Community: Hi David, my question is regarding Loom vs Trinity, they have many partnerships already. Regarding tech, where do we stand against them? And Celer for that matter. Who is your biggest competitor?

David: As I understand they are application-specific (Loom), but I will avoid directly comparing us two. Our approach right now (also will be reflected in the new roadmap) is more about providing multiple user friendly tools to soften the tech barrier for adoption. Celer is doing good and we have a similar approach in terms of adopting multiple platforms e.g. they chose QTUM and we started with NEO. the difference is Celer’s highlight is on routing algorithm and liquidity solution; both aiming at improving the health of the public state channel network. We intend to address these 2 challenges, in particular the liquidity issue, by fostering more customizable private application of Trinity network and its tools. You will understand this better when you get your hands on the tools we provide later. Also, I will say this which is critical and I’m not trash talking others; many projects’ network is still in paper stage — only LN, Raiden and Trinity have codes that are ready.

Community: Knowing what you know behind the scenes, would you say Trinity will be very valuable in the next year? Without naming names are there some solid partnerships with well known players?

David: I have the confidence it will be very valuable not just the token but more importantly the brand name and future community, but I’m not certain with the timing, those in the industry probably already know it.

Community: Regarding tools, can you be more specific?

David: Network status monitoring; node setup and management; liquidity provider interface; private network setup and management; all comes with GUI and easy to use, plus end-user wallet. These may come separately or mixed in 1 or 2.

Community: What plans do you have for the remaining tokens?

David: Remaining tokens: 3 parts. Operational allocation may be allocated to a community governance mechanism; ESOP will be significantly cut down; locked-up part (different from previous locking event) will be distributed to contributors to the network in a POW style mechanism. NOTE: this is just something we are discussing, not finalized and it takes a year long to gradually execute if anything is set. The idea is in the long term, say 2–3 years later is that Trinity Foundation will only be holding a negligible amount of tokens while the rest of supply is DECENTRALIZED.

Community: Do you foresee the market improving in November and December and if so do you have plans to list on an exchange when it improves?

David: Not sure, personally (not as Trinity official team), I think maybe a small bull run. I don’t think it will really come back before the middle of next year.

Community: Why is the China government still pushing back crypto and not allowing it? Do you see that changing any time soon?

David: Propaganda, let me elaborate on this. So for 2 reasons we have to be really low key in China.

1) Chinese speculators will cause unrest and protest when they lose money hoping the government will reimburse them. Since order is the priority, government don’t want to see anything doing publicity given a prospect of economic hard landing.

2) The core value of crypto is freedom, but they hate it. Right now most of the blockchain-related events/policies in China keep away from token, they love “token-less blockchain” and intentionally separate tokenomics with blockchain, silly, but the reality.

However we all know Chinese government practice national capitalism so they will want a big piece of the pie and I know many of them personally doing crypto investment. It is just a matter of time though not anytime soon.

Community: Do you foresee Trinity working in any government project in anyway shape or form in the future? I ask this because of the credentials that the Trinity founders have.

David: My team: very unlikely and I don’t like it at all. But it’s a free network, anybody can use it. We may have a different understanding on this as I’m not the only founder but I don’t welcome the idea of actively pursuing cooperation with government.

Community: How important and valuable is the partnership with NEL?

David: The founder is my ex colleague at Neo/Onchain, legit guy and deep in Neo so our cooperation is pretty comprehensive and thus to make sure Trinity leads on Neo.

Community: I am not sure if you know this but how far away is Neo from releasing the next version?

David: They won’t tell me, and I don’t want to bother them at this time.

Community: Is there anything to the Neo upgrade that you are looking forward to? Can you see it as a viable platform for dApps in the future?

David: The good news is they have plenty of time for development and I’m pretty sure they will release at the perfect timing. We can begin picturing that [what Neo will look like] by looking at Ontology.

