We had a great turnout yesterday during the Laser Telegram Q&A session. We extend a big “thank you” to everyone who attended. Without you, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

In case you missed it, we thought we’d let you in on what happened during the Q&A session.

Our turnout had a combination of existing shareholders in Laser’s parent company, Global Blockchain Technologies Corp., as well as non-shareholders who are interested in getting in on Laser’s crowdsale. The session was led by myself (Maxwell Arnold), an analyst at Global Blockchain.

Here are some questions that we’ve decided to highlight for our recap. Some answers are paraphrased for clarity. The original version of all answers can be seen in the Laser Telegram group.

Hoho had a couple of queries about the sale, to get a better overall sense of it…

Hoho: When starts the pre-sale? How much Money will Laser raise in total? Laser: The pre-sale will start sometime in August, as soon as the OM (Offering Memorandum) is approved. As for how much money Laser will raise in total, the maximum we will be able to raise is USD $15,435,000. With the current established interest, we are on track to meet the maximum.

We had a great question about PoW versus PoS…

Raymond Tse: Hello there, hope all goes well! I had a question on mining. The white paper mentions that mining is to be replaced by POS by Q4. Does this mean mining has already started? How can we get more information on how to mine photons? Thanks you! =) Laser: Great question, Raymond — and we appreciate your attention to the whitepaper. The short answer to this is that the document was written before we encountered some regulatory hurdles, so we will be pushing the dates for steps such as PoS transition back by a couple of months. Our PoS variant will be the most efficient and the most scalable, so this is something that we’re just as excited about as you are!

Also a question about how our timeline will change due to the regulatory hurdles we’re still jumping over…

Jaek: Any other shifts to the timeline? Does that mean mining starts as PoW (ethash?)? Does the timing of the airdrop/offering/mining align, or is it staggered? Laser: Nothing significant, no. The private sale will 100% be in August, and will go on for three months. After that period, the network will launch — and the testnet will be launching sooner than that. Currently, we are planning for it to start as PoW, but if we are ready to launch PoS before the crowdsale is over, then it will start as PoS, skipping PoW altogether. As for the airdrop, that will be given immediately after the crowdsale is complete.

Then a question about Stratus (a project by Global Blockchain that will be an AirBnB-style marketplace for enterprise data storage and computing resources), and how Laser will relate to it…

Stephen Wilson: Are you able to talk about how Stratus will work with and is related to laser? Laser: Absolutely. Stratus is a DAPP (decentralized app) built on Laser. Laser will allow the trade of storage and computing power using many different cryptocurrencies (as opposed to just one). This takes into account that some companies will prefer to use different cryptocurrencies for this purpose (including their own proprietary coins/tokens, which will be possible). With this flexibility, this is a big part of the Stratus value proposition, and it is enabled by Laser.

Then a very astute question from Jaek about the wallet’s availability and initial interoperability features…

Jaek: So will the laser wallet be available at testnet or mainnet launch? What platforms will the laser wallet be compatible with at launch? Based on your timing, will it support ETH/BTC interoperability? Any others? Laser: It will be available at testnet launch. ETH/BTC interoperability will be the first supported pair, but many more are in the works and several of them may be available on testnet, before mainnet’s launch.

Vickey wanted to know how Laser fits into Global Blockchain’s revenue model…

Vickey: From GBT perspective, other than the tokens that it will hold, will laser provide any ongoing revenue streams such as transaction fees? Laser: That’s a great question. What you have to keep in mind is that because Laser is similar to SWIFT (that is, a network of networks), its focus is more on making things happen than it is about making revenue streams. What we’ll be doing is building DAPPs (decentralized apps) on Laser — which, themselves will have revenue streams in Photon tokens. So what DAPPs will be to Laser are what banks are to SWIFT. Does that make sense?

Another great question from Vickey about how Laser will maintain a competitive advantage as an open-source project…

Vickey: Will laser become open sourced and what competitive advantages GBT will have if it becomes open sourced and anyone can build dapps? Laser: Yes, it will be open source. This is essential in the blockchain world, as no blockchain software that was not open source has ever succeeded. How will we obtain a competitive advantage? Basically, the more people that adopt our instance of the blockchain and the Photon will give us the needed critical mass of users to be sustained. We already have a very strong community as it is, and we haven’t even launched yet. So while we are building an advanced technology with breakthrough capabilities, our competitive strength will come from our user base. Which is the good, old-fashioned principle of doing business on relationships.

We’re very excited that you are on this journey with us. Keep an eye out on our Twitter page to see our update about the Offering Memorandum as soon as it’s out…

https://twitter.com/laserprotocol

We look forward to entering the next stage together!