For those of you who prefer reading over listening, this is the first in a three part article series of the ViteX AMA video transcript.
As a quick introduction:
L = Luke Kim, Vite Labs CMO
R = Richard Yan, Vite Labs COO & Co-founder
A = Allen, Vite Labs Technical Director
L: Good morning and welcome to sunny California. We have teammates calling from China as well as California because we are a global firm. Over the year we've had 40-plus engineers working very hard in order to build up ViteX which is our decentralized exchange, our DEX.
So that's the topic today. We want to share the DEX with you all and we've selected some really good questions fielded by the community. And of course, we want to group up these questions by way of consensus so we don't spend time on redundancies.
Today we're gonna highlight 20 or so of the top questions we've received. And for those of you asking good questions on live chat, well, you can interrupt me and we can change course because your questions are exactly why we tuned in today.
So without further ado I want to introduce both speakers today who are my good friends. Richard Yan is the COO and co-founder of our company. He went to school at Dartmouth and NYU. He has that background of Business and Finance. He was at Goldman Sachs and also at 2Sigma as a VP, so very much so a seasoned Wall Street professional.
And then Allen Liu here is a very seasoned senior architect. So he has experience with various types of back-end systems. And notably he worked in IBM and HP both in technical leadership positions.
My name is Luke there are only two things I want to share with you. Number one I'm a director for Startup Grind. If you know about Startup Grind, we're in the same community, basically tribesmen. And secondly, I work as a faculty member for Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator. So there's four of us, I'm one of them. If you would like to apply for the Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator or you want resources from, then definitely speak with me. You can tag us on a telegram, so on and so forth.
So without further ado, the most important question actually thrown at us is:
What differentiates ViteX, our exchange, from other exchanges. And also what differentiates ViteX the token from other exchange tokens, like BNB. It's the question of why should we use you, why should we stop using other exchanges, what makes you better?
We are ready to answer. So Richard without further ado that's you.
R: Okay, great, thank you very much Luke, and good morning everyone, or good evening around the world. So the key difference between ViteX and other exchanges is that ViteX is fully decentralized. And the benefit of fully decentralized exchange is that no one has custody of the assets that you trade on the DEX exchange—that's the whole point of decentralization.
There are many other semi-decentralized exchanges that are also called DEX'es, but one key difference between us and them is that their matching engine is not decentralized. And the reason why they're unable to do it on chain is because of the performance lag of the public blockchain that they are built upon.
So Vite is a public blockchain that is fast and free, effectively solving that problem. And that's why ViteX is able to have an on chain order matching engine and that's what makes it truly decentralized.
In terms of the key difference between VX (which is the token of ViteX) and other tokens out there, is that as VX holder you are entitled to income from the exchange and this is entirely different from many other exchanges out there.
In addition VX has no pre-mining, no presale, there's no public or private sale. And holders of VX are entitled 100% of all the fees and incomes generated by the exchange, permanently. So just to be clear, the Vite team will be entitled to about 10% of VX, but that's linearly released similarly to how VX is being released for everyone else. And just to give you a quick comparison with the Binance DEX, so due to the way the public blockchain is structured that undergirdles the finance exchange, in order to make a trade, whether the trade succeeds or not, and if you cancel that trade, you are charged a fee. That's just the way BNB DEX works.
And that is not the way ViteX works at all. On ViteX, if you make a trade, if it doesn't go through, there's no transaction fee, period. If you cancel a trade, there's no transaction fee, period. And that's all owing to the fact that ViteX is built on Vite which offers free transactions. And then all you're paying are just fees for the exchange itself, not for the public chain underneath.
And also there are many other ways you can earn VX, the token. Trading is mining. Listing is mining, which basically means if you list a trading pair that will help you mine VX. You can get VX through staking, basically you would stake Vite for the benefit of the ViteX smart contract, and that would be one way to earn VX as well. You can also refer others to join ViteX and that's how you get VX. There are a few other ways to earn VX as well, and I think the multi-dimensional nature of how you acquire this crypto is another way we differentiate ourselves from other platforms out there.
