Greetings PRQties! 🖖
Welcome to our most recent community AMA!
PARSIQ has been working hard these last few months, preparing for the upcoming launch of our Tsunami API, which has been in a successful Alpha testing phase. We are also happy to share with you an in-depth look at how the Tsunami API — along with Data Lakes and Data Hubs — will set a new standard for Web3 backend.
We have gotten a lot of feedback from the clients testing the API as well as from all of the projects and teams we’ve spoken to at the conferences and events we’ve been working hard to attend. Just last week we were in Austin, at NFT Connect and Consensus, and this coming week, we’ll be at NFT.NYC, where Tom Tirman has been invited as a guest speaker!
There is a lot to look forward to in the coming months, and we’re excited to share it with our community as the time arises. In the meantime, be sure to have a look at the new FAQ we’ve written up, which addresses a variety of aspects related to our platform.
Alright, let’s get to the most recent AMA, with Tom Tirman (CEO)! (If you prefer to watch the video, feel free to click any of the questions, which are time-stamped links to Tom’s answer from the livestream.)
Introduction
Tom: Hi everyone!
Welcome to this week’s PARSIQ’s AMA!
I’m off to NFT.NYC on Monday, so I figured we’d do one before heading to that event.
Before we dive into the questions, I want to congratulate the community on winning the ‘Into the IQ verse Battle Royale’. This was a really great community effort!
Well, this is one of the lowest live viewer counts we’ve had in a long while, so either it’s a time zone issue or it’s bear market vibes. I think a lot of people have left this space in the last month, after everything that’s happened. It’s pretty brutal out there! So, to everyone whose portfolio is down who have regrets that they didn’t take profit — I’m actually in the same camp in my personal portfolio that I’ve been holding: it’s down quite a bit.
But the important thing is to learn from the mistakes and do better next time and not leave this space. Because those who leave you know, you can’t win if you leave. However rough it is, stick around and invest in yourself, educate yourself. I think crypto has a long way to go. This space has so much potential. If you put in the effort during these tough times. Then when the good times come around, you can do much better. So don’t quit!
PARSIQ certainly isn’t going to quit. It’s a pretty good environment to build and showcase what we’re doing, what we have done, and what we will do; because a lot of the space is about to be cleansed. It is what it is, but it will continue even though a lot of the hype is gone. It’s much easier for projects and startups who are building really important infrastructure to get attention and this is exactly what’s happening right now. A lot of projects have already thrown in the towel, and some will run out of money very soon; some will move on to other things; and so on. We’ve seen it a million times. But this is a perfect environment for our sector to thrive.
I’ve already been seeing it because during these tough times, the attention comes back to the building blocks of the infrastructure — to the plumbing, to the picks and shovels. I’m still getting approached by two to three Web2 VCs each week, even now, who are interested not in NFT’s specifically, not in digital assets, but in the infrastructure for digital assets. And those are Web2 VCs, which are now doing some blockchain-related investments. It’s not just the investors, but there is a lot of other attention as well now that the hype cycle is gone. To my mind, this is a pretty good opportunity to flex infrastructure and to actually build out what was planned and onboard as many as many users as possible.
Alrighty! So, let’s dive into the questions for today…
Q: IQ protocol will be celebrating its one-year anniversary soon. When will the renting of $PRQ be automated?
Tom: Well, after the release of the Tsunami API, I guess we will automate it after that. Because right now it’s all hands on deck on getting the NFT rentals live on IQ. Then we can get back to the fungible token version of the IQ protocol.
Q: Do we have a specific week in July for Tsunami API release?
Tom: There is no specific week. We estimate mid-July, could be later or could be earlier. But we need this flexibility because there’s front ends that need to be done. It’s not just an API. So, it will also have like a front end, which will have the login mechanisms of the user facing part, the dashboards, and so on so forth. So, mid-July plus minus couple of weeks.
Q: Have Coinbase contacted the team about a listing yet, as the latest report shows increased likelihood of a listing this month?
Tom: Well, we’ve signed NDAs with Coinbase. But you pretty much answered the question yourself.
Q: It seems to be very difficult for The Graph to commit to speed times like PARSIQ has stated with Tsunami, have PARSIQ got any comparable stats for the community to see?
Tom: Yeah, we have tested some competitors — or indirect competitors depends on which feature or service you’re thinking of — and there’s definitely a difference. But this is not to say that all of them are slower, because we haven’t tested all of them.
