On Monday the 14th of December, the DuckDAO community had an AMA with Nathan Varty, Žiga Flis and Anas Sayed from SpiderDAO.
SpiderDAO — A Summary
Fair and Resilient Hardware-based DAO
SpiderDAO innovates on the DAO concept by introducing a dual-governance model which bundles together hardware and software tools with on-chain elements, providing a “whale-resistant” governance solution. SpiderDAO is underpinned by the Polkadot consensus mechanism and will utilise a network of hardware routers deployed by DAO participants as a “ticket” for election voting.
They aim to establish a new set of standards for DAOs to counteract the unfair distribution of voting power in traditional DAOs caused by large investment bodies accumulating governance tokens to buy voting rights and skewing elections for private gain.
Key Features
- Hardware-enabled DAO voting process — First of its kind hardware-enabled decentralized voting process with safeguards in place to ensure hoarding of hardware devices is instantaneously detected by the network
- Whale-resistant dual-governance model — SpiderDAO transfers the voting eligibility rights from solely the token to a dual off-chain — on-chain mechanism. This makes it more challenging for large entities to disproportionately influence the elections without incurring significant costs.
- Access to a decentralized VPN service — SpiderDAO will first be integrated with SpiderVPN, providing owners of the SpiderConnect Routers with access to a decentralized VPN service granting full online anonymity and a host of premium features.
- “Liquidity as utility” token model — SPDR token utility expanded to LP tokens enabling holders to simultaneously benefit from LP fees, liquidity mining and VPN services.
Website: https://www.spiderdao.io/
Telegram: https://t.me/SpiderDAO
Twitter: https://twitter.com/spiderdao
Medium: http://medium.com/@spiderdao
Participants:
SpiderDAO — Nathan Varty — CEO
SpiderDAO — Žiga Flis — Co-founder
SpiderDAO — Anas Sayed — CTO
DuckDAO — Limmy — DuckDAO community representative
Please note that the following summary has been edited for clarity.
Limmy
Ok guys — Welcome everyone to another DuckDAO AMA!
We are joined today by Nathan Varty, Žiga Flis and Anas Sayed from SpiderDAO.
Thank you very much for joining us today gentlemen! On behalf of the DuckDAO community, welcome to our channel.
Nathan
Hi, Thanks for having us
Žiga
Hello everyone!
Anas
Hi Limmy, Thanks for hosting us today, We are looking forward to a great AMA ahead!
Limmy
Fantastic :)
Let’s start with an introduction from each of you — tell us about yourselves. What are your backgrounds, and how did you find yourselves in the crypto space?
Nathan
Hi, my name is Nathan, and I’m the CEO at SpiderDAO. I am an experienced entrepreneur with a background in IoT Development and Operations. I have been successfully leading SpiderVPN since its inception in 2017, growing the business to over 6000 users across 18+ countries. I have been running non-blockchain companies since the age of 17, leading to over 20 Years plus experience in total. I have been involved in crypto since 2014, I was involved in some bitcoin mining then I moved over to do some Ethereum mining in 2016 the funds I made doing this mining helped to start SpiderVPN, so this would never have happened without crypto.
Limmy
Since 17! Wow
Nathan
Yes it’s been a rollercoaster of a journey but certainly enjoyed it !
Žiga
Hi, My name Is Žiga before co- founding SpiderDAO, I was the Chief Technology Officer at RiveX, where I spearheaded the development of various blockchain solutions. I am experienced in on and off-chain technologies and I have a passion for developing decentralized solutions. I got into crypto around 2015 when I mined BTCs with my dual-core CPU. After a few months, I shut it down and started researching the technical side of blockchain. Then Ethereum launched at the end of July and I started getting more into it from a technical point of view. After that, I started developing the Ethereum blockchain.
