Satoshi Club x Tezos AMA Recap from June 16

Satoshi Club x Tezos AMA Recap from June 16

On June 16, while the world tries to recover from the pandemic situation, Satoshi Club Community is growing more and more. Our friends from Tezos team were invited to conduct an AMA session with us. The guests were @wbm_97 and @ajustice8.

Rewards: $1500 Prize pool was split in three parts.

In this AMA Recap we are trying to summarize some of the most interesting points for you.

PART 1, INTRODUCTION AND COMMUNITY QUESTIONS

Serg | Satoshi Club: Dear community, today we will have an AMA with one of the best crypto projects: Tezos – number 12 on CMC at the moment. @wbm_97 will be our guest today. Welcome!

Irina Kravchuk | SatoshiClub: Hi William, nice to meet you 🙂

William McKenzie: Thank you, glad to be here!

Serg | Satoshi Club: Please tell us a bit about yourself :). @ajustice8 will join us as well šŸ™‚

AJ: Thanks for having me Serg. While William is writing a novel, I’ll just intro myself. I’m a community director for Tezos Commons, a nonprofit organization focused on building the Tezos ecosystem. You can check out our website at: tezoscommons.org

Tezos Commons supports the ideas, individuals and organizations dedicated to building the digital commonwealth. We empower the community to be the architects through bootstrapping local communities, communications, promotion, education, funding open source initiatives and advocacy.

William McKenzie: Well, Iā€™m apart of Tezos Commons. Iā€™m the community manager. Iā€™ve been involved in the blockchain space for quite some time. At Tezos Commons, we focus on growing the Tezos community through a number of community focused events (such as this haha) and educating the general public on Tezos.

Irina Kravchuk | SatoshiClub: Hi @ajustice8, nice to meet you. Can you tell how many entities are there in the Tezos project in general? Because I was thinking about that also, it’s a bit unclear. Is there a company and a foundation?

AJ: So let me clear up the misconception of a company and a foundation for Tezos.

Tezos is a permissionless, decentralized blockchain protocol or rather just the technology. There are organizations within the Tezos ecosystem that build on the protocol, support community initiatives, build tools, and fund projects. So there are quite a few organizations around it. For example, Tezos Foundation, TQ Tezos, Tezos Commons, Nomadic Labs, Metastate, just to name a few.

Serg | Satoshi Club: Thank you for this introductions šŸ™‚ We have collected questions from the community. Shall we start?

William McKenzie: Letā€™s start!

AJ: Indeed, letā€™s get the ball rolling.

Q1 from Telegram user @kbender

How is Tezos project generating profits and how does it sustain itself?

AJ: So as mention above, Tezos is just a decentralized blockchain protocol, its goal isn’t to generate profits but rather be a base layer of a powerful technology so organizations and companies can build and adopt on top of it. There are examples of organizations on top of it that are generating profits, for example a baker (staker) can set up a node and have token holders delegate to them and they take a percentage of the rewards.

The second part of the question on how Tezos sustains itself is a great question, Tezos has a built in funding mechanism for developers, called inflation funding. A developer can propose an upgrade to the Tezos protocol and attach an invoice. Once it successfully gets voted on by token holders and is implemented, the chain will mint those tokens and pay the developer. This mean Tezos is built to evolve over time with the newest technology as the code base is modular. Tezos can upgrade and evolve at a rapid pace.

Q2 from Telegram user @bitcoinistic

Could you share with us what are the main usages of the XTZ token?

William McKenzie: So, as @ajustice8 touched on, Tezos is a decentralized, permission-less, self-amending cryptographic ledger. Anyone can build on top of the protocol.

Furthermore, any new tech/features that arise can be ported onto the protocol through a formal means decided upon by token holder voting. This is one function of XTZ. There are also some exciting projects that aim to make use of XTZ, such as Emergents, a DCCG being built on Tezos, and also STOā€™s. Thereā€™s been numerous STO deals announced, predominantly in the real estate sector. Iā€™d encourage you to read through this post for further information: https://link.medium.com/MyFbYpmPm7.

Serg | Satoshi Club: What about the funds collected in the public sale? Are they used for this initiatives?

AJ: Absolutely, the funds collected are held in custody with Tezos Foundation. They are a charted Swiss nonprofit with its only purpose to advance to the Tezos ecosystem so they distribute funds via grants to contributors and builders.

