KuCoin AMA Series - Chromia - Full Transcript

Dear KuCoin Users,

17:00-18:00 on Monday, May 18, 2020 (UTC+8), KuCoin hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with Chromia in the in the KuCoin Official AMA Group.

Guest:
Henrik Hjelte - Co-Founder and CEO of Chromia
Or Perelman - Co-Founder and COO of Chromia

50,000 CHR has been presented to users as red envelope giveaways during and after the AMA session (including random and lucky red envelopes)!

Introduction to Chromia: Chromia is a brainchild of ChromaWay. ChromaWay has a long record of delivering pioneering projects around the world. It issued Euros on the Bitcoin blockchain with LHV bank, allowed investors to invest in startups in a wholly decentralised way with Funderbeam, digitized the title transfer process with the Swedish land registry, and mediated the green bond market. ChromaWay’s core team created the world’s first protocol to issue tokens already in 2012, when blockchain was called “bitcoin 2.0”. Then ChromaWay introduced the relational model to enterprise blockchains with a consortium database called Postchain. Now Postchain is going public as the foundation for Chromia, a better blockchain for building decentralised apps.

Chromia is a new public blockchain based on the idea of integrating traditional databases, Relational databases with blockchain security. Chromia is a general purpose blockchain with full smart contract capabilities, just that it is a lot easier to code, even complex applications. You code with an easy to learn new programming language that combines the power of SQL and normal languages but makes it secure in a blockchain context. Up to 1/10 the code-lines vs other blockchains.

The aim of Chromia is to combine relational databases, which exist in every kind of organisation, together using blockchains. It wants to provide a platform for our users to develop totally decentralised apps securely. The goal is for Chromia to be seen as the number one infrastructure for decentralised applications.

Official Website: https://chromia.com/

Whitepaper: Click to View

Q&A from KuCoin

Q: Do you have any news/updates about Chromia that you would like to share with us?

A: Last year we released Rell, the new programming language that is needed, and supported tooling (online Development Environment, downloadable IDE, documentation). We have released the first testnet in december, and at the same time another company 4irelabs has done the first dapp running on testnet. They could take our old code (done as a private blockchain), learn our new language Rell and port it to Chromia. That project is the Green Assets Wallet, green bond environmental impact reporting, run by a non-profit and with banks and institutions as users.

Plans for 2020 are to both release a series of DApps to showcase how fantastic Chromia is, as well as continue to develop the platform. And when it is secure and good enough, we will release the mainnet.

Dapps are now being made by us as well as others. We do a decentralized social network framework called Chromunity, now released to TestNet (https://testnet.chromunity.com.) It is really cool, users can vote over moderators, and in the future users might even govern the complete application, how it can be updated. This is a great showcase for Chromia and why we use the slogan Power to the Public.

Games coming are:

1.Mines of Dalarnia (by Workinman Interactive). An action game in a mine with blockchain rental of plots and stuff. Already on TestNet and you can take a peek on it at https://www.minesofdalarnia.com

2.Krystopia 2, novas journey. A puzzle game done by Antler Interactive. https://krystopiagame.com

3.An indie game Chain of Alliance, done by two external developers. It is a strategy game with full-logic on blockchain. Public release on TestNet on May 22! https://www.chainofalliance.com

And, a secret demo-project that we do together with Antler to showcase the technical potential of Chromia platform.

More coming in 2020: Other DApps from other companies, one in impact-tech.

Q: What was the motivation for creating Chromia?

A: 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 performance reasons to store all data in a database. We needed to quickly know the "balance" of a user, and 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 us to create a more fair world. Users can control applications, not only monopolies like the web is today.

Q: Which programming languages does Chromia support?

A: Rell is the only language on the blockchain side. You can combine with anything on client-side, although now client only exists for JS/TS, C# and Java/Kotlin. Rell is a language for relational blockchain programming. It combines the following features:

1.Relational data modeling and queries similar to SQL. People familiar with SQL should feel at home once they learn the new syntax.

2.Normal programming constructs: variables, loops, functions, collections, etc.

3.Constructs which specifically target application backends and, in particular, blockchain-style programming including request routing, authorization, etc.

Rell aims to make programming as convenient and simple as possible. It minimizes boilerplate and repetition. At the same time, as a static type system it can detect and prevent many kinds of defects prior to run-time.You can check it yourself here: https://rell.chromia.com/en/master/

Q: What is a relational blockchain? How will you explain this to someone who is from non-tech?

A: Relational blockchain = relational database + blockchain. A blockchain is a simple list of transactions. Finding anything there requires you to search everything from start to end. A relational database is the tech that powers your social network, your bank, all your non-trivial applications.

Q: Why have you chosen gaming as an initial focus for Chromia?

