In the white paper it says “Ontology has infrastructure platforms to support dApp development for different scenarios”. In the case of supply chain for example, why would the dApp not be made on NEO?

There are three major reasons why Ontology needs to have its own blockchain/s and not live on NEO as a smart contract. The first reason is due to the nature of Ontology’s business scope — identity and data. It’s too big a leap of faith for business, financial institutions, and governments to use NEO (or Bitcoin, Ethereum) to store sensitive identity information, let alone to be compliant with laws and regulations designed for pre-blockchain world.

The second reason is that identity services generally require high throughout and low latency. It is not economical and scalable to use NEO as an identity service for each and every scenario. This is also why Ontology is designed as a network of blockchains, not one single blockchain. The multiple interoperable blockchain network design makes Ontology highly scalable and each blockchain can adopt independent governance model to be compliant in its own jurisdiction.

Ontology works as an index of identity and data. Applications can choose to run business logic smart contract on Ontology or NEO. Some applications may not be built as a smart contract but as a traditional IT system by simply accessing Ontology’s business-oriented APIs. That’s the third reason why Ontology needs an independent network.

2. Can you explain how NEO contracts will be used in Ontology? What value does Ontology bring to NEO investors?

NEO focuses on digital asset services with smart contracts, including token usage linked to business scenarios. Also, when businesses that run on Ontology need to perform a token sale, NEO can provide the token system.

Ontology can also be the link between NEO and non-token based business scenarios. For example, if the bank needs digital asset services, Ontology can be the connector between NEO and banks (or other businesses).

3. Will the Ontology tokens be built on top of the NEO blockchain? Will the NEO or GAS token in any way be used for interacting with Ontology? Will the presale/token distribution be on NEO blockchain using NEO token?

Ontology token sale distribution will accept NEO tokens, however the Ontology token mechanism has not yet been confirmed. NEO and GAS can be used on Ontology for different business scenarios.

4. What’s the difference between “digital identity” and “trust identity”?

Ontology’s “trust identity” is a connector/mapping list for “digital identity” services, including NEO ID, which can help NEO ID link to more business scenarios.

5. Does Ontology have an exclusive contract with NEO regulating the partnership and responsibilities? Is there a roadmap of what Ontology and NEO aim to accomplish through their partnership?

NEO will be the primary digital assets service provider for clearing and settlement on Ontology. There is no contract between Ontology and NEO now, though Ontology and NEO already have an established partnership. One thing on the roadmap is that in the future business scenarios on Ontology want to hold ICOs they will be able to on NEO.

6. Can we expect NEX, Ontology, and ProjectICO to work together to make a trusted exchange with digital identity and the ability to run an ICO directly on the exchange?

In a technical sense that is possible! We hope to make many exciting collaborations through Ontology.

7. Can you provide one case where NEO, GAS, Ontology, DNA, THEKEY, and NEO ID interact together? There needs to be a strong vertical integration between them to justify the Ontology architecture.

NEO ID/THEKEY can be ID service providers on Ontology, and NEO/GAS can be used for clearing/settlement scenarios — in some cases ID verification will be a requirement for execution of a smart contract. DNA, however, is just a framework, not a platform. ONT’s ledger is an enhanced version based on DNA.

The Ontology Team