Part 2/3 of the AMA video transcript series.
As a reminder:
L = Luke Kim, Vite Labs CMO
R = Richard Yan, Vite Labs COO & Co-founder
A = Allen, Vite Labs Technical Director
L: It seems like we're getting into the weeds of token economics. In particular, ViteX has some attractive ways to earn VX and be participants in the community, the system itself. I'm seeing quite a few questions on livestream, and I want to touch on something quite specific.
According to our release schedule, we say that on the launch date there will be 477220 VX marked for release. How would that work exactly? Does that mean that on day one users would receive higher amounts of VX compared to day 2, 3, 10, so on? Is that how things will work? Could we just clarify for the user base how VX will be released on launch dates and forwards?
A: Exactly. Once the mining functionality is enabled, the daily VX tokens released will strictly follow the schedule, where in the first day a total of 477,220 VX will be distributed, and on the last day of the second year 37,050 VX will distributed. Essentially, this is a falling distribution curve and each day the amount of VX released will be less than the previous day. After 2 years, all VX will be 100% released and there will be no further supply.
L: I got a very basic question for Richard:
Could one purchased coins on ViteX with a credit card?
[brief interruption to announce AMA question winners]
R: ... but back to the credit card question. We are currently working on an integration with a stable coin provider who also has provided a function of purchasing crypto with a credit card. This is traditionally what's called a crypto on-ramp. Once that's been integrated, our wallet will provide this functionality.
L: ...so we're talking about ViteX and I think that's worth exploring. One question is:
Do we plan to list VX on other exchanges? Do we have plans to integrate ViteX with other exchanges such as Binance or Binance DEX? Do we plan to list VX on other exchanges and would our exchange integrate with other exchanges at all?
R: So we are definitely interested in getting listed on other exchanges. There's no reason why not. It's just another coin and we want liquidity for our users. So there will definitely be effort in that regard. But the first exchange where the VX will be traded is obviously ViteX exchange.
As far as the second question, which is, will Binance DEX be somehow integrated with our exchange. We're currently exploring the possibility of also supporting BEP2 in our wallet. As you know, our multi-chain wallet now supports all Vite native coins. It supports all ERC20 as well as GRIN which is notoriously difficult to integrate.
We're looking to integrate with more chains as well and BEP2 is one such example. That's number one. Number two: for a Binance supported coin to enter into our ecosystem we basically need to have a gateway of some sort that sponsors that. And once we have that gateway then I don't see why we won't be able to get the Binance BEP2 coins listed on our exchange.
And in terms of DApps sharing with other exchanges we're certainly happy to facilitate that. In fact the entire code base for ViteX is open source. We are working with other centralized exchanges to see if they are interested in expanding their product offering to other DEXes.
This benefits them in different ways. Number one, this is a new product that they're offering to their existing customer base. Number two, the technology that we have built is on a fast and free chain, so the centralized exchange can get all these features for free. And number three, if there's some kind of dapps sharing between our ViteX and their version of ViteX then this is a win-win situation. Their users can come and trade our coins and vice versa. So we're definitely open to that possibility.
L: There's an interjection in the live stream and this question has two parts:
How will we make volume on our exchange and also, would we be doing IEOs on our exchange. I feel this relates to some questions fielded by four of our community members. Basically will be ViteX support initial sale of other projects and that includes IEOs or IDOs. Would you be able to clarify this, Richard?
**R:**Yeah absolutely. So as I mentioned earlier listing is mining, so we clearly encourage others to lists tokens on the platform. If it's a Vite native coin then there's no need for a gateway. If there's a non-Vite native coin such as BTC or ETH, then you would need a gateway.
But the question is, do we do IEOs, IDOs, and so forth. The difference between a listing and an IDO/IEO is simply PR in my opinion. So I don't think the Vite team will be endorsing any particular coin that comes on our platform. I think will be supportive of that effort but that support will be symmetrical between all these different coins. So I think that, to the extent that IEOs on centralized exchanges would involve lots of PR on the exchanges part, I don't think that's something that we'll be looking into. That means I think we'll be tweeting about it, we'll be sharing this information with our community as this is a benefit to our community, meaning more coins are coming to the system. But I don't think we're going to pay particularly close attention to one coin over another, so I think that answers the question, right?
