Oasis Foundation AMA Recap with Special Guest COO of Red Date — Michael Ma
Previous Partnership Announcement: The Oasis Network joins the BSN Platform
Community Translations: Brazilian Portuguese | Turkish | Filipino
Jon Poole:
🌹 Hi everyone and welcome to our AMA! 🌹
Today we’re joined by Michael Ma, the COO of Red Date — a key initiator and supporter of the BSN O&M. We recently announced that the Oasis Network has joined the BSN platform alongside Polkadot and Bityuan. We’re excited to have Michael join us today to answer questions about BSN and Red Date.
We’ll start with some questions and then open it up to the community!
Welcome, Michael! 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?
Michael Ma:
Sure!
I have a computer engineering degree as my academic background in Australia. Prior to joining Red Date, I had worked for Microsoft and Alibaba for years. I have got 10+ years of experience in software development, product design, sales and corporate management.
I got to know blockchain tech when I heard about bitcoin in 2015. In 2018 I started to get a deep understanding of this technology space when we initiated BSN project at Red Date. I am now in charge of the daily operations of business development, customer services, technical support and training for BSN project.
That’s about me😊
Jon Poole:
Incredible resume! I’ve really enjoyed researching about Red Date and the BSN over the past few months and am thrilled with our partnership 🎊🤝🥳.
Can you tell us more about BSN, how it got started, and what its mission is?
Michael Ma:
Of course!
The BSN, the full name is Blockchain-based Service Network.
It is part of China’s national strategy to lead the digital transformation of economy, announced by President Xi in October 2019.
The BSN was jointly initiated by four founding partners, namely the State Information Center of China, China Mobile, China UnionPay, and Red Date Technology.
The BSN is a cross-cloud, cross-portal, cross-framkework global infrastructure network used to deploy and operate all types of blockchain applications.
It is a one-stop shop for DApp developers to deploy and manage any permissioned or permissionless blockchain applications. We have built entire operating environments and shared nodes on BSN’s public city nodes (PCN) around the world. Developers only need to choose which PCN to connect and upload smart contracts. We will do everything else for you!
Regarding those founding companies, I can give a brief intro.
China Mobile — the largest mobile telecommunications corporation by market capitalization, and also the world’s largest mobile network operator by total number of subscribers.
China Union Pay — the largest card payment organization (debit and credit cards combined) in the world offering mobile and online payments based on total value of payment transactions, ahead of Visa and Mastercard).
Red Date Technology, us, as the technical developer and maintainer of BSN technical platform.
Then, how it was started…
At the beginning, we realized blockchain and DLTs are essentially expensive SILO networks where they build applications in their own environment and are separate from each other. There could be an internet environment where there are tens of thousands of interconnected DLT networks. We have come to the realization that the current blockchain industry is like the Internet in 1993.
One of our primary goals is to include as many blockchain frameworks as possible and make them accessible under one unified standard on the BSN platform. In that way, we can save users overhead costs to build a blockchain while being able to offer more custom services.
Our mission: To reduce the cost of blockchain application design and deployment while powering communication between chains. It will be made available around the world through local cloud providers, ultimately creating a global internet of blockchains.
That’s about my answers to the questions.😊😍😍😍
Jon Poole:
If that doesn’t get you excited for the future of Blockchain I don’t know what will! 🤯😍
How did BSN first discover the Oasis Network and why was BSN interested in working with Oasis?
Michael Ma:
One of BSN’s strategies is being a multi-chain services providers, which means we would like to include as many good frameworks as possible in the network, providing developers with an entree of blockchain frameworkds to choose and deploy.
We are always actively looking for good public chains to integrate into our system. Now we have integrated 12 public chains into our ecosystem including Ethereum, EOS, Tezos, Polkadot, IRISnet, Neos, Nervos, Algorand, ShareRing, Solana, and BitYuan, and of course Oasis.
