Your Questions Answered — Part 2: Ivy Technology.
Click here to see ‘Your Questions Answered — Ivy Part 1: Ivy Project’
This blog seeks to answer your technical questions. We have tried to answer as many of the questions as we could with as much detail we could publicly share but understand that there are many more. Again, we aim to have an AMA with the core team on Reddit in the last week of May to further answer any questions keep an eye on our Reddit Subreddit for more specifics.
When does Ivy believe the MVP will be ready for trial?
We are rolling out different working models and testnets with various partners to explore and test different technology solutions to achieve the goals set out in and alignment with those in our White Paper. After these rollouts, testing, redevelopment and banking feedback, we anticipate the MVP will be ready sometime in 1H of 2019. As stated, before that time, there should be working models and progress made to show how key pieces of technology will work that we can demonstrate and test with Financial Institutions and key customers. We will be sure to keep the community and media up to date with respect to these developments.
Can Ethereum handle enough transactions for IVY? Would you look to move to another blockchain if required?
Our technology is chain agnostic. Our private network has inherent capability to scale, although it may never catch up to other non-decentralized competitors because we support multi-party validation through IBFT consensus which is a decentralized platform.
This is still good for the full throughput of Fedwire, ACH, and SWIFT, for example, should we ever reach that level of success. Public network transactions are limited to Ethereum throughput which we expect to be sufficient in the short and medium term (and hopefully in the long term as Ethereum improves). However, we can and will look to support other blockchains in the future to expand our product offering and capacity.
Circulation of IVYA in the payment cycle. Would I be correct in assuming that, in the majority of cases, IVYA purchased to effect a payment transfer would be available to the Ivy Network for disposal shortly post its purchase by the sender? This presupposes that the majority of transfers are completed successfully and quickly. Here I am trying better to understand likely token velocity.
IVY is not expected to be “disposed” as in taken out of circulation. Ivy treasury policy will dictate whether IVY is held by treasury or released back into the market through treasury operations. In either case, the limitation is not a technological one for all practical purposes and the token will be available for market operations shortly after a transfer occurs in the majority of cases.
Website transactions versus public exchange transactions. It appears possible that a significant volume of all token purchases in respect of payments could be made via the Company’s web site. These off-exchange transactions would likely impact on velocity of tokens traded on exchanges, by either reducing demand or increasing supply, or both. So, I’m curious to learn how price discovery will work for the token. That is, will the public exchange price(s) be mirrored on the Company’s web site or could it be that the Company becomes the token price setter?
This is more a treasury operations question than a technical one. I don’t think we’re ready to answer it because we don’t know how we will play with exchanges or whether we will try to become a market maker in the IVY FX market. You could say that we will be initially using an average market price based on trading prices on major exchanges and the trading has the capacity to technologically interface with exchanges and be near instantaneous, and/or rely on sophisticated trading algorithms to hedge risk and timing. At this stage of our product development, we are investigating, developing and trialing multiple solutions to achieve our goals. What is clear is that IVYA will have a market price dependent on the demand in the open market, which we expect in time to be driven primarily on the utility that is required for its use cases. IVYA will be critical to carrying our proprietary KYC/KYT and other data into and potentially in time, across block chains.
As far as I can ascertain, there is no staking or reserve holding requirement in respect of IVYA. Have I understood correctly?
Correct. IVYA is a pure utility token which carries our tech plus KYC/KYT into the blockchain for settlement against the Ivy private network which is staked / reserve backed (or carries other algorithmic settlement / liquidation solutions). Our White Paper has some specific commentary on the mechanism by which this is intended to be achieved, together with more information about the Ivy public and the Ivy private token.
On page 24 of the whitepaper in b) reference is made to conversion of IVYB into IVYA. Would this mean that the aggregate supply of IVYA might increase at some point?
IVY(A) volume does not change due to IVYB use or conversion, however its utility is expected to. As the IVYB network grows because of better future integration with banks and financial institutions, so too shall the utility of IVYA. IVYB is what private network participants use to prove their reserves on the private network (at the recipient’s bank or settlement clearing network), which allows them to compete for the transaction on a market and decentralized basis. IVY(A) that was acquired by the user is released into the Ivy treasury once the transaction is staked by the network participant.
What is the strategy to allay fears that the IVYB token is centralised on the private network? At the beginning, with very minimal partners, IVYB will be more centralised than XRP.
The centralized nature of IVYB at the beginning is due to the strategy of building out the platform in a responsible way that is friendly to banks. We have a stated ambition to involve as many financial institutions as possible so that the competition for transactions involving Ivy is efficient which will lead to benefits for users of all digital currencies and potentially fiat transfers that seek to build in significant KYC/KYT data. In this way, we plan to grow to be a truly decentralized network running IBFT. By way of contrast and only because you specifically asked, Ripple and its XRP platform is currently and always has been centralized, and has no stated intention of being otherwise.
Can you provide more details on the Ivy Oracle Service including who hosts it? It only has a brief mention within the white paper and yet seems to be an incredibly crucial part.
We are not able to provide more details now. The oracle is a technical function of the network, not a decider of value or token allocation. We will aim to have more information available by the time we host our AMA but even then, will depend on our CTO’s desire to release these key details to the broader community.
The white paper describes that those that wish to use the Ivy network to transfer funds will have to register on the Ivy website to register with KYC info etc. Does that not make this technology quite centralised with all the customer info going through the one company? Are you expecting to expand and allow partners to also fulfill this role?
We envision that Ivy will be one of the primary mechanisms of building out KYC and KYT data and this is more easily done via a user-friendly interface on the Ivy website. However, we note that provided the KYC / KYT data is derived from a trusted source or partner, the Ivy website is not necessarily the only way in which such information can be attached to IVA and hashed into the chain. Ultimately, the participating recipient financial institutions are the arbiters of the KYC/KYT data, and this platform is not intended to decentralize that function. We are looking to help the banks grow their business, not replace them whilst allowing holders of digital currencies worldwide a real-world capacity to interact with the global financial system using such currencies.
The information published by the company is unclear regarding ivytoken B — see the complex flowchart with no arrows and numerous lines and numbers (the reader would need to ask numerous follow up questions to actually understand it) …. When will the company provide a clear simple explanation regarding how Ivy operates so mum and dad investors have confidence in the company to invest their money?
Blockchain’s are not easy to comprehend for everyone, we like to think that we elaborated as best we could. IVYB is a token on a private Ethereum-based blockchain backed by fiat reserves. IVYB enables network participants to prove their ability to process a transaction, and once proven, they can then be selected to process the transaction. Participants stake IVYB to IvyReceive in order to prove that they have the reserves needed to facilitate settlement of transactions.
A useful example we like to provide is that there is probably only a select few of mum and dad investors who can accurately describe the complex settlement process in international (or even local) money transfers between and within banks. However, nearly all mum and dad investors hold bank accounts and can pay with them effectively in the real world. We will aim to make our user interface much more user friendly than current banking and payment platforms, and don’t consider a detailed technical description of the underlying technology will be required in most everyday use cases.
Why is there no substantial GitHub content?
At our core, Ivy is not building a community led project that lends itself to publicy reporting into a repository such as Github. We are a proprietary technology that is chain agnostic using technology that our team has developed which can be adapted on a dynamic basis as banking partner needs change.
In addition, our tech teams are not inclined to natively use git as a configuration management platform, having a preference for SVN and Mercurial on the confidential and valuable components of our technology which cannot be made public.
Notwithstanding, Ivy will endeavor to publish as much Github content as is practicable, keeping in mind our need to protect the intellectual integrity and proprietary nature of our product.
