The financial revolution driven by crypto-currencies has advanced exponentially in recent months and the world is highly interested in this type of market that has come to remain. Today we would like to tell you about the AMA session with our friends from Akash Network. The AMA took place on August 23 and our guests were Greg Osuri (Founder & CEO) and Cheng (CFO).
The total reward pool was $2200 and it was splitted into three parts.
In this AMA Recap we will try to summarize some of the most interesting points for you.
PART 1, INTRODUCTION AND COMMUNITY QUESTIONS
Irina K.| @Satoshi_Club: Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of our AMA series. Today we have as our guests @gosuri and @Chenghiskhan from Akash Network. Welcome guys and thanks for joining us. 😊
Cheng: Good morning! It is a pleasure to be here with you.
Greg Osuri | Akash : Hey everyone! Glad to be here.
Irina K.| @Satoshi_Club: For the beginning please share a few words about yourself and about Akash Network, how did you get to be involved in this project.
Greg Osuri | Akash: My contributions to cloud computing include designing multi-cloud capability for Kubernetes in 2015, which is currently in use by 80% of the Cloud. With economics, I gained notoriety in academic circles with my paper on Bootstrapping markets by borrowing from the future for which I’m invited to teach a Stanford class.
I got started with Crypto in late 2015. Technical first and then economical. As a distributed systems engineer, the permissionless state synchronization component of blockchain was very attractive to me as I was actively involved in planetary scalable systems at that time. As an economist, the ability to test economic theory at a micro-level was fascinating.
Cheng: Good morning once again. I got officially involved back in March. I’m Cheng Wang, the CFO of Akash. My background is in traditional finance where I spent a good amount of time (7ish year of my time) in the investment banking industry. I moved to the crypto/blockchain world roughly 3 years ago and loving every second of it.
There are so many things that drew me to Akash, but I can distill it down to two primary factors: our team and our opportunity. The team is one of the best that I’ve had the pleasure of working with and the opportunity to build something truly useful and transformative is 🤤🔥.
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: You have a great carrer. Congrats.
Tell us a few words about Akash for our viewers. What is it and how did you get here?
Greg Osuri | Akash: Cloud infrastructure — the back bone of the Internet — is increasingly becoming centralized, controlled by an oligopoly of four companies (Amazon’s AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft’s Azure and Alibaba).
The mission of Akash is to break this oligopoly using a decentralized network of computing clusters (data centers), and offering resources in a peer-to-peer marketplace to build resilient and unstoppable applications at 10X to 15X less than what you would pay in the market today. The cloud infrastructure market is projected to be $223-billion by 2023.
My love for free market and hate for oligopolies drove me to build Akash.
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: So you started with your heart 😊? Thank you for your introductions guys.
Q1 from Bitcointalk User Estrange18
There are already many projects in the storage or super-computer space like SONM, GOlem, Siacoin, Storj etc. What’s make AKASH different from them? Or what AKASh advantages in that ecosystem?
Greg Osuri | Akash: Great question. Akash Network focuses on general cloud computation and we are partnering with decentralized storage providers, such as [Storj](https://storj.io/) and FileCoin.
Akash Network is positioned to be a Super-Cloud gateway for developers, ensuring seamless access to other strong projects out there, like NuCypher, DNS, and more.
Irina K. | @Satoshi_club: So the focus is on computing. Do you plan on covering other areas in the future? Like storage for example?
Greg Osuri | Akash: Thats right. Akash does not plan on offering storage but rather interoperate with other protocols. IMO, that’s a way better way for the future instead of everyone trying to do everything.
Greg Osuri | Akash: Also, to add to my answer on Golem etc. Other projects in the cloud infrastructure space, like Dfinity and Golem, they are both in the same industry as as Akash, *Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)*, but our go-to-market is fundamentally different for the $202B industry. Golem and Dfinity’s market size is less than $300-million.
