KuCoin AMA Series - Chromia - Full Transcript
(UTC+8) 17:00:00, May 27th, 2019, KuCoin hosted theAMA(Ask-Me-Anything) session with the third KuCoin Spotlight project - Chromia in the Official English Telegram Group and the Official Vietnamese Telegram Group.
The AMA session was composed of 3 sections: 1. Q&A from KuCoin 2. Giveaway section 3. Q&A from audiences.
Guest Information
Henrik Hjelte, the CEO & Co-Founder of Chromaway who has 25+ years experience as a developer and 10+ years as an entrepreneur. Ex. Senior consultant in Finance and IT. MSc Economics from Uppsala University.
Or Perelman, the Co-Founder, COO, Bitcoin expert focused on marketing and growth. Co-founder of Safebit, an early user-friendly bitcoin wallet. Extensive Blockchain marketing experience and contacts. Law (LLB) degree from the College of Netanya.
About Project
Chromia is a relational blockchain designed to make it much easier to make complex and scalable dapps. Chromia gives power to developers to give power to the public.
Official Website：https://chromia.com
Official Telegram Group：https://t.me/chromapolisbychromaway
Whitepaper: https://chromapolis.com/papers/chromapolis%20-%20platform%20white%20paper.pdf
*For ease of reading, some text has been deleted
Section I - Q&A from KuCoin
KuCoin: Hey Henrik and Or, nice to have you here! Let’s start with this: Could you please give us a brief introduction about Chromia and the vision of your team?
Henrik: Thanks a lot, pleasure is on our side, so the slogan "Power to the public" means we want to support creating of public applications, decentralized applications that are "public goods" such as decentralized social networks, public sector applications that are probably fair and corruption-resistant, games with logic on chain provably fair and where users have a say.
How can we do that? I think the reason we don't see these applications yet is that they are really difficult to do with today's blockchains. Chromia has another programming model, inherited from relational databases, the same technology used by 99% of all non-trivial applications. Enterprise applications such as SAP, Social networks like Facebook. All were done on a relational database (SQL).
Or: Good to take part in this forum. Hope to have a chance to answer all your questions. We've been in crypto since 2011, founded chromaway in 2014. In 2012 we launched our colored coin protocol, introducing the concept of tokens. We spent the last couple of years working on enterprise blockchain consortia. Most notably the Swedish land registry. All this experience has led us to design Chromia.
Henrik: Chromia has a more productive programming model based on combining a blockchain and a database (relational blockchain). So it really makes it possible to do these kinds of wonderful but complex applications. I have a hard time see SAP or Facebook built from scratch on current decentralized application platforms. But with Chromia, it is really simple. If you can code MySQL, you can learn our new language Rell, and create your mindblowing decentralized game/social-network/thing.
KuCoin: Good to know that. What was the motivation for creating Chromia?
Henrik: So as Or says, we started with public blockchains, tokens in 2012, the world's first stable coin with a bank 2015 (LHV). When coding that solution, peer to peer payments of Euro-tokens, we discovered we need for performance reason store all data in a database. We needed to quickly know the "balance" of a user, can't loop through a blockchain. And slowly the idea grew that we can make the database INTO a blockchain, integrate completely with the transaction mechanism of a database. So we did it as a private blockchain first (Postchain), used it for some projects, then came up with the idea to make a Public Blockchain based on it.
The motivation is that we felt we needed a better programming model for blockchains. Our CTO Alex has always been thinking of optimal solutions for blockchain technology and has lots of experiences thinking about it.
Also: make real-world useful things. For example, we support free-to-play models since users do not need to own "our" token to USE apps, the application itself (often the developer) pays for hosting. And of course, great performance. Also: more knowledge of who runs nodes and risk level. So it is more suitable for enterprises.
In Chromia the application (at the start the developer) decides Who should be allowed to run its own blockchain (every dapp has its own blockchain). You can also say on a higher level that we want to provide technology to create "Public applications", a tool that enables to create a more fair world.
Or: The fact that Chromia utilizes a SQL data structure can eliminate a lot of the existing infra intermediaries for indexing, querying, etc.- making it that much easier for devs to deploy their own dapps & users to access them
Henrik: Every dapp decides on its own governance though. You can implement democratic apps where users have a say in different ways, one vote per user or based on how much they contribute to the app, or nr of tokens, or implement "political parties" inside the app. Or do a dictatorship is you like that, but then you need to convince users to join.
KuCoin: Could you tell us more about a relational blockchain?
