Wanchain Bi-Weekly AMA Recap

Recap for the AMA that took place on February 23rd, 2 PM UTC

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

Questions submitted on the AMA form:

Q1. Hi, what things do the team have planned to spread the world more about wanchain and to build awareness of our product? We have seen many bridge hacks recently and wanchain has been working very hard to create an offering far superior to these centralised insecure bridges. So how do they now plan to get the word out there and really drive some mass adoption? — Jonny

• Thanks Jonny! Let me hop on at the part where you mentioned the recent bridge hacks.
• Here, we’re specifically working with some media partners to produce content in response to these hacks. With crosschain as it exists today, the advantages of one bridge over another are in the details, so a fair amount of education is needed. For the future of all crosschain, it’s important to do our part in explaining why, when one of these subpar bridges gets exploited, it isn’t something that is applicable to all bridges by default. In many ways, the field of crosschain is losing this battle, with prominent voices including Vitalik expressing that crosschain, by default, is unsafe.
• More generally, we’re at the stage now where the key to building awareness is through adoption. So that’s where a lot of our focus currently lies.

Q2. Can you list 1–3 killer features of your project that makes it ahead of its competitors? What is the competitive advantage your platform has that you feel most confident about? How do you intend to raise awareness of your initiative in countries / regions where English is not widely spoken? Do you have a community outreach strategy in place to help people better comprehend the project? — zazartb8

• As of now, Wanchain’s bridges still outperform others in terms of security (via secure multi-party computing and over-collateralisation) and decentralisation. Similarly, the blockchain itself is extremely cheap and fast (as we’ve recently started demonstrating in a very straightforward way on Twitter).
• As for the community, as I mentioned last time this is now going to be a major focus of mine. I'm going to keep these regular comms channels open between the core team and all of you. We’re also going to build more local communities to help spread the word. We’ve been experimenting with different approaches with our Spanish and Turkish communities over the past few months, and will be increasing these efforts to other local communities.

Q3. Decentralised interoperability seems to be a very common theme for most major blockchains not just for Wanchain anymore. Decentralised bridges seem to emerge all over as well. How would Wanchain position itself among these? How would Wanchain still be needed? What’s the advantage (and disadvantage) Wanchain has over these competitors apart from having over-collaterised bridges? — Vladimir Krunick

• Thanks Vladamir! I think the word “seem” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Most of the new bridges that pop up are not very decentralised, and therefore not particularly secure. Wanchain’s bridges have several advantages over these including the aforementioned sMPC. Ours also rotate the bridge nodes on a monthly basis to increase decentralisation.
• As an aside, I’m not sure we should be so quick to brush off the over-collaterised element of Wanchain’s bridges! It is an important factor, especially as the crosschain industry continues to grow. For those who missed it, we published an article talking about this a few weeks back: https://www.altcoinbuzz.io/reviews/crypto-education/vitalik-forgot-one-thing-this-is-why-crosschain-bridges-can-be-safe/

Q4. Please give an overview and explain how important and significant is the X Roll Up? — Vladimir Krunick

• X-Rollups is a potential layer 2 solution that we introduced several months ago. Like all Layer 2 solutions, it aims to solve scalability and usability issues. I think we spoke about it last time but to reiterate, it is still in our R&D pipeline.
• As an aside, I think the industry still needs to decide how important true Layer 2 solutions are going to be. Right now, Ethereum Layer 2s are still pretty slow and expensive — they are only fast and cheap compared to Ethereum! Faster chains may not need Layer 2s at all. Still, in the medium term, I expect we’ll have a beautiful mess of Layer 0s, Layer 1s, Layer 2s and sidechains working in concert.
• Whether it's as a Layer 0, 2, or sidechain, I think the more important takeaway is that there’s a need to address the differences in transaction throughput and transaction fees between chains, so that the traffic on these networks can be spread in a more sustainable way. But if you want to learn more about X-Rollup, you can check out the original paper here: https://www.wanchain.org/blog/x-rollups-wanchain-layer2-solution-for-ethereum/

Q5. What will be the 10 next upcoming bridges. (Towards the Wanchain’s 10,000 bridges concept Jack’s been talking about) — Vladimir Krunick

• That’s still TBD! Remember, unless a blockchain is full EVM and has a structure very similar to Ethereum, there’s quite a bit of engineering work required to connect it to our crosschain architecture. It isn’t a simple matter of picking a chain and flipping a switch. But you can normally see leaks on our testnet…

Q6. X-Roll up seems to be difficult to explain to non-developers and general investors. How would you explain it in a simplified way? — Vladimir Krunick

