We are back again hosting more Live Telegram AMA sessions for the crypto-community. This week, KardiaChain (‘Kardia’) joined us in the dbcrypto community Telegram chat on 11 May 2019.
Kardia have big ambitions, and alongside several of their unique selling points, we knew this would be an interesting conversation.
Joining us from the Kardia team:
• Tri Pham — CEO
• Huy Nguyen — CTO
AMA Question Highlights
Thanks for being here Tri and Huy. I’ve got plenty of questions for you tonight, and I’m sure the community does too.
Can you give us an introduction to KardiaChain and also tell us about each of your backgrounds, how did you come to be involved in blockchain and building this project? — Daniel [dbcrypto]
Hi everyone, and thank you Daniel for the introduction. I’m Huy Nguyen, co-founder and CTO of KardiaChain. I’m glad to be here to help clarify any questions or concerns you may have — Huy Nguyen
Thanks Daniel for having us! — Tri Pham
Tri Pham
KardiaChain is an interoperability blockchain platform, aiming to empower the blockchain industry for mass adoption. Our team is from London and Silicon Valley. Last year we relocated half of the team to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city, to leverage our local network to push for blockchain adoption in Vietnam.
Before KardiaChain, I’m an entrepreneur and startup advisor in the UK for over 5 years, working on applying new technology to a number of businesses.
Huy and I were classmate from high-school and we’re still in touch for many years although living in different continents.
Hung is another co-founder for us, working in a top hedge fund in London. We came together as blockchain industry growing but struggling to find real applications.
Daniel [dbcrypto]
I have a question on your initial vision and the goal of this startup.
When you say that your technology with Kardia empowers mass adoption, how does it?
Tri Pham
KardiaChain allows businesses and government departments to adopt blockchain more easily, which in turn brings more new users. By leveraging the dual-node technology, an organisation can build a hybrid solution on their own private chain for internal use with more efficiency and privacy, while having an option to keep specific data transparent by transfer them to a public chain.
For example, we are working a smart city project to help them build student profiles on the blockchain.
The educational department will have a private chain to manage all data.
Occasionally, they will publish the final student records, national exam results on public chain.
“For example,we are working a smart city project to help them build student profiles on the blockchain” — Tri Pham
Daniel [dbcrypto]
The private/public interaction is a fascinating application. Lots of possibilities there. That’s a good way to move into the Dual Master Node concept. From my point of view, this is the primary unique selling point of KardiaChain. This is your USP.
Overall, you want to create a unified ecosystem to foster adoption of blockchain technology. How does this dual node system address that?
Tri Pham
The dual node system use a group consensus among the dual nodes that in charge connecting a specific chain to record and validate info on both chains. This approach allows the transfer of data 100% on-chain, with no single point of failure.
Dual node provides what we call non-invasive connections to other blockchains, meaning that it requires no change for a blockchain to connect to the ecosystem. This helps us to initially build a big enough network with major blockchains such as Ethereum, NEO and Tron.
We will standardize the dual node framework as we move on, so that new chains will be able to connect to the ecosystem easily.
Telegram user dyfan210
What is the difference between dual node and cross-chain?
Tri Pham
Cross-chain is a concept referring to the transfer of data and/or assets from one chain to another. Dual-node is the Kardia patent-pending solution for cross-chain.
Telegram user dyfan210
What is your movement towards larger adoption? Specifically international recognition. It seems like Kardia is focusing on local resources now.
Tri Pham
We are already had foothold in Korea, Taiwan, and China market, dealing with multiple projects there both in crypto and traditional. Announcements will come very soon.
We initially focus on our local market in Vietnam because of the favorable conditions from government, who openly support new technology adoption (by what they call the industrial revolution 4.0), our network of businesses and strong community support.
All the applications building on our ecosystem can replicated on different markets. We will be the bridge connecting users and dApp developers from multiple countries.
Daniel [dbcrypto]
KSML. Kardia Smart Contract Markup Language. You refer to this as the, ‘ultimate tool for developers’.
How does it work?
Huy Nguyen
KSML is Kardia’s markup language to write a Master smart contract that binds and manages different smart contracts on other chains.
