The Matrix team recently held a Telegram AMA in which the community could submit questions to a community admin and have it answered in the new Telegram AMA session. Our Telegram AMA strategy is designed to communicate and address the Matrix community directly.

Today we have complied all of the AMA questions in a article for your convenience. Enjoy!

Question 1: When can we have android and apple wallets?

A: Expect android and apple wallets by the middle of June.

Question 2: Are any of Matrix’s partners currently sending transactions on the Mainnet. If not, when should we expect to see the 1st transactions?

A: Currently not. According to our plans, we hope to get our partners up and running in a real way on our chain before September 2019.

Question 3: What are the barriers preventing Matrix from listing on big exchanges?

A: There’s no big secret here. We’ve been in contact with just about every major exchange at one point or another. When listing on exchanges, it isn’t just a matter of: here’s the sticker price, pay it and get listed. Prices change all the time and it is a negotiation. We will get listed on more exchanges.

Question 4: Is any mass marketing drive expected in the near future?

A: We probably won’t be airing commercials on major networks in the near future. However, we will certainly ramp up our marketing efforts between now and September 2019. We’re currently engaged in a the background work — analysis, brand definition, VI design, etc. A lot of that happens in the background but certainly things will be more visible by September 2019.

Questions 5: What is the actual situation with Huobi and the swap. Why is it taking so long?

A: I can’t say with 100% certaintly, but my personal understanding is that Huobi has undergone some internal restructuring in the past few months. Several news outlets reported on this. The result is that there is a queue for token swap technical support.

Question 6: Any news surrounding mining facilities?

A: Nothing super juicy to share yet. Most of it has been paperwork so far. We’ve secured the requisite licenses in several cities in China.

Question 7: Any update on Ledger integration?

A: This is coming! The technical work is currently being conducted by a 3rd party. I estimate it will be done in about 2 months (assuming no major tech issues arise).

Question 8: How is the Horse Saga launch coming along?

A: Horse Saga is coming along great! Version 1.0 will launch on Matrix at the end of the month, on May 26th.

Question 9: What percentage of tokens have already been swapped?

A: More than 40% of circulating tokens have completed the swap.

Question 10: When can we expected the 2nd ICO?

A: I’ve always struggled with this term haha. I’m just going to call it an additional token sale (ATS). The ATS is ongoing. We’ve been meeting with prospective and interested investors. I can’t name the specific investors at this moment but they will all be announced in due time.

Question 11: What is the significance of Matrix passing the review work of the Xinjiang Government?

A: This was discovered because someone shared a couple videos in a Chinese WeChat group. In fact, it isn’t really the Xinjiang Government doing review work. We are in the early stages of setting up a Distributed AI Computing Center. Part of this involves repurposing some pre-existing facilities. Our plan on how we plan to transform these older facilities was approved.

Question 12: Can we expect an update to the blockchain explorer (tom.matrix.io)? Will the function to show the fiat value of transactions, at the time of the transaction, be added to blockchain explorer?

A: Small updates are constantly rolled out to the blockchain browser. There is scheduled to be a larger update about a month from now — however, the primary purpose of the update is to address speed issues. If enough people indicate they want to see fiat values, it can eventually be added — Either on tom.matrix.io or on a new blockchain explorer.

Question 13: When can we download our transactions to a csv file?

A: This is a future function that is already planned. If the community wants it badly enough, its priority can be increased~

Question 14: When a Verification Masternode is selected, it sometimes serves as leader for many blocks, while other times it serves as leader for no blocks. Why? What is the algo to decide when a Verification Masternode serves as Leader?

A: Couple things to unpack here. I’m going to assume we’re talking about nodes that are properly deployed, since this scenario has the Verification Masternode service as Leader “sometimes.”

First, if selected as one of the 19 Verification Masternodes in a given cycle, every Verification Masternode will serve as Leader in turn. This means, they will “verify” the block once every 19 blocks (an be rewarded with a 2.xx MAN reward).