L: So Richard, one community feedback is we need more energy and more volume from your side. Like think back to your military school days, by the way, community, Richard did go to an American military school. I have a follow-up question to what you just said which is what is the difference specifically and shortly between Vite the V-I-T-E capital letters token, VX and VCP. There are three.
R: Okay, yeah, so it's hard to match the energy level of our CMO, I will tell you that. Like compared to him, I'm obviously just gonna be like a slow person walking.
So okay. So Vite is obviously the token for our public blockchain. And it's basically the currency you need to hold in order to perform transactions. One correction to that, you actually don't need to even have Vite in order to send transactions as long as you do a proof of work. But the Vite currency is something you'll hold in order to secure more TPS quota for larger amounts of transactions you want to send per unit of time.
VX is the token for the exchange. Remember we have the public blockchain which is kind of like your information highway. And on top of that you get all these DApps or cars running on it. And then the exchange is but one of those cars.
We're also tokenizing other cities in America, those are DApps. We've got games, those are DApps. So we've got payment systems, those are DApps. And the exchange is a heavy-duty industrial strength DApp. But it is a DApp nonetheless. And the DApp is called ViteX and the token associated with it is VX.
And VX can be used to basically receive proceeds from the exchanges I previously talked about. And what is VCP? VCP is the currency being used on Vite's stores.
In the future as we expand to offer this kind of "store as a service" to other e-commerce platforms they will be able to take their own currencies, or they can choose to take VCP. But VCP is yet another coin issue or another token issue on the Vite chain. That's the difference between these three.
L: Gotcha, very concise as always. Okay so I have a question actually from the live audience. That's a question for Allen, and that is:
Will ViteX be available as its own mobile app, and if so, when would that mobile app be ready. And if you have any special things to say about the app then feel free to do so.
A: Yes, there will be mobile version of ViteX, however, considering the screen size limitation of a mobile device, a full version of ViteX won't be available on Vite mobile app in the near future. The web version of ViteX should meet most of the trading requirements at this time. However, we will have a "lite" version of ViteX in mobile. In other words, we won't offer support for candlestick charts views, but users will be able to purchase or sell crypto tokens by using the app to place buy or sell orders at the best bid price. This trading service will share the same order book with ViteX. This version of mobile ViteX is in development and will be released later.
R: To add to that, to basically have all the full features of the exchange in a mobile app is too much. In fact, that is why we are going to have some basic functions that share the order book and DEX as the full fledged ViteX on the mobile app. One can always visit the full ViteX website from the mobile.
A: Don't recommend using web interface on mobile app because of security issues. The security of browsers in mobile is not fully verified by us. If you use such a browser to visit ViteX on your mobile, you will risk losing your private key and your crypto assets. This is very risky. You should always use ViteConnect when trading on ViteX but unfortunately if you load ViteX website in mobile browser you won't benefit from this feature.
L: By the way, I have to interject here, so ViteX on web. Let's talk about that for a second. And Allen this is a quick question for you:
Was ViteX built in-house? That's a question that actually four of our community members were curious about. What they want to know is was ViteX built in house or did we outsource engineers. And from a technical perspective, what are some differences between our DEX and other DEX'es? Let's be honest I was at Consensus New York and every second booth is an exchange or someone trying to operate an exchange and it just seems like everyone and their mothers is releasing a DEX. So why are we special?
A: Yeah, that's a good question. That's correct. ViteX is completely built on the top of Vite blockchain by the Vite team. It's a DApp, and one keystone of Vite ecosystem. It is the first fully decentralized exchange built on a DAG-based smart contract, where orders are matched on the chain and user's assets are managed on the chain to ensure full transparency in all aspects of the trading experience.
L: Gotcha, and I think I should segue into something important which is security and bad actors. In the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain we all know that bad actors and security is a concern.
Vite, we are saying we are the industrial and public sector organization that provides products that can scale that can hold up to industrial quality security.
So Richard I have a question:
How can wash trading for example be prevented for mining purposes and what are the vulnerabilities we might have considered in the building of ViteX?
