KuCoin AMA Series - Constellation (DAG) - Full Transcript

(UTC+8) 10:00 on Friday, May 8, 2020/ (PST) 19:00 on Thursday, May 7, 2020, KuCoin hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with Constellation (DAG) in the KuCoin Official AMA Group.

Guest: Mr. Ben Jorgensen - CEO of DAG
Host: Ms. Alicia Kao - KuCoin Senior Partner

The AMA session was composed of 2 sections: 1. Q&A from KuCoin 2. Q&A from audiences. Please fill out the form and include your feedback and KuCoin account after the completion of the AMA. We will randomly select 300 participants to enjoy a share of DAG rewards equivalent to 1,500 USD. Please note that the form will close at 23:59:59 on May 8, 2020 (UTC+8), so please be sure to fill it out within those hours. All reward distributions will be completed in 7 business days.

Introduction to DAG:

Constellation is the blockchain for Big Data leveraged by the US Air Force. Our Hypergraph Network is infinitely scalable and is built on a directed acyclic graph (DAG) and leverages Proof of Reputable Observations (PRO) consensus for speed and security. We provide developers with open source developer tools to secure complex data types, creating an immutable audit trail around data, and is the only blockchain technology that is compatible with existing data management platforms and devices.

Today’s digital infrastructure was not built to accommodate advancements in AI, big data, machine learning, IoT, autonomous vehicles, and smart cities. Constellation’s decentralized network, Hypergraph, provides a scalable decentralized infrastructure to accommodate a world powered by data. Our focus is to prevent tampering and spoofing of data, at scale, through a decentralized network with pre-processing algorithms and consensus. Our community of nearly 25k people help us maintain the network and validate data to decentralize data ownership and improve data integrity across various organizations.

Official Website: https://constellationnetwork.io/

Whitepaper: Click to View

Q&A from KuCoin

1.Before we get started, could you tell us a bit about yourself and your team. Where are you from and what do you do for fun outside of Constellation?

Benjamin J Jorgensen:

Absolutely! We are located in San Francisco where we are in the epicenter of the startup world. I also have an upscale restaurant called GOZU (in SF). I love the creatives in this world.

Our team in this chat are Benjamin Diggles, Mathias Goldman, and Wyatt Meldman-Floch.

We are all pioneers and builders and are a bit of rebels - I think you have to to build an alternative network.We are a bunch of weirdos that have so much vision it exhausts us.

2. So what is Constellation and Where does it fit within the blockchain space? And why is Constellation so different from traditional blockchain technologies?

Benjamin J Jorgensen:

Yes. So Constellation got started with the idea of breaking existing paradigms of blockchain.

We wanted to evolve the entire industry so that blockchain could easily be procured and used by all developers. We wanted to go beyond simply securing a ledger balance - we wanted to evolve the vision of blockchain to accommodate real problems of today - namely all the data that is be creating by systems, applications, IoT, and organizations.

Current blockchain technologies and protocols are not easily integrated into existing data systems. This threatens many organizations because they have spent millions on IT infrastructure. Our goal was to make blockchain's immutable ledger and characteristics integrated with existing IT infrastructure.

This would ultimately pave a path to commercial adoption.

We are different than many blockchains in that we are a graph based database - called a directed acyclic graph (DAG) - and are horizontally scalable.

Why this matters is that all rich databases and organizations that use and collect data require this type of architecture to scale data utility.

We not only created our on infrastructure layer but also a more effective consensus model which enables speed and scalability to our network.

Our Consensus model is built on reputation and topologically organizes data. We use math and geometry to organize data across the network

This is important for applications like AI - AI requires distributed systems and data to be topologically organized so as to have elastic search and is queryable.

We are the first of its kind and this is one of the main reasons we are working closely with the US Air Force and many agencies within the Federal Government. They have been doing years of research and have not found someone that could build out their vision of decentralized networks. Enter Constellation.

3. How is Constellation strategizing for mainstream adoption of its technology? For the broader blockchain industry.

Benjamin J Jorgensen:

It's amazing to see the focus on standards within the DoD and Constellation has the right technology for the right time.

Our main strategy to mainstream adoption is something we call - One to Many. We are establishing standards for how data in transferred with commercial entities like GM and Denso; We are establishing similar standards within the Air Force and Federal Government. These standards set a precedent for how data securely moves between devices, cloud infrastructures, and servers.

There is a big difference in how the public space looks at data VS the commercial space. We are currently focused on impact, not traditional commercial ROI.

