For those of you who do not know, a semi-private AMA (Ask Me Anything) session with Jelurida occurred on the Cryptocopia Slack last Wednesday, August 23rd at 22:00 CEST. Jelurida spoke at length with the community, answering many questions about the now-in-progress, IGNIS ICO, Nxt, the blockchain, and much more. Only registered members of the Cryptocopia community could participate, but since we are so well connected we have you covered!

Cryptocopia’s registration-page has been offline ever since they made the AMA announcement, but here we give you an abbreviated, “best of” version that has all the relevant information and highlights that you need to know.

myco [10:02 PM]

Hello, and welcome! The Jelurida AMA is starting now!

Our guests from the official Jelurida team are:

petko

Hi! My name is Petko Petkov. I am a software developer. I’m contributing to NXT since Jan 2015. Then participated in the design and the development of the Ardor platform.

tomi

I am also a software developer, with more than 15 years of experience. I survived the dot-com crash, worked for a few companies in the Silicon Valley, then for a small startup, then became interested in crypto and Nxt in particular a few years ago. Now I am a part of the core Nxt development team.

The other core developer, Lior Yaffe, unfortunately couldn’t attend this AMA tonight as he is not feeling well. Lior Yaffe is a very talented developer and also lately doing a big part of the project management.

kristina

I am not a developer and before becoming interested in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology I have been working as a legal advisor. I have been following Nxt from its very beginning and when Jelurida was created last year I became an official part of the team because the developers were looking for somebody to take care of organizational, administrative and legal tasks. Now, with the company growing bigger and the upcoming launch of Ardor, I am fully occupied with work and 100% devoted to it.

What will happen with NXT?

Q

myco

I know that we’ve gone through several stages in the transition of NXT to IGNIS and ARDOR.

Could you explain at a high level what is happening with NXT for those who do not know much about it?

kristina

Ardor can be considered Nxt 2.0, because it is being built using proven Nxt technology. The Nxt public blockchain, and software, will continue to exist and be maintained by Jelurida.

There were quite a few technical reasons why Ardor had to be started as a separate platform, and it wasn’t possible to just upgrade Nxt to it.

petko

NXT is an open-source project and POS-based cryptocurrency. We are planning to continue maintaining it, but after all, its the NXT stakeholders who decide whether to use the software we develop. So, there is no actual transition – we had the idea about Ardor and decided to work on it. NXT will continue to exist one way or another. As @kristina explained, there are technical reasons that prevent us from upgrading NXT to Ardor. But we distributed the Ardor tokens to the NXT stakeholders at 1:1 ratio.

Q

dereje

With the development of ardor and jlrda, do you see nxt eventually dying out from lack of support and development?

tomi

We have promised to support Nxt for at least a year, or longer, depending on the funding level obtained in the ICO, and depending on the demand for it. We will also backport features from Ardor to Nxt, if we can hire enough developers to dedicate to that. We expect that Nxt will stay as the stable, well tested and reliable platform. And not all use cases need Ardor with its multiple child chains (which also brings complexity).

kristina

please remember that Nxt is a proven and stable blockchain with a large variety of features, a platform well suited for ICOs for example which is a functionality we plan to further enhance.

Jelurida

Q

myco

What is the development like for Jelurida?

Do you work remotely, or do you have an office where you meet?

tomi

We don’t have an office, working remotely all the time. We do plan to establish a physical office however, depending on the success level of our ICO.

Q

myco

What are the upcoming tasks that the Jelurida team is focusing on in the short term?

kristina

After our ICO is over the snapshot will follow and of course the launch of the Ardor platform.

Q

sanchopansa

How many people are working full-time on the project?

kristina

4 (3 developers and myself) + 2 part time developers.

Q

sanchopansa

How do you plan to generate revenue and when do you foresee to become profitable?

Kristina

We have several possible sources of revenue – licensing of the software for private blockchains, child chain creation, and revenue sharing with businesses that run child chains, consulting, custom wallet creation. Other minor revenue sources are listed in the whitepaper.

We aim to become profitable and self sustainable by the end of 2018.

Q

doubleqp

How much funds do you expect to need until the end of 2018 to survive?

kristina

what we have collected already is enough to survive until the end of 2018.

Q

doubleqp

So what’s your reason to collect even more money?

Kristina

For two reasons: we have a detailed plan how we can utilize the funds up to €50M.

And because we exist in a very fast growing field where our competitors raise/have raised millions which they are using for marketing and because we cannot allow a technology with such a great potential not to succeed.

marenkar

In section V3 of the white paper, (https://www.jelurida.com/sites/default/files/JeluridaWhitepaper.pdf) Jelurida goes over their plan with regards to the amount that they raise (starting on page 36). More funds raised generally means a larger team, more projects, and more business activity.

tomi

Jelurida was established last year as a corporate entity to manage the development of Nxt and later Ardor. Before that, Nxt was developed as a volunteer open source project, without a legal entity behind it. This was problematic when trying for example to license the Nxt software for commercial purposes, and when having to protect the IP behind it.

