DAPP Network #LiquidAMA Recap
Ask Me Anything with LiquidApps co-founders Beni Hakak and Tal Muskal
On November 5, 2020, a live Ask Me Anything session with Beni Hakak and Tal Muskal was hosted in the LiquidApps Telegram channel. Below is a recap of the questions and answers from the #LiquidAMA event.
General Questions
Is Tal willing to have a more public image? — I really would love to see him having a chat with personalities like IvanOnTech.
Tal Muskal: We operate in “bursts” when it comes to content and communication, with each burst having its own focus and target audience. Lately we have been focusing our burst internally towards the community, which is why we mostly concentrate on DAPP Talks & Tal Talks so that we can dive deep into the tech. Now we’re heading towards an outward-facing burst, which includes podcasts and conversation with the wider blockchain community.
Is something in the works with Blockbase? The functionality and the bridge + BBT must have multiple unique selling points and unique use cases for both EOS and ETH that can be monetised and get both projects some shine in the market. Just curious if this is on the todo list already.
Beni: We have had discussions with Blockbase, as we do with many other projects. There are several synergies between BlockBase and DSPs, and the implementation would be relatively easy for the community or someone wishing to use the BlockBase stack to implement on the DSP codebase.
Can you provide more information around the random number service? How does it work, how do you prove numbers are random and is there doco which describes it?
Tal Muskal: For starters, the LiquidRandomness service performs an oracle request to the DSPs. The DSPs fulfill the request by fetching a random number from the Math.random() function. That number is pushed into the oracleentry table and ultimately used and evicted after the oracle transaction is completed. As for proving that the number is truly random, there is an ongoing bounty to do just that. If we told you the answer we’d be spoiling all the bounty hunting fun.
Why don’t you try your hand at solving the randomness bounty?
David Azaraf: You can find instructions on how to specify the oracle request in the documentation and if you have any additional technical questions, feel free to share them in the Devs channel: https://t.me/dappnetworkdevs
Q: Are you leaving EOS?
Beni Hakak: We have continued to provide support and developments to DAPP Network developers that have chosen EOSIO as a base layer. DAPP Network’s provisioning layer is the EOS mainnet. At the same time, the DAPP Network is bigger than any single chain and, as part of the community, we aspire to extend its capabilities across several chains while connecting them together for seamless interoperability.
David Azaraf: You can read all about Beni’s thoughts on blockchain tribalism here:
Beni Hakak: The recently-announced EdgeDSP gives devs and users an opportunity to use the DAPP Network regardless of their underlying chain. We’re getting to the EdgeDSP questions in a moment, so stay tuned :)
Are you still in touch with B1? How often do you communicate? once a week, month, year?
Beni Hakak: We are communicating with block.one at least once a week.
Tal, if one aspired to be as good of a smart contract developer as you in five years and they were at ‘hello world’ contract level today — what broad/general steps would they take to get there?
Tal Muskal: The developer documentation has come a long way since EOSIO launched, that is a good starting point. If you’re brave enough, you can also try understanding some of the source code. Other good things to check out:
- @cmichelio has developed a great e-book called Learn EOS
- The EOSIO stack exchange
- The EOSIO developer channel on Telegram
It’s also good to just try and build things, even if they are simple at first. But the best way of improving is practice, setting defined goals and participating in open source projects.
Zack Gall: training.eos.io is also a great new resource for aspiring developers 🤓
Cross-Chain Bridge Questions
How can we trust cross-chain bridges?
Beni Hakak: One means of trust-building suggested by the community involves putting up collateral. Locking up a significant amount of tokens for large periods of time as collateral is a sensible means of ensuring skin in the game, since it aligns the incentives of the bridge operators and facilitators with the long term interest of the community. Ultimately those who put up collateral will be disinclined to put their long-term position at risk. Collateral can either be put up by the DSPs themselves or by the community if they choose to do so.
Koby Ben-Aroya: There are future mechanisms that the community has suggested for building trust, as described in the following blog post:
In theory, the cross-chain bridge could be applied to any dApp right? Any EOS token can have an ERC-20 clone of itself? And what about NFTs?
Tal Mukal: Yes that is correct, any EOSIO based token could utilize this bridge to create an ERC-20 copy of itself. More than that, any token on any chain could potentially adapt the cross-chain bridge to allow for cross chain transfer.
As for NFTs, the Ethereum side of the cross-chain bridge just needs to be modified to mint/transfer an ERC721 instead of ERC20. Anyone could take the existing code available and implement this feature.
How do you prevent Sybil/dDos attacks (someone sending lots of little transactions in order to clog the bridge)?
Tal Muskal: Teams have various options for dealing with this edge case, many of which have been raised and discussed by the DAPP Network community. Elements of such a solution could combine the following:
* Specifying a minimum transaction amount* Collecting a ‘clearing amount’ that is refunded once the tokens are successfully sent across chains
* Setting a minimum fee (which automatically sets minimum withdrawal without explicitly defining it)
* Setting a max number of transfers per account
Who pays for gas when the pegged tokens are transferred to a wallet on the Ethereum side?
