FANTOM (FTM) AMA with Wolf Crypto
We held an AMA with FANTOM (FTM) in our public Telegram channel on the 13th of June 2018.
FANTOM is the world’s first DAG based smart contract platform that solves the scalability issues of existing public distributed ledger technology. The platform distinguishes itself from the traditional block ledger-based storage infrastructure by employing an improved version of existing DAG-based protocols.
The FANTOM platform adopts a new protocol known as Lachesis Protocol to maintain consensus. Applications built on top of the FANTOM OPERA Chain enjoy instant transactions and near zero transaction costs for all users.
The FANTOM public sale starts in approx 40 hours time and is open to whitelisted users only. You can read the about the FANTOM whitelist lottery process here. Results of the second lottery have now been posted and can be viewed here.
You can also visit the FANTOM Telegram channel for further details.
Here’s what FANTOM’s CSO Joseph Jang & CMO Jake Choi had to say in the AMA.*
*This AMA has been edited for clarity.
WC (Wolf Crypto Telegram Member)
Welcome to another edition of Wolf Crypto AMA, this time with the much hyped FANTOM!
Great to have you here Joseph and Jake!
JC
Hi, great to be here.
JJ
Hello Wolf Crypto Community. Thanks for having us.
TEAM & TEAM GOALS
WC
Joseph and Jake, to start of with something easy, can you tell us about yourself and how you became involved with Fantom?
JJ
I am the CSO, Chief Strategy Officer, for Fantom Foundation. I guess what that means is that I wear several hats and basically do what’s needed to get done.
I’ve been with Fantom from the start, way back from the planning stages. One of my business partners knew Mr. Ahn, Fantom’s current CEO, and we all started talking about doing Fantom together.
JC
I’m currently Chief Marketing Officer at Fantom. I currently also advise on a CIMA-registered Cryptocurrency Investment Manager called Token Capital Management (TCM) as CIO of Digital Currency Holdings (DCH). While we searched for great projects, we wanted to pick a project that has solid institutional/family office backing and have sound operational framework in the ‘wild wild west’ crypto world.
Being in the crypto space for quite a while now, our partners and I wanted to work full-time on a project that basically solves one of the biggest problem in the blockchain space: scalability and speed.
WC
How many members does the team have?
JC
The team consists in 3 main divisions: Core Team, Advisors and Platform Development. There’s currently about 40 in the team. The Core team is all based in the same office while we have advisors around the globe. The Platform Development team is located at Yonsei University (one of our partners). And yes, they all are employed permanently.
JJ
We are a pretty tight group, though, like a family.
WC
Having not looked into your team too much, does the team have any previous blockchain experience?
JC
Our team consists of traditional experience and blockchain experience. This is one of our core strengths. While we have great advisors and founders from traditional VC, startup, hedge fund, institutional markets background, we also have people from blockchain space as advisors.
Our platform development team, to be frank, does lack blockchain and DAG experience currently and we are working closely with our strategic partners and advisors to help speed up the mainnet launch process. However, let’s not forget that the platform developers have presidential award from the Korean Government and are all professors and PhD students.
WC
Thanks for the frank answer. I assume you will be looking to hire more team members post ICO then? Any specific area’s?
JC
Mostly in tech. We are in fact currently in the process of hiring one of influential tech players that you all would be aware of. Let’s hope for the best. Fantom is thrilled to have him on board. Let’s wait for announcements!
COMPETITORS
WC
Who would you consider your competitors and what differentiates you from them, if there are any?
JC
Our competitors can split into two main categories. First, they would be the general infrastructure projects that we all know, Ethereum, EOS, Cardano, etc. Although, it will sound bizarre and too ambitious that we will be able to compete with them, our team is strategizing to ensure we can be at their standard. Let alone, our txn speed and scalability are far greater.
Secondly, they would be more of DAG specific projects like Hashgraph and Constellation. Although we may see them as our competitor, we actually want to work with them to solve the greater problem. The market’s too small to compete with anyone.
As for branding, we are hoping to be the leading infrastructure project based in Korea.
WC
Does that mean future possible partnerships?
JC
Partnership with different projects are interesting. Allow me to elaborate on that later. We are actually working with 9–10 at the moment, whether helping existing projects to migrate to Fantom platform or helping new projects to incubate on top of Fantom.
WC
Do you consider Hashgraph a direct competitor? Are you all attempting to accomplish similar goals? (minus Hashgraphs $300 mill cap :)
JC
Nope, not a direct competitor. We have a different way of tackling the problem. The main differences are, “other than the high market cap for Hashgraph”, is that Fantom is an opensource project.
