Moonlight AMA Recap
On Wednesday, November 7th 2018, the Moonlight team responded to community questions in a Moonlight AMA (Ask Moonlight Anything) on the /r/NEO subreddit. The participants were given an opportunity to ask questions related to the project and share feedback directly with the Moonlight team. We would like to sincerely thank everyone who participated and for your continuous support towards Moonlight. This article serves as an overview and summary of the responses from the Moonlight team.
Q: What do you expect from the platform in 3 years?
Tyler Adams: In three years we would like for the platform and services to have positive net revenue. We would also like to see adoption outside of the blockchain space and a healthy community of users similar to other large productivity software platforms. We’re working on a cultural ‘bleeding edge’ as far as projects go and there are pretty strong employment trends in our favor.
Q: Hi team, Want to thank you for continuing to work hard on project. I am keen on exchange listing plans. Where are we on this? Please do not say you can’t comment on exchanges and working on it. It’s been a few months and still we are on Switcheo. Are we working on any TOP 10 exchanges without naming any specific one in general as I know due to NDA?
Alan: We are working with multiple exchanges to get LX listed in more places. And yes, we do have some high volume exchanges under consideration.
Q: If Moonlight is used to post ‘tasks’ and ‘resolve’ them. It can be translated as ‘post a job and get paid upon completion’. If that is the case, isn’t this the ‘go to’ place for any and every project to post ‘tasks’, in order to complete a project quicker and cheaper by diversifying it? In other words isn’t this the virtual Job Centre for the smart economy?
Tyler Adams: The backbone of any economy is its workforce. A strong workforce yields a stable currency (because you have an intrinsic expectation of salary), liquidity (income and consumption), and intrinsic value generation (through work produced). One of our goals is to be an enabler of building a strong workforce for the smart economy. To you comment about building a job center, this was one of seeds which started the projects. On a daily basis the City of Zion gets resource requests from projects in the ecosystem. Moonlight will build a formalize mechanism to fulfilling these needs.
Q: If the above is correct, can you explain the size of the market we are dealing with here. If this is like a decentralised virtual job centre, therefore open to the entire world for an upcoming technological revolution, can this be compared to something traditional we have now eg LinkedIn or is this destined potentially to be much more bigger? If the above isn’t correct can you still explain the size of the market?🙏
Tyler Adams: Regarding market size, we are delivering a complete product development ecosystem so anyone who is affiliated with product development is a part of our market whether they are hiring, looking to hire, or working on a project. The platform will have some feature overlap with Linkedin (you will notice this specifically with our Copernicus release), but you can think of of project as existing in the space covered by a number of different market segments. Imagine a platform that is a hybrid of Linkedin, Workday, and MS Project; All tied together by the blockchain. That is Moonlight.
Q: Very excited about Moonlight project and absolutely love the team. Thanks for all the hardwork. I have two questions:
1) I think many don’t understand the scope of Moonlight project. Can you explain your plans on expansion outside Neo ecosystem? How big is the market that we are targetting? Just to put it out there: LinkedIn brought in more than $1 billion in revenue this quarter under the Microsoft umbrella.
2) I have seen the recently released Product Roadmap and it looks very promising. Can you please explain what your new endeavour Constellation will entail? Is it about KYC and stuff when we talk about Decentralised Identity?
Travis Lin:
1) There’s more to it than building a LinkedIn alternative. And with us on blockchain, it only make sense to concentrate solving problems using the characteristics of the blockchain technology. I like to believe Moonlight (along with other similar blockchain endeavors) are tapping into an uncharted landscape. Only with enough time and effort, shall we able to find out the size of this market.
2) Constellation is a consortium initiative comprised of a number of groups in the community to deliver a holistic approach to identity in the neo ecosystem. KYC identity is a single (albeit important) component of someone’s digital identity.
Q: My question is you have made it so that the vesting period or slow release of LX tokens, to investors is to avoid a dump,thus affecting the growth of the project. But isn’t it because of the price of LX (during the sale and especially now) that average investors accumulated or can accumulate over 100k each. Therefore when liquidity does occur in the form of exchange listings, the value of the token will go up and the dump you were avoiding will actually occur on a bigger scale. A lot of people are selling at 10 cents or even maybe 5 cents. Huge sell walls will occur. How do you plan on getting around this?
Alan: Vesting was a strategy we took into account in order to reduce the influence of whales and coordinated pump and dumps, which we feel would be damaging to the average investor (especially in the first period after token sale). Anything beyond this is not in our control nor should it be. Investors should be free to buy and sell as they like, and we feel that as people use our product and gain confidence in it, the token value will rise. Our view is long term rather than short term.
Q: Out of nOS, NEX and LX, Moonlight is the most unknown project out there. nOS and Nex have legitimate hype. Where did LX go wrong, or did we go wrong and how do we fix it?
Tyler Adams: Regarding hype, I think the revenue stream for our project is probably less obvious to the average blockchain enthusiast (and we havent dont much marketing for it either). Many people aren’t aware of some of the following revenue numbers in the professional productivity space:
Atlassian: 620M (2017)
Linkedin: 1.46Bn (2017)
Salesforce: 8.38Bn (2017)
Github: ~300M (2017)
I think making those numbers more visible and understood would improve hype. I will add that we hope of first product release will also have a similar effect.
Q: 1) How many fulltime employees does the project have currently?
2) How many languages are targeted for rollout, and which ones are priority?
Alan:
1) We have 10 full time employees.
2) Our product will have an English interface initially, but it is i18n compliant, which means that you can post and collaborate in any language you like. We plan to roll out a number of languages for our interface eventually, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, and German.
Q: Ok so this may sound ridiculous but, if you don’t ask you don’t get right. Right now there are companies out there that can make apps for clients. Whether they are trustworthy or even good is besides the point. Can someone post a job to create an entire dapp for them using Moonlight? If they can then of course it will be a bigger job and therefore will require an entire team. So basically in this example the whole thing flipped. Instead of a team posting certain ‘tasks’ to help their project, it’s an individual posting an entire project to a team. Will that be possible?
Tyler Adams: That’s correct.
For example:
An entrepreneur may have a great idea without the skillset to execute. They could seed a task on moonlight for a product development lead to deliver the product to them. The resolver who is awarded that task may then use the platform to hire and manage an entire team to execute on his task.
As an alternative, you may have an organization (consisting of an entire team) bid and be awarded the task. In that scenario, they would retain all of the funds internally without the need to subcontract.
Q: 1) Noting the ICO was undersubscribed and the ultimate token cap was 1Billion. Is there a possibility of a 2nd round of fundraising after release of the platform? Or do you consider that option completely off the table?
2) Would the company ever be open to a buyout? If it ever happened. Would token holders receive proceeds from the buyout price?
Tyler Adams:
1)To prevent dilution of investor token value, we elected not to mind the outstanding balance of LX remaining after token sale completion. We won’t rule out a option of second raise, but would need to discuss the impact to the project and community. It would be something that we would definitely want community input into and would require a pretty strong justification to do so.
2) I think that depends on the conditions of acquisition (on both accounts). Internally we have had some recent discussions about this topic but ultimately the response is situation dependent. I can guarantee that the community is a strong component to all of these discussions. We view you all as partners in this endeavor.
Q: My previous comments on moonlight reddit and other platforms might have relayed my intents wrongly and most especially my wrong choice of words contributed all culminating to a bad effect on the project. My sincere apologies on that. I want to commend the team for their effort so far in ensuring things play out according to the original plan. Following already established protocols, my questions would include;
1) When is the exact period/date investors and people interested in using the platform should expect launch of the platform for use?
2) I know about NDAs but it would good if the team can tell us if the moonlight token, LX, would be listed in any major exchange without inciting the supposed exchange in any way. I would advice legal consult on this though but there’d definitely be a way to say it without any future indictment.
3) Since there is already a platform like fiverr that provides similar services, what would make moonlight different aside the fact it’s going to be decentralized?
