Octopus Network Exclusive Team Interview: The Early Days of an Appchain Giant
The 4NTS Team sat down with Octopus Network CEO and Founder Louis Liu to discuss the future of Octopus Network. As the first Appchain protocol on NEAR, Liu discussed the focus of the Octopus Team, the nature of the network itself, as well as some timelines for launching on the NEAR Mainnet in the coming months!
Questions:
- It’s been about two months since Octopus Network was announced for the first time, and on NEAR Protocol nonetheless. What have you and your team been working on since that announcement?
- How does the current progress relate to the larger plan for deploying Octopus Network?
- It was recently announced that Octopus completed an impressive $3 million USD fundraise as seed capital for the Appchain network. What was the overall feedback from these investors?
- Is this funding going to help expand the Octopus team in the coming months?
- Is Octopus hiring? If so, what roles are you looking to fill?
- What areas of Octopus Network are currently under development and what areas of the network might need more focus in the coming months?
- It is mentioned on the roadmap that the first Appchain is scheduled to go live in October: Are there already projects interested in launching an Appchain? If so, how many?
It’s been about two months since Octopus Network was announced for the first time, and on NEAR Protocol nonetheless. What have you and your team been working on since that announcement?
Our team has been working hard on the finishing touches of the Stage 1 Testnet Which we have opened up to anyone wishing to test the compatibility of their Substrate-based blockchain with Octopus Network going forward. In this sense, we are still in the early days of building out the network, but we want to make sure that interested projects can get set up early on so that when we do go live, they can hit the ground running.
How does the current progress relate to the larger plan for deploying Octopus Network?
We are planning to launch the Octopus Network in 4 Phases:
- Stage 1 Testnet — (March)
- Stage 2 Testnet — (May)
- Stage 3 Testnet — (July)
- NEAR Protocol Mainnet — (September)
As indicated above, our goals for each stage are March, May, July, and then September (respectively). For the first stage — Stage 1 — there will be basic leased-security capabilities. Stage 2 meanwhile, is dedicated to cross-chain assets. Stage 3 will focus on end-to-end integration and Appchain optimization. Notably, there are already candidate Appchains working with Octopus that will be involved in all three stages of the testnet deployment.
A security and functionality audit will also be done with the release of the Stage 3 Testnet. After these stages are reached, Octopus will be ready to say hello to the world by September of this year!
It was recently announced that Octopus completed an impressive $3 million USD fundraise as seed capital for the Appchain network. What was the overall feedback from these investors?
There are two types of feedback we got from our investors. The first, comes from investors that we have known for a long time, and worked with in crypto. These investors are familiar with our past projects over the last two years, focused on blockchain interoperability and multi-chain architectures. They trust our team as a stellar group of people with serious backgrounds in technology development and a dedication to the Web3 space. This class of investors will support us in building whatever we choose to build.
The second type of investors are new relationships we have fostered with the launch of the Octopus Network. These investors understand the idea behind Octopus Network and believe — as we do — that new multi-chain networks have a huge potential to be used as a critical base-layer protocol. We both understand that the future of Web3 is being built today, and Octopus Appchains will most definitely be at the forefront of that future. I really appreciate the faith those investors have put on us, in spite of the fact we are still in our early stages of development.
Is this funding going to help expand the Octopus team in the coming months?
Yes — exactly. With resources from this fundraise the Octopus team has been and will continue to recruit talent for different teams building out the Octopus Network. While the last fundraise was only announced recently, it was actually closed in February. Since that time the team has already onboarded three members: Leo designer, Lester community manager for the Chinese community, and Aaron who is the community manager for Southeast Asia. Both of them have years of experience in crypto. We are incredibly happy to have them on our team.
Is Octopus Hiring? If so, what roles are you looking to fill?
Absolutely! At Octopus we are eager to hire excellent developers and community managers. On the technical side, we would specifically like to hire developers who already possess experience in Rust and blockchain, as Octopus Network is a blockchain-based network and our team is a Rust-experienced team.
On the community side, we are looking for candidates who have connections across the local Substrate community: The candidate should be a crypto enthusiast, and passionate about the future development of the Web3 space. Working at Octopus is very much an opportunity for self-starters. All of us work from home, and the underlying expectation is that candidates are highly motivated and already interested in the work they are going to be doing. If you do enjoy what you do, and want to be a part of a team that is passionate about Web3.0 — in building a platform for the ages, and helping onboard appchain developers — it will be a great experience and career opportunity. We take special care to offer competitive salaries and bonuses (paid in $OCT token) :)
What areas of Octopus Network are currently under development and what areas of the network might need more focus in the coming months?
Right now there are two parallel directions of development on Octopus Network: The first, is in reference to the development timeline above, which is focused on moving Octopus from Testnet to Mainnet by September of this year. The second, refers to our plan to recruit Octopus Appchains onto the network both before and after its official launch.
I personally will be focusing my attention on the second direction of trying to recruit appchains onto the network. While our team has copious amounts of experience on the development of the technology itself, it is the first time that all of us are going to be building a developer community on a new network.
In this sense, our number one priority is to team up with the NEAR Community, since we are a part of the NEAR Ecosystem and NEAR and Octopus are highly complementary to one another. On that front, we have already onboarded two community managers — in China and Singapore respectively — and we are now actively looking for the same role in North America and the European Union.
Our goal and most important priority at this moment, is to connect with Substrate developers so that they are familiar with Octopus Network and the pros and cons of Octopus Appchains as compared to other multi-chain networks. We believe the value proposition of Octopus is strong enough that they will make a thoughtful choice to join our network. We will make sure that if they choose to launch on Octopus, they will not regret their decision.
It is mentioned on the roadmap that the first Appchain is scheduled to go live in October: Are there already projects interested in launching an Appchain? If so, how many?
We have already started to reach out to existing and new projects that would be interested in joining the Octopus Ecosystem. The initial feedback has been very positive. In fact, within the first month we have reached agreements with several projects including:
Muse. Decentralized Music Sharing and Streaming Protocol. Muse facilitates transactions between creators and listeners, making it effortless for users to distribute and monetize audio content.
Discovol. Decentralized genomic data marketplace. Where a person can turn their genomic data into a valuable asset and take full control of this data by choosing to join various kinds of research projects or to get paid for the use of their genomic data.
Easydeal. Decentralized classified information platform. Anyone can post and make deals on Easydeal in a trustless way, with community governance referred to for dispute resolution. Easydeal, like many other future appchains on Octopus, runs a customized blockchain built with the Substrate framework.
Atocha. A Decentralized blockchain based puzzle game protocol. A creation of puzzles and blockchain that allows gamers to earn real money prizes for solving puzzles. Puzzles range from simple trivia, to adventure quests, to treasure hunts. This world is created by fans themselves interested in creating, solving, and monetizing their hobby. Puzzle makers and solvers can thus align according to a common set of incentives.
Based upon our team’s research and analysis of the space, it is believed that there are hundreds of Substrate based projects that are currently being developed across the crypto-verse. Since only a very few will win the slot auction to connect into Polkadot / Kusama this year, it is reasonable to expect Octopus Network to become the new home for many of these Appchains by the end of this year.
As a result, the Octopus Team is recruiting community managers from major crypto-regions while also working with different Guilds and marketing teams in the NEAR Ecosystem around the world. Follow Octopus on Twitter or Jump Into Their Discord Channel to get started!