Oasis came to our attention because it’s the first privacy-enabled blcokchain platform for open finance and a responsible data economy.
Oasis creates a new type of digital asset called Tokenized Data that can enable users to take control of the data. This is very interesting and innovative to me, of course to BSN.
Now Oasis has been integrated into BSN International (bsnbase.io), developers around the world can now develop DApps on Oasis chain through BSN’s node service gateway and it costs them as low as $20 monthly. In such way, BSN really lowers the threshold for developers to develop, deploy and manage dApps.
Jon Poole:
At Oasis we’re very excited about BSN’s ability to make it easy to build on networks like Oasis. What cooperation can we anticipate between Oasis and BSN soon?
Michael Ma:
For 2021, I think there are two things we can look at:
1) Embed BSN public chain services into Oasis’s websites, which is essentially building an Oasis-BSN mini portal;
2) Join BSN’s open permissioned blockchain initiative (OPB).
Let me explain those two tasks in a bit more details:
1) Build a mini Portal:
We will provide core APIs that enable our partners to build their own portals. The portals are the gateways for developers to access BSN offerings. All portals are completely designed and built by their operators.
The best way to build a BSN portal is to build it into an existing website, such as the public chain’s official homesite, the developer community website, news website, or any other type of website that attracts blockchain developers. BSN provides a set of APIs for the portals to communicate with BSN’s network operation centers.
I take an example from Algorand, one of public chains BSN has integrated.
Here is an example what Algorand has done with us: http://bsn.algorand.org/
The BSN portal operators like Oasis will have full authority and flexibility to build portals based on operators’ own specific requirements. Oasis will manage their own users, process payments, and add any other services besides BSN enabled services. Every BSN portal has its own look and feel.
2) Next, let me explain OPB, open permissioned blockchain project…
BSN recently announced another initiative called the Open Permissioned Blockchain Initiative which I think Oasis can potentially participate, check it out here:
This initiative is designed for public chains to enter the Chinese market legally. It adapts public chains to offer permissioned controls over node deployment and change the mechanism of using native tokens to pay for gas fees.👍👍👍
Technically, an open permissioned blockchain is a public blockchain that has permission controls over node deployment and removes the mechanism of transferring native tokens between accounts.
So, Why Oasis should participate the OPB?
Compared with traditional permissioned blockchains, an open permissioned blockchain allows DApps to operate without running their own peer nodes but instead sharing master nodes.
Additionally, just like public blockchains, DApps are visible to everyone and can be invoked by anybody who knows the smart contract addresses.
For many small to medium-sized companies, this open permissioned blockchain framework is an easier and more cost-effective way to deploy DApps, even though it has limited capability compared to the traditional permissioned frameworks such as Hyperledger Fabric.
Jon Poole:
I can’t wait for ours! 🚀😎
You took the Question right out of my mouth 👌🏼😊
Michael Ma:
One of BSN’s core concepts is to integrate various blockchain technologies to form a one-stop infrastructure of blockchain services and to empower various websites to provide services to developers to deploy and operate DApps in a convenient and cost-effective way through APIs.
😉😉😉
BSN has integrated multiple public blockchains on international portals and PCNs, and is very familiar with the technical features of public blockchains.
Therefore, it is relatively easy to implement an open permissioned blockchain with BSN in China. After many internal discussions, the BSN Development Association, the governing body of BSN China, has decided to launch the BSN Open Permissioned Blockchain project within BSN’s network environment in China.
Jon Poole:
🔥🔥🔥 You’ve certainly been busy 😉💪🏻
What does the future roadmap of BSN look like for 2021 and how do you plan to continue to support fast, easy development?
Michael Ma:
Sure!
First, keep integrating permissioned and permissionless frameworks, and interchain protocols, keep deploy public city nodes worldwide by working with local cloud service providers, and improve our services to ensure the quality and stability of the network.
