Iron Fish Q&A: privacy, competitors, challenges. Part 1
Lawrence Wisne: “Iron Fish has shown that we can build a really fantastic privacy protocol: that is fast, is secure and reliable.”
It is not a secret we are targeting the mainnet March 14, 2023
Phase 3 of testnet is closed this Saturday: 25 February
Despite some technical difficulties, Iron Fish had a really promising Q&A session. In its Twitter account, they told us, “You don’t want to miss this one!” I agree, and will give you the link to the official recording below. Nevertheless, I find it convenient to have answers in here. That would be an easy task to script all the session, thus I descended to make it shorter and with my own comments. Hope you don’t mind!
Hi! I am Val, and I am a business analyst, Ph.D. in computer sciences and crypto enthusiast from Ukraine. Subscribe!
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What are the key goals for Iron Fish after Mainnet?
Elena Nadolinski: “We want Iron Fish to be the Privacy platform for crypto”
In fact, Elena compared Iron Fish to https technology as a fundamental part of blockchain technology to guarantee privacy of any transactions. Nevertheless, she acknowledged that there is a “long road ahead”. Multi asset, that is being tested in the phase 3 is kind of a functionality created with that reason. Another important thing is that Iron Fish is working to have Bridges as a partner to implement cross chain possibilities.
Another step for the future, announced in Q&A is the wallet. Let’s wait for it, too!
Where do you see Iron Fish in five years?
Lawrence Wisne: “Right now, private transactions are less than one percent of overall transaction volume”
Isn’t it a shocking number?! I have written about privacy and its importance here: Why privacy matters? . It is my favourite piece of text, among others I presented in medium.
However, let's get back to the topic — the real answer to the question.
Iron Fish in five years is going to be leading in private crypto transactions. So the number that was named by Wisne on the start gets much higher. Transactions should become safe, secure and reliable with Iron Fish. This is the main plan and as Lawrence Wisne said Iron Fish is a head of it.
Will you be releasing information about Iron Fish tokenomics? What are the team, investor allocations investing periods? What is the total Supply, and what will the initial circulation supply be?
Firstly, it should be mentioned, that there is some information in white paper Road Map. But specially for you, I will put it below in the picture.
42 million initial supply
Team and investors tokens will be under 12 month lock-up and year of gradual unlocking. This way the circulating supply won’t get too heavy, and thus, everyone is sure, that the team is going to work hard nor less that these two years. But we definitely are waiting for more long therm perspective. And according to the question above — there is some plan. More details will be on the website soon.
How is Iron Fish different from its competitors projects?
Iron Fish team is focused on building the ideal privacy technology. In this perspective, Iron Fish team is working in a competitive environment, but for the mutual goal. They learn from each other and get better together.
Elena Nadolinski:: “I am actually very supportive of all the projects that were mentioned (Aleo, Aztec, Z Cash, Oasis, Monero, etc.), because they are helping the crypto community as a whole, paved the way for privacy being accepted”
However, Elena emphasized on some differences too. Aleo is more of a generic project for development with privacy features, while Iron Fish is for private transactions. Aztec is focusing on Ethereum chain, while Iron Fish is going to be multichain. In compares with Z Cash or Monero that are Silo chains, Iron Fish has more collaborative principles. Oasis appeared to be no that safe to use, as it uses Enclave technology. This technology already proved itself badly.
What are some Iron Fish challenges, and how have you addressed them?
Jason emphasized that building a new layer 1 chain is the most obvious challenge. But the team coped well with it, building smth very simple. It is true, that simple is always better, but not that easy as it looks like. That is from my own perspective (Val’s one). Simple is stable and, furthermore, it can be expanded from there. Yeah, stable fundament is a good choice. I am pretty happy with such of an answer.
As the system is distributed, the team should be very careful with every new version and every bug that appears.
Mat Geist: “Privacy is hard to get right”
Yeah, I can confirm that! Everything matters when private information is at the top priority. When you tell people that smth is private as it appears to be not — you can lose the war, not one battle.
Derek Guenther described some technical issues with their new way to make peer to peer connection possible. My blog is for newbies, so I won’t stop on that. You can watch the full video. I will leave the link below. However, he described issues that can be important if you are going to develop peer to peer by your own.
Yajun Gao: ”We are building very innovative and a unique product and there is no other. There are not many L1 privacy chain out there.”
I think, personally, that is also a real challenge. Good that Yajun emphasized on that: the team can’t find the quick answers. They create problems and fix them in a very old way:creating their own knowledge and experience. This is a science.
A lot of people in the Discord are actually wondering my mint burn and send are not being processed. Why?
Jason Spafford: “We are seeing an immense kind of load from the amount of network or the nodes online, participating in phase 3.”
Jason confirmed that there are significant issues with that right now. Moreover, if I get back to the very beginning of the Q&A session, there are few word from Jason about that too. But everything is seen and hopefully will be fixed. But here is a note: the transactions should be confirmed on the blockchain.
This is the first part of the Iron Fish Q&A session. Interesting questions and promising answers. Tomorrow, I am going to post the second one, so stay turned. (Click the link below!)
Iron Fish Official Sources:
