Cryptory AMA Summary

New things we learned from the Cryptory AMA

There was an AMA (Ask me Anything) in the German Crypto Channel CryptoryTalk on Thursday, 29th of August 2019. A sizable part of the Nimiq Core Team answered questions there for about an hour. This is a summary of the most interesting questions for our non German speaking community.

Questions Regarding the Project in General

Question: Do you see yourself as competitors to other Paytoken like Dash, Litecoin and of course Bitcoin ? You have strong competitors that are already used as means of payment.

Richard: Nimiq wants to prevail through usability. A decisive difference is that Nimiq runs directly in the browser. And that makes a big difference, because it allows to offer a payment function as convenient as PayPal, but completely decentralized. NIM also provides an easy-to-use interface. With the Cashlink feature you can receive NIM without an account. Via OASIS a smooth payment process with NIM will be possible, where the merchant is paid in Fiat.

And from Nimiq 2.0 the very high TPS and the very short confirmation time will be a further advantage.

Tammo: What can be added to this: Without installation you can not only create an account (including keys and web-wallet functionality), but you can also create a network node in your browser at the same time. This allows you to send transactions directly to the network. Anyone who can operate a browser thus becomes a peer and is therefore significantly more independent of third parties. This is unique.

Question: Do you have an update on the release of the new website?

Sören: We are in the last moves and it will arrive very soon(TM).

Question: When will you start translating nimiq.safe into other languages?

Sören: Translating is still on the list. The safe is unfortunately a legacy system and will be revised soon, then probably with support for different languages. We will then approach the respective communities to help with the translations.

Question: When will the printable cashlinks be available?

Sören: Daniel will release the tool in the next two weeks. Without automation it’s already possible. Just encode the cashlink as QR code and print it ;)

Question: How are you currently positioned financially ? Do you have an investor or do you live from your project?

Sven: The project is still financed by the Token Contributions. There are also ideas for revenue generating components, but this is not yet specific.

Question: How do you rate the phase when the Mainnet was flooded with transactions?

Richard: It was interesting to see how the Main Network behaves under load.

Since then, we’ve also implemented some protection against transaction spam.

Questions Regarding Nimiq 2.0 and Albatross

Question: How stable is Albatross so far?

Richard: Albatross runs stable with 25 validators so far. How it works with the planned 512 active validators is still to be seen. A public TestNet will be launched soon.

Question: Cold staking has been around for about half a year, it would be good if you could consider this from the beginning.

Janosch: With Albatross you can easily stake NIM that are in a Coldwallet.

Question: Will the community be involved in deciding whether to change the block reward when switching to PoS? Or is a change inevitable because of the shortened time it takes to get the reward, so you’ll eventually make a suggestion and listen for any major objections?

Timo: When the block time changes from 60s to <1s, of course the reward per block must be changed, that is quite clear. The question is whether the emission curve (i.e. inflation) will also be changed.

In addition, immediately after the announcement of Nimiq 2.0, there was a proposal from the community to lower the rewards and thus reduce inflation. This proposal has been taken up and the team is currently seeking expert advice on what is the best solution. Since Nimiq 2.0 requires a hardfork, these changes can only happen with the approval of the community anyway.

Question: Anonymity will probably be a high-quality attribute of a payment network. It may not be a priority yet, but you can confirm that this would definitely appeal to you?

Pascal: Definitely. We have already looked at anonymity/privacy and will continue to do so. The foundations for this will definitely be laid in Nimiq 2.0 as well.

Questions Regarding Nimiq OASIS

Question: What basic requirement will OASIS need to provide liquidity in FIAT (Euro)?

Pascal: In general, OASIS can also support OTC trades. However, in order to provide real liquidity on the FIAT side, it requires either connections to Exchanges or Market Makers.

Follow-up Question: Is there someone you’re talking to with proper size?

Pascal: Yes, we have something planned to ensure that the necessary liquidity will be available.

Question: What contacts do you currently have with shops/retailers to integrate Nimiq?

Sören: Our first shop to launch the new Nimiq Checkout (first without OASIS) in September is kindhumans.com. Otherwise we have first talks with other shops too, but in general they want to see a working solution before they agree. Therefore, as soon as things go smoothly, we will increasingly approach online shops.

Question: How important will Trade.Telegraph (Agora.Trade) be for OASIS?

Sven: Trade.Telegraph does not play a decisive role for OASIS, an exchange is not required.

Question: Are you discussing ideas to increase price stability? This is no problem for merchants as they receive their money thanks to OASIS in fiat. For NIM owners, however, it is somewhat. Or are you relying on the market size to bring stability?

Sören: We’re not going to manipulate prices. Therefore it is important to increase the demand, which we want to achieve with our current big effort to bring NIM to all online shops.

Questions Regarding Marketing and Visibility

Question: How did the Web3Summit go from your point of view for the Nimiq project?

Sven: Web3 Summit was very good! A conference of like-minded people. :) We were approached several times because people already knew Nimiq, that was great. And otherwise we tried the onboarding via cashlinks with everybody who was interested.

Follow-Up Question: What feedback have you received from the hacker community so far?

Sven: Many find the concept of making blockchain accessible for non-techies very exciting. Also that the node can run directly in the browser and that it offers completely new possibilities for developers is always a topic of conversation.

Question: Which plans are there at present to approach JavaScript developers more actively?

Sven: We recently released v1.5 and the new client makes development even easier. I will also release the new docs soon.

Sören: We are now at the point where we have good stable APIs, for the Core Library and also for the user-side Nimiq Hub.

We will do a workshop in Vienna next week at BDLT (bdlt.school).

Question: Are there plans to include the Charity / Impact X project in marketing?

Tammo: When the time comes, that will definitely play a role. Generally we keep our feet still a little bit, because we want to spare the NIMs until they are worth more.

Question: Do you have any knowledge about the new generation of students in terms of blockchain? Still quite small?

Pascal: There are definitely some students at the BDLT https://bdlt.school where I will present them next week together with Sören.

In Conclusion

We want to thank Georg and Eddy from CryptoryTalk for making this AMA possible and also thank all the participants for their interesting questions.

See you at the next AMA!

Timo from NimiqDE