The Second Aergo AMA with Phil Zamani, Q&A.

Here are some interesting answers the questions from the community by Phil Zamani, CEO of AERGO platform:

Question #1:
"In your article, you wrote that you are building a blockchain system that follows the open-source characteristics. But open source significantly reduces development costs. Why do you need $30 million? 🤔 Given that you already have a working business - the company Blocko."

Answer:

Good question - all major open source development projects need to be incubated - free developers are not enough - we will prime the platform with the money raised

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Question #2:
"Are you going to spread Aergo vision in live meetings in Eastern Europe: Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, Romania, and others?"

Answer:

Yes we plan many roadshows from November onwards - watch this space!

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Question #3:
"How do you see your relationships with Blocko in future? .. like Father to Son or equal partners?"

Answer:

Think Linux and Red Hat...Linux= Aergo (open source platform) and Blocko = Red Hat (enterprise global support)

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Question #4:
"How many BPs will be set at the start? As consensus is DPoS that’s mean that most of the income parameters should be set by holders via the voting system. How often will be voting held? Can you explain this part of Aergo more extensively?"

Answer:

This is a good but difficult question for me to answer - we will share more info on the whole token economics in due course as well as the voting and safeguard mechanisms we will implement.

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Question #5:
"I am sure that among the funds there were many who wanted to become your partners, by what criterion did you make your choice?"

Answer:

Simple - they all needed to show us they can add value to the project - so far we are very happy with most of the investors - others will help later.

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Question #6:
"Hello, Phil. Several times in whitepaper I met the concept of "best block". could you explain what it is. thank you"

Answer:

Best block is the best block - sometimes the system may have a Race or conflict condition so we are building a dependency analysis capability to select the best block.

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Question #7:
"In case of fast growing and good performance is it possible that Aergo will be acquired by the tech giants like IBM, Microsoft Azure, and others? What will happen to holders in this scenario?"

Answer:

We are not interested in being taken over - we have a long-term vision and will do everything to make this happen...Aergo...distributed trust at scale...we are very happy with these players to be part of our tech and delivery ecosystem and own our tokens (but not the company!)

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Question #8:
"You said that the project will have no problems with clients for Blocko company. How are you going to look for new customers, in which industry contact first of all?"

Answer:

We are already working with leading companies to educate them in what Aergo can do - no specific industry as we are working on deployable use cases first - primary markets are Korea, China, Uk, Germany and the USA (but we are also talking to companies in other regions as well)

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Question #9:
"As I understand AERGO project declares that its ecosystem will have features similar to GitHub. What was the problem to use GitHub? As we see, many IT giants use it and do not build their own platforms."

Answer:

We will use Github but also extend this with new capabilities - we will not reinvent the wheel where we don’t need to!

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Question #10:
"Phil, You are working on your technology at manufacturing and telecommunications companies, how effective will it be in other areas?"

Answer:

Very as these industries have very complex needs and often lead in innovation

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Question #11:
"A distinctive feature of the Aergo project is that you can integrate some changes in your blockchain without any hard forks, which is something that is not found in other projects. Can you tell me how you will do this?"

Answer:

This is part of our magic (experience) mix - we don’t want to share this yet - the team at Aergo did this for over 20 years with Linux with very few hard forks - its about technology - process and skill set.

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Question #12:
"1. What projects in the crypto area are most valuable in your opinion? Which of them are you going to partner with? What aspects of Aergo can be strengthened by them? 2. On last AMA you mentioned that Aergo has hybrid blockchain, is it possible to change our private blockchain on Aergo to the public at any time and switch it back later?"

Answer:

1. Cannot comment here (have a few favorites) 2. Yes in principle if you follow our deployment guidelines (this will all be explained when we launch)

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Question #13:
"Have you already got specifications to become Aergo node? What benefits will node take from the ecosystem?"

Answer:

We are finalizing the detailed spec for block/node providers - they get rewarded via transaction fees and get the top vote on the tech stack and ecosystem over time

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Question #14:
"Dear Phil, How many users of your technology without server computing do you expect?"

Answer:

We are not sure but many - as most developers will start on the public net and only move to serverless when the systems get adopted by large ecosystems and large clients - that is also very good for us as we want a very large community in our public net

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Question #15:
"Hi, Phil. What limitations in scalability do you see at the moment in the architecture of Aergo?"

Answer:

Very good question - I don’t know! - but here is what you need to know about scalability - it depends on a mixture of things private, public chain interaction, plasma bridges, underlying network topology, network/computer/disk latency and overall system design / when you here xxx has a TPS of 1billion per second its like saying you have a jet engine in a car...if the tires blow out at 100km/h - what’s the point!... Aergo’s architecture, in theory, provides infinite scalability - now we need to build this stage by stage.