Our focus has been to not do simple PoC's and sandbox dev environment pilots, but to integrate with core data management companies that are handling big data. We are working closely with the USTRANSCOMS - the hub for logistics data in the DoD. The USTRANSCOMS is one of the largest data producers (if not largest data producers) in the world that manages data across air, land, and sea.

They have a pull to push all agencies to use a standard for how data moves

Benjamin Diggles:

To Ben's point, aligning with the right partners is mission critial in this approach. So we are looking at the data management solutions that the federal GOV relies on and aligning with those. DevSecOps. It's been going really really well. And it goes beyond just these tools - it's also about aligning with commercial federal partners. Which we will talk more about later down the road.

Benjamin J Jorgensen:

One thing we are really excited about is a HUGE partnership in the data management space. We recently partnered up with MongoDB to add cryptographic security to complex data sets (not just a ledger balance) but cryptographically securing rows and columns of data. MongoDB is a public company that provides NoSQL database solutions and we are building an integration to add security around these complex databases. NO BLOCKCHAIN COMPANY CAN DO THIS.

MongoDB has about 15k customers and nearly 80M downloads. They are just one partner in the data management space that fulfills our vision of one-to many. This is a huge step forward to integrating where developers are already are. We aren't a silo or an island.

https://constellationnetwork.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/MongoDB-Constellation-Network-MongoDB-Technical-Integration-Overview.pdf

https://youtu.be/jA0R7Lm5_s8

Our amazing community built a great explainer video discussing the partnership; we wrote a white paper that articulates the integration and capabilities like securing MongoDB's single view - solution.

Benjamin Diggles:

MongoDB is an approved DevSecOps tool for the DoD and out alignment with them only speeds up deployment opprtunties with various federal agencies.

I do want to mention that their team is amazing to work with and for lack of a better term, "they get it."

Benjamin J Jorgensen:
These data management solutions are currently being used across the DoD. We are not only making fast strides to navigate the public sector, but are quickly becoming a name across commercial entities that power and manage data for the world's companies.

This is just a start... we have a few more up our sleeves that help build on the vision of horizontally integrating in the big data industry.

4.I think not only me that feel it's so cool about a blockchain company work with federal agencies. Please talk about one of your biggest clients, The United States Air Force? You established a working contract with them in 2019, can you provide some updates on what you are working on with them now?

Benjamin J Jorgensen:

OMG - it is beyond cool. We have no competition in the space

In 2019, we secured our first working contract with the US Air Force. We are 1 of two blockchain companies to be rewarded a contract.

Our focus is to provide solutions for JADC2 - which is code for joint all domain command and control. For simple speak, this is moving data between systems - servers, cloud, devices - in the field, to vendors, and other agencies.

Benjamin Diggles:

Since we solidified a contract for multi-domain command and control this means we have to work across various agencies. A pretty daunting task but according to average stats, we are ahead of the game. We have to isolate use cases that not only impact the core end user we are working with but also for those that have dual purpose w/ other stakeholders.

Benjamin J Jorgensen:

Over the past 7 months we have navigated a myriad of agencies including connecting with the intelligence community to homeland security to the Army, IRS, and various consulting groups like Accenture and Deloitte.

Benjamin Diggles:

The list seems endless and I feel so fortunate to be honest. The list seems endless and I feel so fortunate to be honest. The federal space was a big win for us.

Benjamin J Jorgensen:

We are now working with various agencies and organizations with the federal organization to establish a new standard for how data is transferred and used (Data in-transit; data in-use). It is a big vision of secure interoperability and every agency has a use for Constellation's Hypergraph (our DAG network).

This will create a new world where data is transferred with multiple levels of security.

Exciting stuff.

5.So some people might curious about "DAG" and "Constellation". What does the role of DAG play throughout Constellation and the big data narrative?

DAG - well.... It is on Kucoin for starters - thank you Kucoin for integrating our mainnet - what an achievement to plug in a truly decentralized network.

DAG plays a couple of roles:

- Nodes earn validator rewards in the way of DAG

- DAG is used to secure throughput on the network

- DAG will be used to purchase validated data sets on the network (programmatic data exchange).

DAG allows for the tokenization of data packages which then opens the road to the network becoming a network for exchanging the data commodities of the future.

Mathias Goldmann:

with that we enable our node validators and users on the network to also become what we call "datapreneurs" - enabling everyone to participate in new business models around secure, tamperproof and auditable data

So the network is an infrastructure layer that is like wordpress the basis for people to build their own businesses

Benjamin J Jorgensen:

The main long term vision is as follows. We want to work with nearly every organization on the planet to secure and validate data. These secure and validated datasets can then be used to be purchased (if compliant with and individual or organization) to enrich new data sets (like AI or machine learning). This ultimately will create a giant network of programmatically exchanging data between different data sources, applications, and systems.

