At Satoshi Club we continue to educate our community and giving great rewards for it. So, today we would like to tell you about the AMA session with our friends from Uniris. The AMA took place on November 3 and our guests were Akshay Kumar and Nilesh Patankar.

The total reward pool was 500$ and was divided into three parts. In this AMA Recap we will try to summarize some of the most interesting points for you.

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PART 1, INTRODUCTION AND COMMUNITY QUESTIONS

Mary | Satoshi Club: Hello, Satoshi Club! We are happy to announce our AMA session with Uniris! @nileshvp @akshaykumarkm9 welcome to Satoshi Club. 😀

Nilesh Patankar: Thanks you, happy to be here.

Akshay Kumar: Thank you.

Mary | Satoshi Club: Welcome here… could you please introduce yourself and tell us about how did you start with Uniris?

Akshay Kumar: I am responsible for the R&D of Uniris blockchain and biometrics, as you know Uniris has 14 strong patents around this. I was introduced to crypto during my master studies at Ecole Polytechnique, Paris in 2016-17. I joined Uniris straight out of college.

Nilesh Patankar: Hi, I have been in the payment industry for over 2 decades. I used to work with MasterCard earlier. I started discussing this idea with my friend Sebastien in early 2016. We were both intrigued by the bitcoin concept and the elegant solution. It was so interesting to see the application of Mathematics in a distributed P2P trustless ecosystem. The codifying of rules to govern systems without centralized management was almost a utopian state devoid of malice and greed. Our first thought was to apply this concept to create a P2P decentralized marketplace. We started looking at possible base layer like Ethereum to provide the solution but we quickly realized the shortcomings. It was impossible to imagine a marketplace powered by a blockchain that could ONLY scale up to 25 transactions per second. The next stumbling block was adoption. The blockchain ecosystem is so esoteric in nature that it’s adoption is limited to tech-savvy “nerd” segment. This thought became evident when Sebastien tried explaining the concept to his grandma, who was unable to fathom the whole private key management aspect. We realized that the adoption would only be possible through simplicity of use and if adoption was successful then scalability to manage the growth was of utmost importance. That is when we decided to create our own blockchain, that provided scale and a biometric solution, that simplified access and private key management.

Mary | Satoshi Club: How has your vision changed in 4 years of working on the project? Did you find something new, that you will add or discover something that you are not able to change now?

Nilesh Patankar: As I mentioned earlier our vision started with decentralized marketplace on an available blockchain but then we created our own blockchain. We also did lot of research in the crypto biometrics space to create our unique solution. This resulted in a strong identity based blockchain system. Lot of innovation has gone into every layer for providing the scale and security. We also found some shortcomings in the smart contracts design that were prevalent and vulnerable. We did a lot of work in that area too.

Akshay Kumar: Yes, blockchain has been prone to 51% or 66% attack based on the consensus protocol and there is no new research in this space that takes it to the next level. At Uniris, we have built a new consensus protocol called ARCH that is able to handle even 90% maliciousness.

This is something, that will revolutionize the blockchain space.

Q1 from Telegram user @Jmagsss

Uniris consensus uses the ARCH consensus or Atomic Rotating Commitment Heuristic, this is the first time I’ve heard about this type of consensus, were you the first one to innovate this kind of consensus and integrate it to your blockchain or you had some idea based on other types of consensus?

Nilesh Patankar: We were the first one and once we wrote the design we got it reviewed by academics/researchers. The base idea was to provide scale without compromising security. A lot of Maths and simulations went into creating the final design. This is a step away from PoW or PoS.

Atomic Commitment is the form of “absolute” consensus that implies 100% concordant responses for the acceptance or refusal of the transaction validation. Heuristics is the set of algorithms, softwares and parameters that manage the entire network, allowing the network to elect in a decentralized and coordinated way the nodes in charge of validating and storing transactions chains.

Rotating the network being fully distributed (no central or privileged role), the nodes elected for each operation are constantly changing so that no node can predict which nodes will be elected until the transaction arrives. In other words, ARCH makes it possible to obtain universal consensus from a small part of the nodes. This is proven using hypergeometric distribution laws. It is one of the core concepts that lead to scalability and security.

Mary | Satoshi Club: The math here is a bit tricky 😂, but you can give 3 examples of why your consensus is the best? Or is it the best only for Uniris’s solutions?

