For the first AMA of 2022, Dan Friedman started off by updating the community on work behind the scenes. He revisited the topic of DEX listings and that the priority is to get Ergo listed on several major DEXs - like Sushiswap, Uniswap, etc. These types of listings will go a long way towards increasing volume and accessibility of ERG and create a way to onboard more people to Ergo. Details on this work will be available to the community as work is completed.
With regards to education initiatives and products, Dan updated the audience with the news that he is in the final stages of negotiating a “relationship, potentially a partnership, with a highly accredited university.” This relationship will focus on building education projects with the Ergo Foundation and these products will be available in person and online. Dan reiterated how important these products will be for attracting even more people to the Ergo brand and ecosystem. Because discussions are ongoing, details about the relationship are not yet available for the public.
Lastly, Dan discussed his focus on creating financial products for Ergo. He reminded the audience to watch the recent Ergo Pulse episode that featured ErgoLend’s Chris Ray. He also revealed to the community that he is in discussions with several entities about creating various financial products as a way to create more utility for Ergo holders (specifically, devising ways for them to make passive income).
Joseph Armeanio’s opening statements included a reminder about registration for the upcoming ErgoHack. He mentioned that there are already some interesting proposals that involve the mixer and hopes for a lot of interesting dApps to come out of the event. The turnover rate from previous ErgoHacks has been really impressive and he is happy to see new developers join the community as a result.
Mark Glasgow also joined the AMA this week and talked about his work with the Sigmanaut program and its goal to develop more community marketing for Ergo. Ultimately, these endeavors aim to attract more talent to Ergo as the ecosystem grows.
AMA Questions and Summary
The following is a summary of questions posed by the audience during this AMA. Last week Dan, Armeanio and Mark answered questions on mining decentralization, marketing, the need for education products, the naming of projects on Ergo, bridges, venture capitalists, scaling solutions and so much more. The community jokingly suggests Dan wrap his car in Ergo swag and Dan graciously accepts the idea. He said he would let the community even pick the car before doing a photoshoot at scenic locations throughout Japan! To view the full AMA, please head over to Ergo’s Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvaL_7KQ8AQ
How do you tackle mining centralization? How will Bitcoin survive when emissions complete, transaction fees get high, or have huge blocks?
Answered by Joe Armeanio
- Preventing mining centralization
- Ergo needs to deliver value
- When looking at chains that get 51% attacked, for the most part there is usually rentable hashrate available
- Chain is dead or hibernating
- Need to maintain value
- It protects the chain from 51% attacks
- Do that by building on top of Ergo to make it useable
- If you have a chain that shares an algorithm with another blockchain that is larger, like ETH and ETH classic used to, you had one chain delivering a lot of value and the other is more stagnant
- Security differences need to reflect that value
- Was profitable at one point to rent hashrate and point it at another chain and then siphon value double spent
- Bitcoin
- When emission runs out, leave that answer to someone else who will still be around
Answered by Mark Glasgow
Tackling mining centralization
Smart pills in the first hackathon
GetBlok who are testing the smart contracts
Can achieve mining decentralization through techniques like these
Bitcoin
- Doesn’t think anyone is really thinking about that right now
- Doesn’t think transaction fees will be enough but by that time, who knows
Ergo has been in freefall for months and you think marketing should be introduced slowly?
Answered by Mark Glasgow
- Ergo’s marketing director has been speaking with a few PR agencies and a communication agency
- Set up an incubator project to help communication between Ergo Foundation and community developers - make it more cohesive
- Website rebranding
- Sigmanauts programming will help with community marketing
Answered by Dan Friedman
- Ergo Twitter now has 50k followers!
- Big accomplishment for the marketing team
- Working to make it more engaging
- We are talking to a PR and media company
- Long time business acquaintance of Dan’s
- With a great track record
- Figuring out an optimal strategy
- Get our PR and media to the next level
- We’re going to outline spokespeople for the ecosystem
- Media strategy of what we will and won’t promote
- This is happening now
- Stay tuned
Answered by Joe Armeanio
- What does a crypto do?
- Ergo is putting a lot together
- DEX is coming
- NFT marketplace is available
- Building tooling on Ergo
- In new year, expect to see more growth
- Can foresee more marketing on top of Ergo
- As the system develops and more systems build on top, there’s more features, more functionality
- Useful tools that people can access
- Need to provide the right kind of experience that draws people in
Why do we focus on education? This clearly came from Cardano. We are not Cardano and we don’t need to ourselves into schools like Cardano.
Answered by Mark Glasgow
- We don’t focus on education because of Cardano
- Ergo is a research based blockchain
- It’s new tech
- Need to teach developers how to use so that people can build on it
Answered by Joe Armeanio
- eUTXO is new
- It’s a new smart contract framework
- Multiple chains are leveraging work of EVM
- ETH did a good job of that
- Creating open source tooling and libraries
- It brought in a lot of development talent
- Didn’t happen overnight
- eUTXO is younger
- We are in initial phases of putting together manufacturing process
- As we build and create an open source community
- We get tools and libraries
- The barrier to entry will get lower and lower
Answered by Dan Friedman
- Lots of companies use education to promote and develop their products
- When you start with education you can onboard a lot of new people to use your product
- Education creates an on-ramp
- There are more people that want to know about blockchain and what it does
- There is a much bigger audience that wants to be on-boarded without being bombarded by information
- Don’t want to intimidate people; education lowers barriers
- Talks about his initial experience and entry into blockchain. Needed to understand why blockchain was being touted as the next big thing
- Education will not only help bring people into the ecosystem, but educating in general is something that the blockchain movement needs to do.
- For law makers so that they understand it
- So that people can learn
Is there a plan for having someone in a developer relations position? Hopefully creating content for developers.
