Launchpool AMA Recap — Functionland
On Monday, 13th January, Launchpool was thrilled to host Ehsan Shariati, founder of Functionland, for an exclusive Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) session with the Launchpool community.
This session gave the Launchpool community exclusive insights into the project, its roadmap, and its flagship product, the Fula Platform — a cutting-edge decentralized data storage infrastructure designed for AI development. The session lasted approximately 30 minutes and consisted of questions from the Launchpool Team as well as questions from the Community.
Place: Launchpool Community Telegram
Date & Time: Monday, 13th January, 3:00 PM UTC
Guest: Ehsan Shariati, Founder of Functionland
Host: Musty (Launchpool)
Questions from the Launchpool Team
Musty: It’s AMA Time‼️ 🚀
Hello and Welcome all LPOOLers,
As many in our Community already know, today we have an AMA session with Ehsan Shariati, founder of Functionland
Functionland is at the forefront of a new era in data infrastructure. By leveraging unused computer resources, it delivers a cost-effective and decentralised cloud storage solution, while empowering users with full data sovereignty.
As always, the chat will be muted for roughly 30mins whilst we ask the pre-prepared questions. After this, we will open up to questions from the Community for another 15 mins. We will enable “Slow Mode” for questions.
Good day Ehsan glad to have you with us today.
Ehsan: Hello! And thank you for inviting me to the community.
Musty: Our community are eager to hear from you today. Let’s get it on!
Please tell us a bit about yourself, your background and your involvement with the space.
Ehsan: I am Ehsan Shariati, and I have been a software developer and electrical engineer for over 20 years.I live in Canada and in terms of my professional background, I have studied electrical engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Before founding Functionland, I managed several multi-million dollar projects for companies such as L’Oreal, where I oversaw the operation of their hardware and software for all of their Canadian checkers.
✨ Special Announcement ✨
The $FULA token sale is currently live on Launchpool 👇
Musty: Wow, that is a long time to be in any industry. Could you tell us about the rest of the team?
Ehsan: Sure, the Core Team consists of three people who started the project 4 years ago. Our co-founder Keyvan, studied Artificial Intelligence at the University of Southampton in UK, way before the AI hype. He used to work with Ben Goertzel in Hong Kong on the openCog project which was the beginning of the AGI.
Our other co-founder, Kate, has been working at the Ontario Center of Innovation for many years with startups and larger companies for their funding needs as well as teaching at Universities across Ontario.
We did a government-funded project together before this, and that is how the team got to know each other.
We also have well-known advisors in our team, such as Shaun Neff, who is called the “Branding Whisperer” by Forbes, and Yves Behar, who’s been known as the most influential industrial designer in the world by Forbes, and several others who are supporting us in marketing, finance, design and the technical side of hardware & software.
Musty: That’s amazing. Putting together a strong team is important. What problem are you trying to solve? What is the overall vision for the project?
Ehsan: Being in tech for more than two decades, and as someone who’s been following AI since very early ages (2006!), the problem we saw four years ago, was that the current infrastructure is not well equipped to scale and deliver the amount of data storage or data processing that artificial intelligence requires.
AI systems will be creating tons and tons of data, much more than what we’ve created so far. Relying on centralized servers alone is not scalable enough to address the demand for that amount of data; both environmentally and technically.
So we decided to go to a similar route, which helped other industries like hotels and taxis to scale (AirBnb, Uber, etc), by relying on individuals to rent out on used resources: A Decentralized Marketplace! We want to upgrade people from users, to owners of the cloud. So we’ve built out a platform that allows you to install on your device and start renting out the storage of that device.
Our platform aggregates all these smaller spaces together, and takes care of data replication (for reliability), date encryption (for security) and finding the best location to store your data for providing the fastest download and upload speed. We also created SDKs for software developers, so they can build applications for people to interact with their data.
But we are not just creating a data storage platform, we are creating a full data ecosystem that incentivizes data storage providers, application developers, and content creators, much how centralized cloud systems incentivizes all parties.
