Recap of the First Universal Protocol AMA — July 25
On July 25, 2019, we held the first ever AMA for Universal Protocol. JP Thieriot, CEO of Uphold, and Dan Schatt, President of Cred, who are both co-founders of the Universal Protocol Alliance, answered community questions live on our Telegram channel and our Reddit page. Below is a recap of the questions and answers.
UPP Telegram & Reddit AMA Q&A 25th July 2019
Telegram Q&A
Q. Is there an ETA for platform launch?
A. We’re already live on Uphold and we’ll have the broader rollout in late September. You can sign up now for an Uphold account and use the Universal tokens. You can also earn interest on them as well. Since they are all ERC-20, you can send them to any ERC-20 wallet.
Q. Can we send the tokens from our wallet to uphold?
A. Yes, but not the UPT token yet, that will come later in September.
Q. So what’s next? The ICO was done, will you guys be doing another sale?
A. We are planning to do an IEO in late Sep/Oct with a major exchange, can’t comment too much at the moment, but will have a big impact.
Q. What do you see as the benefit to buying/using UP tokens as opposed to just holding the regular currencies in Uphold? Is it for purposes beyond Uphold?
A. Uphold is supporting the reserve technology and the idea is that this reserve technology can be licensed and used by other companies outside of Uphold, Cred is offering lending and borrowing services for every Alliance token. There are many reasons to use UP tokens, and beyond just Uphold. You will receive high interest rates for earning, the tokens are interoperable with each other, and all of them can reason with any ERC-20.
Q. How much did you raise in ICO?
A. We will be sharing that information soon.
Q. You’ve invented wrapped Bitcoin for the 8th or so time?
A. We were the first — check out the date of the whitepaper.
Q. Are you just wrapping cryptos into ERC-20?
A. No, It can be any protocol, not just ERC-20. The big solve is the transparent, on-chain reserve, We have a substantial reserve technology, on-chain burning/minting, detachable wallets, and technology that can support token recovery. Very different than simply wrapping a digital asset as an ERC-20 We are beginning with ERC-20 but have also been approached by other protocols.
Q. Do you think you still have investor confidence after delays, setbacks and moving the goalposts since the sale ended?
A. Yes, given the bear market, all projects were generally set back, but we still have the full support of the alliance members and investors. The objective is to bring to market something that doesn’t yet exist, brought forth by what, in the aggregate, amounts to the biggest crypto ecosystem.
Q. Did you have an interview with Mark Zuckerberg or did you meet any of these people at Facebook these past few days?
A. We do know many of these people, but we are not in contact regarding their project.
Q. Why is this a good thing to be approached by other protocols? ERC-20 is the standard everyone knows and uses and is compatible with hardware wallets etc.?
A. ERC-20 is our preferred protocol at this time for the alliance. We’ve built the technology such that we can offer the service on other protocols if the alliance believes they have substantial merit.
Q. Will the lockup continue even after listing. Or will 100% be available at the time of exchange listing as it is already 2&1/2 months from 1st term unlock date?
To further clarify, the 40/60/90 day unlock will no longer be in effect?
A. For ICO participants, no lockup. Up to 5 year lockup for founders and partners. It is correct that since the 90 day period has passed, there will be no lockup.
Q. Is the Uphold API the major/only way of interacting with UP tokens programmatically at this time?
A. This is not through Uphold APIs, we can direct you to UP technology team if you are interested in learning how to integrate the Alliance technology.
Q. Who are the 8 large companies that form the UP alliance?
A. Uphold, Cred, Brave, Blockchain at Berkeley, CertiK, Bittrex International, and a couple to be announced soon.
Q. Is UPA considering new members over time?
A. Certainly. If they provide incremental value, expertise etc.
Q. What are you doing about marketing, precisely ? And what are you planning to do ?
A. The marketing power of the collective user base of all alliance members will be quite substantial, but takes time to coordinate coming off the ICO and the upcoming IEO. For instance, Uphold and Cred have already started, you can purchase / sell / transmit / earn on UP tokens today! The project is live. The UPT will only be out once the IEO is complete, and that is when the UPT can be used and marketed by the collective companies.
Q. No direct marketing like banner ads and such on say CMC? When you google ‘Universal Protocol’ there is practically nothing since the end of the ICO?
A. No reason, and that the nature of marketing will not be as relevant since the UPT will be built into the user experience of our collective partners — that is the real marketing power. We don’t need to attract users through Google searches. Our users come through the 40M+ users that will experience the Alliance directly.
Q. Why not “make noise” before the IEO in late September/October?
A. We will definitely be making noise, but the noise we will make will relate to concrete progress, IEO dates, specific uses of UPT, enabling of new use cases. You will see a lot more marketing within the next 4–6 weeks.
Q. Will the IEO be open to US non-accredited persons, or too early to say
A. It will not be.
Q. What differentiates UP from other crypto wrapping products on the market?
A. token recovery, detachable wallets, a coalition of 40M users, a utility token that extends past BNB, fully transparent reserve structure, lending/borrowing of all tokens, full interoperability across asset classes, etc…lots of exciting work we are all doing.
