Wanchain Bi-Weekly AMA Recap

Recap for the AMA that took place on March 9th, 2 PM UTC

To promote open communication between the core team and the community, we are hosting bi-weekly AMAs on Telegram!

Q1. You told us that the team was super busy and that’s why we didn’t see anyone online. Why Moliin was working for avax(advisor!) ?! — Zeldo

• Well, it’s possible since everyone at Wanchain is extremely busy, Molin included. That being said, accuracy here is important. Molin is not working as an Avalanche advisor!
• You are almost certainly thinking of Li Ni, who is serving as a volunteer Avalanche Tech advisor, with a focus on interoperability. This is actually part of Wanchain’s partnership with Avalanche.
• If you all recall, when we announced the partnership with Avalanche, there were several efforts outlined. The announcement indicated that:
  1) Avalanche would introduce the benefits of Wanchain’s decentralised crosschain bridges to its ecosystem projects;
  2) Wanchain would create new use cases for wrapped tokens on Avalanche and other chains; and
  3) Avalanche and Wanchain would co-incubate promising new crosschain DeFi projects.
• All three of these pillars are active. Recently, we’ve seen Li Ni and Weijia attend Avalanche events to introduce Wanchain’s crosschain infrastructure to developers. There is also a project that is being incubated on Avalanche that will make heavy use of Wanchain’s bridges.
• Here’s the original partnership announcement, for those who need a refresher or are curious: https://medium.com/wanchain-foundation/wanchain-and-avalanche-to-foster-decentralised-crosschain-interoperability-576e948e4500

Q2. Are private transactions absolutely untraceable? — Vladimir Krunick

• I’m pretty sure you, Mr. Krunick, yourself, asked this exact same question last time lol. But I’ll take a few moments to answer it again, in case you missed it last time.
• There’s a couple ways to approach this question. I think the most accurate answer is that private transactions are technically untraceable, but it is possible to infer the sender/receiver when individual transactions are large and/or overall volume is low.
• When a user locks WAN in the privacy smart contract, it’s not possible to see who the intended recipient is. This is due to the lock transaction not containing the recipient’s address within the transaction call data, but instead only containing ring signature data from the recipient’s one-time address. Once a one-time address is used, is disposed of. Thus, while we can see transactions that lock funds into the privacy contract, and other transactions that redeem funds from the privacy contract, we cannot link any lock and redeem transactions by anything other than value.
• So in that sense, private transactions are untraceable. But like I said, if there is low volume, and you suddenly see 1 million WAN go into the privacy smart contract, and 1 million come out, then there’s some things you can begin to infer…

Q3. I’d like to know more about wanlabs, how they are funded, and what there upcoming projects be, things they are working on conceptually. And if not, why are we not discussing/disclosing information about the incubator more often? Simplified, what is wanlabs working on, and when can we expect some more community interaction from them as a incubator? — jgbtrade666

• As you said, Wanlabs is an incubator supported by the Wanchain Foundation. Though it has deployed a few projects, it is very much focused on technical incubation and blockchain infrastructure. It is not a profit-seeking or investment incubator, in the classic sense.
• In terms of when they will do more community-forward activities, it is ultimately up to them, not Wanchain! As I understand it, while Wanlabs does receive minimal financial support to maintain operations, it is actually run by a small group of devs, engineers and community contributors. More like an informal DAO.

Q4. What if some bad things happen to the source chains after an asset had been bridged to Wanchain? — Vladimir Krunick

• I love these kinds of topics, and is very much the topic that arose when Vitalik Buterin outlined his concerns regarding crosschain bridges and other crosschain solutions.
• In his post, he specifically spoke of negative outcomes that might occur if a source chain was hit by a 51% attack. For instance, he posited that owners of wrapped ETH on Solana would incur devastating losses if Ethereum were rolled back following a 51% attack since the Wrapped ETH on Solana would no longer be backed by the original ETH on a 1:1 ratio.
• (as a aside, mere weeks after his post, the Solana bridge was exploited 👀)
• But back to the question, we disagree with his assessment as he is assuming that the crosschain assets can’t be overcollateralised via additional token deposits. This is precisely why Wanchain’s bridge node operators need to deposit WAN. The wrapped tokens aren’t only backed by the original asset, they are backed by the original asset AND some WAN. This increases the security of the bridge.
• Additionally, it’s important to remember that crosschain technology is still very new. The industry is still in its infancy. There are other exciting technical innovations that will help make crosschain bridges even more secure — things like zero-knowledge proofs.
• Wanchain actually wrote a far more detailed rebuttal explaining why Mr. Buterin was mistaken in his assessment and we published it on Altcoinbuzz. I suggest giving it a read! It also helps clarify how crosschain bridges actually work.
• https://www.altcoinbuzz.io/reviews/crypto-education/vitalik-forgot-one-thing-this-is-why-crosschain-bridges-can-be-safe/