Golem has on-chain computing and is essentially a supercomputer, which requires supercomputer problems. The market size for that is relatively very small compared to ours, which is $202B. How many applications do you know require supercomputers to run? Dfinity focuses more on smart contracts. Their PoS improves the throughput of executions but there are limitations to smart contracts. We’ve been seeing Dfinity move closer towards Akash’s model, but haven’t looked too deeply at their source code.
Irina K. | @Satoshi_club: Could you tell us more about your go-to-market? Whom do you see as your regular user?
Greg Osuri | Akash: Our GTM is focused on users currently using the big Cloud. Any application that runs on AWS can run on Akash with very little switching cost. By switching to Akash, a developer can leverage the benefits on Decentralization without sacrificing performance. Our market focus is Big Data / ML but we’re seeing a ton of interest from DeFi applications, particularly Stateless and State-lite frontends.
Q2 from Bitcointalk User k.muller
Where are your servers located? How many servers for backup do you have? Does it function like for normal clouds of google, apple or is it decentralized?
Greg Osuri | Akash: Everywhere and nowhere. Akash’s servers are globally distributed. From large datacenters (Equinix, Packet, etc) to home computers like Akash Supermini (http://akash.network/supermini). Akash provides the same experience a normal cloud provides.
Irina K. | @Satoshi_club:
Would it run on mobile devices as well? Like phones?
Greg Osuri | Akash: Theoretically yes. Akash is a decentralized marketplace where if there is a buyer for mobile power computing, you can sell that to make money as provider. But I highly doubt if you can make any meaning for income as a mobile phone provider on Akash.Not too many web-scale applications can run well on a mobile phone.
Irina K. | @Satoshi_club: Understood. Thank you for the clarification.
Q3 from Telegram User @marccryptonic
You claim that your cloud services are 90% cheaper than the market. How did you come up with this number? What is the price of your competitors in the market and what is yours?
Cheng: So there are TWO primary mechanisms that help drive down the costs relative to traditional pricing. First, the Akash Network is tapping into latent supply that wouldn’t otherwise be available, which drives down costs by about 2-3x. Second, and more interestingly, is the Akash subsidy, which further drives down costs further (more than 10x). You can learn more about the Akash subsidy mechanics here: https://dcs.akash.network/spec/dcs-9
Irina K. | @Satoshi_club: Who’s covering this subsidy? Made through inflation. Nice move. Saw it now at the link.
Cheng: Great question. The subsidy is covered by Akash’s inflationary mechanism. You can think of this as borrowing from the future. https://akash.network/blog/bootstrapping-a-free-market-by-borrowing-from-the-future/
Irina K. | @Satoshi_club: Will this “subsidy” be a permanent feature? Or temporary, until you get enough market share?
Cheng: It is a temporary feature that will last approximately 80 years. 😎 The inflation will eventually subside at that point.
Q4 from Telegram User @phamtan310
What are the use cases of Akash Token? Do you have any plans to raise funds in the future? In what ways can users earn passive income from the Akash ecosystem?
Greg Osuri | Akash: The core for the native token AKT besides exchanging value is staking and governance. AKT introduces few economic innovations to the PoS ecosystem. First the notion of Take Income, meaning a consistent share of revenue from gross merchandise exchanged on the network. Second, AKT introduces a mechanism to organically adjust inflation to optimize price pressure, giving it relative stability value. More information is available on our economics whitepaper. https://akash-web-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/03/akash-econ.pdf
Q5 from Telegram User @pandasbitcoins
I am very excited about your supermini. The computer is very powerful. I hope I can get one! Please tell us more about it. In partnership with what hardware company are you producing it. Or are you assembling it with custom pieces by yourself. Also, is it designed for mining as well?
Cheng: The Akash Supermini is a plug and earn device that allows anyone, even non-technical users, to become Akash Cloud Providers! The Akash Supermini is currently going through its prototyping paces in the lab and we are working with an amazing hardware team to bring it to the hands of Akashians. The Supermini is designed and built in the state of California.