• X-Rollups is a potential solution to Ethereum’s scalability issues, where a chain like Wanchain serves as a kind of Layer 2 for Ethereum (or to another chain with issues, for that matter).
• X-Rollup itself, as it’s described in the paper, is basically a connecting layer between Layer 1 and Layer 2. This connecting layer comprises 2 groups of nodes (something like a Storeman Group and a new Voucher Group). The Storeman Group acts very much like the existing Storeman Group, managing the transfer of assets, while the Voucher Group basically intermittently injects Layer 2 data into Layer 1 at regular intervals.
• There’s a little write-up that we did, which is quite a bit simpler than the original paper: https://medium.com/wanchain-foundation/lending-a-helping-hand-introducing-x-rollups-ethereum-layer-2-solution-4a995e250932

Q7. What would happen if the price of Storeman’s collateral drops dramatically in value? — Vladimir Krunick

• Usually, nothing would happen. But if there was a drastic situation where the Storeman’s collateral dropped such that if the bridge Quota was filled, the bridge nodes would simply not be able to mint new wrapped assets until more collateral is added.

Q8. What is a WWAN (Wrapped Wan) within the Wanchain mainnet? Why are there wrapped Wan here when WAN is already a native token? — Vladimir Krunick

• WWAN is just a wrapped version of WAN, since WAN, as the native Coin of the blockchain, doesn’t conform to the WRC-20 standard. It’s the same thing as WETH on Ethereum!

Q9. I get different addresses when set up my wallet on Metamask and Wanmask using the same seed phrase. Metamask gives the same address as my ETH address but Wanmask gives a completely different one. Why so? and will this be a problem locating my funds? (Wanwallet gives the same address as on Wanmask) — Vladimir Krunick

• This also confused me the first time! But Wanmask uses a different derivation path than Metamask does. In practice, what this means is that the addresses derived from your seed words will differ between the two. If you are trying to move from WanMask to Metamask, you can simply export your WanMask private key and import it on Metamask.
• Liam himself wrote a guide for this! https://medium.com/@Liam_wan/how-to-migrate-from-wanmask-to-metamask-4698e8b9da01

Q10. Are private transactions traceable? — Vladimir Krunick

• As I understand it, during private transactions, when a user locks WAN in the privacy-enabling smart contract, it is not possible to see who the intended recipient is. This is because the lock transaction does not contain the recipient’s address within the transaction call data, but rather contains ring signature data. So, while we can see transactions that lock funds into the privacy contract, and other transactions that redeem funds from the privacy contract, we currently cannot formally link any lock and redeem transactions. However, if there isn’t much volume, a lot of things can be inferred (if not proven). So increased volume here would be helpful.

Q11. On the token side of things, I got a few questions; Why are there zero $WAN tokens on American exchanges that I know of (not on FTX/Binance US/Gemini/Coinbase/Crypto.com ect)? This makes it very hard to get newbies to be interested here in US. Also, why no WAN/USDT on KuCoin or Huobi Global? Other smaller exchanges offer that. Are there any plans to get that accomplished or not in the plans? Also, I had trouble figuring out when total supply hits max supply, only info I can find is on coinmarketcap & coingecko and it conflicts. Are all the tokens minted, if not when is that date or estimated date? Thanks! — bzekus

• A few things to unpack here. WAN doesn’t have the volume for exchanges of this size to realistically list WAN on their own. Complicating matters is that Wanchain builds crosschain bridges which, in some ways, compete with the services that CEXes provide
• Regarding the Max Supply, the original distribution stated that it would take about 5 years for the bulk of WAN to be emitted. We’ll never actually hit the Max Supply, but come 2024, all but a hundred thousand WAN or so will exist.
• As a reminder, 10 Million WAN started emitting back in September 2019. 2.5 million WAN were emitted the first year. From there, fewer and fewer WAN are emitted every year. After 5 years (starting at the September 2019 date), 9.8+ of this 10M will have been distributed as PoS Validator Node Rewards.

Q12. What is the plan to get more outside projects to integrate WanTokens like WanBTC, wanETH, wanUSDT, etc? — Wanchain_Agent

• As I’ve shared a few times, we’re focusing greatly on adoption these days. Arguably the biggest element of that is BD. This comes in multiple forms. Not only are we discussing with more projects to build on Wanchain, but we’re also discussing with projects on other chains to support and incentivise the WAN and some of Wanchain’s wrapped assets. We also have an upcoming BD-focused program aimed at getting more of the Wanchain community to get involved with project outreach.

