Crypto Group Telegram channel on August 12, 2021.

Question 1. Can you please introduce yourself and tell us about your company

Answer: I’m the President and Founder of Mogul. I’ve been an entrepreneur my entire career and have built many relationships doing so specifically in China and Canada. 

Movies and blockchain are my passions. I’ve been investing in indie scripts since 2015 and around the same time, I got into blockchain and went down the rabbit hole. I believed, very early on, that Ethereum and Cardano were (are) generational opportunities to be a part of. 

Bridging my passions for investing in film and for the future of blockchain technology, Mogul was born. 

And here’s Mogul: DeFi and NFTs for movies! 🎬

Question 2. Can you briefly describe Mogul Productions to the new members of Crypto Industry?

Answer: Yes of course! And a message to new crypto members: join us!! Mogul is such a fun community and we’re seeing movies + blockchain become a reality right before our eyes where fans can now be a part of Netflix original calibre movies from all over the world. From their computer. Isn’t that just mind blowing? Using blockchain we can break the barrier down and that curtain that typically hides what goes on in Hollywood and does not allow for fans to see behind that curtain.

Mogul is a DeFi and NFT platform for movies

It’s an incredibly large addressable market so we focus our efforts in 2 areas:

1. Using blockchain-based products to help finance movies. Right now, this is our showcase voting that is currently live. In the future, we are building the framework so that you all can contribute to movies beyond just voting 🙂

2. Driving product-market-fit for our NFT marketplace, where we want to be the de facto place where entertainment meets NFTs. We’re excited to launch the first version of this product in mid September and with an adjusted token model where STARS holders will be perpetually rewarded in the success/sales in the marketplace for true community ownership

Question 3. What are your main features that distinguish your project from other projects and what competitive advantages do you have? Please Explain it in simple words for our community?

Answer: The beauty of open source technologies and the ethos that blockchain communities have, is that businesses in our industry rarely have a competitive advantage around specific IP. I love that personally. We operate in an industry where the key variables to success are your team, your process, and your brand. For our NFT marketplace, of course it’s going to be amazing technology, but the reality in crypto, is that you can fork another NFT marketplace open source code and launch it under your own brand. But will you have the ability to execute? 

For Mogul, I truly believe that’s where our competitive advantages are. We have one of the best development teams I’ve ever seen in crypto – 100% dedicated and aligned with the success of Mogul. We have leadership and advisory who have won a litany of awards in film and finance. And we have community managers and marketers that are so passionate about the project. 

We’re a really close team and we work hard together on a mission.

Question 4. Could you please explain a little bit about the Access Passes, and what rewards are tied to them? 

Answer: Yes! I love this question, but let me take a little tangent first. 

I love NFTs. They’re liquid intellectual property and digital ownership. There’s a huge trend with PFP NFTs right now spearheaded by Crypto Punks and BAYC – which are both AMAZING communities. I own PFP NFTs myself and I understand the thesis that there is viral marketing attached to people using them, people form intimate attachments with their online identity, and people don’t want to sell them when they become part of their identity online. 

Now, there are so many meme NFT avatar projects that have come up, and don’t get me wrong, I love a good meme. But the other day I was down a rabbit hole researching NFTs and came across Fast Food Punks. Basically crypto punks with a Mcdonalds hat on their head. I almost bought one! 

But I sat back and thought, “what value does this really have?” Well, the value is in the meme. The community. The culture. Which is amazing, but when does the music stop? 

I have conversations for biz dev every day related to NFT drops that we can do. Let’s say, for example. Mogul is doing a drop with Ja Rule. Just an example 😉

When we speak with their team, we’re very clear that: you can’t just create a picture into an NFT that looks cool and expect crypto audiences (or general audiences for that matter) to buy it! There needs to be intangible benefits attached that bring your fan experience closer to the NFT issuer. For example, Floyd’s NFT drop came with boxing lessons. 

In marketing, a great mentor to me would call this the “Lagniappe” when it comes to marketing a product or a business. It’s the “what else do I get with this purchase?” that makes something more valuable to consumers and the community. 

SOOOO now to Access Passes:

Access Passes give people intangible benefits from our movies that we’re making. And there are passes with more and less rarities that get different benefits. So far, access pass holders have gotten / will get: 

– Rewards from our partnerships (BANANA token reward)

– Free Rob Prior NFT (marvel artist) collectible

And there will be much more 🙂 

But the point here with this rant is that Access Passes are UTILITY-based NFTs that people can purchase to have a more intimate experience with Mogul and our movies

Question 5. Mogul Productions is making Partnerships with many StartUps. Can you explain how they have been helpful in the growth of the platform?

