Crypto Daku AMA
Dear Stegos Community,
On November 18th, our CEO Joel took part in a Telegram AMA for Crypto Daku. The transcript of that AMA is provided below:
Transcript AMA Crypto Daku - 18.11.2019
Which types of updates you’ve done in recently launched mainnet beta 5 as compared to previous beta versions?
Good morning everyone! The event updates were very much focused on the stability of the mainnet and improvements to sync times. We have not deployed any new features but got things ready for production deployment on Nov 20.
Stegos is said to be completely secure in privacy where the real-life identity is unknown to anyone so to use Stegos application users will not be asked for any KYC?
If no KYC how do you stop the application reaching wrong hands like drug dealers, terrorism and other illegal actions?
What is the use case of TAC? How for its helpful to developer to use this service?
For payment does it supports all kind of crypto and fiat?
We are a Swiss company and have to abide by Swiss law. We are required to KYC anyone we directly sell tokens to. We are not required to KYC anyone who buys from exchanges, for example.
There’s no use case for TAC at the moment. It’s something we will likely eliminate from our road map in favor of a tighter focus on secure and anonymous chat, red packets (viral growth feature) and decentralized and trustless OTC trading.
What is the reason and motivation for your team to create the Stegos project when the cryptocurrency market has many projects to solve this problem that occupy the majority of the market and customers?
We want to deliver not just private payments but a secure message and data bus that other applications can be built on top. This is something unique and not seen in the market thus far!
What are some of the advantages Stegos has over it’s competitors?
Revenue is a priority for all projects/companies, can you tell us how does Stegos generate revenue(from it’s technology) ?!
We are looking to make money from sales of applications built on top of our platform. It will take time before we get there, though. In the meantime, we are going to drive token growth through our viral features.
Red packets is a feature that we borrowed from WeChat. You can create a QR code using our app and post it anywhere, e.g. plaster it on walls or sidewalks. Scanning the QR code with your smartphone will get you a link to download our app. By scanning the QR code with the app you will try to open the red packet and get free tokens. It’s very important to note that this does not require you to have any tokens in your wallet, it’s free to try to open a red packet!
You may or may not get free tokens every time you scan the QR code since this is random. You can keep trying, though, until the packet is empty. There’s a technical delay of 2-3 seconds every time the packet is opened so we’ll be showing an add (animated GIF?) during this time. The ad can be set by the creator of the red packet.
So red packets should drive growth and spead our app far and find, in addition to creating demand for our tokens. And ads in the read packets should drive demand for the red packets themselves.
As I saw your introduction video regarding Stegos prototype, you will use face recognition to unlock the app, so my question is who/which party will store user data, in this case is our face id?
The face unlock is always particular to your smartphone platform and OS, e.g. iOS or Android. We will not store or have access to this data, just integrate with what your smartphone OS providers to secure passwords.
One of the competitive advantages of Stegos is the Dev team who assures speedy developments of different functionalities on stegos ecosystem. I’d like to know more about your organization. Were there any significant challenges that your team encountered in the past?
There are always significant challenges in a project of this size! We have overcome many challenges, both technical and organizational but we’ll continue iterating and learning. We have 5 people on the technical team and that’s small compared to other organizations. I believe in having a small team of ninja special forces developers over having an infantry battalion!
How can you deal with security and Scalability?
As you know security and Scalability is the big challenge in any field.
We have dealt with security but scalability is an upcoming challenge.
If you were going to explain what is Stegos to someone who is completely new to crypto, in a few sentences, how would you explain it?
Stegos makes your payments and communication private and secure.
:Recently many exchanges and projects went out of funds, and paused development —–What about STEGOS project?
What is your strategy to take on the fund crisis in this nuclear winter and how to utilize the funds in the future ?
We will continue using the remaining funds for development. I have been frugal with our funds so far. There’s no such thing as pausing development, though — you either continue or you don’t! We will further cut our overhead to reduce our burn rate and extend our runway. Then we’ll continue developing.
