The Pink Crypto recently did an AMA with Substratum developers Justin Tabb, BJ Allmon and Abram Cookson and here is what she found out about the robust Substratum token that has been making a name for itself in the cryptcurrency world.

What can you tell us is different and unique from your competitors?

So there are a lot of good companies out there trying to solve the issue, which is good, it shows it is a problem that needs to be solved. We like to focus on what we are doing. We are working at a base protocol level. We are not reliant on any other platform or API. By staying self reliant we know we are in control of our future. I often tell people I don’t want anyone else to be in control of my business. That said we are not reinventing the wheel, we are EXTENDING what is good about the internet and fixing the things that are bad. So where other companies may rely on their own browser or other third party systems, we believe that browsers work. We don’t need our own browser. We also believe that Google and other search engines work. We believe that domain names as a whole work. So where other companies may require something like apple.mydecentralizedproject.com, we would still work with Apple.com.

The most exciting thing of what we are doing, and BJ can elaborate, is how we are working at the protocol level HTTP/HTTPS/TCP. The core protocols that make up the internet. Take for example TOR and I talked about this in a video I put up last night, TOR is amazing. Great project standing on the shoulders of giants so to speak. But what can we LEARN from TOR our team learned that TOR packets are easily identifiable, thus they are easily filtered out, Substratum packets are not. I’ll let BJ take it from here on this one…

We are not experts on what others are doing. However, I think what sets Substratum apart is _who_ we are building the platform for and why. We aren’t building just a decentralized web because that wouldn’t be enough to secure it, keep people anonymous, and keep the traffic normal-looking by not using protocols or special tools that are clearly blockable. We are building a platform solely to fight censorship, net neutrality issues, and to reduce potential attacks.

What are some reasons that I can give my mum to invest in Substratum?

Well as with anything, do your own research. But we believe we have a great solution for a GLOBAL problem, even bigger now with the Net Neutrality vote. We are a hard working team of great minds and we believe we have a bright future in a big space.

If I am using my PC as a node I use my RAM and connection only?

The SubstratumNode software will require some hard disk space to run the program (small footprint). However, we plan on relaying traffic through memory only.

What are the legal risks of running a sub node? I.e., what are the implications for me, a sub node runner, of getting paid while serving illegal content?(edited)

So this is a tough one obviously. There are different laws all over the world. However, we can say we are making it virtually impossible to detect you are using Substratum. Let me elaborate, So whereas a TOR packet is identifiable a Substratum packet is not. HACKER, we are “hiding in plain sight.” We disguise our packets as normal HTTP/HTTPS/TCP packets. By working at the protocol level this enables us to do this. So whether it is legal or not, you are protected. You have to work at your comfort level of course, but we are incentivizing people. For running in protected areas such as China, BJ can elaborate. And FYI, TOR is identifiable. That’s how certain sites block TOR traffic.

How many platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac, Raspberry Pi, etc) do you plan to support?

Windows, Linux, Mac first while experimenting with Pi, Aurduino, Tinkerboard, etc.

Will there be an updated roadmap for 2018?

YES! We have transitioned to a TIMELINE approach, we work in a highly AGILE manner, and work in 2 week sprints.

We want to deliver just how your mobile apps update. While you sleep we update, Abram added.

Will a hoster be liable for the content served from his/her machine? If someone decides to run an illegal website, what risks are there to the hosters?

Again, this is a tough and interesting one, if someone hosts an illegal site on GoDaddy, GoDaddy is not responsible so there is that, but with Substratum no one NODE holds all the bits of data, so you never really fully host anything, a bit like BitTorrent. That being said, we have no desire to become dark web 2.0. So we will implement a user governance system to ensure illegal content is not hosted.

Is it possible to host more than one node per system and if so would there be any benefit to hosting multiple instances?

Since we need an IP address per node the number of instances would not matter. Uptime, Upload speed are most likely your best factors.

What features are available to the websites hosted? Can you use languages like PHP, Node, Rails and Go?

We plan to support all main server side languages over time, starting with the majors and working our way down.

Where is my free shirt?

LOL, it’s coming, we had THOUSANDS OF REQUESTS. We are answering questions as appropriate but have no intention of giving away the whole farm!

What will the minimum system requirements be?

We will be delivering these after our open beta, we need to get large amounts of data.

What will the minimum system requirements be?

We are running an open beta, during that time we will gather large amounts of quantitative data that will enable us to provide you with ACCURATE minimum requirements. For instance we don’t know now if an old Windows XP machine can serve a request because we don’t have one, but by involving large amounts of beta testers we will be able to gather large amounts of data and give you those system minimum requirements.

How will the decision to repeal net neutrality impact the current schedule for substratum?

So the Net Neutrality Decision was a sad one, but it does open up a lot of new opportunities for Substratum. We never envisioned we would be needed so desperately in the US from the get go. We figured we would start in China, Russian, Iran and branch into the US when the need arose. So the schedule it won’t change because we are already feverishly working, but the marketing need in the US is greater now.

Is there any plans to offer a router that automatically makes your traffic encrypted through the Substratum network?

This is a great question and neat idea. However, there are no plans as of yet. We have spoken about how to properly handle nodes behind load balancers or in clusters along with multiple nodes to one wallet for payout.

Now that Net neutrality is repealed — what are some of your marketing strategies to make people aware of SUB ? And how easy will it be for the average person to use it ?

So we are obviously pushing on the NN thread because we have a technological answer to a political problem. We have already been featured in a couple publications just yesterday and today that had no contact with our PR agency so that is encouraging. I think because there are basically 3 or 4 players in this space in the crypto world and we were the ones with the huge spike so it seemed like the people had chosen is why they featured us. We are definitely pursuing this thread as it is a viable use for Substratum.

The community Substratum Discord has a good amount of active members. Do you plan on joining the Discord at any point?

I think it would be good for us to reach out. As a gamer I have used discord (no I will not reveal my gamer handles), and love it. It would nice to have verbal conversations with our community. We will see what we can do.

With the unfortunate net neutrality repeal, will the United States be included as one of the nodes “high risk” high reward locations?

LOL, well the way we are defining “high risk” locations right now is places where you could be imprisoned or worse for running a node, like China where a citizen was jailed for 9 months for selling VPN services a couple months back. So no, not at this time.

Checkout a recent tour of the Substratum offices…