Q13. What tactics are the team looking at to increase the use of the WAN coin? — Wanchain_Agent

• Nothing groundbreaking here. It’s a combination of product design (ie. better integrated the WAN into the product itself) and building use cases on other chains (whether it be farming pools or something else).

Q14. Are there any potential burn mechanisms planned to be integrated at the protocol level or dApp level(like WanBridge, WanSwap, etc.)? — Wanchain_Agent

• We’re still discussing how to implement WanBridge fees — one option being some kind of buyback mechanism built into the bridges themselves to maximise value for WAN holders. However, burning tokens solely to lower supply (which is already quite low) is not something that’s imminent, nor is it something I’d personally recommend!

Q15. What are Wanchain’s plans to move into the Metaverse interoperability space? How will the WAN token be utilized? — Wanchain_Agent

• I hope Wanchain_Agent is here for the live section, because I’d first ask him to define the Metaverse Interoperability Space!

Q16. How does Wanchain plan to further adoption on Avalanche projects? — Wanchain_Agent

• As we mentioned in our original release Avalanche release, part of our efforts are to introduce Wanchain bridges to Avalanche ecosystem projects. This is why you’ve seen Li Ni and Weijia taking part in the recent Avalanche Hackathon! I expect we’ll start to see more projects on Avalanche start to support Wanchain-wrapped assets as a result of these BD efforts.

Q17. What is Wanchain’s current main focus? Building more bridges? Entering the Metaverse space? Trying to get more projects to utilize WAN bridges? Enterprise adoption? — Wanchain_Agent

• Adoption for our crosschain solutions, while continuing to establish research-based crosschain standards. We’re as committed as ever to building the crosschain future.

Q18. Is there a need to increase the number of Storeman or PoS nodes? — Wanchain_Agent

• Need is probably a little strong, but in the long-run, we want to increase the number of nodes. More nodes will increase decentralisation, which I think we can all agree is something important.

Q19. How can Wanchain promote more people/projects to stake more WAN in the PoS and Storeman node mechanisms? — Wanchain_Agent

• We’ve experimented with this in the past, by collaborating with Bitboy on his Storeman node. And while it resulted in a fair number of tokens being staked, there wasn’t a tonne of hype around it. Recently, we’ve been more aggressively pitching these node opportunities to projects that are considering building on Wanchain, as a source of risk-free/low-risk passive yield without impermanent loss. So it’s something that we continue to work on.

Q20. Can we have a dapp with fiat gateway? Creditcard to buy wan/wbtc/weth/wusdt? For quick entry into wan eco? (Example:https://ramp.network/) And is it possible to get more tether pairs on exchanges? — Web

• Probably not any time soon. The compliance requirements for a fiat gateway are quite high and crosschain-bridges/privacy transactions make this even more difficult.

Q21. Can we have a dapp with live feed Wanchain stats? Like tps, value transferred over bridges, locked supply, inflation %, # validators, # wallets…. WanData — Web

• A lot of these stats are featured on the new website. Otherwise, they are also visible on the blockchain explorer (wanscan.org)

Q22. Can we build an NFT Viewer/Wallet dapp(multi-chain maybe)? And a openzoo dapp would be nice and convenient. — Web

• I’d love to see someone from the community tackle something like this. If any of you want to drive it, get in touch and we can support it!

Q23. There is information on GitHub that the Wanchain project is working on blockchain indetification and that each chain, IP addresses, will be assigned a Chain ID. How will the Wanchain engineers protect this data? After all, it will essentially be the same “bank” with personal data — who and how will keep that information safe? And who will be able to control and regulate it on the future, banks for example?

Why is it impossible to withdraw from the Delegator PoS the amount of coins I need in a Wanwallet, but the option is available: only withdraw completely ALL the coins from the pool?
In other projects, such as Cardano, you can withdraw the number of coins you need without leaving the pool.
If you withdraw all coins, it is a big expense and loss (the commission is 10%) on entering the pool again. Does the team plan to fix this? — Shambala Phuket

• I’d like to get a more detailed answer for you, but the issue of on-chain Chain IDs is pretty fascinating. Right now, each chain’s ID is arbitrarily assigned and there’s nothing stopping one chain from assuming the same ID as another chain. So it seems clear that we need some kind of on-chain solution for this.
• The 10% (or whatever the validator has their fees set as) comes off your rewards, not your initial stake. You don’t get charged 10% to enter or exit staking

Q24. I have to ask, and apologies as it’s probably been asked. But big chief Jack Lu said website end of Feb, 5 days left…. still on track? — UncleLiquor

• I would start preparing yourselves for an early March official launch. But it's very close. Even close enough that we’ve been including parts of it in recent tweets.

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