PARSIQ Q&A #44
Where we are going and how we are getting there!
Greetings PRQrew and Qties! 🖖
We have another great AMA for you to enjoy. This one is particularly exciting, because Tom Tirman (CEO) takes the time to walk us all through the details about the future of PARSIQ — Tsunami API, Data Lakes, Data Hubs, Explorer, Hybrid, and more!
There are a ton of innovative products that PARSIQ is currently working on, and this AMA provides a first look into how they will all work.
In addition to this AMA, Tom Tirman also recently published a “letter from the CEO” that describes many of the same details talked about in the AMA. Essentially, it lays out our plans for how PARSIQ will redefine Web3 backend technology. That letter also includes the updated PARSIQ roadmap, so be sure to have a read of that as well.
Finally, before getting to the AMA, we want to call your attention to some nice staking incentives we have for $PRQ at the moment. During Q2, those staking $PRQ on IQ Protocol will receive a 2x Yield Boost on the rewards you earn! But not only that, those staking on IQ Protocol will also qualify to receive Free $IQT tokens!
Alright, now on with the AMA! (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.)
Intro
Tom: Hey, everyone! Welcome to PARSIQ’s AMA. It’s been a while since we did one dedicated to PARSIQ — it’s been about 5 weeks, and it’s been a hectic time for the team as they’re building, and have so much going on.
We have been attending conferences, networking with people in NFT-LA and Avalanche Summit in Barcelona — which have been quite successful — and currently there is ETHDubai. So, we’re quite spread out, trying to speak to all kinds of partners, all around the world. PARSIQ is actually co-hosting a dinner tonight, which will be one of the main events at ETHDubai. It is pretty exciting stuff!
The purpose of today’s AMA, in addition to answering some of the questions here, is to give you a bit of an overview of what we’re building, where we’re going, what we’re focusing on. I’ll also give you a rough understanding of the roadmap. So, this will be a pretty informative AMA, going over the whole shift of focus and product.
After today’s AMA we will also publish my second CEO letter, which is a follow up to the first one, and gives an even more in-depth understanding of where we’re going. It will be accompanied by the roadmap and you will see some articles, some press releases that some publications may put out. Nothing huge, but we’re making a small event out of this, as it’s a start of a larger journey. I’ll take some questions first and then I’ll dive into the new PARSIQ product.
Q: Why initially did you have no interest in creating a PRQ token?
Tom: Well, we built PARSIQ as a centralized software platform, so it’s not that the token was necessarily needed at first, it could have existed without the token theoretically, back in 2018. But we spent time with Kevin (from Coinmetro), and the same could be said for Coinmetro: exchanges can also exist without tokens, but the token can actually give you utility and capture value, so if we could eventually figure out a model to do this, then it makes sense. And it was also unfortunately, at that time (in 2018–2019), slightly easier to raise for tokens than for equity, because all the equity VCs that we approached years ago, they said “Blockchain? Nah, that’s a scam.” So it was tricky. But yeah we decided in favor of the token pretty fast.
Q: I’m grateful for the Q2 reward programme, however when do you foresee PARSIQ revenue high enough where reward programs are no longer needed?
Tom: I think a significant shift will come with the new product. This is a focused product that will allow us to increase revenue streams, I’m thinking. This is not a guarantee that we will do incentive programs the whole year, I don’t know that yet. But I’m thinking if we reach all the milestones that are about to be published, then we could see maybe starting next year, it should be high enough to be attractive.
Q: Do you see the growth of PARSIQ increasing along with IQ NFT rental market, and why?
Tom: Yes, for multiple reasons. First of all, we will use PARSIQ’s new product as the back end for IQ Protocol and the NFT rental market. And it’s a great case study that other DeFi protocol’s, other NFT applications can and will do the same. So, I think IQ Labs will even be paying or renting to use PARSIQ. So, that’s usage in itself.
In addition, I think that most of the enterprises, games, service providers or dApps who will deploy renting pools and NFT rental contracts on IQ Protocol will also be utilizing PARSIQ. I think I mentioned on the last AMA that we have a great idea where IQ Protocol could provide this monitoring or staking pools or NFT rentals to these enterprises for free, but since the Protocol is taking fees from the rentals, a portion of the fees could go to PARSIQ for providing the service — so it’s definitely a revenue increase.