Anas
Hi, I am Anas the CTO at SpiderDAO. I have been in the networking field for many years and have already had experience in running different projects and driving them to success and I am always eager to bring the best ideas & new tech wherever I can. My time management skills got me where I am now working with market-leading clients and this makes me confident and ambitious that SpiderDAO will follow to be the next big thing. I have also been involved in different R&D projects with Hisilicon, FuboTV which are now deployed to very high profile companies. I got into crypto by chance in 2011 when one of my friends introduced bitcoin to me and how that is going to be the future just like what we did with Android since version 1.0. I have since explored blockchain technology and started trading in 2015 than mining in 2016 and I have also written some mining modules to use GPU cores which executes a lot more processing power when mining.
Limmy
Early adoption seems to be a common thread for all the guests that we have in here. I sometimes ask myself what you’re doing still working when you had access to BTC at such low prices haha
A sure sign of a driven individual(s)
Ok let’s dive right in!
Our first question:
I am currently using VPN services such as NordVPN and ExpressVPN. What is the key feature in using dVPN from SpiderVPN and why should I be using them instead of these existing services?
Nathan
We all have a drive for innovation this really is what motivates our team
Anas
The decentralized VPN increases the users security and privacy compared to using a centralized one. Additionally, we don’t make any shortcuts on speed and reliability. We are absolutely competitive in these areas and even beat most of the known VPN providers. However, with SpiderDAO we are able to add features none of our competitors can. I mean, selling your bandwidth, getting passive income and at the same time taking part in the democratic decision making process through our DAO is surely nothing we can see with any other competitor.
Limmy
I see — so this isn’t just one of those companies that are out there looking for a problem to solve by tacking blockchain onto something (obviously :P we wouldn’t have you here if this was the case haha). I’ve seen many cases a disruptor creates a token or platform just for the sake of having it on the blockchain.
I must say I used a VPN and haven’t reaaallly looked too carefully into how they are handling my data — I’ve just assumed it’s safe…
Nathan
Yes this has real use cases solving real problems and helps the open source community with our knowledge and experience.
Anas
You need to always be very careful in this current era we are living in especially when it comes to your privacy and security as spams & scams are everywhere and most centralized VPN providers are forced to give out details if the authorities requested it which is why our dVPN is there to tackle this issue
Limmy
Very true — I get nervous whenever I do ANYTHING related to my crypto. I’ve taken many precautions as well
Ok next question:
Could you please confirm that everyone needs a router to participate? What is the cost of the router and are they transferable if you leave the DAO?
Nathan
Yes that’s correct. You will need to have 1 router + SPDR token in order to take part in our DAO operations. The SpiderConnect router would cost 60$ or for free if you invested 2000$+ on our private sale. You can transfer the SpiderConnect router to someone else after resetting the device so all your details can get cleaned up so we can add the new owner details in.
Limmy
Is the transfer process complex or quite straight-forward?
Nathan
The process has been made as simple as possible, for example like resetting the router and passing to a friend to create a wallet and register it with us.
Limmy
Great, sounds simple enough
The privacy you provide can create legal problems. Some exchanges are removing privacy projects from the list due to government pressure. What can you say about that?
Nathan
Our customers privacy is paramount and we cannot sacrifice that for taking part into any exchanges and that was our rule of thumb since the beginning when we did the dVPN network however we won’t allow illegal traffic and malwares throughout our network which will be using both our ad blocking and dpi filters techniques.
Limmy
Fair enough — in this age of DEXs who even needs exchanges xD
SpiderDAO Introduces “Whale-Resistant” Blockchain Governance in an article published on the 9th of December.
This means that in order to vote, SpiderDAO members must have a SpiderConnect Hardware Router connected to the SpiderVPN as well as a minimum amount or staked tokens. Votes are then weighed by ownership of hardware instead of only taking into account the amount of currency owned by each user. The result is a “one router, one vote” system.
My question is what stops a whale from purchasing 10,000 routers and manipulating the system?
