PIRATE. Independent. Secure. Anonymous.
An Interview with the PirateChain Team
PIRATE is all about privacy & nothing about piracy
Good day Captain, everyone has his own story on how he/she got into blockchain technology. What’s yours?
Well met Captain Blackbeard. It’s a pretty interesting and somewhat foretelling beginning. My first engaging experience with blockchain was an article similar to this one about Monero, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-02/criminal-underworld-is-dropping-bitcoin-for-another-currency
The ideas presented intrigued me, specifically the public ledger and the privacy protocol of Monero. Within 2 days I was mining XMR on my gaming rig and the rest is history. I was hooked right away. Mining rigs started popping up in the corners of my house while I researched as many aspects of the tech that I could.
I owe my kids and significant other a big thanks for putting up with the over the top nature surrounding my beginnings. The upside is that they now have awesome gaming rigs from spare parts. My SO, she is a proud BTC hodler now, special thanks to her for keeping the faith.
What is your role at the PirateChain ?
The best title I would consider relevant to my position is “company” director. My first and foremost goal is to ensure the success of the project and share the positive privacy vision that Pirate is building for it’s users. Much of my time every day is spent to make sure different community members have all they need to manage their tasks.
I work with art teams, editorial teams, developer teams and third party integration teams on all aspects of Pirate as well as manage the back end infrastructure requirements through input from said teams. From stock photo accounts, to web servers, I help to make sure the teams all have the tools they need.
Art teams have to follow certain guidelines to keep a cohesive look to the project. They are a fantastic crew for creating release statements, information, graphics for editorials and maintaining the overall aesthetic and look for Pirate.
Editorial teams are currently hard at work every week coming up with new articles and information to write about and translating them into 10 different languages. https://medium.com/piratechain I have a community member, SEKO, who also helps manage the Telegram channel, in charge of the Authors and translations team. Together we ensure the team has the proper information or key contacts to reach out to for verifying data in their articles as well as editing and researching them for veracity.
The developer teams are unique. Being founded in the Komodo ecosystem and launched as an independent asset chain, we are a decentralized project at the core. There’s really no one person who can claim they founded Pirate. There were about 7 members responsible for creating the protocol and testing the product into existence. We have about 30 people in total working on the project now. Wallet devs, website devs, explorer devs, bot devs and more… I make sure that each of these developers have the knowledge, contacts, data, art and information needed when working on integrating or developing parts of our ecosystem. Part of this includes relaying our prioritization needs to them. Assigning the proper tasks to the right people and negotiating compensation for their services is a difficult task, especially without an ICO or Dev Fund war chest. Nobody works for free, but thankfully the strength of the Pirate code is realized and the developers are happy to put time in on a ship they see with wind in it’s sails. I never feel like the people who work on the project are earning enough so I will continue to do my best to ensure the project can reward them through it’s own growth and their decision to support it, if they so choose.
Third party integration is really the task of going through the motions to get the coin listed in as many locations as possible, and providing a contact person for their teams should they need assistance. I am currently working with third parties such as Mining Calculator sites, Coin info sites like CoinMarketCap, Exchanges for listings, data sharing sites and advertising departments for all of the above. We haven’t pursued that last option but it’s something we’re gearing up for if it makes sense.
I have been fortunate to find myself here. I have been in the same mortgage finance industry for 20 years, and for the last 10, running my own business from home. The environment I work in now with Pirate, is very reminiscent of my first successful business venture where we took 2 employees and turned it into over 100. I’m really enjoying the chance at the structure building and delegation opportunities I have when there are so many amazing minds that I get to work with on such a great idea.
Who is behind Pirate Chain ? What are the Backgrounds of the team member ?
The main developers of the chain are a team of Komodo developers. JL777 is the founder of Komodo and our lead tech consultant. We have had various Komodo developers help us with various aspects of the project, from JL777, Decker, 0x03, and more anonymous ones, to a handful of KMD notary nodes operators like Webworker, DWY, Jeezy and more giving their time and efforts. There are third party wizards like Radix42, Mrs. Zcash integrations specialist herself, and Duke leto, Creator of Hush who have offered to, and spent time developing for the project. JL had members of the Komodo team help with wallet integration, explorer creation and anything else that might be needed to have a legitimate blockchain. I am in the process of building a team page and we will release this soon. Some of the devs have chosen to remain anonymous out of respect for past or current projects they work with and I have to respect those wishes, especially since they do such amazing work.
How did the idea to develop PirateChain come about ?
As community member of the Komodo ecosystem for a while now and not just a Moon-boi hodler, it’s been very interesting to see how all these users and developers interact on ALL things Komodo.