Answer: Blockchain is about community. We work with other partners to collectively grow our communities and businesses. We have partners we onboard from blockchain and film. In blockchain, this has been AMMs, yield aggregators, cross-chain swap platforms, layers 2s, etc to give more utility to STARS across the ecosystem. 

In film, our partnerships are mostly to get more content for our platform (movies and NFTs) and with best in-class companies that we’l be working with to produce films. 

We’re very much collaborative in our growth and we have a great partnership program internally that outlines the co-marketing efforts we want to do when creating a new partner and I think we do a good job collectively as a company doing due diligence on our partners. 

My fav partner is ApeSwap. If you check out the co-marketing we did with them, that’s what we strive to do with each partnership to grow

Question 6.How many members are there in your team? Do you have plans to expand your team? What kind of talent are you looking to hire?

Answer: We are expanding. Yes! Always looking to hire amazing people all over the world. We have a meritocracy type atmosphere – great work gets rewarded. We’re proud that we’ve promoted 2 of our internal employees in the last month because of their amazing work. Mogul is a distributed team (mostly in Canada) where team members are all over the world and we’re able to attract top talent because we give people flexibility and the ability to take the reins on their role and create success for themselves, of course with all the support needed. 

One of our employees right now wanted to work remotely to travel a little bit. Because they do such great work and we have amazing trust with our employees, we were able to support this. Mogul is a great place to work. Crypto is a global industry and top talent is hard to come by, so when we find good resources, we support them 100%!

Our development team has 10 people on it, our marketing team 6, our film team 5 full time, and then we have our support team and other contractors we work with + advisors that round out our team of about 30 people across the world 🙂 

Right now if you’re a marketer, biz dev expert, or crypto analyst with an interest in NFTs we want you to get in touch through our applications on our website. They’ll be shared through social soon too

Question 7. Can you please tell us more about your current project and how will it benefit your token holders

Answer: Yes of course. I’ll talk about our current initiatives:

1. Showcase: this is where STARS holders can vote on which movie they want us to finance. When people vote, they are staking STARS and earning rewards just like farming

2. NFT marketplace: more info to be announced on this, but there will be an aspect of the marketplace where fees on transfers are shared with STARS holders/stakers. 

We want to create more in-app utility every month for our token

Question 8 from twitter @V8Quang: What is your roadmap for 2021? What are notable milestones we should look forward to in 2021?

Answer: Well there are only 4 months left in 2021 and I can say that our roadmap for development will consist of launching our NFT marketplace mid-Sept and adding continued features there and continuing work on our smart wallet and layer 2 integrations for the product. 

In terms of the biz dev roadmap, expect major NFT drops with top entertainment talent on a biweekly basis. The people we are looking at partnering with must commit to aggressive co-marketing campaigns with Mogul and engaging with our community and each drop is prioritized to grow Mogul and our ecosystem – not capitalizing on the hype just for the sake of dropping an NFT. We want people who love crypto, love Mogul, and want to offer genuine experiences that align with our mission. 

Also in this arena, expect more partnerships to grow the STARS ecosystem and accessibility 

In terms of the film roadmap, next week we will be announcing the winner of our showcase and the first ever movie that we will greenlight through blockchain. That movie will likely be a completed product by the end of 2021, which is SO fast and timely. The winning movie will be doing continued marketing and promotion with our community to provide much more intimate experiences than what we’ve been able to provide thus far

Question 9 from twitter @AlbertJaison2: The utility of the token is one of the factors that evaluates the credibility and potential of the project. So what is the use and role of the $STARS token in the ecosystem? How can users earn more $STARS through the incentive program? Can you share its tokenomics?

Answer: Of course, i need to run shortly so I’ll share this link: https://www.mogulproductions.com/stars

STARS are our in-app currency used for staking, farming, rewards, and power the Mogul platform and everything we do 🙂 

We’ve had a 15% increase in holders in the last week and are super excited for the future there

Question 10 from twitter @Phuongkcl: Collaboration and partnerships are one of the cornerstones to making DeFi more widespread. Can you share some of the partnerships you have formed with existing blockchain foundations recently?

Answer: Of course. Recent partnerships are seen on our blog and are with:

ApeSwap: BSC dex that I believe has one of the strongest marketing teams in crypto

AnySwap: bridge for STARS from ETH to BSC 

And we have more to come 🙂 

Big one will be announced next Friday too 

Full list of announcements here: https://www.mogulproductions.com/blog

Question 11 from twitter @Kozhi50222584: The gap between traditional movie makers and NFT crypto movie makers is still huge. How does MOGUL bridge this to attract more traditional makers to try out new blockchain aspects with NFT?

