Social encounters

Asia Blockchain Review recently spoke to Terrence Wang, co-founder of IOST, an ultra-fast, decentralized blockchain network based on the next-generation consensus algorithm, Proof of Believability (PoB). Wang talked about working to meet the security and scalability needs of a decentralized economy, the IOST Partners Program, and the firm’s part in developing DApp projects to drive the blockchain community.

Asia Blockchain Review: What was your inspiration for founding IOST? What is your vision for the company?

Terrence Wang: I have personally been an early Bitcoin and Ethereum miner since 2016. I remember being very fascinated at how digital money can be created and used as a global currency without any financial intermediaries, which changes the foundation of how the entire world economy can possibly work. From then on, I started researching blockchain development.

The inspiration for founding IOST came from my own experiences of developing blockchain applications. At the time, using a public blockchain for developers was costly and has high technical barriers. The network also had many limitations, such as being too slow for commercial applications to scale. We founded IOST to give aspiring developers a user-friendly, affordable, and enterprise-grade blockchain platform to bring their business ideas to life.

Our vision is simple — to be the backbone of the new digital economy built on the blockchain. One day, the world will be on the blockchain, and we want to play a pivotal role in making this happen.

ABR: Can you tell us about the technology behind using Proof of Believability? PoB aims to solve the issue of centralization by specific nodes, but is there any potential issue with this consensus? How do you see other ways of overcoming this issue that other platforms are attempting, such as GHOST by Ethereum or DPoS by EOS?

TW: Proof of Believability solves the scalability trilemma in blockchain, which states that you can only choose two of three: (a) scalability, (b) decentralization, or © security.

PoW consensus chose decentralization and security, which results in slow network speeds. DPoS consensus chose scalability and security, which results in network transactions being handled by a small exclusive group of supernodes.

Proof of Believability (PoB) essentially has a points system that determines which nodes get into the node producing committee, which changes every 10 minutes. Nodes receive points based on their staking amount, and these points are used up as they produce blocks. Thereafter, for the next committee, other nodes that have yet to use up their points would take their turn in the block production committee. This creates a system where all the nodes get to participate in block production (decentralized), while at the same time allowing the IOST network to reach speeds of up to 8,000 transactions per second (scalable).

We believe that currently, IOST is leading the industry in providing a real-world working solution to the scalability trilemma.

ABR: Your efforts to improve transaction speed rely on “Efficient Distributed Sharding” in order to solve the scalability issue. Can you elaborate on this technology? Does it differ from sharding by Ethereum?

TW: Sharding as a technology is not new, and research on sharding has been carried out for decades. We have actually achieved speeds of 8,000 transactions per second (TPS) using the PoB consensus mechanism with some sharding. Our R&D on Efficient Distributed Sharding is ongoing, and we expect it to play an important role in scaling the IOST network towards 100,000 TPS.

ABR: How is your partnership with Blue Hill Foundation driving the development of DApp projects?

TW: Bluehill Foundation is a US$50 million blockchain fund that invests in high-potential projects and founding teams that can deliver greater value to the IOST ecosystem. Bluehill takes a long-term capital horizon on its investments. We invest both in protocols and DApps, as they play different roles within our ecosystem. Protocols provide the platform and tools for certain specialized DApps to be launched on the IOST network, while DApps are the user-facing applications that drive mass public adoption for IOST. Besides providing investment capital, Bluehill also supports IOST via the Featured DApp Program, where Bluehill will subsidize certain marketing budgets for IOST DApps. This direct support differentiates IOST significantly from other public chains and is an attractive incentive to bring strong DApp teams over to build on IOST. We have run multiple campaigns to date with DApp teams and Bluehill Foundation, and have seen strong user growth as a result of these activities.

ABR: Can you tell us about the partnership with Boomstarter? What is IOST bringing to the crowdfunding platform?

TW: IOST provides an international channel, using IOST as a cryptocurrency, for founders and entrepreneurs in developing countries to launch the businesses of their dreams. These founders and entrepreneurs are all motivated and hungry to succeed but are held back by the legacy financial infrastructure which lacks support for small businesses.

With IOST, they can now access global capital and reach out to a global community of backers to crowdfund and launch their products. Boomstarter is one of the largest crowdfunding platforms in Russia with over 2,000 projects and over US$7 million raised to date. IOST is excited to work with Boomstarter in its global expansion plans as well as deliver a practical blockchain use case with mass adoption potential for the crypto community.

ABR: What is the IOST Partners Program, and how do you engage with partner nodes?

TW: The IOST Partners Program is to bring in Nodes who are invested and committed to the development of the IOST ecosystem and will work to serve the entire IOST community. Nodes are incentivized to contribute to the growth and development of IOST as they receive staking rewards, contribution rewards, and block production rewards. Nodes can contribute to the IOST ecosystem in a variety of ways, including but not limited to market promotions, media publicity, integration/application developments, and organizing events such as hackathons and workshops.

We work very closely with Nodes to (1) grow education and awareness of IOST for the mass public, (2) build and launch innovative DApps for the global crypto community, and (3) implement and drive practical blockchain use cases for enterprises and consumers.

