Welcome to another exciting chapter of our Satoshi Club AMA Series, today we would like to tell you about the session with our friends from SPERAX. The AMA took place on August 13 and our guests were Zhou Yu (Researcher) and Frida Cai (Global strategic partner).
The total reward pool was $600 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
Serg | Satoshi Club: Hello dear community! Today our guests are from @sperax. The sale is starting in 12 hours! KYC IS OPEN: sperax.io. You can begin your registration now. Welcome @yuzhou87 @FridaCai_Sperax.
Irina K.| @Satoshi_Club: Hi everyone 👋
Zhou Yu: Thanks hello everyone.
Serg | Satoshi Club: We are glad to have you here. Please tell us a bit about yourself 🙂 and a bit about Sperax.
Zhou Yu: My name is Joe. I am currently studying in UCLA for Mathematics of Computation (mathematical side of computer science) and pursuing a Philosophy minor. I have been working as research assistant for Prof. Rafail Ostrovsky for cryptography and theoretical computer science back in school. I joined Sperax last June under the supervision of world leading cryptographer Professor Yongge Wang. I am now a researcher for Sperax. I am one of the authors of Sperax latest IEEE INFOCOM paper and I am the presenter. So ask me anything about BDLS consensus or the paper if you are interested. 🙂
Frida is our global strategic partner responsible for marketing side of mainly north America. She holds a bachelor degree in Foreign Affairs and a history minor from University of Virginia. She is a fresh graduate from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism with a Master of Science degree in Data Journalism. She has extensive past experience in reporting the latest technology trends in Asia and was mesmerized by the potential of crypto and blockchain industries and has been devoting her career into the space ever since.
Serg | Satoshi Club: Thank you for this introduction 🙂 we’ve collected some hundreds of questions from the community. We’ve selected 6 of them to be discussed in the first part. Are you ready to start?
Zhou Yu: Sure. Maybe I can introduce Sperax very briefly first?
Serg | Satoshi Club: Of course! this is the point of the AMA, we know that you have a good team based from your explanation, let’s see the project.
Zhou Yu: Sperax project originates from a blockchain proposal by world-leading cryptographer, Professor Yongge Wang from the University of North Carolina. Funded by the internationally-renowned blockchain venture capitals like Outlier Ventures, Sperax is a new-generation financial public blockchain. Founded at Menlo Park in Silicon Valley, California in 2018, Sperax team now spreads across the U.S., Singapore and China.
Serg | Satoshi Club: I see that your education/work is mainly based in Nort America. Where is the name coming from? Smth from latin?
Zhou Yu: Haha many people asked this question. Someone in our marketing side came up with this pretty fancy name from Latin.
Serg | Satoshi Club: I speak some Latin, so it sounded familiar.
Zhou Yu: He told us it means “trust” and everyone was just amazed haha.
Serg | Satoshi Club: So, shall we proceed to the first question of the community?
Zhou Yu: I am ready.
Q1 from Bitcointalk User linderm
I have seen that you have multiple consensus protocols. Why do you need more? What are its functions?
Zhou Yu: When we proposed Sperax project, we analyzed many current blockchains and of course their consensus protocols since consensus protocols are like the souls of blockchains. They are all good and some are impressive. However, we found that they were all based on a naive network model, aka “synchronous network model.”
I mean this model is not bad. It is simple so leaves much room for the designers. But it can overlook some significant security problems that only occurs in the real environemnt. Our professor is specialized in this area. We chose to use the more realistic and of course more challenging one — partially asynchronous network. Under this model, many realistic attacks have to be taken into consideration when designing the protocol. Especially DoS attacks because the network is not always in a sync mode.
Serg | Satoshi Club: So, you are making it more secure.
Zhou Yu: Basically yes. But we did not stop here. After we finished our first draft (BDLS consensus is an academic paper at first), we asked ourselves, is it enough.
Serg | Satoshi Club: Never stop, always improve. 🙂
Zhou Yu: Our Prof thinks we can do better. In a nutshell, we cannot only improve security without taking performance or efficiency into account at the same time. So we devoted the rest of our time in improving the efficiency of our consensus. The most significant part is communication complexity. Since communication usually takes the most time.
Luckily, in the end we managed to reduce communication complexity significantly. Our BDLS enjoyed double the communication speed than the fastest one.
Irina K.| @Satoshi_Club: Communication between nodes you mean?
Zhou Yu: Yep. Nodes have to send messages back and forth to reach consensus. In async setting, it gets even more complex. So you can imagine when we were notified by IEEE INFOCOM that our paper was approved, we are SOSOSO excited haha.
I think my answer is a bit too long. I will keep it shorter for the following questions.
