Thank you to everyone who participated in the AMA. Here is a summary of all the questions and answers for anyone who couldn’t be with us on Telegram.

Summary Transcript

Dominique: Welcome to today’s AMA with Daniel Gasteiger! Thanks for taking the time to be with us today, Dani!

Daniel Gasteiger: hey everybody! looking forward to your questions — no limits!

Dominique: Great, as always starting with questions that we have received beforehand. Question from Larsmaennchen: I feel like eID is marketed independently of VETRI. Is there a plan to make users of Procivis eID aware of VETRI as well?

Daniel Gasteiger: Yes, that is absolutely the plan. while the eID+ clients of Procivis obviously decide themselves to open their systems to 3rd parties, it is very much our intention to connect the dots and convince governments we work with to allow access to VETRI.

And the infrastructure (e.g. the identity app) is of course compatible to begin with (eID+ 2.0)

Dominique: Great thanks Dani. Next question by tdn2005: is the agnostic layer to incorporate other eIDs (such as NEO ID, etc) not planned anymore?

Daniel Gasteiger: The eID incorporation happens via the DID standard, so if other eIDs also use the same standard they will be able to communicate. In terms of agnostism: the data structure of the MVP is built in a way that doesn’t rely on any specific feature of a particular protocol, which means once it’s completed, it can be moved to another protocol without a lot of work.

Dominique: The third question comes from SpecTurrican, then we’ll open it up to ad hoc questions. His question is: will there be a beta tester program?

Daniel Gasteiger: We are considering it but have no details on it at this point. we are also planning the release of the code for open source community engagement in early 2019

Dominique: okay, thanks Dani. the round is open for ad hoc questions now

DaniZ: Will the VALID token still be named VALID or is it going to get renamed to VETRI? You mention in the roadmap that VLD (the token symbol) will stay. But what about the full-name of the token?

Daniel Gasteiger: The symbol will be VLD, the token name will be VLD token (and not VETRI token) — while not ideal it is unfortunately not possible to change that.

Rex: Hi Danny, with this [protocol agnostism] in mind, do you mean that the VETRI solution can be moved to another protocol altogether? The revised roadmap has stated that Ethereum will be the protocol of choice. My major concern with Ethereum is that we’ve seen on numerous occasions when the platform has performed poorly due to the increased number of transactions to the point where it takes 10+ minutes to process a single transaction. I understand that other platforms are not as mature as Ethereum, but if the sharding/PoS & other protocol improves are delayed on Ethereum, does that mean VETRI can move to another protocol such as NEO or VeChain?

Daniel Gasteiger: Yes, this is in the realm of possibilities. If a smart contract platform emerges in the future that is better suited for our needs, we will consider adopting it, migrating fully or partially from Ethereum. It’s also an option to adopt different blockchains for different purposes.

Lars: Hi Danny. Can you give us a little update on the progress of your eID pilot project in Schaffhausen? What’s the current status?

Daniel Gasteiger: Hi Lars, we went live formally in June with Schaffhausen so the system is productive. We are now working with the government in Schaffhausen to build services on top of eID+ so that there is more traction on that and more people start to use the eID app. We are also working on eID+ 2.0 which will bring additional features like e-signing which is something that is needed for some other services we plan with them.

We also speak jointly on many conferences in Switzerland on the topic of eID to share our experiences introducing such a solution in the government context

Next one is in September in Lucerne if you are in Switzerland

Crypto Batman: Is there any update regarding the corporate partnerships with pharma and content delivery company?

Daniel Gasteiger: Not yet, we are in early stages and have had some individual discussions. First we need to finalize the use cases we will build with the MVP which depends on the findings from the market research and the micro site testing, all of which will be available end of July. In August we then take the decision what the use cases will be. Generally speaking, health data use cases are the most complex ones (and the most challenging ones) so might be a case for post-MVP phase nonetheless it is one of, if not THE, most promising use case of course

Henrik Zakaryan: Hi Dani, will we be listet on a decent exchange this year? I have the feeling this is not prioritized. To gain attention and liquidity it is important to be on a decent exchange.

Daniel Gasteiger: Henrik, I am sorry you feel this way. Ican assure you that this is a daily topic and we are doing what we can to get listed on a ‘decent’ exchange. We are making progress but Idon’t ever commit to a timeline for something I cannot control. But again, let me assure you we do what we can to get an additional listing as soon as possible. Also we are discussing a market making capability on Lykke as we speak to get the volumes up. But again it will have to be balanced with the resources (e.g. money) we have at hand

Crypto Batman: Thanks. Any plans to initial talks with someone like SOLVE regarding healthcare and insurance?

Daniel Gasteiger: I am organising a meeting on partnerships for July 30 where we gonna share all such ideas. On Aug 2 I will be in Austria where we will discuss a very prominent partnership as well that will help VETRI to be recongnized more in the respective community of personal data protection. So while we have not formalized any announcements we are definitely looking into all ideas and I personally head the partnership working group of VETRI.

Crypto Batman: If I am not wrong Estonia E-residency and their digital identity portal has almost all the futures of a data market place. Is other governments looking into something similar to it. Is VETRI team learning from them or discussing something similar to swiss govt.

Daniel Gasteiger: Kaspar Korjus is on our advisory board for Procivis. he is the MD for e-residency in Estonia so we are in talks. what i understand is that there is no plans to do a market place like VETRI. I never heard from any government looking into this but would appreciate if you share more info if you have.

Crypto Batman: Althought digital identity cannot be classified as market place, there are so many options to make them into a market place. Recently read an article about Estonia. Personal details and billing details all included in the digital identity and citizens having the ability to pay tax, insurance and bills etc with the same.

Daniel Gasteiger: Yes, but there is no concept of a token (that was dismissed if i am not mistaken) and a blockchain based market place so while the data is all there it cannot be linked and sold. it is pretty important to understand that the vision behind Procivis came from the Estonian model of e-government so we have studied that deeply and even released a report on it at the beginning of our company.

http://procivis.ch/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Report-Two-Countries-Two-Decades-Two-Results-vFinal-January-25-2017.pdf

So in a sense VETRI is the next evolution of what Estonia has been doing centrally from the government in a decentralized way for the blockchain world

Btw, we are looking for feedback on a meetup roadshow so we would love to hear from you on the format and locations you are in.

If no more questions i would like to thank you for the interest. Last week’s roadmap release was a big milestone for us and we are very happy with the responses we got directly here and by personal feedback. Next milestone is now the use case and marketing update in August and then the partnerships (and of course hopefully a listing announcement soon). Stay tuned and happy Wednesday!

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