Benjamin Jorgensen (CEO / CO-FOUNDER Constellation)

Thank you for having us!

Mateo Gold (Mathias Goldmann -VP FINANCE)

Hi Moonwalker thanks for having us — It’s a pleasure

tehMoonwalkeR

let’s start with the first question so many are excited about!

Can you tell us about the recent partnership with UAF and how exactly you are going to work with them?

Benjamin Jorgensen

Absolutely!

We just had a great post in Forbes

And a lot of articles have covered this.

tehMoonwalkeR

I’ve seen! congrats on this huge achievement!

Benjamin Jorgensen

From a high level, we have a working contract to help solve multi-domain command and control.

What this means is that we are improving interoperability between data systems (legacy and cloud infrastructure). It falls in line with big data. This is a big problem for every company.

Mateo Gold

USAF is making a big push to onboard new technologies to solve for their interoperability problems and upgrade their infrastructure.

Benjamin Jorgensen

Not just the USAF. We have been invited to mix with other entities within the USAF to help solve certain use cases. One that we are diving into right now has to do with mission planning and data transfer between parties. Think of our solution as a decentralized OAuth. I can’t say much more

One more thing

We are not doing a blockchain POC. This is a problem across USAF and we happen to have a blockchain-like solution for their problem. Real-world problems.

tehMoonwalkeR

Thinking of UAF I’m sure privacy is a huge factor, how does this work with the open nature of blockchain?

Benjamin Jorgensen

Great question. We have found that the USAF has been extremely open and transparent about many things. They want to show that they are easy to work with.

The way we see the USAF evolving is like this. We will first do a private permission network to test, debug, and get everyone comfortable. Let’s make sure it works! Once we hit those milestones, we will be able to look at new ways to commercialize subsets of their data for open innovation. One of the main criteria they had in selecting us was that we presented a commercially viable option. Ultimately, and by adopting open innovation, the USAF can encourage new business models within the private sector… This open innovation comes with the open network and utilizing $DAG.

tehMoonwalkeR

This sounds very impressive and brings me to the next question:

Many claim that most partnerships don’t benefit the token use or the network at all, what can you tell us about that?

Benjamin Jorgensen

Ya. I think that is interesting. Let’s start by having people read the vision paper and the Tokenomics paper. https://constellationlabs.io/resources/

Mateo Gold

I can’t say what happens with other projects but there several angles to this

in the first stages, ben referred to we are tying the token economics to the industry and government partners through initial burns.

We have some novel approaches how to tie the token aspect and the community even tighter into the enterprise adoptions.

We will release more on that after mainnet launch,

also we plan to purchase throughput on the open network for enterprise partners.

Benjamin Jorgensen

The token is essential to all of our partnerships. It is always in our pitch — but we have to get people there. Telling a company that you are going to put their data on an open network with cryptocurrency, is scary. Not unheard of, but scary. What data is the question we are looking for .. What data will go on the network?

We have a partnership coming up in the near future that clearly shows the value of the token and the network.

tehMoonwalkeR

So it sounds like in short term the success and building of partnerships is the main priority but longterm, the team needs to include the token in most working partnerships, did I understand that correct?

Benjamin Jorgensen

Exactly. There are data infrastructure tools out there. What makes us unique is an open network powered by $DAG

At the end of the day, open data exchanges with verified data are the vision and that is what we are working towards with every partner.

Taking verified data and exchanging it and creating new businesses and use cases.

Mateo Gold

Exactly. maybe that’s a good time to reiterate the function of the token here in general:

The use of the DAG token is pretty straight forward and it serves two main functions:

To pay for throughput beyond the rate limit of 1tx per snapshot window. This means that sending single tx from wallet to wallet is free. However anytime you want to validate streams of data you need to get more throughput with DAG.

As Constellation allows for the processing of high volume streaming data sources of any kind DAG can be used to attach value to data. This is a really neat feature as it allows for the network to become a data marketplace where validated and true data can be securely exchanged without violating any privacy laws. In addition, it allows for the exchange of any type of data beyond its silo of origin which will unlock the data economy of the future.