There’s a lot of new players coming out. Now that the euphoria is gone from the market, Blockchain data will be highly sought after. We haven’t seen all of new players yet, but comparing Tsunami to the ones that we’ve tested: we definitely have an advantage when it comes to speed.
But it’s not just speed with us. It’s much more: it’s the complexities that platforms and devs don’t have to deal with — you know — like running your own software for things, as well as real time triggering of events, which doesn’t need indexing data into database. With us, you pretty much get the stream of events right off the bat, and we also include the storage functionalities for all of this. Also, a lot of other things like custom tailored DeFi data via our Data Lakes, among other things. So, speed is not the only competitive advantage and key differentiator. But it is an important aspect.
Q: Is the Tsunami Alpha testing still running? Can you say who is participating?
Tom: Yes, it’s still running. The first customers are already using it in testing. Everything seems to work fine. They’re all pretty happy! There is also a list of projects who haven’t tested yet, because they’re waiting for another blockchain to be added (or some such things), which is actually quite long. And there are all kinds of names on there, small and big. You’ll be you’ll be hearing about all of them one by one after the Tsunami API release.
Q: Can we see a list of all the parameters that you can use Tsunami to monitor?
Sure! These details will be included in the documentation. Now, the Tsunami API itself, what you get from that is mostly raw and fundamental data. But the Data Lakes, which are separate API’s for specific things, like an NFT monitoring API, NFT ownership API, dedicated API’s for certain protocols, for certain DeFi projects, for certain dApps, and so on. These will have aggregated data. So, it will be different for each Data Lake. The NFT ownership API is also pretty much ready in alpha.
Q: In the future, could PARSIQ run a service like Glassnode or look to replace the likes of Etherscan/ BSCscan/ Polyscan?
Tom: Glassnode is about analytics, right? So, we are currently not competing with projects like Glassnode or other analytics platforms, because we’re another layer from them. We can provide the data, index the raw data, and aggregated data for such analytics platforms to use. And we haven’t yet decided to go that route, and to do our own analytics platform. Which is not to say we won’t do that in the future. But currently there is no plan for us to do so. We would rather work together with platforms such as these and provide them with all of the on-chain data that they need.
Now in terms of Etherscan, BSCscan and Polyscan, etc., will be supporting all these chains, we can do the same, and much more, than the API’s of these products. What they have is also a user facing explorer right which we don’t have right now. But on the roadmap you can see PARSIQ Atlas, which is planned to be a user-facing product, including a consumer-facing blockchain explorer. But it will focus more on dApps, DeFi protocols, and NFT projects, rather than general data.
Q: Will there be any change to the utility of $PRQ token after the release of Tsunami API?
Tom: Not immediately, but more utilities will be added as the DAO is formed. I think I covered this topic a lot in previous AMAs. But there will definitely be more rights for token holders, as well as more utility and more use cases for the token after the DAO organized.
Q: How will customers pay for the usage of the Tsunami API, crypto or fiat?
Tom: There will be crypto payments integrated right off the bat. We might add fiat subscriptions later on.
Q: Has PARSIQ been facing many issues — as many other crypto projects have been during these tough economic times — in the crypto space? Do you anticipate any in the near future?
Tom: Well, luckily, we are pretty well-funded. We did have a treasury in crypto assets, which got hit, but it wasn’t like the majority of the runway or anything like that. We still have a lot in fiat and stables so we’re good for the next two years, even without having to cut any staff (like you know, Coinbase just laid off something like 18% of their workforce, which is 1100 employees, and BlockFi is cutting 20%, and so on so forth). We don’t have to do that and can survive without doing that. And we will be generating income streams.
But we cannot exclude another fundraising round in the next year or two as well, to really take PARSIQ to the next level. We don’t need to now, but we’re not excluding it as a possibility in the future. It’s interesting, though… I know Y Combinator sent out letters saying it’ll be nearly impossible to raise funds. I don’t think that’s the case. Investors still have a sideline capital, a lot of it: a16z just raised like an almost $4 billion fund, and so on and so forth. Long term investors will be deploying during the bear market. The short-term flippers will be deploying during the bull market. Investors will just be more selective. There’ll be seeing and looking at product/market fit. They’ll be looking at whether it’s generating any kind of revenue, and they’ll be looking at the team, and so on. We tick all these boxes. So, I think if we do decide to raise — which we don’t have to right now — it shouldn’t be an issue. I mean, investor interest in PARSIQ is quite high even now. Because in these times, like I said, infrastructure is the play
Q: What options do you have available for the price structure of Tsunami?
