We have recently received a request for a FAQ list via the Discord chat, so we’ve compiled a list here featuring questions submitted from the community. Please also look at the daily activity plan and the medium to long term road map while reviewing this list.

The translation of this article was supported by ALIS Ambassador Jimmy and Puck. ALIS communicator Graham Smith also translated and proofread. Thank you! We will continue increasing the amount of information presented in English in the future.

―What kind of platform are you guys aiming for ALIS to become?

We want ALIS to become a place where people with original ideas and quality content are able to reach an engaged and active audience. We also want to make sure that content creators who may be let down by other platforms feel motivated to restart or continue producing content, on the ALIS platform.

―Is ALIS only for influential bloggers and “thought leaders”?

People who are not established and influential bloggers are also aiming for a world as visualized by ALIS, where media is trustworthy and reliable. These individuals are vital to the success of the platform. As such, the closed beta version will prompt former bloggers who wish to write again to continue with ALIS.

―Will a user’s amount of ALIS tokens be used to determine potential for earning on the platform?

We will consider not only the ALIS token holding amount but also ALIS media utilization. For example, we will identify the amount of tokens obtained by activity on the platform, and make the determinant logical mechanisms/algorithms not dependent solely on token holdings themselves, but on a user’s statistics obtained via writing, curating, and gaining reputation from other users, based on the weighted statistics of these users as well. In this way, simply holding ALIS tokens is not enough in and of itself to really succeed on the platform. Quality content and contribution to the ALIS platform is necessary to success.

―How much can a user earn?

Though there is no 100% accurate way to predict the future, based on a simulation utilizing current market capitalization up to this point, 2 to 300 million yen of ALIS token per registered user per year would be a reasonable estimate.

―Will bloggers who are already earning money use ALIS?

We do not feel that earning money is the sole determining factor as to whether or not a blog contains quality content. For example, due to existing limitations created by keyword patterns, SEO, and existing affiliations, many quality bloggers without knowledge of how to navigate these obstacles remain obscured from the public eye of large-scale readership. As such, focusing on bringing in already-earning bloggers is not necessarily connected to bringing in quality content to the platform. Also, regarding the monetary remuneration, the sustained improvement in the value of the ALIS token brings about the merit of on-boarding users with established high blog income. For that reason, we are preparing a mechanism to increase the use of tokens as the media grows to the extent that there are more good article providers. Details will be announced at closed beta launch.

―What are the costs of “liking” an article?

At this point we have no plans to use tokens to like content. Currently, you will be rewarded if the articles later on become perceived as very trustworthy.

―Can existing blogs be re-blogged on the ALIS platform?

Yes. Whether the information is pertinent, trustworthy, useful, or timely, however, will be up to the ALIS users to decide.

―Who will own the rights of the content produced on the ALIS platform?

The user. What is created by the user is the property of the user.

―Is it possible for newspapers of other media companies to post on ALIS?

Yes.

Business Strategy

―What about plans for listing on more exchanges?

We are working on getting listed on other exchanges. We feel it is not beneficial to the ALIS token to have high liquidity spread out over multiple exchanges before there is an actual product. We are planning to list ALIS on other exchanges together with the product release. We are targeting Japanese as well as foreign exchanges. The earliest that this would occur would be with the Beta product in April.

―How much ETH was raised with the ICO?

Approximately 13,000 ETH was raised during the ICO.

―What is the total ALIS token population?

Originally there were 500,000,000 ALIS tokens, but we burned 424,790,800 tokens, about 85%.

More about the token burn:

―There is a plan for a new road-map in April, but I am wondering, will ALIS endeavor to enter other fields beside media?

Basically, we are focusing on enhancing and revolutionizing the online social media experience for ALIS users. Other than this, increasing the usage of the token is a main goal.

―Why does the ALIS platform need a cryptocurrency?

The ALIS token economy will be used to bolster and encourage growth and stability on the ALIS blogging platform by incentivizing both the creation and curation of trustworthy articles. In this way, the token economy is an invaluable tool to secure the user-ship, and sustainability/security of the platform.