Indeed, and they are transparent with their bi annual reports of the funds: https://tezos.foundation/reports/, that is audited by the big 4 accounting firm PWC.

Q3 from Telegram user @pandasbitcoins

Tezos had a rough start, with many people criticizing the lack of news and progress. Why did you have this period of poor communication?

AJ: So Tezos indeed had a rough start, as it was one of the largest fundraisers for the blockchain project. The Tezos Foundation had to shake up their board of directors which upheld communication, however, the community and development was still going strong during this time. There were weekly development updates from the founder of the project while the Tezos Foundation was sorting out its board of directors. The amazing thing about it is, that Tezos launched its betanet, restructured the board and has been running like a well-oiled machine since the launch. The other great aspect is that the community banded together and helped launch the project as well.

Irina Kravchuk | SatoshiClub: Everything worked out quite well after the betanet launch😊.

Serg | Satoshi Club: I was an investor in the Tezos public sale. To be honest, I was skeptical that the project will succeed. I am glad now everything is going well :).

AJ: I wouldn’t blame you, it was a tough period that tested the Community’s will. But diamonds are forged through tension, stress, and pressure :).

Q4 from Telegram user @bitalik_vuterin

Name 3 most important concurrents that Tezos has at the moment.

William McKenzie: So, I will say thereā€™s many focuses currently within the Tezos ecosystem and these range from several sectors – from digital securities, payments, CBDCā€™s, DeFi, and more just to name a few. I would say some of the most exciting developments at the moment, I touched on in my response to @bitcoinisticā€™s question.

In terms of competition though, I think the blockchain space is still nascent and the technology is all very new. So, it will take some time to see what works and what does not.

AJ: 3 exciting concurrents for me:

STOS – there will be over 1 billion dollarsā€™ worth of real estate tokenizing on Tezos

Governance – Tezos is decentralized with over 450 bakers and have successfully upgraded the protocol 3 times

Adoption: The French cybercrime unit is using Tezos to validate expenses, Universities are using Tezos for voting, etc.

Irina Kravchuk | SatoshiClub: What about external competition?

AJ: in regards to competition, I think Ethereum and Cardano are interesting competitors.

Serg | Satoshi Club: Can you tell more about the French cybercrime using Tezos?

AJ: You can read more about it here: https://cointelegraph.com/news/french-cybercrime-division-uses-smart-contacts-on-tezos-blockchain.

Q5 from Telegram user @cryptocivilizations

What is the role of Tezos grant funding and what projects can participate in it?

AJ: So as you know, the fundraiser initially consisted of 250 million dollars which is held custody by Tezos Foundation, a nonprofit foundation located in Switzerland. This nonprofit has a charter which means the funds are legally only to be used on advancing the Tezos ecosystem. Tezos Foundation has a grant process that issues an RFP each quarter people and projects to apply for. The projects vary from technology platforms, business development, development, tooling, marketing, community initiatives. A great resource of the entire grant process and application can be found here: https://tezos.foundation/grants/.

I believe the last bi-annual report stated that Tezos Foundation now has 600 million in custody from BTC price rising so that means there is even more funds since the fundraiser to grow the Tezos ecosystem

William McKenzie: Thatā€™s correct, for anyone curious to see this report, they can view it here – https://tezos.foundation/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/tezos-foundation-biannual-update-march-2020.pdf.

Irina Kravchuk | SatoshiClub: How many applicants did you have until now?

AJ: There have been hundreds of applicants, I can’t verify the number in approximate measures as Tezos Foundation has those numbers but there tons of cool applications to build the Tezos ecosystem.

Serg | Satoshi Club: In 2 minutes we will open the chat for the live questions from the community :).

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PART 2, TELEGRAM COMMUNITY LIVE QUESTIONS

The chat was open for 2 minutes and a lot of questions were posted by the Satoshi Club community. Our guests chose five of them.

Q1 from Telegram User @Knarf7003

How Secure is the Tezos Smart Contract?

AJ: Great question, Tezos Smart Contracts has built in formal verification due to the language oCaml. In other words, the smart contract can detect any bugs before being live. This enables confidence when executing a large value smart contract and why a lot of institutions prefer Tezos.

