On Friday August, 0Chain hosted a live AMA with CEO, Saswata Basu. If you were unable to watch live, you can read the transcript below or check out the videos here:

https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1YqGodeqLgbJv

Saswata: Hi guys, Saswata here from 0Chain. It has been a while since we have done one of these so I am happy to be here. Here are some updates: we are progressing with betanet and are working on View Change which no current project uses. You can read up on the protocol in our whitepaper and have published an article on EthResearch about it. It is rather intensive and is the major aspect that we are still working on. I believe betanet will be available in 3–4 weeks. I want to do substantial testing and then bring on external miners. We think it’ll take a week or so to get them all on board. Then we will have some additional testing before making betanet live. At this time we will open up the code for people to view and start the bugathon. Our hackathon is ongoing and anyone can participate in that. 0Wallet is pretty much done and appears to now be bug-free following community testing. 0Box should be finalized soon and the Android version should be available in 3–4 weeks. Once betanet is ready, we should have all our products ready to go. Then Byzantine testing will be done before launch.

Question: When do the Early Bird Miners who got MSB rig with White Glove to receive the 2x number of tokens?

Answer: I haven’t put a timeline to it, but you will get them. Probably toward the end of betanet. Betanet is our current focus so we will keep you up.

Question: What’s the status of beta net? When can we expect external miners to be added?

Answer: I just mentioned that in the beginning. External miners in a couple of weeks hopefully. No other project or product uses a view change, so this is a first of it’s kind.

Question: Can you provide more details about the external servers that will facilitate the ‘view change’ mentioned in the WP? As this is a recent addition to the protocol, it needs explanation of how it is both decentralized and incentivized.

Answer: It is explained in WP and on EthResearch forum. As new miners are added in the pool, they need to participate in the next view change. Period has yet to be decided. At then end of n number of rounds, view change will take place. DKG process (distributed key generation) will be re-done and based on stake. The smart contract selects the highest stake (based on squared-stake) and then you will be able to participate in the new view. When the view change takes place, new miners can take place in the current view. Anybody can stake, so it is decentralized. It is based on stake so make sure to stake enough.

Question: Any meetups planned from now until end of the year?

Answer: Yes, one thing we haven’t publicized yet is that we are presenting at the Go meetup (for developers and bugathon) and also Hyperledger meetup in San Francisco. One will happen in September, the other in October. I am always going to meetups. Tomorrow I am going to a DevCon to see if there is an opportunity for us to work together. I recently published an article of how we could partner with a dApp or other blockchain project. We are agnostic and can partner with anyone. We have a proposal with Hyperledger (i will share link). Trying to work with Ethereum and Hyperledger as a decentralized single source of truth as an oracle provider (like ChainLink). We can work with any blockchain or dApp. In addition, we are talking to dApps with a lot of data that want to use to better protect their data. Our dStorage solves two problems: 1) data breach and protection and 2) data dispute and fraud. These can be solves with blokchain transactions and single source of truth. We see all enterprises needing this. We are working with Hyperledger as i mentioned.

Question: what‘s your marketing partners strategy for the next few months?

Answer: Strategy is simple. We want to partner with blockchain projects or dApp projects that deal with transactions and data since we can provide single source of truth. Partnering with meetups to increase visibility and awareness. Working on increasing visibility in Korea and China through different platforms. MSPs as they are consumer and provider of storage to small and medium businesses. We believe they will be the backbone of our network. Talking to enterprises: we now have a clear value proposition for them for data breach protection and the benefit of data fraud prevention if they want to do blockchain level transactions down the road. 0Box is a way to reach consumers to provide private cloud. Our plan is a multi-layer strategy involving our multiple products to target different groups, meetups specifically in the Bay Area as well as China and Korea

Question: Any update on funding?

Answer: We have gained interest and want to gain traction. Takes time to do this. You will see something happen in a very short term. Essentially in itself, it is a way to get funding. We want to raise a large round. We can gain capital right now but we ant to get a large round. With enterprises, it takes time. Want to secure funding for 2–3 years of runway.

Question: Based on cash on hand and the current burn rate, how many months can you operate without new capital?

Answer: That information is kind of private. We are looking into lowered-cost basis which would mean acquiring talent elsewhere. As we go into mainnet, we have accomplished pretty much everything. We will just need to maintain the platform, so we can use talent from elsewhere rather than just bay area. We have other devs from other areas also working on the project as we speak. It is not dependent on our cash on hand. We have several months of activity to keep going, and then we will also have income via 0Box, MSPs, and enterprises, such as private dStorage from enterprises. We intend to be cash-flow positive in 6–12 months. We intend to operate lean.

Question: Have you received any term sheets from any VC’s?

Answer: We have received, but they are in the process. Nothing finalized yet.

Question: You pivoted from an enterprise focused blockchain to developing 0Box and a new focus on the consumer and crypto projects. A recent update said the marketing strategy was to focus on developers? Why?