Nilesh Patankar: Here are three reasons why: Security – Manage 90% maliciousness without compromising the truth, Scalability – Near linear horizontal scalability which means given enough nodes we can scale to million txn per sec, Sustainability – 3.6 Billion times less energy consumption than Bitcoin, 0.1% average transaction costs 60,000 times less than EOS.

D. | Satoshi Club: And what advantages does this consensus offer over other consensus algorithms?

Nilesh Patankar: Ability to handle 90% maliciousness is well above other consensus algos like PoW or PoS, similarly scale is well above the prevalent processing abilities around 25 txn per sec and energy consumption is well below other algos since the whole network does not participate and pause for processing one block.

Q2 from Telegram user @AmirJosh

Uniris was awarded the label for the management of secure access for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. What is your contribution and part of the upcoming 2024 Olympic Games? Will you be providing assistance to the famous event?

Akshay Kumar: The platform has been certified by the French Strategic Committee of the Security Industries Sector (CSF) with the aim to identify solutions that can contribute to the security of major events such as the Paris Olympics 2024. For the next 5 years, Uniris would have an opportunity to provide secure access for various global events in France. Our first pilot was supposed to be at this year’s French Open Tennis tournament (Rolland Garros). We were planning to provide bands that would provide access to the arena and other secure zones for spectators and players respectively. The access/authorization information would be securely stored on the blockchain.

As you know due to the corona pandemic the event was postponed and all experiments were halted for this year. Similarly, for the Olympics we will design a secure access system based on our blockchain. Spectators, players, team management, security personnel and others would get relevant access to relevant zones based on their authorization.

Global event management means Uniris blockchain would potentially add a minimum of 10 MILLION USERS due to the Olympics alone. Imagine the network effect!!!

Mary | Satoshi Club: Which kind of security and identity you will provide? Can you explain in details?

Nilesh Patankar: We are providing security using crypto-biometrics. This is very different from scoring biometrics. We generate private keys on-the-fly using the biometric information and the private keys are used to unlock the associated asymmetric keys. That way it is like zero-knowledge-proof, we do not store any key information. In scoring biometrics, a pattern has to store for comparison later. The identity is totally decentralized and we have something called identity chains. Each user will have an identity chain. The identity is self-sovereign.

Complete control over your own data and how you monetize it. Good bye to surveillance capitalism.

Mary | Satoshi Club: Oh, it’s so interesting) i will wait for 2024. 👍

Nilesh Patankar: You will see it working before that even during Rugby World Cup 2023, Paris.

Mary | Satoshi Club: It was some kind of competition to provide this access? Sure, you were not the only one who wants to provide this for such events?

Nilesh Patankar: Yes, we went through multiple rigorous rounds of interviews with French CSF and Paris Olympics committee. It was a jury based selection. We were the only blockchain solution to be selected.

Q3 from Telegram user @JesusFre1tes

Many of the mobile devices are not yet adapted to advanced security systems such as the fingerprint reader. What is UNIRIS’ proposal in this regard to solve all the limitations that may arise and make all users part of its platform? Will the fingerprint be the only security mechanism?

Nilesh Patankar: We have ability to use the captive solutions provided with the mobile devices. So we can integrate the private key generation with available solutions. We will also be industrializing a device that can be used at the points of access to use the native crypto-biometrics of Uniris. The mechanism is primarily finger vein or they can always use usb keys and other available key management solutions.

Mary | Satoshi Club: I have one question – are my fingerprints the only way for access? If something will happen with my hands will i be able to prove my identity?

Akshay Kumar: The biometric device takes into account two of the three measurements

• Finger print
• Ultrasound of the internal venous network of the finger
• Spectroscopy of the finger

If anyone is damaged, the other 2 measurements can still authenticate the transaction. Moreover, the biometric device is able to learn any morphological changes that may occur.

D. | Satoshi Club: But what about people with disabilities? if person has no fingers?

Nilesh Patankar: During initial key generation we take all fingers into account so there is always a backup but loss of limb will require usage of pass phrase that will help in regeneration through deterministic wallet algorithms. So there is always an option to use the wallet recreation.

Q4 from Telegram user @ireneLSL

From your whitepaper, “with the ARCH consensus, only 295 miners are needed to offer the same performance as the Bitcoin network, which has ~ 100,000 miners”, and in your example you are using an intel NUC i3, what will be the realistic requirement and stakes needed to run a mining node? How profitable is it to operate a node?