I expect that it will take a few months after mainnet for word to spread and for us to gain adoption. I also expect 2020 to be THE year of Stegos. We are here for the long term!
So, how is the current situation of accepting Stegos developing? Does the team have any plans to expand the momentum of the Stegos application?
Momentum of development is limited by the current “crypto nuclear winter”. We can only expand as we make money and we can only make money by selling tokens, at least at the moment. We will not be able to sell tokens for a while and we cannot forecast liquidity and thus cannot forecast our revenue. So we’ll continue development, slow but steady.
If one developer wants to integrate Stegos technology in developing dApps, How he/she can do so? Does Stegos offer any ready to plug-in SDK?
We will offer SDKs but we don’t have dApps. You can build and connect an application written in any language to the Stegos platform. This application can exchange packets securely with other instances of the same application or with other applications. So the Stegos blockchain becomes a message bus for data packets and applications (not smart contracts!) of almost any kind.
Google decided to ban all mining apps due to the harmful effects they had on devices. Cryptocurrency mobile mining leads to overheating, battery damage, and overall lower performance. Apple also banned mining apps from the App Store back in 2018. So, iOS owners can’t do any mobile mining. Is mobile mining feature on Stegos dApp will be a barrier for the app to be listed on these mobile platforms ?
We will initially support mobile mining on Android. Fortunately, you don’t need to use the Google Play Store to install Android apps, you can side-load them from an APK. Also, PoS (proof-of-stake, the consensus we are using) is not as heavy on smartphones and batteries as PoW (proof-of-work).
Smartphones spend a LOT of time connected to high-speed networks like 4G, LTE or WiFi, e.g. while their owners are sleeping or at work. We want to leverage this time and harness these smartphones to support our network and privacy features. A blockchain network of billions of smartphones can never be shutdown and will guarantee private payments and communications for EVERYONE!
What are the requirements for running a node as validator ? i.e. Minimum hardware or cost requirements ? Can we stake Stegos tokens ?
You will definitely be able to stake Stegos tokens (STG). We are trying to make the node requirements as minimal as possible, e.g. suitable for a cheap VPS. I suggest staying in touch with us by joining our TG group at t.me/stegos4privacy You will then know of any updates to node requirements, etc.
What is your best, most favorite feature of Stegos that you will be proud of before other companies and can inspire you to build this token?
It’s not what inspired me to build Stegos but I’m putting high hopes on the red packet feature that I described above. This has NEVER been done before, in ANY blockchain project. I’m truly looking forward to seeing how this will drive Stegos mobile app installations on millions if not billions of smartphones!
Facebook is ready to launch their Libra project which will be integrated with Facebook messenger, Telegram also prepared for their launch with $TON. Do you see them as your main competitors? If so, what have you prepared to compete with them?
All these are centralized messaging apps that leak metadata, e.g. your IP address, phone number, etc. I suggest skimming Snowden’s book, “Permanent Record” where he explains how governments can learn everything they need by simply analyzing what phone numbers and IP addresses your communicate with and when!
Stegos does not leak meta data and does not require phone numbers or similar information that uniquely identifies you. You can stay as anonymous as you want with Stegos. Centralized services, that are limited in the number of servers they can deploy to support their network and can be shut down. Stegos is decentralized can never be shut down as long as people run nodes!
When did the second round of investment begin? What were the dates for the first and second investment rounds? When will you release the Stegos mainnet?
Please check our whitepaper for existing token sale structure. All private sales are closed now as we are a couple of days away from launching our mainnet. You will be able to buy tokens over the counter (OTC) or on exchanges after we launch.
You will also be able to get hold of free tokens by finding Stegos red packets to open by scanning QR codes with the Stegos mobile app. We will be releasing this app in 2-3 months.
Whats the main consensus algorithm architecture of stegos project ? On which POS or POW stegos works ?
Stegos is PoS (proof-of-stake). A unique feature of Stegos is that our PoS consensus is “gamified”. What does that mean? On other PoS blockchains you get block rewards by validating and helping support the blockchain. I’m not talking here about receiving “dividends” by just holding tokens in your wallet. I’m talking about running a full blockchain node.
