Thread by @baconesq

Overview of @WithoutTheRope weekly AMA in the $STRONG Telegram ⬇️⬇️⬇️

$STRONG Q: In the Service 2 contract you said it will have rerouting without claiming, but will there be a function to auto make nodes at every 10 strong earned?

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope The claim routing feature will work just like the current “claim to StrongPool or your wallet” feature. It will allow you to simply stake into other pools (like the $ETH 2.0 pool), but there will be more pools to choose from. (1/2)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope The big addition here is, if you have enough STRONG when you claim to create a particular kind of node (10 STRONG for Ethereum 1.0 and DVPN, less for others), then you will be able to create a new node, instead of claiming into your wallet. (2/2)

$STRONG Q: What is the exact amount of $FTM and $MATIC one time grant?

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope Polygon has so far committed $15k of $Matic in their one time grant. Fantom has discussed a higher amount, but we don’t have the exact amount. Polygon will launch first. (1/x)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope That brings up the question of “why don’t blockchains support their full nodes?” (Ah, a question within a question within an answer.) (2/x)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope The reason StrongBlock exists - indeed, our mission - is because blockchains as a whole tend to only reward Validators / Block Producers. And for most chains, becoming a Validator is not only expensive (3/x)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope (often millions of dollars in their native token), it’s also often a “who you know” issue.
With full nodes - which provide access to the mainnet transactions and relieve congestion for queries, among other things - most chains don’t (4/x)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope provide native rewards. Instead, they want the nodes to work for free. If that sounds like an oligarchy, it’s because it is.
So, long story short: most chains we’re talking with don’t have native support for full nodes. So, we offer rewards, (5/6)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope which means we need to generate them from deploying the treasury and supplementing that with grants. But that’s something we’ve invested heavily in with time, and soon with capital. (6/6)

$STRONG Q: Can we add option to pay, 30, 60 or 90 days so we save on these crazy gas fees?

$STRONG A: Ah, Ethereum gas fees. They seem to have gone up above 100 gwei and not come back down ever since the Ethereum Altair update a few weeks ago, which mainly affected Ethereum 1.0 validators). And with $shib activity, there is also often more (1/x)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope ETH being burned than created on any given day.
And with increased NFT activity, there are now many more times of high congestion. It’s starting to feel like driving in LA traffic, which Elon Musk called “soul-crushing”. (2/x)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope The protocol gets crushed by high gas fees as well.
But I digress. The simple answer is: In the Service 1 contract, there’s no way to consolidate paying for fees. This is something that, while not yet in Service 2, is now a possibility. (3/3)

$STRONG Q: Are the ideas you've been brainstorming with the swiss economist still up to date or have you moved on from that?" And if you have moved on from them, why? Thanks!

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope We have several amazing advisors. Our swiss-based advisor typically focuses on economics. He also tends toward being an $ETH maximalist. That does NOT mean the main Ethereum 1.0 or 2.0 chain is the only solution. (1/3)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope His idea of a gradual decay in a rewards contract - which still gives a great return - is incorporated into the Service 2 contract. We’ve implemented and tested it, and added a number of parameters to tweak; (2/3)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope the result will be that we shouldn’t ever have to introduce any quick declines in rewards. Fair and lucrative for everyone. (3/3)

$STRONG Q: Is there any plans to have a rest api to retrieve node data so devs can build a native app instead of using the browsers dapp to track their nodes and possibly even claim things in the future and any other relevant features

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope Thanks for the question Kay. With the introduction of the Service 2 contract, we will be able to isolate and secure access to node data; that’s the reason all of our API’s are protected behind multiple layers of security. (1/x)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope We’re looking forward to providing the ability for people to create their own native apps. And of course that leads into the discussion of why it’s highly likely that there will be a StrongChain in 2022. (2/4)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope That would allow for an ecosystem to support “decentralied democracy” to strengthen both a StrongChain and other blockchains, and allowing the ability for everyone to participate in Validation and Block Production, and (3/4)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope build a thriving 3rd party open source set of applications around it. (4/4)

$STRONG Q: Can you give us an indication what the floor reward rate will be for the oldest nodes. Will it be more than half? Or infinitely go down in percentage decrease.

