KuCoin AMA with Oasis — A Privacy-Enabled Blockchain Platform for Open Finance and a Responsible Data Economy

2021/09/29 08:12:12

Dear KuCoin Users,

Time: September 23, 2021, 15:00-15:56 (UTC)

KuCoin hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with Anne Fauvre-Willis, COO of Oasis Labs, in the KuCoin Exchange Group.

Project Introduction

Oasis is the leading privacy-enabled, layer-1 proof-of-stake blockchain. It was founded in 2018 by Dawn Song, the award-winning professor from Berkeley, and has many key backers such as Binance Labs, a16z, Accel, and more. Designed for the next generation of blockchain, the Oasis Network is the first privacy-enabled blockchain platform for open finance and a responsible data economy. Its unique privacy features can not only redefine DeFi but also create a new type of digital asset called Tokenized Data that can enable users to take control of the data they generate and earn rewards for staking it with applications. Oasis already has several projects building on its network and partners, such as the CryptoSafe Alliance with Binance, Chainlink, Balancer, Meter, and others.

Official Website: https://oasisprotocol.org

White Paper: https://oasisprotocol.org/papers

Follow Oasis on Twitter and Telegram.

Guest:

Anne Fauvre-Willis — COO of Oasis Labs

Q&A from KuCoin

Q: Tell us a few things about yourself.

Anne: My name is Anne Fauvre, and l am the COO of Oasis Labs and an early contributor to the Oasis Network, a privacy-first blockchain platform for building a responsible data economy.

Prior to Oasis Labs, l worked as a Product Manager for the iPhone at Apple, and l also worked for former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at the Albright Stonebridge Group. I have an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Georgetown University. For the past 3 years, l have been leading operations at Oasis!

Q: What is Oasis? How did it start?

Anne: Oasis is the leading privacy-enabled, layer-1 proof-of-stake blockchain. It was founded in 2018 by Dawn Song, the award-winning professor from Berkeley, and has many key backers such as Binance Labs, a16z, Accel, and more. Designed for the next generation of blockchain, the Oasis Network is a privacy-first blockchain platform for open finance and a responsible data economy. Its unique privacy features can not only redefine DeFi but also create a new type of digital asset called Tokenized Data that can enable users to take control of the data they generate and earn rewards for staking it with applications. Oasis already has several projects building on its network and partners, such as the CryptoSafe Alliance with Binance, Chainlink, Balancer, Meter, and others. You can learn more in these links:

Website: https://bit.ly/3lHRPII

Blog: https://medium.com/oasis-protocol-project

Oasis Announcements Telegram Channel: https://t.me/oasisprotocolfoundation

Oasis Community Telegram Channel: https://t.me/oasisprotocolcommunity

Oasis Slack channel: www.oasisprotocol.org/slack

Twitter: https://twitter.com/OasisProtocol

Discord: https://discord.gg/RwNTK8t

Oasis Grants: https://bit.ly/3AxHXrc

Ambassador Program: https://medium.com/oasis-protocol-project/become-an-oasis-ambassador-and-build-a-responsible-data-economy-bbd38d0f9c12

Official Oasis Wallets: https://bit.ly/3kod96p

Q: What's the current status of Oasis? What milestones have you reached?

Anne: Since launching Mainnet, we've had a pretty big year.

The Oasis Network Mainnet went live last November and is a fully decentralized launch with over 70 independent validators. The Network has many exciting partnerships such as privacy-first genome sequencing with Nebula Genomics, Balancer, Google Cloud, MusicFund, and more.

We recently announced the Cipher ParaTime, a new, smart contract environment to the Oasis Network, which is in Testnet phase, with a pool of avid validators setting up nodes and sleuthing for bugs before the Mainnet release. The Cipher ParaTime will bring a host of new features and capabilities to the Oasis Network.

Some other key milestones are the:

- Grants Program with over $1.5M in ROSE available for funding (https://bit.ly/3AxHXrc)

- Global community engagement led by over 100 Ambassadors focused on growing communities in over a dozen countries (https://bit.ly/3hOysfR)

- The largest university program in blockchain with over 25 universities and clubs from 5 continents actively running nodes and building on the Oasis Network. (https://medium.com/oasis-protocol-project/the-biggest-university-program-on-a-blockchain-network-just-launched-on-the-oasis-network-2a3c3a0dec1d)

- We’ve just released our official Oasis Wallets this week (https://bit.ly/3kod96p)

Q: Can you tell us more about the Oasis ROSE wallet?