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Question #16:
"Hallo, Phil, tell us in more detail what the structure of the project team itself looks like. Do you have a separate staff or team members working simultaneously on Coinstack and Aergo?"

Answer:

Yes we have three teams 1. Coinstack support 2. Aergo chain 3. Aergo enterprise architecture - split Korea, Uk, Germany, Canada, and Brazil! We are looking for good developers anywhere we can find them! Pls, apply on [email protected] :-)

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Question #17:
"Hi, Phil what is the use case of Aergo token? I know one is to pay for services within the ecosystem but people talk about staking, how can we the holders stake tokens???"

Answer:

See our white paper but we are also hoping to publish a more detailed document on network economics soon - staking also gives you a real vote in the future of AERGO and the selected block providers! Pls bear with us as we are working on this

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Question #18:
"Are you planning to build an ecosystem and push companies to do dapps on your platform? Maybe there are already the first agreements? What applications do you focus most on?"

Answer:

Yes this is key to our strategy - we are not yet ready to select which apps as this should be marketable and client driven - but we are developing our own Dapps :-) to kick-start the process

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Question #19:
"Hi, Phil, how soon do you plan to integrate Aergo into a real business, when we can see a real example of using Aergo?"

Answer:

We have a number of projects being specified now - nothing will be made public until our magnet is out and fully tested - so if you want o see first external use cases - early next year - if you want to I see real use cases - in a few months (via our partner Blocko!)

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Question #20:
"Hello, Phil. Are you planning to do more meetups, presentations of Aergo in future? Was so impressed by your presentation in Seul and looking forward to attending a few in Europe :)"

Answer:

Yes we plan many meetups and are in fact looking for local Aergo ambassadors (more on this in a future post ;-)

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Question #21:
" If tokens will be expensive can it be the problem to use your utility tokens for clients? And will you regulate the price of Aergo tokens, to get more clients? "

Answer:

Very good question - see our updated token economic paper soon where we will try to answer these questions - in short, the model has to work well for all stakeholders!

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Question #22:
"Phil, In the near future are planned speeches of representatives of AERGO at various events? Will there be speeches on blockchain exhibitions, hackathons?"

Answer:

Yes and in fact, we need your advice on what events work best by region/county/sector - our tech team just presented our new tech at SAN Francisco blockchain week and it was well received - more will follow from November onwards.

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Question #23:
"Hi Phil, I watch 80% of the questions come from a Russian audience. Maybe you should open an office in Russia?))) But seriously, your project is very much like Stratis, I can even say that Aergo is a Stratis from Korea. how do you plan to compete with them?"

Answer:

We do have an active Russian-speaking community as a starting point...we will do more in Russia over time - not familiar with Stratis...probably great team as well - if they fail we will hire their R&D team perhaps!

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Question #24:
"Are there new dAPP tools invented by AERGO for developers to work with?"

Answer:

Yes we are building some sort developer kits...more on this when the tech team are ready to showcase this

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Question #25:
"Hi, Is it too late to write an article about Aergo?"

Answer:

Yes you can - rewardrop deadline is Sunday 14th October

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Question #25:
"Where you see the greatest potential in the development of the project? What kind of market (I mean the region) are you oriented first of all? You have customers in the Asian market now. Where do you go next in the first place?"

Answer:

It is not actually geographically focused - we have a good feeling for which type of uses cases will be good first projects for Aergo - these are the ones we will focus on.

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Question #26:
"As the users of open source projects can donate money and the foundations can distribute it in a fair way, how would be the transfer of value between the open source producers and the open source consumers implemented? What kind of links (unidirectional or indirect) will AERGO use?"

Answer:

The best example I can give you is (yes Linux once again) is how the Linux plus enterprise corporations behind it work (Red Hat, SuSe Linux, Canonical etc..)..the model has proven to work and we will follow a similar approach (pls see my Medium article on open source for more info)

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Question #27:
"Phil I'm still trying to get my head around how to understand what Aergo is aiming for. Is it a protocol/platform/interoperable project? Or is it bigger that has its own language and can potentially form the spine and interactive layers (oracles) to host a decentralized web? "

Answer:

You are on the right track - its not a protocol - its a whole decentralised platform that leverage hybrid Blockchains, enterprise app development (micro services), serverless cloud deployment (for scale - privacy- performance), open source core technology and open source mantra/mentality/culture and all wrapped up with four years worth of practical enterprise deployment expertise from blocko...IBM is the close competitor...its a huge undertaking but we believe we have the vision...team and passion/skills to make it happen!!!

