On July 15 the Idena team hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) in Idena’s official Telegram chat. Here is the AMA transcript.
DEVELOPMENT
What is the main use case for ETH Relay? Can Idena Ethereum Relay be used for listing Idena coin on IDEX or similar ethereum-based DEX exchanges?
The core of the Idena network is a registry of validated identities. Idena Relay is a mechanism of transferring this registry to Ethereum. This is not related to the DNA coin relay. The goal of Idena Ethereum Relay is to enable Idena accounts to be used in Ethereum smart contracts.
Do you plan integrating DNA with the Ethereum network thus allowing DNA/ETH pairs? Is it technically feasible?
Technically, this is possible. However, this may be too expensive for practical use. We are ready to support developers who take on the challenge to implement such a peg.
Could Idena be like Ethereum where developers can make their tokens like ERC20 or smart contracts?
We believe that smart contracts in Idena have greater potential compared to Ethereum. There are two reasons for this:
- Firstly, as all validated participants are miners, they will be able to freely use smart contracts on Idena because, unlike with any other blockchain, they do not need to buy coins to pay gas.
- Secondly, Idena smart contracts will be able to receive information from the outside world through decentralized Oracles. Each validated participant can be selected to perform the Oracle function in order to validate a certain fact (evidence, value, etc.) needed for smart contracts. Oracles will receive rewards for the correct confirmation of facts and bear the risk of losing a deposit in case of providing incorrect data.
However, we set limits for ourselves. We want to keep the minimum requirement for the hardware where the node can be run at the current level (an average laptop) in order to avoid centralization.
Do you follow AI developments? Do you have knowledgeable people in this field? Are you confident that AI won’t be an issue for some time?
Yes, we closely follow progress in this sphere.
To confront AI successfully, several conditions must be met:
- The maximum number of flips must be original and not following known patterns (for example,‘car accident-hospital’ or ‘robber-prison’).
- It is desirable to use hand-drawn pictures or collages of Internet pictures
In order to ensure flip uniqueness during validation, participants check the relevance of the flip to both keywords. However, there are often unreported flips that are relevant to just one word. Such flips usually follow a simple template and should be penalized. We plan to improve the reporting system:
- To motivate flip reporting by paying extra rewards only to those participants who report exactly those flips that other participants will report.
- The number of flips that can be reported by one user during a validation session will be limited, so the user has to decide which flips to report.
In addition, increased rewards for flips created using collages will also be introduced. During the long session, automatic scoring of used images will be performed.
Can you describe the process of verifying transactions in the Proof of Person algorithm and how does it connect with the “mining” option in Idena.
Every validated participant with the “mining” flag activated has a voting power in the network to produce and validate blocks. Randomly selected participants generate block proposals and broadcast them into the network. After that a random committee is selected to reach a consensus about whether to include a proposed block into the blockchain.
What programming language is Idena using?
The Idena node is built on Golang.
VALIDATION
Validation ceremonies seem weak and unstable because of bugs/failures in the network. How do you view the issues with stability?
This is what we are constantly working at. The Idena development is still very active and any user should be aware of the experimental stage we are now at. Recently the validation ceremony protocol has been significantly improved. Unfortunately there are still some issues that we are not able to reproduce in our testing environment. If you’d like to help us to improve the protocol please submit the issue with log files on the Github once you have problems with validation.
We see that load on the network is huge before validation and bootstrap peers are becoming a bottleneck for some users. Is it possible to share the peers in a secure way to address this issue?
The Idena node uses IPFS peering for connection with other nodes. We do not manage IPFS peers discovery algorithms. IPFS is trying to connect to 5 new peers every 15 seconds. If another peer has reached the incoming connection number limit it won’t let you connect. Every 5 minutes one randomly selected connection is dropped to allow others to connect.
Adding a peer manually won’t help much to people that have issues with peers discovery. Normally, it takes several minutes to find peers even if ports are closed.
The fact that we can’t miss a validation session without penalties will in my opinion slow the mainstream adoption. Is there anything you plan to change?
No, we are not planning it. Cryptoidentity dies if it is not validated. If you abandon this principle, people will be able to create sybils.
