To Run like a ZEL — Q&A with ZelCash Official developer Miles Manley

The Masternode Spotlight / #2

Even if you get your investment advice from Crypto Twitter, you know Ethereum isn’t the only game in Turing town.

Although it had first mover advantage, ETH still faces several well-known challenges: a max TPS of 20, decreasing node count, cumbersome DApps, and a high switching cost for devs.

Yes, there are ETH solutions on the horizon — Casper, plasma, sharding, etc., bu the fact remains that some of these challenges, particularly their node structure and programmers needing to learn Solidity are likely to be serious handicaps well into the future.

So there’s room for challengers. And one of these lesser known smart contract projects that has us particularly excited is ZelCash.

Disclaimer 1: This isn’t investment advice.

Disclaimer 2: We own it.

The Zel ecosystem –powered by the crypto currency ZelCash — looked at the mistakes of Ethereum (and to some extent, Bitcoin) and set out to build a user-friendly, developer-friendly platform for decentralized applications.

This grand vision is already being realized through some of their products, like the ZelCore desktop / mobile wallet.

Image from https://medium.com/the-zel-shill/zelcore-wallet-fc59bc948e7e

The UI is crisp and refreshingly slick for a blockchain product. But the real magic is under the hood. It’s got a slew of interesting features covered by Explosiveproton in this post, but our favorite is the in-wallet swap between assets. Right now it uses third-parties that we’re familiar with, like Shapeshift, Changelly, and Kyber. In the future though, ZelCore will be fully connected to their own decentralized exchange allowing an almost limitless combination of swaps — basically, you’d never need another crypto wallet again.

The price has jumped a bit in the last few weeks as the ZelNode feature gets closer to launch.

That said, the market cap is still around $3.6M and the collateral costs to run an Economy (Basic) node are not out of reach for everyday investors. (~$800 at the time of writing).

Given the utility of the project, the current market cap, and the dedication to user-friendly functionality, we think ZelCash is an attractive play at these levels.

A few weeks ago, Blockstake had a chance to connect with ZelCash developer and founder Miles Manley.

Hey Miles, thanks for jumping on the phone. Basics first — who are you and how did you get into crypto?

Hey, I’m Miles, founder and developer at Zel Technologies. I don’t remember how I heard about crypto exactly, maybe it was from a news article or a YouTube video? It was about 3 or 4 years ago. I was sitting in a dorm room with my friend. That much I do remember.

We read the Bitcoin white paper and immediately thought: “Whoa. How can we get some of this?”

Long story short, we went to our parents to ask for their help to buy us some ASIC miners, after failing to acquire some through GPU mining, and they gave us a flat no. So, I started selling the extra hardware I had laying around at my computer company.

By 2016, I raised enough to buy just over one hundred GTX 1060 GPUs and started mining the hot project of that time — Ethereum.

Around a year later, I also became very interested in a little known project called BitCoinZ and became part of the group that took over the project that Fall. But with limited resources and funds available to the project, I started thinking about what might come next.

And that’s when you got the idea for Zel? So what exactly is it and what problem does it solve?

Zel is a decentralized ecosystem and ZelCash is the ecosystem’s currency. The short pitch is that we wanted to create a working version of Ethereum, a decentralized computational network with a very high TPS. Basically a platform where DAPPs can easily be built, deployed, and operated.

So what’s the role of the ZelCash token specifically?

It’s pretty straight forward — it’s the ecosystem’s currency. It has the role of money, so it’s a transaction and store of value with the added benefit of zk-snarks for privacy. It’s important because it’s what will incentivize the network’s growth and maintenance.

Let’s talk a little more about the technology. You’re building a JavaScript SDK — how are you guys different than LISK? Also, how would you respond to the criticism that Java is a verbose language that’s open to a lot of attack vectors and probably not ideal for smart contracts?

That’s fair. As far as LISK goes, it’s inherently more centralized than Zel. They have a delegated proof of stake model, which means you can’t stand up a LISK node if you want. Zel is different. Anyone can stand up a Zel node if they want to.

To your point about javascript — we chose it because it’s the most widely used programming language and with more developers comes more possibilities. Yes, it’s verbose and yes that comes with an increased number of attack vectors, but we plan to launch our SDK and framework with a slightly reduced functionality to mitigate the number of attack vectors.

We are eagerly awaiting the release of ZelNodes. Can you explain why you chose this architecture and what you hope to gain from adding masternodes?