Q2 from Bitcointalk User bitmartbounty
What’s the purpose behind a DUAL TOKEN system of SPA and SCOIN, can you explain their utilities and diffences and can I swap between Spa and SCOIN?
Zhou Yu: Sperax ecosystem issues two tokens: SPA as the utility token on BDLS and sCOIN as the native stablecoin. SPA is the utility token in the Sperax blockchain just like ETH in the Ethereum blockchain. It ensures the economic incentives for participants in the BDLS consensus. It also reflects the network value for Sperax.
When users join the Sperax network, they could earn SPA as they run nodes and validate transactions. Similar to other public blockchain, gas fees are collected in SPA as transactions happen on the Sperax blockchain. Moreover, SPA is also the governance token for the protocol. In short, SPA is the utility token. In contrast, sCOIN is fiat-pegged stablecoin issued on the Sperax blockchain. Moreover, it is the native stablecoin of Sperax blockchain. We are the first public blockchain that issues a native stablecoin btw.
sCOIN is minted through depositing fiat currencies by users and is issued by financial nodes (regulated financial institutions with fiat custody) in the network.
Irina K.| @Satoshi_Club: So the stable coin is covered by fiat?
Zhou Yu: sCOIN is fiat-pegged.
Serg | Satoshi Club: It’s smth different? I didn’t see this model. oh, just read more carefully. You are the only one in the world.
Zhou Yu: Haha if you are interested, check out our econ page on our website. 🙂
Frida Cai_Sperax: Or read it here.
Serg | Satoshi Club: hey Frida! Welcome 🙂
Frida Cai_Sperax: Sorry our KYC just opened up and a flock of registrations went in from all over the world.
Serg | Satoshi Club: That’s a good sign, I have seen you guys on a lot of platforms.
Q3 from Telegram User @madkaren
Why are you using the unpredictable random beacon RANDAO? why do you need a protocol that presents a joint random number?
Zhou Yu: RANDAO is for our consensus protocol BDLS. BDLS belongs to the category of BFT consensus protocol which requires randomness to ensure its security.
Yes we can choose a centralized randomness provider or naive randomness like hashing the previous block info. But if we choose a centralized randomness provider, what’s the purpose of blockchain right?
Serg | Satoshi Club: Right. 😀
Zhou Yu: And if we choose naive randomness, the process is deterministic. This means we have to reduce our security level significantly. So we end up in choosing a decentralized, collective randomness.
Serg | Satoshi Club: You pay a great attention to security. That’s a good thing. Your name, which means trust, really fits you.
Q4 from Telegram User @Eraybukucu
Sperax token holders have the right to governance by contributing to the design & upgrade of the ecosystem. How many tokens do I have to hold to participate in the decisions, and what is the structure of this, would this system be corrupted if someone holds +50% of the tokens?
Zhou Yu: This AMA is very tech-focus haha. I am pretty excited.
Serg | Satoshi Club: We try to understand the important things. 😀
Irina K.| @Satoshi_Club: We try to do the translation job.
Zhou Yu: Sperax is basically a PoS blockchain. So you stake to participate in block generation. Our testnet makes 10k SPA as one staking unit (this might change when our testnet is launched, our econ simulation model is still experimenting on this parameter).
Will our system be corrupted by 51% attacks? you guess you mean 51% majority stakes. Any BFT consensus protocol needs over 2/3 honest participants to ensure secure consensus, so malicious 51% staking holder is a big problem for any BFT protocol which every current PoS blockchain uses. I mean let malicous group control over 50% stakes are itself crazy. Like half of your fortune in a state is controlled by terrorists.
So over 51% staking will put any BFT consensus blockchain into security vulnerablility. But since we use extra randomness, we have an extra layer of defense even in this situation.
Serg | Satoshi Club: We don’t negotiate with terrorists. 😀
Irina K.| @Satoshi_Club: And do you have mechanisms that prevent this from happening? I mean someone or a group holding such a big part?
Zhou Yu: I feel in general we do not need to. I mean if someone say their blockchain is secure no matter what (even when the world is at its end), you prob won’t believe him.
Q5 from Telegram user @nerddutch
You claim that after partnering with Chainlink, you can finally bring real-world data into the Sperax ecosystem and connect to traditional non-blockchain systems. How would you do that? Please elaborate.
Frida Cai_Sperax: We are thrilled to share with the world today that our mission to make decentralized financial services globally accessible is marking another milestone, thanks to our upcoming integration with Chainlink. By integrating Chainlink, we can finally bring real-world data into the Sperax ecosystem and connect to traditional non-blockchain systems. This allows our developers to create smart contracts connected to off-chain data feeds, APIs, traditional payment infrastructure, and more, which greatly expands the number of use cases we can build solutions through DeFi and other large markets.