We would like to know the reason behind having a specific definition or an abstract synonym for keywords instead of the most common definition of the word. Having strict rules makes it difficult to create flips out of it and increases the chances that they are strictly judged against the given definition.
The more different specific words, the more diverse the flips are and the more difficult it is for AI to correctly guess them. We do not want flips to be of the same type because this affects the network security.
Some people are successfully running 2 Human nodes. Is this a massive problem? What’s your opinion on that issue?
The Idena cryptoidentity is semi-unique, it is hard, but possible to get 2 identities. Sustainably having 3 or more accounts is impossible for a human. We do not plan to address this issue (for example by increasing the number of flips for the short session or decreasing the time of the short session) as it might prevent some people from successfully running a single node.
SCORING
Do you have any plans to modify existing scoring criteria and implement something like a score based on the latest 5 validations or calculated as a trailing average for the last 5 epochs?
Yes, we plan to change score calculation and use a trailing average based on 10 latest validations.
Is it a good idea to consider flips quality while calculating the Total score?
Since the flip quality score does not tell whether the address is a human or a bot, we do not consider it for identity validation. Bad flips are penalized instead.
FLIPS AND REPORT SYSTEM
We are glad you listened to the community suggestion in the last AMA to decrease the report barrier and we saw it having its effect in cleansing out bad flips from the network. What are your plans to improve the report system?
We do not plan to decrease it further yet. We rather believe that the reporting system can be improved by adding rewards for proper reporting and limiting the number of flips that can be reported.
Network participants have to agree which flips are bad. First of all, flips must comply with the given pairs of keywords. It’s a clear criteria for reporting.
What according to you are the ways to prevent “report all” movements from happening? Can we use reported flip rewards to tackle this problem in any way? Have you considered burning reported flip rewards? It would decrease flip rewards by ~10–15% but it would prevent misguided “report all” movements from forming.
Rewards for the reported flips are to be distributed among the committee members that reported them. Limiting the number of flips that can be reported would make people choose which flips to report.
During the last few validations, many people did not get rewards because one of their flips was reported. What is your response regarding this?
If users make flips relevant to 2 words they will hardly be reported.
What do you think of “done for you” flip creation services, and how do you plan to address the issue when it’ll come to light? This is an attack against the whole concept. Are you actively checking such services do not exist already, and ready to act when they become public?
We have an idea how we could penalize compromised flips and to give a user an option not to create flips but to buy them — to buy a right not to submit any flips.
REWARDS & PENALTIES
Rewards are one of the reasons to attract many users to the Idena Network. It looks like the current invite distribution is concentrated in the hands of best/fastest flip solvers but not best flip makers. Do you plan to include this as a criteria while distributing invites?
Invites should be received by humans, not bots. Since the flip quality score does not tell whether the address is a human or a bot, we do not consider it for invitation distribution. Bad flip makers are already heavily penalized, as they don’t get their invitation reward.
The current invite distribution system seems to clog the network growth. Can we give 1 invite each to all identities with status Verified or higher and make invite rewards for Humans 1.5x the rewards for Verified identities?
The invitation distribution system is to be changes as follows:
- Humans will get 1 invite starting from those with the highest score
- The remaining invites are distributed first to Humans (1 to each account) and then to Verified starting with those having the highest Total score.
As a result, Humans with a low Total score will probably get at least 1 invitation. Verified accounts might get invitations only if there are invitations left after all Humans have received 2 invitations each.
The targeted number of invitations in the network will be calculated in the same way as it is done now: 50% of the network size after each validation (Idena foundation invitations remaining extra).
What is the reason behind imposing mining penalties?
When you go offline you need to tell the network about it. If you do not do it, the participants remaining online are waiting for your votes while confirming blocks. If there are too many participants who do not vote because they are offline, mining process might get stuck. This is why the offline nodes are kicked out of mining when inactive for more than 1 hour. The mining penalty is just an economic incentive to make miners go offline properly. In addition, this motivates people to check from time to time whether their nodes are online.
ROADMAP
When do you plan to apply sharding?
We’ve started Phase 1 development for sharding. Phase 1 enables sharding for peering and the validation flow. However, before we apply sharding we have to make the validation flow robast for the single network. The ETA is Q4.