R: To answer the second part we built something called ViteConnect which currently allows people to access the web version of ViteX by scanning a QR code on their mobile phone. And this is because we don't want to have people enter their private key or seed phrase through the web browser, which is easily hackable. So this is definitely one security concern that we've taken into account.
Regarding the earning of VX through wash trading, to be completely honest this is not something that is easily trackable. Even for other exchanges, the act of wash trading is difficult to detect.
Like for example if you have five or six different accounts and then you just trade among those six accounts. It's hard to say if that's wash trading or not wash trading. So in this sense this is not something that we're tracking right now. But we're always open to suggestions and ideas from others.
L: So following that though"
Are there are other security problems such as DDoS, hacking, SMS SIM swapping?
R: Yes, so I think that Allen would be able to answer that question. I am happy to take that as well.
A: Yeah yeah, I can take over.
You know for security, ViteX, as a fully decentralized exchange unlike traditional exchanges. ViteX is a decentralized exchange running on a public chain. In order to launch a spam attack, you must have enough quota first, and in order to have enough quota you have to buy a large amount of VITE coins, which is not easy, and will be more difficult considering current VITE price is undervalued. Similarly, as a fully decentralized exchange, assets are not stored in centralized servers, but kept in individual accounts on-chain, secured by user's private keys. This means that each user is responsible for storing his or her own private key safely so that they do not get hacked.
L: So this is where I have to go even deeper for the interest of our community. We have these things called DEX operators and cross chain gateways and this is known to be around the topic of centralization and so Allen could you:
Elaborate as to what our DEX operators do, what is the process for on-boarding and then talk about how that works within our system of decentralization?
A: In ViteX, anyone can be an Operator. Any user can issue a new token on Vite platform, and once a token has been issued, they will need an Operator in order to list trading pairs. Typically, the Operator will need to be relatively big with lots of token resources. Some tokens can be directly issued on Vite platform, which would make the VITE tokens. However, for other coins that are not native to the Vite chain such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, you will need gateways to transfer coins and tokens from one chain to another. As such, gateways play a very important role in our decentralized exchange. Additionally, these gateways also play an important role in centralized exchanges, like Binance. You need gateways to manage these assets.
L: There's a little bit of trust and security that's mixed into the concept of gateway operators and gateways which are definitely necessary for exchanges. Richard could you add some color here about:
1. A more holistic idea of what gateway operators do in Vite?
2. What is our approach to the idea of duplicate trading pairs across zones? Would that be confusing for users?
R: Yeah so yeah just to add to Allen's previous point about how these gateways work. They're basically the entry point from outside of the Vite world into the Vite world. So right now the state-of-the-art solution of such cross-chain transfers still is the gateway model.
So the way we're approaching this is that we ask entities that want to become gateways to be credible, to have history of operating such things, and to basically go through some kind of application process.
And we do ask that our users pay particularly close attention to these gateways before submitting your coins to them. Just because ultimately in the ethos of blockchain you are self-sovereign for your asset. As soon as your asset enters the Vite ecosystem, it is in a completely decentralized world.
But before that, if you have a non-Vite native coin, you do need to deposit a coin with a gateway. So that's how the gateway operates.
And then as far as duplicated trading pairs go, what Luke is referring to, is the fact that operators are able to list trading pairs. And so for example, gateway A might have their own version of bitcoin and gateway B can have their own version of bitcoin.
The way I think about this is that it's kind of like stablecoins. So think about the difference between packs and TrueUSD. So the asset backing these coins are all US dollars but they have different representations. In fact both of them are on the ERC 20.
So the example that I gave is very similar in this vein you could have one representation of bitcoin and another representing another bitcoin. These are sort of a byproduct by the fact that we are decentralized in the sense that many different parties can become gateways.
And this theoretically could be a source of confusion. But the extent of the confusion is no more than the confusion of between TrueUSD and PAX. And in fact I think this can create arbitrage opportunities for interested traders, just like how you can arb for the value differential between the two stable coins I just mentioned.