We will see more thinking in that direction once people start to realize what the third generation of high throughput blockchains will enable the business and governance side. I always refer to this as “datapreneurship” where users can validate the public or their data on the network and monetize it. As such from a technical perspective DAG is the financial state channel of the network allowing connections of datasets that were not connectable or exchangeable before.

Benjamin Jorgensen

We need to move the narrative away from centralized data repositories like google and facebook and start telling a story of data governed by the community. That is the role of $DAG — earning rewards for governing data.

tehMoonwalkeR

Wow, this not only makes me excited about DAG but about blockchain in general, lovely!

I could talk about the token use all day but let’s move on for now

Any upcoming partnerships you can talk about? what are the next steps in the near future?

Benjamin Jorgensen

Let’s see. Where do I begin? A part of our strategy with partnerships is to lay them out in how we see our solution driving more blockchain industry adoption by making it easy to integrate such solutions.

We have a pretty interesting partnership coming up that will move the needle in terms of commercializing blockchain technology….namely scalable blockchain technology. This isn’t an obvious partnership like USAF, but it is an essential building block to getting any mid-market or enterprise partner to test out our technology with easy. Current strategies to do PoC’s with blockchain divisions in companies hits a wall… management can’t scale the PoC because there isn’t a line item for scaling a blockchain initiative. This is due not only to faults in technology but management. When the blockchain team at Boeing asks for the budget from Finance and distribution by marketing they all respond with “What is blockchain”. This new partnership will make it easy for companies to procure a solution, test, and scale through the budget. Our technology scales, but we need to have the ease of integrations on our side and the ability for an organization to jump on board

We have a few other partnerships in the pipes as well. A lot of research going on at Constellation. This other partnership will unfold sometime in October and it starts to consolidate the blockchain industry and ecosystem. You can see how all of these new technologies (blockchain technologies) start coming together.

I can’t say the names. But there is a lot of thought and research and explanation going into these partnerships.

Once revealed, they will be detailed and will walk people through our vision of today to tomorrow to 5 years from now.

tehMoonwalkeR

It seems you have a bright and clear path, very impressive.

The Constellation network is composed of $DAG nodes, state channel nodes, and ‘hybrid’ nodes –

Can u expand more on the node system if possible in simple terms?

How will nodes selected, how will they be rewarded, etc

Benjamin Jorgensen

So a $DAG node is a financial state channel. A state channel is a node. The state channel does not have to be financially related. You could customize a state channel simply to validate data. A Hybrid node would allow a financial state channel to connect to a non-financial state channel. This is the micro-service ecosystem we speak of — different micro-services connecting and interoperating.

For example, we could create a ChainLink State Channel that passes validated data to a Smart Contract (powered by ChainLink). To ensure throughput of the validated data to the Smart Contract, one would need to use $DAG to ensure distribution of the data.

Once again, $DAG being essential in a scenario like this.

Mateo Gold

Good question, nodes that validate data on the open network are rewarded in general with validator rewards. this is similar to the mining process on BTC with the difference that our consensus is reputation-based and thus uses existing hardware and compute resources vs increasing the hardware development cycle due to the more difficult progression of the algorithm.

Benjamin Jorgensen

The node system is as follows: Over the next several months we will be onboarding about 100 nodes or node groups to be foundation nodes. After that, we will onboard light nodes to further build out the network.

tehMoonwalkeR

“reputation-based” meaning you earn rep with stability and long-lasting presence instead of mindless raw computing power?

Mateo Gold

Yes, nodes that function flawless and nonfaulty get assigned a good reputation score. the rewards vary if a node starts performing less than perfect and gets ultimately kicked off the network if faulty or lagging behavior persists for a couple of snapshots

So this process creates a network of nodes that can be trusted and it encourages good behavior and uptime.

Going forward so you can imagine a network landscape where you have trust centers of nodes and new nodes align around these established trust centers..similar to a human relationship where new friends get introduced to an existing group of people.

