Oasis Network & Conflux Network AMA Recap (27th January 2021)
Community Translations: French | Filipino
Dear Oasis Community,
Today we have a new partnership agreement that we are excited to announce. You can find all the details about the partnership agreement between Oasis Network and Conflux Network here. In addition, after the announcement, an AMA was held in the Oasis Network Telegram group with the participation of Conflux Network on 27th January 2021. We wanted to share this recap with you for those who missed the AMA.
Jon Poole: Hi everyone and welcome to our AMA! Today we’re joined by Geoff Le Fevre, Lead Researcher & Ecosystem Manager at Conflux Network. We recently announced that the Oasis Network and Conflux are partnering to bring Oasis’ privacy-technology to the Conflux Ecosystem. You can read more about the partnership here: https://medium.com/oasis-protocol-project/conflux-network-and-oasis-foundation-to-enable-private-data-ownership-for-participants-8c8259f97187
We’ll start with some questions and then open it up to the community!
🛑 Please remember that if you can’t be nice you’ll be given a small time out. 😉 🛑
Jon Poole: Welcome Geoff! And thanks for joining us for this very special AMA. Could you start by introducing yourself and telling us a bit about your background in the blockchain space?
Geoff Le Fevre: Thanks Jon, great to be here and meet the Oasis community! My name is Geoff and I’m the Lead Researcher & Ecosystem Manager at Conflux Network. My first intro to blockchain was reading the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2008 right in the middle of my economics degree and I was hooked.
In between then and now I explored the convergence between AI and blockchain at a startup and most recently before joining Conflux I was an Associate at Outlier Ventures where I worked in the crypto economics practice and helped write the first business process book on how to design a token economy which we received the Blockchain Research Institute’s award for New Frontier in Enterprise Blockchain Research in 2019.
I think one of the things that really excites me about this space is its ability to attract people from all around the world and from all walks of life. Blockchain is truly unique in its ability to bridge and connect communities.
Jon Poole: Can you give us background on Conflux? How did it get started, and what are the goals of the project?
Geoff Le Fevre: Conflux Network originated in the research lab of Turing Award recipient Dr. Andrew Yao., who developed a breakthrough ‘Tree Graph’ consensus mechanism that optimized for security, scalability and decentralization.
In 2018 the Conflux Foundation was formed, and following a regulatory compliant fundraise, Conflux began building an open infrastructure utilizing the Tree Graph consensus model.
Today, based on our regulatory compliance, Conflux is the only state endorsed public, permissionless blockchain operating in China. China’s BSN is a pay to play for blockchains interested in entering the China market — but they are all permissioned. This gives us a unique advantage in Asia. Our long term goals are to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western projects, connecting economies and communities, to strengthen the DeFi ecosystem.
Jon Poole: At Oasis, we’re very excited about our recent partnership. Can you tell us a bit more about how you heard about the Oasis Network and why your team was interested in partnering with us?
Geoff Le Fevre: I’m very excited as well! I heard about Oasis Network a little over a year ago now when I was working on a cross-chain interoperability project at Outlier and got connected to your colleague Luca. Our founder Fan Long also knows your founder Dawn Song!
Leaving the personal connections and privacy benefits aside for a moment, it was clear that Oasis Network had a forward looking view of the space and were interested in bridging communities and ecosystems. In that way the Conflux and Oasis vision for a connected Web3 world were very much aligned and our team at Conflux was very excited to join forces with Oasis Network to build out the future together.
Jon Poole: The Oasis Network is well known for being able to keep data private and its support for confidential compute. What role do you think privacy has in DeFi, and how do you think this will help benefit projects on the Conflux network?
Geoff Le Fevre: Privacy is one these things that you can take for granted until you don’t have it anymore. For DeFi I think privacy is a major pillar for mainstream adoption. Who here would want the whole world to know their personal finances?
Blockchains are great economic sensors but the downside is that the data is stored forever and so if you collect enough of it, it is relatively straightforward to correlate crypto wallet addresses with actual people and begin mapping out their personal crypto finances.
Not a huge issue now, but if we are to onboard the remaining 99% of the finance world, ensuring that users are protected and personal information is kept private is critical. Especially if the new systems we are creating are built on top of public permissionless infrastructure.
Our partnership with Oasis Network will introduce projects building on Conflux to privacy preserving data collection and compute. This will not only benefit their end users but will also help to limit a project’s liabilities in the sense that they won’t need to collect and store personal data. How many data breaches have we heard of now?
Data is an important tool for optimizing operations, but on the other end having access to and storing personal data is a liability and in some cases a major barrier to entry for some, potentially ground-breaking projects.
Jon Poole: We saw that the Shanghai government recently included you in their 5-year-plan and invested in your project. Congratulations! That’s really exciting news. Can you tell us more about the research Conflux will be doing?
Geoff Le Fevre: Thanks! Yea we were very excited about the announcement. With the support of the Shanghai government we launched the Tree Graph Research Institute in Shanghai, the financial capital of China.
Conflux’s research will focus on blockchain scalability, security, programmability, and privacy. In 2021, we will focus on enhancing Conflux chain’s finality, providing new execution models to DeFi smart contracts on Conflux, improving the storage layer performance, and introducing new builtin functions to facilitate the development of privacy related smart contracts. We are also working with a large state-owned enterprise on applying blockchain to aero-space supply chains.
Jon Poole: What’s next for Conflux and Oasis? Where do you see this partnership going next?