Q: Recently in an AMA, Kevin Murcko mentioned that the utility of PRQ is lacking, but he mentioned there are many smart people in PARSIQ, could you comment about the utility of PRQ tokens?
Tom: Before launching the IQ Protocol, I would 100% agree that it had very limited utility. For example, $PRQ could only be used for payments. I’m not a fan of payment tokens or app coins as we call them: they’re of limited utility, not really usable in everyday life. But with IQ Protocol, it actually gives the token utility, so it’s needed and token holders can benefit. With the new product and the PARSIQ DAO we’re planning, there will be even more utilities — but more on that later.
Q: Is PARSIQ able to provide any statements on usage analytics?
Tom: We do have a usage summary. However, the growth over the last 3–6 months: it has been growing but the growth is stagnating a bit. The growth isn’t the same kind of numbers as it was in the first year. The reason for this is what I explained a couple of AMAs ago: we developed the product in 2018, and back then not many were doing anything with blockchain data…so we had a kind of first mover advantage. But now there are data solutions everywhere. However, we built PARSIQ in a different way than anything else, in a way that no one else did. The Smart Triggers, the IFTTT workflows, pushing data streams instead of querying databases — we were quite unique.
PARSIQ was built so that anyone could build their own use case on. But it has limitations: to get adoption for a platform you either need to do a lot of marketing, like putting millions and millions as we’ve seen from other projects like L1, alternative L1, L2 blockchains, that’s the only way to get adoption. I mean ETH is one of the only ones that people are building on without incentives. So, looking back, building as a platform wasn’t maybe the best direction — but it actually provided us with the foundational technology!
And if you think about how PARSIQ has evolved: we’ve had the initial thousands of users, over a hundred projects using our tech. However, we’ve run into growth stagnation because when projects come to us, they only have something like 60% of their needs covered, and everything else has to be custom made. Sometimes building these custom additions requires a lot of time, a lot of dev-resource and costs more money than they would pay for an annual subscription. So it didn’t make sense and wasn’t scalable…That’s why we’ve made the decision to make the new product on top of the PARSIQ platform. Which will be focused, which will be ready to use for every Web3 application, every Web3 Protocol and it will solve their problems from the get-go. I think this will actually help us grow revenue a lot and get a lot more adoption.
Q: Will the circulating supply of PARSIQ be capped at 190 million instead of 310 million? I heard the remaining 120 million will be sent away and not added to total supply?
Tom: This is undecided. There are scenarios where a part of that 125 million could be taken and given to the DAO treasury, the upcoming PARSIQ DAO and token holders can vote for developer grants and things. So, maybe we could put some of those funds to good use.
Q: Any update on government integrations?
Tom: These things take a lot of time. The way we see it going forward, with the current PARSIQ platform it doesn’t make sense for us to do custom integrations for individual projects needs: it’s not scalable, it’s not cost-effective, etc.. The new product will be the go-to infrastructure for data in Web3. The original platform, the current platform, will become like PARSIQ enterprise and it will remain for these big players. I mean those with huge contracts where it’s actually justified to do custom work for them. The governments, the traditional corporations, this is part of the plan.
Q: Why is the amount of PRQ borrowed always the same?
Tom: We get revenue in different portions. Some of our clients have to renew their annual subscription, and when that happens we try to spread it evenly. If we do a big chunk of borrowing and don’t do it for the rest of the month then the rewards are frontloaded, so it’s going to be an issue for people joining later, receiving less of a share. Spreading it out evenly seems more fair.
Q: Are you concerned that Anatoly is acting as a CEO for 2 projects, is he able to fully concentrate on both of them?
Tom: He’s only the CEO of Blockviz, which is his own development company, which actually runs by itself. So, no, I’m not concerned. He’s not the CEO of PARSIQ or IQLabs.
Q: Any updates on exchange listings?
Tom: …The favorite question, haha. Yea, we have them lined up. At least one of them is coming relatively soon. We just wanted to get the roadmap out, get my CEO letter out, and announce the new product — what we’re building and where we’re going — before having the listings. It will be a nice string of events for the PARSIQ community.