Now, the size of the block reward you receive on other PoS networks is proportional to the size of your stake. Rich whales can put up a huge stake and receive the lion share of the rewards.
Stegos gPoS is different! Yes, we have the same block rewards proportional to the size of your stake but we also have a CRUCIAL difference! Some 20% of each blow reward goes into a prize pool and a drawing happens every week or so. Any validator (node) who has been online and validating throughout this week will be eligible for this drawing, regardless of the size of their stake. We call this the Validator Service Award since it’s a reward for meritorious service!
Practically, it means that you can strike it rich with Stegos by putting up a small stake and then doing good work supporting our blockchain. This is more democratic than existing PoS systems.
Today many projects claimed that they achieved thousand or even millions TPS but the truth is not. Is TPS increased linearly when the node increase or what? Have you done stress-test for your network? If yes, can you show it for the community?
We have done some stress tests but we are not focused on TPS at the moment.
How many people are currently participating in your test net? How much RAM does it need?
We ran a bounty and were able to attract some 300 validators.
Beam is also providing privacy blockchain solution can you describe why stegos is better compared to other privacy solutions?
Other privacy solutions focus on payments whereas we focus on payments AND being a platform for exchange of data.
When will you develop cross-chain anonymous transaction?
First half of 2020.
Do have any plans to expand the market to other countries in the world yet? Or do you focus your market only on Asian or European countries?
We do not focus on any country or region specifically. Anyone can download and use our apps. For example, we seem to be popular in Africa according to the bounty. I didn’t expect this ).
What is the utility of red packet (hongbao) while users can make transactions directly with the others in Stegos app?
The red packets are a marketing feature designed to drive viral growth. You can create a private community of people and keep the interest up by periodically dropping red packets into your group. This is a lot like what people are doing on WeChat right now. WeChat is completely unsecure and 100% visible to the Chinese government or any other agency dedicated to mass surveillance.
Who are the key members of the project? What are the strengths of experience and capacity of the team?
See http://stegos.com, there’s a team section.
Why a chat platform need blockchain techonology? What issues is Stegos aiming to solve?
Centralized chat can be shut down and leaks metadata. Decentralized chat cannot be shut down. Stegos is using anonymous payments to carry data, basically. So data is indistinguishable from payments and neither payments nor data can be tracked or attributed to the sender or receiver. You can only do this with custom and specialized blockchain technology, e.g. of the kind that Stegos is deploying.
How you do immediate transactions? Do you anticipate scaling issues?
Transactions are not immediate but have a delay of 3-5 seconds at the moment. We are looking to improve and scale but it will take time.
Your metamorphosis is a laudable one, how have you been able to survive this longest bear market and continue building and developing cos many projects have died out in this time period
Comparatively, how do you outperform similar projects like monero, dash, DAPS etc, what’s your competitive advantage against other projects
We have tightened our belt and cut our expenses. We have focused on developing with a small team of crack developers. We have learned from our mistakes and we are constantly improving. We are gearing for the long run.
What is the biggest goal of the Stegos project in the end 2020?
To deploy chat, red packets and decentralized and trustless OTC trading against BTC and ETH. The trading bit should enable you to convert your BTC/ETH into STG and then trade securely and anonymously.
Why are you choose the name " Stegos “?
I think I dreamed it up :P The name comes from steganography, though, not stegosaurus. Hahaha
i love this red packet thing.. when a red packet for daku community with 1000usdt inside it :)
1000 USDT is unlikely but we’ll be dropping red packets into various communities in the future. Please stay tuned by joining our TG group and subscribing to our official TG channel at https://t.me/stegos4privacy_official
has to have hardstop in 3 min :). Before we end want to know: about exchange - it will be very soon right ?
Ugh… The dreaded question… Well…
We had a signed deal with an exchanged. We spent a month integrating with this exchange. Sadly, they got cold feet at the last moment, citing government pressure in China. We are looking for an even better exchange now but it will take us a few weeks to integrate. Stay tuned and apologies for the delay!