Jan 24, 2022

12 min read

Wolfonaire Chatbox : AMA With Moonbeam (12th January, 2022)

Hello! Wolfonaire Family & Crypto Enthusiasts

We recently hosted an AMA With Moonbeam 12th Jan, 2022 at 02.00 PM UTC. This session was phenomenal. If you have missed then here is the precious AMA transcript, for those who missed the live session this will enlighten you for sure…

Guest Speaker :

Ms. Katie Butler | Head of Marketing, Moonbeam

(Note: This is the transcription of the event. Please note that the transcript was edited for comprehensibility and coherency, while the content was not changed.)

INTRODUCTION

Katie : My name is Katie Butler. I run marketing for Moonbeam, which became the first fully-functional smart contract platform on Polkadot yesterday 🎉

I joined PureStake (the company building Moonbeam) 2.5 years ago, when Moonbeam was very much in the ideation phase. When I started, I was the only marketing resource and drove the branding, messaging, content, and more. Since then, we’ve grown from a ~12 person team to over 40, and our marketing team has grown to 6 with more hires on the way!

I was brand new to crypto when I started working on Moonbeam. Prior to this, I worked in tech marketing for a variety of start-ups, with a particular focus on marketing to technical audiences. That’s actually what drew me to PureStake/Moonbeam: I really enjoy marketing to developers and I jumped at the opportunity to do it again.

Wolf : Amazing…
You have plenty of experience in tech marketing field
Q.Very few people understand about DotSama Ecosystem and their working model.Please explain moonbeam & moonriver in details.

Katie : Moonbeam is an Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform targeted to Ethereum and Solidity devs. It is also a parachain on the Polkadot, which means it benefits from the shared security and interoperability that the Polkadot network provides.

We provide the easiest development environment and the richest set of developer integrations on Polkadot. By making it easy for developers to build on Moonbeam, we are able to attract and onboard new and existing applications to the Polkadot ecosystem very quickly.

» For regular users, this means that there’s a rich set of DApps to choose from very quickly after launch. Just look at Moonriver (the sister parachain on Kusama), where nearly 100 DApps and integrations have deployed in the 4.5 months since launch!

Because of Polkadot’s design, all these dapps and projects that deploy to Moonbeam are able to access assets and users on Moonbeam directly, Polkadot itself, any parachain connected to Polkadot, AND anything bridged into those parachains. We expect it’ll create a sizable network effect as more and more parachains come online.
We’re often asked what the difference between Moonbeam and Moonriver are.

Moonbeam is our deployment that’s targeted to Polkadot. Moonriver is the same code base but is targeted toward Kusama (a companion network of Polkadot that runs the same code and code is deployed there first before they deploy to Polkadot). We want a permanent environment where Moonbeam software can be deployed first, before it is deployed to Polkadot. We believe this will result in higher software quality, better security, and faster development. Having different deployment environments starts to make blockchain development look a little more like regular Web2 development, with more frequent iterative releases, instead of the 1–2 releases per year that are the current norm for public blockchains.

We also consider Moonriver to be the “community led” network, where the majority of tokens were given to the community through crowdloans and other incentives. Like Kusama, we expect this to create a very different environment over time that develops distinct use cases that are not necessarily the same as Moonbeam. Moonriver launched last August.

Wolf : Great explanations I’ll ping this GLMR performed really well after Listing Ignitees the Hype for Dotsama Ecosystem and explorations.

Q.How do holders of the #GLMR $MOVR Tokens benefit in the ecosystem? What power within your model do individuals hold? Why is it so attractive and what are the basic requirements to participate?

Katie : First, let’s talk about what these tokens are. Glimmer (GLMR) is the utility token of the Moonbeam network, while Moonriver (MOVR) is the utility token of the Moonriver network. They are separate independent networks and tokens.

GLMR and MOVR have the same utility as Eth does on Ethereum — they are used as gas for smart contract execution. But they also serve additional functions that are unique to the network. For example, you use GLMR to participate in the Moonbeam on-chain governance system, to propose referenda, and vote on things like protocol upgrades. You also use GLMR for staking, which supports the selection of collators and secures block production on the network.

GLMR staking is already live » https://apps.moonbeam.network/moonbeam

In terms of the power that these tokens and the models hold, they’re pretty different.

MOVR was largely distributed through the crowdloan and other community incentives (grants for builders, etc). The Moonbeam team did not get any tokens, nor did any VCs or investors. This is why we talk about it as “community-driven”… it’s really in the hands of the community. That drives a different kind of usage and activity. That said, we’ve seen INCREDIBLE usage and growth on Moonriver, hitting 10M transactions in a matter of months.