Tom: We will reveal this quite soon. The pricing details are almost finalized. There will be different types: there’ll be a free tier, which will have certain limitations like how many requests per second and so on so forth. We will have additional options, with add-ons, like the Data Lakes, which will not be free. The team will publish all the details once its finalized.
Q: Last time I asked you about your opinion on the market conditions, your prediction was BTC would swing between 30k and 40k at the worst. What do you personally see crypto doing now?
Tom: Well, I certainly didn’t expect a drop this fast. I mean, we went from 30k to 20k in six days. It’s brutal. It’s very brutal. But the reason for this is the global macroeconomic conditions. They are pretty rough and also the amount of leverage in crypto. The amount of leverage is huge and now is starting to unwind. We have huge funds getting blown up, we have like crypto banks, some of the biggest stable coins, some billion dollar projects, are blowing up. It’s insane. I’ve not seen anything like this, not even in like 2018–2019.
That’s the reason for such a steep drop. I did think we would hover between 30k and 40k for a while before testing 20-somethings. I mean, no one knows. No one knows where the bottom is. Will we hold the previous all-time highs which is 19–20k? Hopefully. But you have to be ready if we go below that, to…whatever: 17/13/10k. I mean worst case scenario: even four figures BTC for a little while, but something bad has to happen for this. But it’s all possible. I think this year probably won’t be the best for crypto.
But I do think that crypto and Bitcoin will bottom out before stocks and equities and everything else does. And they will also be the first to rise. So yeah, I mean we’re in this capitulation phase right now — how long it will last? No one knows. Then, we’ll have the last phase, which is the exhaustion phase. And we’ll range somewhere at the lows for a while. Some very little volatility and not a lot of interest. After that, things will start picking up. I expect things to pick up by, say, the middle of next year maybe, and then start getting better and better after that. 2024 should look fine and 2025 as well. But again, no one knows. And the market can surprise us in both ways. So, we’ll see. Those are my thoughts anyway.
Q: What’s PARSIQ’s bear market survival plan?
Tom: The survival plan is simple. We have enough runway to last for a couple of years. We have like a treasury and some private investments, and eventually the market will recover this will extend our runway. We will be generating some revenue after the Tsunami release and later from some enterprise clients on the core platform. This will extend the runway. We probably will be looking to do another fundraising round within the next two years. And this will extend our runway further and allow us to expand because we have a lot of ideas on how to take the concept of what we are building much, much further than just on-chain data and backend infrastructure.
Q: Can we have any updates regarding NFT marketplace, IQ Protocol. Is $IQT still coming out this summer? When will we find out more details?
Tom: About the NFT marketplace: it’s ready, the audits should come back within a week. After audits, we’ll see if there are any bugs, but we will launch a showcase really soon. And after we know that the audits have come back, and there are no bugs (and if there are, then we fix them). Then the initial batch of games will go live on the NFT marketplace approximately in July. But a sort of showcase of the rentals will take place…wouldn’t give much details but it’s the aim for this month.
The $IQT token is likely not coming out this July or August. This is because of lot of reasons. First of all, the market conditions are not the best. Second, we’re not in a hurry — the more traction we can show, the better. If we can do this prior to launch, it’s much better for the launch of the token. Much healthier. In fact, if we even implement the tokenomics of the $IQT in the protocol for the launch, then that’s even better. So, we’re not in a hurry. There is no set date, but it’s probably not to be July — I mean, it most certainly won’t be July. We are ready for the launch in a technical sense, but a lot of other considerations have to come into play. That’s why we’ll stay nimble, and we’ll take the opportunity to launch it once we’ve shown more progress.
Q: There are many decentralized data providers like API3. How will new customers trust PARSIQ with the data credibility?
Tom: This question has come up a lot. Oracles like API3 take real world data and bring it on-chain. That’s why they need the consensus mechanisms and everything to be more decentralized. And in our case PARSIQ takes data from the blockchain and takes it off-chain. That means we’re taking it from a decentralized source, the blockchain network itself. So, I don’t see the need to sacrifice speed, scalability, and a lot of the technological advantages in favor of decentralizing PARSIQ.
