I'm excited to hear what Dom has to say today! In 5 minutes I will start "live tweeting" for your amusement.
https://twitter.com/iota/status/1372237017405358084
And we're live! "The most awkward parts of a presentation are the beginning and the end." Even more awkward when you can't get the audience feedback. We're here for you Dom!
Big AMA today, and it might go long because there are many questions. Also have an exciting announcement: the Chrysalis network migration is set for April 21, and the network will go live April 28.
On April 28 we enter the new dawn! There were some unknowns in getting the exact date, and it came down to exchanges. 40-50% of the entire IOTA supply is on exchanges, so they need to be supported in the transition.
Obviously this is a delay from our Q1 estimated timeline/goal, but the most important is to maintain trust and make sure everything/everyone is ready. So now we have a firm date.
Firefly beta release next week: a great way to engage with the community and get your feedback. 300-400 people have been engaged in Chrysalis activities so far, but with Firefly all of you will be able to experience Chrysalis in full!
Firefly is likely early next week and then we can start sending testnet tokens around and experience what Chrysalis is like.
Mana discussion this Friday. On to the AMA.
Q: How resilient is the Tangle to an attack similar to what has been happening on Nano across weeks? A: we are constantly under attack and constantly refining our defenses. Permissioned networks are not as good for ecosystems because they are not battle tested.
Oops! I have a meeting to attend on Zoom!
Over the next few weeks with GoShimmer and implementing all the mana aspects, we can play with attacking it. We want to battle test against all attacks.
Every DLT has the problem of attacks. We all want to enable 50,000 TPS. That's gigabytes of data being transferred, and all networks have to think about how to scale. In BTC or ETH the data bases are getting very large. These attacks help move towards production readiness.
Our solution for these type of attacks is mana. We have thought very thoroughly about these problems. Feeless invites attacks, which has led to rate control mechanisms and mana. On Friday maybe Luigi or Billy can talk about mana.
Q: Can we get an easy-to-install node on Android? Muxxer and Luca complain about using phones as a node, because your node will crumble under high transactions, dropping out of the network and slowing confirmation rate. This happened recently in the Chrysalis testnet.
When it comes to running nodes, we want to decrease the requirements to run an #IOTA node. Ultimately we would like a home device that could run as a node so you don't need a third party to connect to the IOTA network. We want to preinstall on routers.
Think about ways to enable IOTA uses in smart homes (side note: Dom never wants an Alexa, for privacy reasons).
Q: Will IOTA be part of the German digital vaccination card? A: Not sure. UBirch won (congrats!). They use several DLTs, including IOTA, and we don't know which they may use for their vaccination passport--we imagine they will announce on their own. We are in touch with them.
Identity is one of the holy grails. You don't store your data on the Tangle, just the proof of certain statements. The vaccination passport is a subproject, and we are "very much engaging with U.S. counterparts, including the government." We will see what role #IOTA plays.
Identity is one of the most important projects for adoption of #IOTA. Working with some banks on KYC/AML verification to ensure privacy and security.
2021 motto for #IOTA is "Tangible Adoption." You will be able to use IOTA in tangible ways, such as registering your identity on an IOTA app on your phone and use your identity in the IOTA ecosystem. Also #SmartContracts will be an exciting way to utilize IOTA this year.
Q: Coinbase? Predominant in the U.S., but they are expanding into Europe. #IOTA is the largest project in Germany. "Of course we are speaking with all of these large exchanges, and many of them understand the magnitude of Chrysalis." They see that it will be easy for them.
We want to get on more exchanges and to get #IOTA into more ecosystems, such as wrapping IOTA onto #Ethereum. "You will be able to utilize your IOTA tokens in different ways to earn interest, to stake them in various networks." Chrysalis is the enabler for all of that.
The objective is to get on all of the large exchanges. #IOTA has very little adoption in the U.S. exchanges. We have some big work to do there, but we will get there.
With Coordicide there will be a different dust protection. With Chrysalis transition addresses should have >1Mi. So transition all of your <1Mi balances into a larger balance.
Q: Are there other protocols being standardized for IoT? A: Only #IOTA is really targeting the IoT. #SmartContracts are popular, but others are going the #DeFi route while we actually focus on IoT. Few take standardization seriously. We have an OMG mtg next week to progress.
We are already using standards in some of our layer 2 solutions, and our objective is to have the #IOTA protocol developed as a standard. The yellow paper for #Coordicide will push us forward. It will be published with Nectar.
Q: Are there other major announcements besides Chrysalis and Firefly in the following weeks? A: pause. . . if I were to answer this I would get so much hate for doing preannouncements. We have a pipeline of projects: Chrysalis, Coordicide, Smart Contracts, Streams, Access, . . .
Hopefully the day comes where you don't have to ask the #IOTA Foundation about progress because so many companies using IOTA will be telling you about their progress--the ecosystem will become self-sustainable.
Q: OMG standardization update? A: It takes years to standardize a protocol. It just takes time. Here is Mike (head of standardization) replying on Reddit: 
Q: will there be a 3rd party analysis of #IOTA energy usage? A: Blockchain in its current state is not sustainable. That is why we & others have invested so much time to finding alternatives to Proof of Work. No miners, no fees, no wasted electricity = IOTA
Comparisons between #IOTA and #BTC energy consumption should be done by a third party, like a university. We will support that. We are on the right path with our tech. The playing field will be leveled because of environmental concerns, transaction fees, and scalability issues.