Second, build infrastructure for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and Stablecoins. This will include two projects basically:
1) A payment network
2) Public chain in which “gas fees” can be paid without buying cryptocurrency
The payments network, a blockchain-based enterprise payments platform that will support CBDCs and stablecoins, is a BSN project and expected to launch in the first half of 2021. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies pegged to traditional currencies, such as the dollar-linked Tether (USDT). The public chain is at an early stage. It would be a standalone chain but BSN-compatible.
Both projects will make it easier to use blockchain without buying cryptocurrencies. It will make the technology appear less risky to large businesses. Separating blockchain from these state-free currencies will likely reassure accountants and annoy purists.
More details can be found:
BSN Architect firm eyes CBDC with two new projects
😍😍😍
Jon Poole:
With so much change on the horizon, what impact will the cooperation between BSN and Oasis have on China’s Blockchain market?
Michael Ma:
Yeah, to be honest, this partnership just kicked off recently, and we haven’t seen many impacts in the China domestic market yet.
But based on my observation, I can see Oasis has a very active community. Speaking of the criteria of choosing partners, community quality and technological expertise are the two things we always have in our mind.
Oasis Protocol lays very heavy emphasis on user data privacy as well as suiting business needs. It is the only framework of its kind that we have included in BSN. I think the recent data privacy project Oasis has in collaboration with BMW Group demonstrates your capacity very well.
As a blockchain infrastructure, BSN provides Oasis’ developers with exceptional low-cost resources and tools to deploy and run DApps. Like I mentioned earlier, public chain partners are also offered the opportunity to join the open permissioned blockchain — which allows public chains to provide its services in the Chinese market. We are very pleased to have Oasis joining into our public chain system, I believe this is a very good start of a high-quality partnership.
I believe with more and more developers starting to use such a privacy-focused and highly scalable framework and more business opportunities and innovation will come.
That’s my opinion 😍😍😍
Jon Poole:
Thank you, for the kind words of encouragement. 😊🙏🏻 We are very proud of our reputation to work with the most reputable and influential businesses and organizations around the world. 🌹
I couldn’t agree more. 🔥🤝
How can our community support BSN and continue to strengthen our relationship in the future?
Michael Ma:
Let me put our social media links here, hang on.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bsnbase
Medium: https://medium.com/bsnbase
Telegram:https://t.me/bsnsupport
Yeah, that’s about it. @CoincidenceJon 😍😍
Jon Poole:
I’ve already joined! 💪🏻😎👍🏼
Michael Ma:
Thanks, LOL
bsnbase.io is the official site, it’s better to check there for guys.
Jon Poole:
Thank you, for these resources. I’m very proud and excited for our continued cooperation and I wish the BSN and everyone involved a prosperous 2021. 🌹🎉
Let’s open the chat to the community 😎🔥
Michael Ma:
Absolutely!!! 👍👍👍
Jon Poole:
Chat is open!
I think that’s one of the most precise and explanatory AMA’s we’ve ever held, so I’m not surprised there are not many questions!
Jacob M:
Thanks, @damaike for the great talk it was really interesting! I’m curious how technically skilled would an individual have to be in order to build an application using BSN? Is it any different than building directly on the chain?
Michael Ma:
Hahaha…I got written too much content I guess. 😉😉😉
That’s a very good question.
Jon Poole:
I don’t think you could have made it any shorter without removing valuable information 😅😉
Michael Ma:
What BSN does is to lower the cost and get rid of the cumbersome of deploying and maintaining a DApp on a chain. You still need to understand a particular properties of a specific chain if you are going to dev and deploy on it. You can simply treat BSN as an underlying dev environment for blockchain Dapp development on top of cloud providers.
Jacob M:
Aah okay. That’s very neat. I will definitely check out the site. Thanks for sharing.
Michael Ma:
You are welcome! 😊😊😊
Jon Poole:
Thank you, @damaike very much for spending the time with us and being our special guest for this evening! 🌹🌹🌹🤝