Nilesh Patankar: Yes Intel NUC i3 is realistic and we are running our alpha network nodes on that. The ARCH consensus makes this possible since unlike PoW there is no hash rate race for mining and hence no requirement for mining rigs. The consensus randomly selects the validation group. Random but repeatable using the heuristic algos.

Akshay Kumar: As far as profitability is considered, Uniris blockchain has a prediction module built inside it, which will always ensure a minimum profitability. For example: The electricity costs in Denmark are 5-6 times higher than in India, the prediction module automatically takes all these into account!

Mary | Satoshi Club: So, you won’t need a lot of miners?

Nilesh Patankar: More miners provide more scale but yes in comparison we will not require as many miners. Every miner brings computing power to the network so the performance will keep enhancing as miner community grows. Moreover there is no compute entry barrier for miners to be part of the network.

D. | Satoshi Club: What is this ‘prediction module’? please tell a bit about it.

Akshay Kumar: To enable Uniris blockchain network to survive decades or even centuries, it must be able to adapt to threats and react accordingly. For this purpose, the Uniris network has a prediction module capable of linking a network disturbance (e.g. unavailability of nodes in a geographical area) to an event (e.g. storm in that area via Oracle).

The ability to predict an event even before it happens and deploy countermeasures!

Q5 from Telegram user @Angieleal

Taking into account that Uniris won Noonies Tech 2020- “Trending Tech Product of the Year” could you describe what is the CORE product of Uniris? What are the main uses of this product? The fact of having won against products like TikTok and Zoom is amazing!

Nilesh Patankar: Yes, core product is the ecosystem based on blockchain and biometrics. The use-cases start with secure access, P2P marketplace and many more. The product adds value to the community by enhancing the potential of solutions that are possible.

Mary | Satoshi Club: When this all will go live?

Nilesh Patankar: Q2 2021. The TestNet would be deployed before that around Q1 2021.

Mary | Satoshi Club: Oh, not so long to wait👍 Do you have some features available for test now?

Nilesh Patankar: Not yet, we have the alpha network up and running and we are updating our website on top of our alpha network. By next week you will be able to see our blockchain based website. Testing will commence next year.

Q6 from Telegram user @konditer_rolex

For the first time I meet the concept of Self-healing Blockchain. Is this your exclusive solution? I would like to ask what is destroying the blockchain and what will you heal it from? Perhaps you will share the address of your blockchain pharmacy on GitHub? Or are you closed source code?

Nilesh Patankar: We are open source and idea was self-healing was based on the challenges that are related to scalability. Scale requires concepts like sharding to be implemented and sharding is prone to loss due to network and other issues. Hence the self-healing concept. The pharmacy is available for all to partake and share.

Akshay Kumar: Self-healing blockchains are designed to heal from any P2P network problems (online/offline of nodes, internet, electricity problems, etc…) The blockchains performance is prone to the problems that why we call it self-healing blockchains, as far as shutting down the blockchain is considered, the prediction module will deploy counter measures even before the shutting down happens, so…

Mary | Satoshi Club: Open sourced, that’s great) What about governance? Who will be able to influence on project?

Nilesh Patankar: We have designed a form of on-chain governance. Very soon the implementation and details will be provided to the community. Idea is for us to leave the project to the community in coming years. For that there would be set of users and community of users who would participate in the on-chain governance. We are excited about the concept that we have designed and we would provide some literature around it very soon.

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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 @K2ice

You incorporated Uniris in 2017 after two years of research. And you could have easily jumped on the ICO boom that happened in 2018 but you didn’t. Why did you decide not to jump on this opportunity and wait till a later time?

Nilesh Patankar: You are absolutely right, we incorporated Uniris in 2017 after two years of research. We could have easily jumped on the ICO boom that happened in 2018 but we have been patient and transparent in our approach. We have taken time to engage with researchers and got our work peer reviewed. Today we are listed with the promise of well-defined use-cases and business plans. Investors can easily verify the authenticity of the roadmap and the work that is happening. We have multiple proposals in the pipeline and a sound business plan leading to a steady revenue stream.

Q2 from Telegram User @KelierTG

I noticed that for the distribution of your token economy you used Fibonacci numbers or succession, quite interesting! Where did the idea of applying this succession to your token economy come from?

