Aergo AMA Recap: 30th May 2019 Transcript

Here is a recap of Aergo's latest Telegram AMA, where questions were addressed surrounding the latest QPU report. Aergo is one of the top 5 enterprise-focused blockhain projects that we've been keeping an eye on. They've responded to some of the burning questions that Community has surrounding their quarterly report that we would like to share with the Steemit Community

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Introduction

👋 Welcome to today’s AMA session with Phil and Hun.

Phil (CEO) and Hun (CTO) last saw all of you about two months ago, live on YouTube for a video AMA. Now, seeing as we’ve been pretty busy and have pumped out a lot of updates, they’ve come again to engage with all of you and answer any questions you may have. 🔥

This AMA is mainly meant to answer questions about that may have come up after you read the comprehensive, transparent Quarterly Project Update we released for Q2 of 2019. Most of you have likely read it by now.

The QPU goes in-depth on what happened with Aergo over the past quarter and what you should expect moving-forward. It also gives a detailed financial update and token metric breakdown, so if you have any questions in that area you should refer to the QPU.

We’ve made good progress in onboarding the Aergo mainnet’s initial block producer partners. We are holding an event in Seoul, South Korea, on June 10, 2019, called our ‘Network Participant Event’, where we conduct an educational workshop with our existing and potential block producer partners. These partners will be guided, on the ground, through the next steps on the block producer program, being whichever next steps are most relevant to these partners. The event will look to educate our existing and new partners alike. We look forward to updating you all on how things progress!

Aside from that, make sure you check out some of the more recent news items.

• MAY 10: Aergo Connect browser wallet released for testing

• MAY 17: Q2–2019 QPU goes live

• MAY 21: Aergo Ecosystem blog series

• MAY 22: QPU infographic competition. Deadline June 5

• MAY 24: Global Aergo Knights program

• MAY 28: Recording of Phil’s pitch at Deconomy was published

• MAY 30: Hyundai AutoEver to anchor its blockchain to Aergo

We ask that everyone is respectful during this AMA and ask their questions in a calm and collected manner. We will first conduct our live AMA for the duration of one hour. Then, we will answer the pre-submitted questions sent here using #AMA.

Please give adequate time for your question to be answered as typing answers can take some time. I would like to remind everyone that some questions relating to speculation and other sensitive matters cannot be addressed here. Questions that we are unable to answer will simply be ignored, however will be as open as we possible can. We urge everyone to read our QPU (linked at the start of this message) for information on financials and token metrics.

Without further ado, let’s all welcome Hive account@philzamani and Hive account@hunyoungpark to the chat. The AMA begins now and lasts for one hour.

Start of AMA

Q1. When we can see full mainet staking ?

Phil: When the program is ready, later this year.

Hun: We will launch 1-way swap soon, and will launch 2-way swap later.

Q2. Can you elaborate a bit more on how the on-boarding of Hyundai AutoEver will go, are there any targets set by them and how do they measure success?

Hun: In Hyundai’s used car business, we are designing smart contract, maybe we can use it as auction system, or history management. and block hashes will be anchored in the mainnet.

Phil: The program is going very well — we do not disclose customers business targets as these are private and often commercially sensitive — please read their announcement for more

Q3. When will you go public with your partners?

Phil: We are meeting many of these partners on June 10th — We will announce these in due course.

Q4. I hear some news abhout kakao is going to bulid a blockchian platform in Korea ， any comments on that ?

Hun: Kakao is kakao, they are good at service. but we are strong at enterprise business

Q5. Is there a small fee when sending native AERGO tokens to other wallet or it is free?

Kyle: Hey Fellowsheep, the answer to this is that there is a fee associated with all transactions, including transfers between wallets.

Phil: We have not yet finalised our governance model — We need to combine a careful balance of being KYC compliant but also easy to use — We will share details when this conundrum has been resolved — see Huns simpler answer below!

Hun: No, anyone who stake their tokens can be a voter. It’s basic rule for public chain.

Q6. What conferences are you guys eyeing to attend soon?

Phil: In general we are focusing on customer attending industry events — and less crypto events as we now are fully engaged with recruiting and working with Clients — IT partners — Node participants and of course Developers.

