Recap of RightBTC AMA with Tezos
RightBTC hosted an AMA with Tezos Asia team on April 1, Wednesday at 8AM (UTC). Here’s the recap of the AMA.
Q: Hi Celine and Vincent, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
A: Hi all, thank you for having us here today! I am Celine and I help the Tezos Southeast Asia team run events in the region. Here with me today is Vincent, our senior developer at TSA.
So, Tezos is a technology that powers a distributed peer-to-peer, permissionless network. It is an open-source platform for assets and applications backed by a global community of validators, researchers and builders. Tezos is driving blockchain innovation through security, stability, and scalability. It is co-founded by Arthur Breitman and Kathleen Breitman.
Hello, I am Vincent, a senior developer from Tezos Southeast Asia! I am feeling great
I am excited to answer a few questions the community has!
Thank you for the introduction and we appreciate you all for taking the time to join us today!
So my first question is:
Q1. What are the main features of Tezos technology and what are some of the issues and pain points that Tezos tries to resolve? How is Tezos different from other similar projects?
A1: Tezos seeks to transcend the “Governance by fork” paradigm. The traditional approach of fork-based governance proposes that different visions be implemented as different versions of the ledger. The difficulty of a decentralized system to safely evolve and incorporate innovation is what inspired the Tezos project.
The Tezos protocol is designed to encourage community involvement through on-chain Governance. On-chain governance empowers all stakeholders to more efficiently and formally coordinate to reach social consensus on protocol upgrades. It is a decision-making process that takes all stakeholders’ preferences into account to better strengthen the network effect.
Furthermore, the self-amendment feature of Tezos allows Tezos to upgrade itself without having to split the network into different blockchains. The expectation of a fork can divide the community and disrupt network effects. However, with self-amendment, protocol upgrades can be automatically executed and implemented, removing a fork in the future.
Another unique feature of Tezos is that it uses Liquid-Proof-of-Stake (LPoS). It is the mechanism by which the various participants in Tezos reach consensus on the state of the blockchain. Stakeholders can participate in the consensus process in Tezos and be rewarded by the protocol itself for contributing to the security of the network
What is unique about LPoS is that it allows the token holders to transfer (delegate) voting and validation rights to bakers without giving ownership and control over the keys and tokens to the bakers. It allows holders to instantly withdraw and re-delegate those tokens and it is not the same as Delegated Proof-of-Stake.
In DPoS, the election of a fixed set of block producers is required. In Tezos, delegation is optional and their tokens will not be locked up, hence, it is called a liquid proof-of-stake. It aims to maintain a dynamic validator set that is accountable and flexible. Baker nodes then share part of their reward with stakeholders who have delegated to them according to their agreement.
To understand on-chain governance better, you can visit https://www.tezosagora.org/learn#voters--bakers or https://tezos.com/get-started to learn more about the features of Tezos.
Q2. What are some of the major accomplishments of Tezos since its ICO and what are some of its use cases?
A2: Since its ICO, Tezos has undergone 3 protocol upgrades — Athens, Babylon and Carthage. On 30 May 2019, the Athens amendment to the Tezos protocol was approved and activated — becoming the first blockchain to upgrade itself automatically without forking. Athens demonstrated a democratic implementation of an amendment on a live blockchain protocol, giving businesses and stakeholders confidence that a decentralized governance model works. Subsequently, Tezos underwent two further upgrades — Babylon on 18 Oct 2019 and more recently, Carthage on 5 Mar 2020.
You can visit www.cryptium.ch and https://nomadic-labs.com/ for more details on the specific upgrades :)
Applications of Tezos have been particularly focused on financial applications, hence many of its use cases revolve around the use of smart-contracts in financial institutions
For example, the cybercrime division of the Gendarmerie in France has been validating judicial expenses incurred during investigations and recording them on Tezos since Sept 2019. Smart-contract was designed to allow the justification of an expense without the risk of disclosing operational activities and jeopardizing ongoing investigations (https://bitcoinist.com/french-military-police-finds-use-case-for-tezos-blockchain/).
French Military Police Finds Use Case for Tezos Blockchain
Since September 2019, the French Gendarmerie’s cybercrime division has been validating and recording judicial expenses on the Tezos blockchain.
Tezos has also been gaining significant traction in digital assets, notably asset tokenization and Security Token Offerings (STOs). A STO is a representative of ownership rights recorded on the blockchain and is programmed into a smart-contract. This opens up the investment market for illiquid assets such as real estate, art and commodities and even private equities to a wider base of investors.
We also saw BTG Pactual, Latin America’s largest investment bank and Dalma Capital, a prominent Dubai asset manager making an announcement to utilize Tezos blockchain for STOs of ReitBz mid last year. The institutions plan to pipeline in excess of USD 1 billion for existing and prospective token issuances with a wide variety of traditional and alternative investments (https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2019-07-03/btg-pactual-and-dalma-capital-to-utilize-tezos-blockchain-for-security-token-offerings-stos).