Occasionally, you may also be selected as a backup Verification Masternode. In this case, you will still receive selection rewards, but you will never serve as Leader unless another Verification Masternode fails to do their work and needs to be replaced.

Once selected, all the Verification Masternodes are sorted into their starting positions. The probability of each node’s starting position is impacted by their stake. After this initial ordering, the stake doesn’t matter anymore — the nodes take turns from that point on.

Question 15: Some verification nodes show 600% ROI. Others have 4%. Why is there such a discrepency?

A: A few factors at play here. It is a combination of luck, misdeployed nodes, unequivalent uptime and unequivalent hardware (in the case of Mining Masternodes). Someone with 4% is almost certainly misdeployed. That’s not to say things are working perfectly — we have tweaks coming.

Question 16: If the same node is selected most cycles and verifies blocks most of the time, it is centralization. Do you agree? Is Matrix a centralized blockchain?

A: This is certainly not the ideal sphere to debate the meaning of centralization in blockchain — and I might regret addressing this at all — but I didn’t want to be accused of skipping the hard Qs haha. Ultimately, I don’t agree with the above characterization of the Matrix AI Network. Centralization is, in many ways, a question of control. Even if a node is always selected to serve as a verifier, they still only have one vote. Additionally, all Verification nodes serve as leader in turn. No one party has centralized control and no one party has the authority to make unilateral decisions.

Question 17: How many DApps are expected to be on the Matrix AI Network by the end of 2019?

A: More than 10, less than 100. To be honest, our approach is not to flood the network with DApps to boost the number of transactions. We are more focused on creating a smaller number of higher-quality applications that actually have the potential to improve things.

Question 18: How far off are the early- Masternode rewards?

A: These haven’t been distributed yet because the requirements haven’t been met yet… but we’re close! There are more than enough Mining Masternodes, and more than 90 Verification Masternodes have hit the 100,000 block mark. We’ll probably be there in two or three weeks.

Question 19: The lack of exchanges of any quality is the biggest hinderance to this project. You have been saying you are actively pursuing this for well over a year, same answer each time you are queried. An explanation would be good especially when I see other projects line up every exchange including Coinbase in a bear market.

A: As mentioned above, there is not big secret here. We’re in touch with several exchanges and will list on big exchanges when we think it makes financial sense. It needs to make sense on all sides. It’s coming though!

Question 20: Are there any plans to speed up the syncing process for new masternodes?

A: We received this question or questions similar to this one several times. We know the chain is quite large and is only getting larger. We will release methods to sync to chaindata faster. That’s not going to come out for a few months though. We’ll enable to faster syncing before the issue becomes too extreme.

Question 21: When will the rewards earned by Foundation nodes be returned to early Masternodes?

A: The specifics are still being worked out but it should be in the middle/late June.

Question 22: If crypto is banned in China, how will hospitals and other partners be allowed to pay using MAN tokens for Matrix AI Services.

A: Saying that crypto is banned in China isn’t accurate, though there is certainly some uncertainty — so the point is taken. This will be handled on a case-by-case basis by each individual partner/entity. It isn’t a huge issue though.

Question 23: I would like to know more about the 2nd ICO (Additional Token Sale) and why it is needed?

A: The funds from the Additional Token Sales are dedicated to developing new AI mining algorithms and further the future vision of the Matrix AI Network. Details of this will be outlined in more detail in our updated whitepaper. The english version of the new whitepaper is scheduled to be ready at the end of May/early June.

Question 24: Are any partners using the AI functions via the wallet.matrix.io portal?

A: Currently not in any great quantity. In the future, some larger partners will use custom clients tailored to their specific needs. The wallet.matrix.io portal is more of an all purpose client.

Question 26: What’s the latest roadmap? New milestones? How can we track progress?

A: After releasing new whitepaper (whitepaper 2.0), we will also update the roadmap.

Question 27: Any progress updates on the fpgas?