Q7. Is it true that Aergo will never go to Binance because of the lawsuit between Binance and Sequoia?

Phil: We don’t comment on our exchange listing plans — we also ignore all such rumours that are blatantly wrong.

Q8. When will the connect browser wallet become available for use?

Kyle: Hey Patrick, the answer here is that the Connect wallet is already available to use, even for mainnet. However, you cannot obtain native coins yet. Once we launch the token swap (1-way), you’ll be able to use the Connect wallet for mainnet coins.

Q9. In the last QPU we’ve gotten a taste of how market expansion/penetration will be handled in China. Could you elaborate more on the strategy in Europe or perhaps other regions?

Phil: We are focusing on three major regions — South Korea, China and Europe — but this does NOT mean we ignore other markets — for example we are working with a major Middle Eastern country who is exploring the use of Aergo in many local government and public service related use cases — our client facing strategy is threefold:

1. Find clients who understand the value of a hybrid blockchain and have a distinct idea or business need.

2. Work with them to qualify and shape each opportunity

3. Deliver this first system within 3–6 months (and potentially work with a local IT system integrator so we can win and deliver more projects in that area)

Q10. Could you please explain how does your Smart Oracles work?

Hun: We can think 2 kinds of smart oracles

1. Recording off-chain information correctly in public chain

2. Uploading legacy data to the private blockchain.

We are more focusing on 2). So want to make general middleware. In case of 1), we need detailed design for each domain case.

Q11. In the QPU report, it stated that the three phases of aergo which includes;

“Build” in 2018 being the 1st phase. “Deploy” as the 2nd phase.

“Business execution” as the 3rd phase which focuses on business agreements with partners. Does this include Hyundai AutoEver?

Phil: Yes all of our work now is focused on Phase 3 Execution.

Q12. Hyundai just joined the aergo mainnet, does that mean they have to buy and hold Aergo token first, then aergo and blocko will provide the service?

Hun: No, Hyundai can use tech support service of Blocko, and don’t need to ‘buy’ the tokens, but will ‘use’ it. Makes sense?

Q13. Is the governance model planned, 1 AERGO = 1 vote or some other like quadratic voting?

Kyle: In general, it won’t necessarily be 1 = 1, but more sophisticated to encourage a stronger ecosystem.

Q14. So what are the privileges of being an AERGO Knight?

Rexford: If you’re an Aergo Knight, you get to be part of the core group of supporters growing the aergo ecosystem. Essentially, you’ll gain early insights on core developments, work with our core team, lead our community efforts, and be compensated for your efforts and further for bigger initiatives you take on.

The three categories primarily being:

• Crypto Ambassadors

• Developer Enablers

• Enterprise Champions

It’s still up for now, our applications are piling up so send it in early :) You may apply here.

Q15. If customers ask for a business case / ROI for implementing blockchain what are common aspects that you address to showcase the true value of the Aergo solution?

Phil: This varies by customer and use case — often ROI is NOT the first thing clients we work with look at.. It’s things like:

1. Can this solution add value to my business — if yes, where, and how?

2. Lets build and test this first

3. Now that i get it lets deploy it at scale to see if we can either be more efficient and use our existing IT and data to win more business (ROI) or be more efficient (ROCE).

The latest Hyundai deal covers both examples nicely (we have worked with them on multiple engagements — starting with PoC’s and lately full production deployments)

Q16. Have you considered using something similar to the LTO bridge toll model?

Kyle: Their bridge toll model is one where private sale investors must pay a fee to enter the ERC-20 token format and trade the token. We didn’t adopt this kind of a model. However, we will indeed have a dual token mechanism where the mainnet coins and ERC-20 tokens exist in unison.

Q17. What is Samsung’s relationship to Blocko?

Kyle: Samsung is both an investor (in multiple financing rounds!) to Blocko and also a major client. See this answer from Enzo for more.

Q18. When can I know the name of block producers? Why don’t you reveal them in your latest QPU?

Phil: When we and they are ready to talk about this publicly — please get familiar with our commercial and business code of practise — we don’t announce anything without customer or partner consent

Kyle: Also, I’ll add that the mainnet is being incubated at the moment. We go over this multiple times in our QPU and medium articles, you should really read them! See pinned message for the QPU

Q19. Are you planning to interact with other large companies, such as LG?