4) A suggestion; There should be a reward for HODLERS not because they won’t benefit from sticking long enough such a great project but to encourage them and also spur their support in every way they can lay hands to help. Thank you
Tyler Adams: Its OK. I think its important for people to voice their concerns about projects and its important for projects to be held accountable to their community. :)
1)You can refer to our recently updated product roadmap for our target release information:
2) I just winked at your comment. Once meant that we have a major exchange listing in the near future, twice means that we are still a ways out from a major listing. I will add that the switcheo team has been amazing to work with.
3) Currently there is some overlap in the scope of Moonlight and Fiverr; specifically with some of the features of our Kepler release. That said, the provisioning of a verifiable resume is a powerful differentiator. Scope-wise, as the platform matures, I think you will see that the overlap between us and other recruitment platforms is actually very small. Especially by the time Galileo is released. We will be more of a product development platform than recruitment-specific solution.
4) The token model is designed to reward hodling (similar to the way you are rewarded with gas for hodling Neo).
Q: 1) If i remember correctly the token was presold to some strategic investors. Without naming names, are any of those investors employee staffing agencies?
2) What is the best way the general community can support the project at this time?
Tyler Adams:
1) Our strategic investors come from a wide range of market segments both inside and outside of the blockchain space.
2) Prior to our initial release, sharing the project concept and the business case with others is the best way to support the project. We also really enjoy engaging in relevant discussions with the community on our social platforms.
Q: 1) There appears to be many projects creating digital identity products. Why are you attempting to create your own(constellation)? Why not join an existing consortium?
2) Does moonlight plan on integrating Nel’s NNS, or utilizing nOS name service?
Tyler Adams:
A) Constellation is a consortium of neo projects which does not emphasize productization and is attempting to address the larger ‘identity’ space as opposed to a subset of it. In the near future more information about the initiative will become available.
B) Currently we are fully allocated to core product development. We may choose to adopt this convention in the future. We will not be accommodating domain squatters on either platform.
Q: 1) Does the project intend to generate quarterly reports on revenue/profit/loss generated?
2) After full moonlight roadmap rollout. Is the goal for this to be an ever adapting company? Or a fully decentralized (set it and forget it) enterprise?
Tyler Adams:
1)We have not discussed this internally, but I will add it as a topic for the team to review. We have had some internal discussion about disclosing salary mechanics for employees; but how we would disclose (and to what resolution) has not been finalized.
2) The current roadmap only outlines the major releases which we have substantially defined (in this case, the ones outlined in the white paper). I may not speak for the entire team on this, but believe you can expect the current platform (and future ones) to continue growing and evolving over time. That said, it is an interesting concept the open the entire project up.
Q: 1) What has been NEO’s biggest hurdle during development of Moonlight?
2) What has been the greatest strength of NEO developing Moonlight?
Tyler Adams:
1) Currently developer tools are still very young (specifically for things like debugging and contract auditing). Some of the community members (CoZ and NeoResearch) are working in this space, but we still have a long way to go.
2) I may be biased, but I think the community is the greatest strength. All the projects genuinely want to work together to produce a strong ecosystem. The Neo team has also been very supportive of the project which is always a great moral boost!
Q: I wanted to know if the LX token is an UTXO.
Tyler Adams: LX will use a mechanic similar to UTXO; Meaning that gas claim events are integrated over the time you hold the tokens (similar to how gas is awarded for holding neo).
About Moonlight:
Moonlight is a distributed workforce and project management platform being developed in the NEO ecosystem by a number of City of Zion members. It provides improved liquidity to conventional resource management activities by integrating ‘gig economy’ mechanics into an analytical project management platform. Tasks completed in Moonlight are published to a user’s address on the blockchain which acts as a trustless resume. The project therefore provides a public ledger of contributor work experience and a match making algorithm to effectively fulfill project needs using a global pool of qualified contributors. This data is also leveraged by the ecosystem’s project tracking and staffing tools.
For more information on Moonlight, visit the following links:
For more information on Moonlight, visit the following links:
Website: https://moonlight.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Moonlightdotio