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: Does it need any configuration? Or I can just plug it into any computer at my office and it would work? 😃
Cheng: Some very, very light configuration, so it is easily manageable through your mobile device. The Supermini is a computer itself, so there’s no need to plug it into a computer; it just has to be plugged into the wall and connected to the internet in your home or office.
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: Oh, got it. What will the price be?
Cheng: The first 300 units Superminis are currently sold out, which were priced at $975. Please stay tuned for further developments as we bring the Supermini to market! Join the Supermini waitlist to keep up with the latest: https://akash.network/supermini/
Q6 from Telegram User @endtimeprophet
I discovered from study your site that I can play my part as a VALIDATOR, SO what’s the requirements as well as benefits for becoming a VALIDATOR?
Greg Osuri | Akash: Akash is permission-less so any AKT holder can validate and participate in Governance. To validate Akash blockchain, all you need is a cloud grade computer and some tokens. As as validator your income streams are a) inflationary rewards from self-delegated tokens, b) commission on inflationary rewards from delegated tokens, c) commission on take income from delegated tokens.
For a complete overview of earning potential, please see this blog post https://akash.network/blog/the-earning-potential-of-akash-token. And ofcourse Akash Economics whitepaper for more details.
PART 2, TELEGRAM COMMUNITY LIVE QUESTIONS
The chat was open for 80 seconds; a lot of questions were posted by Satoshi Club community. Our guests chose some of them.
Q1 from Telegram User @Nickkiii
I’m a developer, and I’m interested in contributing to Akash Network, Do you have any Bug Bounty to check for vulnerabilities on your platform?
Greg Osuri | Akash: Absolutely, we’ll be distributing 5% of Genesis tokens for Bounties, please see our site for more info https://akash.network/challenge/
Also, please ping me on @akashnw after this AMA and I can direct you accordingly.
Q2 from Telegram User @adityaaryah
Thank you so much for changing the world for the better and can’t wait to see where Akash Network goes. So proud of you guys. Is there anything we, your community and biggest fans, can do to help AKASH NETWORK continue to succeed?
Cheng: Thank you for your support, belief, and passion! You, our Akashians, can help support the Akash Network by engaging with each other, directly with Akash by participating in AMAs just like this one, and telling your network and friends about us. Follow our twitter (https://twitter.com/akashnet_) and join our telegram (https://t.me/AkashNW) to get started :). Seeing supportive messages like this fuels the Akashian team even more!
Q3 from Telegram User @Samerjamai
Hi team! Will there be any incentives for moving the apps from Amazon’s AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure to Akash? How you gonna stimulate apps joining Akash? Thank you!
Cheng: There are two huge incentives. The first is price; it will be up to 10x cheaper to deploy on the Akash Cloud VS AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure, etc, so the economic incentive is very strong and compelling. The second is Akash’s focus on developer experience; Akash developers and our CEO, Greg, are obsessed with making Akash super developer-friendly, so that everything from deploying on the Akash cloud to the Akash UX will be world class.
Q4 from Telegram User @bountyairdrop2k19
When we use the services at Paltofrm Akash. What are the payment methods?
Greg Osuri | Akash: Akash has a multi-currency settlement system. Users can settle using AKT or any of the white listed tokens, usually stable coins.
Q5 from Telegram User @TVT6VI
DEFI is the hottest trend today. Has Akash had or will there be updates in the roadmap related to Akash? Trust and security is very important in any business, what makes investors, customer and users safe secure with privacy when working with Akash? In addition to raised fund from token sell. Where does Akash benefit from?
Cheng: DeFi is certainly the hottest thing in crypto right now and the Akash Supercloud is perfectly positioned as the decentralized cloud for decentralized finance! In the spirit of true decentralization, the Akash Supercloud will enable DeFi projects to decouple from the big cloud providers like AWS, Azure, Google, etc., reducing their costs and moving towards true decentralization and community empowerment. There will certainly be updates coming in the near future related to DeFi and so much more.
Q6 from Telegram User @Daptika
There are so many projects that only exist for a moment “die on the road, traumatizing investors with new projects”. Question: how can the Akash Network project survive, continue to grow & in what ways do you convince investors that this project is very promising?