Phil: Who said we are not already? 😊

Q20. So i am trying to learn more about Aergoconnect, what web3 applications or tools can you share on what’s planned there?

Hun: Aergo Connect is a wallet, If you want SDK like web3, you can use heraj(java), herajs(javascript), herapy(python).

Q21. You mentioned on Twitter a form of encryption called Homomorphic Encryption. Please explain to us how it is superior to established encryption methods and where do you plan to apply it

Kyle: Homomorphic encryption is a form of encryption that allows computation on ciphertexts, generating an encrypted result which, when decrypted, matches the result of the operations as if they had been performed on the plaintext.

What this means is businesses in the future will be able to share their data with third-parties who may need the data to train their machine learning models, without ever exposing the contents of the data or even the model itself. So, for example, if a drug manufacturer requires patient data to train a deep learning algorithm, they can purchase data they need from the health service provider. The health service provider will share this data once it is homomorphically encrypted into ciphertext. Homomorphic encryption will enable the data to be consumed by the AI algorithm without decrypting the data and therefore exposing its contents.

Consequently the application of this cryptographic technique over other methods is very valuable, specifically for privacy-preserving data sharing among distrusting parties. We’re working with some partners to combine our hybrid blockchain architecture with homomorphic encryption.

Hun: Thanks Kyle, Yes Homomorphic Encryption is very interesting tech item, We are studying it for the cases like ‘anonymity voting’ or ‘medical information exchange’.

Q22. You mentioned clients ask about being quantum resistant do you have any update with aergo in relation to this?

Sorry we cannot share any details yet as this is a long term (confidential) project with a leading research centre — We will start talking about why we are doing this soon and to set the scene on this advanced techniques to protect private — business — government level data 🙂

Q23. Not sure if Aergolite was asked.. what industries will be interested in Aergolite? I’m sure supply chain is one .. I believe IoT devices can be quite affordable if they are low power.

Hun: Yes, we already had an IoT demo in London’s IoT and Blockchain Expo. Now we are developing it as a general solution, but we can develop for specific domain.

Kyle: Yup, Phil actually gave a 15 minute long presentation on AergoLite at the UK event as well. We’re going to upload the recording next week, probably on Monday!

Phil: It’s simple — in ANY industry where SQLite devices are already deployed…at last count the number was 1trillion SQLite devices in existence — so it’s a very very large potential market for AergoLite!

Q24. Hope this question is not out of place, have previous partners help Aergo get in touch with other companies/governments. Meaning how big is word-of-mouth marketing for Aergo?

Phil: It’s a very good question Abbe — the answer is a lot — our advisory board has some of the most knowledgeable and influential people in many complementary sectors — they have the expertise — contacts and trust with leading firms, research centres and also G7 governments — we already have two separate government level projects under discussion through such introductions — you will also see exciting new about extra experts joining our Aergo team an advisory panel — Watch this space 🙂

Q25. How are you progressing in finding new integrators who can support in on-boarding new customers in the future? The demand could grow quickly once you can show some real business value and of course you will have to be ready to meet the demand.

Phil: We are designing an Early Access Program (EAP) to be able to scale what we now do on a case by case basis — this will be out very soon!

Q26. What do you consider as number 1 SMART “specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound” goal for Aergo to achieve by the end of Q3 and Q4?

Phil: Not one but a collection of interrelated metrics : visibility-engagement-qualified opportunities-adoption-transaction-growth-pipeline, and all measured by brand and technology awareness.

Q27. If it’s not confidential to ask, Credit Suisse was mentioned before in the Live AMA as one of the clients, at which stage that currently is? PoC?

Phil: This was a PoC.

Q28. Hive account@philzamani, good day to you👋. How do you think how long it will take time to integrate Aergo B2B product in the real sector .. I mean i live in Russia — but we don’t have laws about cryptocurrencies here … I mean, as an ambassador, what can i do to involve real business sector into Aergo innovation, without government support?

Phil: Hi Art — the first step is to find clients and partners that either “get it”or that are open minded and want to be educated — we can take it from there.

