[Messari AMA] Michael Chen, Chief Marketing Officer, and Michael Kong, Chief Information Officer, at Fantom

Messari hosted a public AMA with Fantom’s ($FTM) Chief Marketing Officer, Michael Chen, and Chief Information Officer, Michael Kong, in the Messari community group. This is a transcript of the conversation.

Messari: Michael and Michael, thanks so much for hopping in the chat to field questions about Fantom! We have a LOT of questions in the queue, and it will be fun getting through as many as we can over the next hour. Thanks for being here!

Fantom (Michael Chen): Hey guys, pleasure to be here. I know some of our community members have been looking forward to this one, so I hope we can meet those expectations.

Fantom (Michael Kong): Hello all.

Fantom (Chen): Short intro for those who aren't Fantom supporters yet, I'm Michael Chen. Chief Marketing Officer at Fantom. And I have my colleague, Michael Kong, with me. He's the Chief Information Officer at the foundation. Well at this point, I'd say de facto Chief Operations Officer, Chief Strategy Officer, Director, Chief Financial Officer, and much more haha.

Messari: Before we jump into specific submitted questions, can you give us a very brief overview of what Fantom is and why decided you start building it?

Fantom (Kong): Fantom is essentially a software ecosystem, with application, middleware, and of course, consensus layers using aBFT. Fantom was started to provide a more robust, scalable, and secure smart contract platform than existing technologies.

Fantom (Chen): The original idea was sprouted between our team in Australia and South Korea, the founder of Fantom, Dr Ahn Byung Ik, wanted to build a platform which was scalable enough to run supply chain and foodtech use cases on top of — he's also the founder to a foodtech platform called SikSin, which is used in Korea to book reservations and rate restaurants.

Messari: That's great—thank you! We have a few questions about Fantom dapps that I want to start off with. I’ll give them to you rapid-fire and you can answer them in whatever order you choose.

“What do best dapps test on Fantom chain?”

“How many dApps are currently being developed on Fantom? How many will we see announced by eoy? Are developers of these dApps established companies and governments or are they mostly start ups/ICOs?”

“Will the Governance model allow a Dapp to adjust transaction fees? Will it allow a Dapp to adjust the amount needed in order to run a node?”

“Is there any information on transaction fees?”

Go!

Fantom (Kong): Not sure if I really understand the question. Sorry.

Fantom (Chen): Might need some paraphrasing haha — I 'm afraid I don't understand either.

Fantom (Kong): There are a few Dapps currently under development, particularly to do with the issuance of a stable token. We are aiming to get Dapps out there EOY. We are working with a few companies in the space to release them. More details will be coming out.

Yes that is the plan. We have a document on proposed governance for the mainnet that will be released to give more information on how we believe governance should work on the platform.

Fantom (Chen): The amount of dApps I'll hand over to Kong, I was recently speaking to our technical advisor Andre Cronje however, and we've really been pivoting hard into the consensus-as-a-service space. Instead of focusing on our own mainnet/chain which people build dApps on etc., we've also been looking into issuing blockchains for institutions/other projects. We're working on a stablecoin platform, Fantom Statheros, which is a combination of our Lachesis aBFT consensus, TxFlow which is a protocol for increased responsitivity, and Cosmos SDK. Another team we know of is working on it and launching it, in collaboration with us.

Fantom (Kong): Information has been published on transactions fees and block rewards for the network.

Fantom (Chen): Each and every mainnet (because there will be multiple mainnets/chains based on the same codebase) can tailor the requirements and all. Say if a financial institution wants to issue a blockchain, I assume they'd want higher validator node requirements and some more control to ensure that the assets which are on chain are not manipulated. Value of security should be higher than perverse incentives in the form of malicious behavior.

Say we have a dApp or smaller use case issuing their own chain, they'll require less security or token requirements to secure it.

Messari: Next, I want to switch gears and dive into a few partnership-oriented questions. I understand if you can't answer some of them. But I'm curious to hear your answers. Anything related to Ethereum-based projects switching to Fantom?

