Pinknode’s Cross-AMA Recap with Pontem Network

Hey Pinknode Community! Last week, we hosted a cross-AMA session with our esteemed partner Pontem Network in our community chat. Co-founder & CEO Stas Oskin, Co-founder & CTO Boris Povod, and CMO Alejo Pinto answered questions about upcoming plans, technical setup, and goals for Pontem Network.

You can learn more about the partnership by reading our post or checking out what Cointelegraph had to say.

Curious about Pinknode’s AMA? Check it out here.

The below are the transcribed questions and answers for Pontem’s AMA.

Pinknode:
Today we have with us the CEO, Stas Oskin, CMO, Alejo Pinto and CTO Boris from Pontem Network.

Please tell us a little more about yourself!

Stas Oskin, Pontem Network CEO:

Boris and I have been working in the space since 2014, building multiple projects. We started with Crypti which in times been re-launched as Lisk / Ark blockchains, then launched Wings DAO, took part in working on Beam MW, and now focusing on Pontem Network. I also worked on Spondoolies in 2013–14, one of the early ASIC makers, and lived through the BTC mining boom/bust of 2013–2014.

Boris Povod, Pontem Network CTO:

I’m a blockchain researcher & developer lead and co-founder of Pontem Network. As Stas mentioned, we’ve been in the space since 2014, building and advising multiple projects, including projects on Ethereum (Wings), Cosmos, and Polkadot. In early 2014–2016 launched Crypti which in times has been re-launched as Lisk / Ark blockchains, currently working on Pontem.

Alejo, Pontem Network CMO:

I’ve been following crypto since 2014, dipped my toes first at IBM in 2017 leading performance marketing for their portfolio of blockchain products including Worldwire which was a competitor to Ripple using Stellar. Then joined BlockFi for about 4 months during their meteoric rise, but I wanted to go deep into the actual innovation going on in the decentralized metaverse so after meeting Stas and Boris, now I’m here 🙂

Pinknode:

So this is a question for Stas, can you tell the Pinknode community what Pontem Network is actually all about and what is the vision you want to achieve?

Stas Oskin, Pontem Network CEO:

I can talk for hours about it (which I do here in EthCC in Paris, btw if anyone is here will be happy to meet up!). In a nutshell, we are big believers that crypto has to finally cross the chasm between financial / tech geeks and the common person.

While we are all very early in this space, we are still kinda “swimming” in our small pond of what, 2–3M people who know how to invest, trade, or operate wallets? Tech giants such as Facebook have the power to bring billions of people into this space, and while some maxi’s feel it will be losing the good “old times” and that it will hurt their semi-anarchy vision of a world without banks.

After being in this space for 7–8 years we all see it probably won’t happen this way. We need to make crypto accessible for the rest 95%, and the only way to do it is to make it as accessible as the most ubiquitous tool out there — the social networks of any kind and shape, which might be Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Weibo, Twitter, etc. So our dream of Pontem is to start preparing the ground for this, letting developers who are dreaming to build on top of Diem.

Alejo, Pontem Network CMO:

For billions of people, the internet does not exist outside of Facebook, so we believe this will be a huge onramp for many, and we need to make the process for existing applications to migrate to Diem simple

Pinknode:

We absolutely agree that the world needs to be exposed to crypto!

Next question will be for the CTO Boris — Due to Pontem acting as the testing grounds for measuring feasibility of deployment to Polkadot, on what end of the bridge does Pinknode fit? Is Diem making API calls to Pontem via Pinknode-provided endpoints? If so, when would the architecture models be updated on the Pontem website to reflect the Pinknode inclusion to Diem deployment?

Boris, Pontem Network CTO:

Our goal is to provide our developers, validators, and overall community with the easiest possible way to reach our network API endpoints and validators infrastructure (through Pinknode services).

For example, if I am a developer and I want to send a transaction to Pontem, instead of having to set up my own blockchain node I would just go to Pontem/Pink node websites and see the available API endpoints.

Once Pinknode will provide hosted/managed node services, I will also be able to simply use this service to set up a validator node easily.

Pinknode:

What’s the use case of your native token and what role does it play within your ecosystem?