Kyle: And this is something you could only know and understand if you’ve been doing this for 20 years with new technology ☝️

Q29. How can Samsung help with regards to Aergo’s technology?

Phil: By adopting and working with Aergo they help to raise the awareness of what this exciting technology and platform can do for many other clients.

Q30. A more general question: what has so far been the most fulfilling experience ever since starting Aergo? I am asking this because after having seen most of your interviews, I could really see the passion for the project 😌

Phil: Working on something exciting, game-changing with a brilliant team of developers and business development experts at our partner Blocko. (and of course meeting folk like Won, Hun, Kyle, Alison, Han, YP, Igor, Camron, JD etc. and the many super cool Blocko blockchain developers).. I also enjoy seeing younger people grow quickly into this profession — and OF COURSE engaging with our community (well nearly everyone apart from those that keep asking “when lambo?”).

Q31. I have a random question, will Aergo have much benefits for SME ‘s since it’s on public network? I suppose it is reliant on industry.

Phil: Yes — for any customer that wants to use data in a business or ecosystem context — Aergo is a horizontal platform i.e. suitable for many sectors and industries.

Q32. What big use cases for the future do you see aergo solving for new clients?

Hun: I can imagine government business for identities or real property.. and Blockchain as a Service like AWS!

Phil: Keeping them in business — making them grow faster — allowing them to spend more on applications and services and not paying IT vendors for expensive IT that creates “lock-in”.

Q33. Yesterday, Aergo has gotten a lot of traction through the Hyundai AutoEver partnership, as well as from big names in crypto. As our community continues to grow, what are some things you wish or hope to see from us? 👌

Phil: Keep spreading the word — keep the faith in our long term aspirations — Stay involved — Stay positive — don’t believe the rumours (some people and perhaps firms are trying to create FUD as they cannot compete with us on the technology and business / customer adoption side) — get others involved !

Q34. Hi will there be any upgrade to aergo block explorer any time soon ? for browsing as i cannot go to some index for specific tx checking?

Hun: Oh, can you share your experience to tech@aergo.io? we can fix it ASAP.

Q35. How many developers you have in the team?

Phil: 50+ Developers.

Kyle: You can get a glimpse of it here, we showed them in our last AMA in one of our offices!

Q36. When will the Aergo Enterprise program release?

Phil: Very soon — it’s already being tested with some advanced clients (like Hyundai).

Q37. I want to confirm, you are using real dpos but in private chain POA, so BP who are maintaining that network will be known for that private network but not public?

Han: BPs are for public network(mainnet) so we can reveal them (except they refuse).

Phil: We use DPOS for our public chain and a RAFT based POA consensus model for side (private) chains — we are explaining this to our first batch of node participants on June 10th (watch this space 🙂)

Kyle: Node providers that maintain private LPOA-based sidechains will be seperate from public Aergo mainnet block producers. However, we anticipate that most of our block producer partners will act as node providers for private chains as well, we will shed more light on this later.

End of AMA

Phil
To all of our Aergo community and followers — a big thank you for the questions on today’s AMA, and of course for your continued support of Aergo.

One final request..

I know the latest QPU is very long and very detailed, but I strongly advise you read and absorb the information and insights it contains

Whilst some of this perhaps may be too complex for everyone to understand, it will hopefully give you a good sense of:

1. Our go forward business, ecosystem and technology plans.

2. The areas we will focus on.

3. The new programs we are launching for the community, developers, partners, IT integrators and of course customers.

4. How we are working even closer with our strategic technology (and now business) partner Blocko.

5. How we manage and fund the business (including latest token and treasury management metrics).

Trust me — it will be time worth spent if you believe in the long term opportunity that Aergo and our project may provide.

Until we (AMA)meet again!

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Aergo QPU Q2 2019 Report

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Kyle:

Thank you to everyone that attended this AMA, and thank you to Hive account@philzamani Hive account@hunyoungpark for answering the community’s questions. We will continue to keep all of you updated on the latest on the project through our social channels. We’ll also post a Medium transcript update of the update. With that said, we now end the AMA. As well, please see Phil’s message above and read our latest QPU to learn more on Aergo.

Hun:

It was an honor to be here, we will come back here with details and good news! Bye guys!

End of the AMA