For example, our DEX MVP requires a Kardia Master Smart Contract (which is written in KSML) and manages 3 other smart contracts (ETH, NEO, TRX).
As you know each participating chain may use a different smart contract language and protocol (e.g. ETH->Solidity, NEO->Python etc.), KSML would need to be flexible and easy-to-use enough for accommodating all 3 at the base level.
Telegram user Mohamed Amc
After the mainnet, where is your target for adoption?
Tri Pham
Our public testnet is currently running, just not announced yet. Mainnet 1.0 will be in Q3 2019, which is quite ambitious, and that’s why we are gathering more resources and expanding the team.
“Mainnet 1.0 will be in Q3 2019, which is quite ambitious, and that’s why we are gathering more resources and expanding the team” — Tri Pham
After mainnet, we will focus on bringing the 100M population of Vietnam onto blockchain, introducing the concept of token to them.
To do this, we are already cooperating with several different parties. For example, we help the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) to build a dApp for football fans and players. In this app, we introduce football points/coins to incentivize the community. Coins can be used to rate/review/buy merchandise/donate to players etc.
This is coming together with our deal to ‘blockchainize’ part of VFF’s data and documents for more efficient data management. We leverage the players/club/tournament info from this database to attract more interactions for fans.
Telegram user Yourcryptoexpert
About about the VFF themselves? Which corner can your project help?
Tri Pham
Right now they’re still managing documents mostly on paper. Complicated relationships between these documents can simplify using blockchain as an unified database.
Each player, for example, currently have scattered data across clubs he was in/is in, matches he played in different tournaments, really hard to keep track effectively. When on blockchain, a player will have a single immutable profile to link all theses data together.
Telegram user Johnsteward
First of all, thank you for forming up a team with young brilliant minds to have these innovative solutions.
For cross platform exchange, does KardiaChain use escrow type of account to secure the fund before the transactions on both chains occur?
A follow up question: how to mitigate the risk of 51% attack? 51% attack tends to happen more frequently with the chains that do not have enough hash power.
Huy Nguyen
Yes, our DEX smart contract in participating chains serve as the “escrow account” to secure the fund and only release once conditions are met (i.e. release transactions on both side are confirmed).
For 51% attack question, KardiaChain uses DPoS BFT (vs. PoW) for both main and group consensus, therefore we are NOT susceptible to “51% attack” and “insufficient hash power” problem. Indeed, to attack KardiaChain main consensus, attackers would need to secure ⅔ stakes from our Master nodes (which is literally impossible).
Telegram user Johnsteward
According to the whitepaper, the standard/dual node can only bind to one chain at the time. Does it mean you have to manually switch the binding if needed?
Do you plan to have it automated in the future since we can’t predict the demand of a particular chain? Allocating the nodes to meet the demand would be able to avoid congestion.
Huy Nguyen
This is a great question directing to ESWIM (Elastic Sharding With Incentive Mechanism) in the whitepaper, where we explained the “what” and “how” the switching happens.
To answer your question — Yes, at this stage, our Master Dual Node can only bind to one participating chain at the time (e.g. ETH), and can decide to “switch” to bind another chain if the incentive is higher (e.g. TRX).
We don’t want to “force” the Master nodes to switch (because they may have other reasons to stick with one chain), but once we detect potential congestion on one chain, we will increase the incentives to “encourage” the nodes to switch, and maybe when the incentive is high enough to overcome the obstacles, the nodes will voluntarily make the switch. Please note that while the “decision” to switch is manual, the whole “elastic sharding with incentive” and “switching process” is fully automated.
In the future, we plan to have more mechanisms to help Master nodes in automating their decision, for example:
- Configure parameters to auto switch if certain incentive thresholds are met.
- Allow nodes to bind to multiple chains at any time.
Telegram user Johnsteward
This question is for work life balance. According to your LinkedIn profile, you are currently a Staff Engineer at Google that requires fair amount of time. There are three other members that also work for Google. I want to get a big picture how you manage and balance the work for 2 workplaces.
How much time can you dedicate for KardiaChain?
Huy Nguyen
I assume it’s hard to quantify “work-life balance” for Silicon Valley startup :)
When KardiaChain started, Thien, Nam, and myself took 6-month leave from Google to be full time developing the first framework. You can see from GitHub that it was the three of us who implemented the solution. During that time, we were able to build up the tech team that is competitive enough and share our vision to provide the much-needed help to get Kardiachain to today maturity.
