Friday's AMA was another stacked affair. With 100's of questions to get though, we didn't manage to get to them all in the two hour session. Those not covered this time will be picked up in the next AMA.
Knowledge
Last Updated:
September 2019
Joseph Denne: ERC-20 is not of particular value to us as things stand. We've explored a lot of alternative options on this front, including Binance DEX (which we've tested extensively, and which we rate highly). Key is understanding the requirements that exist within the network. In summary these breakdown as follows (in no particular order):
It would also be great to be able to operate on a feeless footing. Anyway, we have a clear view on the future of the platform in relation to chain requirements and the direction of travel. I can't say much more than that right now, but we will be releasing a lot of additional information toward the back end of the summer/early autumn.
Arthur Mingard: Whilst it is true that an Attestation server is required, it doesn't necessarily have to be Intel. In 2018 Intel released a whitepaper for the support of third-party attestation. With the introduction of a trust mechanism there is the potential for a decentralized approach which is what we are currently working towards.
Arthur Mingard: We actively encourage attendance across a variety of events however the way in which each engineer keeps their knowledge current is entirely up to them. Working remotely means more flexibility, increased job satisfaction, and improved mental wellbeing. We're a team, we rely on each other to progress, so it's fairly obvious when someone has taken their foot off the gas. This is extremely rare though and we usually find ourselves encouraging peers to take a break!
There are no requests made directly to a Host. This was a key part of the network design which allows Hosts to operate behind Firewalls. All requests are outbound, via GRPC.
Joseph Denne: We plan to build local sales and partnerships teams in each of our key target markets. Marketing efforts are global, with tailored messaging for individual markets. PR is being localized.
Joseph Denne: The best case would be the back end of 2019. Industrial design and POC is complete internally, but there's a lot more to do to take it to production and our timings are not yet set. We'll share more as soon as we can though.
Joseph Denne: Probably not. At least not quickly. There is a lot of commercial sensitivity around infrastructure, which is likely to prevent this level of transparency. However, it may just be a question of scale: at a point the batching of transactions may allow enough scale to effectively hide the scale of individual customer operations. This is something we'll return to and review in a few months.
Arthur Mingard: SGX can be used on any machine with supporting hardware so Gateways and Stargates can run in a secure enclave.
Arthur Mingard: We're spending a lot of effort exploring blockchain technology and looking at what can be done to more efficiently and transparently store network activity, and doing so in a way that enables faster - and cheaper! - payouts. Our biggest challenge remains security around self-onboarding, but we've made huge strides on this front in the past month.
Joseph Denne: Specifically, as I covered in last week's update, we've been working with Vault for the issuance of individual machine authentication codes, a setup that enables node access revocation without impacting the broader network.
Joseph Denne: What prevents Amazon/Apple/Google/Facebook from doing anything that any other company does? Should all businesses pack up and go home? Obviously not.
Fundamentally our proposition is designed as a counterpoint to the centralization and control of these mega corporations. And of course, the same question was asked of those very companies in their start up phases.
Size isn't everything. In fact, beyond a certain size companies slow down and find it hard to change. Look at Google. It's getting increasingly hard to argue that they are still a technology company that's interested in R&D. Buying other companies!= R&D
Joseph Denne: Liquidity is important to us as access to tokens is central to the performance of the network (for both usage and consumption of services). Availability on exchanges is something that we monitor and spend a fair amount of time on, and there is a strategy behind this. I can't say more than that at the moment.
Arthur Mingard: This is something we would like to offer. Encouraging the development of alternative interfaces and integration into third party monitoring services would be a great way in engage more in the networks goal to be open and transparent.
Joseph Denne: Volatility in the cryptosphere in general poses an issue for the industry as it drives misconception about the maturity of the underlying technology. However, volatility in token value has no impact on our business in terms of customer onboarding, so it's not a major concern right now. What seems likely is that if we are able to continue to drive growth in the network in terms of scale and adoption by customers, is that the token value will increase first to reflect the value of the business and then to reflect the potential of the platform and the size of the market that it is helping to define.
Joseph Denne: Yes, we know who is performing the audit. It was pitched as a technology due diligence report for our community, and to this end is being produced by an impartial third party with solid technology and IP experience. I don't have a handle on timings yet as there are some complexities to overcome – how do we publish a technical report in such a way that it doesn't damage the IP protection process currently in process for example – but it will be sooner rather than later.
Arthur Mingard: One is the addition of third-party hardware to the network and the other is the rental of hardware currently maintained by the core team.
Joseph Denne: Conversion happens at the point of charge. And earnings are calculated at the point of processing.
Joseph Denne: Yes, there is - we have a full rollout plan: we'll be sharing the direction of travel with you all in the next week or so, and the design work itself soon after that.
Joseph Denne: It's workable for now, but ultimately, we want to get as close to real time payouts as possible, and this will require fee free transactions.
Arthur Mingard: Varying, but in the same ballpark in terms of power.
Joseph Denne: We've done a few of these in the past and plan to do so again. I'm not sure of the when of this though, but we'll keep you posted. We're also considering consolidating to a single channel for the regular AMAs, perhaps to Reddit to aid accessibility. Would be interested in your thoughts on this front.
Arthur Mingard: I know next to nothing about Ankr apart from what is on their site (which seems thin on detail). They appear to be focused on the creation of a marketplace for spare capacity at DC level. I can't comment much further than that I'm afraid.
Joseph Denne: For Founding Nodes, no, as they are the foundation of the network designed to provide enough baseline capacity for the mainnet to bootstrap itself. But overall, we see dedicated devices as making up a small percentage of the total device set in the network. The primary focus is on unlocking the idle capacity in laptops, on mobiles, in set top boxes etc.
Joseph Denne: It's largely hidden from customers as most are not involved in the cryptosphere. That said this is starting to change and we have had some really engaged customer discussions around crypto. And you know what, when they get their heads around it they are really excited by the possibilities – we've had some start to explore how they could use the blockchain in their own offerings as well.
Joseph Denne: Currently all hosting fees run back to the network. It is the intention that everything that happens around the Edge network will return to the network, which will ultimately include support/consultancy services. When this cross fade will complete is not currently defined.
Joseph Denne: Yes, we've considered it. They're very different channels and experiences though. What do you think?
Arthur Mingard: The explorer list is heavily cached so it's likely that the device was temporarily offline at the point the data was captured. How this affects earnings depends on how long it was offline, which sounds like it wasn't long at all.
Joseph Denne: The concept of an Edge Compute Unit is something originated here. We needed a way of measuring the relative power of machines contributing to the network. They are benchmarked with the Founding Node as the baseline. We are working to define the boundaries of edge networking, and are setting our own language as the first stage in that process.
Joseph Denne: Fiat to token conversion will be automated, making use of the APIs provided by our exchange partners. Payouts are being fully automated with the intention of getting to as close to real time as possible.
Arthur Mingard: If you take a look at the real performance of an EC2 instance for example a t3.small, they're pretty comparable. The reality is, when you pay for cloud resource you tend to get a bit of fluctuation in real terms performance, and you pay a lot for very little. These overheads and excessive costs come from the fact redundancy has to be accounted for. A warehouse of machines still needs maintenance and security no matter how much is really being used. These factors mean that by the time you get to paying for a machine as powerful as even the older generation RPi, you're paying a good deal more, and the pricing vs machine performance is intentionally lacking in detail.
Joseph Denne: Network pricing is tied to $ USD value at the moment, as it is currency that is understood well by our target customer base. Payment is taken monthly in arrears. This means that the value of the token doesn't really matter, as there is a Fiat>Token swap at the point of charge, and earnings are calculated at the point of use throughout a month.
Joseph Denne: Nothing is planned on this front at this stage. But we're going to be maintaining the Founding Node programme, so never say never!
Encrypted traffic across the internet is of fundamental importance to our collective and individual security and privacy. Here CTO Arthur Mingard talks about the approach taken in the Edge network to ensure security in data transport.