Head of IT Thomas Taroni — AMA Transcript
This is the transcript of the latest AMA we did in our Telegram group on June 14. This time we invited our Head of IT Thomas Taroni over. The transcript is anonymized and only contains questions and the answers by Thomas.
What is your roadmap?
Thomas Taroni: I think to have a first proof of concept within 4 to 6 months. Then we will make an iteration with all our key partners from the logistics industry. These are Emirates Sky Cargo, Cargolux, DHL, Panalpina and Kuehne & Nagel. Many other logistics players have contacted us about this project. Once we have a solid feedback from them, we will move the development to reach the beta stage till march 2019.
Which blockchain protocols are you considering to build the LOGI Chain on and why?
This is a very important decision, therefore we want to take the time and assess this very carefully. For the LOGI Chain a public and a private blockchain protocol. Therefore we consider NEM, NEO, EOS and Tezos as potential blockchain protocols. We will start the assessment right after the ICO in July/August.
The LOGI CHAIN will be developed as an open source system (in the spirit of the Linux Foundation). Does this also mean there will be an open development platform for users? Also will you be purely blockchain or will you try to go with an open API approach like NEM for example?
Yes, we will definitely provide an open API platform. From a software architecture point of view, we will have here some kind of abstraction layer.
Also concerning blockchain-tech: Do you plan in working with smart contracts and if so is Ethereum even an option?
O course, another potential combination to implement this project would be using Hyperledger in combination with Ether[eum].
And if you are planning in working with smart contracts: will they be mutable or are you looking to use a turing-(in)complete platform/language like Ethereum/Solidity?
In case you chose a chain-agnostic approach on the public side do you already have a plan how to make sure the public assets in the system (aka LOGI token) are movable? Or are you rather looking at cross-chain protocols like BlockCollider or Polkadot?
The LOGI token is an ERC20 token based on Ethereum.
And in case of choosing a cross-chain protocol what is your take on decentralization vs. centralization for validators/oracles? Where do you draw the line between usability and security?
In case of our containers there are multiple ways to connect the public blockchain identifier with the private blockchain identifier. The private blockchain will run at different locations at different members of the LOGI CHAIN.
Don’t you think that using Ethereum comes with an extra risk because of the turing-(in)completeness of the platform and the immutability of contracts after deployment?
In a first project stage we’ve planned to store only the immutable information of the container in the public blockchain. Because this aren’t many but important information, I don’t see this specific risk in our case.
So what happens to the ERC20-compliant token if you choose NEM as a platform? Would you wait for atomic swaps to become an option or move the assets from ERC20 to mosaic?
The LOGI tokens will stay on Ethereum as fuel of the LOGI CHAIN but the rest of the application is independent from a specific blockchain protocol due to the abstraction layer. With our technology we’re able to connect many different blockchain protocols.
So all instances will be represented in the public and the private ledger at the same time?
How do you define an instance?
Everything tracked on the LOGI CHAIN (documents, containers, products)?
Yes, that’s the plan. and the identifiers are in the public blockchain.
I am asking because we saw pretty bad instances of contract breach on Ethereum and no one really has the (proven) experience with complex smart contracts aside from token creation (or not that I know of). I know form other developers that they are concerned by that fact. As long as you only store information though that should not be a big problem.
Where will the business logic be defined in your case?
The business logic will be inside a RESTful API for the LOGI CHAIN.
To get a little more insight of some of the hurdles in tech land, can you give us an idea of your biggest challenges to date? And how have these been overcome?
My biggest challenge so far was the global implementation of the IoT sensor project of Smart Containers that has been running since 3 years. So the entire project is based on a domain-driven system that includes a lot of microservices and HTML5 applications.
And also I know Richard is quoted as saying “the dream is to partner with Amazon”, how would this be incorporated into the tech side of things? Are there any adjustments with taking on a potential partner like this?
I like and share this vision. From a technical perspective we’re ready since we’re running our services in our own data centers in Switzerland. At Smart Containers, our microservices and domain-driven systems enable us to connect foreign systems in a standardized way.
So payment from parties within the ecosystem will also always stay on Ethereum, right?
You’re right. But there is also a possibility to make payments through the API via FIAT.
Hi there! I have read the whitepaper and a question arose. It is said that SMARC token was not considered as a security token under Swiss regulation. But in fact it pays dividends (20% of net income, as I understood).
May someone explain this point? Is SMARC a security at all?
The SMARC token is a token conferring profit participation rights. Because of its economic function the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority qualifies the SMARC Token as a so called “asset token”. However, SMARC tokens do not represent or confer any ownership right or stake, share or security or equivalent rights of participation in Smart Containers and its corporate affiliates. It neither provides the token holder with a conversion right into shares or other equity of Smart Containers nor any other right whatsoever, other than the rights mentioned in the terms of token sale. It is therefore not equivalent to a security and does not qualify as a security according to current Swiss law.
Has the team contacted VeChain? They’ve got similar partners as Smart Containers, K + N being the largest, as well as they offer the privacy features that Thomas is leaning towards NEM/Mijin for.
It really seems like the best choice for a platform to operate off of for Smart Containers.
Yes there are many project’s that have private and public parts, the challenge for me here is to create a software architecture who could handle that. Specially if you think about that the underlying technology will not be developed anymore we have to create an abstraction layer which allows us to change the underlying protocol.