IGNIS ICO < > NXT ?

Q

myco

When will the IGNIS snapshot take place?

vanbreuk

From https://www.jelurida.com/ico, “The Ardor Genesis Snapshot will be performed at least two weeks after the end of the last JLRDA sale round”. But no exact date has been announced yet.

Q

myco

What happens to the NXT collected in the ICO for IGNIS?

tomi

We will be selling most of the NXT for BTC and fiat, because the purpose of collecting it is to provide funding for the company. We have been very clear about that in the whitepaper. Some amount of NXT, up to 40 M, will be kept by the company.

Q

myco

It seems like selling the NXT you receive in the ICO for BTC and fiat will make the NXT have a much lower value.

Who will be buying the NXT from you? people who want to hold for the IGNIS snapshot?

tomi

We have already sold most of the 24 M NXT collected in the first round, it didn’t crash the price. We expect people who want to participate in the next rounds, or didn’t have a chance to buy in the previous, to be buying this NXT. And at the end, indeed those who want to hold for the snapshot. But even after the snapshot, we believe NXT will continue to have value, and this value will probably become stable, as no major disruptions will happen to it anymore.

kristina

People believed that NXT will lose value after the Ardor asset was launched too, but it didn’t happen… It indeed dropped temporarily but after that it went back up again…

Q

myco

What new functionality is present in IGNIS that was not present in NXT?

tomi

We have a feature comparison table on the website, few things I can think of: asset dividend payments using other assets, or MS currencies, or other child chain coins; asset share increase transaction; smart phasing (a boolean composite of phasing conditions); asset control…

About Ardor

Q

myco

What is the current status of development on ARDOR? When will that be a useable technology in production?

tomi

It is running on testnet now. The multiple child chains framework is implemented and working, you can try it. We are planning a new testnet release some time before the snapshot, which will introduce some innovative features – smart phasing and asset control for example.

The pruning and snapshotting parts of the Ardor design are currently being worked on, and will not be part of the initial release, they will be ready later. See the roadmap on our website for all details.

Q

myco

What mechanisms would cause the rise in price of Ardor? What is Ardor used for?

tomi

Ardor will only be used to provide security for the whole system, it is the token used in the proof-of-stake algorithm. It intentionally has very limited other functionality, as Ardor transactions by design must remain in the blockchain (and cannot be pruned like child chain ones). Having significant Ardor stake will allow users to run forging nodes, and collect fees from all child chain transactions (converted from native tokens to ARDR by their bundlers).

myco

I can understand that value if you get native tokens from staking ardor… but why would I want to get more ardor for staking ardor if there is no additional utility to it besides getting more ardor? It seems circular. what am I missing?

petko

Ardor is like the mining hardware in bitcoin, minus all the wasted electricity

marenkar

For child chains to run, bundlers will need to exist to collect child chain tokens and then pay ARDR to the forgers to process the transactions. Any account can opt to be a bundler as long as they have ARDR and set the rate they want for accepting child chain coins relative to the ARDR paid out to forgers. Transaction fees paid out to forgers will be fixed based on the amount of data processed and/or the type of transaction and have a similar fee structure as that with Nxt ( `https://nxtwiki.org/wiki/Transaction_Fees` ).

In terms of value, assuming all other things held constant, the more child chains on Ardor and the more activity on the child chains on Ardor, the higher the demand for ARDR as the need for it increases to handle the increased demand for transaction processing.

Q

oojacoboo

So Jurlidia needs money to develop Ardor so it can try and sell sidechains to companies? That the tldr; ?

tomi

Child chains can be useful not only for companies, but for the general public, even when there is a company behind a particular child chain. For example a pegged child chain, with token value fixed to fiat currency, maintained by a 3rd party business who charges commission on entry and exit from the system – but all users than can transact with this currency on the blockchain, denominating their transactions in it. And the Ignis child chain, for which the ICO is being conducted, will always remain decentralized and accessible to everyone.

kristina

not only creating child chains, but also private blockchains – it depends on the use case

and please note that the Ardor child chains are not side chains. The difference between them is explained in our Whitepaper.

Link to white paper – `https://www.jelurida.com/sites/default/files/JeluridaWhitepaper.pdf`

Link to page about side chains vs child chains – `https://www.jelurida.com/child-chains-and-side-chains`

Q

sanchopansa

What are the major industries/verticals that you are hoping would be using NXT?

tomi

Banking and financial sectors, asset issuance and trading, voting (including shareholder meeting voting), crowdfunding. We have been in talks to several banks that are testing internally our technology, but since this is under NDA I can’t mention names until it becomes publicly known.