Stas Oskin, Pontem Network CEO:

You can see our current token roles in our design paper here: https://pontem.network/designpaper#4

Mainly for:
Transactions fees
Gas for Move VM execution instructions
Rewards for Parachain validators & nominators
Staking deposits of Parachain validators
Governance

Do note that it’s a subject to change, as we working to find out the best use cases for Pontem

Pinknode:

Once Diem finds traction at Facebook and its users, and utilizing crypto currencies becomes standard, a lot of people (influencers, advertising, game developers, news, etc) might want to reimburse their expenses through their own coin compliant to regulatory affairs on Diem and test it via Pontem. How will such a huge load affect the your network and how to you plan to avoid any congestions?

Boris, Pontem Network CTO:

It’s a good, but long-term question.

We are building on Substrate, which has a current TPS (in an ideal environment) at somewhere around 1500 TPS — https://twitter.com/gavofyork/status/1270025498580656134?lang=en, however, the real TPS output also depends a lot on the environment: the number of validators, latency, code performance (Move VM for example). All these are factors that have an impact on the network throughput.

For sure we are going to look into any potential scalability issues, but first thing is first — need a few working products first. There are a lot of different approaches to how we can scale, starting from second layer protocols, code optimization, and just launching more parachains.

Pinknode:

Now we have a question from the community! Anyone can pick this up!

Why does Pontem choose to develop their platform on Polkadot network? — asked by @jennyisdabest

Boris, Pontem Network CTO:

Polkadot ideally fits our technical requirements. Substrate framework and Move VM (Diem) both written in Rust, allowed us to implement integration without additional headache. A lot of modules and code from other projects that we can reuse. Community wise it grew well, which means we can also get part of this community, a lot of partnership opportunities

Pinknode:

I’m curious about the re-usability of Rust code, any examples on this? I was under the impression that most crypto protocols were built in golang or C. Perhaps the newer launches like EGLD and Casper are on Rust but so far we aren’t seeing much traction there due to their youth. — asked by @zackcrypto

Boris, Pontem Network CTO:

Look at the Substrate pallets approach, something like modules which you can reuse in any substrate-based project — https://substrate.dev/docs/en/knowledgebase/runtime/pallets

Also, you can look at Moonbeam — https://github.com/PureStake/moonbeam. It’s also a Polkadot project built on Substrate, their code is very useful when you start learning Substrate

About Pinknode

Pinknode is a Polkadot-specialised Infrastructure-as-a-Service provider with the goal of accelerating adoption and empowering innovators to build on the most promising Web 3.0 ecosystem. By providing API endpoints through a streamlined onboarding process and maintaining secure, reliable, and scalable node infrastructure, Pinknode helps innovators jumpstart development quickly and accelerates their product life cycles.

If you want to know more about Pinknode, check out our website, follow us on Twitter, and join our Telegram to get in on the conversation.

About Pontem

Pontem is building a bridge to connect the Diem Blockchain to the decentralized ecosystem of public permissionless blockchains like Ethereum via Polkadot. This will expose Facebook’s 2.7 billion users to any crypto use-case, from decentralized finance (DeFi) to non-fungible tokens (NFTs). With Pontem Network and development platform, users can build and test apps on Polkadot and other popular blockchains before migrating their products to the Diem Blockchain.

The Pontem Network is a Polkadot Substrate-based chain that functions as an incentivized testnet for Facebook’s Diem Blockchain. Using Polkadot, the project introduces creators to Diem’s potential and gives them the ability to validate ideas before submitting an application to the Diem Association for migration. By utilizing cross-chain bridges, Pontem also taps into the established liquidity, data, and tooling of other networks.

Pontem’s vision is to establish itself as the leading experimentation network for the Diem Blockchain, thus essentially becoming not only a bridge for liquidity but also a “Kusama for Diem.” This dovetails perfectly with Pinknode’s ability to connect dApps to the current Kusama network using highly efficient, customised Pinknode-powered code. The existing Kusama blockchain has gained a reputation for being fertile grounds for cultivating early-stage startups, experimentation with innovative creations, and incubating fledgling dApps before deploying them on Polkadot. This is thanks to its low barriers to entry, more forgiving slashing penalties, speedier iterations, and up-to-date technology. Pontem’s journey to achieve the Kusama business model for Diem is nothing short of ambitious — which is why Pinknode is honored to help it make this vision a reality.