We strongly believe community building and transparency is the crux of any infrastructure project to allow new developers to come and support us by not only learning how to code Fantom but to develop new ways of tackling the problem. Not to mention, the underlying technology of the hybrid between DAG and smart contract is the crux of our project.
PARTNERSHIPS & INVESTORS
WC
What is the nature of Fantom’s relationship with Oracle? Is the relationship with Oracle or just Oracle Korea?
JJ
Fantom’s relationship is with Oracle Korea. Our CEO, Mr. Ahn, has had a good relationship with them for awhile on previous business ventures. Oracle Korea has been one of our earliest partners and they have always strongly supported Fantom. In fact, our very first meetup in Korea was held in Oracle Korea’s building!
They are working with us on several levels but they are all development related. We can’t openly discuss everything at this point but needless to say, they are a big part of our development.
WC
Are there any partners that have signed up that haven’t been listed on the Fantom website?
JC
Yes 😏 . We are waiting for final confirmation for some of the strategic partnerships. And some of them are held off public due to publicity concerns. We will slowly make open announcements as we go.
WC
You have a bunch of VC’s investing. How are they helping the Fantom project?
JJ
They help us in a lot of ways actually. Today’s ICO industry in general requires the involvement of VCs whether we all like it or not. As I said previously, we have always been about the community and that means that we need to do whatever it is that will help us become the best platform for the global community.
Having strategic VCs onboard helps us to achieve that goal in several ways: marketing, relationships, business enterprises, community development, and even tech support in some cases. Each VC we work with have been specifically chosen as they add value to us in one or more of those areas.
Plus, each VC is geographically located in different parts of the world so that we can find value in different jurisdictions. We have been fortunate enough to be able to be selective in the VCs partners we work with and both Jake and I feel that we have a very strong group of VC partners who have all committed to helping us build Fantom for the long haul.
WC
Any projects outside of Fantom you guys are working on that you can give us the early word on? ;-)
JC
I actually love to talk about this as Fantom will be initiating Fantom VC, just like how EOS has EOS VC and Cardano has Emergo. Some of institutional investors weren’t allowed to participate in our token sale; however, believed in project that will be built on top of Fantom.
We are currently working on 9–10 different projects, but we can only announce them after we have fully onboarded them. As a side note, please do check key advisors and founders LinkedIn profiles to have early view.
I’m currently also advising on Enosi Foundation (www.enosi.io) which may be involved with Fantom Foundation 😏
THE FANTOM PLATFORM
WC
What is a DAG? Not the same as blockchain?
JC
DAG stands for Directed Acyclic Graph, which not really a blockchain, but a newly explored method to allow high speed transaction. Some of the disadvantages are having low security. But a lot of projects, as you guys all know, are figuring out fine line to balance speed and security. Every project has different thesis, but our project base our algorithm on Lachesis Protocol.
WC
To follow up on this — Fantom is the first to implement smart contracts on DAG if I understood it correctly?
JC
Yes, that’s correct! From what we are aware of.
WC
I also read that the Fantom platform adopted a new protocol known as Lachesis Protocol to maintain consensus. Can you give us some more details on that?
JJ
Sure. The Lachesis Protocol is our own consensus algorithm. The algorithm is the heart of the Fantom technology and our PhDs are hard at work to finalizing it. A bit part of what we are trying to accomplish is to make a DAG based platform that is fast, efficient, secure and scalable. And what will separate us from our “competitors” is the Lachesis Protocol.
I’m not an engineer so I don’t feel totally qualified to delve deep into the tech, but I can assure you that we will be able to accomplish our time to finality faster than anyone else. I know many of you are looking and waiting to go deeper into this subject, but I have to say just wait a few more weeks until our technical white paper comes out. :)
WC
Can you give us some more details on the structure of the Fantom Opera chain?
JJ
The Fantom architecture is composed of 3 parts: the core layer (Opera chain), which includes the Lachesis Protocol and the DAG, the middle layer, which includes the virtual machine and other functions, and the application layer, which will host the decentralized apps.
The Opera chain is the main chain in the DAG.
Most DAG based protocols do not have a main chain as it is not necessary for the DAG to function. However, we decided to include a main chain as it helps with the validation of the network.
The Atopos and Clothos will work together to develop the main chain, which will help validate the entire network and is series of event blocks in perpetuity.