None of the Alpha testers — some of which are relatively big name DeFi protocols — have no issues with using PARSIQ. Because, like I said, it’s taken from a decentralized source and given to them. They can check it, and we could even implement zero-knowledge technologies to prove that we didn’t alter the data on the way from the blockchain to the customer. So, it’s not an issue.
We will be applying a sort of hybrid approach, where we will distributed but not decentralized the product. We are slowly decentralizing some small aspects of the product, but still keeping the core centralized.
Q: Will the max supply of PARSIQ ever be changed?
Tom: No, the max supply for PARSIQ cannot be changed. 310,256,872 is the maxmimum possible supply.
Q: What are the top two or three milestones, according to you, that would help put PARSIQ in the top 100 list?
Tom: Well, it depends on what you mean by the top 100 list. I mean, I’m pretty sure we’re in the top somewhere for blockchain data providers. And our goal is to become the go to back-end data platform for all of Web3.
Now if you mean the market cap ratings for the tokens, then that’s a bit different. Market cap is not necessarily…hmm, how to explain this? An example: A project which is down 99.9% can have a big market cap, right? It depends how they structure their tokenomics. A huge market cap is not necessarily a sign of being like a top project in the niche that they’re in.
I’ve seen a lot of times when there are huge token supplies which are shown as circulating but they’re not actually actively circulating, and that’s why it’s not really that relevant. With that being said, yeah, I hope the Tsunami API and everything that we’re building in the next one or two years will help the token to do really well and accrue value for the holders. I definitely won’t make any predictions for market caps or anything. I mean, what is good is that the PARSIQ token is very far from its all-time lows, while a lot of the other tokens are at their all-time lows right now.
Q: What are the plans for PARSIQ to improve awareness and influence and all the crypto developer community?
Tom: The new API is geared towards developers. So, yes, this is the number one target audience. When I say dApps and protocols and projects will be using it, I mean that the development teams will be using it. That means we need to get as much dApps as possible, which means developer conferences, hackathons, bounties, and everything developer-related. The SDK will contribute to this tremendously as well, which is on the roadmap.
Q: How will the Tsunami API be useful for NFT companies?
Tom: It will be useful in the same way it’s going to be useful for any Web3 related companies. If they deal with Blockchain assets — whether they’re building on the blockchain, or they’re building an NFT marketplace, or they’re building really anything on an NFT listing or minting website — they need backend. Simple as that. Every Web3 dApp and every web3 project needs the backend to tie together the blockchain layer and the user-facing front end. And this is what PARSIQ is here for.
Q: If PARSIQ could own the data infrastructure, would it be possible to build a workflow orchestrator similar to Apache Airflow, where all end-to-end development would be possible?
Tom: Yeah, we’ve actually discussed similar use cases already within the team. I think it might be a good idea to finally do some kind of AMA where we have all the tech and product guys together, including Anatoly. I know an AMA was promised earlier, but with all hands on deck, it’s been tricky. Maybe just prior or at the Tsunami API launch we could have Danny, Anatoly and some more of our guys to dive deep and to what was built and what else is possible.
Q: Could PARSIQ build a functionality to port traditional Web2 to Web3?
Tom: Yep. And we’ve actually taken these use cases much farther (conceptually, of course). I think when the time is right, and we’ve evolved and established the Tsunami and the Data Lakes in the market, and have sufficient adoption; then we can decide to expand, and I think some of these use cases will be killer.
Conclusion
Tom: All right, that wraps it up for today.
Stay safe in these very brutal and turbulent markets. Remember, tough times don’t last. Just survive. And you can be sure that the PARSIQ team is building more than ever. If we manage to do what we’re planning to do here, there’ll be a lot of positive results and great positive developments. Personally, I’m really excited!
If anyone is in New York next week, then let us know. We’re doing a small meetup in NYC and we put out a call inviting community members and partners to join us.Thanks again to the community for sticking with us for supporting us. We couldn’t have made it here without you.
Have a great end of the week, everybody, and I’ll be posting some updates from NFT.NYC. And we’ll do an AMA in a couple of weeks!
Thanks for reading this week’s AMA! We hope you enjoyed it as much as we have.
Once again, don’t forget to take part in our 2x Yield Boost incentive and Free $IQT incentive!
About PARSIQ
PARSIQ is a full-suite data network for building the backend of all Web3 dApps & protocols. The Tsunami API, which will ship in July 2022, will provide blockchain protocols and their clients (e.g. protocol-oriented dApps) with real-time data and historical data querying abilities.
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