Merkle Network AMA recap with The AMA Room
Transcript of Merkle Network’s AMA with THE AMA ROOM, 18th Oct 2021, 11am UTC
Merkle Network conducted its AMA with one of the most passionate communities in the crypto-verse, The AMA Room. Read the full transcript of the AMA conversation, in case you missed out on it for some reason.
Q. Please introduce yourself, your background and share an interesting story how you got into crypto
Alex: I am Alex, co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Merkle Network. I have extensive experience in working in the blockchain space. I started my blockchain journey as a lead developer for an exchange. Also, I have built some interesting products in this space including gaming metaverse, and I also worked with over 50 projects for their custom price feed bots which are still in use by AMPL, Trutswap to name a few.
Sandeep: I am Sandeep, co-founder and CEO of Merkle Network. I have worked as a lead developer in many blockchain projects before I decided to join Alex and start our own project. I worked in various domains including Edtech, Gaming and NFT.
Q. Can you share what Merkle Network is all about?
Alex: Merkle Network is building a layer zero interoperability protocol that opens up communication between blockchains and opens doors for cross-chain applications. Merkle Network’s main functionality is to connect multiple blockchains and bridge the gap between the decentralised ecosystem flourishing in these blockchains. With the growth of all the blockchains, the ecosystem is now fragmented. And there has been no way for applications on 1 blockchains to interact with applications on other blockchains. This is just limiting the adoption of the blockchains.
Sandeep: Another thing that I would like to add to this is that there is a fragmentation of assets as well. And sending assets from one chain to another is still highly centralized. When blockchains can communicate with each other then a lot of possibilities open up.
Q. How did you come up with the tech and how long?
Sandeep: The idea behind Merkle Network came last year when we were looking to switch to Layer 2 for Metaverse we were working on. The lack of a decentralized protocol which can enable applications to operate cross chain was felt and we knew that this issue is only going to be more pressing once people realise the need for interoperability with all the emergence of many new blockchains. We are looking to enable every decentralised application to tap into the cross chain features without compromising on decentralization or security.
Q. What great features are waiting for your users?
Alex: The key feature of Merkle Network is cross chain data and asset transfer.
Now with that being possible a ton of use cases can be built by anyone using Merkle Network. All the projects you see these days who are working on cross chain applications will be able to use Merkle Network.
Q. Can you share what the utilities of $MERKLE are?
Sandeep: Merkle Network uses $MERKLE token to fuel the decentralized protocol. The use cases of the tokens include:
🔹Operate decentralized Validator Network
🔹Gas Fees for cross-chain transfers
🔹Staking
🔹Token Burns
🔹Token Listing
🔹Governance
Q. When is it launching?
Alex: The protocol has already been tested and we are working for the testnet launch which is coming next month
Q. How big is the team right now?
Sandeep: We are currently a team of 12 people
3 blockchain developers and devops
2 front end developers
1 UI/UX designer
2 marketing team
4 community managers
and we are currently onboarding more people in our development, marketing team and business development team
Alex: We are rapidly growing and anyone who wants to be a part of our team and work with us can reach out to us. We are always hiring.
Community Questions:
Q. What protocol does Merkle use for cross-chain interoperability? How high is the security level? Can you explain in detail what this protocol consists of? Is this a model similar to the PUSH notifications that some platforms use to prevent users from losing investment?
Sandeep: We have developed our own protocol which will be used by other applications and products built by Merkle Network. You can check out our whitepaper which has detailed information about how it works and the security features we have incorporated to make the protocol secure.
Q. I see that Security of Merkle Network lies in the hands of Validators who are saddled with the responsibility of securing the network for decentralized assets and data transfers. So how are these Validators incentivized to encourage them to act honestly?
Alex: There are incentives and penalties in place which promote validators to be truthful. In addition to that we are working with many reputed and reliable players in the crypto space to join as validators in our ecosystem.
Q. The most important consideration in DeFi is Security, Followed closely by User Experience and Product. Would you be kind enough to reveal your plans for innovation, implementätion and deployment to achieve unparalleled security architecture, top notch user experience, and innovative product on Merkle Network ?
Sandeep: The protocol is designed keeping in mind the security needs of the blockchain applications that will be built using the protocol. In addition to being highly secure, Merkle Network is also very developer friendly and designed to be user friendly as well. Adding interoperability will not come at the cost of user experience. In fact this will be much more user friendly than other solutions proposed in the market.
Q. I observed that Oracle projects that are dominant in the market are just restricted to price feed. What improvement would the Merkle Network offer on this?
Alex: Oracle projects have become another name for price feeds but this not Merkle Network is. Oracles are just a component of Merkle Network which is used for data transfer. This data can be anything — state of a contract, data, asset lockup information etc. There is also a protocol that runs on top of oracles which enable applications to be built using Merkle Network.
Q. Do you plan an additional IDO for those who missed this one or is still analyzing the project?
Alex: You need to wait to hear about our upcoming plans. There’s something amazing cooking up at our end
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