Benjamin Jorgensen

We will be exploring gamification techniques to make the node operators encouraged to build out data state channels and micro-services. This will organically drive data to the network without relying on partnerships.

tehMoonwalkeR

Gamification is a great idea and the road to adoption I agree.

I also fully agree with smart networks with a rep. systems instead of useless mining wars.

Last Questions

How is the funding situation and how long can the project last?

And do the partnerships generate revenue?

Benjamin Jorgensen

Lol. This is a weekly question. I feel like I answer it every week.

tehMoonwalkeR

Born out of bear market :)

Benjamin Jorgensen

Brad Laurie just asked that a few weeks back. Constellation is healthy and we have plenty of runways. This network will always run! Some of our partnerships are revenue-generating and some are not. It all depends on how we are collaborating.

Mateo Gold

Monetization and going to market with an actual product is and has been the goal for constellation all along. The USAF contract is a paid contract for example and beyond the datapreneurship aspect where we might validate and monetize data streams as well, the spore platform is the base onto which enterprise and government clients are on-boarded.

tehMoonwalkeR

Sounds fair enough!

so I think that’s it from me, if you’re ready I open up the chat, I’m sure the community want to follow up on many epic things you told me :)

Benjamin Jorgensen

I would love to share a video that Wyatt recorded at USC at a HyperLedger meetup.

https://youtu.be/ByhniOgyVVU

That talk was on elastic distributed systems and how eventually consistent blockchain protocols can achieve elasticity. Specifically, we highlight Meme, our reputation model and how it’s used for global state convergence in Constellation clusters which is the main hurdle for achieving elasticity. The talk was for the Hyperledger meetup at USC.

tehMoonwalkeR

thank you so much so far, you ready for the crowd? :)

Benjamin Jorgensen

We just got this!

Mateo Gold

yes sir

Infinite DAG l00p

The Tokenomics paper says that you will announce partners and burned allocations in a quarterly report. Will the team publish a quarterly report Oct. 1st?

Mateo Gold

[In reply to Infinite DAG l00p]

yes, we will be transparent with the burn and allocations for each partnership. We start on Oct. 1 with the first report.

Lucky

Hey, love the AMA so far! Excellent job guys. In response, the above, does Constellation plan to provide validated data for blockchain projects such as ChainLink or others?

Benjamin Jorgensen

[In reply to Lucky]

We are in talks with many blockchain projects that have data onramps to blockchain technologies.

S

How big is your current team and are you still hiring?

Benjamin Jorgensen

[In reply to S]

We are 10 (somedays 12 with the contractors)

CryptoMatrix,

Does USAF partnership prevent you to partner in any kind of company in EU or Rus?

Mateo Gold

[In reply to CryptoMatrix]

No. it does not restrict our abilities to contract with further partners

Fred Bos

What’s the roadmap for listing on other exchanges such as Binance?

Benjamin Jorgensen

[In reply to Fred Bos]

We are first doing Mainnet swap at the end of October. After that, we will open the path to more exchanges.

_RN03xx_

FomoHunt recently started to accept DAG as collateral for merchandise, events and more. What other exciting things can the community expect as a result of this partnership?

Benjamin Jorgensen

[In reply to _RN03xx_]

This is an exciting partnership as they cover PACASIA — we don’t have a big footprint over there. They are making us more visible.

Dag Holliday

Does Constellation have a solution in place for long term storage or historical archive? Will this be something Nodes can choose to do and be rewarded for?

Mateo Gold

[In reply to Dag Holliday]

The Constellation Network hosts the validated and notarized metadata.

Benjamin Jorgensen

[In reply to Dag Holliday]

Yes. This is something the nodes will be rewarded for.

Rolf

What is Spore exactly? And how does it fit in with the other tech?

Mateo Gold

[In reply to Rolf]

the spore platform is described in detail on our website and the vision as well as the tokenomics paper which is linked in the resource section of the website. In short, it works like Redhat and The Linux Foundation.

Major Mclaurin

Will $DAG be scaling to other parts of the world?