Community: Question for David. In the letter you say codes and products aren’t ready so that’s why we don’t have to expect anything from you yet. No marketing but you want to focus on network health. More nodes? Don’t you need to attract more people to invest and set up nodes then? Why should I invest in Trinity now if we don’t have to expect better communication and marketing. Second thing that worries me is that you are so confident that adoption will come naturally. Why are you so certain it will come and they choose Trinity and not another solution? Relying on 2 partnerships really makes me nervous. You say WOB is too far ahead of its time. You said it would be bigger then crypto kitty but it’s a big disappointment. With all that in mind I really think Trinity has to do something about their image.

David: So, we are still in discussion on what we do and when we do it, it will take some more time. The market has changed and adoption is different from previous projection, we will have to readjust [roadmap]. In terms of communication; yes we have added new channels for you guys to directly communicate with the developers [David also mentions later on he will try and be more visible with the community]. Regarding WoB: it’s so much more complicated than you think. It’s the first game combining traditional gameplay+asset/logic onchain. Now I realize things you see, when people say they are going to build state channels/blockchain, they just say it [don’t delver], and this holds down development progress. We are “dumb” enough to actually do it as soon as possible. The same as blockchain games, name one that is real, and is already onchain? Most of them brag about it and just copy paste and declare they will be on chain 2 years from now. Like I said, we are “dumb” enough to actually do it and do it now, though I like the ones like Fomo3d, no gameplay but blockchain part is amazing.

Community: When can we expect the new roadmap more or less?

David: I have implied most of the contents, but waiting to be finalized, we want to give something as accurate as possible.

Community: Would you say Aeternity is a good project with success in their blockchain and state channel solutions?

David: Yes, I started learning about channels with Aeternity in the very beginning but the overall solution…I don’t know.

Community: The first roadmap you released had way too many “secrets” on the roadmap, are you taking the same approach this time. I do understand sometimes you have to do that because of competition. Are you also doing work in the background that can’t be shared with anyone?

David: Nope not this time [secrets on the roadmap]. Let me say something high level so that may answer many of your concerns. Like i said in the letter, the old game is just gone. It’s no longer a marketing/hype game, learning from the past real successful blockchain projects we realize for Trinity to succeed it has to adhere to the most orthodoxical principles in the blockchain space: free and decentralized. The improvement and new dev will be focusing on that. Many projects you know today are just going nowhere, despite this they still hire a pretty face to please their community and create fake transaction volume on exchanges. I have talked to many of them, they are completely clueless especially those “dapps” “platforms” “blockchain+xx” projects. Trinity stands at a very strategic position and is a typical “hardcore” blockchain project, we are able to adhere to the above principles and make this network easy to use, accessible and secure. For example, I don’t think projects with majority of the token supply in the team’s control and unwilling to change that will yield healthy trading and price. Some are actually doing pretty good doing manipulation, but if you want to play ponzi, go away.

Community: What is the future without revealing much in regards to IoT and Trinity? On the roadmap it says release of Trinity Trading Engine. What is the use case of the trade engine?

David: With state channels, you expect people to transfer a variety of tokens but nodes have to stake that token as collateral, that brings the liquidity issue: do you have that particular token and how much do you have? So for the public network, you need some kind of automatic/decentralized token swap mechanism. I think most future dapps will be implementing their own or adopt a wide recognized solution on this as well. That’s the correct use scenario for DEX.

Community: Atomic swap, it’s already being implemented by some platforms as we speak correct?

David: Yes, that’s also important for trading. To be very honest with you guys I know many big exchanges dropped their asking price for listing, I will take none of them. We don’t even know what this exchange game will look like after this bear market.

Community: Do you see micro payments being a lucrative avenue for Trinity in the future?

David: It is but a small part of it I think, just remember Trinity is a typical hardcore blockchain project, we can and we will do it in the old way: very low entry barrier and decentralized tokenomics. Not many projects have the chance (because they started off wrong) and we don’t have to play their game. Montesquieu said in the Spirits of Laws (it’s probably a read from 10 years ago) that Northern cold countries always produce great thinkers and scientists. in this cold market Ii think it’s great timing to cool the heads down and do some solid work and thinking; partly the reason i don’t show up often. I also need some time for myself.

Community: That’s great in the long run can we get some creative incentives while it takes 2–5 years to gain traction.

David: You get it.