Q: What is the current status on Public Marketplace, Ncase, and ParsiQL2.0? Will they merge with the new product in some way?
Tom: Will the existing technologies merge with the new product? Yes, somewhat. I will get to those details after I cover a few more questions.
Q: Can you discuss new/upcoming product?
Tom: Yes! I think I have gotten to the point where I can give you a bit of information about what we are building: what it is going to be, for whom, and what the plan is. You will get more information, later today, on other socials, on media, on the CEO letter with the high level roadmap of the product, as well as some other things.
The concept that we are building right now is called the PARSIQ Network. The idea is that we take the existing technology — the Smart Triggers, the Retrospective Triggers, and even Reverse Triggers, and everything else, like the data monitoring and infrastructure we have built — and we are going to be using it in the new product. The PARSIQ Network is a system of different, core parts of the product that we will be releasing, one by one (according to the road map). The first part is the Tsunami API.
The Tsunami API is our main, our core, API through which our clients and users can get any kind of blockchain data, realtime and historical. When we tested it we could retrieve data from 1 million blocks in less than a minute — I think it was 25 seconds or something! To my knowledge, I have not seen a data API as fast and efficient as this. We have built it in a way that is going to be scalable and have throughput. It will have large limitations on API calls. I think this will be usable by anyone!
The Tsunami API is the first part of the PARSIQ Network, and it differs from what we already offer. So, this is not quite what we have had already. Tsunami API incorporates the retrospective data, the real time smart triggers, and everything else, and makes it available from an API endpoint — we didn’t actually have this on our platform. It will be multi-chain and will cover a lot of EVM chains, including one you may not have heard of or heard from us that we are integrating yet. It will be for core, fundamental, raw blockchain data: any kind of data you can query you can get real-time updates on it, and so on and so forth. The IQ model of staking and renting will work here. We anticipate a lot of users for this API.
But this is only the first stage. After that directly, we will be releasing what we call Data Lakes. Data Lakes are integrations of DeFi protocols and dApps. And these will be custom-tailored. We will dive into the custom logic of these protocols and dApps and create dedicated lakes for them, which anyone can also query for dedicated APIs. These will be forks of the Tsunami API, but there will be an API for each, specific lake.
Who will use these Data Lakes? First of all the dApps and protocols themselves. They are the target audience. They will use it for their backend. How a dApp works is that you have the blockchain part, you have the smart contracts, you have the front end, and the rest — which actually connects all of this — is the backend, which users don’t see. With PARSIQ network, dApps and protocols can build their entire backend using our technology. They will be able to utilize the Data Lakes themselves. We will be approaching those who are building products, who have already built products, and we will also be approaching the big protocols, the market leaders in DeFi, NFTs, and dApps. Even if they don’t want to use something new for their backend, they will still be happy that the Data Lakes of their product will be available on the PARSIQ Network. Anyone can use and query these Data Lakes. For example, analytics companies or any DeFi tracker or 3rd parties who need the specific, custom-tailored data of that specific dApp or protocol.
The Data Lakes will come with Data Hubs. The Data Hubs are storage, where the dApps and protocols can store all their data, both on-chain and off-chain data. Essentially, it becomes backend infrastructure for Web3 — something like Google Firebase or similar, where you don’t have to host anything, but have a full suite solution on the PARSIQ Network. We are using this on-chain/off-chain hybrid approach. A lot of the Web3 applications are hosting parts of the apps and data off-chain: e.g., logic, metadata. It is too costly to store everything on-chain. We are big proponents of this hybrid model, where you can mix on-chain and off-chain and you can have the advantages of decentralization while not sacrificing speed and scalability, etc.
These tags of “centralized/decentralized solutions” are and will become more and more popular. For example, I had a long discussion with Kevin from Coinmetro, and he agrees that hybrid models might be the future, even for exchanges. We see this approach as being the best in the market. So, serverless backend for your Web3 applications, and you can build anything for your backend on the PARSIQ Network. That is the idea.
Shall we take some more questions here before I go on?
Q: How does PARSIQ Network compare to what, e.g., The Graph is offering?