“Has there been any behind the scenes interest from established Ethereum projects to make the switch over to Fantom?”

Fantom (Chen): I'm not so sure about a switch necessarily, but I know of a fair amount of projects which are willing to operate or issue on both Fantom and Ethereum. Had a really good chat with some friends over the German border today actually.

Asking people to switch over completely is a big step, having them dip their toes and playing around with it to get excited is a very cool first step I think — a lot of people forget or don't know about that possibility haha ;).

Fantom (Kong): Not sure myself. The biggest issue i've heard people have with Ethereum is the slow confirmation times. If we can address that via aBFT and other methods, it should make Fantom more attractive.

We have solidity-compatability via go-lang and rust implementations of the EVM, and the aim is to have solidity-compatability with our new middleware stack being worked on by the University of Sydney and Yonsei University. This should make integrating ethereum-based dapps a lot easier than having to rewrite code.

Messari: This question is hoping for a “scoop” during this AMA. Any unannounced partnerships?

“Does Fantom have any unannounced partners that will deploy dApps on mainnet?”

Fantom (Chen): Just a second, need to call compliance and all the other people we're partnered with to make sure I don't get sued by them for breaking all kinds of NDA's and agreements that are in place.

But you can assume there's not going to be a scoop on that question today.

Messari: You might have the same answer to this question too...

“Any new exchanges planned?”

Fantom (Chen): Haha yeah — same answer.

Messari: One more partnership question: “How many partners are using Fantom Testnet right now?”

Fantom (Chen): I see that's a question from Lukas, love that dude! I know that the teams who are working on that stablecoin which uses Fantom consensus + Cosmos SDK are playing around with the testnet constantly. Need to check who else with Michael I think.

Fantom (Kong): 1. Working with a few companies at the moment. TBA.

2. Hopefully as many as possible.

3. Hopefully as many as possible. But as people know, we are working in Dubai, South Africa, and Australia, as well as elsewhere.

Messari: I grouped a bunch of technical questions together, and I want to dive into those now. Michael Kong, you’re up.

First: “Are there any proposed specs to run a node yet?”

Fantom (Kong): We will probably release some details on recommended hardware, but you should be able to run a node even on a mobile device. However, the more powerful hardware you run, the more rewards you are likely to receive as you will be able to confirm transactions faster if running a validating node.

Fantom (Chen): Network incentivizes good hardware — at the bare minimum you could even run it from a phone but that's not doing the network any good.

Messari: Here's a question on Fantom's 3 token types: “How will the 3 different token types work once the 1st mainnet arrives? Will the bridge be seamless so we won't have to work out if it's a bep2, erc20 or native all the time?”

Fantom (Kong): We want to have a bridge between all three, just like we currently have a bridge between BEP2 and ERC20.

Messari: Question about Lachesis consensus: “When dApps from ethereum or cosmos make use of Lachesis consensus, what does it mean? For example, if you complete an operation on an eth dapp that plugs into lachesis, does lachesis provide finality to the operation and then, Ethereum nodes confirm the operation once again?”

Fantom (Kong): Lachesis consensus determines finality and transaction confirmation. Cosmos's SDK allows us to use their open-source software stack to build applications on.

Messari: Here’s a two-part question about DAGs: “What are the major attack vectors (51% equivalents) in DAGs? If someone told you in 10 years that DAGs never panned out, what would be the likely reasons why?”

Fantom (Kong): As you need 2/3'rds of the total validating power ofthe network to achieve finality, attacker would need >1/3 of the total validating power to prevent finality from being achieved. This would require them to have to purchase a significant amount of FTM and assume the remaining nodes and users don't fork.

Messari: What about a Fantom SDK toolkit?

“How will you assist projects to swap or build their mainnets on top of Fantom? Do you schedule to release a SDK Toolkit?”

Fantom (Kong): We will probably use software tools with Javascript to connect to LAchesis so a user can write, deploy, and run smart contracts.. In fact, we already have some of that available and documented.