Data monetization and utility will run everything in the future. The free flow of data will be enabled through a decentralized network. Constellation provides the infrastructure, accounting capabilities, and audit capabilities of the data.

This is why we are strategically fit to make data democratic again. Consumers will be able to decide who and what purchases their data. We will live in a world where organizations and big businesses can't freely sell data without our permission or paying us. A decentralized network - Hypergraph is the only way to a secure way of exchanging data.

6.The data management industry was established about 12 years ago (almost around the time of bitcoin), how are you making an impression on the existing big data industry and does this give insight on how you will scale?

Benjamin J Jorgensen

Well... Great question! Many organizations are still defining "what is your data strategy". Every organization on the planet is having to rethink their digital infrastructure.

What they thought two years ago (silo'ing data) or even IoT 20 years ago, it quickly breaking down. With COVID right now, we are seeing new utility of data and digital ecosystems are being built to accommodate remote work.

We are in a fascinating time. We could not have done COVID shelter-in-home 10 years ago. We didn't have the infrastructure built, it wouldn't scale!

Now, as we rethink how we work, where we work, we are bending our minds to accommodate visions around AI and machine learning to optimize our networks.

Benjamin Diggles:

Cryptographically securing data at scale is no easy feat. There is still a lot of questions when it comes to data management around what data is even worth securing. As we always say, the further the data gets from the source, the more possibility it has for corruption. The Constellation solution has the ability to preprocess data as it makes its way into a system and this is a big data dream.

Benjamin J Jorgensen:

Constellation provides the infrastructure and layers needed to embrace unprecedented amounts of data coming online. We are working with existing rich database solutions like MongoDB and others to provide more robust data security to address new threat vectors while creating immutability of data for an unforeseen future.

Constellation is setting precedent to the blockchain industry by making it sophisticated, scalable, and secure enough for data engineers across the planet.

7.I've noticed that your community is one of the most vibrant communities in crypto, how do you maintain such a strong community and how does the community contribute to your global footprint?

Benjamin J Jorgensen:

Vibing completely! We hummmmm to a different tune.

Benjamin Diggles:

I may not engage a ton but our community is one of my favorite parts of Constellation. They are family.

Benjamin J Jorgensen:

Our Community is brilliant and amazing! A huge shout out to #thebestcommunityincrypto. The community is the lifeline of this organization. Over the past year we have built layers of our community to help build Constellation.

They help build constellation by acting as our governance board - maintaining the network and establishing values and principles; our stardust collective helps disseminate the Constellation story and develop an understanding of big data and the role that Constellation plays; and our admins help us connect deeper with crypto communities and serve as our trusted advisors.

The community is our decentralized governance. They have built a swag store for Constellation: http://constellation-dag-gift-shop.myshopify.com/

... A daily newsletter to help people follow crypto, Constellation, and Cybersecurity and Big data industry news: https://mailchi.mp/constellationnetwork/cryptodaily

... They have created our native Molly Wallet... Soon to be our block explorere... and have offered their technical support to onboarding node operators

Mathias Goldmann:

The team and company has significantly evolved over the last 2,5 years to be able to embrace a global grassroots community. If you talk about true decentralization then this can only work if the working relationships are active and super strong. In that way we scaled our very tightly knit founding team into a circle of trusted community members. This then build the foundation to establish processes that lead to tightly knit expanded teams that self-organize on the many different areas of our community.

As such the wallet has been community built, the block explorer StarGazer is in production as we speak and the community built merchandise shop

http://constellation-dag-gift-shop.myshopify.com/

Benjamin J Jorgensen:

Our community truly embodies an open source community - akin to the Ruby on Rails community of the early 2000's.

This is the future of work.

This is the future company. Our community is not an echo chamber of our ideals. They expand on our consciousness and our business

One of our advisors, and close friend, is Rehito Hatoyama - Ray was the former global CEO of Sanrio (hello kitty) and took them from -$350M to $6B in revenue in 6 years using open innovation - we are following a similar model.

Benjamin Diggles:

We are forging the future vision of the datapreneur and our community will be a capstone to this vision.