BTG Pactual and Dalma Capital to utilize Tezos Blockchain for Security Token Offerings (STOs)
More recently, just this year, Tezos is also venturing into the gaming and digital collectibles industry. Coase, launched by Tezos Co-Founder Kathleen Breitman, is building a digital collectible card game — Emergents on top of Tezos and aims to easily let people acquire and swap cards that they actually want (https://www.coindesk.com/tezos-co-founder-turns-to-gaming-with-hearthstone-competitor).
Tezos Co-Founder Turns to Gaming With ‘Hearthstone’ Competitor — CoinDesk
Coase, a startup launched by Tezos co-founder Kathleen Breitman, is pushing a new way to make digital card games more fun. This sector is constantly expanding, and we can definitely see how Tezos is one of the projects that is leading the way.
Q3: Now, what makes Tezos an ideal platform for financial transactions?
A3: Tezos is a public blockchain built on OCaml, with its smart-contracts written in Michelson. Michelson is a stack-based programming language that facilitates formal verification, a technique used to mathematically verify potential bugs in smart-contracts to prove that the code works without errors. This allows Tezos to produce extremely secure institutional-grade smart-contracts, which is a significant consideration for firms dealing with financial transactions and securities.
To put it simply, Tezos smart-contracts aim to achieve institutional-grade security through formal verification.
This is one of the important feature of Tezos that makes it highly suited for financial transactions
Q4: News says Tezos offered more than $37.6 million in grant funding for the Tezos (XTZ) ecosystem since August 2019. What kind of organizations can get the funding and what are the criteria?
A4: Yes. Tezos Foundation is the body that deploys resources to entities and initiatives that will help to ensure the long term success of Tezos. The foundation is focused on three grant categories — research, education and core development grants, tools and application grants and community grants.
Let me quickly go through the different types of grants and the processes.
The first grant supports research on and education on various domains computer science such as distributed systems, cryptography, programming languages, and formal verification. These grants are allocated towards supporting scientists and engineers at top-tier institutions and organizations around the world, as well as educational programs to train future talent.
The second grant supports team building tools that will help developers to build novel applications on Tezos and contribute to the growth of its ecosystem. The Foundation focuses on programming languages and libraries, block explorers and analytics, smart-contracts development and application.
The third grant focuses on ensuring communities around the world have the support they need to succeed and the Foundation provides funding to entities who support community development, events and other outreach
There are 4 main processes.
Step 1: Applications are vetted to ensure they fulfill the Foundation’s formal requirements. Formal requirements are published for prospective applicants via a request for proposals.
Step 2: Applications that pass through the initial review phase are sent to the Foundation’s Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) for technical due diligence and evaluation.
Step 3: Applications that receive positive recommendations from the TAC complete a due diligence process before final decisions to approve, decline, or revise grant applications are made by the Foundation Council.
Step 4: Final decisions about grant applications are communicated to applicants after they are made by the Foundation Council.
The Foundation reserves the right to review the grant process.
For more info on grant processes, you can visit https://tezos.foundation/news/tezos-foundation-releases-second-biannual-update
Tezos Foundation
Tezos Foundation Releases Second Biannual Update
The Tezos Foundation is excited to share its second Biannual Update. This report provides an overview of the Foundation’s activities from August 2019…
The evaluation process for new grant applications normally takes between 6–8 weeks.
Q5: Now we know both of you guys are from the Tezos Southeast Asia Team.
What is the main focus and responsibilities of the Tezos Southeast Asia team? How does the TSA team fit into the whole Tezos operation? What are TSA’s next plans?
A5: Tezos Southeast Asia (TSA) is one of the many entities in the global Tezos ecosystem. It’s a non-profit organization based in Singapore dedicated to promote and support the industry adoption of Tezos, as well as fostering the growth of the blockchain ecosystem in the Southeast Asia region.
Our team engages key industry players and organizes education and training programmes with various local top-tier universities. Much like the goals of the Tezos Foundation, our vision is to empower entities and individuals from the region to create a robust and decentralized digital commonwealth
If you would like to find out more on the different communities in the world, check out https://www.tezos.org.sg/community/
Tezos Southeast Asia
Tezos Southeast Asia holds community programs regularly throughout the region. Join our masterclasses, events and meetups. Most of our programs are free.
Here at TSA, we identify key industry players and local projects that would benefit from Tezos technology. We have been largely focusing on adoption and promotion efforts in areas of financial services, asset tokenization, accountancy and payments. At our training programmes, students learn about numeric computations, P2P networks, distributed systems and more.
Our plans for 2020 are to continuously facilitate and push forward the goals of the Tezos Foundation within the Southeast Asia region
We are prioritizing and actively looking out for potential applications of Tezos in various industries. We hope to see more industries and individuals being open to explore such potential applications together with us. While we push for further adoption, we also recognize the importance of building a stronger network to ensure the stability and sustainability of Tezos.