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Question #28:
"Hi, Phil how ambassador gonna work for Aergo, I was wondering although it is very interesting to work for Aergo in long term."

Answer:

More info on this in the very near future - we want the best and most passionate/experienced people to help us (anywhere they can add value to our ecosystem!).

We will be attracting top community contributors and working with them going forward. That will revolve around content, community support, events, ecosystem (less so translations - we have received a lot of those so far and have already reached out to translators for G20 languages + Dutch). More structured ambassador program guidelines are coming after the rewardrop program is closed. Right now we are evaluating applicant to select for long-term. P.S. Developer community is separate

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Question #29:
"Phil as you always mention Linux, would like to know your thoughts on Hyperledger fabric by Linux Foundation - which is also open source and aimed at businesses but also quite popular? Is that your target "

Answer:

Hyperledger has some great things going for it and IBM is a great company - we share some common goals and even some common tech - but we are focusing on our own strategy as this is 100% customer focused (not vendor/consortia focused).

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Question #30:
"How big is part of the innovation in your project, how much of it is based on old developments?"

Answer:

Very good question - simple answers it a pragmatic mixture of new (not yet fully tested)...current (well test)...old (forgotten but reborn - eg SQL adapted to blockchain to allow 8.5M developers the opportunity to get into blockchain easily)...when the iPhone 1st launched...Over 80% of the tech was developed beforehand...many projects focus on the new and shiny...customers want working and best value for money!

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Question #31:
"So, if the customer wants coinstack services (like you can get from Blocko now) he will need to order it through AERGO platform and pay in tokens in future? Will not be possible to order straightly from Blocko and pay in fiat?"

Answer:

No they can pay in fiat as before and in the future use Aergo tokens if they want to get into the broader Aergo ecosystem - it will entirely be their choice.

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Question #32:
"How about a kit for future ambassadors? Or anyone else who is interested in hosting an Aergo meeting in their country, with some organized materials that are more suited for the general public, including people who have little previous knowledge of blockchain, whom the first introduction with it would be via (said ambassador/person) into Aergo itself. Would such a kit be a possibility in the future? One could do fine without such a kit of course, as a lot of information is already available. But it would be nice :)"

Answer:

we are building exactly that - more info shortly - we will have events form basic beginners to teen most advanced tech CIO level audiences!

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Question #33:
"You are more focused on the South Korean Market. Don't you think it's time to spread wings?"

Answer:

South Korea is our genesis base...we will always have strong ties to South Korea...but our wings are already spreading...UK, Germany, Canada, and Brazil...we are also hiring a completely new team for China!

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Question #34:
" I advise businesses who look to deploy blockchain, why am I choosing AERGO over something like Ontology or Dragonchian or Wanchain to build a solution with?"

Answer:

Because our technology works and has been tested and implemented with clients like Samsun and the central Bank Of Korea...not PoCs...millions. Of users...oh and our team is simply awesome (expertise - customer focus - and committed!)

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Question #35:
"Please take the Netherlands into consideration in your expansion plans as it is a forward thinking country with high rate of interest in the adoption of blockchain solutions within dutch multinationals"

Answer:

I love the Netherlands...cheese...tulips....and.....!!! We are OPEN for business and happy to talk to anyone who is serious about understanding what AERGO can do for them!

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Question #36:
"Hello, Phil! Tell us what actions you are going to take to develop the open source community :)"

Answer:

Being an open source platform is one of our four major tenets (ie. elements) of our strategy - please see my Medium article for details on our exact strategy and execution approach.

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Question #37:
"How many hours do you sleep? Do you sleep at all?)"

Answer:

Between 4-6 hours :-).

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Question #38:
"Hello Phil Zamani, what's the ticker for the Aergo token?"

Answer:

Not finalized but probably something very creative...like AERGO :-)

Questions #39,40:
Q1. What do you foresee as being the major entry barriers/bottlenecks in the implementation of Aergo’s blockchain solutions at enterprise level at this moment?

Q2. It is my understanding that Aergo will focus its marketing efforts towards business clients at the enterprise level. Are you also interested in bringing awareness/exposure for the project at retail customer level…for example by means of regional marketing/advertising partners?

Answers:

Q1. Visibility of AERGO - we need to spread the word and make our brand awareness much better.

Q2. We sate we are an enterprise blockchain focused business but the truth is the tech works for all kinds and sizes of business - again think of AWS - it serves every type of business (very well I may add!).