Henrik: It is amazing to see how new the idea around using a proper database for blockchain is. After all, you would never ever consider anything else for a normal application... Imagine SAP or a core banking app being built on NoSQL... It just doesn't happen. Relational (SQL) Databases have 90% + of the market share. NoSQL is used for caching and special apps only. And blockchain is at best resembling NoSQL, but often in an even more primitive way.
Relational algebra (that is used for SQL} was mathematics done in 70:s. Oracle popularized the SQL database and made a large company based on that. Now there are lots of implementations of a similar idea, from IBM, Microsoft, MySQL, MariaDB, Postgresql, etc. All use a dialect of SQL. Chromia, however, uses a new language that is more suitable for blockchains. Rell our new language, is Statically typed (means bugs are discovered when programs are written rather than we they run). It is also more compact, up to 1/7 of the code lines of SQL. And have "normal" programming constructs + blockchain programming built in.
An example of power. One of our devs Riccardo did a little sample app before Consensus. A tic-tac-toe game completely on the chain, including detecting wins and loss, have a list of online players wanting to play, match with other players, etc. It took him 3 hours. It was 140 lines of code. Try to do that with another blockchain.
Fewer lines of code = fewer bugs (one of the most empirically proven things in computer science). Also faster time to market. And that is what developers want, productive tools
The analogy with the web. PHP was once the dominant platform. Everyone was doing PHP (and a database, mySQL). Then Ruby on rails came out of the blue and grew because it was more productive, easier to do applications faster. Then Node.js came, then React.js etc. All "better" ways to do programming. That is what I think will happen with Chromia and Rell. Productive tools win over time, almost all the time.
KuCoin: Why did you choose to join the KuCoin Spotlight program?
Or: KuCoin has been a great partner of us since day 1 and we were very impressed by the kuCoin team and even visited them. KuCoin is backed by top traditional equity VC funds in the world and we like their IEO model, we think it's one of the fairest designed IEO models.
Henrik: We had a private pre-sale to only selected investors. We thought of it as a normal way to do "early" financing, the risk is high with these kinds of projects and analogous to angel-financing. But then we got a lot of criticism, why don't we open up to the community, to everyone. And we started to see IEO as a great option to open up and broaden.
KuCoin: Here is the last question from me. Could you please share with us some future plans for Chromia? Will you build your own blockchain ecosystem?
Henrik: Yes, we will build up an ecosystem, not "us" only but developers that like fantastic tools, entrepreneurs that want to build Public Applications (and do it faster to market too), and Users that want to use Public Applications.
Now when we have Rell working and can start to show how it works, we have documentation and releasing sample apps on a testnet soon, then we will focus more on attracting an active community. Note that we will support entrepreneurs with ideas in various ways because we want fantastic applications on the platform. So reach out to us!
Also, we've been a part of the community for a long time and are personal friends with lots of other projects leaders, so we don't see it as we "compete", we are all striving for a great future together and complement each other.
Section III - Q&A from Audiences
Q: What other crypto projects are your competitors and what is your advantage over them?
Henrik: As said, we don't see ourselves as competitors. But sure, once people become frustrated with Ethereum, EOS and the other new hip blockchains and see they will be able to accomplish more advanced things faster, they might look at Chromia. But we all strive for a great future and want to transform society for the better.
Q: How about the security side of the Rell?
Henrik: It is secure. We always design for security with our protocols and tech. Alex is an expert. Please see source-code and whitepaper, too difficult question to ask in a chat.
Q: What complex dapps are scheduled to run now in chromia？
Henrik: In testnet, we will have a social network kind of thing, a decentralized discussion forum. Also a, proof that we can have complete game logic on-chain (a checkers game). Then we will have an enterprise project for Green Finance, tracking environmental reporting of green bonds (with enterprise users), we are working with a non-profit on that. And we are working with a legal company to do a completely legal share-registry and corporate events in a Chromia Dapp (for Swedish regulations). And we are working with a game company.
Q: Hi Henrik, its an honor to talk to you, as we know postchain is implemented largely in Kotlin, how do you explain postchain framework?
Henrik: Postchain is a framework to do relational blockchains. Normally configured as a federated blockchain. It is a JVM based Kotlin program that sits in front of a database and handles consensus, voting etc. Source code is on bitbucket.
Q: What is the use of IEO? When you guys releasing new coins each week in kuCoin...Silent notary? Ocean? Why..