We really believe in a greener, more equitable future, and we have to build it together, with all of you in the #IOTA ecosystem.
Q: What are the current hurdles to adoption? #IOTA's strategy is to work on core protocol and building blocks, and to nurture and drive adoption in the ecosystem. We educate corporates, develop PoC's and take an advisor role.
With large companies, they have innovation departments. IOTA is there, in the experimental phase. Big companies have slower innovation cycles than crypto has. Our job is to get the protocol production ready. 1st contact to NDA is about 6 months. We are focused on a few companies.
Dell and Zebra and "a bunch of others that haven't been announced yet" are partners where products are built. Adoption over the next few months will increase exponentially because #IOTA will be production ready, plus Identity, Access, Oracles, Smart Contracts, etc.
#IOTA is a universal protocol that can be used in many different industries. It is an agnostic platform to build on. Many companies need a specific product for a specific solution. We don't have that yet-we are still in innovation phase-but we are moving towards that.
#IOTA adoption has gone really well and companies are very excited for what we have been doing. Relationship building will only increase over the coming months. Plus there are companies looking at IOTA without talking to us.
Q: Incentive to host a node and generate mana as a normal person? A: No big incentive for an everyday user, but we want to get to the point where you will get a built-in node in your router and can participate in the network painlessly.
Q: Why would a company want to buy mana? A: it may be cheaper for them to buy mana for a short time of high throughput rather than buy more tokens, or a company may not really be able to buy tokens at all because due to restrictions around holding cryptocurrency.
Q: What strategy to convince companies to become "infrastructure partners?" A: I think 1 or 2 big companies will announce they have acquired IOTA tokens, and this will create a ripple effect. It is a utility for your company, an investment, and a hedge against inflation.
The narrative of #IOTA value will become clearer as we release nectar. I will be educating our partners on the value proposition of IOTA, moving us out of the speculative asset space to providing utility while being an investable, highly liquid asset. Q2 all about token economics
Q: Any use cases we can test on Nectar? A: we are focused on node implementation. As we move towards nectar we will see many more applications built on the GoShimmer network. There will definitely be use cases to try out. M2M, feeless micropayments. Applications will be built.
Idea: DAO where people can donate to operate satellites or drones. The fund acquires forest and monitors it. No profit intention behind the DAO, just long-term ecologic health. There will be many exciting, crazy ideas for real-world use cases.
Q: Digital Euro based on #IOTA? A: It's possible. There are different ways to do digital euros, such as a simple IOU or something as exciting as algorithmic stable coins (that is where we want to move forward). We can enable both.
Q: will the user of a smart contract get information about which nodes are running it? A: Yes, you will get information about the nodes and can verify the behavior, size, and the identity of the committee members. Ultimate goal is to have an open market of validators.
#IOTA #SmartContracts are flexible. You can have a permissioned network running on top of IOTA, which meets certain corporate requirements, or you can have it permissionless or build your own committee for your specific needs.
Q: does the IF use #IOTA for any internal use cases? A: No, but it makes sense for a depository on Github-put the hash of the commit on IOTA so everyone can verify it. We can do something like Gitcoin to reward open source development. gitcoin.co
Q: Does #IOTA put downward pressure on the price? A: NO! We do not trade. Our role is to build, not to trade or to influence the price in any way. We have very strict rules and guidelines when it comes to sale of iota tokens. The foundation has a broker (Crypto Finance) who sells
Another reason the #IOTA Foundation does not trade is that we would lose focus. We are focused on building the future. Yes, many on the foundation have invested, but we don't trade.
Q: Which podcasts do you listen to? A: I have a man crush on Scott Galloway and the Pivot podcast. Also like "How to save a planet" about climate change solutions. Mostly listen when I'm trying to cook.
Q: What happens to old tokens on the old network that don't get transferred? A: they will remain claimable. Eventually we will let the community decide what to do with unclaimed tokens (burned, donated). The IF is just here to develop the software.
Q: Please share book recommendations. A: OK, will post that soon, but the internet really influenced me. We should have a kind of portal where the community can share their book lists. I've been trying to revise my blog. Maybe this weekend.
Will mana be sold on an open network? The objective is to be flexible and offer freedom to decide. Most companies will acquire tokens to acquire mana with their own nodes.
Q: Will Chrysalis start with autopeering? A: Not sure--we froze the features in February to do the audits. Ask developers on Discord.
Q: Nectar was initially scheduled for April. With Chrysalis in April will Nectar be in May? A: Not sure-I worry about confusing our messaging with so many things happening simultaneously. We will probably have both at the same time-Nectar release is still scheduled for April.
ETAs are indeed ESTIMATES. We have realistic ETAs but there are unexpected factors that can push us back. Ultimately we are working on incredibly complex protocols and have an entire ecosystem to worry about, so we can only do our best with ETAs.
Another question about books-recent reading. Dom recently read a book by Jeff Bezos that was essentially a compilation of shareholder letters. It was interesting to see his focus and how he encouraged failure as a means to progression.
It's difficult for #IOTA to have a core focus because we are working on so many things at once. We are better at focusing and saying "no." An important lesson in life is saying "no" to things you really want to do in order to focus on what matters most.
Dom also a big fan of Howard Marks, a hedgefund manager, who talks about market cycles. He will make a reading list.
We are showing the path and removing as much uncertainty as possible to realize the vision and succeed. In the early days we took 3 steps forward and 2-4 steps backwards. It caused a lot of emotional stress. Now we just move forward on a clear path-it's a new phase. #IOTA
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