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope The decay rate would have a delay for older nodes before it goes into effect. For newer nodes, they would even likely start off slightly higher than the current reward model, then decay gradually over the typical payback time, with the same (1/2)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope basic effect. It’s after that the rewards will start to decay. Will have more details about it when we launch in a few weeks. And again, this is tweakable for each new node protocol that will be launched. It will start with Polygon. (2/2)

$STRONG Q: is there any discussion around approaching the XRPL Foundation to make a deal to launch additional validators for the XRPL? The $XRP community is quite large, would bring a lot of new interest to Strong and they have an immediate need for more validators

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope They do have a large and loyal community! We are blockchain neutral. We simply want to launch nodes and validators for any blockchain we can support. Ideally, they would provide some sort of support for nodes, but we are finding that it won’t be (1/2)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope necessary, especially if we can launch validators - full or fractional on our side - and use the rewards to supplement other rewards.

So, it’s time for us to reach out!

$STRONG Q: Hydra is releasing eth bridge in near future. Full EVM compatibility. Bridge will be one click ERC20 -> HRC20. EVM dApps can run on hydra. Requires their browser extension. Is this something that Strong could be migrated over to for avoiding the high gas fees?

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope We have looked at migrating to other chains to reduce gas. We’re coming to the conclusion that there are too many liquidity, adoption, community, migration, compatibility and other challenges to forklift our rewards model.(1/2)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope That’s why we’re actively modeling a new chain. (2/2)

$STRONG Q: wondering if youd be interested in reaching out to VAIOT (vaiot.ai/en) in attempts of an agreement to provide validators for their AI Intelligence Service. They are interested in validators but are looking specifically only for ones they can trust (1/2)

$STRONG Q: They have partnership with IBM and I believe they'll become one of the biggest projects in this space, so if an agreement could be conceived between both parties I think it'd be mutually beneficial. (2/2)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope I will add VAIOT to the list. I am not familiar with them. So many chains! This sounds quite intriguing though for launching trusted validators. That’s one of our biggest gripes about blockchain validators: keeping them locked down and secure.

$STRONG Q: any updates on sustainability model?

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope See above and over the more recent AMA’s regarding the decay arc rewards model, deploying capital and using the rewards to supplement, and a StrongChain. And also maybe another token. (1/2)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope BIG discussions with a top exchange and other partners going on about that starting next week. (2/2)

$STRONG Q: Can we get any sort of alpha on what the plans are to prevent a walled garden with a strong block specific chain. How do we keep inflows from elsewhere going and healthy if we exit $ETH for a Strong specific chain

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope We’ll be meeting on this over the next few weeks. It will likely be EVM compatible and have bridges and liquidity pools to keep everything moving.

$STRONG Q: Is there a plan to monetize our $Eth nodes in the near future? We have a ton of them at this point, I would assume we could start putting them to good use!

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope Yes. We are talking with different enterprise and consulting groups about this.

$STRONG Q: What enterprise partnerships can we expect? Any news to fire up the troops?

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope Not sure how enterprise partnerships will fire up the troops though. I spent years on the Enterprise side, starting with Oracle, and things move glacially slow there. Much more movement and promise within the blockchain side itself.

$STRONG Q: With the rapid pace of change it we would be interested to learn more about what your business development efforts look like... If there is anything the community can do to further these efforts we would also love to hear from you how best we could focus our attentions

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope What the community can do is bring attention to chains you think look promising, and see if someone in the community already has a connection there. We work through our advisors and partners, but there are SO many opportunities out there!

$STRONG Q: If you could have this community focus on 2 thing that would further the mission you have for StrongBlock what would they be?

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope
1. Look for new ways for StrongBlock to grow and thrive.
2. Don’t pay attention to FUD.

$STRONG Q: Will/Has Strongblock looked into bring NaaS to blockchains that are ISO20022 compliant?

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope Yes.

$STRONG Q: What currently is your largest single bottleneck impacting the pace of development for Strong Block.

