Last week, we had our first AMA session in our Telegram Chat. Our guests were Sherman Lee and Rahul Vishwakarma, Co-founders at Raven Protocol, one of the most interesting Binance Chain-based projects designed for machine learning.
Here are the essential points of Sherman and Rahul on the product and future prospects.
Please welcome Sherman (S), and Rahul (R), and the questions from our Telegram chat members (Q).
Q: Sherman, first I would like to ask are about Raven Protocol, its aims and achievements. What could you tell about the aims? What Raven does and how it is gonna change the game?
S: Raven Protocol aims to provide an efficient and fast way to train deep neural networks by using a distributed and decentralized framework and ecosystem
It will not only make training deep learning models faster to train but highly cost-efficient as well. Moreover, it'll allow contributors to earn by donating their idle compute power in the form of smartphones, laptops and more for training a piece of the model.
Q: Why do you choose Binance DEX FOR IDO and why IDO?
S: The idea of the IDO was seeded by the community. Our plan was to list RAVEN on the 17th of June on Binance DEX. The Raven community wanted us to make sure that we get the exposure we deserve. One thing led to another and we announced an IDO on the 14th of June. The team executed everything over the weekend and launched it on the 17th
Q: What are the incentives for someone holden Raven tokens 
S: Raven is creating a network of compute nodes that utilize idle compute power for the purposes of AI training where speed is the key. A native token is the key to bootstrapping a nascent network.
We want to incentivize and reward people all over the world to contribute their compute power to our network. Additionally, we will reward token holders for running masternodes which will be responsible for orchestrating the training of various deep neural networks.
Our consensus mechanism is something we call Proof-of-Calculation. Proof-of-Calculation will be the primary guideline for the regulation and distribution of incentives to the compute nodes in the network. Following are the two prime deciders for the incentive distribution:
Speed: Depending upon how fast a node can perform gradient calculations (in a neural network) and return it back to the Gradient Collector.
Redundancy: The 3 fastest redundant calculation will only qualify for receiving the incentive. This will make sure that the gradients that are getting returned are genuine and of the highest quality.
Q: What difficulties have been encountered during the development of Raven Protocol?
R: To be upfront, the bear market hurt a lot. We stayed heads down and built when many ppl no longer believed in token networks. Only the best projects survived that. We raised a small seed round, stayed lead, and built. Most people thought we were an overnight success :) Step by step we move forward.
Q: What makes the RAVEN token unique from others? Why should anyone invest in RAVEN?
R: RAVEN is a long term project. We are very clear and upfront about that. A framework like Tensor flow was in beta for 3 years and it too many more years after that before they became well known. We've been building for only 1 year.
Q: Could you describe your customer acquisition strategy? Most projects, even those that have been live for 12 months only have a handful of users who purchase tokens for utility rather than speculation. How will you ensure RAVEN acquires utility users rather than just speculators
R: We are building the utility for consumers first which has been proven in the past. Will be announcing this soon.
Q: How does the migration to Binance Chain help in your project?
S: The biggest unfair advantage you get from building on Binance Chain (after speed and security) is access to the Binance Chain ecosystem and its network of projects/founders that want to support each other. That's how this AMA happened.
Q: I noticed this, that's why only 400k was raised in the IDO, compared to other projects raising millions and then their token price dumps hard. It drew me to Raven protocol. Raven's value will grow as the tech grows. So in my opinion, a fine investment!
A: Yes, it's about executing on the tech. We’re developing our own framework written in Python and c++. Because we have no dependency on the architecture of the machine, nodes in the network can be as simple as a Javascript client. E.g. a website could install a javascript snippet and execute gradient calculations on page load.
Q: Could you please touch upon the security side of the Raven Protocol?
R: There are multi-layer of security for both Customers and contributors. One - the data gets split and encoded with SHA-256, two - gets randomly distributed, three - incentivisation algo.
Q: What has so far been the most fulfilling experience ever since starting Raven Protocol?
R: Love and support from the community
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See you soon!