Answer: We have our biz dev team having conversations daily. If you look at our current showcase, these are not “NFT crypto movie makers”. These are award winning filmmakers that create several Hollywood grade movies per year that make it to Netflix, Amazon, theatres, etc. They are experienced and some of the best out there, and we have more A List talent that will be announced shortly. Our brand, thus far, has only ever been associated with movies that we believe are commercially viable in the existing Hollywood system so that you’ll be able to watch them on your fav streamers

Question 11 from twitter NAGS7777: Is MOGUL Productions hack proof and audited from a third party? Is the system designed to stop attacks from Quantum computers?

Answer: Last week we made a splash in the entertainment industry adding Mike Cosentino (former Bell Media) to our film team. We received a call from a former President of Bell Media after that announcement was featured in the top entertainment magazine in Canada where he told us how impressed he was with the moves Mogul was making to make us a big player in traditional entertainment

Classic question. All our audits are here: https://www.mogulproductions.com/security-audits

We work with 2 of the top auditors in blockchain to make sure code we ship is secured by best in class

Question 12 from Telegram @Frankq5: How do you plan to get more partnerships or could you plz tell us what partnerships are going to join with this project?

Answer: There are 2 keys to partnerships:

1. Relationships

2. Ongoing communication and execution

We have an amazing team with great relationships in Hollywood and an advisory group that has a solid track record of opening up conversations with many different groups. 

Then, we have internal resources (and are growing our capabilities) to follow through with these partnerships. For example, we can get in touch with top talent who want to do NFTs, and then we have the resources internally to follow through and create great marketing and co-branding activities and do an amazing drop. We’ve shown this with the Rob Prior partnership. 

So the strategy, which has been very successful thus far, is to leverage relationships of our highly connected leadership team and show them that Mogul means business in our execution 

Question 13 from Telegram @jbarcel: We see the streaming services growing worldwide , how do you see this impacting  the film industry and how mogul will be positioned regarding the streaming ?

Answer: Mogul is a financier of film. So we work with the streamers to get our movies on there. We’re streamer agnostic. We see the growth. And each of our movies will consider streamers as a revenue source when distributing the films

Categories
Blog Posts

Marvel & D.C. Comic Book Artist Rob Prior to Create Unique Film-Inspired NFTs to be Auctioned on the Mogul Productions Platform

Star Wars, Marvel, and Wolf of Wallstreet Artwork by Famed Movie Artist Rob Prior to Be Auctioned as NFTs on Mogul Production’s Blockchain Platform

March 18, 2021, Toronto, Canada

Mogul Productions partners with famed Marvel and D.C. Comics artist Rob Prior to create film-inspired non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that will be auctioned on the decentralized film financing (DeFiFi) platform. The first three pieces will be inspired by Star Wars, the Marvel Universe, and the Wolf of Wall Street — a film that is particularly relevant today in the wake of the recent GameStop/Robinhood controversy.

Gagan Grewal, CEO of Mogul Productions, expressed, “Our aim is to support an entertainment ecosystem that brings creators, fans, and financiers together in one space to ensure more great films get made, and we see the NFT auction of film-inspired artwork as the perfect way to commemorate the merging of blockchain and entertainment worlds.”

Artist Rob Prior, who is also joining Mogul Productions as an advisor, expressed, “It’s incredible that we can now make art immortal by giving it a permanent digital life on the blockchain. I couldn’t be more enthusiastic about working with the Mogul team to share my creations with the members of the entertainment community, who have always been big supporters of my work.”

As a comic book artist, Rob has worked with Marvel, D.C., Todd McFarlane, Kevin Eastman and Image Comics. In television and film, his most notable credits include work on Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Terminator, Deep Space 9, Game of Thrones, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Firefly. As a leading storyboard artist, he provided boards for advertising campaigns for corporations like Budweiser and Nikon, as well as for the gaming industry, for Titleist, 2K Games, and Buffy. Rob also created all the storyboards and animatics for video games Ghost Rider and The Darkness. Rob’s illustration credits include TSR (Dungeons and Dragons), Wizards of The Coast, Battle of The Lords of the 23rd Century, and numerous others.

Mogul Productions launched their platform earlier this year with nearly 6,000 sign-ups in the first 24 hours. Mogul is also rapidly approaching its mainnet launch, at which point participants can begin using STARS tokens to engage with filmmakers and other movie fans on the platform.

The first NFT auction of Rob Prior’s artwork will be held in late spring on the Mogul platform. The highest bidder will receive the NFT version of the artwork, with the option of watching Prior burn the original to ensure no duplicates are ever made again or retaining the physical work of art.

To be eligible to participate in the NFT auction, you must sign-up for a Mogul account and own STARS. All Access Pass holders will have advanced access to the NFT drop. To create an account visit: my.mogulproductions.com

For media inquiries, please contact Leila Wolf at (310) 260–7901 or Leila(at)MelrosePR(dot)com.