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope The Mythical Man Month: bringing on new people means they need to learn from the current people. That has happened in project development since the dawn of software. But we are very carefully growing our team and contractors. Big addition next week.

$STRONG Q: Can you publish an updated roadmap?

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope Things change as the market and technology change. What I can tell you for now -as we’ve been discussing-is:
Through the end of 2021:

1. ETH 2.0 Smart Contract audit with Hacken starts Monday. Expected to go live during the week of November 15th. (1/2)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope
2. Service2 Smart Contract audit starts next week, and will take longer (its much bigger and more complex) and will go live after ETH 2.0 It will include $MATIC
3. $FTM will go live after that
4. More pools and node partnerships will be announced (2/3)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope The SB merch store will go live next week while we wait for the results of the ETH 2.0 & Service 2 Contract audits.
We have 3 auditors were working with. We can only announce Hacken. Well announce the others after we’ve signed contracts next week (3/3)

$STRONG Q: Security for Compromised accounts with Authenticator system and lock account by support to secure nodes , will something like this be possible in the future?

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope Yes. We are looking at that and node migration from Service 1 to Service 2.

$STRONG Q: You said that $15K of Matic was provided as a one time grant - I'm conscious this amount is really low. How will this help anything?

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope Most of the questions today are about the MATIC grant. We published the information in August. It hasn’t changed. That’s exactly what we’ve been talking about today in the AMA: most chains DO NOT support their nodes. (1/2)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope We have therefore worked out a way to supplement them via treasury deployments. It looks even better than depending on grants from other chains. (2/2)

$STRONG Q: any news about strong tokens to be on @binance and others?

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope We are in discussions, but cannot make announcements. We’re already on @kucoincom, which is now the #3 exchange. They are very happy with us, and we have other things planned within their ecosystem.

$STRONG Q: can you confirm that if you fractionalize nodes they will be on other blockchains or even our own blockchain? The idea sounds awesome and helps with inclusion and growth

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope What you described sounds complicated! With nodes, it will likely be a “light” version, where you have more nodes with lower contribution cost. With Validators, the fractionalization will be as if you had - more nodes. (1/2)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope Same with the approach for ETH 2.0 pool - each contribution is treated as a separate transaction, and will have claim all. (2/2)

$STRONG Q: As ETH is the "cash" in our wallet its the one to always depreciate, would it be possible for people to claim node rewards in other tokens such as Eth instead of Strong this way more Strong is left in the protocol? Would this help with the scarcity issue for the strong

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope Yes. At first, they will only be ERC-20 compatible (for the first release of Service 2). Over time, we’ll be adding non-ERC-20 tokens for rewards as well. The wallets are much better at allowing you to switch between chains now; (1/2)

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope it’s still a bit complex for users, but we have a team member working on that as well. (2/2)

$STRONG Q: Will the strongblock merch store contribute to node rewards in any way?

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope All profits from the merch store will go to charity, not rewards.

$STRONG Q: Does the decaying model drop rewards to 0 over time?

$STRONG A: No. It just keeps decaying asymptotically.

$STRONG Q: You mentioned above that audit for Service 2 starts soon, and it will take long. So we can expect this even after eth 2.0 releases?

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope The Service 2 audit will start next week, and will perhaps take 3-5 business days longer than the ETH 2.0 contract. So, week of 11/15 for ETH 2.0 launch, likely two weeks after for Service 2 and polygon launch (US Thanksgiving holiday in between).

$STRONG Q: How many polygon nodes will be available at early access launch?

Will we be able to compound polygon nodes?

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope For the pilot of Polygon and Service 2, everyone with a Metal NFT will have access.
Regarding compounding, this is part of routing - claiming to create another node without sending it to your wallet.

$STRONG Q: What happens when grant tokens run out on new protocols like $Matic while the nodes remain online?
Do grant tokens have any relationship to the projects you are pursuing? Since nodes in theory will work with or without grant tokens

$STRONG A: @WithoutTheRope As I said earlier in the AMA today, grants are a small part of how we will be funding rewards.

That's it from this weeks AMA - thank you @WithoutTheRope - some big things to look forward to this month!

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