Right now, we still meet daily with Vietnam team to lead the development process.
Telegram user serkhan87
Hi, I’ve got a question about competitiveness. Could you elaborate more about how your tech could excel and be unique compared to other interoperability projects like ICON or Cosmos?
Tri Pham
For business wise, we are in a different market and have different opportunities with privates companies and government bodies.
Tech wise, we can link any private and public chain (currently ETH, NEO, TRX) unlike ICON, which focuses on private networks and has only one public channel to Ethereum.
For Cosmos, they have a set of standards for new blockchains to connect to their hub, which is a huge barrier for bigger blockchains to adopt.
We are choosing a different approach. We “adopt” major blockchains first and standardize the framework along the way.
Telegram user Justin_Freeman
This question is in regard to achieving consensus and the protocol that you are going to be using.
It is somewhat of a double usage of BFT-DPoS. It seems that as time goes on the consensus protocols of choice become more and more complex and with longer and longer acronyms.
These can get complicated, so if you can, simply tell us why you’ve chosen this BFT-DPoS approach?
Huy Nguyen
Thanks for the great question!
Actually BFT-DPoS describes two different processes:
- BFT describes how to reach consensus, meaning you need ⅔ voting power to agree (vs. 51% hash power as in PoW)
- DPoS describes how we choose the Master nodes to vote and reward the stakers (vs. PoW where everyone waste energy to mine and only winner)
Deciding the right consensus model is definitely one of the most critical factor for our chain, so we pick it with careful consideration. We think that DPoS BFT model helped us achieved the right balance of decentralization (100s of Master nodes), security (⅔+ vs. 51%), and performance (5000+ tps) that fits our need.
Telegram user Justin_Freeman
Following on from my previous question, you will have a staking model where we can lock up x amount of KAI to become a validator.
What should we know about the difference between a single and dual master node?
Huy Nguyen
Single Master node only participates in KardiaChain consensus process (thus only need to keep KardiaChain ledger) whereas Dual Master nodes participate in both KardiaChain consensus, and another group consensus e.g. ETH-KAI (thus need to keep KardiaChain ledger and also observed events in ETH).
Therefore, Dual Master nodes would generally receive more rewards for their works.
Daniel [dbcrypto]
You have tentatively set a date for a token sale in Q2 this year. What will the focus of your team be after the sale is successfully finished?
You clearly have a focus on adoption; will you look to conduct more marketing, more business development?
Tri Pham
We actually will focus more on product development to deliver our mainnet, support our partners for building dApps and solutions on KardiaChain. Marketing and business development are already going well.
Daniel [dbcrypto]
Regarding multi-function dApps. This question is about your advantages in interoperability in a more relatable real-world example. In your whitepaper you make a case for a multi-function dApp, we can reference CryptoKitties as you do, however I know there are many others being built, even here in Australia.
Can you explain how your solution with KardiaChain could apply in the context of some multi-function decentralized app? How does Kardia provide any benefit for these dApps?
Tri Pham
dApps in our ecosystem can leverage the data on different blockchains. One more example is for loyalty points. Companies can provide their customers the options exchange/redeem points cross-platform.
Daniel [dbcrypto]
One last important question from me tonight, and this is always a really important question for any new project with a utility token. What is the intrinsic utility of the KAI token? Aside from as a settlement mechanism, is there anything else that gives KAI utility to holders?
Tri Pham
Dual nodes have to stake KAI to facilitate cross-chain operations and earn rewards. It can also be used in many dApps like the VFF mentioned earlier.
It’s been a great session tonight and very informative. Thank you guys
— Daniel [dbcrypto]Thank you very much Daniel! My pleasure to meet you and your dbcrypto community. Very constructive conversation. Cảm ơn và hẹn gặp lại
— Tri Pham
Website
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https://www.t.me/dbcryptochat
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Please note that some questions and or answers may have been edited to account for grammatical errors and appropriate presentation. This summary does not necessarily include all questions asked and answered during the event.
We thank KardiaChain for sponsoring this AMA session.