One day in the CHIPS poker channel, a discussion was spawned about privacy and making a real private blockchain. Naturally being a zcash fork, the KMD people looked at zcash first. ZKsnarks has been a cryptographic protocol in development for nearly 40 years and it has won several awards along the way for innovation.
So one day at the end of August, 2018, JL777 and a few other KMD devs were discussing an entirely private chain requiring zksnarks on all sends and the possible limitations to such an idea. Immediately (within 24 hours) the conversation took over the chat channel it was in. Discussions were moved to channel in the KMD ecosystem setup for testing blockchains. Blackj0ker and Alright are two well respected devs at KMD who run a product called KMDLABS, which is essentially a testing platform for CryptoConditions and other Blockchain experimentation. The idea behind their branch is essentially to be able to test any comlpiant protocol under extreme conditions, without having it in a live environment.
These two amazing devs setup an entire test Komodo ecosystem, complete with test notary nodes, to determine how to provide this protocol with 51% resistance and more importantly, double spend protection with dPoW. Other aspects of the chain were also tested including transaction spamming and methods to stop fee manipulation. The TL;DR version is that now Notary Nodes are the only Public transactions allowed on the blockchain other than the initial coinbase creation.
At that point JL777 contacted me and we’ve been building the brand ever since. They knew they had a privacy protocol so strong that it should seriously be considered a top contender unlike all the false or optional privacy protocols riddled with holes of their own design. XMR is the only real tech comparison in our minds. They have an amazing product and their goal of privacy is one we emulate and appreciate dearly.
Fluffypony acknowledges there are stronger privacy protocols than Monero, ZEC being one, albeit with tradeoffs. In this screenshot here he was mentioning optional ZEC. I wonder how he feels about ARRR and it’s required zksnarks sends.
What is ARRR and how would you explain it to non-crypto speakers?
Pirate coin is a privacy focused cryptocurrency that is fully decentralized, meaning there is no third party in charge of your funds at any time. Private transactions are confirmed in a trustless manner on the blockchain. This means you do not need a third party to verify that your transactions are valid, the pirate code takes care of that.
- Pirate coin uses a highly advanced and respected privacy protocol to hide the data of your transactions. This is accomplished through the use of an advanced technology called zk-snarks, which we have adopted and required on 100% of the send transactions. This is considered by many prominent developers to be one of the strongest methods of hiding your financial data on the blockchain. ZK-snarks works so effectively because it doesn’t require the data from your transaction to be viewable on the public ledgers.
- All Pirate chain transactions are private by default. This alleviates the problem that many cryptocurrencies with optional privacy introduce into their protocol. These optional private transactions used by the majority of other privacy coins provide anchors for data to be analyzed and thereby weakening the overall privacy protection for users. This complete privacy protocol also provides users with additional assurance that no authorities in the future can come along and claim that users funds are “tainted” or ill gotten due to previous transactions
- Pirate crypto allows for quick and secure transfer of value across the world for both the customer and the vendor. The fees are very inexpensive, there is no chance for fraudulent chargebacks, no erroneous fund verification periods, and transactions are confirmed and secured within minutes. These features alone can save merchants and vendors across the globe save billions of dollars by cutting out facilitation fees
What are the main use cases you are looking to cover?
Financial privacy is crucial for so many people for so many reasons. Privacy is needed by vendors, distributors, merchants, purchasers, suppliers, service providers and customers. Pirate plans to support community efforts for a legitimate marketplace to parlay your pirate coin for goods and services. Customers deserve privacy and speed in their transactions, period. Businesses can assure their clients and themselves that both parties to the transaction will receive the privacy and speed they expect.
Business is cutthroat and it’s critical for some businesses to protect their relationships to retain their edge on their respective markets. The ability to incorporate a cryptocurrency with the ease of use, speed, flexibility and financial privacy that Pirate offers will secure this critical advantage that powers many businesses in todays market. Pirate offers an enormously beneficial means of transacting and exchanging value. The traditional and very cumbersome methods that exist within legacy banking systems are not only detrimental to businesses, but can be costly to businesses in many ways. Your transactions can be at the scrutiny and whim of being reversed by a third party with no rights, reasons or understandings to your business.
Todays FIAT currencies are already making a mass exodus towards digital systems. Any sovereign cryptos created in the future will surely not be wholly private and still be likely subject to manipulation as it already is… as opposed to a decentralized blockchain protocol run by math.
The code exists today such that we no longer need to have these middlemen and facilitators managing our transactions and to maintain our privacy, which many have egregiously failed to do.
Can you give us an example why privacy are so important to the (crypto) world ?
Somehow we write off this lack of privacy as “Amazing world changing tech” while giving up the entire history of our financial decisions.
