Paralink Network x Satoshi Club AMA Recap from 10th of February

Hello, Satoshi clubbers Another AMA took place in Satoshi Club and we would like to introduce to you the AMA session with our friends from Paralink Network and our guest was Jan Knezevic the CEO of Paralink Network. The AMA took place on 10 February.

The AMA session was divided into 3 parts with a total crypto reward pool of 500$.

In this AMA Recap we will try to summarise the most interesting points for you.

Part 1 — introduction and questions from the Telegram community

Mary | Satoshi Club: Hello Satoshi Club! We are happy to announce our AMA session with Paralink Network! Welcome to Satoshi Club😀

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club: Hello, dear Satoshi Clubbers!

We are pleased to announce our AMA with Paralink Network😊

Today our guest is @janknezevic!

Jan Knežević: Hi everyone great to be here!

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club: Welcome to Satoshi Club, @janknezevic!

Mary | Satoshi Club: Hello, Jan! how’s going?

Jan Knežević: Great! We are working hard as our countries are in lockdown, so we don’t have any distractions or missed opportunities as there is nothing else to do but work:)

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club: To begin with, please tell us a few words about yourselves and how did you get to be involved in Paralink Network😊

Mary | Satoshi Club: Yes, you’re right! And i am happy that we have great opportunity to work from home!

Jan Knežević: I am Jan Knezevic and im the CEO of Paralink Network. My background is in business and economics- more specifically i worked as an auditor for KPMG , i was an actuary in a life insurance company and later on i transitioned into consulting blockchain projects with accounting and business development as well as conducting internal audits. Last year i was part of a team that acted like a data vendor for blockchain data, we collected pricing, on chain and sentiment data and created qualitative indicators for traders. I was also an active day and swing trader on the stock market trading stocks and stock options and later on transitioned into trading cryptocurrencies.

We decided to build Paralink Network in q2 of 2020 after looking at other oracle solutions and seeing that the technology stack they are built on isn’t sufficient for providing a stable and resilient service. That is why we decided to build on polkadot to achieve higher throughput and add sufficiently expressive ETL systems and an advanced querying language which we felt were lacking in the current solutions.

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club: Great experience! 👍

Mary | Satoshi Club: KPMG, familiar name! I like your experience 👍

It’s interesting, that you learned about blockchain from your work😀

Usually people are coming on the wave of hype 😉

Polkadot developing fast, so i can understand your choice 👍

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club: Thank you very much for great intro! Are you ready to proceed to the questions from the community?

Jan Knežević: Yeah sure

Q1 from Telegram user @Xusuo

I read that Paralink Network was build on Polkadot but in the same site you also build your own Token on the Ethereum ERC20, can you explain the reason, isn’t this will make a contradiction?

Jan Knežević: Paralink network is chain agnostic. We want to implement our solution to all major blockchains. We decided to launch an ERC-20 token first as it is a accepted standard that all exchanges support already and because the current DEFI ecosystem exists mainly on ethereum. When we obtain a parachain we will launch a parachain native token which will be interchangeable 1:1 with ERC 20 token and centralized exchanges will act as intermediaries between the 2. Kind of like with USDT where it runs on 9 different chains and most users don’t even know that.

Mary | Satoshi Club: Got it👍

When do you plan to obtain parachain?

Jan Knežević: The initial auction is probably out of reach for us as we think the cost will be between 10-25mio $. We believe the cost will go down significantly in the latter auctions as the exclusivity of the initial auction fades away. That is when we plan to obtain a parachain slot. There is an option to obtain it in the initial auction if enough users stake their DOTs for us. We are in talks with exchanges who can provide this mechanism and if we list there we might get enough users to stake their DOTs so that we can obtain the slot in the initial auction, but there is always an uncertainty as there are many great projects competing for a limited amount of slots.

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club: Well! You thought this whole process well enough! 👏👏👏

Mary | Satoshi Club: Thank you! It’s clear now 😊

Ready to proceed?

Jan Knežević: Yes

Q2 from Telegram user @Indomiekuy

Paralink Network have Token (PARA) that can be used for an incentive and governance Token. But can you explain what incentive that holder will get? Can we also stake PARA Token and what is the benefit from staking?

Jan Knežević: First of all, its used to pay the transaction costs of the callbacks as well as for services provided by the relayer quorums.

Besides this, its also serves an important role for incentives -so it can be staked into the relayer quorums – and those get rewarded for providing useful work – also the other way around – slashed for misbehaviour.

Its also a governance token, so you can vote for collators on the parachain as well as calibrating other parameters through the ecosystem.

And lastly, you can use it to provide liquidity in PARA AMMs and earn more of them.

Mary | Satoshi Club: When staking will start?

Jan Knežević: The exact date is not known yet Q2 or Q3 of this year.

Mary | Satoshi Club: How PARA tokens will be distributed?

Jan Knežević: The private sale rounds will be distributed over the course of 1 year in 5 batches. On average around 20 % each quarter after TGE. Team tokens will be distributed over the course of 2 years with a cliff at 6 months after TGE. For more information check here: https://blog.paralink.network/para-tokenomics/

Mary | Satoshi Club: Thanks! Nice distribution model😀

Ready for the next question?