Akshay Kumar: The fibonacci series, is mainly adopted from the nature. For the network effects to have maximum influence on the price of UCO Fibonnaci series was the best choice.

Q3 from Telegram User @niko518

How do you plan to ensure a programmed deflation mechanism? Will this mechanism increase the value of the $UCO tokens?

Nilesh Patankar: As explained in our white paper, the destruction of UCOs will be directly built inside the mining process (part of the fees will be burned). This is transparent for the users of the platform and does not affect their transactions or their holdings. The burn happens from the part of the transaction fees only and hence helps in decreasing the UCOs in circulation in a gradual and programmed manner. As explained, the value of a crypto currency is only based on demand/supply – thus the importance of that kind of burn mechanism is to systemically reduce the supply and hence systemically increase the value of each UCO.

Q4 from Telegram User @Maksyrn

What will be done if someone manages to spoof a fingerprint?

Akshay Kumar: The biometric device, not only takes into account the finger print but also the Ultrasound of the venous network and spectrometric analysis of the finger, so for you to be authenticated not only the finger print needs to be matched but also the other 2 parameters.

Q5 from Telegram User @Splendicity

Do you plan adopting your stress level checking instruments in Health centers and Hospital?

Akshay Kumar: Yes, indeed the Biometric device has all the capabilities, data and the algorithms necessary to do so… In fact, when you combine the data with AI algorithms new areas of innovation and research can be created!

Q6 from Telegram User @tungvodoi206

“UNIRIS”, how was your name born and what does it mean?

Nilesh Patankar: Uniris name is made of Uni+Iris, it means one soul. It signifies inclusion and unity in diversity. We felt that the name is able to denote our vision of breaking all the barriers and creating a community based ecosystem.

Q7 from Telegram User @Johana0012

Wuao 3.6 billion times less energy consumption, how does Uniris provide such care to the earth and at the same time provide innovative technology?

Akshay Kumar: Uniris network stands out due to ARCH consensus and its focus on data availability and on the global and decentralized spirit of proof-of-work (not the HashRate PoW).

Uniris consumes

• 3.6 Billion times less energy than Bitcoin
• 308 million times less energy than Ethereum
• 60000 times less energy than EOS
• 0.42 Wsec per transaction
• Equivalent to burn one tenth of a gram of sugar.

Q8 from Telegram User @Johana0012

Are Uniris smart contracts natively activatable, updatable, formal and easy to program?

Akshay Kumar: Uniris Smart Contracts are:

• Self-Triggable
• Smart contracts can interact with Uniris’s native Internal Oracles
• Formal
• Easily programmable with drag and drop boxes, (even your grandmother can program on Uniris smart contracts)

Q9 from Telegram User @cengizhantekin

You have ZKP in your system. Can you tell some about it please? What is its mission? What are the advantages of having that feature?

Nilesh Patankar: ZKP is the holy grail of cryptography akin to magic. The idea is to provide access without any knowledge of the proof of access. We achieved it through our crypto biometric solution which aims to unlock the user’s identity chain without storing any proof related to the user. Asymmetric cryptography is utilized and biometrics is used to generate private keys that are only used for decrypting the identity locked by the corresponding public keys. No storage is involved and there is no threshold based pattern matching.

Q10 from Unknown Telegram User

…

Akshay Kumar: Uniris blockchain outperforms the current blockchain standards and is closely integrated with biometrics’ native identity. Uniris architecture provides linear horizontal scalability. Given enough nodes we can target 1 Million TPS. Here are some KPIs –

Ergonomics: a platform for all blockchain applications.

Scalability: > 1 million transactions/sec.

Instantaneous: < 5 sec validation time.

Security: 0.0000001% risk of fraud even with 90% of malicious nodes.

Sustainability: 3.6 Billion times less energy consumption than Bitcoin, 0.1% average transaction costs.

Simplicity, with the native biometric device (no more passwords, keys, etc…).

Nilesh Patankar: Killer features –

ARCH Consensus – scale without sacrificing security

Supervised multicast protocol for P2P network – This is less chatty than Gossip protocol and increases the available bandwidth.

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PART 3, QUIZ AND INFO

As usual, for the third part, Satoshi Club Team asked the chat 4 questions about Uniris. A link to a Quiz form were sent into the chat. Participants had 10 minutes to answer. 300$ were distributed between the winners.

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