Q2 from Telegram User @jpsarmah

Your website reads, ”Secure. Upgradable. Built to last.” Can you explain how Tezos as an open-source platform achieves this and how is Tezos a self-amending cryptographic ledger?

William McKenzie: First off, when the term ā€œself-amending cryptographic ledgerā€ is used – it encompasses Tezosā€™ on-chain governance process. Through this formal process, which token holders have a say in, new tech/features can be ported onto the protocol and as @ajustice8 described previously – be rewarded.

That process works as follows: 

A dev team injects the hash of a tarball file into the protocol as a proposal with an invoice attached. That proposal undergoes 4 phases, where upon approval of each phase it results in activation – and the subsequent minting of new XTZ to fulfill that invoice attached.

Q3 from Telegram User @Lady_luck2

Tezos uses the Liquid Proof-of-Stake algorithm (LPOS) a combination between the classic PoS and its counterpart the delegated PoS. What advantages does this combined system bring to the platform?

AJ: The amazing thing about LPOS is that your tokens are always liquid when staking, that means when you delegate your tokens to a validator, you always own your tokens and can move them in and out without any lock up period. This also plays a key factor in governance, your token is a vote, so when you delegate to a staker, then you are delegating your voting rights to that staker. Letā€™s say for example a proposal has been submitted and your baker is going to vote on it and you don’t agree with their stance. You can instantly change bakers that does agree with your point.

Read more about it here: https://medium.com/tezos/liquid-proof-of-stake-aec2f7ef1da7.

Q4 from Telegram User @alice_wonderland12

What is the minimum amount of XTZ required to be a stakeholder, and which other requirements are needed? What would be my reward program as a stakeholder?

William McKenzie: So, there are numerous tutorials out on how to get started on baking – both video and written. Iā€™d recommend reading through this before you even start – https://medium.com/tezos/its-a-baker-s-life-for-me-c214971201e1.

In terms of how much XTZ you need to be a baker, you can delegate to a baker for a minimal amount ~100 XTZ. But, to bake on your own youā€™ll need a roll (atm = 8,000 XTZ). In RE: to expected returns, itā€™s about ~6% currently.

Q5 from Telegram User @Misun1

What business scenarios can XTZ support now? In which industries can we see the mass adoption of XTZ technology in the near future?

AJ: Right now Tezos is leading asset tokenization, there will be over $1 billion dollars of real estate tokenizing on Tezos through various organizations and banks. These organizations prefer Tezos because of its ability to evolve over time with a sophisticated governance mechanism and because of formal verification built into smart contracts.

Here’s a cool sizzler video on STOs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=225nO6HPwF0.

William McKenzie: To add onto this, that number is actually closer to $3B plus with a lot of momentum in the real estate sector.

Serg | Satoshi Club: We have the 5 winners šŸ™‚ Congrats for the good questions and thank you for taking the time to be here with us today!

AJ: Thanks Serg! that was fun.

William McKenzie: If youā€™d like to learn more about this, we did a deep dive on TezTalks.

You can check that here – https://youtu.be/dNik0CPsl1o.

Irina Kravchuk | SatoshiClub: Thank you for your time and great answers.

William McKenzie: So, weā€™d like to thank everyone for participating in this and asking all these great questions. You can find more information about Tezos Commons and Tezos through these links – https://tezoscommons.org, https://tezos.com.

AJ: Thanks everyone for having us, that was a blast and really enjoyed talking to your community. We also like to engage with a ton of community engagement, we host regular virtual events online and a podcast:

Check us out at: https://www.youtube.com/c/tezoscommons.

And our medium site: https://medium.com/tezoscommons.

………………………………………………

PART 3, QUIZ AND INFO

As usual, for the third part, Satoshi Club Team asked the chat 4 questions about Tezos. A link to a Quiz form were sent into the chat. Participants had 10 minutes to answer.

17 users with correct answers were rewarded.

For more information and future AMAs, join our Social Media channels:

English Telegram group: https://t.me/Satoshi_club

Russian Telegram group: https://t.me/satoshi_club_ru

Spanish Telegram group: https://t.me/satoshi_club_spanish

Telegram Channel: https://t.me/satoshi_club_channel

Website: https://esatoshi.club/

Our Partners:

Tezos Telegram Group:https://t.me/tezosplatform

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