Thank you to the NanoNews Community for participating in Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Sperax on August 13, 2020. This guest star Sperax Frida Cai and Joe Yu . If you were unable to join the live AMA, no worries, here comes our 40th AMA recap!
We are glad to meet here
Frida Cai, Global Strategic Partnerships Sperax
Joe Yu, Top Researcher
For taking your time out from busy schedule for the AMA!
Introduction Session
Q1: Can you introduce yourself to the community? What is your background and how did you join Sperax?
Frida: Hi, my name is Frida Cai. I am the Global Strategic Partner at Sperax. I hold a bachelor degree in Foreign Affairs and a history minor from University of Virginia.
I am a fresh graduate from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism with a Master of Science degree in Data Journalism.
With extensive experience in reporting the latest technology trends in Asia, I was mesmerized by the potential of crypto and blockchain industries and has been devoting my career into the space ever since.
Joe: am Joe. I am currently studying in UCLA for Mathematics of Computation (mathematical side of computer science) and pursuing a Philosophy minor. I join Sperax last June as research assistant to our professor and participated in designing our BDLS consensus protocol. I am now a researcher in Sperax. Our paper on BDLS has been approved by IEEE INFOCOM this year and I am also the presenter of this paper.
Q2: Can you briefly describe what is Sperax? and what makes Sperax different from other competitors?
Frida: What really set us apart are: Decentralized Financial services, high performance and efficiency.
We noticed that the current blockchain industry is not for the mass consumer groups. After seeing the severe lack of user friendliness, we want to overturn this pain point.
At Sperax, we take a layered approach to solve the problem. At the infrastructure layer, we developed BDLS protocol, which is an innovative consensus module that is more secure and efficient than other Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) protocols. On top of it, we introduced Sperax stable coin system. It is backed by fiat currency and is the first native stablecoin in public blockchain ecosystem. Developers could build decentralised applications without worrying about educating users about cryptocurrency.
So essentially: Sperax provides a layer of financial services within the public blockchain stack through a native stablecoin and decentralized financial service providers.
Sperax is a new generation public blockchain that aims to build a truly secure and efficient infrastructure for the decentralised economy that renders greater efficiency, flexibility and self-governance than the traditional economic model.
We released our BDLS consensus module on GitHub in March 2020 and plans to release its testnet in a month or two from now.
“Sperax.io is going to surprise a lot of people this year when they launch,” said Ryan Zurrer, the former partner of Polychain Capital and Web 3 Foundation, who joined Sperax as an advisor for token economics and governance design.
Sperax closed a 6+ million USD seed funding round in January 2020, with leading investors including Outlier Ventures, FBG Capital and NewStyle Capital.
On March 18, 2020, Sperax launched its first public sale on Cobak, Korea’s largest cryptocurrency community, with a 200,000 USD allocation sold out in less than 20 minutes.
Q3: When will the token sale take place and how many phases are there?
Frida: haha. The token sale is scheduled from August 14th at 10AM ET to August 28th at 10AM ET. Just one round.
We know everyone has been waiting to hear the news about the Public Sale round 2 and we are happy to announce that it will be happening on Aug 14th!
Details are as follows :
Supply available in Public Sale : ~230,000,000
Percentage of Total Supply : 4.70%
Price : $0.02
Ticker : SPA
Vesting : None
Eligible Participants : Non-US/China Participants. Additional jurisdictional restrictions apply.
KYC Required : Yes
Public sale to be start on 14th of August, more details on how to participate in Public Sale will be released soon. You can also check spa.sperax.io for more information. If you have any questions, we are always available in our Telegram group to answer your questions @sperax
Q4: How is the Sperax to prevent early investors from selling their token and what benefit will Sperax give to them?
Frida: In Sperax, we issue SPA as a governance token.
SPA ensures the incentives for users to participate in the Layer 1 BDLS consensus.SPA reflects the network value of 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.
SPA has a fixed five billion supply. There will not be inflation in the future.
The distribution https://spa.sperax.io/4.-distribution-and-unlocking-schedule truly indicates how we value a long-term relationship with our investors.
Q5: What are Sperax Progress from the beginning until now?
At sperax.io, you could find the entire timeline and enjoy the interaction you own. Go check it out!
Q6: What are the major milestones Sperax achieved so far & what are in future pipeline?
I can take this one since I am more familiar with the tech side
Tech-wise, I think the biggest milestone so far occurred early this year when we were notified by IEEE INFOCOM 2020 that our paper on BDLS consensus protocol had been peer reviewed and approved by the academic committee. I still remember how happy everyone was. Also, another big milestone just happened weeks ago when we resolved a big implementation issue on the BDLS consensus protocol. So we expect our testnet be launched this month and this is our nearest goal in tech team.
