Right before the completion of the Stage 3 we publish the transcript of the video AMA with Mikhail Vakhrin, one of SP8DE co-founders, translated from Russian. Misha talks to Anatoly Radchenko (trader) and Konstantin Katsev (TrueFlip) about Life after ICO.
At the very beginning it was more or less just an idea. Moreover, the level of our idea depended on how fast the guys from Cardano will act. On how they will follow their roadmap. How fast they will complete what they promise. Unfortunately, they were delivering their academic articles, incredibly complicated! My hair turned all white while I was getting through them. But as for the code, it was still in its infancy, that’s why we also faced a problem. One of our assumptions was not really correct, so we had to improvise, and the results of this improvisation in my humble opinion turned out to be better than what we had initially planned!
The most important thing right now is the random numbers generating protocol. Distributed random numbers generation is really complicated! If it was that easy to solve, Ethereum would have been at Proof of Stake now. It’s not that easy. Based on this piece of protocol it’s already possible to build the whole ecosystem where guys develop games, generate random and all the rest. But for them to be able to generate distributed random numbers… that’s the most complicated things. And that’s what has the most commercial success right now. A huge piece of our work.
And your token? What does it do? Is it to pay for the protocol usage?
True. Addressing the RNG which will generate random numbers will cost some number of tokens.
Misha, what Konstantin says about his company (TrueFlip). Do I understand it correct that you can just disrupt them with your protocol?
Our main goal is not to disrupt Konstantin. Not at all. We can help Konstantin, I hope, and enterprises like them. We have it all like that, again: all these benefits of decentralization are focused in one single act of random numbers generation. And we do it in a way that it demands minimum efforts for casinos to integrate it. That’s why we would be like software providers. Konstantin first of all makes money on his games. We make money on the specific elements of these games. That’s why we are useful for people like Konstantin.
There’s a lot to be added about gaming. That’s one of the most important factors. We have now a kind of integration of gaming and gambling markets. Now you have all these endless loot boxes, roulettes for the same items in gaming. You don’t need to explain it for example about DotA 2. That’s the first one. The second: now we have the opportunity to poke the screen of our phone with our fat fingers right there, in the bus, to place your bets. You now don’t need to rush to Vegas to satisfy your gambling needs. Again, the regulation changes. It’s caused by many factors. Including the fact that now we have a new generation – us. The growing generation who’s not interested in coming to physical casinos and pulling all those machines. You should be in a special environment to enjoy a standard casino experience, glowing lights and poking the same button over and over again. That’s just not that interesting. And gambling as an industry has open statistics. The classical gambling loses its audience. The audience wants something new, different all the time. That’s why it got a stimulus to aspire to other niches where they can win the hearts and minds of the new generation. So, the successful efforts in this direction cause growth.
And where’s the blockchain? Misha, tell us how blockchain will disrupt this industry.
That’s the hottest topic, one of our developers team is busy with that. The most important thing is that you can save it from many risks, many potential losses. Reputational losses. Casino and other guys need to store KYC on their servers. If you break the KYC process, so that when it’s completed, you have some wallet’s transactions signed with some KYC provider, then with some secret sharing you can break KYC documents and spread it to the trusted nodes in a way so that none of the trusted nodes could have access without permission gained from say other 80%. In case if you’re visited by FBI who tells you there’s some guy who does something wrong, you can say “look, here are the documents”. In case if you’re visited by a hacker who wants to steal these data, these data are very sensible, and nobody can do it just hacking you. Plus, all the problems with people who are sitting in a standard casino, like guys who make KYC. You can do it this way: if one wallet is signed with one KYC, all the other providers in this KYC chain also accept it. Scaling it out. What you can create with it is huge, we also do it.
How to disrupt the rest of the gambling industry? How to compete with Poker Stars, for example?
No matter how much you’d raise with your ICO, there are guys who can spend more on marketing per month. That’s why it’s quite tough to compete with them in user experience. This question was our motivation to build the architecture of our product this way. It’s better and fairer for our investors as well. You should better build some solution which can be integrated into Poker Stars so that Poker Stars could benefit from it somehow. So that blockchain would help even guys like Poker Stars to do something better. Because otherwise you can compete with them but better with your own money and not somebody else’s.
Misha, and in the end the protocol will be free of charge, right? How much does Internet cost? Nothing. Businesses which build software cost something, and protocol costs nothing. So, it means you develop an open source solution.
Nope, it’s not open source. That’s normal healthy business approach. That piece of our solution which makes Proof of Concept and all the rest, which is decentralized, it’s open sourced. And the piece which is needed to verify all this… look, after we sign enough contracts with big guys we can make it open source, because the value of the protocol is about how many people participate in it. Now we keep it a secret, otherwise anybody can… Well, you understood me.
What are your general forecasts?
Yeah, it’s like Buffet said: "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked”. That’s what will happen. Those who were swimming naked will go extinct. We will have a more institutionalized market, with corporate sector, there will be financial regulations. Everything will grow and all the shit will die out. Ones with good commercial ideas and successful execution will probably live and even trade in the classical sector.
Misha, what do people do with your tokens right now?
Well, we have pretty much the same story (as TrueFlip). Those who invested a lot are sitting and waiting. Buying what others sell who have less tokens. I think, the most important here is to make a borderline between the utility potential and the investment component. Where investment component is connected to the utility component, but it will be a subject to some fluctuations. We have it all this way.
Misha, imagine this situation: there was this moment when you had an idea, then you’re making an ICO, getting ready. So, imagine. Time passes. It’s been half a year ever since you had the idea. You had an ICO completed, raised money and you’re like “ok, now we can start developing the product”. But everything has changed (in crypto a day counts for two and a week for a month). You wanted to invent a wheel, but people already have flying cars. What to do?
That’s an easy one. You’ll either be a crazy idealist who will keep on hammering year after a year trying to execute your idea based on the new commercial circumstances. For example, what I was saying about this blockchain thing – you can make a mega-decentralized casino where everything is distributed, but nobody needs it and it doesn’t work. But you can do it and say: “ok, I did it”. And people who invest in ICO, they understand it’s a start up and start ups have everything changed once in three months as the new circumstances occur. And they invest not as much into the idea as in the adequacy of people who execute it.