We’re a quarter of the way into 2020 and it’s been an interesting start, to say the least. Despite the current climate, the Pantos project is still fully operational and last week, we held our first ‘Ask Me Anything’ of 2020 with Bitpanda CEO, Paul Klanschek (along with a helping hand from Pantos Researcher Christof Spanring) on Telegram.
There was a lot of food for thought in this session, so we are trying to summarise some of the most interesting points for you.
Will there be more whitepapers?
Yes, our researchers are working on “sprints”, so to say, they have goals they want to achieve with each WP. The next one published will be (most likely) in May!
Can you describe in two short sentences how PAN could revolutionise the crypto market?
In a world that heavily uses digital assets for the transfer of value, there will need to be a way of connecting the most successful platform blockchains. We have a very good value proposition that Pantos can fill this demand.
Is the focus of PAN’s finished product more on institutional customers or partners?
The technology will be for partners that want to launch their token using this technology. Most normal users don’t launch their own tokens with the need of being multi-blockchain.
How involved are the Pantos partners? Are they helping with the development?
We have a very close relationship with the project partners. Whenever we need research input or anything at all, they happily help us. The task of doing the basic research is on us though! We will likely add another partner in 2020.
What advantage do I have as an end-customer if I have to hold different quantities of the same token on different blockchains at the same time, as well as move these tokens freely and completely between decentralised blockchains?
The advantage is that you will be able to move tokens between multiple blockchains freely. Right now, you can’t do that! If you currently hold $USDT on the Tron blockchain and your exchange of choice (BITPANDA!) only accepts ERC20 $USDT deposits, you have to use a centralised service on Bitfinex to even exchange to ERC20 $USDT again. Imagine if $USDT was using Pantos technology, you could just switch to ERC20 yourself and deposit instantly.
Is there a marketing strategy for Pantos?
Yes. In the past, we focused all our Pantos resources on the research as we thought that without the basics, it wouldn’t make sense to spend time and money on it. Now that we are making very nice progress, we will switch our strategy. Our strategy for 2020 is to be present for the developer community and focus heavily on the attendance of conferences. The COVID19 situation isn’t helping but once this is over, we will be ready again. Lukas Enzersdorfer and Eric already started presenting Pantos over the last few months. We are also growing the team to allow for those things in the future.
Are there any rewards/incentives planned for PAN holders?
There is currently nothing planned in the short-term. We value our community highly and I am certain that there will be cool promotions for PAN holders in the future.
Where do you see Pantos in 3 years?
This is hard to answer. The whole digital asset space is still very young. I think that Bitcoin and other major blockchains will see an immense increase in usage. The need for a “meta-technology” will go up immensely. With Pantos, we have the opportunity to be the “go-to” technology for this exact use case.
What advantage does Bitpanda have from using the TAST -technology internally?
The Pantos technology is used to enable cross-blockchain transfers seamlessly. As we want our current and future tokens to be single blockchain-independent, we need technology to make this possible. There is currently nothing on the market that makes this possible, so we are focusing on this with Pantos. The advantages of a project using this can’t be denied. Not relying on a single blockchain is important. Think about past promising blockchains that aren’t used at all anymore. You don’t want to launch your product on a “ghost-chain”.
When can we buy goods or food directly with PAN or other assets?
We will enable PAN in our Bitpanda Payments product as well. There is no current ETA on this though.
Does PAN need its own wallet after launch?
Christof Spanning: Aside from using tools such as MetaMask, the answer is: for cross-blockchain transfers, this is very likely. I don’t think common wallets right now allow the additional parameter of a destination blockchain. For inner-blockchain transfers, however, we aim at standard solutions being made possible and PAN still complying to e.g. ERC20 standards.
Will PAN holders have the option to participate in the consensus mechanism? Will it even be possible to participate as a community after completion?
Christof: The first question is still a question of the research outcomes and the second one a definite yes. After all, it’s an open-source project!
Currently, you work on the ETH network. How do you foresee interoperability between other blockchains, i.e. BTC to ETH?
Christof: It’s still a question of demand (and research). For Bitcoin, we currently know of two possible approaches:
Coloured Coins or OmniLayer solutions like Tether (USDT), which slightly extend the Bitcoin protocol and require some form of centralisation for cross-blockchain transfers, for instance, transfers via exchanges or vaults.
The other is Merged Mining and smart contract extensions like Rootstock (RSK). This project aims to augment Bitcoin with full smart contract capabilities, potentially allowing similar relay solutions.
However, from a pedantic perspective, the Bitcoin protocol does not actually provide token capabilities. Thus, native cross-blockchain asset transfers (or the transfer of native Bitcoin Tokens) will not be possible, unless the Bitcoin network decides to adapt the core protocol accordingly, which we do not consider likely.
As you can see from the chat with Paul, we’re well on our way on to making Pantos’ vision a reality. We made significant progress in 2019 and with a greater focus on project visibility and awareness in 2020 — we aim to make more giant steps forward.
To get the latest news on the progress of the Pantos project you can follow our official channels:
- GitHub: github.com/pantos-io
- Facebook: facebook.com/PantosIO
- Twitter: twitter.com/PantosIO
- Reddit: reddit.com/r/Pantos
- Telegram: https://t.me/PantosIO_EN (official English group)
- Telegram: https://t.me/PantosIO_DE (official German group)
- Telegram: https://t.me/PantosIO_announcements (announcements only)
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/Pantos_IO