Community: A lot of people aren’t fans of state channels tokenomics and don’t believe it’s a sustainable model. What would you say to them in regards to their concerns? What will make the TNC token useful and not just some random coin that nobody needs to use.

David: They are right, they are very right. People who question tokenomics of state channels are the people who really know the technology. That’s why I think Valerik Buterin refused to endorse Raiden right before its ICO. But that’s what we are trying to address, we need to make it “light” so people don’t feel like they are being forced to use the token. Just like people getting fine with ethereum gas. By the way Celer also recognizes this and is trying to tweak it, nice try. Don’t worry about tokenomics, that’s our core improvement priority.

Community: What’s going on with Decentraland? Are they still going to implement Trinity for their dApps?

David: I will take another day to talk about this, Ari and I have a very clear understanding on this.

Community: They are a huge project and some more clarity on the working relationship should instill confidence in the community. I think we just want to see some progress. Most of us understand that it’s a bear market and can take a long time to get out of this but some little updates here and there with Decentraland would be golden!

David: No, no, this is not what you think. It is economically and logistically impossible to SERVE every other adopter of Decentralandl or others on using Trinity. Did Vitalik Buterin teach you by hand when you bought your first Ether? Right, so the idea like I repeatedly said is to tackle this on the high level. When our tools are ready, [we will] tune it a bit for DCL, the adoption should nice and easy.

Community: Why are you trying to do several things at once? Like the Trinity mobile app, Wob, Neo state channel? Why not focus 100% on Ethereum state channel in the beginning? Sometimes it is not better to do multiple things at the same time as it slows down the process. Isn’t it better to focus on getting adoption e.g. getting a functional product like Ethereum state channels ready quickly for your partners to start using?

David: You are right, but it’s a different market now [acknowledges rush to get things out].

Community: The truth is always respected and appreciated

David: You know back when Neo was still Antshares, I was thinking about this all day, the wallet is bad, I want to build a nice one, it needs a state channel, I am going to build one — that kind of emotion drove me.

Community: That’s called passion brother there’s nothing wrong with that.

Community: Also, why does the Trinity wallet look totally different than the one you showed in SF? I don’t think putting UI is hard?

David: To be honest we released the UI guy 2 months ago, I thought we didn’t need to spend that budget. There is a new guy coming next month, it will be improved. I need a beautiful interface for myself to say the least.

Community: Hi David, glad to have you here. I heard that dev is working on release of USDT node. Is this necessary because USDT is on the verge of abyss, many stable coins are listed on exchanges.

David: You got it right, guys you should watch out for a USDT earthquake but the idea is simply to integrate multiple currencies. I think the USDT in this case is the erc20 one.

Community: Have you thought about giving out bounties for designs? There’s a lot of talented people in Crypto and I’m sure someone can come up with a UI for the wallet easily.

David: In a few months time I want to gradually set up a community governance so this kind of need can be met easily, might as well do it all together meaning, putting the budget in community’s control.

Community: Yeah to me it seems like a better bang for your $ when you can contract the community to help out and it gives them a sense of participation and attachment to the project. You would also not have to pay someone full time for some UI UX work.

David: When tools are better ready and we figure out the community governance design I will come and ask you guys for favours.

Community: I think community governance will be a huge boost for the community! Will it be like CoZ?

David: 2 steps. First one is more about community, marketing, small things, under the condition we are the core and sole development team. CoZ is step 2.

Community: Why should people like into Trinity?

David: Trinity stands at a strategic point where it could lead the future layer2 innovation in the blockchain space.

Community: NEL will release a lot of games in November, December and next year. Is this a good chance for Trinity to show as well?

David: I will pass this one Yongxiong talked me about, their best is NNS (Neo Name Service).

Community: Do you actively seek private funding?

David: Absolutely zero at current market, if people give me money for free I will refuse let alone investment.

Community: Interesting, don’t need it? Not willing to forfeit equity?

David: So you know there are many new people, until I’m sure I can make them happy I’m trying to be more responsible. If i know we are good and ready to take off I won’t hesitate in launching a serious marketing campaign, however we are not there yet.