So just to be clear, we don’t think of them as masternodes because they do more than your typical masternode functions. Like Dash Masternodes, we’ll have the potential for instant transactions and such, but we think of them more as incentivized computational nodes. They’re a huge component of our ability to scale and we plan to utilize ZelNodes in a way that Ethereum can’t because of the way it’s been created so far. You’re limited by the hardware running each node which varies from place to place. That’s the main reason we’ve introduced standardized hardware tiers. To illustrate why that’s important, I like to use Android vs. Apple as an example.

Apple iOS is optimized for the iPhone device. Android phones have double the RAM, but they need it because the apps aren’t optimized for the varying hardware sets. There’s just too much variety among Android devices so the apps can’t be optimized for just one. It’s the same dilemma Ethereum faces. When you can have optimized and standardized solutions, like Apple, you get a much more elegant and efficient solution.

A good product and idea is one thing, but we’ve seen a lot of platforms fail to gain traction. What’s your go to market strategy? How will you make sure it doesn’t meet the same fate as a project like NXT?

At the moment, the current team setup is very developer focused, and we don’t have much of a marketing department.

Our current metric is build tech first and the users will come. If we make the platform and applications easy to use, we’ll get the user base.

With ZelCore — we’re creating the one stop shop for everything crypto. With that product, we’ve got a wide audience in the crypto community. And once we’ve got that platform, naturally, I think developers will come to it. Sure, Apple has great marketing, but they have the user base. Developers reach a much wider audience by choosing that platform.

So yeah, our aim is to get in the user’s pocket first and developers will follow.

But I’m no marketing guy — that’s just our current metric.

Any plans to list on bigger exchanges? When Binance?!

Hah — if you go in our Discord and ask “When Binance” you get the message: “I don’t know. Maybe ask CZ?”

I’ll say, that right now, we’re finding our way through the necessary legal frameworks. That’s most of what we’ve seen in 2018… I won’t say regulation, but there’s been guidelines coming into place. Where the criteria for getting on Binance, Bittrex, Kraken, the larger exchanges etc., is much higher than before. Ridiculously high listing fees aside, it’s simply the fact that you now have to meet a legal criteria.

So we’re working through those, the Howey test, and exploring how we get through that. Basically — is it’s being worked on and ZelCash ticks all the boxes we’ve seen to be listed on these larger exchanges.

I feel pretty confident though that you will see ZelCash in a few new places in the next 3 or 4 months though.

Any partnerships you want to tease? Any big upcoming dates?

Well the obvious one is January 2019 when our ZelNodes are expected to launch.

As far as partnerships go — we’ve connected with I2Trade, a large OTC broker dealer. And most recently BlockFolio and Delta App, which we’re excited to be a part of.

On the team side of things we’ve added some key advisors, namely Patrick Storchenegger, who’s on the Ethereum Foundation Board and Tim Bukher, one of the leading legal minds working in crypto today.

I will say, our Chief Strategy Officer, Daniel Keller, wanted me to pass on that we’ve only begun to develop trusted partnership with major players. He realizes that tech first is the way to go, but recognizes other people notice partnerships.

We’re in the first phase of “currency by choice” and Zel intends to lead the way with projects focused on usability, scalability, and overall trust with the customer. And in this case the customer isn’t just the end-user, but users, miners, investors, tech dev sectors, and other blockchain projects.

So the opportunity for meaningful partnerships is pretty vast.

Definitely stay tuned during the next few months, we’ve got lots in store!

That’s great to hear. Ok last question — any upcoming events or opportunities to meet the team?

We’re all working away, but there’s talk of a Berlin meet up in the second half of 2019. We’ll keep you guys posted!

Sounds good. Thanks Miles!

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If you have a masternode or service node based project you’d like to pitch for the next Masternode Spotlight interview, send us a message on Twitter

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Blockstake is a proof of stake mining company and masternode operator. For more information visit www.blockstake.io. For press or media inquiries please contact earl@blockstake.io

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer or solicitation to sell shares or securities in Blockstake, ZelCash, or any related or associated company. Any such offer or solicitation for the Blockstake or ZelCash will be made only by means of their respective confidential Offering Memorandums and in accordance with the terms of all applicable securities and other laws. None of the information or analyses presented are intended to form the basis for any investment decision, and no specific recommendations are intended. Accordingly this release does not constitute investment advice or counsel or solicitation for investment in any security. This article does not constitute or form part of, and should not be construed as, any offer for sale or subscription of, or any invitation to offer to buy or subscribe for, any securities, nor should it or any part of it form the basis of, or be relied on in any connection with, any contract or commitment whatsoever. Blockstake and ZelCash expressly disclaim any and all responsibility for any direct or consequential loss or damage of any kind whatsoever arising directly or indirectly from: (i) reliance on any information contained in this, (ii) any error, omission or inaccuracy in any such information or (iii) any action resulting therefrom.