You didn’t go into the coffee shop today and show the cashier your bank statement before you gave them money for your coffee. You just gave them the money. There was zero knowledge on how you got the money, there is zero knowledge on how much you have, there is zero knowledge of your merchants finances, and yet somehow, the sun keep shining and the weather is sweet. Crypto financial transactions deserve the exact same discretion. It is critical to many people for many reasons. Safety, security, peace of mind and most important of all, financial privacy. The implications of financial privacy and the breach thereof, would be an entire article/interview on it’s own.
What makes PirateChain stand out when it comes to privacy, how did you achieve this and how is the competition doing it ?
We have taken one of the most cryptographically secure privacy protocols, zksnarks, and required it to be used on ALL send transactions on the blockchain. ZKsnarks works by obfuscating all users funds in one large shielded pool of funds, making it impossible to discern your funds from another users funds (to date). As mentioned above, our biggest tech competitor, Monero, mentions there are stronger protocols. The zcash devs themselves acknowledge this stating that the strongest use for zksnarks is a requirement to use the tech on all send transactions. Zooko has mentioned that they would like to ban unshielded transactions but that’s a tall order for them to require at this point in the project.
In addition to having what is considered one of the strongest privacy protocols in crypto, we have also added dPoW from Komodo giving us resistance to damage from 51% attacks as well as double spend protection meaning exchanges and users can be assured that any issues with double spends on the chain can be handled swiftly and effectively without causing permanent damage to the chain.
On your website you talking about ‚http://tortuga.exchange ‘, what will be the peculiarity of this exchange ?
TORtuga will be a CEX that can be connected through TOR and will facilitate z address transactions for ultimate exchange privacy. Think BarterDEX for Komodo but for Privacy coins. Most privacy coins can’t be traded on BarterDEX in their shielded / obfuscated form as the Bobs and Alices (Buyers and sellers) cannot communicate. TORtuga is comprised of a group of about 8 people. KMD devs, notary node operators and third party developers are all working on this goal. They claim to have a plans for a working product by the end of Q1 2019 and we will keep the public informed more about this as it unfolds. It is not a Pirate project, but it was one of the first community spawned ideas because of the pirate project. There were NO exchanges that supported z addr withdraw and deposits when they started pirate chain. There has only been ONE exchange that has been able to integrate our project, DigitalPrice.io, and according to JL777, “what Digitalprice did was quite impressive”. The Z address withdraw and deposits was no easy task. There have been several exchanges who have not been able to get us added or that have even passed before even trying.
The TORtuga devs feel the crypto world needs an exchange like this and they do plan to add other strong privacy coins as base trading pairs in the future.
Are there any plans for an own Wallet ?
The Agama wallet integration from Komodo is amazing. We essentially get wallet dev help from them for free. Updates and upgrades are all done by their team with input from us as needed. They now support ERC20 tokens, the Android wallet is released and the iOS version is in testing. The costs, efforts and time needed to accomplish all this for a blockchain by itself is a big task. Not to mention, who needs ANOTHER crypto wallet for a specific coin? We really feel overall that this is the best option.
We are designing a paper wallet that should be ready in the next few weeks. There is a developer who started their own GUI wallet, and this person has every skillset needed to do this, but I think they even realize that using the Agama wallet and supporting the multi-coin wallet integration will be best. There are other items pertaining to this that we aren’t privy to share too much of, but it relates to sapling and the future. We are really looking forward to the first half of 2019 with a lot of our final integration needs being completed.
Thinking about the future, do you have any roadmap with relevant upgrades or partnerships?
Decentralized projects don’t have partnerships. Yes we are thinking ahead with the roadmap for Pirate and we are glad to work with developers to integrate our project into their ideas. I have Seko, mentioned above, working on the road map and I assume he will be done in a week or two. Here is a screenshot from my message to him on things to include in it… so you could call this an exclusive for you Captain Blackbeard!
Mike Toutonghi, lead developer of the Verus Coin platform and former co-founder of Microsoft’s .Net platform, worked VERY hard to integrate sapling into Komodo. Now that he has completed this monumental task, JL777 and the Komodo dev team are working to activate these features on ALL chains and to the benefit of all projects using the Komodo platform. The original target for doing this was at the KMD notary node fork in April, but the Verus project. Mike Toutonghi offered to help integrate sooner, and we are now ready, almost 4 months early thanks to Verus Coin! Truly an amazing project in the original spirit of open source, project that not only thinks about its specific short term goals, but one that cares about contributing to a strong ecosystem with PIRATE and other innovative projects, a mindset that makes all the difference in creating strong community. In addition to Sapling technologies, Verus also integrated a ton of unique technology and enhancements to existing Komodo technology as well. We are fortunate to have Verus Coin, a project that truly believes in cooperation and building an open source community as members of our own extended Pirate family!