A: These are still in testing. The team is currently trying to lower the cost without sacrificing too much performance. They may look at non-fpga solutions though nothing is 100% decided on that front.

Question 28: What is the status of the audit that Ernst and Yong conducted?

A: The Matrix Foundation is still ongoing. Not yet 100% completed.

Question 29: Other than opening port 50505, what other tweaks will improve performance?

A: You can make sure there are no firewalls in place, plug in via ethernet instead of wifi, upgrade your hardware or network speeds, etc — but there’s nothing that will improve everything in one fell swoop unless your node actually isn’t deployed properly

Question 30: Date of Intelligent Smart Contracts?

A: We’ll released a demo to the community by the end of Q3 2019.

Question 31: How can community developers participate?

A: According to our current plans, the developer platform will be released by the end of Q3 2019. However, this is subject to change.

Question 32: Once GPU/FPGA is enabled, will this impact Verification Masternodes or only Mining Masternodes?

A: This will impact Mining Masternodes. The impact on Verification Masternodes will be negligible.

Question 33: Nodes that are not online still get selected and receive rewards. Why is this so?

A: In this early stage, this approach was to encourage as many people as possible to stake tokens. Additionally, we view this approach as being more fair. As with any new technology, we anticipated some technical hiccups in the early going. We didn’t want to overly punish early adopters who were trying to deploy properly and honestly. For intance, in the first month, it was not unlikely that someone was trying to run their node honestly but was experiencing network issues. We didn’t want to overly punish these people. We wanted to minize the number of people who would give up in the early going. Hammering away at them with harsh penalties would have the opposite effect.

Question 34: Why not check if a node is properly deployed and online before selection?

A: There are several reasons why a node may appear offline. Some reasons are country specific. A node in Turkey may not be able to connect successfuly if through the USA, but can if directly through Russia, for example. Additionally, we can only ping nodes to see if they are online. We can’t check all their ports or their network speed or other important factors. So they may ping online and still fail to complete work for other reasons. Ultimately, we can’t be 100% sure about every node ahead of time.

Question 35: Will Matrix be preventing nodes from staking until they are fully synced?

A: No. In a future update, we will propose to remove such nodes from being selected but we won’t stop them from staking tokens.

Question 36: In what way will the Matrix Team be penalizing poor performing nodes (Verificaiton and Mining) that cause blocktimes to exceed expected design limits?

A: In the next update, nodes that fail to complete their work due to being offline will forfeit 10 selection opportunties. Honest but poor performing nodes will not be punished in this way. In fact, slow nodes have no real negative impact on the Matrix AI Network.

Question 37: Will the tom.matrix.io explorer have to ability to show if a node is deemed to be “online” or “offline”?

A: This data exists, but due to the aforemetioned issues with online/offline status (Q34), we’ve decided not to publish it for the time being.

Question 38: The chain data is currently around 50GB and will obviously grow. What does Matrix intent to implement to ensure the chain data size is scalable for Masternodes?

A: As mentioned before (Q20), we are aware of these concerns. We will eventually release a solution for speedier syncing but not in the immediate future.

Question 39: Why does the team recommend 16 miner threads as the maximum to be used?

A: Because exceeding 16 is a waste. Downloading the requisite data with 32 cores offers no benefit over 16 cores with the current design, so using 32 isn’t efficient. The time to download block data is the same with 32 or 16 cores.

Question 40: Does the team plan to increase the mining difficulty?

A: Difficulty will rise and should rise rapidly around the time GPU mining begins — I estimate this will happen in September 2019.

“Matrix AI Network is a platform which incorporates blockchain and AI to enable the realization of the Intelligent Blockchain. The use of AI allows innovations such as natural-language smart contracts (Intelligent Contracts), continual network optimization, formal contract security verification, and much much more. — Matrix AI Network”

Any new AMAs will be published on this Medium chat for your convenience be sure to check in regularly for AMAs or other insightful articles regarding Matrix AI Network!