Q5. Has wanchain though about decentralized domain hosting? I.e ENS/Unstoppable domains/dweb TLDs. Why or why not? — jgbtrade666

• I’m glad this one was asked ahead of time, because it gave me the chance to research the topic a little bit more. The tale I’m about to share actually predates me haha
• But, a Blockchain Name Service, like ENS for Wanchain, called WNS, actually already exists. It’s actually an effort that dates back to late 2017.
• It was originally done in collaboration with Portal Network (some of you OGs may remember that name). Portal Network is/was a project that offered Blockchain Name Services to several blockchains like Wanchain, Ethereum Classic, ICON, QTUM, TRON, KYBER, etc. However, as I understand it, none of these Name Services took off and the project never really thrived.
• As a consequence, WNS isn’t very easy to use these days. I believe the only way to register a domain is by using MyWanWallet.com. Once you do that, there aren’t really any wallets that actively support WNS (or any of the other Portal Network-run name services) anymore. So even if you register a domain, there isn’t an easy way to use your domain when transferring funds.
• But to directly answer your “Why or why not” question, it’s simply a matter that there wasn’t/isn’t a lot of demand for WNS.

Q6. How to attract more new investors to Wanchain instead of hoping they come to us? — Cat whisperer

• There’s no big secret here, it will take a concerted effort, combining BD, marketing and development, to attract new users to Wanchain. Wanchain has already built a safe, fast and affordable blockchain and the world’s premier crosschain network, but users are still going to be primarily attracted by interesting applications and/or the allure of grand promises.
• For us, attracting more applications is the more appealing of the two.
• So, as we’ve been saying, we’ve increased (and continue to increase) our BD efforts. So far, we’ve made huge inroads with massive partners, but when you enter into these kinds of partnerships, with projects that are far bigger than you, you are often bound by NDAs and other things that limit our ability to share news. You really end up working according to the larger partner’s PR schedule.
• But while these huge endeavours are important, we’re also increasing our efforts to attract small- and mid-sized projects. We’re doing this is a few ways, including making more and more incentives available to developers and projects.
• To support these efforts, we’re going to work more closely with the community — with all of you — as well.
• As such, I’m happy to reveal that we are going to launch a new outreach program focused entirely on business development called Wanchain Thrust.
• The goal of Wanchain Thrust is to find and onboard blockchain projects and DApps to deploy on Wanchain’s blockchain, introduce Wanchain’s blockchain and technology to more builders, and present the available incentive opportunities.
• We’ll be making the formal announcement and opening applications shortly.

Q7. What is the amount of the incentive program ? What are the details ? — Clem

• Depending on the size and background of the projects/developers, we usually offer incentives based on TVL, passive income opportunities and/or custom packages. Different projects have different needs and wants, so we try to remain flexible to meet their needs and make it a real collaboration.

Q8. So Documentation for users that bring in other new users, can be hard to find, out of order, and outdated. Can we get a promise or a guarantee the team will develop/make some concise and up-to-date tutorials/guides to help users be able to quickly link/provide detailed information, for would-be new users? tl:dr — new uptodate documents for devs, for storeman and validators nodes, etc — jgbtrade666

• I remember when I was researching Wanchain before joining the team, there was so much information to consume so I totally empathise for the need to have concise and up-to-date materials. So yes, you can get a promise or guarantee that we will do that. In return, I ask for all of you to let us know which topics/materials are most in need of a revamp so we can prioritize properly.
• In the meantime, if anyone is looking for up-to-date info, Explore Wanchain (www.explorewanchain.org) recently underwent a total revamp, so that’s currently the best source for info about Wanchain, the tech and everything else.