―How much token inflation will occur and how will it affect the token value?

For the first three years we will inflate the currency population by up to 10% per year. We are doing this because we intend to grow the network and want to ensure liquidity for new users. We do not think these reasonable levels of increase will negatively impact the value of ALIS tokens.

―Is there a limit to the amount of ALIS tokens to be created over the years?

At the moment we have not decided to put a limit. However, depending on how things develop after the platform release, we might set a limit, but only if the ALIS community agrees with it.

―What kinds of articles are you focusing on first and how will you be expanding?

We are aiming to start out with mainly cryptocurrency and blockchain related information, as we imagine our initial userbase will lean heavily towards these areas of interest. After that, we want to focus on attracting people who will write about the typical focuses of the Japanese microblogging market — restaurants, beauty, travel, etc., subjects that involve a lot of writing about personal experiences, and where reputation and authentic, accurate information are most valued.

―What are your plans to monetize?

We would like to reiterate that we will never use the ALIS platform to thrust ad space on our users in an effort to monetize.

We are planning on announcing some specific plans regarding monetization in the coming months, potentially as early as April. Right now, we are focusing on increasing the token value. Some things we are considering include working together with other companies, as well as other means of monetization that more directly involve the ALIS token.

―How will the ALIS team use the tokens they possess?

We will use the tokens for measures that are valuable to the ALIS community, such as increasing liquidity, for marketing, and acquiring excellent team members.

―How will you connect with existing media?

Because ALIS aims to be different from existing media sources, this is a difficult question to answer. API could potentially be used to link to other media, but at the present time such plans are uncertain.

―How is ALIS different from Steemit?

While there are certainly similarities between ALIS and Steemit, we feel that there are several significant differences. Our token economy is based off of 1 token, the ALIS token, as opposed to 3 different tokens like in Steemit’s ecosystem. We also have a different vision of how to best incentivize content creation and evaluation, which yields completely different content, user experience and a different platform in general.

In addition, articles will be the just the beginning as to the kind of information we will eventually be hosting on the ALIS platform.

―What does ALIS think of Steemit?

ALIS and Steemit are often compared and seen as adversarial competitors. However, we at ALIS have never thought of Steemit as an adversary.

The overall crypto market is still developing and rapidly expanding, so we believe we all need to work together to make crypto bigger. Both Steemit and ALIS will be served by growing the marketshare of incentivized social content creation and evaluation. Moreover, as a service, ALIS has different aims and focuses on a simple user experience. The initial platform has been developed with the Japanese user and Japanese market in mind.

Product Development

―How much of the platform will be placed on the blockchain?

We have chosen to not put the entirety of the content of the ALIS platform on the blockchain. We think it is unnecessary and unwieldy to do so, and that this way we will also be able to guarantee better usability through more effective data storage.

We will of course put user information, including their wallets, balances, and other sensitive information on the blockchain, as it is a more immutable record.

―How are you guys prepared for attempts at abuse of the token distribution logic? For example, a large number of “liking” one article all at once, or people randomly liking every article.

Ensuring the correct token distribution logic is one of the core concerns of our platform. We have and will continue to test our logic to prevent abuse. This is one of the many reasons as to why the β product is so important. We will be doing regular updates on the token distribution logic even after the platform’s release.

―How will you be evaluating what information and which users are valuable?

The level of trustworthiness will depend on the amount of likes. On the platform, “liking” means the user is declaring that the information in the liked post is quality information. The influence of 1 ‘like” will also depend on a number of factors, including (but not limited to) the person liking and their reputation, how many likes a post has already received, etc.

There are a number of ways to tackle the problem of filtering trustworthy info from low quality info. We are a strong supporter of the social concept that trustworthy people not only can produce quality content, but can evaluate it too. We want to build a system where people who write trustworthy content will separate themselves, as well as those who evaluate that content, and will be rewarded for doing so.

―What about measures against hackers?