Koby Ben-Aroya: That is an excellent question, and we dedicated an entire article to explore this and other community-generated ideas that could underpin cross-chain bridge models.
Can anyone build their own bridge using the DAPP tech and use their own token? Or do they have to use a DAPP token?
Beni Hakak: Anyone can configure a bridge for whichever use case they desire. This includes transferring their own tokens across chains, as well as using the bridge as a generic cross-chain communication channel for all data types. In any use case, and just as with other DAPP Network services, DAPP tokens must be staked to the DSPs for the services that allow the bridge to operate in accordance to the license.
What do you think about bridging *Insert_Chain_Name_Here*?
Tal Muskal: The cross-chain bridge is a generic communication solution. This bridge currently supports EOSIO and Ethereum (EVM) based chains, and we can envision cross-chain bridges to other kinds of chains, potentially including chains that don’t support smart contracts.
If anyone could build a bridge, will there be 2 or more contracts for a bridged token? Ex: on EOS. How could 2 contracted tokens interact with each other? How to make sure a bridged token not copycated or fake?
Tal Muskal: The bridge requires a bridge contract on the host chain and the destination chain. There would also be a token contract on the host/destination chain. The tokens would interact with each other separately from the bridge logic. For example if there are 2 ETH based tokens that are wrapped and sent to an EOSIO based chain, those 2 tokens could interact with each other as wrapped tokens.
Bridged tokens will prevent duplication or copycatting in the same way regular EOSIO tokens prevent duplication, by ensuring you are interacting with the correct account name that hosts the wrapped token contract.
For example, you can create XYZ token on any EOSIO based account, but only 1 account will represent the real XYZ token.
EdgeDSPs Questions
What are the DAPP tokenomics surrounding this new EdgeDSP model? Also, with all of the fresh new DAPP tech being announced, are there any new or additional use-cases for the native DAPP token that you can discuss?
Beni Hakak: The DAPP token is a utility token used to gain access to DSPs’ service packages through staking, and the EdgeDSP is the same. We’ve seen the DAPP Network community generate a host of novel ideas around the cross-chain bridge, and we envision a similar discovery process happening with regards to EdgeDSP use-cases.
How Do I Become an EdgeDSP?
Tal Muskal: It’s going to look something like open this link and following instructions: https://ipfs.io/ipns/edge-kernel.liquidapps.io/
More information will follow :)
Will you need to hold the dApp token to use EdgeDSPs?
Beni Hakak: Anyone that wants to access the services provided by EdgeDSPs must stake towards the service packages provided by those EdgeDSPs.
What happens if a EdgeDSP loses the net connection and goes offline exactly?
Tal Muskal: The EdgeDSP would be unable to perform its function; however, this is one of the benefits of having many EdgeDSPs performing DAPP Network services. For example, an oracle request could require 7/11 responses then it could analyze the first 7 given to ensure they are within a given amount of one another.
Can EdgeDSPs run their own CUSTOM edge services?
Tal Muskal: No, there is one universal DSP service which EdgeDSPs offer, it is flexible enough to run every potential decentralized service. Therefore, there’s no need for custom EdgeDSP services.
Can you run a light IPFS node at home or on a mobile device?
Tal Muskal: Yes, but you will have a hard time providing sufficient availability.
How can EdgeDSPs be leveraged by DAOs?
Beni Hakak: DAOs can comprise several EdgeDSPs which would allow them to leverage EdgeDSPs in several ways. For example, EdgeDSPs can provide their DAOs current oracle results, cron jobs, and IBC services through a simple MSIG of several EdgeDSPs. Also, a DAO wishing to bootstrap could use EdgeDSPs for bootstrapping its own chain or decentralized service.
What situations would warrant using EdgeDSPs compared to using a full DSP? Will most dApps need both?
Tal Muskal: EdgeDSPs allow you to form a community of end-users without any additional infrastructure requirements on top of each community member’s device. Each service that could run through EdgeDSPs — should run through EdgeDSPs, thus allowing for simplicity, ease of use and cost reduction.
Does a EdgeDSP need to have a STATIC IP ADDRESS in order to serve the network or can sit behind the NAT?
Tal Muskal: Doesn’t need an exposed public IP at all. Can sit behind the NAT.
Do you think it will soon be easier for ethereum developers to access tokens to build their dapps? e.g. my friend codes solidity but doesn’t want to deal with scatter to access any resources. my question is entirely centered around the utility function of dapp and its accessibility now vs in the future.
Tal Muskal: We have discussed the idea of signing LiquidAccounts transactions with a MetaMask wallet in a number of DAPP Talks videos. This would allow Ethereum developers to build dApps using the dev environment with which they are familiar. Furthermore, the technology behind the EdgeDSP enhances the accessibility of DAPP Network resources by enabling any was wa one to run a node in the system from their browser regardless of their preferred underlying chain.
Is there each package for each chain to make sure that bridged tokens works on same contracts, right? So, do devs have to choose a particular package when developing in a certain chain?
Tal Muskal: For existing DSPs, a package needs to be registered for each service used. In the new bridge, there will only need to be 1 package registered per DSP. This package can be used for bridging across all supported chains and will only require the universal EdgeDSP service.
