[2018.3.9] Bluzelle Telegram Live Summary
Bluzelle is working actively on new partnerships and a global expansion plan
This week’s Bluzelle Telegram Live was hosted by our very own Pavel Bains. We were thrilled to receive so many questions and great feedback from the community. We are grateful for all the supports from you.
Host: Pavel Bains, Bluzelle CEO and Co-Founder
Pavel Bains is the CEO of Bluzelle. In addition to fintech, he is an expert in digital media having worked with Disney, Microsoft, Warners Bros, DreamWorks. Pavel is also a frequent contributor to Forbes, Huffington Post and Fast Company, writing articles in the areas of finance and digital media.
Discussion Summary
Q: Pavel, I was at the tour in Singapore last weekend. Great to hear you speak.
A: Glad you came out. We’re starting to build up our developer events. The goal is that in 6 months community members in different cities can run them for us too. In two weeks we’re doing one with Golem, Kyber, Gnosis. https://www.meetup.com/Bluzelle-Swarm/events/248531102/
Q: Bluzelle talks about how having fast and reliable access to data as important for the success of the predictions market to garner new customers and participation. Does that just point towards machine learning?
A: The faster they can collect data and analyze it, the tighter predictions can be made. It makes a more useful tool. I think machine learning comes later.
Q: Regarding network incentivization, will you be providing tokens to early adopters (from the reserves) to utilize the platform; if so what kind of a subsidy will you be giving on the overall cost of hosting their database on the Bluzelle network.
A: We have a pool set up for that. We want to figure out a model that Dropbox initially used. So let’s say you sign up early and refer others, you will earn X number of tokens which equates to storage space. I remember getting up to 5GB on Dropbox for having my friends sign up.
Q: Will Bluzelle pursue interoperability as seen with other projects such as AION ICX and WAN?
A: Bluzelle is its own protocol. So its designed to plug into any blockchain. So you could say it’s already interoperable
Q: Why do dAPPs need a decentralized database instead of using existent products(e.g., Oracle)?”
A: Forget dApps. Everyone should use a decentralized database. 3 reasons: Security, Scalability, Reliability.
- A centralized database can be hacked into one area, and everything is stolen.
- Centralized systems don’t scale well for small companies. Gets too expensive. The large companies will pay, they can afford to.
- A centralized system gets hit by some attack, the whole database goes down and the user cannot access it.
Q: Pavel, does BLZ have plans to compete with major database hosting companies like AWS/Oracle? It seems like they’re eerily quiet to this potential threat.
A: Eventually we will compete once we step out of the blockchain world. By then we should have enough traction that they start freaking out. https://blog.bluzelle.com/why-we-are-ignoring-the-enterprises-14a77d52a94b
Q: What is stopping other projects or platforms from implementing their own swarms or using sharding to manage their data? Why do other these need bluzelle?
A: Companies need to be focused on what is their specialty. Everyone can always run their own stack. But it doesn’t always make sense. Why use cloud servers from AWS when you can have on your own? Because it’s more efficient to have another expert take care of that while I build my real product.
Q: From what I understand JD’s partnership is more of a MOA (correct me if I’m wrong) where it isn’t clear if they will be a producer or user of the network, has any of these details been ironed out? If no, what side are they leaning towards?
A: The cool thing about them is that it gives us both options. They want to explore what is best for us first. Unlike other projects, we can have two use cases as you identified. As a consumer, having their data on our network will show to other companies that our system is enterprise grade. As a producer, it gives us an initial set of nodes on the network and offers others the confidence to join.
Q: Are more partnerships coming out? e.g. Kyber, ICON. Hashed also invested in these companies, so it is easy to get communication with these companies. Partnership with Kyber would be nice for decentralized exchange in the near future?
A: We are talking to several more. Hashed is a big help. We are defining use cases, and feature sets first with many.
Q: How do you plan to tap Western markets and partnerships if you are located in Singapore? (congrats on the JD partnership) — Has a strategy been formulated yet?
A: We have an office in Vancouver. With that, we will do developer meetups in the key cities on the west coast — Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Fran, LA. That will establish a base and then we can doing road trips to the eastern US.
Q: Pavel, do you see Vancouver as a possible location for a crypto revolution in Canada? Projects like Etherparty basing themselves in Vancouver for example. Is there a possibility of a hub?
A: I wish there could be. Vancouver had early crypto supporters and meetups. It just hasn’t grown that much. And now companies are listed on the Canadian Stock Exchanges from people who know little about crypto and blockchain. So the money isn’t moving into crypto at all. Maybe once we get some big traction going, more will come about. RightMesh is one cool one from Vancouver.
Q: What about Canada in general? They did come out with Project Jasper, which is currently linking up with Project Ubin in Singapore. Do you see Canada being a crypto hub like Singapore?
A: It’s got the potential. The Canadian government doing Project Jasper mainly helps the banks. They need to offer more helps to entrepreneurs in order to become a hub. Singapore is different where they have spent years pushing to build a fintech ecosystem which then spawned blockchain and crypto. Also, Singapore wants to help grow the ecosystem and attract talent.
Q: Hi Pavel, Are you planning to discuss any government to use BLZ? Indian PM Modi is a huge fan of using new technology for the Indian government.
A: Long-term would love to work with governments. But we aren’t going to spin our wheels chasing them yet. We learned that from working with corporates. The critical thing is to focus on the blockchain companies who will move fast. We’re building a good developer program to on-board companies more quickly. We just need to focus on executing. I’m most excited right now about building up our developer community. We’re looking at doing an event in Mumbai early April.
Q: Any plan to grow the team in India Pavel?
A: Possibly at some point. We are scoping out different areas around the world. I was surprised at the turnout in Vietnam. Right now talent can be anywhere
Q: From the roadmap, we will have our first product in the next month. Can we deliver it on time to the public?
A: We are updating the roadmap with when specific features will come in. I’ll provide a summary next week of what it will do. Neeraj did more of a tech update last week. We hired a good group of people last month. We’ll update everyone next week with their bios
Q: Was wondering when the exchange for BLZ to BNT will come out and if there are any plans to list BNT on centralized exchanges?
A: No plans for that right now. Over time, we want to eliminate one and just have a single token. Right now BNT is for the internal network use to ensure speed.
Q: I would be interested in your company culture. Have you agreed on a set of values?
A: Actually, I find it strange when companies say things like “we will be diverse. we will treat people fairly”.
Aren’t you supposed to be doing that anyway? If you have to write that down, then I think you have a real company problem. It should be done through actions.
Q: I can just share my experience with my company. We have some core values defined from the start (Focus, Simplify, Trustworthiness, Joy and Think Big). It’s the way you implement them as you pointed out. Write them down and pin them everywhere is not the right way. But when you start making decisions based on your values, it’s a good way of aligning a growing company. Over the years the company grew to 150 people and our values are really something we could rely on in the past. You hire accordingly and you end up with a great bunch of people with the same mind-set. Looking back I didn’t believe in it at the start but think it was one of our best actions
A: I like that. Stuff that really means something. Not about ways to act, but ways to dream. I guess we’ve been talking about that and communicate that with staff. But it’s definitely good to have a manifesto for all.
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