Nontech-wise, I guess one big thing is we got 6M seed round fund led by top blockchain VC like Outliner Ventures and got a lot of help from Ryan Zurrer regarding marketing.
Twitter Session
Q1: Sperax aims to make decentralized financial services accessible to all global citizens. That includes people who have no idea about crypto nor blockchain, how easy would be for them to use Sperax?
Frida: After seeing a severe lack of user friendliness in blockchain-enabled decentralized financial applications as well as the big disconnect between the traditional financial industry and the cryptocurrency world, Sperax team believes that scalable blockchain applications should not require end users to interact with blockchain itself, while enjoying the benefits of the underlying technology.
We notice that crypto is not designed for the mass consumer groups: the complexity in setting up wallets and accounts makes it impossible to create killer apps. Due to the lack of financial infrastructure, the current design principle of public blockchains is to create a prepaid SaaS model rather than an economy that runs on smart contracts.
We see this pain point and we want to overturn it.
To begin with, crypto is difficult to integrate with the real economy: It is difficult to onboard users; the token price is chronically fluctuating; and a majority of these cryotocurries are currencies without currency features
The second inconvenience is that security and performance are hard to balance. While Proof of Work (PoW) systems sacrifice performance for security, Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus have security flaws in protocol design, since most Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) protocols are not secure under asynchronous networks
Hence our project is designed under one single principle, which is to bridge the gap between crypto and real world users. Sperac team vision a blockchain infrastructure without “blockchain”. We believe that the best blockchain applications are the ones that do not require users to interact with the blockchain itself. With our technology, Sperax guarantees security and efficiency at the same time. While holding in mind that security is the most important feature of a public blockchain compared to a centralised solution, we continue to improve on the performance of our protocol; algorithmically, the current consensus that we are using is the most efficient among BFT-based consensus.
With this vision, we ultimately hope to connect a decentralised economy with real world finance. Through partnership with regulated financial service operators and payment integrators, applications built on Sperax could be offered to end users without interacting with the blockchain directly. That would bring more possibilities for application developers to offer the best use cases to consumers.
Q2: We often hear that some Defi platforms has been hacked, talking about the quality of the Defi platform’s security. How confident Sperax to ensure the safety of financial system platform?
Frida: 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. 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.
Our current partners also include:
- 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
- A Sand Hill Road based Venture Capital: Tokenize its emerging crypto-focus fund & Integrate its mobile gaming portfolio companies on Sperax networks
- 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
our project is designed under one single principle, which is to bridge the gap between crypto and real world users. Sperac team vision a blockchain infrastructure without “blockchain”. We believe that the best blockchain applications are the ones that do not require users to interact with the blockchain itself. With our technology, Sperax guarantees security and efficiency at the same time. While holding in mind that security is the most important feature of a public blockchain compared to a centralised solution, we continue to improve on the performance of our protocol; algorithmically, the current consensus that we are using is the most efficient among BFT-based consensus.
Q3: How does Sperax compete with other popular platforms? What killer features does Sperax have in front of the opponent?
Frida: We do not see other platforms as competitors, but there are some features we have that outperform them.
- High Performance: Sperax BDLS consensus protocol requires only four rounds of communication to reach consensus, much fewer than other BFT consensus protocols
- Security: Sperax overcame the liveness vulnerability under partially asynchronous networks widespread among BFT consensus protocols, saving its consensus from being led into unrecoverable deadlocks and guaranteeing security.
- Dual coin system: Sperax ecosystem issues two tokens: SPA as the network token on BDLS and sCOIN the native stablecoin. Sperax is the first decentralised system with a native stablecoin.
- Embedded Financial Services: Sperax introduced a financial layer, including stable coin and financial products, to enable developers and token holders to create an ecosystem that connects to the real economy.
- Decentralised Governance: Sperax token holders have the right to governance. Collectively, they make the network better by contributing to the design & upgrade of the ecosystem.
- Designed by world-leading cryptographer: Sperax consensus algorithm is designed by a world-leading cryptography research team from top-ranking universities (UC Berkeley, UCLA, University of North Carolina) led by Professor Yongge Wang. Prof. Wang is among the top cryptographers in US. He has published over a hundred peer-reviewed academic papers on various fields of cryptography including pseudorandomness, fault-tolerant computation, dependable distributed computation, and secure communications. His academic achievements speak to his expertise in designing a safe, efficient, robust blockchain system.
Q4: For all SPERAX is offering, it is built on ETH blockchain which is annoyingly slow and cannot scale, why have you chosen the ETH blockchain over other Comparatively faster and Scalable chains and do you have plans for mainnet to Migrate your own Chain
Zhou: I’m a bit confused on what you said we built upon Ethereum 1.x blockchain. Sperax is a public blockchain project aiming to provide a true security under the real internet environment while maintaining high efficiency. To achieve this, we came up with our own consensus protocol — BDLS consensus and also designed a new token economics. Basically, we designs a new public blockchain specifically for financial use like DeFi. We are an equivalent or alternative to Ethereum 2.0, not a project built upon Ethereum 1.x.