Benjamin Jorgensen

[In reply to Major Mclaurin]

Absolutely. Europe is starting to get strong. FOMOHUNT partnership will push over to PACASIA. Our node operators will be distributed throughout the world (one of the criteria in building out the network).

we will make sure that nodes are selected to represent the different regions of the world. On the business side, I’ll leave that answer to Ben

S

Any hardware wallet which will support the mainnet $dag token?

Mateo Gold,

[In reply to S]

We don’t have a new wallet integration at this point and are open for community support to integrate with an app into the ledger hardware wallet

Joshua Morris

Did you get headhunted for this job, Ben? You do great

Benjamin Jorgensen

[In reply to Joshua Morris]

Thank you! No, I didn’t I was sought out to be an advisor. I started working in the early days with Wyatt to help tell his story. He has a lot going on in his head, we just needed to distill it down

And I am always working to improve that.

Joshua Morris

What is happening on Oct 1st? Why not announce it immediately?

Mateo Gold

[In reply to Joshua Morris]

This has been answered before. It has to do with timelines on our partner’s side.

Dagchad Headroom

How does data validation compare as a use case to smart contracts?

Benjamin Jorgensen

[In reply to Dagchad Headroom]

Great question. So right now if you were to plug in data, via API, into a smart contract, you would get a fire hose of data. There could be bad data, anomalies, redundancies, etc. And all that data goes into the smart contract. Data veracity becomes and issue. By adding a layer of validation, you can sort and clean data before it goes into a smart contract. This improves the data lifecycle for technological execution (AI) to management decisions.

Yaz

[In reply to Benjamin Jorgensen]

Thanks. That being said, two follow up questions please:

1. Considering that the exchange listing process takes a while by nature in terms of technical and legal agreements; is Constellation working on that now so it could potentially be ready with a new listing after mainnet?

2. If not, What would be the best way to contact you for potential listings and to initiate the proper channels of communications between exchange and Constellation?

Mateo Gold

[In reply to Yaz]

As a US company, we need to be careful about how to approach listings. That said we are open to new listings. From a strategic perspective, a new listing before mainnet does not make much sense

S

What is currently the biggest challenge?

Benjamin Jorgensen

[In reply to S]

Our biggest challenge right now is working with the USAF. It is a big organization that has many layers to it. We are learning to navigate the entire organization. WITH THAT…. there are tons of opportunities. We could create a multi-billion dollar business line just from USAF. Beyond that, debugging and getting ready for mainnet…Nothing but normal technology nuances.

Synopsis

While the partnership with none other than the US air force, was probably one of the most impressive achievements for any low cap crypto project, team Constellation soon after this AMA in my TG on 20.9.19 released another partnership with Stackpath.

I have spoken to many many projects in my years as a fulltime crypto trader, I honestly never have seen this amount of passion combined with deadly skill and profession.

This team loves what they do, and they do it very well.

They don’t hide behind their desks and wait for glory to approach them out of the blue, no they walk the talk and approach huge companies directly.

A mindset many failed projects could learn from.

Blockchain is brilliant, yes we get it, it can solve many problems, yes we understand this as well.

but after all, business is business, this means you have to land deals, generate revenue and present yourself and your project in a professional way.

Team constellation did that, and they are just getting started.

With a hilariously undervalued market cap of 6.5m$ and a ranking of 370 on CMC behind fun and troll coins, this is without a doubt, the biggest no-brainer in crypto.

the market doesn’t always make sense, we can blame futures or weak hands, but let us face the truth, paying 20000$ for 1 bitcoin in 2017 didn’t make sense.

It may make sense in the future, but at that time it was foolishness.

This goes both ways, selling a project like $DAG at this mcap is not smarter than paying $3.40 for 1 XRP.

The masses will never tell you anything smart, so you got to think for yourself.

Take a step back, think about it, and make your move.

Brought to you by tehMoonwalkeR

Some links to #dyor

https://constellationlabs.io/

https://t.me/constellationcommunity

https://twitter.com/Conste11ation