Within our DeFi ecosystem, Chainlink oracles will aggregate market information from a variety of high quality data sources to serve as reference prices for assets such as cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies, commodities, indices, and more. DeFi applications can then use those price feeds as the basis for making automated decisions like how big a loan a user can take on, whether or not to liquidate someone’s collateral, and whether or not a payment actually occurred off-chain.
This integration will enable Sperax to leverage Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network to bring real-world data to any smart contract running on the Sperax network, and ultimately steer users and developers towards better financial decisions and more passive incomes through highly accessible and reliable financial products.
Irina K.| @Satoshi_Club: Great initiative. Good luck with that. 👍
Q6 from Telegram User @dtv1907
Can you tell me more about the next $SPA Public Sale? Do I need to KYC to join the Public Sale? Is there any lock up period after I buy $SPA and other round in the future? Can you give me the points that convince me to buy $SPA?
Frida Cai_Sperax: 1. The KYC is opened for registration now at sperax.io. The sale will not begin until August 14th at 10AM ET.
2. You can refer to https://spa.sperax.io/4.-distribution-and-unlocking-schedule for the unlocking schedule.
3. SPA is the utility token in the Sperax blockchain just like ETH in the Ethereum blockchain. It ensures the economic incentives for participants in the BDLS consensus. It also reflects the network value for Sperax. As users join the Sperax network, they could earn SPA as they run nodes and validate transactions. Similar to other public blockchain, gas fees are collected in SPA as transactions happen on the Sperax blockchain. Moreover, SPA is also the governance token for the protocol.
………………………………..
PART 2, TELEGRAM COMMUNITY LIVE QUESTIONS
The chat was open for 80 seconds; a lot questions were posted by the Satoshi Club community. Our guests chose some of them.
Q1 from Telegram User @anhdaikull
How different is sCOIN compare to other stable coins?
Frida Cai_Sperax: Stablecoins exhibit high volatility that fundamentally stems from poor adjustment to supply and demand, because they overlook what the fintech market is after. To address that, Sperax designed a backed fiat-pegged stablecoin.
By partnering with regulated financial service providers, Sperax stablecoin could also ease the barrier by on-boarding users holding fiat. While these are similar to Tether’s initial claims, their validity has come under criticism of late. The trouble is, Tether isn’t held to those promises because it’s not intended for use by regulated financial service providers.
Regulated financial service providers and OTC desks are best at interacting with end users and helping consumers understand their products and services. By leaning on these providers, Sperax can focus on providing liquidity for the token. By issuing geography-specific stablecoins, Sperax can support cross-border transactions in conjunction with financial service providers.
In order to further ensure stability, Sperax manifests for the consumer in a stabilization fee charged each time users exchange fiat for stablecoins. This in turn is used to reward financial nodes, as well as for buyback of the SPA tokens.
Finally, where other stablecoins have failed due to external factors like protocol incompetence, Sperax stablecoins have diversified dependencies. Where a decentralized stablecoin issued with Ethereum-centric collateral rises and falls with Ethereum, Sperax provides an extra layer of stability for the SPA token holders by being the first native stablecoin in the public blockchain ecosystem. https://medium.com/sperax/a-stablecoin-that-actually-works-1c0afa143256 read more here.
Q2 from Telegram User @puppyz1
So your project does seem to be promising, but we have seen many of the project team member desert the team and project for some unknown reasons and how can you ensure that your core team members will remain committed to this project?
Frida Cai_Sperax: I am confused by what you mean that many of the team members desert Sperax…? Because there is not. 😅 As for how to keep people committed, we implement a flat management, which means no c-level position is assigned. Everyone is deemed as a partner who is in charge of different sectors.
Q3 from Telegram User @Dhanu006
Why is Sperax integrating Chainlink Oracles? What advantage does it bring to Sperax?
Zhou Yu: In short, Chainlink provides us with a decentralized oracle network. It can provide us with a secure and reliable data channel, both data feed and output. So developers on Sperax has more reliable data and API access and have more room to develop better dapps, especially better DeFi.
Q4 from Telegram User @sayasyno
Why sperax make 2 tokens?
Frida Cai_Sperax: On top of BDLS, financial infrastructure is designed in the ecosystem to support users of the network. Sperax introduces a native stable coin design in the system that connects its decentralised economy with the physical world. Just like it is hard to imagine an economy without financial systems or a government body, it is necessary for a digital economy to have its own currency and governance model to power new business models. The platform token – SPA, is introduced both to serve as the governance token in the ecosystem and the fuel to power network transactions.
