Our recent AMA with Verge Currency challenged everything we thought we knew about project funding and community-driven development in crypto.
Justin, founder of Verge Currency, joined our Swapzone AMA session to discuss their unique approach to building across 14 different smart chains, the problems with traditional databases, and why they’ve never raised a single dollar from investors. This cryptocurrency without ICO funding has the flexibility to prove that alternative approaches can work.
Here’s what we learned and why it matters for the future of decentralized projects.
About the Projects
For newcomers, Swapzone is a crypto exchange aggregator that compares real-time offers from dozens of providers. Our mission is simple: make swaps transparent, fast, and fair. No hidden fees, no complications. We’ve been doing this since 2019.
Verge Currency launched in 2014 as what Justin describes as “just kind of a side project I was doing while I was working for other cryptocurrencies.” What started as a hobby evolved into a remarkable cryptocurrency without ICO funding: “We’re one of the only projects that didn’t do an ICO or a premine. We didn’t do any fundraising or take money from investors at all. Nothing like that. I obtained my first coins just like everybody else did. I mined them with a GPU, not even an ASIC.”
Community-First Cryptocurrency Philosophy
When asked about protecting user investments, Justin revealed a fundamental difference in how Verge approaches its community:
“One of the cool things is we don’t really see people that buy the tokens as investors because it doesn’t benefit us or the team at all. If you buy $1,000 worth of a Verge token or XVG coin itself, that benefits me zero. I don’t see profit from that.”
This philosophy extends to governance and decision-making. “Whether you have a governance token or not, you should be active and aware of how your community feels and what they want anyway,” Justin explained. “People like me and our team, we’re in our chat all day talking to people. We talk about tech. I ask people questions, people ask me questions, and we have discussions.”
The symbiotic relationship is clear: “A project relies on its community and a community relies on the project, hand in hand. It’s a symbiotic relationship, if you will. We both rely on each other.”
Revolutionary Multi-Chain Cryptocurrency Approach
Perhaps the most innovative aspect of Verge’s current strategy is their multi-chain deployment with shared contract addresses.
“About maybe six months ago or so, I started learning a lot about Solidity and I realized that I could launch a Verge token, an XVG token across other smart chains that were EVM compatible and I was able to keep the same contract address on every single chain that I deployed on.”
The result? “From 2014 to now (11 years almost), we have a whole array of XVG branded tokens on probably about 14 different smart chains right now that all share the same contract address. This makes it a lot better than a wrapped token because it’s native to each chain.”
This approach solves multiple problems: “It’s very easy to prevent forgery or counterfeit XVG tokens where someone can just make a token called XVG. All of our tokens across all of these chains share the same exact contract address. This protects users.”
Strategic Chain Selection
Justin’s approach to choosing which chains to deploy on reflects deep technical consideration:
“I handpicked many of these chains because I think that they have very promising technology. I think by now we’ve kind of established ourselves as a household name. We’re known to be in the space for a very long time. We’re reliable. We are battle tested and we’re here to stay.”
The selection criteria goes beyond hype: “That’s why we’ve launched tokens on the most serious chains like ZK Sync. They’re handling government information in Buenos Aires. They have like 3 million people that reside in Buenos Aires, and they’re handling government information now on that chain. That’s a very serious project and it’s going to be around a while.”
Recent partnerships validate this strategy: “We were just talking about Avalanche the other day. We have a token on Avalanche, XVG AVA. Avalanche just made a deal with Toyota, and they’re going to be storing all of Toyota’s consumer information from the mobile app on blockchain.”
The Database Security Revolution
One of Justin’s most passionate explanations centered on why blockchain databases matter:
“SQL databases have been around since I was a child. There’s never been a time in my life where an SQL database has been unhackable. Every database that you’ve seen get hacked, there’s a 99% chance it was an SQL database and somebody figured out how to inject code and dump it.”
The solution is clear: “If we’re going to move forward as a civilization of humans on this earth, we have to adopt technology that’s safer and better and battle tested, and blockchains are that for databases.”
This isn’t theoretical anymore: “It’s about time that we see this mass migration to databases, to blockchain databases, over the archaic ones like SQL and FoxPro.”