Messari: We have a question from Slido about reversing fraudulent transactions: “The governance paper states the ledger is immutable, except in the case of a fraud. Who determines what’s fraudulent? How are transactions reversed in that case?”

Fantom (Kong): Current proposal is that a significant amount of voting power is required to determine what is considered fraudulent or not, so it is a high-threshold. More details on how voting works will be released in a proposed governance document.

Messari: Last technical question is about node push button deployment: “Can you tell us more about the push button deployment of a node/VPS through docker?”

Fantom (Kong): We have a series of deployment scripts to be able to deploy and run nodes without having to go through many steps. This has been documented on the repositories I believe.

Messari: Actually, one more I overlooked from Slido: “How does the Fantom staking mechanism work?” Can you explain Fantom staking briefly?

Fantom (Kong): Users can run validating nodes so long as they fullfil the minimum staking requirement, wich is currently proposed at 3,175,000 FTM. Users should be able to delegate to nodes if they wish. Validating nodes will take a 15% fixed fee, so competition is based on the performance of the node and uptime. There is also the concept of "Proof of Importance" which is a factor that influences a validating node's reward, which includes a measure of performance against other nodes, and the number of originating transactions from that node. This should achieve 1) A "race-to-the-top" of a higher performing network and 2) more users using the network, as well as increased security.

Messari: “Most important question that needs answer, Is mainnet for Q3?”

Fantom (Kong): Q3 is the current aim. More details available here.

Messari: Okay, I grouped a bunch into a short yes-no group that @MHchn and @mkong888 can answer with either a yes or no and maybe a brief explanation when necessary… Ready?

Fantom (Chen): Ready

Messari: “Can we stake Fantom through a mobile app?”

Fantom (Chen): In the current iteration, no.

Messari: “Would FTM be raising fresh capital any time soon? If not in the near future, would FTM management consider a M&A with Hadera if it ever falls on the cards?”

Fantom (Chen): No to all. We have enough runway.

Fantom (Kong): No plans to raise capital.

Messari: “Will staking be available directly in the FantomPay app?”

Fantom (Kong): No. it will be for peer-to-peer transactions.

Messari: “Do you have any contacts with another smart city project, like Singapore for example?”

Fantom (Chen): Contacts — Yes. Agreement, pilots, contracts, or anything in a stage that is far enough to confidently say yes to? No.

Fantom (Kong): Not Singapore to my knowledge, but a number of smart city initiatives in particular Dubai. We want to focus on a few areas first.

Messari: “Is Fantom involved in Dubai expo 2020?”

Fantom (Chen): Involved in Dubai Expo — in what sense? Will we be attending? Pretty sure Ashton will be attending. Are we organizing or co-organizing? No.

Messari: “Is there a recommended hardware specification to Fantom node yet?”

Fantom (Chen): Already answered that above — better hardware = more rewards. But you can run it from a mobile device if you want in theory.

Fantom (Kong): Was previously answered. More details to be released.

Messari: “Will Fantom have its own native oracle provider?”

Fantom (Chen): I believe we're working with a cool oracle provider that everyone knows. But we aren't building any ourselves.

Fantom (Kong): People will be able to write their own via a smart contract.

Messari: "Is there Ledger and hardware integration for the native coin in the works?"

Fantom (Kong): Not sure.

Messari: “Will there be a team moving out to Dubai full time?”

Fantom (Kong): More details on Dubai activities are going to be released.

Messari: “Can you confirm that Fantom will support all ERC types upon mainnet launch? (ERC-223, 721, 777, etc)”

Fantom (Kong): Sorry I don't really understand the question. People should be able to launch their own tokens on top of the Fantom software stack. ERC specifications are specifically for Ethereum.

Messari: Last one: “Are Aergo and Fantom competing for the same type of contracts for the SmartDubai project, or different contracts?”

Fantom (Chen): Both projects are partnered with the Private Office, but I think the aim and scope of activities is different. The Private Office is busy with more than just smart cities. Congratz to Aergo though — they're cool.

Messari: I have a few final questions that didn’t fit into any particular category on their own, but are worth surfacing! Who competes with you?