Musty: How are you differentiated from other similar projects?
Ehsan: Most Web3 projects, including decentralized storage ones, do not provide the support for mobile native applications. You open a web browser to upload and download. From the beginning, we’ve focused on being mobile app friendly. Therefore mobile applications such as Telegram, Twitter, Instagram, etc are the main tools we use to interact with our data
As you know, most Web3 data resides on AWS or Google CloudWhen. To be fully decentralized, we wanted to rely on personal nodes. Our objective was simple, make it easy to setup and with a low power consumption so as not to require much electricity. Therefore, we built plug and play hardware that enables users to easily join the network with a single click from their phone….we started this before the word DePIN existed, let alone a became hype.
Musty: It will be nice to have mobile app functionality as this would attract more users. Where are you at in your roadmap? Could you please talk us through the next steps.
Ehsan: Since we started, we have shipped around 1,000 of our notes globally and increasing. We created the supply chain to be able to scale to more than 10,000 notes per month (although you can run our protocols on your own device or laptop as well without needing the hardware node).
Our testnet launched early last year for the storage part and it has over 3,000 users through the mobile applications we have published on Google Play on Apple store, with the flagship one being FxFotos, which is a decentralized alternative to Google or Apple photos.
We also created a plugin mechanism for our hardware that makes it a DePin aggregator! It allows other projects to easily add themselves as a plugin to the hardware, and then users through the app can run them through a single click. Streamr is already a plugin to our hardware for decentralized stream, and we are currently working with a decentralized VPN and decentralized compute which would be added soon.
Right now we’re integrated with Etherium and are expanding to Base, IoTex, Skale, with the direct support of them. We are aiming to do our TGE and token listing in Q1 2025.
Musty: Can’t wait to see the expansion. How was the project funded up to this point? How will the funds from the AME be used?
Ehsan: We started as a grassroot project. The project was initially funded by grants from Dfinity (internet computer), Filecoin and Crust. We won a DoraHacks Hackathon which got the attention of Outlier Ventures. We got some pre-seed funding from them, and then we raised $1.1M seed funding from reputable VCs such as Protocol Labs, Delta Blockchain Fund, Outlier Ventures, Master Ventures and several other high profile VCs.
After that we did a crowdfunding for the hardware on Indiegogo (intentionally used a web2 platform to test the mainstream market) and raised more than half a million dollars there.
We also did another private Fundraising round, with the participation of Protocol Labs, Delta blockchain fund, Tobi and Brent, Cointelegraph and several other VCs. Also all our partners, such as our manufacturer and law firm are invested in the project.
The goal for the current funding is to be spent on user growth and specifically onboarding 60,000 users in the next 18 months on the both the hardware as well as the software side. This would bring in more than 14 million of revenue, which allows us to add more features and utilities to the network and the token.
Musty: Are there any other strategic partners that you can share?
Ehsan: During the past 4 years we created reputable partners such as Dora Hacks, Filecoin, Internet Computer (ICP), Crust, DepinX, Cointelegraph, AWS, Google Cloud, Fuse Project, Formidable Labs, Singularity DAO.
We’re also working with many blockchain projects directly as our partners such as BEVM, U2U, IoTex, Skale, etc. and accelerators such as Tehcstars, 1871 and Outlier Ventures.
Musty: What made you choose Launchpool as your launchpad partner for the AME?
Ehsan: We noticed that many projects that Launchpool launches on their platform is focused on the token utility, and some partners like Singularity Dao are actually our partners as well, so it got our interest to partner with Launchpool to get the support of the the community in executing the goals of decentralization. As we would like to attract communities who are also interested in the utility part of blockchain.
Musty: What is the total allocation you’ve set aside for the Launchpool community? Are there any limitations or is the token sale open to everyone?
Ehsan: We are using one of our most limited caps, so the maximum we could put aside is $50,000 for the Launchpool community. And there is a limitation is a maximum of $6,000 per contributor.