When can we expect to see governance implemented by Idena developers, and can we have more details and ideas about that topic?
We plan to take the first step to governance when the network is able to perform seamless activation of hard forks in such a way that a hard fork only happens when the majority of the network is ready for it.
We consider this a basic level of governance: each participant has the right to download or not to download a certain version of the node. Launching a certain version of the node is essentially a vote for it.
A new node version sends a signal that the node is ready to upgrade. An actual transition to the new version takes place only when the majority of the network signals readiness.
We plan to use the seamless hard fork activation approach to switch from the current experimental mode to the mainnet in Q3.
Which big features are your main priority now? When are you planning to release them?
The most important ones are the following:
- Sharding Phase 1: Q4
- Oracles voting: Q3-Q4
- Predefined smart contracts: Q4-Q1
We would like to know what items you are currently developing at the moment. Can you share a small to-do list with the community?
Currently we are focused on the following items:
- Validation flow improvements, load testing
- Protocol changes: Reporting system, Identity scoring, Flip reward system
- Extending the node API to enable building Validation-as-a-Service apps on top
- Predefined oracles smart contract integrated into the protocol and UI for the app
When do you plan on releasing a more technical white paper?
We don’t have resources to do this in the near future but will be happy to support anyone who is ready to lead the creation of such a document.
Do you think Idena could help to solve the oracle problem?
We think the Idena network is essentially a ready-made network of oracles. Oracle is one of the key use cases both for Idena and DNA coin utility. Since the registry of validated participants is available only in the Idena blockchain, confirmation of the outside world information by Idena oracles can only be bought for DNA. We are working on a smart contract built into the protocol that will provide:
- Submitting the oracles smart contract with a question which the oracles can answer if they consider it to be understandable and the reward for it to be sufficient
- Freezing rewards to pay oracles after the voting
- Forming a random committee of oracles (oracles are not known until they vote)
- Secret vote of oracles (no one sees the vote until the vote is over)
- Oracle deposit blocking (the deposit is burnt if the oracle does not vote like the majority)
Do you think of other unique ways to leverage cryptoidentity besides oracles and advertisement (lending services, etc)?
Lending guaranteed by an identity stake is an interesting idea.
Can we fork Metamask wallet and use it for idena?
This requires a centralized API similar to Infura. We are working at providing a node API for such kinds of solutions.
The last hackathon was a great initiative to showcase the use cases of ‘Sign-in with Idena’. We were glad to see some websites come to life. Do you plan to have a new bounty and hackathons in future?
Yes, we plan to have hackathons in future. We are open to new hackathon themes: If you have any ideas, please share them with us. We will also be happy to get help in organizing and conducting such hackathons.
We believe Idena has some great potential use-cases in future. But, at the same time, do you have enough resources to implement sharding, messenger, mobile app, dex etc. Any plans on adding more devs to your team?
Of course, all this cannot be implemented by the Idena core team only. We look forward to the growth of the ecosystem and the emergence of new developers willing to build applications leveraging cryptoidentity.
VOTING
Votes are crucial in making critical decisions. And thanks to ‘Sign-in with Idena’ hackathon, we now have some working solutions to actually use them. But to really engage everyone in the voting process. What are your views on integrating the community vote functionality directly inside the client for such “important” votes?
This will actually be part of the oracle-based voting. Important community votes can be run based on the orcales smart contract. We plan to have a dedicated form for that inside the Idena app.
BUGS
We know that new features always come with new bugs. But can we have a faster way to send bugs and logs? Maybe directly from Idena client. It’s easy to analyse the problems people face this way.
It is possible. We have it on our to-do list, but it is a low priority task. We’ll be happy to support anyone who would like to contribute to the development of the feature.
Can we please have closed community testing of Idena client/node before the main release to tackle bugs before they hit a bigger audience?
Yes, we plan to do testing of critical Idena app changes in the form of a pre-release. Most node changes usually require a simultaneous update of the entire network.
CLIENT FEATURES & UX
Are you thinking of implementing the choice of setting up a security code to access the Idena client?
We have it on our to-do list, but there are more urgent tasks there.
Can we expect Dark theme for Idena Client?
Also on our list, but it is a low priority task. We’ll be happy to support anyone who would like to contribute to the development of the feature. Here is the corresponding branch for that.