Anne: Really excited to have these out in the wild.

While we had a few 3rd party wallets already, the most requested feature by the Oasis Network community has been a safe place to store and stake their ROSE tokens. So yesterday, we announced the official Oasis ROSE wallets: the web wallet to be your front page for everything ROSE-related and the browser extension for quick and easy access to your ROSE when you need it. Both these wallets have actually been created by amazing community members who were awarded grants for the work supporting the Oasis Protocol.

Both wallets come with great features:

- Send and receive ROSE over the Oasis Network

- Review all network validator metrics like total amount staked and staking fees

- Stake your ROSE with network validators to EARN staking rewards (you can calculate the rewards here at StakingRewards --> https://www.stakingrewards.com/calculator/oasis-network)

- Sleek and easy to use UI

- Ledger integrations so you can continue to use the Oasis app on ledger

On top of those features with the browser extension, you’ll be able to sign transactions with Dapps on the Oasis network.

Learn more here: https://bit.ly/3kod96p

The wallets will also allow us to enable some other cool features coming down the pike focused around ROSE/ETH interop.

Q: The Oasis blockchain network is separated into two layers, one for computation and another for consensus. Can you tell us more? How is it different from sharding?

Anne: So Oasis has a unique approach to scalability where the network separates consensus from computation. By doing so, the network is able to manage really complex transactions at scale. Sharding is a nice idea in theory but comes with a lot of complexity and costs that make it harder to implement in practice. From a security perspective, the complexity of sharding also makes it harder to audit and inherently more vulnerable to security breaches. The Oasis Network’s discrepancy detection-based approach provides the same benefits as sharding through a cleaner, simpler, more efficient implementation.

Ultimately, the Oasis Network’s unique scalability mechanism ensures that the network is not only fast (like sharding networks purport to be) but also versatile and secure enough to support a wide range of real-world workload.

Q: What are the Oasis Paratimes?

Anne: It's somewhat similar to chains like Polkadot, the Oasis Network allows many compute environments (called ParaTimes) to exist in parallel — each writing their own transactions to the Consensus Layer. Anyone can build a ParaTime, and they can be customized to fit each developer's unique needs.

Today, these are the following ParaTimes available on the Oasis Network.

- The Parcel ParaTime: A custom-designed ParaTime used to support Oasis Labs’ Parcel SDK. Parcel is a simple API interface that allows developers to store data, access confidential compute technology, and eventually mint data-backed NFTs.

- The Oasis-Eth ParaTime: An EVM compatible ParaTime designed to support DApps ported from the Ethereum to the Oasis Network. The ParaTime has better performance and gas fees nearly 99% cheaper than Ethereum.

- Cipher is a powerful new ParaTime coming to the Oasis Network and will bring a host of new features and capabilities to the Oasis Network. Here’s a snapshot of what’s coming to Cipher over the coming months:

Fully decentralized node operators operating the ParaTime from around the world
Native support for Oasis ROSE tokens to pay gas fees and for easy integration in DeFi DApps
A bridge to the Ethereum network for easy swaps
A WASM based smart contract environment with support for Confidential smart contracts

Q: Tell us more about ROSE, its circulating supply, and its utility.

Anne: The circulating supply of ROSE at mainnet launch was approximately 1.5 billion tokens, and the total supply is capped at 10 billion tokens. ROSE token is used for staking, delegation, and transaction fees in the consensus layer.

As the Oasis Network evolves, of course, I’d expect the community to propose a number of ways to further expand the utility of the token as well — for example, as we think about creating a responsible data economy, you can envision how the network will allow users to retain control of their data and ROSE to serve as a way to incentivize them to do so as well.

Generally, the network is targeted to reward stakers with rewards of between 2.0% to 15.0% depending on the length of time staked to provide staking services on the network. In order to be eligible for staking rewards per epoch, a node would need to sign at least 75% of blocks in that epoch. Learn more here.

Free-Ask from KuCoin Community

Q: Can you expand our knowledge about your roadmap this year and the future and any updates on your research and development progress?