Hence, we are also aiming to grow the number of Tezos bakers in the region by putting up online baking guides and webinar sessions in the coming months.
Please follow us on our social media channels @asiatezos to keep updated on our upcoming events and plans for the year! :smile:
We are also actively looking for partners whom we can collaborate with in the Southeast Asia region!
Global exposure is essential for any projects, so with this, we can see the expansion of Tezos into this region.
Q6: Also, what has been done in the Asia Pacific region for Tezos?
A6: TSA is focused on the SEA region. With that being said, we have done various community outreach and partnerships across Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia.
Excitingly, the Singapore Blockchain Landscape 2019, a joint project by IMDA and Tribe Accelerator, illustrates some of the notable entities and initiatives actively involved in developing the local blockchain ecosystem. We are delighted to see Tezos being listed alongside other public local blockchain ecosystems, demonstrating that Tezos has been recognized in the eyes’ of the Singapore government.
We have also partnered with Tribe, Singapore’s first government-backed blockchain ecosystem platform to launch training programmes on Tezos. (https://www.tezos.org.sg/tezos-southeast-asia-partners-with-tribe-accelerator-to-launch-its-first-ever-official-training-programme-with-the-singapore-government-supported-blockchain-incubator/).
Tezos Southeast Asia
Tezos Southeast Asia Partners with Tribe, the Singapore Government-Supported Blo…
TSA partners with Tribe Accelerator, Singapore’s first government-backed blockchain accelerator to launch its first-ever official training programme on the Tezos blockchain
We have also supported universities around the region like Chulalongkorn University and Vietnam National University to run blockchain educational curriculum for their students to equip future generations with the skills required for the growth of blockchain.
We have also conducted a real-estate-focused private seminar for decision makers in the Malaysian real estate industry to share on the potential benefits of blockchain technology in real estate and asset tokenization. We also did take part in big conferences such as the Singapore Fintech Festival last year, which garnered interests in the potential applications of Tezos in their respective industries.
Q7: How do we get started on baking? How much do we need? How much can we earn?
In order for a baker to stand a chance to be selected to bake a new block, it would need at least 1 roll, which constitutes 8,000 XTZ of the bakers’ own and delegated tokens. But it is recommended to have slightly more than 8, 000 XTZ because when you delegate to yourself, there is a small operation fee that you have to pay. To bake/endorse, you will need a minimum balance of 8,000 XTZ. The more rolls a baker owns, the more likely the baker will be selected to bake or endorse a new block.
Blocks are baked every minute and a baker receives up to 40 XTZ. For priority 0 baker, it will be 1.25 * no. of endorsement per block baked. For priority 1 and above, it will be 0.1875 * no. of endorsement per blocked bake.
Endorsement rewards every minute and will generate up to 40 XTZ. For priority 0 blocks, it will be 1.25 XTZ per slot * 32 and for priority 1 and above blocks will be 0.8333 XTZ per slot * 32. 1 cycle has 4,096 blocks, hence that is up to 327,680 XTZ received per cycle. A cycle normally takes 3 days to complete.
We will be sending out a ‘Guide to setting up a Tezos baker’ to those who subscribe to us! Subscribe here -> https://mailchi.mp/tezos.org.sg/baking-guide
Yes!! subscribe to us for a free baking guide
That makes sense, but what is the difference between delegating vs. baking vs. offering delegation services? How much can we earn from these?
That is indeed an interesting question, there are some differences in the rewards you are able to earn
Solo-baking rewards = 6.5% — 7% (inflation / % of XTZ staked)
If you are delegating your tokens to a baker, you will get similar yield as solo baking but at a 10–15% fee
If you are baking with own and delegated coins at 100% capacity, rewards would be around 10.5% — 12% (the more rolls you have, the more likely you are to be selected to bake)
For a list of delegation services, its rewards and fees, you can visit mytezosbaker.com to find out more
Hope that clears any confusion between the three :)
Q8: What should people take note of when choosing their baker to delegate and what should people who want to start their own delegation services care about?
A8: There are a few key factors to take note and I will list them in priority.
a. Team
b. Efficiency (you can visit www.mytezosbaker.com to check bakers’ efficiency)
c. Payout Frequency
d. Fee
e. Baking Since (the older the service the more reliable it is)
Q9: What is Vincent’s role in Tezos? Can he describe what a senior developer does on a day to day basis, and how he is contributing to the success of Tezos as a challenger to Ethereum?
Many answers can be found online, but I would like to understand the PEOPLE behind Tezos, and understand the real heartbeat of the project :)
A9: I am working on a few projects with local companies interested in utilizing Tezos Blockchain. I provide technical assistance to developers who wish to integrate Tezos.
Thank you very much for joining our AMA today. We will host more AMAs in the future.
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