L: Yeah, yeah, totally. And then another audience question is:
Will you list Vite as a BEP2 token on the Binance chain for liquidity in the future as many blockchain projects did, would that be something in our roadmap?
R: Yeah, that is a possibility as well. If we were to do that we would probably participate in the buying and DEX competition. I think that's certainly a possibility. But that's a lot of work both from someone from the engineering side but mostly from the operating side. So that's something we're looking very strongly at.
It's also a trade-off of resources. For example, developing and operating the exchange that we have now, namely ViteX, is already a significant amount of work. So we will definitely explore that particular option.
I think the earlier question that I actually haven't addressed in full is about volume. And I just want to address it really quickly here. The key about volume is few different things. Number one is the types of coins being traded. Number two is the trading experience. And number three is just the user base. I would say out of all three, perhaps the last one is the most important.
We're trying to expand the user base through BD (business development), through DApp sharing with other potential platforms and so forth. But the most importantly though, I think the fact that ViteX basically provides its holders the benefit of holding the coins and getting income from the exchange is quite unique and we think that that will actually encourage lots of participation.
L: As we jump from technical to non-technical question and back and forth. Allen, I have one question for you. I think this is a very important question because it fits with our BD roadmap as well of interoperability and partnership making.
Will there be APIs released to allow other crypto projects, blockchain projects, to incorporate trading within their own websites and how would that be done through ViteX?
A: Yeah, definitely there will be APIs. The ViteX API is designed for this kind of purpose. Other crypto projects who would like to create their own exchanges can easily develop their own exchange web UI and then plug into the order book and order matching engine on ViteX by calling the ViteX API. In this manner, any 3rd party decentralized exchange will have independent look-and-feel and the same order book, on the top of ViteX technology and Vite public chain.
L: Yeah I mean Vite DEX is our most powerful DAapp right now. Let's see I think this is about time to release our winning questions from our community members. But rest assured we haven't hit everything that you're curious about so we will go over time. But in case any of you have to step away from the computer the three winning questions that we have from community members submissions are:
Number one: how do we mitigate the risk of DEX operators running away with users' coins. This question touches on the concept of DEX operators, the concept of a full decentralization, partial centralization, and the necessity of cross chain gateways to run a truly global fast DLS and scalable ecosystem in blockchain.
The second question we want to reward is, will there be APIs released to allow other crypto projects to incorporate trading within their websites -- this one which Allen just addressed. And actually we would love to hear from you if you're part of a project, if you're part of a product, that would love to work with us.
And thirdly, the question which we thought was most astute was, how do you deal with security problems such as hacking, DDoS, and SMS SIM swapping because the truth is centralized exchanges or any centralized system is vulnerable to corruption and to comfortability so part of our value proposition when we say decentralized or DEX is that we are more or less incorruptible at least compared to the existing players. So all in all, these are very good questions that we received, and again we received so many good ones so if you didn't win this it doesn't mean you're not special, it means there's only three places for winners right now.
For the audience in YouTube chat, you can hit us up after this AMA.
Your question of, will you list Vite as a BEP2 token on Binance chain as many other publics did, that was a pretty good question and I think it opened up conversation so you get a reward.
The second from our live chat, and that question was, how will we make volume on the exchange and would we be doing IEOs and that led into another topic of IDOs and many other types of token events.
And the third question that we have from the livestream audience which we thought was pretty good and is a very non-technical question. The third question is how did you survive during the bear market and what are your future challenges. This question is either the easiest or the hardest to answer depending on what you know. I know quite a few partnership managers and CMOs and blockchain friends of mine who are in sinking ships and the fact that we survived last year is a pretty good thing. Richard and Allen can you both speak to that.
Can we talk about why we won last year and why we're gonna continue to win?
R: The bear market is still not over, and I don't know if we fully survived. I'm just kidding. I mean, to be honest with you, it's quite simple. Many projects spend all of their money on marketing or yachts or getting Tom Cruise to speak on their sessions. And we don't do that. We spend all of our money on actual development and making sure DEX comes out.