Separately, the Moonbeam token (GLMR) did have a more traditional distribution model but also had a crowdloan and a community-focused token event. The token event was very different than what you typically see in the space: it was restricted to verified community members only, in an effort to recognize the earliest supporters of the project. This creates a dynamic where the most enthusiastic participants have access to tokens early, which will in turn drive the community and the token dynamics in the future.

Regarding “basic requirements to participate”… both tokens are live and transferable, so I’ll refer you to sites like CMC or CoinGecko to see where you can obtain them.

Wolf : Interesting Both are my personal favourite tokens
Q.If possible please share about your funding details,Current market cap of $GLMR & vesting schedule.How you’ll keep scarcity & Demand of $GLMR in long term.

Katie : The Moonbeam Foundation is the steward of the GLMR token. They ran two token events last year which were the primary opportunities for community members to get tokens pre-launch. I’ve mentioned both of them but just to recap:

Take Flight token event — community only event in September 2021 that was restricted to verified community members

Moonbeam crowdloan — event in November 2021 where users can back the project with DOT and receive GLMR tokens over the life of the parachain lease (approx 2 years). The Moonbeam crowdloan was the biggest to date, with over 200,000 individuals participating and receiving more than 35 million DOT ($1.4 billion USD at the time of crowdloan close) in support of the project.

Market cap info is on CMC and CoinGecko already, but approximately 7% of the supply is in circulation right now. You can do the math on that to get to market cap. https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/moonbeam

The Take Flight tokens will be distributed on Feb 20, 2022. That will put another 10% of tokens into the supply.

Wolf : It’s just 694 Million$ Marketcap
Amazing…

Katie : Otherwise, the tokens are released gradually according to various vesting schedules. https://moonbeam.foundation/glimmer-token/

Glimmer (GLMR) Token Info & Tokenomics
Glimmer (GLMR token) is the utility token of the Moonbeam network, an Ethereum-compatible smart contract parachain on Polkadot

Wolf : Okay

Katie : There is also a token release schedule, although I’ll note that there are updates coming from the Moonbeam Foundation very soon. This should give you an idea of token distribution timing + scarcity https://moonbeam.foundation/glimmer-token/transparency/

GLMR Token Transparency Statement
The Moonbeam Foundation has published information on its token holdings in its goal to ensure parachain sustainability, protocol development, and ecosystem growth for Moonbeam.

And lastly, to address the “demand” part, in our view that is going to be strongly driven by usage and activity: transactions and smart contract execution require the use of this utility token, and we’re focusing the next couple of years on bringing as many developers to the platform as we can

Wolf : Good to hear that Have you met all your goals in the roadmap till now? And were there any difficulties that you didn’t expect and were not prepared for? describe the future roadmaps for Moonriver and for Moonbeam?

Katie : This is a tricky question in the sense that we’re a parachain on Polkadot (and Kusama). So yes, there have been some delays in the overall launch timing, but much of those delays were spent waiting for parachain functionality to become available.

Our own roadmap was on-time, and we were able to deliver on our technical plans in time to join the Kusama and Polkadot ecosystems as part of the first batch of 5 parachains onboarded. There was no delay there on our side.

In terms of roadmap, there is quite a bit ahead of us. Firstly and most importantly: interoperability. It sounds like a big theoretical concept but it’s our belief that this is going to be a game-changer for crypto and a major theme this year. Polkadot has this incredible Substrate framework that all parachains are based upon, allowing each to work with each other and leverage things that are created in other places. I think this is where we’ll start to see DApps with components from multiple parachains all working in one place (over time).

Very soon, there will be a release to Moonriver to allow for cross-chain functionality. Once that’s tested and verified, it will also be deployed to Moonbeam. We’re seeing some really interesting use cases pop up already.

Other than that, the other roadmap item for us is around performance. All parachains are currently working in a reduced performance state, operating at just a fraction of our capabilities. We’re working with Parity to roll out some improvements to allow all the parachains to operate at full capacity.

Oh, and the “were there any things you weren’t prepared for” component… largely, Moonriver has helped us see these things before they arise. Moonriver is the only parachain on Kusama with active usage right now, which helped us find some of these issues that we’re already addressing. So it is delivering a ton of value in that way.

Wolf : Yeah No doubt Moonriver is legendary itself , Even MOVR community is #1 in Dotsama ecosystem, Good to hear that Could you please give us a short tutorial on how even a nontech guy can easily use and enjoy your platform?

Katie : Since it just launched yesterday, the primary way to use it right now is through collator staking. That said, there are already a number of bridges and DEXs that are working on deployments now. So there will be a number of dapps to use within the next few weeks.

If you want to get a sense of the breadth of dapps that are expected to deploy, I again point you to Moonriver for waht to expect. You can see a bunch of the defi dapps on DefiLlama

https://defillama.com/chain/Moonrive

DefiLlama is a DeFi TVL aggregator. It is committed to providing accurate data without ads or sponsored content, as well as transparency.