Or: The use of the IEO is mainly for marketing and community building, ocean is even not comparable, our raise is low, we don't need the funding and our token metrics is much more different than what Ocean had, Ocean is a use-case and we are an infrastructure play, in addition, they raised around 35m, while we are raising a significant much lower sum.
Q: I’ve noticed on the whitepaper you are interested in running MMOG's. Have you approached any of the companies that develop these?
Henrik: We've been starting conversations with game companies, the problem is that what we provide is so futuristic in a way that we need examples to show. This is not only about NFT:s, but complete game logic on chain. We are in a great city for gaming (Stockholm) (Minecraft, candy crush) and will be reaching out to many companies across the world. Also, we are now working with a company in the US to do games.
Q: There are many kinds of projects like this? What difference do you make?
Henrik: There are no other projects who are first to use the obviously better technology as used by 99% of all of the world's applications (a relational database). Also, there are almost no other projects with a 7-year track record, and being first in the world to implement user-defined tokens that inspired ethereum and others.
Q: Do you intend to list CHR on another exchange same day with KuCoin listing?
Henrik: Not on the same day, but I'm sure other exchanges will follow later.
Q: Where do you see Chromia in 3 years from here?
Henrik: As a top blockchain, the fastest growing one, and with lots of real worlds useful public applications running on it.
Q: What is the incentive structure for users on Chromia? Secondly, What is the consensus model and revenue model for a dapp?
Henrik: Users participate in various applications on chromia. They do not necessarily have to hold our token. So incentive for my mother could be to run a farm-game and have fun, and maybe trade her cows to another game, whatever is made up in Chromia. We do not have a central incentive for users.
On the revenue model for a dapp. It also varies: Maybe you have an ad financed game, maybe you sell tokens, whatever. It is up to the application creator to decide.
Consensus model for a dapp: The providers of the dapp run PBFT and more see whitepaper. The dapp itself can choose its own consensus: maybe you limit updates to the dapp to the users. The developer maybe says I won't be able to change the game rules unless the players agree, please vote yes to my proposal.
For people that do not understand why Chromia is better: Because we are the only blockchain that uses the world dominant, 30+ year proven, completely market dominant way to handle data and updates of data. It is called a relational database (SQL). Chromia is a relational blockchain. The same tech almost as did all normal applications.
Q: Does Chromia supports different governance like structure
Henrik: Yes. Dapps decide on their own governance: a playground for political scientist...
The Chromia blockchain itself is mainly governed by Providers, who have economic incentives to keep running an attractive system, and we want to make it easy to fork it to keep the pressure on good behavior.
Q: Which will you focus on initial phase? Game or Business Application?
Henrik: Both. We have the fortune that some Business Applications will be going onto Chromia. But normally, it takes a longer time of thinking and talking for businesses to get started... Games are faster. Do a game, run it. And it can prove a point about our great scalability and prove working security.
Q: What are the use cases of Chromia?
Henrik: All blockchain applications, in particular when developers gets frustrated with other blockchains, and the final architecture looks like a pile of servers, caching, blockchains, layers on layers. Then you come to us, and do the same things faster, easier and better.
Q: Please elaborate on Chromia vision.
Henrik: To give Power to the Public. We want to make technologies that enable creating a better world. So much potential in blockchain, if we only had tools to create these kinds of fantastic applications... (there is where Chromia comes to the rescue).
Q: Will there be more partnerships in the near future to hype Chromia?
Henrik: Yes there will be partnerships. We try to avoid vanity partnerships "to hype", prefer real partnerships that lead to working applications.
Q: Which country is Chromia based?
Henrik: Chromia tokens are issued from an Estonian company, a daughter company of a Swedish company, but we have co-founders from Sweden, Israel, Ukraine, a team in Croatia, Ukraine, Sweden, China, Vietnam, US, Netherlands, Russia
Q: Chromia from the designation name like the google chrome platform is it the same as chrome or different? and for the Chromia platform itself, what do you stand in?
Henrik: Google invented a lot of things, but not the chemical compound Chrome, neither the greek word Chroma which means color. We have a heritage from the colored-coins project, the world’s first user created token protocol since 2012. So "ChromaWay" inherited that name, and Chromia is related to ChromaWay.
Q: When exactly will ChromaWay finish developing an application for Swedish e-currency?
Henrik: This is in the hands of the central bank. We are not sure if there will be an e-currency in Sweden or not, and if it will be a blockchain based in that case. We are happy to be invited to conversations with them, now for over 5 years.