Jan Knežević: yes

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club: thanks a lot for the answers!

Q3 from Telegram user @alice_wonderland12

The data required is searched in the oracle through the Paralink Query Language, what are the particularities of this language? Doesn’t it limitate the applications that can use it, due to translation problems or makes more difficult the understanding of the oracle?

Jan Knežević: Paralink data requests can be made via PQL definitions, which are JSON based descriptions of ETL (Extract, Transform & Load) jobs. PQL queries are done via SQL like interface which generalizes over common data structures (JSON, XML, SQL), and includes basic post processing utilities such as math functions and type casting.

The data collected from multiple sources and aggregated with a function like median or mean, validated using validation conditions and then returned to the caller’s smart contract of choice via the callback.

https://docs.paralink.network/whitepaper/PQL.html/

https://docs.paralink.network/developer-guide/paralink-query-language.html/

Mary | Satoshi Club: So, users won’t have any translation problems and limitations?

Jan Knežević: No

Mary | Satoshi Club: Great😀

Jan Knežević: We will also create a drag and drop easy to use UI for PQL so that non developers can also use it.

Mary | Satoshi Club: That’s a great idea, because not all of us are familiar with tech things😉

Ready for the next question?

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club: Oh it really matters👍

Jan Knežević: yes

Q4 from Telegram User @Arisabela

One of Paralink services use cases is derivatives and money market, which enables realtime asset pricing, that’s a lot of data to manage, how is Paralink accessing in a secure and efficient way to provide all this data from the money markets?

Mary | Satoshi Club: 👀

Jan Knežević: To satisfy all kinds of applications, Paralink offers 3 security models with different cost, convenience and security characteristics.

Simple Oracle

Paralink Nodes can be used as a multi-chain oracle from any 3rd party data source by any developer.

Trusted Oracle

Simple Oracle can be upgraded by the virtue of cryptographically signed PQL results with ECDSA private keys from reputable data providers.

On-Chain Consensus

For applications that require the highest level of security, without having to rely on a single source of truth.

For real time pricing of derivatives the suitable options are Trusted oracle and On-Chain consensus. The first one is cheaper to use but has to rely on the trustworthiness of the trusted source of information, which can have serious consequences as we saw in the last few months when outages of APIs have unfairly liquidated derivatives holders. This is why we created the On-Chain consensus solution which is unique to Paralink. With it you will be able to get information from multiple sources and thereby increasing resilience and accuracy of the data. The throughput needed for real time pricing will be available when Polkadot launches as it is unfeasible with the the current technology stack.

For pros and cons of each solution check here:

https://docs.paralink.network/whitepaper/security.html/

https://docs.paralink.network/whitepaper/consensus.html/

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club: Thanks for sharing!👍

Mary | Satoshi Club: Requires the use of bridges, ie. Polkadot <> Ethereum, so not all chains are supported. Which next chain support you will add?

Jan Knežević: We will use Darwinias bridge for ethereum. We have already integrated with Plasm and are working on the integration with Moonbeam and many others. Integrations take a lot of development time which is why we will constantly add blockchains we support. The use of bridges is needed for the relayer quorum solution as aggregation on chain is unfeasible on ethereum because of the gas costs.

Mary | Satoshi Club: Sure! And i understand your concern about gas costs🤷 hope we will see better numbers in the nearest future!

Ready to jump to the next question?

Jan Knežević: yes

Q5 from Telegram user @yellowchamp

Part of your roadmap this Q1 2021 is the TGE or Token Generation Event for Paralink Network. So can you tell us the overview of this Token Generation Event(TGE) in your platform? How can we participate in this event? What are the qualifications and requirements? What are the benefits for early adopters of this event? Thank you

Jan Knežević: The TGE will take place before exchange listing. Unfortunately the private sale is closed already so the only way to buy the token will be on an exchange or OTC after TGE. We are creating an ambasador program where applicants will get rewarded in PARA tokens which they will receive at TGE before listing on exchange. Token rewards will be available constantly through our community engagement activities such as meme contests and similar activities.

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club: Sounds good 😊

Mary | Satoshi Club: Oh, i know some our members like meme contests so much😂

This ambassador program will go in the nearest future?

Jan Knežević: Yes

Mary | Satoshi Club: Great! We will follow your updates!

Jan Knežević: we will inform everyone about it through our social media channels

Mary | Satoshi Club: Sure! Thank you!

Ready for the 6th and last question from this part?

Jan Knežević: yes

Q6 from Telegram user @garrinepotter

You have launched developer testnet. How active is the work? Perhaps you can share with us what interesting things you are developing now?

Jan Knežević: We are very active on the development side. We open sourced our node last month and as stated launched developer testnet. We are preparing a block explorer which will be launched in the near future. We are also adding new features to the testnet soon. Development is currently split between integrations with other blockchains and building our own product. We are onboarding new developers as we finished with fundraising so we have an option to expand the team. We have received pull requests already and some of the devs interested in contributing are already on a trial period. If anyone is interested here please feel free to take a look. We are improving the documentation every day and any feedback is greatly appreciated.

https://github.com/paralink-network/

https://docs.paralink.network/developer-guide/getting-started.html/

Mary | Satoshi Club: Thanks! Sure a lot of developers will join!