Answer: Not sure where we said we are going to focus on developers. We want to focus on developers because they provide a lot of market value as well as technical value for applications. There are a lot of things that need to be developed on top of our platform. Our focus is still executing our product. We still want to finish developing everything we have started and we are focusing on projects that use data transactions. That may be a new focus right now, that we can get crypto projects since we can provide single source of truth. We continue to gain traction in the crypto market. We are still focusing on enterprise and MSPs, but that takes time.

Question: Why delay the mainnet launch by developing 0Box if that isn’t going to be the marketing focus?

Answer: 0Box is not delaying mainnet launch. Mainnet launch is being delayed by our view change protocol, which is a new protocol and takes time to workout.

Question: Any updates on 0Box for android? Were android developers secured for this? outsourced?

Answer: Yes, we will have 0Box for Android in hopefully a month.

Question: How is the “free 2gb” going to be paid for 0Box users? I thought the minimum allocation from MSBs was 1TB. Is ZCN going to be purchased off exchanges to pay for the 0box users? If so, is the ZCN going to be used to directly pay MSBs with ZCN or is it going to be “locked” and paid to MSBs via interest?

Answer: The 2gb from 0Box is different than the allocation from the MSBs. Yes, the current plan is that ZCN will be purchased to pay for the storage from 0box. The ZCN will be directly paid to MSBs. We haven’t really planned out the entire plan as it depends on the demand for storage. We are hoping that this will scale and we will be buying petabytes of data.

Question: When better liquidity?

Answer: I think it is a function of awareness and how many people are willing to buy. as we get more buyers, we will see more buyers. This is part of our multi-prong marketing plan.

Question: When first tier exchange? When Binance?

Answer: Exchanges take a no-risk approach. They are not going to risk listing a project to market it with low liquidity. With increase awareness, we increase liquidity and lower our listing fees.

Question: Have you applied for NASH? If not, are you going to?

Answer: We have applied but we are awaiting a response. They are probably head down on getting live.

Question: What are you most excited about in the next 2-3 months (regarding 0Chain)?

Answer: excited for mainnet, as we have been awaiting for a few years. We want to see it as we are the first ones in the market. We are creating a lot of excitement with devs, MSBs, and enterprise in the bay area. We want them to use our SDK platform to use our storage. We are looking at diff business models and cloud providers. It is an exciting time. It is difficult to make a real world application with a crypto project. Many times it is gaming or gambling. We have a real use-case with storage. If we can make it viable and applicable, we can make it big. We are the first ones and we are excited about it.

Question: What are some of the most hard current challenges that you are facing on the tech side and business side as well?

Answer: Tech side, the view change is the biggest problem. Getting it done and executing the rest is all that’s left other than view change. Business side, the hardest challenge is coming up with a business model that works. MSPs want a low-risk approach. They will take a risk but it should be minimized. Working on constructing plans that will work for them and getting help working on this.

Question: Which cryptocurrency do you currently hold? Was just wondering if any other crypto projects have caught your eye & were worth the investment.

Answer: I don’t hold any crypto other than USDC as we are being really conservative. Other than BTC, I don’t see any other value. Even with BTC i think it will eventually go down in value. What is the value of cc other than transactions outside gambling and gaming? it is small. Basic value is transactions done on scale. If you can achieve that value of scale. We can provide end to end encryption and multiparty transactions. This is a real value. There is a lot of fraud with current transactions and we can help solve this. Recently talked to and will be partnering with cannabis supply chain so that goods from origin to destination can be verified on blockchain. A lot of those applications have value from security and quality from origination to destination

Question: Can we have a look of your new office, a look of the team?

Answer: I sent a picture to Chad who will send out the picture!

Question: Mainnet will be ready for Q 3 ? or risk of delay?

Answer: Beta net will be in a month (mid September) so hopefully October for mainnet ready. That’s what i Am thinking right now

Question: Why switch from traditional cloud storage to 0Chain?

Answer: You have an application and you could backup on prem or AWS S3. We are telling them you can keep that architecture, and you switch to S3 IA (infrequent access) which is half price and switch to us. by doing so you get better data protection, better availability, better data proponents. Lower cost, improved storage, security and backup solutions. Zero added cost, zero risk, add layer of security, add a layer of performance. If you have three-way replication, you can remove one and add us as the third layer. You can decentralize your data by keeping some on your servers and use us to plug into current architecture. security (data breach), availability, and performance.

Question: back up phone data on 0Box?

Answer: Yes hopefully soon

Saswata: Hopefully next AMA we will be in betanet and then mainnet. progress on tech, business and marketing side. between now and next AMA we will gain marketing traction and awareness of ZCN as a whole. we will see how the market receives us. The whole alt market has been going down but hopefully we will be received well. New video coming with token value based on data asset and interest. Should be available soon. Crypto community will gravitate towards that. thanks for your patience. we appreciate it