Reaching out to new people seems to need a wallet for iOS and Android smartphones, is this part of the Idena road map?
It’s in our roadmap but we are fully loaded with the core development. In order to speed up the development of mobile applications, we plan to hold a series of hackathons.
MARKETING
Idena Twitter Raffle was a good start in pulling the active Idena community to do some noise on twitter. Do you have plans to more actively and formally market Idena?
Let’s get it started. We are about to publish our vision of how we see Idena marketing and community management moving towards decentralization. All initiatives are welcomed, let’s join the community forces.
Are there any plans to have a figurehead for the project? A face that will show up to conferences and meetups, but not necessarily a developer.
As Idena is an open source project, anyone from our community can speak on behalf of it. We had successful examples of our community members representing Idena: Supriyo Roy taking part in the RadicalxChange Conference and Adli Bataille presenting Idena’s challenges at the GitxChange Hackathon kickoff. The Idena team is open to your initiatives: If you have experience in public speaking, if you know a great event happening online or in your location and would like to participate please reach out. We are ready to provide education and materials and to reward your effort.
Do you consider making some marketing articles with Cointelegraph, Decrypt, Coindesk or other crypto news?
We would not like it to be advertising. It’s always better to pitch journalists to get free coverage. If there are journalists in our community feel free to reach out to the Idena team to discuss possible topics and get extra information. If you know influential reporters that could potentially be interested in covering Idena, pitch them directly or introduce the Idena team to them and get a reward when a publication is out. The team is open to their questions.
Do you plan running a signature campaign on Bitcointalk forum? Maybe, use Foundation funds to run it every month?
There has been a suggestion from an Idena community member to run it on behalf of Idena. We are working at it and hope to run it in the near future.
Do you have any ideas how to make the Idena community more active? Only small percentage of people are voting and even less people have constructive suggestions.
Voting is work. You need to understand what you are voting for. Often it takes time to become an expert in a certain question. Perhaps, for people to vote on issues that are complicated for them, they need to be paid for their work. Obviously, to pay the vote of the entire network is not an effective approach. However, it is possible to form randomly selected committees whose voting will reflect the opinion of the network. We believe this approach could work. We have to try it out.
EXCHANGES
Where are we on the talks with Tier 1 exchanges?
No big news yet. We have held a series of negotiations with several top exchanges and are looking for cost optimization options. In parallel, we keep investigating various other listing options.
Which exchanges do you consider as “Tier 1 exchanges”?
Top exchanges from this ranking.
During validation time, exchanges have to suspend deposit and withdraw. Is it a drawback for DNA to get listed at bigger exchanges such as Binance?
We don’t see any risk here. There is no need for an exchange to suspend deposits and withdrawals.
The vesting period of 2,355,000 DNA expires August 31, 2020. Will a higher liquidity exchange like bittrex, hotbit, hitbtc etc be available to insulate DNA value from this large sell pressure. Do you have any alternative plans to extend the vesting period or open up OTC channels as a measure to avoid sell pressures on existing low volume exchanges?
The early Idena investors believed in the team and this is the vesting agreement we decided on. They see the project’s progress, believe in Idena and are not going to sell off. We have no reason not to trust them and change the agreement.
We believe that only use cases in the form of unique services that the Idena network can provide for a fee could compensate the pressure on the market. For example, oracles could be such a use case.
Why do you seem so distanced from price action? Price is what decides if a project is successful or not. You can have the best tech, but at a low price no one will know about it or use it.
We cannot and should not influence the price.
MISCELLANEOUS
Is it possible to punish an account for stealing coins?
A rollback is impossible as the coins may already be sold at an exchange.
Why have you never done AMA in other crypto groups? Isn’t doing AMA has a good impact? Many people will find out about Idena.
Let’s consider that!
So far, what kind of partnerships did Idena build? Does it affect the growth of Idena? Will Idena have partnerships which might have an impact on its growth?
We partnered with other projects for events, but nothing else. Any ideas? Feel free to suggest.
We are curious to know if Andrew’s account in Telegram is accessible from Andrew alone or everyone in the team has access to it?
@AndrewIdena is an account of an Idena team member. A few other team members also have access to it.