Every year, 840 million IOST is given out to Nodes and Voters who support these Nodes by staking. Both Nodes and Voters are rewarded with attractive returns for their support and growth of the IOST ecosystem and are incentivized to participate and contribute to the community.

ABR: What are some of the new projects and developments that we can expect from IOST in 2019–2020?

TW: One of our incubated projects, Emogi, has successfully launched its IEO in August as the fifth project on Huobi Prime. Emogi is a video content application that rewards both content creators and viewers. Content creators can earn from creating great content that attracts viewers, and viewers can earn from watching videos. Emogi has over 6 million users and is ranked among the Top 5 apps on Google Store in Latin America, above Snapchat and TikTok.

The interesting part here is that the Emogi token is issued on IOST, and we have laid out an airdrop schedule where IOST holders will receive numerous Emogi token airdrops over the next five years.

Besides Emogi, IOST has released our “Back to the Moon” strategy roadmap very soon for 2019–2020, where we chart the way forward for our community towards becoming a Top 30 token project. More announcements will be coming very soon, so do keep a lookout on IOST!

ABR: How is IOST addressing the security and scalability needs of a decentralized economy?

TW: IOST addresses the security and scalability needs of a decentralized economy by giving aspiring developers a user-friendly, affordable, and enterprise-grade blockchain platform to bring their business ideas to life.

Jimmy Zhong is a young & aspiring serial entrepreneur, who founded tech startups in both the U.S. and in China His passion for startups has been cultivated and growing since 2009 when he co-founded the largest student union & student travel agent in Beijing. Leaving his hometown to pursue higher study at Emory University, he didn’t stop exploring new business ideas and innovations. Even before finishing college, Jimmy sold his first company, StudyPool, an online marketplace for students to buy and sell class notes, for $40M.

Following this, he returned to Beijing and had multiple successes as CEO at Dora, an IoT business managing 10,000+ smart kiosks across China and is currently the CEO and Co-founder of IOST, a globally leading blockchain protocol with over 100 million transactions already processed.

What Is Your Vision for Founding IOST?

We have been fascinated by blockchain since Bitcoin was first started, and I myself was an early Bitcoin and Ethereum miner. We see that the first generation of blockchain using Proof of Work was just too slow for real commercial adoption to take place. Yet, the second generation of blockchain using Proof of Stake had sacrificed decentralization for scalability, which made them no different than many existing solutions in the market. This trade-off is known as the scalability trilemma, and the entire industry was struggling to find a solution. We had an idea of how this can be solved and create a public blockchain infrastructure that is high speed and also decentralized — leading to the founding of IOST.

How Does IOST Solve The Scalability Trilemma?

We developed our own consensus mechanism — Proof of Believability (POB). In a nutshell, it is an extra layer of reputation on top of the vanilla Proof of Stake system. We added a “Servi” token to the IOST ecosystem, which serves to give points to block producers who contribute and provide value to the network. The more Servi you own, the more chances you get to produce blocks, and after blocks are produced, the Servi is reset to zero.

This creates a positive cycle in which incentives block producers to consistently contribute to the ecosystem while at the same time, rotate different block producers into block production. We have hundreds of block producers who take turns to produce blocks every day, which is significantly more decentralized than some of the other existing blockchains with 20–30 block producers who remain relatively unchanged.

What Does A Typical Day Look Like For You?

I spend most of my time overseeing the various parts of the IOST ecosystem which includes the Foundation team, our investment portfolio, incubated projects, corporate partners, enterprise clients, and institutional investors. There are a lot of moving parts and my core priority is to ensure that everyone within the ecosystem is working in concert to deliver business growth and increase user adoption. My phone is never far from reach so that I can respond in the fastest time to emails or messages from our team and partners.

I like to do my thinking at night, when its quiet and I can put on my thinking cap to solve challenges for IOST and hopefully, for the global blockchain community.

What Are Your Goals For IOST This Year?

Since the mainnet launch this year in March, our focus has always been user adoption and ecosystem development, and these goals remain relevant for the near term foreseeable future. We are growing the IOST ecosystem exponentially by bringing in some of the best developers, exchanges, and partnerships. We have a strong base of active nodes, dApps and users have grown very well since mainnet launch. It’s been only around 8 months, and we have achieved a lot in a short period of time.

What Will Be An Exciting Development Coming Up For IOST To Share With Our Readers?

I am glad to see that the value of blockchain is starting to receive greater recognition globally, with the most recent commentary from China’s president being extremely positive for the market. We are very focused on tech, and with our blockchain technology and ecosystem well in place, we are planning some key product launches. These will be announced soon, and will the platform that takes us deeper into the enterprise space.

Earlier this year, we have already worked on an aerospace project together with Ehang, a global drone company and the Civil Aviation Administration of China to securely and accurately manage flight data and analytics. We are targeting to work on more government and MNC projects in 2020, the teams in Beijing, Singapore, Korea, and Japan are all involved in driving multiple such initiatives so watch out for some exciting partnerships to be announced.

Ultimately, we aspire to build a future where blockchain technology is accessible and tangible to everyone. It is always my passion to bring innovations that make other people’s lives better and we will continue to work in this direction.

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