ISO 20022 Compliance and Banking Integration
When asked about ISO 20022 compliance and competing with projects like XRP and XLM, Justin outlined Verge’s positioning:
“ISO 20022 is what Swift and ACH are adapting to. It’s a new standard or protocol of sending messages through bank wires. We’ve adapted software where Verge could be used in the same situation and have the same formatting as these messages that go back and forth that send your fiat over bank wires.”
But competition isn’t the focus: “We don’t really worry about competition. We kind of stay in our own lane. We’re not worried about what XRP or XLM is doing. They’re unique in their own right… Those are two projects that raised enormous amounts of money in ICOs. As a cryptocurrency without ICO funding, we’re community based. We don’t need to raise money for anything.”
Innovative Trading Economics
The multi-chain approach creates unexpected benefits for users:
“Many of them are launched on V4 pools, so gasless trading is now possible. Swap companies like Swapzone are actually able to pass cheaper fees down to the users. We’re seeing an interesting dynamic now where sometimes it’s actually cheaper to trade your coins or tokens using a swap site than it is a CEX.”
This partnership approach makes sense: “Aggregators like Swapzone are able to go search for the best price available at the moment through indexing many available liquidity pools and pass those savings on to users, which is just amazing.”
No-ICO Development: Milestones Over Roadmaps
Verge takes a unique approach to planning that reflects crypto’s volatile nature:
“On our website, we actually don’t have a future road map. We have what we call milestones because, as crypto changes so often, it’s really hard to set a specific goal. We kind of make plans on the fly as we move along, with community input and team input, and with the evolution of crypto in general.”
The methodology is practical: “We set goals daily and weekly and monthly, and then we just accomplish them and then we set them as a milestone. It’s just much easier that way. It’s more realistic.”
Continuous Development Excellence
Justin highlighted their commitment to technical excellence:
“One of the things that we recently did was on Monday this past week, we released a new major version of our Verge Core software. We just released 8.0, which has a ton of new updates. It’s much faster. We did a modern migration of C++ 17 and also kind of paved the way for C++ 20.”
The improvements are substantial: “We optimized the software itself so that if you’re running a daemon or running a wallet, it’s just much sturdier, uses less memory, keeps your data more secure, and there’s less chance of corruption.”
Their pace is impressive: “That was our sixth Verge Core release this year since January. We’ve just been chugging right along, making updates to Verge Core constantly.”
The Future of Crypto Winners
Justin’s perspective on the crypto space challenges zero-sum thinking:
“As we’ve come to realize in the crypto space by now, there’s not going to be one winner. There’s going to be a lot of winners. There’s probably going to be hundreds of winners. It’s kind of like when the stock market just started – if you said only one of these companies is going to be a winner, well, look what happened today. Thousands and thousands of stocks, and many, many of them are winners.”
However, he’s realistic about the current state: “I think that the crypto space has far too many projects (like 16 million projects, and that’s stupid), but there’s room for a lot of winners. There’s plenty of room for a thousand, 2,000, maybe even 5,000 or 10,000 projects, but 16 million is a bit carried away.”
Partnership Benefits for Users
When discussing the Swapzone partnership, Justin emphasized user experience:
“The best thing about swapping is you don’t have to make an account somewhere, send your license or your passport, sit around, wait for them to approve you, then send money, and then you wait for it to clear, and then you make a trade, and then you have to withdraw and wait.”
The alternative is elegantly simple: “With projects like Swapzone and other swaps and aggregators like you guys do, it’s just so much simpler. You go to the website, you say, ‘This is the coin I want to send,’ and then you select the coin that you want to receive, and you’re done.”
Final Thoughts
This AMA demonstrated how authentic community building and technical innovation can thrive without traditional venture funding. While many projects chase ICO millions, Verge Currency has spent 11 years proving that a cryptocurrency without ICO funding can create lasting value.
As Justin emphasized, “Communication with the community is the most important aspect to me.” Combined with their groundbreaking multi-chain approach and commitment to real-world utility, Verge Currency represents a different path forward for decentralized projects.
Both Swapzone and Verge Currency show that DeFi’s future lies in solving real problems while maintaining the principles that make blockchain technology revolutionary.
Trade XVG on Swapzone Today
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Swapzone hosted this AMA session with Verge Currency to discuss multi-chain innovation and community-driven development. The information provided is educational and does not constitute investment advice. Always conduct your research before making investment decisions.