Anne: Yeah, so there are a lot of things in the works right now for the Network. I'd say the theme of the last year was infrastructure -- getting the basic piping in place to ensure the network had better liquidity and engagement. Right now, you're seeing (and will see in the next few months) a ton of projects launching in support of this, including:

- Oasis-official wallets

- A ROSE/ETH bridge with integrations in DEXs ets

- launch of the Cipher Paratime (a confidential environment built for DeFi)

These should all be coming out pretty soon. And once they are then I think what you'll see is a broader focus on private DeFi initiatives and usage via the Cipher Paratime as well as adding more AMMs, DEXes, Data marketplaces, etc.

Q: NFTs are hot-trending now. Do you have a plan to have NFTs in your platform? If so, can you tell us the plans of your project in NFTs?

Anne: Yeah, so I think we have a pretty unique role to play in the NFT space, actually. One of our paratimes is called "Parcel" and that paratime allows you to essentially create "data NFTs" or "data tokens". These data tokens are, in essence, a way to represent data that you store and use on a blockchain, sell it, lend it, etc., and get paid when you do so. As we see NFTs evolve beyond static art, I think these types of data NFTs and auth-based NFTs are a huge area for growth and innovation, and we will be leading the charge there.

Q: The crypto industry is fast-paced. How flexible is your project to change quickly and keep pace with technology trends? What is your long-term vision for the forecasting industry in which your project operates?

Anne: Actually, this is one of the most important things about our network design. Paratimes can serve a ton of different use cases -- and we're seeing that come to fruition on the network today. We have a private DeFi paratime that should launch soon, an EVM-compatible paratime, another EVM-compatible paratime, and a paratime built specifically for enterprises (parcel). Most of these were built by community members and serve a variety of use cases. And what's awesome is that should new use cases emerge, it's really easy for developers or community members to spin up a new paratime that matches their needs and interests as well.

Q: Can you list 1-3 killer features of this project that make it ahead of its competitors? What is the competitive advantage your project has that you feel most confident about?

Anne: 1. Confidentially at the smart contract layer --> this ensures you can do things really impossible on other networks. In DeFi, you can prevent front running or enable undercollateralized loans, in enterprise you can store and manage sensitive data, and so many more use cases are coming online now that really benefit from privacy/confidentiality.

2. Scalability -- and I don't mean "sharding" which has a number of flaws. In fact, we have a really unique design that is more secure than sharding and way way better for complex data (think: ML models, etc.). Once our ETH bridge goes live, I think this gives us an opportunity to be a pretty unique player in the space where we can essentially serve as a low-cost compute environment for ETH or other Networks AND provide confidentiality as well.

3. Real-world use cases -- with the Parcel Paratime, there are already 100s of devs building things on the network, and many of them are real businesses and companies building their products on a blockchain. This is actually pretty unique! We get compliments all the time that our Parcel API is on par with the APIs of companies way bigger and more mature, and more importantly, our ability to support private compute AND offer a public ledger makes us super unique in the space.

Q: Do you have a user manual or short videos that would guide potential users of the project to safely navigate your platform?

Anne: Yes, tons! You can find documentation at docs.oasis.dev, and we have a ton of videos on different aspects of the network at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC35UFPcZ2F1wjPxhPrSsESQ

Q: With the current market condition right now, what is a watchtower solution during the bear season for users and investors to hold the token and not sell?

Anne: Good question. I think our many enterprise use cases give us a pretty unique position in the market. While we also have a lot of interesting DeFi and NFT type things in the works, we will always have real-world usage thanks to our many B2B devs already building and deploying things on the Parcel Paratime.

Q: How experienced and promising is your team? I have seen many projects that promise a high impression at first but later they abandon failing to give results and make excuses.

Anne: The team is pretty legit. Our CEO, Dawn Song, is a MacArthur Genius and a long-time professor at UC Berkeley. She's actually been an advisor to many top blockchain projects over the years and started a ton of companies herself as well. In addition, we have a super strong eng team with a number of folks who are big-time experts in cryptography, decentralized systems, etc. Finally, we have a lot of good product shipping experience with technical and product folks (myself included) from Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to share or you want us to know?

Anne: Super happy to be here. The last thing I'd share is there are a TON of ways to get involved in the Oasis project. As is true in this space, we are only as good as the broad decentralized community supporting us. I'm going to add a few links to things for folks who are interested next. Please reach out if you want to be an ambassador, get a grant, etc.