A: Gaming is quite a challenging target because good UX is expected, it needs to be fast, responsive, etc. If we can do that, then we can also do all sorts of other stuff. Also it lets us experiment with things without a lot of hassle, it’s easier to get users, and so on. It’s also a growing niche within blockchain.

But we can’t say we are actually ‘focused’ on gaming, it’s one of several things we do. We are a broad geneeral purpose platform and also have enterprise applications being built on top like the gaw - greenassetswallet.org and others.

Q: What does Chromia’s slogan “Power to the Public” stay for?

A: "Power to the public" means we want to support creating 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).

Q: What is Postchain?

A: Postchain is a product of ChromaWay for enterprise clients and it’s the core technology on which Chromia is built.

Postchain is a product of ChromaWay (https://chromaway.com) for enterprise clients and it’s the core technology on which Chromia is built.

Postchain is a replicated blockchain and database that offers highly resilient distributed database management with distributed control. Postchain is the only product on the market that combines the immutable consensus of a blockchain and the ACID properties of a database management system. Postchain allows you to share information between companies and/or individuals in a secure and transparent way.

Q: What are the prerequisites for developers to start developing on Chromia?

A: Chromia has a low entrance barrier for developers, entrepreneurs and users alike. For developers, it is recommended to have worked with SQL databases in the past (like the vast majority of developers have), due to the resemblance between Rell language and SQL. Once they're interested in building with Chromia, developers learn quite easily the technology and are assessed at all times by the Chromia team through our developer chat.

Q: How will Chromia incentivise developers to build on its ecosystem over the multiple ones already in existence?

A: We have some professional IT companies building stuff on Rell and Postchain now, even when it is in Alpha. And we get a really good response from individual developers even though we only have a Preview of Rell out. So I'm quite happy. Also, it is always the case that people will say, "How will your little language compete with the big one that everyone is using"? A few years ago we had PHP. The big language that everyone was using. And then a small little toy "ruby on rails" captured momentum, after that node.js plus javascript etc. Developers want productive tools and are not afraid to learn better new languages. When you see that you can do your project a lot faster and better with Chromia, you will try it.

Also, SQL which our tech is close to is more used than Java, PHP, Python, C, C++ and of course a lot lot more used than Solidity and blockchain.

Source: stackoverflow programmer survey 2019.

Q: What is the best suited Dapp that can thrive on Chromia?

A: Basically any DApp you can imagine can be built on Chromia. We think it will be a great use case if someone will build some Massive Online Game on top of it, imagine LoL or WoW on the blockchain. Or build a social network controlled by users, where content creators have an influence. And actually all of it is already happening. Yesterday we released our first game Mines of Dalarnia to TestNet users (check it out https://minesofdalarnia.com) and the Decentralized social network made by external developer fully on Chromia blockchain called Chromunity (https://testnet.chromunity.com.)

Free-Ask

Q-01: The games are linked to CRH? Some board interface?

A: Yes - the games are linked to CHR, please check

https://www.minesofdalarnia.com/ as a reference

Q-02: One thing that i always heard about Chromia Project is RELL ! What is RELL? What's the main Functions & use of RELL in Chromia Project?

A: Thanks! Rell is Chromia's smart contract language which is similar to SQL but 8 times more compact and user-friendly - for more details you can check: https://rell.chromia.com/en/master/

Q-03: Will Chromia be more involved in the game ecosystem in 2020? What developments are waiting for us in the industry? And How will Chromia guide the development of new generation dapps?

A: Yes, we plan to be involved in the game ecosystem - we're already approaching more game studios and developers to build on top of Chromia.

Q-04: According to you how much time will it take for $CHR to get into mainstream adoption and execute all the plans set for this project?

A: Well we hope to have some initial mainstream use already this year, with that I mean games etc that normal "non blockchain" people play, and other applications used by the non-blockchain world. For example GAW is used by financial companies already (green assets wallet).

Q-05: What are the benefits for CHR holders?

A: Staking, ability to build applications and more.

Q-06: I want to know about RELL language. Is there any explained guide to follow?

A: https://rell.chromia.com/en/master/ - go ahead!

Q-07: What are the things you believe to be changed in database technologies ?

A: Interesting, first time someone talks about future of databases in AMA:s... So I can observe some trends. In normal world, "cloud database" is a large trend. And if you think about it, Chromia is a fantastic cloud database in a cloud that is decentralized and not controlled by a single vendor.

Q-08: You said relational database is the tech that powers your social network, your bank, all your non-trivial applications so how does Chromia fit into these explanation and can other blockchain use Rell or is it just for chromia alone? Please do tell?

A: Right now Rell can only be used with Chromia. Because we use a full database (Postgresql) behind the scenes. It is not easy to add to other blockchains. But not completely impossible, we are considering a smaller version of Rell for other blockchains.