About Mogul Productions (Mogul)

Mogul Productions is a decentralized film financing (DeFiFi) platform that connects creators, movie fans, & film financiers in one space to ensure the best films get made by giving everyone a voice. Leveraging blockchain technology and a tokenized model, Mogul incentivizes participation and engagement. Using the Mogul in-app currency and utility token (STARS), users can vote for their favorite films to be greenlit and participate in key decision-making aspects of production. STARS holders are key governing bodies of the Mogul platform, including the profit-sharing pool of capital accruing from Mogul-funded movies. Mogul’s production team and advisors are award-winning Hollywood veterans who have written, directed, acted in, and produced diverse slates of films and TV shows.

Categories
Blog Posts

Meet the Mogul Smart Wallet

Today we’d like to announce the Mogul Smart Wallet, a smart digital wallet that was engineered to provide the film industry with a digital asset storage experience that is easy-to-use, easy-to-recover, and highly secure.

Mogul Smart Wallet removes the headache of long seed phrases, understanding the jargon in third-party Web 3 interfaces, and the painstaking verification of a twenty-something digit long crypto address.

On the front-end, the Mogul Smart Wallet has a high user design like traditional mobile applications that users are used to. However, on the backend, Mogul’s development team has created a seamless, blockchain-based application that our users who are not tech-savvy will operate without any experience.

There is a triangular problem with the current generation of smart wallet offerings. Typically you have to pick two of the following design principles while sacrificing on a third: decentralization, usability, and a simple user experience. However, with Mogul, you get all three in one simple platform experience.

Mogul is one of few companies to build a Smart Wallet in production. Others include Argent and Dharma: two highly regarded companies in the DeFi industry.

An Easy-to-Use, Easy-to-Recover Smart Wallet for Digital Asset Storage

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Mogul’s target audience in the film industry has an expectation of convenience and user experience that is difficult to find with other blockchain-based wallets:

  • Easy-to-Use, Easy-to-Recover:

Our Smart Wallet’s decentralized recovery system delivers a seamless user design with the high accessibility users have come to expect. If a user forgets their password on Mogul, they go through a familiar front-end experience similar to resetting an email or social media password. They click on a ‘Forgot Password’ button, a link is sent, they receive an email, click the link, and the password is reset. However, on the back-end, Mogul built a smart wallet system using smart contracts for decentralized wallet recoverability. When users reset a wallet, they actually create a new authentication wallet that is programmed to have the capabilities of interacting with the smart wallet. Yet, on the front-end to the user, it looks like a simple password reset.

  • Manual Transaction Signatures Eliminated:

Users can send free and frictionless transactions within the platform without manual signatures. When you use other DeFi wallets, you generally have to interact with a Web 3 interface to manually confirm a transaction and pay a costly gas fee, especially as the network congests. For example, with Metamask and Web3, a user needs to give permissions to access their wallet and then the user needs to confirm the transaction:

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This process would need to happen for each action on Mogul. Not everyone who could benefit from Mogul’s technology is able to understand the nuances involved in a blockchain transaction, so Mogul offers sponsored, frictionless in-platform actions.

While other wallets require tech-savviness just to maneuver around, Mogul has re-engineered an incredibly complex system in a very simple way.

Smart Wallet Recovery Done Right

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Our wallet recovery process uses the Mogul Guardian by default, which allows for safe and secure decentralized recoverability. This system provides a user with a new authentication wallet through a standard password reset flow.

The system delivers a new authentication wallet to communicate with user funds.

A Mogul user can choose between using the default Mogul Guardian system, or reset their guardian(s) to their preference where more than one Guardian can be chosen. Guardians could be friends, hardware wallets, or a mixture of both. Thus, users can create a multi-channel authentication system for decentralized password and key recovery.

For example, if a user doesn’t want to use the Mogul Guardian, that user can designate Tracy (or Tracy, Bob, and Alice) as the guardian(s) and thereby make them the only entity that can change the authentication wallet, requiring their wallet’s permissions to do so.

The film industry can benefit from the Mogul Smart Wallet because it is easy-to-use and does not require the tech know-how that was asked from previous generations of blockchain wallets.

Mogul removes major points of friction to deliver a seamless end-user experience that makes using blockchain technology feel as natural as using the Internet when browsing the web.

We are always listening to our users. We welcome suggestions and feedback through our contact page.

ABOUT MOGUL PRODUCTIONS (MOGUL)
Mogul Productions, established 2019, is a blockchain-based film financier and production company with a presence in Canada, the United States of America and Europe.

The Mogul platform connects contributors, film industry professionals and fans through technology that allows all users to engage and participate with each project throughout theirs entire lifecycle, from financing through to production and distribution.