US and Canada are excluded as well as any sanctioned countries, however, hopefully with a new US president, things with US and Canada may change.
Musty: What happens after the AME? Could you talk us through the tokenomics?
Ehsan: $FULA is a utility token having a fixed cap at 2 billion tokens — with more than 70% of tokens allocated to the community across the years ahead!
The initial circulation supply is very low being less than $300K. For the Launchpool community, we are allocating from the KOL round which has 20% released at TGE, with linear vesting over 6 months for the remainder.
The tokenomics has been designed with the support of Outlier Ventures, Filecoin, Singularity DAO, and DepinX team and is very solid for a long-term project.
Musty: What are the use cases for the token? Do you have any mechanisms planned to support the DeFi component?
Ehsan: Utility of $FULA can be categorized below:
Storage Access
- Pay for decentralized storage services
- Purchase additional storage capacity
Application Usage
- Pay developers for using the open-source dApps
- Access premium application functionalities
Governance Participation
- Vote on network proposals
- Participate in protocol decisions (except reward distributions)
- Influence network development direction
Plugin Access
- Cross-token payments for integrated plugins
Staking Functions
- Stake to access reduced storage costs
- Stake to receive staking rewards
- Stake tokens to publish new plugins
Musty: Where can we join your community?
Ehsan: We are on almost all socials with the id “Functionland”.
Below are main ones:
🐦 X
💬 Telegram:
👾 Discord:
🌐 Website:
🛒 Shop:
✨ Special Offer✨
I would love to offer a limited time 40% discount to the first eight (8) people using this code to purchase our hardware nodes in the shop: launchpool40
Musty: That’s a great offer and thank you for sharing these updates with our Community. I will now open the Community up for questions from the floor for another 15mins or so.
Please be reminded that we have “Slow Mode” enabled for questions and will only be answering related to Functionland.
The Floor is Now Open❗
Questions from the Launchpool Community
Question: Do you have AUDIT certificate because AUDIT is for important any project and secondly do you have a whitepaper?
Ehsan: Yes! We are working with Hashlock for the audit and it will be done before TGE.
Our whitepaper can be found here:
Question: I really like this project a lot…mostly for the sustainable approach. When are you launching the token? Is it definite or can a change happen? Also on what chain are we going to receive our tokens during vesting.
Ehsan: Appreciate the kind words, yes it is all about creating a sustainable ecosystem. We are aiming to TGE in Q1 this year. Most things are finalized and we do not anticipate a change.
As for vesting claims, you get the option to choose from Base, Ethereum, IoTex or Skale.
Question: Are you planning on launching on tier1 exchanges?
Ehsan: We wanted to keep the initial circulation supply low as this benefits all participants. Most T1 exchanges for a new launches require huge amount of tokens (more than double our initial circulation supply at the moment!), which we think is detrimental to the community as they will be a huge selling pressure for those tokens on the community.
On account of that we decided to gather offers and only go with best offers for TGE. As of right now, MEXC has confirmed as we got a really good offer from them.
Musty: Thank you again Ehsan for taking the time to update the Launchpool community, it was great having you here with us. We are excited for what’s ahead.
Ehsan: It was a pleasure being here and if any more questions please feel free to join and ask in the Functionland community.
Musty: If the Community has any more questions or if it’s unanswered, please hop over to the Functionland community via any of the links shared above, to have it answered there.
Thank you to everyone that participated!
This will be the end of our AMA.
About Functionland
Functionland is pioneering the future of decentralised data storage for AI with the Fula Platform, by significantly reducing costs, enhancing data sovereignty, and building a sustainable ecosystem for AI and blockchain integration.
Website — Twitter — Telegram — Discord
About Launchpool
Launchpool leverages communities, knowledge, expertise, contacts and capital to provide crypto projects with the best possible start to life, maximising their chances for success in this fast moving & dynamic space.