Anas
We are aware that whales/bots can buy more routers using new wallets to try and affect the governance model, but that will come at a heavy cost for adding more routers and also have to wait for a period of time deemed reasonable to the DAO. Users must have active transactions on the wallet before being able to vote to make sure bots and whales won’t get access with ease. We will be keeping a log of every MAC Address and serial number for every router we add to our inventory, this we’ll be added to an on-chain ledger or on-chain database. This will help us to identify any clone or anyone trying to spoof/manipulate the hardware.
We will also be in constant contact with the growing SpiderDAO community and the open-source community for beneficial ideas on how to make the governorate safer and more resilient to whales-resistance. If the essential data is not matched to the end-user and they try to spoof or manipulate access. There will be 3 warnings followed by a ban from taking a part in our governance model for a limited time(still to be decided). The ban time will be increased systematically based on the number of times this is identified until the customer is banned indefinitely if the infringement persistently continues.
Limmy
Right, so this is one of those scenarios where it is theoretically possible to do so, but in practice near impossible due to the difficulty in simulating many distinct users across all the devices and network activity etc.
Anas
Precisely, you nailed it!
Limmy
Ok so our next question is quite a long one
Via the SpiderMarket on the SpiderDashboard, it will be possible to trade one’s bandwidth in exchange for SPDR tokens. Will individuals who do so possibly expose themselves to legal consequences in their local jurisdiction, if evidence of a crime could be traced to their IP should a bad actor use the dVPN services for something illegal?
That is to say, in general, if a company such as a VPN or an ISP does not monitor data or keep logs on those who use their services, then there is no basis for authorities to serve a warrant or enforce other penalties; the individuals in your ecosystem, of course, would not have access to the data that they transmit, but would they be similarly protected from other penalties, especially with the greater exposure of acting as an individual rather than a corporation?
(Not that we are condoning any illegal activity of course)
Nathan
All traffic going through the user’s node will be encrypted at both ends “the entry and exit nodes” and is only decrypted at the end of the tunnel which will also go through our DNS services to avoid any requests being leaked plus our DPI filters which will be used to stop any malicious traffic like spam/portscan/DDoS going through you home network. Users will also have the option to enable/disable traffic like BitTorrent going through their network.
Limmy
So users will have the utmost security available to them. What they do with that protection is up to them
Nathan
Yes, however we try to make it as easy as possible for people of all technical ability.
Limmy
Fantastic
With online crime growing exponentially by the day, how much time and work is being put into maintaining the security of the VPN? (looking for vulnerabilities, exploits, etc.) and what type of technology in terms of security of data, does the VPN currently use?
Anas
We are using our own software firewall setup based on iptables to secure the routers and are updated regularly addressing any new reported security issue including exploits & vulnerabilities in the market and we are planning to include the latest firewall setup as a part of our cloud based infrastructure in the future which can be applied to the router automatically to keep it always safe without having to do a firmware upgrade instead.
Limmy
Thanks Anas.
For our next question, we look to the future.
What does success look like for SpiderDAO? And what is the long term vision 3–5 years from now? How will you execute on that and make it a reality?
Nathan
We will start off by deploying our solution to our already existing SpiderConnect routers in the market with 6000+ users using our VPN network and growing exponentially so we believe it will just be more successful from this point onwards with us integrating blockchain technology into the mix plus our DNS geo-restricted unblocking service & Ad blocker plus SpiderDAO operations and sharing your bandwidth with others across your home network. We see ourselves helping crypto adoption to normal non-techie home users with us extending our custom operating system to more vendors/models to take our users from thousands to millions in a few years.
Limmy
Beyond the DAO voting, one of the most exciting aspects of the project is the dVPN. While preventing data leaks similar to NordVPN seems straightforward, it also appears that you intend the dVPN to be faster than a traditional centralized VPN.
How do you intend to maintain and monitor decentralized players to offer a consistent, higher standard that is superior (or even sufficient) for high-bandwidth, low-latency applications like video conferences or online gaming?