Q9. In reference to the crosschain bridge fees that are coming. What if from those fees Wanchain holders receive some of the crosschain wrapped asset as airdrops? So if you hold some WAN in the WanWallet or Staked somewhere you will receive a piece of the wrapped asset in ur wallet (ex. wbtc,wltc,wavax) encouraging people to support the crosschain bridges and benefit with small pieces of all these chains. Hold one asset and possibly get 13+ different assets as airdrops (with 10,000 chains possible). Would drive in so much hype to support Wanchain. Just a thought — Web

• This is an interesting idea, and I’m sure something like this would encourage people to complete a crosschain transfer using Wanchain bridges, since this basically amounts to just paying people to use the bridges.
• I’ll need to think it through more carefully, and I’d have to crunch the numbers, but I’m not sure if the bridge fees alone would be enough to serve as an effective incentive. And if it’s exclusively from the fees, isn’t it akin to just paying yourself? haha. In a way, this is always an issue with these kinds of approaches: Where do the wrapped assets come from? Giving people money is fun, but the money still needs to come from somewhere.

Q10. Zoo has brought in a lot of new users, and so did wanswap before that. I think that crewfire (ran by Liam) is a great way to incentivize the community to engage with ourselves, furthering our reach, and increasing our social score. I’ve come to the conclusion most users from ZK aren’t aware of the crewfire program. Can you (tem) write up a little blurb during the AMA? Most ZK users come to the wanchain telegram, it would be a good way to help spread awareness of the program. I can send some $WAN for the crewfire wallet if need be — jgbtrade666

• CrewFire is a great way for users to earn some WAN for helping spread the word on twitter, retweeting/liking/commenting on certain tweets and overall supporting the ecosystem via twitter. For those new to CrewFire, you can sign up here: https://www.crewfire.com/signup/MJW6dlXsg
• View the guide here: https://wanchain.guide/crewfire
• And we will certainly tweet more about crewfire to get more people aware of it! If anyone has any questions about crewfire or has any good tweets (ecosystem tweets, any tweets mentioning wan etc) please reach out to me (Liam_wan).

Q11. Why does the rpc have such a bottleneck. Zoogenes had issues with rpc, sometimes minting on openzoo has rpc issues. In the future we should have alot more users thanks to projects like zookeeper, will there be a plan or a possibillity of fixing the rpc issue? — jgbtrade666

• As a brief aside, I think that’s an overly dramatic assessment of the RPC
• There was an issue with the RPC during one of the Zoogenes sales rounds, but our devs took immediate steps to rectify it and subsequent rounds went smoothly.
• At that time, the RPC was hosted on a single server, as that is almost always enough to support the amount of traffic on Wanchain. When Zoogenes encountered issues, our devs immediately sprang to work (in the middle of the night for them, if I recall correctly) and temporarily split traffic to three different servers.
• Now, we’re back to a single server setup. If we get to the point where normal traffic needs more than a single server, we’ll deploy more as a permanent solution.

Q12. Will Wanchain be the one spot for all coins in the future? Do wanchain plans to unite all chains together in the future? Thank you.

• Our overall vision is to connect all the chains into an interoperable crosschain network. But, by definition, this means our vision is not that Wanchain serves as the “only” chain. But as we connect more and more networks, of course, all these assets will be available on Wanchain.

Q13. When new website?

• As I’ve been told, the Website is in the final stretch, with small little tweaks still being made. At this point, I think it could be fun for all of you to help decide when it goes live. (A poll was done on telegram, https://t.me/WanchainCHAT/980831)
• I’m sure there will be small adjustments to be made even after the website is live, but at least this way you all have a bit more agency.

Q14. Hey Tem, thanks for the AMA, li ni has recently said wanchain has 50 team members. This definitely include wanglu tech people (which shouldn’t be counted). my question how many people are working on “wanchain”? — Ron81

• 50ish. We’ve addressed Wanglu over and over. Just like with every single blockchain project, different legal entities are established in different jurisdictions to operate legally and conduct business. There’s no substance to the idea that somehow there are conflicting priorities between Wanchain (a blockchain project) and any of the legal entities established in any jurisdiction.

Q15. Wanchain by far the BC I utilize most. What other bridges are being worked on and is XDC (which is EVM) one of them? — Leo Bradley

• As far as I know, there’s no work being done on XDC. But if there is interest from them, and since they are EVM compatible, helping them bridge would be relatively easy
• Right now, there’s work being done on Moonbeam, Optimism, Tron, and I think a lot of you noticed ADA on the testnet already.

Thank you to everyone who participated in our Bi-Weekly AMA, until next time!