Tom: I would say that this is faster than subgraphs. With that being said, The Graph is also improving their tech. They have a great team and a big team. I don’t want to get into the competitiveness of all of this. However, the advantage here is that, first of all, we have storage in addition to data. You can store things on the Data Hubs and use it to build your full backend. So, we offer much more than data querying. Secondly, you don’t have to re-sync nodes. With The Graph you have to resync nodes which can take days, weeks, and so on. With us, it saves a lot of time. But it is different. We have gone over most of the competitors and we think that no one has come up with a solution exactly like this. There are other advantages, which have the custom tailored DeFi and dApp data, which means we integrate the internal logic of the products, which will make the lives of these dApps and protocols (and any 3rd parties who want to use data from these dApps and protocols) much easier.
Q: You are building plumbing for Web3?
Tom: Yes, this is the whole backend. You have your smart contracts, you have your front end, everything else you can do on PARSIQ: you can store, query, connect Web2 to Web3, so on and so forth.
Q: Can you build a better Etherscan with PARSIQ?
Tom: Yea! Actually, explorers can be built on the PARSIQ Network. This actually brings us to another milestone on the roadmap, which is an explorer. What we will do is take all the Data Lakes that we have created, and on top of them we will built a visual frontend as an explorer. It will not be a general explorer like Etherscan. Instead, it will be a DeFi and dApp explore. Think of it like this: you have an aggregate or marketplace of all the dApps, protocols, NFT applications. You can click on each one, and get all data summaries on their usage, on what’s happening, and even dive deeper, getting data about who is borrowing, who is prepaying, who is getting liquidated, who is posting collateral, so on and so forth. So, this will be a user-facing, retail-facing, B2C visual explorer is coming, and it will be built upon the Data Lakes.
In addition, we will have an SDK. This will allow even better interaction with our APIs. And it will allow other developers, from outside of the PARSIQ team, to build Data Lakes. This is where the PARSIQ DAO can come in. Since we are going a slightly more decentralized route — before we were a completely centralized software platform — and now are taking a hybrid approach, a PARSIQ DAO makes sense. It is on the roadmap. Not all the details will be revealed yet, but definitely voting-rights for token holders will be included. VOting will be on a lot of things, including things like developer grants to support the creation of more Data Lakes. So, the PARSIQ DAO can incentive developers to develop Data Lakes for us, so that we don’t have to integrate all of them on our own. I also foresee projects and protocols coming to the PARSIQ DAO and submitting proposals, asking to have a Data Lake integrated. This will be something that will be voted upon (among many other things, of course).
Q: Are we starting to compete with Chainlink? Or, are we just an aggregator of sorts providing their data?
Tom: Not yet. We are not competing with them, we’re providing infrastructure for the backend of any Web3 applications — with storage, with data APIs, with SDKs. But, I’ve not really covered the whole roadmap yet, there might be a little bit overlap with oracles,
Q: With Tsunami API, would projects/dApps require any other data services, or will PARSIQ not be providing it all?
Tom: Well, that’s the point of the PARSIQ Network. You have to go anywhere else, you get all your data and backend infrastructure needs for Web3 in one place. This includes storage, historical and real time data and anything, you don’t need to go anywhere. You just need to have the smart contracts and maybe a visual front end, that’s it. You build everything else on the PARSIQ network.
Q: Will API’s be free or require $PRQ to use?
Tom: They will definitely be required $PRQ for B2B usage. We might allow for a certain number of API calls per day for free without holding $PRQ.
Q: Will the IFTTT data triggers be 100% customizable to fully address the full 100% need of clients now?
Tom: It will address 100% the needs of clients that would like to use it for backend infrastructure for their Web3 applications. Or, 3rd parties who need that data. It will not cover some other use cases. That’s the point of the product, to not spread our focus on a million different things, and do everything well enough, but not great. We’d rather do one big thing and be the market leader in it!
Q: No other project is providing this suite of plumbing for Web3?
Tom: There are other API providers, but that’s about it. There is competition, but the whole package of the PARSIQ network will cater to all the needs of building your Web3 backend.
Q: Does PARSIQ plan to build its own chain one day?
Tom: Not quite.
Q: Can you expand on the overlap with oracles?
Tom: This is where we’re going a bit further.