WC
Have you managed to reach 300K TPS yet? Or is this still in development?
JJ
As far as the 300,000 TPS is concerned, it is based on simple math. For example:
If the time it takes for each node to create an event block is 0.1 seconds, each node can create 7 to 10 event blocks per second. Let’s use 7 per second as the lowest.
Assuming that each transaction is 260 Bytes, a single event block can include up to 440 transactions.
Assuming that the number of transactions requested is infinite and that 100 nodes are participating then we get 7*440*100 = 308,000.
TOKEN UTILITY
WC
Where do you use see Fantom being used in the future and what would you say is your best case scenario?
JC
Fantom can be used in the future among various industries. From the institutional partners we have already onboarded, it includes Food, Telecommunication, Technology, Payments, Banking and Logistics. Let’s not forget about different industries like Energy, Real Estate, etc… The best case scenario is when people can “actually” use crypto in real life.
We want the experience to be seamless and smooth so that anyone that is new to crypto don’t even feel like they are using crypto.
ROADMAP & FUTURE GROWTH
WC
Your roadmap has “middleware beta” slated for this week. Could you elaborate on this please, what is it?
JJ
Actually, our middleware beta is delayed at the moment as well as the validation of the Lachesis Protocol. The validation will take place by the end of the month and the middleware beta should be ready sometime next month.
Our dev team is hard at work and we feel quite confident to have the testnet ready by Q3 of this year, as stated in the road map.
WC
How much importance do you assign to marketing and making sure the potential end users know Fantom’s capabilities as compared to other platforms?
JJ
Marketing, or I should say communicating, with our community is extremely important to us. The community is a priority or us. It has always been that way. And we try to communicate as much information as we can that is available and able to be shared with the public. So having the end user understanding and knowing the capabilities of the Fantom platform and its possible use cases is very very important.
In addition to that, we plan to help projects that will come onto our platform by telling our community and engaging with them about them. The platform by itself is great (tech wise) but if nobody uses it, then it is a meaningless platform. We aim to be meaningful.
WC
Since you are based in Korea, how do anticipate upcoming elections to affect your project?
JJ
Great question. Today was actually voting day in Korea so it was a national holiday. As people know, the Korean government’s official stance was to ban ICOs. This was due to the incredible interest in crypto from the Korean population as Korea has always been one of the top countries as far as crypto trading volume. Thus an outright ban was issued but no law actually was passed to enforce. As a result, the populous still engages in crypto and ICO activity but they are always looking behind their shoulders.
This vote will have strong implications for crypto and blockchain in Korea. Although the government now has officially “unbanned” ICOs, there still is a high amount of carefulness when it comes to ICOs. I think with further education and knowledge, the government will eventually accept and adopt blockchain tech, but as far as ICOs go, we should still tread carefully.
There are lots of things happening in Korea and new policies come out seemingly on a daily basis. It’s a lot of work for Korean exchanges just to keep up with them!
ICO & TOKEN METRICS
WC
Is the token distribution still set for June 29?
JC
That is correct. Still set for June 29. We actually have the token sale contract (testnet and audited) in our Github. Please check it out.
WC
What is the public allocation of tokens now?
JC
We are raising US$2m from the public.
WC
What is the lockup process for seed investors and team members?
JC
The seed investors terms are private at this stage, as they have been early supporters. As for the team members, it mainly divided into two, founders & foundation team and advisors.
The founders & foundation team have a 24 months vesting period released monthly and advisors have 3 months lockup post TGE.
WC
I see that you guys are using 30% of the token for market development. Would you mind talking a bit about that?
JC
The 30% of the token market development is what’s crucial for Fantom. It’s for strategic institutions that is either —
1. Co-developing our platform and
2. Formulating methods to create a dApp on top of Fantom.
And I’m talking real use cases guys.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
WC
You guys have a great team and obviously good heads on your shoulders.
Much appreciated gentlemen. Best of luck during the ICO and looking forward to the next steps in the roadmap.
JJ
Thank you guys for having us! Appreciate the forum you gave us to engage with your community here.
JC
Thanks everyone! Please support Fantom and for more info please visit our social media channels.
Fantom Resources
Website: https://fantom.foundation/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FantomFDN
Telegram: https://t.me/Fantom_English
Medium: https://medium.com/@FantomFDN
Wolf Crypto Resources
Public Group: https://t.me/WolfCryptoPub
News Channel: https://t.me/WolfCryptoAnnounce
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WolfCryptoGroup