Greg Osuri | Akash: Anyone with an operational kubernetes cluster can become an Akash provider with very little friction (usually within 20 minutes). Please visit this link for a thorough guide. https://github.com/ovrclk/docs/blob/a3cfd9a792f1a5455d7b06df9fab7a25d1e276b7/providers/kube/README.md
Q7 from Telegram User @lv_nlv
Do you have some sort of staking available for the $AKT tokens and what are the benefits of it to the investors?
Cheng: Staking will be available for all AKT tokens! For all AKT token holders, staking and the rewards associated with staking will be available and central to the network. Furthermore, the AKT token has a novel, never-before-seen element in crypto that gives the AKT token true, intrinsic value made possible by a take income. See our previous blog post here to learn more (https://akash.network/blog/the-earning-potential-of-akash-token/).
Q8 from Telegram User @eylem201
What is meant by Hybrid Cloud of Akash Network? What are its main Objectives of Hybrid system?
Greg Osuri | Akash: A hybrid cloud allows users to leverage advantages different clouds bring in a federated experience. The biggest benefit users of hybrid cloud realize is “no vender lock-in,” which in turn is presented as a cost benefit.
Q9 from Telegram User @bitgraile
What was the biggest milestone Akash Network had so far? Thank you.
Greg Osuri | Akash: Our biggest milestone is having enormous success in multiple testnets. At peak we had over 1800 applications deployed across 160 providers, with more memory than the entire EOS mainnet.
Q10 from Telegram User @NickOxa
How will Akash Network overcome the threat of centralization in the decentralized cloud computing marketplace?
Greg Osuri | Akash: We believe the future holds an opportunity for more distribution of datacenters versus the contemporary model of hyperscale deployments. Better distribution means lower network latency, which means faster applications. More distribution also means more decentralization.
Q11 from Telegram User @Idee01
Akash project plans for 2020 are: Mainnet launch, Liquidity Campaign and Platform launch. Q3 is almost over. Should we expect them in Q4? Can you give us an update of progress made to make us rest assured all these goals will be achieved in 2020?
Cheng: Make sure to follow Akahs on Twitter, Telegram, and DEFINITELY the Unstoppable Blog for updates.
Our July update can be found here: https://akash.network/blog/the-unstoppable-update-july-2020/. Previous updates are also memorialized in older posts so you can look back to see everything that was done. Akash’s goals for 2020 is just as you stated: Mainnet launch, Liquidity, and Platform launch. Our entire team is very much committed to these 2020 milestones and will be keeping you updated with all of our socials and blogs.
Q12 from Telegram User @chrisluna
How do you plan to spread awareness about your project in different countries where English is not spoken well? Do you have local communities for the them to let them better understand about your project?
Greg Osuri | Akash: Yes, Akash has already attracted a large global audience and have a validator community encompassing North America, South America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. In the past two months we’ve added teams in China and Russia to support our large audiences there, and we’re continuing to expand support to additional global regions. Most of our critical content is available in Chinese and Russian as well. We’re excited to announce additional global expansions and support in the coming months.
…
Serg | Satoshi Club: Thank you for joining our AMArathon! 😁 It was great. I really liked your project and we will continue to share your updates. We will encourage our community to join your group for updates.
Irina K.| @Satoshi_Club: Yes, we are here for 2 hours and 17 minutes. Thank you @Chenghiskhan and @gosuri for your time!
Cheng: Thank you Irina. To your team, the entire Satoshi Club community!
Greg Osuri | Akash: Thank you Serg for inviting us to connect with your amazing group. We’re very excited to announce our Mainnet plans with you all next week. 🙂
PART 3, QUIZ AND INFO
As usual, for the third part, Satoshi Club Team asked the chat 4 questions about Akash Network. A link to a Quiz form were sent into the chat. Participants had 10 minutes to answer. 1300$ were distributed among winners.
For more information and future AMAs, join our Social Media channels:
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