Q

sanchopansa

Do you have any commercial partnerships/deals that you can talk about?

kristina

The ones not covered by NDAs – we have partnerships with companies/projects like TLVC, Beecrypt, Bitswift, Sigwo Technologies and quite a few others to be announced soon…

Q

sanchopansa

If I understand correctly, you’re in the blockchain-as-a-service space so that would make Stratis, Lisk, Ark and maybe to some extent Ripple your competitors. Why would any business use Ardor instead of these other options?

tomi

We believe that our parent – child chain architecture is currently unique in the blockchain space, and it opens the door for even more use cases and a greater interoperability between child chains. It also solves the blockchain bloat problem – which I don’t believe those other platforms have a solution for. Ardor is based on the tested and stable Nxt codebase, and has a very rich feature set which will be carried over to it from Nxt.

Price speculation

Q

myco

Why do you think that NXT has been left behind in price, relative to new coins coming out in the past year?

marenkar

There’s quite a lot of reasons because Nxt has existed for quite a long time, such as a lack of a proper team, which Jelurida now fills, a lack of funds, which this ICO now aims to address. Also it being the first Proof of Stake platform during a time when everyone wanted to mine held things back a bit. I made a long post about it if anyone’s interested – `https://www.reddit.com/r/NXT/comments/6m2tyd/why_did_nxt_never_catch_on/djyjxa6/`

Q

myco

What are you going to do differently with IGNIS to make a token that people want to hold?

Or will you focus on making money through corporate consulting use cases?

Petko

My personal opinion is that there is no need to do something special with IGNIS in order to differentiate it from the other child chain tokens. Same like NXT – everyone is free to clone NXT and start another blockchain and token (and there are many clones existing), but the NXT token only one

Q

oojacoboo

And why would I want to own any JLRDA tokens? What value do they have, since this is a funding model for Ardor…

thewiremaster

The JLRDA MS tokens represent the IGNIS tokens you will get at Ardor launch.

vanbreuk

If a company is funded for developing the platform where your tokens are used, there is a much bigger chance that tokens will appreciate in value. I don’t understand the question.

kristina

Yes, we are selling tokens, that’s right. You may want to fund the development of Ardor because it will be a scalable PoS multi chain ecosystem – it will be the next big step in the blockchain industry

marenkar

Ignis will be the first child chain on Ardor. The Ardor main chain will not have substantial features as it is intended to secure the Ardor network and not be a regularly-used chain. Ignis provides an unrestricted way for users and organizations to utilize the features of Ardor, such as creating an asset or setting up a decentralized poll. Transaction fees to do these transactions will be in IGNIS not ARDR. Other child chains will also have these capabilities but they may set restrictions on them.

The JLRDA > IGNIS ICO

Q

myco

Where can we find the best instructions for how to participate in the ICO? The software used for the ICO is different than the BTC/ETH icos we’ve been participating in lately

tomi

Since we are running our ICO on our own blockchain, it is using the Nxt wallet. It may indeed look different from the BTC and ETH client, but shouldn’t take long to figure out, and especially for the purposes of the ICO we added a separate page – accessible from the Ignis Token Sale link in the header, which really makes it easy.

But do read the instructions on our jelurida.com/ico page, there is also a video showing how to do it, and we plan to post more instructions in a video or pdf too. And remember, only use the IGNIS Token Sale link from the header – do not buy any similarly named tokens/assets/marketplace goods, as unfortunately there have been scammers selling fake JLRDA or Ignis tokens.

Q

myco

What does it mean that IGNIS is “fully permissionless” compared to other child chains

kristina

It means that it is open for everybody to use freely. Other child chains will be associated with a specific use case, a company or an organization behind them. Some of them may want to implement restrictions such as KYC for example….

tomi

Permissioned blockchains is something our enterprise customers ask for, as they want to be able to control who can connect to the blockchain (read access), who can send transactions (write access), and who can give or take such permissions (admin access). Some of this functionality will also be added to child chains that may need it.

Q

lordcameltoe

How will the next IGNIS sale be handled to avoid having whales scoop up the majority of coins before everyone else?

tomi

Everyone has equal chance to participate in the Ignis sale, using our scheduled transaction feature which automatically submits their purchase transaction as soon as the sale offer is posted. And the batch will be split into 4 rounds of 20 M each, again to give users multiple chances to participate.

lordcameltoe

So the technique one person used last time to get most of the tokens has been patched?

vanbreuk

Rather than patched, the Nxt Client now allows for everyone to place a buy order in advance, before the next batch of tokens is effectively placed for sale. So the tactical advantage of that person in the first few batches is not there anymore, since anyone can do it from the client.

marenkar

I’m not 100% sure how it works but it ends up being a lottery of sorts. Some users couldn’t get in, others could. A few users were able to get in even without the scheduler though, but that was rare. Well, at least from what people claimed on Slack.

–

Thanks for tuning in, dear readers. That was an interesting and informative AMA from Jelurida. They clarified a lot of their plans and continued to bring attention to the IGNIS ICO.

For our ongoing coverage of the ICO, we have our special report series and a weekly Nxter Newsletter, that follows blockchain trends and reports on the last week in the ever growing world of the blockchain. Follow us on Twitter for important breaking updates as they occur. Stay informed and keep reading.

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