Geoff Le Fevre: I think it’s going to be a big year for this partnership and for both our Networks. I see Oasis and Conflux leading the way building bridges across cultures, communities and blockchains which will lead to assets and data flowing freely across our networks and around the world with greater velocity, security, and privacy.
There are a few things that aren’t public yet so I cant get too specific, but what I can say is that expect to see some real life use cases emerge from this partnership as our networks and communities converge.
I’m excited to see cross-chain privacy preserving solutions emerge for fraud detection and privacy in DeFi with some major DeFi related partnership announcements in the near future.
Jon Poole: Great! Thank you for joining us for the AMA. We’re eager to continue working with you and are excited to see what you’ll do next! If folks would like to stay up to date on your project and learn more about Conflux where should they go?
Geoff Le Fevre: Thanks for having me, it’s awesome to meet your community, and we’ll host you soon in ours!
To stay up to date on Conflux or learn more I’d recommend you check out our Discord, Telegram, or Twitter.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Conflux_Network
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/aCZkf2C
Telegram: https://t.me/Conflux_English
Jon Poole: 🌹🎉 Now, we’ll open it up to questions from the community! 🎉🌹
Felipe 🇧🇷: Open DeFi is a global initiative to develop the decentralized financial ecosystem and enable greater economic inclusion. As Conflux is one of the founding members, do you think that Oasis, with its technology, could play a key role in this initiative in the future?
Geoff Le Fevre: Absolutely, privacy is a major pillar for financial adoption, and think there is alot of potential in each of the three tracks for Oasis to make a big impact (innovation, liquidity, and risk management) and we look forward to having them join 🙂 https://www.open-defi.com/
Jacob M: What are some projects on Conflux that you’re excited about?
Geoff Le Fevre: A major one that is building ontop of Conflux at the moment is MoonSwap https://moonswap.fi/ A major peice of our quickly growing DeFi ecosystem. They are an increadible team that doing big things in DeFi and now NFTs and gaming.
VYCL: A few years from now, where do you think Oasis and Conflux will be? What will be the long-term benefits of this partnership?
Geoff Le Fevre: In a few years I think that the Conflux and Oasis partnership will lead to mass adoption in the DeFi space, and help onboard CeFi use cases onto a privacy preserving public permissionless infrastrcuture.
Ron Lakvist: What is the timeframe when you say near future for defi related partnerships ?
Geoff Le Fevre: After Chinese New Years.
Felipe 🇧🇷: Last year, we saw an explosion of DeFi projects, mainly using the Ethereum network, which made the problems it faces evident. How did the Conflux network solve these problems? Can you tell us a little more about the Tree-Graph Consensus algorithm and the Tree-Graph Blockchain Research Institute?
Geoff Le Fevre: I’m not the most technical, so I’ll try to answer as best I can. Our Tree Graph allows for blocks to be processed in parrallel without creating forks allowing for a very high TPS without sacrifcing security or decentralization. For more information you can check out our developer docs 🙂 https://confluxnetwork.org/developers/assets
Andrew Miller | Oasis: How does Conflux cross chain protocols differs from other cross chain projects, what are the advantages?
Geoff Le Fevre: Besides from being live and actively migrating tokens between Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains I think what sets us apart is our focus on building more bridges and have started to solicit community particpation in the bridge operations. We have many more integrations into our cross chain protocols coming up. For more information you can check out https://defi.confluxnetwork.org/en/cross-chain-asset-protocol/ , and if everyone would like to become a ‘token captain’ check out: https://shuttleflow.io/shuttle/in
Jon Poole: I’ve got a question from an Ambassador that couldn’t be here due to the time zone.
Q. Can you eloborate more what is off-chain matching & on-chain settlement in your Dual Protocol, how does it work? -@Louwhey
Geoff Le Fevre: Great question, I’ll take this to a team member and get back with the answer 🙂
Users can initiate transactions in the user interface. All asset change requests will be submitted to off-chain matching engine MatchFlow for centralized matching. Benefits of this include real-time matching similair to a CEX. Security is also improved by syncing on and off chain data, the convenience is also improved for the end-user by eliminating the gas fee associated with matching traders. On-chain settlement just refers to finality of the transaction happens on the Conflux mainnet
Jon Poole: 🎊 This has been fantastic. Thank you 🙏🏻, @glefevre for taking the time today to answer our questions and enlighten us about Conflux, our proud new partner. 🤝💪🌹🚀 🎊
Geoff Le Fevre: Thanks for having me @CoincidenceJon, great to meet the Oasis Community! I’ll be checking this chat throughout the day so feel free to me and keep asking questions. I’ll try to get back ASAP.
Hack AndSlash: Is there a roadmap for moonswap?
Geoff Le Fevre: Definitly. I’d hop into their Discord and chat with the team directly 🙂
Jon Poole: I was wondering what will some of the token use cases be for CFX? It has multiple functions, correct?
Geoff Le Fevre: That’s right! Conflux’s token CFX has two primary utilties. One is to act as a medium of exchange on our network, an the second is for staking.
On Conflux there are three reasons to stake:
1. Stake to earn interest
2. Stake to rent/purchase storage space on the network
3. Stake to earn votes in network governance
You can learn more about our token design here: https://confluxnetwork.org/files/Conflux_Economic_Paper_20201230.pdf
Jon Poole: Thank you! Fantastic flexibility for long term sustainability. 💪👌
Thanks, again, @glefevre 🙏🏻😎🌹 Have a wonderful day everyone 👋🏼🌹