I mean, recently I was in a chat talking to someone else comparing us to another project in another East Asian country which also uses DAG and then I went to that project's Medium page and checked out what they have, and they have absolutely nothing. I think projects like that can probably create short-term focus and attention from the community but they won't last in the long run. Ultimately, I think the projects that last are the ones that have produced. And I think this will be our strategy going forward.
What I find puzzling is that I think this is actually the easiest thing to do, and that is, say something and then just do it. Do what you promised that you're gonna deliver. The hard thing is actually to you say you're gonna do X and keep dangling that carrot in front of the donkey and not delivering. I feel that for us is hard.
So if there's any secret sauce it would be that philosophy that we follow and we're just going to continue following that philosophy going forward.
L: How about you Allen?
A: Actually, I want to say something about the technical development in the future. After ViteX gets released, we will probably release our mainnet in Q3 2019, ahead of schedule. This will be a big milestone in Vite development roadmap. We believe when the timing is right, ViteX has been used widely, and Vite blockchain can handle a large amount of transactions, that means Vite mainnet will be about to launch. After that, I can share something new, we will develop something called Vite 2.0. This will be sexy and what we are gonna push forward in the next year. I can share a little bit more about that. The technology will be related to cross-chain capabilities built into Vite 2.0 protocol. In Vite 2.0 you can share assets with each other. Vite blockchain will be at the top level of the cross-chain protocol and handle the overall consensus via the snapshot chain. This definitely will be something exciting and we will have till the end of this year and next year.
R: Just to add to that. There are a few different priorities we're exploring right now.
Number one is obviously the decentralized exchange.
Number two is something we call public chain for public good. This is the government sector strategy that we're pursuing. We don't see a lot of blockchain use cases in public sector. And obviously we're pushing on with our multi-chain wallet and in addition to that, we're also pushing a payment solution based on a stable coin, a native stable coin on the Vite chain and what Allen referred to something called Vite 2.0 which is basically the next phase in our roadmap. It has a lot to do with cross-chain functionalities but I think more technical details which will be released a little bit later.
L: Just to sprinkle a bit of detail. If anybody in our audience knows a king, a mayor, a president, a union leader, or something like that, you let us know because we were the first to pilot this historical first project with Syracuse New York in which we designed a token economy for a city so that the mayor could raise his own funds for infrastructure and social projects.
We've already submitted applications and proposals to the West African Monetary Institute, to the European Union, to Rhode Island, to various other parties, UNICEF, about public financing, nonprofit financing through blockchain.
Anyhow we need to continue this Q&A, so stay active on the live chat. To bring it all back, I have one question which is, just so everybody's clear here:
How would a project get listed on ViteX and do we from our team have any requirements, mandatory requirements, which the team must meet to get listed on ViteX? This one's for you, Richard.
R: Currently there are no requirements. I mean it's kind of like, you know, the American First Amendment of free speech. What is considered free speech? Is hate speech free speech? The problem is that once you set a bar somewhere it's very easy for that bar to enter the slippery slope and then ultimately speech gets censored. What we're trying to do here is that we're not censoring any coins right now, we're not endorsing any points right now, and we're basically following the blockchain ethos of being fully open and transparent.
L: So following that question, this is a question for Allen:
What do you think of large transaction volume, scalability, as in will our DEX be capable of supporting a large volume and a hugely growing community at a very fast rate because, let's be honest, I am the CMO, I want to believe that our DEX will be the most popular DEX forever and will be the dominant industry player forever and so if that happens, I mean, can we handle it technically?
A: Yeah, absolutely. Everybody cares about the TPS. So I'm gonna share something here. TPS is transaction volume. For a decentralized exchange, TPS depends on how powerful the underlying blockchain is. Since Vite is a DAG-based, super fast public chain, ViteX, which is built on top of it will have the same benefits. Super-fast order matching and high scalability is the typical characteristics of ViteX. Compared to the low order processing throughput of other DEXes -- some of them are at single digit level, ViteX is capable of handling at least 100 orders per second. And, also please remember this is just the very first version, we have the confidence to improve this throughput number to a higher stage in the future.