For the WEB application, general security measures are thoroughly in place. In addition, we are also in the process of designing a plan to reduce risk by making the platform as serverless as possible. Regarding the ÐApps, quality assurance, including external audits, is regarded as the top priority, as these must be extremely secure, trustworthy, and robust.

―How do you design token transactions?

ALIS tokens are designed on the Ethereum block chain according to the ERC 20 standard. Currently, Ethereum’s scaling has not kept pace with demand and we expect that it will take half a year to a year-and-a-half until various solutions can be implemented. Because of this, our goals and vision for ALIS do not seem to be feasible utilizing only Ethereum on-chain transactions in the current climate. We would like to do everything on chain, but as for now it seems that some off-chain processing, such as the operation of private chains, may be inevitable. Of course, we will create a roadmap reflecting our continued plan to consolidate into a completely on-chain enterprise when the environment is in place.

Marketing

―How much are you spending on advertising?

We are spending 0 yen on traditional advertisements.

―How many users are you aiming for?

A twitter poll held by one of our ambassadors resulted in an estimate of 7,000 persons who would want to use ALIS right now. This is already more than what we in our whitepaper have regarded as minimal success after one year of the platform release. As outlined in our whitepaper, we have initial metrics of what would constitute minimal, moderate and meaningful success in terms of adoption. We believe that the number of ICO participants and social media followers we have been able to attract from Japan and elsewhere, as well as the showings at the meetups we have held thusfar, demonstrate that we are going to exceed our minimal expectations and have a sufficiently large enough userbase upon launch.

―How will you guarantee the quality of information on the platform?

Initially, we will have a few hundred established cryptocurrency bloggers join ALIS to provide the minimum amount of content needed to be an actual source of information. To round out this initial population, we will invite an additional, larger group of people who have thought about starting a blog but haven’t, or who have written a blog before but quit. This will be our initial push to populate the platform and attract organic users.

Then, we will look at the following metrics (among others) for the β product

1. What sort of content do people like to produce on the ALIS platform?

2. Are people more likely to stick with writing articles? What is encouraging or discouraging them?

3. How content is actually evaluated through the expression of likes.

―How many ambassadors are there?

The first group consists of 10 people from overseas and 5 Japanese.

More about the ambassador program: https://medium.com/@alismedia/alis-ambassador-program-starts-dcb1ef3b39d0

―How are the ambassadors compensated?

Ambassadors do not receive any monetary compensation. If they visit the office, they’ll get as much free coffee as they want and a tour through Tokyo. What we want from them is free thought and useful critiques. We value our ambassadors for their unique and varied experiences, both in the blockchain space as well as the social media space. If we were to pay our ambassadors, we feel that it would potentially undermine or influence what feedback we receive from them, and their feedback is too valuable to do that.

Obviously, our ambassadors are not privy to any inside information regarding material developments on the project that would allow them to improperly trade on the ALIS token.

―How many ambassadors will there be eventually?

In the future, we plan to increase continuously up to 100 people, taking into account the current situation, timing, and needs of the ALIS economy and community.

Team

―Who are the stakeholders of ALIS?

The only stakeholders are the 3 founders. We are currently working with the funds from the ICO.

―What is the team’s ALIS plan regarding legal affairs?

We are in continued contact with applicable government ministries and agencies, proceeding with a team of capable, legal professionals in order to make the best decisions and secure the stability of the company.

―Is the company officially listed?

We consider official listing necessary for successful business operation. This consideration is not so much related to greater ease in raising funds, but is made in the interest of building a bridge between our new token economy and existent “legacy” systems of business and finance in society.

―With the funds raised by the ICO, how long is ALIS able to fund business and development?

With the amount raised in the ICO we will be able to continue on for about 2 to 3 years. That timeframe is enough for us to launch and evaluate our Beta product, launch the main product in Japan, and potentially even begin to launch ALIS outside of Japan.

That’s all! Each time the ALIS FAQ is updated, it will be announced on Twitter and Discord, so please follow us on these forums!