And State of the Dapps has also listed a bunch of project deployments as well https://www.stateofthedapps.com/platforms/moonriver

Many of these projects are also expected to deploy Moonbeam, plus many more that were simply waiting for a way to get into the Polkadot ecosystem. We’ll see that start to happen in the next 0–3 months, like it did on Moonriver (perhaps even faster since everyone has already done this before!)

Wolf : Great Explanations
Thanks for the details @katiebutler

Let’s move for the twitter round

Q1. “You say that Moonriver is to serve as a “CanaryNet”, which will sound the alarm of any potential problems before the code is implemented in Polkadot, but really after it is implemented in Polkadot, what sense and use will Moonriver have for the network of Moonbeam?,

Katie : Long after launch, we will continue to release improvements to Moonbeam. The need for Moonriver will persist as well. That’s part of our vision to have this be a long-lived network.

We’ve already seen dozens of dapps deploy. These will continue to be attractive for users because the fees on Moonriver will be even more inexpensive than Moonbeam (assuming based on the market caps) and Moonriver has access to all sorts of Kusama-only projects, RMRK is the most well known.

As we continue to release new functionality to the parachains, Moonriver will always get it first, which will naturally drive projects to deploy as they seek to take advantage of some of these mechanisms.

Wolf : If Moonbeam really is a Polkadot parachain, which will allow it to interconnect with the other blockchians, then why only give importance on its website to its connection with ETH? Could it be that Moonbean really only benefits this network and not others like BSC or Solana?

Katie : I think this is a great question because it’s a common misconception. Moonbeam isn’t “connected” to ETH per se… There are bridges to bring those assets over, but when we say “Ethereum-compatible” that isn’t what we’re talking about.

Ethereum compatibility is about using the MOST POPULAR development languages (Solidity, Vyper), account formats (H160), wallets (MetaMask), and developer tools (IDEs, testing tools, etc) and making them work in a new ecosystem.

This is something our founder, Derek Yoo, realized the importance of very early on. The guys at Arrington capital wrote a great piece about this yesterday. https://arringtonxrpcapital.com/2022/01/11/the-moonbeam-strategy-four-lessons-in-lean-execution/

When we talk about Ethereum compatibility, we’re actually saying “our platform lets you use the things you’re already familiar with, and access all the amazing things happening on Polkadot”

We’ve already seen a number of teams copy this strategy, and there are EVM platforms popping up all over the place.

But we expect to be connected to all these other platforms in similar ways: by deploying to EVM compatible environments, dapps can live on Polkadot AND Solana AND Cosmos. This is a major shift.

Wolf : Why do you think people will use MoonbeamNetwork over Polygon or other layer 2.

Katie : It all comes down to Polkadot. We expect Polygon + Ethereum will continue to be very popular, but the interoperability in the Polkadot ecosystem is irreplaceable. Only through Moonbeam will you be able to bridge or create an ERC-20 that can then move across the Polkadot ecosystem to other parachains. It’s going to change the way we think about bridging and liquidity (which no longer needs to be fractionalized in the same way). We expect this will continue to drive projects to build on Moonbeam.

Let’s move for the community round

Q1. Is your project a community only for English speaking an countries or for users not of other languages?

Ans. Not at all! Our project is run by English and Spanish speakers primarily, although we do have French, German, and Portuguese speaking employees as well. Our team is lingually diverse.

Our communities reflect that. We have ambassador-run communities in a couple dozen languages and make it a priority to support those communities actively through AMAs, technical presentations, tutorials, and more.

Q2. Can you list outstanding features of your platform? Are you a global project or local project? At present, which market are you focus on, or is it focused on building and growing to gain customers, users and partners?

Ans. Outstanding features would be Ethereum compatibility (unmatched) and interoperability (from Polkadot). The combo of those two is totally unique to Moonbeam.

We are globally present, with a focus on on-boarding many developers over the next few years so that we continue to have a broad and diverse set of dapps for users to take advantage of.

Q3. Does your project support staking program? if yes. how is your stake system work what is the requirement for user, if they want to stake in your platform?

Ans. Yes we have collator staking. It’s slightly different than what you’re used to so I’ll explain it briefly.

On Polkadot, all the parachains have shared security through the validators on the relay chain. That’s something unique to Polkadot for now, though others are copying.

Validators are responsible for finality but aren’t the only ones capable of producing blocks. Parachains produce blocks too, through collators, and those blocks are passed to the Polkadot main chain (relay chain) to be finalized by validators.

So on Moonbeam, you can stake with those collators and earn rewards. You should also be able to stake through DEXs very shortly as well, if not already.

collator staking link
https://apps.moonbeam.network/moonbeam