Going forward, we are working on sapling integration and development which opens other exciting possibilities I don’t want to share just yet. I have been in touch with fantastic zcash and kmd experienced devs to start building the team that will help us post sapling with all of the development and integration needs at that time.
Last week I spoke with a few webdevs about the possibility for a legitimate private shopping website. They are eager to build this. I have found a developer who is making them shop plugins for Pirate to be accepted in Ecommerce shops. I am personally excited about that project.
There is a lot of momentum behind the project and I see the future as being an open sea with much to discover along the way.
Any plans for exchanges?
We are currently on DigitalPrice.io and they really did great work to get us integrated. I would suggest any coins looking for a new home and exchange to participate in, that they reach out to this team. I spent three weeks with a recent exchange to get integration for our coin and they were unable to complete the integration. Others have flat out denied trying to integrate the z addr withdraw and deposits due to the amount of work needed. We’ve taken care to not just get on ANY AND EVERY exchange. This does nothing to help young projects. We have a small exchange, and now we are shooting for a top 100–200 exchange. After that we will go for a top 50. There are other limiting factors to exchange listings that we are working on alleviating. Some exchanges want Coin or Token opinion letters. Some want a foundation behind the project. We’re putting the wheels in motion to obtain the legal docs and framework that will be needed to start getting listed on larger exchanges. I would say in the next 2–5 months we should start making headway on these things.
How much funds do the core team has in budget for development and marketing?
That’s an interesting question for a project that had no ICO, no premine and no dev fund. That said, at the beginning of the chain, we had some Pirate Whales donate large amounts of pirate to the project. We are using these funds for many purposes. There are three people who manage the funds and funding for the project, I am one. In the essence of Privacy, we don’t want to disclose what we have on hand for our project to be used towards integration, developers and marketing costs. We are glad to talk about ways we are trying to get funding for the party… Onboarding. We have a program that is very close to release, where pirates can purchase ARRR for KMD through the Dexstats website. Some of you have done this already here (https://dexstats.info/onboarding.php).
We have changed this piece of the project to be a private referral tracking system. Now when pirates sign up with a referral link through dex stats, the creator of the referral link will get some of the KMD used to onboard by the Pirate they referred. The price is a bit higher than the lowest standard exchange rate so that people can support the project, support the referral program and get a fair amount of pirate in return for their support. We are really excited to release this in the coming weeks as the developers put their final touches on it in testing.
We do have a few anonymous benefactors who donate healthy amounts to the project occasionally. It’s not Lambo money, but its enough for listings, integrations and developer rewards.
We are urging all of our users to use our referral links for exchanges. This will generate passive income that goes right back into the project. One user is starting an initiative to integrate and encourage Brave Browser use to have the BAT donated to the fund.
Our most recent listing attempt had a 0.8 BTC listing fee, and the community raised this in about 3.5 hours. There is momentum behind the project and we are always finding new and unique ways to add value and funds to the projects needs.
Conclusion
In the few short weeks that the chain has been launched, the Pirate ecosystem really has developed into something amazing, and very much what I expect someone would want in a decentralized project.
Pirate welcomes developers and contributors of all skillsets. There are over 30 contributors to date, who have provided services to the growth and development of Pirate chain. Developers are all working in a team fashion to bring in knowledge and experience from all parts of the crypto sphere. With their diverse group, there is always someone with the knowledge of how to complete a needed task, or someone with a connection to someone who can. They have completed many first time accomplishments in the Cryptocurrency realm when it comes to privacy protection and they will continue to innovate and collaborate with the community towards these efforts.
Thank you to all of our users, believers, developers, authors, artists, bloggers, vloggers, followers and most of all thank you to the KMD ecosystem.
Without them, none of this would have ever been started nor would it have been as successful in any other place. Thank you all for reading this far and if this still isn’t enough for you, please stop in the Komodo Discord to participate in the daily discussions about all things Pirate.
~Captain FishyGuts, sailing away~
Thank you for your time. If you enjoyed the read feel free to follow me on Twitter. You can tip me ARRR here: zcRkr45vzGp5pL7MPeL7mFbFX6vnKJ3tLwQTR9SYJZTZLhCJhbcBpjHpEa9NHVaquAewwKQMy5rapt6XhqhffzQfSMtbVvT
Digital Price referral link : Please use this for any hotlinks and note that using it supports the project directly. https://digitalprice.io/?inviter=4fdaf7
Social Media & More
Discord: https://discord.gg/UYNJaUZ — KMD discord — Pirate channels are down low in the lists.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateChain — Twitter
Telegram: https://t.me/piratechain — Telegram
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/PirateChain — Reddit
Bitcointalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4979549.0
Github: https://github.com/PirateNetwork
Latest Agama release supporting Pirate: https://github.com/KomodoPlatform/Agama/releases/tag/multios-0.2.43d