Mathias Goldmann:

There is always advantages and drawbacks going back and forth between decentralization and centralization. we have seen in the past that fully anarchic models do not work and lead to collusions and purely greed driven ecosystem that corrupt easily. With DAG we take another approach by combining the best of both worlds. As in the consensus that is governed by reputation we implement these principles into our daily operation with our community. As such we have a couple of aces up our sleeves to redefine how a decentralized network is governed - while not forgetting the ultimate global scalability that pulls corporate and even state actors as potential participants into the network

Benjamin J Jorgensen:

The datapreneur will empower community members to build data businesses on Constellation's hypergraph and further extend the vision of democratic data.

8.Next topic would be kinda serious..About COVID-19 , what is your plan to fight through the end of the COVID year?After we all through this, we would also like to know that is your 5 year plan for the Company?

Benjamin J Jorgensen:

With regards to COVID, our company is doing well and we are laser focused on building out our government channels (very exciting developments happening here). Many blockchain companies that focused on enterprise or SMB adoption - and not go toward the route of governments and institutions (which are still spending) will struggle. Our focus is to build the next level of secure networks for how data is transferred across the Federal Government (beyond just the Air Force).

I will save the complete 5 year plan for an updated vision paper coming out in the next month that will connect the dots in many ways - Federal Government adoption to commercial adoption to the largest network of programmatically exchanged data.

Mathias Goldmann:

the government partnerships allow us to approach productization and monetization from a completely different angle. Government does not swing in the same cycle like enterprise which means in COVID times with an increase in data usage and focus on data and security topics our alignment is pretty future proof.

In addition constellation has been born into the bear market and we are battle hardened which allows us to find optimal solutions in sub-optimal times.

Benjamin J Jorgensen:

Our focus is to make inroads and integrations with organizations where no one is looking - because we have a unique piece of technology that cryptographically secures data leaving an immutable audit trail around interoperability.

We have one of the most unique advantages playing to us: we work with existing IT infrastructure and we were built to handle speed, security, and scalability. This will usher in new accountability for compliance on energy utilization for smart cities and smart buildings and will create a more trusted world on how data is handled.

Compliance - proof of auditability of how data is being used and transacted - will be programmatic in the future.

Free Ask

Q: Benjamin, Ben, Mathias, Mateo, Wyatt, thank you so much for changing the world for the better and can't wait to see where Constellation goes. So proud of you guys. Is there anything we, your community and biggest fans, can do to help Constellation continue to succeed?

A: We have many ways and avenues to engage in our ecosystem as we grow. People ask every day how they can participate. Now, the easiest way is to get to know us the community and the technology by making yourself really familiar with how we engage with each other, what the vibe is and the implications and functionalities of our technology. I know it is a lot but we are developing something truly novel and that requires fresh behavior and thinking in order to participate. Once you feel familiar and engage in the conversation you will get to know our admins and the people who self organize in stardust. they will guide you and introduce you to the efforts that are suitable to the skillset you bring to the table. In stardust we have lawyers, graphic designers, social media experts, economy buffs and blockchain OGs. So what I'm saying don't ask what you can do but watch and learn by being part of it and you'll see where there is a need that fits your skill set - and then just ask and communicate with us. it becomes pretty obvious pretty fast if someone fits into that web and ecosystem of great people and there is a lot of room for growth on many levels.

Q: What is your projects main target of $DAG in this year 2020?and what your VISION and MISSION is in #DAG Marketing?

A: Our main goal with DAG this year is to get multiple agencies in the federal government to establish Constellation as the DLT solution to add multiple levels of security to their data which will improve data integrity across many stakeholders in the Federal Government.

Additionally, we will pilot our datapreneuer approach where we secure data sources and data pipelines for small and medium size businesses - like retail analytics. This secure data pipeline adds auditability to a data type. This validated data feed will be supported on Constellation's Hypergraph network and will be purchasable with DAG to use for enriching business insights and analytics.

We will then connect the dots of securely validated data sources to make them interoperable with other devices. This network of validated data will establish compliance for smart cities.

Furthermore, we aim to establish and deploy a direct to consumer offering where people can manage who has access to your data. Companies will be able to purchase your data with your permission through our Molly wallet.

A lot more to come and $DAG will be at the forefront of the first phase of a data exchange.

Q: What is so special about DAG compared to other projects? Can you give some reasons to convince users to choose DAG?

A: Great question. First off - our community! We have a ton of fun in our community. Our core team is extremely humble and we are always putting on our beginner mind. We are constantly learning from our community and listening to their recommendations on what they want to see and understand. We are very approachable and don't hide behind a curtain.

Our team executes like no tomorrow. In just 7 months, we are establishing ourselves as the blockchain solution for the Federal Government. Additionally, commercial partners, like MongoDB see us as a default blockchain solution that mirrors their architecture.