But this is still a good question and if you are interested, you can dm me and we can discuss more 🙂
Q5: Is the BDLS consensus protocol more secure than other BFT-based consensus protocols, such as Cosmos Tendermint, Polkadot Grandpa, and Ethereum Casper?
Haha I dont like to critisize or comment on other projects here in public. I will tell you this way. Before Sperax, public blockchains are all designed in the simple model of synchronous network.
It is a great network model to use and designers can enjoy simplicity. However, it can also ignore significant security issue due to its simplicity.
In contrast, we chooses to more challenging job of designing our protocol under the model of “patially asynchronous network.”
In our knowledge, this model is the best one to simulate the real internet environment. Although more challenging and we have to deal with a lot of issues due to asynchronisity.
Live AMA
Q1: Why creating two different tokens in a single ecosystem and what’s the difference between SPA and sCOIN?
Frida: Sperax ecosystem issues two tokens: SPA as the network token on BDLS and sCOIN the native stablecoin. Sperax is the first decentralised system with a 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.
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.
sCOIN is fiat-pegged stablecoin issued on the Sperax blockchain. Moreover, it is the native stablecoin of Sperax blockchain. It is minted through depositing fiat currencies by users and is issued by financial nodes (regulated financial institutions with fiat custody) in the network.
There are multiple benefits introducing a native stablecoin. By providing a digital token with a price pegged to fiat currency, sCOIN could lower the barrier for users to adopt the usage of blockchain. Moreover, by partnering with licensed financial service providers in different countries, sCOIN network is able to serve a global user base. At launch, payment, global transfer and remittance would be supported for stablecoin users; however, the network will be an open platform for developers and liquidity providers to launch innovative products based on the blockchain and financial infrastructure.
Q2: Can you tell what are the challenges of existing PoS based Blockchain?
Zhou: People usually talk about scalability nowadays. But I focus more on security. People are not talking about it right now just because the scale blockchains have nowadays does not raise the interest of really malicious groups yet. Specifically, I will pay attention to DoS attacks. We found many current projects very vulnerable to it under partially asychronous network like our internet. So security will be my answer.
Q3: What differentiates sCOIN of any other stablecoin on the market? is its value publicly audited?
Zhou: sCOIN is the first native stablecoin. It is native to its blockchain compared to other stablecoins like DAI which is built upon existing infrastructure. sCOIN is fiat-pegged and its value will be guaranteed by authorized financial institutions.
Q4: DeFi is now a good form of transaction because it is not regulated by any organization or government. So I want to ask if the Sperax ecosystem can create some additional advantages for defi?
Zhou: DeFi is definitely a big focus of us. We think current DeFi has two main problems and to these two problems we give out our solutions.
The first problem is about infrastructure. Like everyone knows, currently DeFi are mainly deployed on Ethereum 1.x blockchain. Both the high fees and slow speed remain a big headache for any serious DeFi project. For example, days ago I made one single transaction on uniswap and the fee is 5 USD…it is crazy
Aiming to provide a better infrastructure, we designed our own consensus protocol — BDLS consensus protocol. It is designed in a more realistic model as I mentioned before and thus got its security guaranteed. Also, it greatly enhanced performance of current consensus protocols. So it can also enjoy high speed.
The second problem is DeFi’s connection to traditional financial world.
To address this issue, we have a unique token economics design. We add a financial layer into our blockchain system. Within it, we issue our native stablecoin sCOIN. Also, we invited authorized financial institutions and regulators to operate with financial nodes. In this way, the connection between DeFi and traditional finance will be much tighter and the transition between this two will be much more smooth.
Q5: What are the use cases of SPA and sCOIN as different tokens, what would be the benefits of holding each?
Zhou: Sperax has a dual-coin system. Let me explain to you
Sperax ecosystem issues two tokens: SPA as the utility token on BDLS and sCOIN 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.
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.
In contrast, sCOIN is fiat-pegged stablecoin issued on the Sperax blockchain. Moreover, it is the native stablecoin of Sperax blockchain. It is minted through depositing fiat currencies by users and is issued by financial nodes (regulated financial institutions with fiat custody) in the network.
Hope this can answer your question. You can also check out the econ page on our website 🙂
Telegram Group: https://t.me/sperax
Indonesia community: https://t.me/speraxindonesian
Telegram announcements: http://t.me/sperax_Announcement
Twitter: http://Twitter.com/Sperax
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sperax/
Medium: http://Twitter.com/Sperax
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sperax
Github: https://github.com/Sperax
Whitepaper: https://github.com/Sperax/docs/blob/master/Paper/SperaxWhitepaper_Aug3.pdf
Official Website: http://Sperax.io
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