Nathan
Yes and that’s why we were one of the first providers to adopt wireguard VPN protocol into our network and the fact Wireguard is kernel based module that communicates with the operating system user-space makes the speed loss is very minimal which we also improved using our offloading techniques to the point where we have customers who achieved around 90%+ of their original speeds when connected to our VPN network. Doing that along with our DNS unblocking and ad blocking services is making our solution much safer and providing more security while not sacrificing speeds which is the combo we are looking for for our customers.
The important points is…. its fast and secure
Limmy
That’s a pretty technical answer — I think I’ll have to do some googling after this session to really wrap my head around it haha. I can see that the important aspects are being focused on — security without sacrificing speed.
Final question before we open it up for everyone. This one is something that comes up a lot:
Most investors focus only on the price of the token in the short term instead of the real value of the project. What are the benefits for long term investors?
Nathan
Yes we are aware that most of the people focus only on the price of the token, This is why our approach to the private sale was in sort of a unique way, we tried to approach people who expressed genuine interest in the project in good faith that this would help the project in lon1g term, but long term investors will also have benefits in participation in the LAU concept & they will have access to all the extended features of the upcoming Spider Dashboard, which one of the more interesting ones will be the monetization of bandwidth that would allow you to create passive income with the help of the SpiderConnect router.
Limmy
I am really intrigued by the monetization of bandwidth features. Especially now that many online games have 100000 TB patches haha
Ok we’ll now open the chat for those that have any further questions they wish to ask the team. Thank you guys so far for the excellent answers you’ve given to our community questions so far.
Please take your pick out of any questions that are submitted and we’ll finish up once you’ve answered them or you run out of time.
To our community:
Please keep the questions nice and concise — don’t throw a wall of text at the team please! I’ll close it up again when we get a good number to choose from.
🐥
Why does SpiderDao incorporate on-chain and off-chain consensus mechanisms? What is the benefit of this incorporation?
Nathan
We will be keeping a log of every MAC Address and serial number for every router we add to our inventory, this we’ll be added to an on-chain ledger or on-chain database. This will help us to identify any clone or anyone trying to spoof/manipulate the hardware. We will also be in constant contact with the growing SpiderDAO community and the open-source community for beneficial ideas on how to make the governance safer and more resilient to whales.
🐥
There are so many VPNs that do well in the market right now, why is a decentralized VPN platform better than centralized? What are the advantages of SpiderDao VPN?
Žiga
The decentralized VPN increases the users security and privacy compared to using a centralized one. Additionally, we don’t make any shortcuts on speed and reliability. We are absolutely competitive in these areas and even beat most of the known VPN providers. However, with SpiderDAO we are able to add features none of our competitors can. I mean, selling your bandwidth, getting passive income and at the same time taking part in the democratic decision making process through our DAO is surely nothing I can see with any competitor.
Nathan
Centralised (VPN) services route all end-users’ internet traffic through a remote server(node) owned by a company (normally a centralised firm), routing all end-users’ internet traffic through a data centre. The end users Data could be checked by the company which is not provable to the end-users that this is a non-logging service. Decentralised (dVPN) services route all end-users’ internet traffic through a decentralised remote server(nodes) owned by the community. This still routes all end-users’ internet traffic through the community node. The end users Data could not be checked by the company as the node is owned by the community contributor this then provides a provable non-logging service for the end-user.
In simple terms, a decentralised VPN is run by the community, whereas a Centralised VPN is run by the Company. A dVPN will show complete transparency of the code base and will be available for full provability, and distributed nodes across the globe, enabled by the community, allow users to choose the optimal servers based on geographic location and speed.
🐥
When can we expect polkadot network to start using hardware based dao features 😁 Will polkadot mandate all voters to onboard on spiderdao first ?
Anas
That would be in Q2 2021 where our customers will start to see the DAO operations into their routers and we are working closely with the Polkadot ecosystem to achieve that. Voters can use both Polkadot or cross-chains platforms to take part into the governance.