“Who competes with Fantom? Why is Fantom better?”

Fantom (Chen): Are we in a position where we can say other compete with us, instead of us competing with them? Last time I checked we haven't launched mainnet yet and haven't shown the world what we can do yet! I'd say, who are we competing with? Or to put it into a nicer and less tribal context, who are we looking up to currently? Hashgraph, IOTA, Ethereum, and Cosmos come to mind for me. We think Cosmos is incredibly cool though, and that's also why we worked on that Cosmos SDK compatibility, it's freaking amazing stuff.

Happy to see projects sprout that use elements from both Fantom and Cosmos.

Fantom (Kong): Other smart-contract platforms could be considered competition, we want to be better in the following ways:

1. Faster consensus, in particular, by achieving finality faster through faster propagation of events and voting rounds.

2. Faster middleware stack, with a verifiable computation engine using Isekai, a verifiable compiler and register-based virtual machine, and well as new storage system.

3. Allowing people to easily deploy and run Dapps on top of 1 and 2

Messari: Can you speak to some exciting Fantom use cases?

“What use case apart from smart cities are you most excited about?”

Fantom (Chen): Fantom Statheros, Stablecoins. Very cool and rewarding use case to pursue. Andre tells me all about it, every single day, without failure. I think most of our team is in love with that use case, whereas Innovation Labs is in love with the UAE and Smart Cities ;).

Fantom (Kong): This stablecoin work is pretty awesome at the moment. Consensus seems to work well with transfers between account. Any use case using smart-contracts should to able to work on Lachesis.

Messari: Quick question about the governance paper: “A governance paper has been noticed in the github, but hasn't been announced. Is this a draft or final copy?”

Fantom (Chen): Cats out of the bag lol. People check out Github — that's a pleasant thought.

Fantom (Kong): Our current proposal, subject to community approval.

Messari: And of course the question everyone is asking: “Is mainnet on time in Q3 or delayed?” You said Q3, right? ...not delayed.

Fantom (Kong): That's been previously answered many times. Q3 is the aim and we want to come out with fastest consensus we can come up with.

Messari: This question is pretty open-ended, but any updates? “Any update on Fantom Pay?”

Fantom (Chen): Can you give me some time to come back to that question? I don't want to make announcements about announcement so I'll keep it vague intentionally. If I say ''Cool stuff coming up'' it's going to be an announcement about an announcement. So let me pretend the question is not there mmkay? Please read between the lines guys!

Messari: Love it — thanks guys. We're coming up on the hour mark, and we've soldiered through a lot of questions. I really appreciate your time. This has been great

Before we conclude, two quick things:

Do you have any thoughts or comments on something not asked about here?

And where can we continue conversations about the questions and answered discussed here?

Fantom (Chen): I would prefer to focus on what we can build on the tech, or on the mainnets, instead of asking ''when mainnet''. Launching mainnet is not the one end to all problems in the world — the community (especially the developer community) needs to nurture after that, and we need to keep improving and adding on cool things such as the new virtual machine and middleware. Can one take Cosmos SDK, TxFlow, and Lachesis, launch it, and call it ''the mainnet'' we've all been waiting for? Yeah sure, be my guest. We want to do a bit more, make the consensus faster, add in more of our own sauce, etc.

Fantom (Kong): I would encourage people to visit our GitHub organization, which is open source, to see the current developments on consensus.

Fantom (Chen): Q3 is still the aim, goal, internal assumption, striving, thing I wake up thinking about every morning when I brew my espresso. Can I guarantee it with 100% that it will happen on X date at Y time, and not maybe a few days or weeks later due to unforeseen circumstances? Nope, let's be real, nothing in life is set in stone. But RIGHT NOW: it's still looking hot. That's the closest thing I can give to a concrete answer, to reassure people, to give more than a vague and evasive answer.

Messari: That's great, and on that note—thank you both again so much for your time. This was very informative and a lot of fun!

Fantom (Chen): It was indeed a lot of fun — thanks for being a great host. Till next time I think?

Fantom (Kong): Thanks for organising the event!