Ready to start with the live part?😀

Jan Knežević: Yes

Mary | Satoshi Club: Let’s go 🚀

Part 2 — live questions from the Telegram community

Q1 from Telegram user @Abisola1

Can you list your notable investors? Are they well-known in the industry? @janknezevic

Jan Knežević: LD capital, NGC, Kenetic, Genesis block, 3 commas, Bitcoin.com. They are helping us throughout the way with their connections advisory and introductions to other projects in their portfolios for potential partnerships.

Q2 from Telegram user @Joesunda

According to its tokenomics there is no amount in the public sale, is that to say why there was no public sale and why?

Jan Knežević: We have decided not to host a public sale as the existing platforms don’t provide a fair random distribution. The interest for the public sale was also much larger than expected and most of the interested buyers would get left out. These are the reasons we decided against it. In the tokenomics you can see the changes with timestamps. The public sale was supposed to be 0,44% of the total supply.

Q3 from Telegram user @Boylut

There is a lot of demand for GraphQL, do you have any plan of adding it integration? @janknezevic

Jan Knežević: It already supports GraphQL

Q4 from Telegram user @DanielMZ21

ill Paralink obtain a parachain on Polkadot? Or do you only plan to use Kusama for now?

Jan Knežević: We will launch on Kusama first and afterwards obtain a parachain slot on Polkadot. The details of slot obtainment are explained in the earlier answers.

Q5 from Telegram user @tuvalunia

There are several oracle platforms. Why should we choose Paralink?

Jan Knežević: I’d like to show you a comparison table so you can have a clear picture about the advantages that we have over the current competitors. One of the biggest additions is the advanced queries and ETLs. We believe this will change the way people build dapps and think about data ingress into smart contracts.

Also, having cross-chain capabilities while maintaining on-chain validation and aggregation gives us the flexibility to do the kind of processing never possible before.

Q6 from Telegram user @bangolbd

What are your plans for the 2021 in terms of developing? @janknezevic

Jan Knežević: Block explorer, improve functionalities of testnet, Launch a parachain on Rococo testnet, PARA staking and rewards, Deploy Paralink as parachain on Kusama network, Data stream reliability explorer, Quorums reputation tracking, Deploy Paralink as parachain on Polkadot ( depends on when we obtain a slot)

Q7 from Telegram user @CryptoDurden

If Ethereum 2.0 ultimately delivers better functionality than Polkadot. Are you moving to Ethereum 2.0 or are you continuing to develop infrastructure on Polkadot?

Jan Knežević: We decided to build on Polkadot as we think that they will deliver a functional solution much earlier than Ethereum 2.0 which is currently in phase 0. As soon as there is a better technology stack we will focus our attention on it but for the foreseeable future we are betting that Polkadot will be the most functional ecosystem.

Q8 from Telegram user @Unknown_Mark

From your website I saw that accessing real-world data is easy with Paralink Query Language and a community maintained registry of PQL querie , can you please tell me what is Paralink Query Language? I mean how can I benefit from using it ?

Thanks

Jan Knežević: Paralink data requests can be made via PQL definitions, which are JSON based descriptions of ETL (Extract, Transform & Load) jobs. PQL queries are done via SQL like interface which generalizes over common data structures (JSON, XML, SQL), and includes basic post processing utilities such as math functions and type casting.

https://docs.paralink.network/whitepaper/PQL.html/

https://docs.paralink.network/developer-guide/paralink-query-language.html/

Q9 from Telegram user @Giniwhite

Is there a reason why Paralink is building a consensus module with Polkadot’s substrate? What advantages does this provide for your project?

Jan Knežević: Because Polkadot allow incomparably higher throughput which makes the on real time information with chain consensus model feasible.

Q10 from Telegram user @PerishepaTrade

Can you tell us more about the Darwinia integration? Can I join the testnet?

Jan Knežević: Anyone can join testnet.

Some data sources require more security than others. One such example are the real-time price feeds to be used in decentralized derivative and money markets, where any corruption in the price feeds can result in large financial losses. For this use case, a reputable quorum of relayers with on-chain coordination, validation and aggregation mechanisms is required. Performing such consensus algorithm at high frequency is prohibitively expensive on Ethereum due to low throughput and high gas costs. For this reason, Paralink on-chain consensus algorithm is being built using Polkadot and its Substrate stack.

A parachain with oracle quorums is great for the Polkadot ecosystem as it provides a reliable and trustworthy oracle platform the for other parachains. However it would be great if the results of on-chain oracle aggregation and validation could be relayed to other chains such as Ethereum as well.

This is there the Darwinia Bridge Chain comes into play. Darwinia is building a first truly decentralized bridge solution, which is the primary candidate for solving our problem of relaying our computation results to non-Polkadot chains.

https://blog.paralink.network/paralink-is-integrating-with-darwinia/