We’ve covered the Tsunami API, where we’ll provide real time and historical data from blockchains and decentralized networks. Then we have the data lakes, which are custom tailored data for specific dApps and protocols. We have the data hubs, which are storage for these dApps and protocols to store and use for their backend. We have the SDK to allow developer engagement and outsource the data lake integrations, and so on so forth. We have the PARSIQ DAO, which will oversee some of these initiatives and will be able to vote and make proposals.
The next stage is what we call PARSIQ hybrid, which is a piece of infrastructure on the PARSIQ Network that allows you to combine on-chain and off-chain data when you’re building your dApp. Also, you will be able to do tasks. This is where the reverse trigger technology will be utilized. It will be centralized in the sense that if some dApp or protocol wants to automate some on-chain action, deploy smart contracts, they would use the API to submit a request to the PARSIQ Network to execute the request. Projects and dApps will be able to do everything by interacting with this one API. The most effective model will be partially on-chain and off-chain with respect to both costs and user experience. We will build it in a way, theoretically, that will allow us to build this into a full fledged decentralized PARSIQ Network. It doesn’t mean we’ll do it, but we will build it in a way that allows it.
More about roadmap…
Tom: So, what I have said covers the overall roadmap. Collectively all the parts that make up the PARSIQ Network and the backend data infrastructure for Web3 applications. Teams can build on us, and 3rd parties can use the data as well. We will have a retail facing component with PARSIQ Atlas (explorer), which could be really interesting and it will provide a lot of in-depth data (from Data Lakes) that you cannot get in generalized blockchain explorers.
It’s a lot of work, it’s a huge roadmap with a lot of milestones. You’ll get more color on this in my CEO letter to the community. We have a bunch of dApps and protocols lined up to be our early adopters of the Tsunami API and the PARSIQ Network as a whole. We’ll be working to be the industry go-to solution for your data and backend infrastructure needs. Whenever someone thinks, I’m going to develop a Web3 application or Web3 protocol, they will think of PARSIQ. That’s the goal.
Q: What is the timeline for the milestones?
Tom: Please see the roadmap (below) for a good idea of when everything will be released.
Q: Will the early users of the Tsunami API be announced today?
Tom: No, they won’t. They will be announced when the Tsunami API goes live.
Q: Any further details you can provide us on more $PRQ utility?
Tom: The IQ model is intact, which means that any of the people using PARSIQ services will need to rent or hold the $PRQ token. With our product, we’ll be more focused on specific problem solving use cases, and we expect quite a lot of traction to scalably grow our client and user base. Once we deliver, I think we can see some good revenue growth. The PARSIQ DAO is not a maybe, it will happen and there will be a lot of voting rights for the holders.
Final thoughts pt 1…
Tom: There are exciting times ahead in the sense that there are a lot of new products and there will be a lot of new adoptions from projects. It’s a focused product that can gain a lot of traction in Web3 and from people that are less attracted to fully centralized platforms. There will also be a rebranding, a lot of things to expect. Exchange listings are coming soon! We will also be focusing on increasing the engagement around the PARSIQ Network and Tsunami API for both retail and builders. With the whole concept of data lakes, you can expect a lot of collaboration with all dApp and protocols. A lot of good synergies with start ups, small projects, and established protocols.
Q: Will there be surface level “normal” subscriptions for new product?
Tom: We haven’t gotten that far yet. With the PARSIQ Network, you won’t need to create an account by using your email or social login, it will connect by metamask. We will also be starting off with direct metamask payments. We’re going the full Web3 way! We will probably add fiat options at some point.
Final thoughts pt 2…
Tom: That was a lot of information for one AMA. For those of you that are confused, please check out the CEO Letter as it explains everything in greater detail. Be on the lookout for some media publications explaining the Tsunami API and the PARSIQ Network. Please take a look at the roadmap.
We’ve held off on the listings and other initiatives to be sure we did not release them before this exciting news! Hopefully what we are building will become the de facto infrastructure for Web3 data for dApps and protocols. Be on the lookout for what’s coming up in the next few days and coming months!
Thanks for reading this week’s AMA! We hope you enjoyed it as much as we have.
Once again, don’t forget to have a look at our post on how PARSIQ will redefine Web3 Backend, and 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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