Q. Will your IEO announcement be incorporated within your forthcoming PR in the next 4–6 weeks?
A. That is the plan!
Q. Are you planning to do “the” or “an” IEO on your partner’s platform Bittrex?
A. We can’t comment on that nature of specifics quite yet.
Reddit Q&A
Q. Which one business book would you recommend? Both for Dan and JP.
A. Virtual Banking, written by one of the co-founders of the Alliance! It’s all about innovation through partnering! You can find it on Amazon.
Q. What did you have for breakfast this morning?
A. Bulletproof coffee! Blend 2 tablespoons of butter, coconut oil, chocolate collagen protein! Try it!
Q.Is UPP on track with the roadmap as in the whitepaper described: Q3 UPT convertible to 3+ Additional cryptocurrencies — integrated with exchange and derivative platforms?
A. Yes and No. Recent expanding of the alliance and utility of UPT has pushed back our roadmap slightly, but we don’t expect major delays.
Q. The Facebook Libra announcement has seemingly sent regulators into a frenzy. I was wondering where the UPP sits from a regulatory standpoint. Have you encountered any pushback?
A. Not at all. We’ve gone out of our way to be legally compliant with all of the products we offer in the jurisdictions we do. We did our legal homework before we announced what we were doing.
Q. How does one redeem UPUSD or UPEUR for example to USD and EUR? Via the Universal Protocol Platform itself?
A. At the moment UPUSD and UPEUR are available for purchase and redemption to USD and EUR on Uphold.com for limited jurisdictions. In the future, we will have other exchanges and partners offering these currencies.
Q. What does the onboarding procedure for new users will look like?
A. Onboarding of users is done through our partners and Alliance members that integrate with the Universal Protocol Platform.
Q. When will UPP become available to use? Somewhere in 2020?
A. UPP, Universal Protocol Platform, is available for use now in a limited function on Uphold.com.
Q. How does UPP plan to gain adoption from other centralized exchanges (other than Bittrex) as the stable coin market is starting to get crowded?
A. Through integration with our partners in the Universal Protocol Alliance, the tokens and products we are offering will have wide distribution and potential integrations that a typical stable coin would have i.e. 10% annual return on UPEUR and UPUSD through our partner Cred.
Q. When does trading begin?
A. We can’t comment on trading or exchange listings, unfortunately. However, we can say that we are actively working towards what’s best for the UP project and community.
Q. When is the token unlock?
A. The token unlock is currently on hold from trading as we build out additional functionality of the UPT token and further integrate with new and existing partners. It has taken a while, but we are getting closer to the next phase of the project.
Q. The UP team seems to consist of members that work in allied projects and divide their time one way or the other. How much effort/focus (FTE) has been spent on UP on average, say, the last two months? And how many people are working on the project for more than 80% of their time?
A. We have a large team that is completely dedicated to Universal Protocol’s success. We have a core team of engineers in Portugal who are working every day to build out the platform, and all of its functioning parts. In addition to the UP team, all of our alliance members are focusing on integration and functionality with the UP platform.
Q. What has been the defining moment or insight that made you broaden the scope of the alliance some months ago?
A. We had a major enlightening moment when we realized that we had built this incredible alliance of leading blockchain companies, with millions and millions of users, and we had this opportunity to build a truly universal utility token of the realm. That’s a huge idea.
Q. The Universal Protocol Platform aims to be blockchain agnostic if I’m correct but the main business logic is built upon Ethereum?
A. Yes, we are built on Ethereum, but are exploring integrating with other blockchain platforms at the moment.
Q. If UPP is fully built on Ethereum, is UPP built with Solidity?
A. Yes, all Universal Protocol Platform tokens are ERC-20 tokens, which are present on the Ethereum network and those contracts were built with Solidity.
Q. If UPP is built on Solidity how does UPP prevent things like the DAO hack and Parity bug? — as Solidity isn’t build with formal verification in mind? (And recently the 0x vulnerability (https://forum.zeppelin.solutions/t/the-0x-vulnerability-explained/1045) shows that even the best auditors aren’t able to catch all bugs.)
A. Given the native capabilities of the Ethereum chain where there is no formal verification, the best we can is having all contracts audited. We had all contracts audited by CertiK who uses formal verification.
Q. Hypothetically, if such an event were to happen where a bug in the smart contracts would lock a certain amount of value, or even worse, let the attacker mint new Universal Proxy Tokens, is there insurance or a fallback scenario in place?
A. All contracts were audited by CertiK and we know the exact amount of assets issued and under reserves. If somehow an unauthorized mint was done, we could immediately detect and burn them until the issue is fixed.
Q. Could you walk me through an example of Bitcoin and a Universal Bitcoin token? The Universal Bitcoin token is an ERC-20 (Ethereum based) and a Bitcoin not. How do you assure an on-chain and decentralized cross-chain atomic swap?