🐥
Does SpiderDAO have a good solution to balance security, efficiency and privacy protection data?
Nathan
Anas has covered this here. We are using our own software firewall setup based on iptables to secure the routers and are updated regularly addressing any new reported security issue including exploits & vulnerabilities in the market and we are planning to include the latest firewall setup as a part of our cloud based infrastructure in the future which can be applied to the router automatically to keep it always safe without having to do a firmware upgrade instead.
🐥
How can I make money from bandwidth? What incentives will the community receive from SpiderDAO?
Žiga
In layman’s terms: You can join the DAO and set up your Router as part of the dVPN (Decentralized VPN). Others will then be able to use your bandwidth for which you get paid. Once the feature is fully developed, you will have the ability to turn your router into a node and create a passive income while you sleep. These features will be available on our SpiderDashboard.
🐥
What difficulties have you encountered during your development process? Can you say some highlights from them? What was your motivation for creating this project?
Anas
The main difficulty we can say is the challenge to make it as easy as possible for our customers to do use our routers and coming into the blockchain world the challenge would be how to make DAO & wallet operations in addition to our next features going to be added the easiest possible for our non-techie users.
We believe in everyone’s security and privacy and having services without any restrictions and that what’s the free world and internet is and we have seen many customers along the road disadvantaged getting in touch with their loved ones for example cause China didn’t allow something or cannot make a WhatsApp call cause the providers didn’t allow it and that’s where the SpiderDAO great power comes from to make your life easier and safer.
🐥
Many crypto projects are often attacked by hackers. How can you ensure SpiderDAO has strong security and privacy to prevent hacker attacks?
Anas
Our data security and encryption is the highest priority for all of us here at SpiderDAO — we care a lot about this and [this is why] we have deployed many aspects like the ad blocker, strong firewall & dpi filters to make sure our customer’s internet safety and security are secured with our always evolving features
🐥
Great user experience is important to all customers, what solutions does SpiderDAO have to improve user experience?
Anas
We have a group of beta testers ranging from completely non-techie all the way to very techie customers to help us get the best UX experience for our customers. We are planning to expand that group to include our interested community members to be an active part of our future development plans and be hands on on the features we are going through our roadmap and beyond
🐥
How secure is the company financially?
Nathan
We are very secure! while this is an ongoing project with many R&D modules to be implemented and that is costly when you work with the best development teams. When it comes to our tech we don’t want to make any compromises as a truly unique experience with your home network is our highest goal.
Additionally, our target group are end users and we don’t have the intention to ever charge high subscriptions fees. To stay competitive, and increase the market share in our niche, we will have significant marketing spendings. We are pioneering in our niche but pioneering means nothing when you are not on the radar. To put us on the radar of everyone, we simply need significant funds. I want to emphasize that we did not randomly choose the fundraising amount but in coordination with our development and marketing team.
Limmy
Ok guys I think this is a good place to end this session.
Thank you guys so much for your time today
I look forward to sticking it to my ISP and their $&@)&$ing data caps haha
Anas
Exactly haha, We are looking forward to setting everyone free from ISPs and countries restrictions while being safe!
Nathan
So I want to thank you guys again for hosting the AMA with us. To join the community and benefit from our ecosystem, I would like to invite everyone to our channel https://t.me/SpiderDAO where we will later on announce the winners of 3 best asked questions from the AMA who will receive a free router!!
Anas
Appreciate it and thanks to the whole DuckDAO community for taking part in our AMA. We look forward to you joining us on our journey!
Limmy
Yes — make sure that you guys all join the SpiderDAO TG channel!
DuckDao Details:
Telegram Channel: https://t.me/joinchat/It2yDE3QPPTw9JLLMHLXKA
Website :https://duckdao.io/
Twitter :https://twitter.com/dao_duck
Medium: https://medium.com/@duckdao