Q5 from Telegram User @baobao265
I think there are 3 core issues: security, scalability and interoperability which will bring competitive advantages to blockchain projects. So how does Sperax outperform other projects?
Frida Cai_Sperax: For security, as our answer for BDLS has explained, our BDLS consensus protocol is designed in the most realistic network model so the security of blockchain is greatly improved. For scalability, I prefer a more general term — performance or efficiency. Since the main goal here is for us to improve the processing speed in blockchain.
Our BDLS protocol has significantly improved processing speed or efficiency by enhancing communication complexity of our consensus. The last one is interoperability. I guess here you mean how our Sperax blockchain can be interoperable with real world finance. We connect our blockchain ecosystem with the traditional financial world by our unique design of financial layer. It consists of our native stablecoin sCOIN and a group of authorized financial institutions. We believe that our unique financial layer can truly integrate the new blockchain world with the traditional world.
Q6 from Telegram User @bhu85
How important is the community to Sperax Project and how can we collaborate in development?
Frida Cai_Sperax: Sperax BDLS is mathematically proven to provide an extra layer of security against DoS attacks in an asynchronous environment with fewer safety assumptions — such as on the open Internet. 2019 saw Sperax enthusiasts recognizing this potential at meetups with our current investors and partners, including Outlier Ventures, FBG Capital, Newstyle Capital, etc. We’re also proud that we’ve been able to partner with various portfolio companies in the China Academy of Science Holding (CASH), the largest state level tech investment firm.
We are always striving to foster healthy community discussions surrounding the benefits that Sperax presents to the PoS community, as well as the larger blockchain ecosystem.
At present, the Sperax project has established R&D teams in both China and the United States, carrying out collaborative development, researching key technologies, and simulating and testing key modules. We host meet-ups internationally, so please keep an eye out for a future one that might be near you!
Q7 from Telegram User @dinhnam862
Why is the Sperax ecosystem issuing 2 tokens: sCoin and SPA? What is Sperax’s main token? As far as I know, Sperax is the first decentralized system to have a native stablecoin. So what is the main function of sCoin?
Zhou Yu: Sperax is a financial public blockchain. A native stablecoin like sCOIN will play a crucial part in achieving our goal. It is vital in every one of our three main use case: a decentralized payment system; global remittance and transfer; DeFi ecosystem.
Q8 from Telegram User @Truongkhanh
What is the utility and use cases of Sperax? Can we use it in real life or not?
Frida Cai_Sperax: https://sperax.io/token
Q9 from Telegram User @Dhanu006
How can we participate in Sperax’s network and become a nodes and validator of SPA? What is the requirements for equipment?
Zhou Yu: A regular PC is enough. If ordinary user cannot participate, our blockchain defeats its own purpose. 🙂
Q10 from Telegram User @kun4321
What is your plans in place for global expansion, are Sperax Project focusing on only market at this time? Or focus on building and developing or getting customers and users, or partnerships? Can you explain this?
Frida Cai_Sperax: Founded in Menlo Park, Sperax now has offices in SF, NY, Singapore and China. We are expanding in southeast Asia and would open a lab in Germany.
Q11 from Telegram User @rioliandaro
SperaX uses a consensus algorithm. BDLS, it looks like it looks good in terms of security and scalability. However, I am not sure whether SperaX can play a role in connecting the real world and the blockchain sector in the financial sector. Do you have any other plans? or do you have a business case you’re working on?
Zhou Yu: Sure. These three use cases might be helpful to your question:
i. Xiaomi Financial Virtual Bank with full licenses authorized by Hong Kong Monetary Authority Proposed Sperax stablecoin for the following uses cases:
- Use the fiat gateway and accept cash equivalent.
- Support cross-border transactions based on the stable coin network and offer more competitive rates.
ii. A Sand Hill Road based Venture Capital
- Tokenize its emerging crypto-focus fund.
- Integrate its mobile gaming portfolio companies on Sperax networks.
iii. A costume martial-arts TV series, The Untamed, with 8 billion views on Netflix and WeTV:
- Tokenize its worldwide fan meet-ups and concerts tickets.
- Tokenize celebrity merch’s online marketing places.
Irina K.| @Satoshi_Club: That’s it for tonight everyone. Thank you @yuzhou87 and @FridaCai_Sperax.
Serg | Satoshi Club: Thank you for joining us! It was awesome!
Zhou Yu: Thank you Serg and Irina for hosting this amazing event.
………………………………..
PART 3, QUIZ AND INFO
As usual, for the third part, Satoshi Club Team asked the chat 4 questions about Sperax. A link to a Quiz form were sent into the chat. Participants had 10 minutes to answer. 300$ were shared among the winners.
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/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/esatoshiclub
Our Partners:
Sperax: https://t.me/sperax