A. There is no such functionality scheduled, all swaps will be off-chain.
Q. What does the architecture of the Universal Protocol Platform look like? Is it a hybrid of permissionless (Ethereum public) and permissioned (Ethereum private) technology?
A. Yes it is a hybrid. Only authorized parties will be able to issue mint and burn requests. Only certified validators will be able to validate mint and burn requests. Anyone will be able to validate all assets backing each token once all transparency details start to be published.
Q. How does the current transaction throughput of Ethereum impact the mission of UPP to reach adoption by 100 million users? (As all the transactions are settled on-chain — and Ethereum 2.0 is still years away.)
A. We will not reach 100 million overnight, so if Ethereum is unable to keep pace we can start issuing tokens in a multitude of other blockchains.
Q. On 04.2.1 Will UPP be using Schnorr Threshold Signature Scheme?
A. We have not yet defined what will be the best method, but currently more inclined to use Shamir’s Secret Sharing.
Q. Will there be mobile wallets (Android and IOS) available from the start?
A. Not directly through Universal Protocol, however many of our partners, like Uphold, have mobile wallets that will allow you to utilize the tokens and products created by the platform.
Q. Will governance be done via a DAO created on Ethereum as well?
A. We are still exploring the best governance structures for the UP ecosystem and token creation process, but most likely it will not be a DAO on Ethereum.
Q. Is there a reason the Universal Protocol Platform needs to be run on Turing-complete smart-contract platforms? (And not on non-Turing-complete.)
A. Turing-complete blockchains allow for much greater innovation. Although some aspects do not require it, others do and it allows it to be replicated on any Turing-complete scripting language.
Q. Are you planning to release your own crypto exchange? When?
A. No, we are already integrated with some of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, so we don’t need to launch our own.
Q. When can we expect Bittrex (and other exchanges) to implement the protocol?
A. We are working closely with Bittrex and other exchanges at the moment and will share more when we can.
Q. Why not new projet, not marketing?
A. Sorry, I don’t understand the question.
Q. Could you shed some light on the project advisors and what their roles are? Brendan Eich’s and Lu Hua’s involvement is self explanatory given their projects are part of the Alliance already, so I’m wondering more specifically about Greg Kidd and Adrian Steckel. Are there plans for cross-integration between UPP, OneWeb, and GlobalID? The projects all seem to share a similar vision (while targeting different sectors).
A. Yes, the UP advisors (and their companies) share a similar vision with the project. Adrian specifically was the CEO of Uphold before JP. Greg Kidd is close with many of the projects in the alliance and provides advisory to the UP leadership team.
Q. Brave recently announced that they will support multiple cryptocurrencies in addition to their native BAT token. Will the conversion between these different assets be facilitated by the Universal Protocol?
A. The Brave browser now has almost 40 million downloads, which is incredible! UP itself wouldn’t be handling conversions between currencies on or off the BAT platform, but we would do look forward to integrating with Brave in other ways. Stay tuned for more info on this!
Q. What are the biggest tangible risks or external forces that you see hindering your vision for UP? Not talking about adoption, bear market etc, but talking about competition, business case validity etc.
A. As the UP Alliance grows and more big companies with a lot of influence are added, we need to make sure our mission and governance practices are clear and concise. This will allow us to quickly and easily launch products and tokens that can be marketed across our partners to 100M plus users.
Q. What is the biggest positive surprise or learning over the past 9 months?
A. The biggest positive surprise was the enthusiasm for our idea of building out UPT as the ‘utility token of the realm’.
Q. Is there any link between your ‘tickers’ (UPBTC etc) and UPhold, purely looking at the UP parts of these denominators? If so, what is the reasoning behind that?
A. UP stands for Universal Protocol, of course., but Uphold is one of the founding members of the alliance. So maybe there is a connection… or maybe not :D
Q. You want to “bring 100 million new users into cryptocurrency”. Who are these people and what will be their purpose within the crypto ecosystem? Specifically, what’s your target demographic?
A. For bringing new users into crypto, our target demographic is essentially anyone who wants to ‘revolutionize value.’ Cryptocurrency is just in its infancy, but it is already starting to allow for things that aren’t available with fiat currencies. So, our demographics are broad, from the person in Japan or Europe who wants to simply earn an annual return on their Yen or Euros, to the person in Venezuela or Argentina that is looking to put their assets into a token that is backed by a more stable currency than their own, while earning an annual return.
Q. Do you appreciate the problems of having a utility asset which is subject to issues of price volatility and liquidity? Utility blockchains should surely want to have a separation of utility from price for smooth functioning of the system.
A. UPT is a utility token and will certainly be subject to volatility. Obviously, we can’t speculate on any sort of price activity and how that is associated with utility. Our other products are stable coins (UPUSD, UPEUR) or pegged to another asset (UPBTC). Those would be expected to have much less volatility, of course.