Answered by Mark Glasgow
- Recently created more bounties for tutorials
- Started an ErgoDocs site: docs.ergoplatform.org
- On the lookout for more technical writers
Answered by Joe Armeanio
- Have talked to Alex about this and it’s a matter of finding the right type of person
- Alex has thought of maybe a director of education
- Also considered the potential of bringing on a developer that helps with new projects
- They could open source tutorials, etc
- Trying to find the right person
Any thoughts on a naming convention for Ergo projects? Naming everything ErgoSomething does not seem good.
Answered by Mark Glasgow
- ErgoPad team has promised to push people to drop using the name Ergo for new projects
- Definitely recommending people to move away from it
Answered by Dan Friedman
- Thinks it would be fun to have an app that generates cool names that don’t have Ergo in them
Can we get your opinions on VC? Is there any intention to attract VCs into the ecosystem?
Answered by Joe Armeanio
- It’s a core protocol - that Ergo decided to do a fair launch
- Because it’s fair access, it means any VC can start accumulating ERG at any time on the open market
- You have a token that has been live on the open market
- If a VC wanted to come, it’s not an issue
- In terms of project launches, VCs can accelerate the path to market
- Can see the appeal of it because you have market access already lined up
- Hard to do with a fair launch
- This slowly builds up a community and attract developers
- Can see use case for VC
- Trade off is that you often have someone who has price control power
- It is a potential adversary for anyone who builds on top of them
- The power within VC’s is often highly centralized
- Most users don’t seem to care
- Finds this a bit sad
- Thinks that tokenomics matters
- Not saying that VC’s are bad actors and/or don’t want to build value
Answered by Dan Friedman
- This has been coming up a lot
- In blockchain, some people are vilifying VC’s
- And yes, price control is not what we need by VCs
- We also need to be realistic
- They are not all evil
- The problem isn’t VCs - it’s predatory business practices
- Knows some very good and fair VCs that are adding value to the ecosystem
- There are some VCs that have given a bad name to VCs
- Should not be turned off from VCs
What’s the development state of scaling solutions on Ergo? If we were to see a sudden rise in popularity and traffic - is the dev work needed for something like Cardano’s Hydra in the pipe already?
Answered by Mark Glasgow
- Scala hub is working on Plasma
- Other discussions - knows that we are mentioned in Hydra whitepaper
- Updated the ErgoDocs as well to show how much is possible
- See tutorials from Scala Hub
Answered by Joe Armeanio
- We have a lot of flexibility on this
- A lot of pretty cutting edge stuff is being worked on and Kushti has been sharing some of this
- Haven’t seen end-all, be-all scaling solution yet in blockchain
- There is a lot of interesting stuff in papers and in trials
What bridges are being worked on? Interoperability is everything in crypto space.
Answered by Mark Glasgow
- Have the SOL bridge being worked on by Susy.One which uses wormhole
- Will bring SOL, USDT, GTON, and more - a total of 7 assets
- A bridge with Conceal Netowrk is also being built
Answered by Joe Armeanio
- Wormhole framework is used by a lot people in the industry
- Potentially opens up a lot of interoperability
Will there be an updated roadmap?
Answered by Mark Glasgow
- Yes there will
- Been working with the branding guys and once that’s completed will have time to make the new roadmap
- It’s going to be an interactive roadmap on the new site
What’s your opinion on the incident with Bitcoin hashrate falling yesterday when Kazakhstan switched off the internet? As a PoW chain, could Ergo suffer the same issue?
Answered by Joe Armeanio
- We see this from time to time where a world event has secondary consequences elsewhere
- This obviously had an effect on the markets
- Unseen events are always something that cause ripple effects
Viawallet is far better than Yoroi for iOS Ergo holders.
Answered by Mark Glasgow
- The Android wallet has been ported to iOS
- It’s ready to use
- In test flight on the app store right now but waiting for some administrative processes so that it can be hosted on the main App store
- It will be better than Viawallet because it supports native Ergo assets: NFT’s and another tokens
There needs to be a YouTube video explaining to the masses what Ergo is and why it will grow, coin bureau style.
Answered by Mark Glasgow
- YouTube manager is actually planning to do something like this so keep an eye out
How has the partnership with Kairon Labs been working out?
Answered by Joe Armeanio
- Good so far
- We still have work on the process of getting them onto gate.io
- Because an account was set up in the states, had to find a way to give power of attorney to Kairon Labs and during the holidays trying to find a notary who was open on Christmas Eve
- Power of attorney is signed and submitted and they will be online soon
When can we expect an update on Ledger integration?
Answered by Mark Glasgow
- Just waiting on code to be reviewed by the Tesseract Team
- The Yoroi developer has started the work from their end so it can just link up once it’s done
- The majority is done
- Just the small bits at the end
Do you think the current crypto space is addicted to VC backed projects, creating unrealistic expectations for fair launch projects like Ergo who don’t have the same spending power?
Answered by Mark Glasgow
- I personally do
- After looking at other projects, there aren’t a lot like Ergo
- Some people have forgotten that crypto can do this
Answered by Joe Armeanio
- Thing to focus on with this question deals with creating unrealistic expectations
- Things take time to build
- Especially if you want to do them in a quality way
- It takes a certain craftsmanship
- There’s always a trend and people get addicted to trends
- How long does it take to develop something with a lot of depth and quality
- Real value and utility is not going to come overnight
Answered by Dan Friedman
- Thinks that one of the nuances of the crypto space is the expectations and unrealistic time expectations
- People don’t always realize how long it takes to build quality
- Otherwise, you get a less than quality product
- The industry is spoiled by move fast and first to market mentality
- You can get lucky and build something that doesn’t break
- But it doesn’t mean it will be sustainable
- Short term price movement is inconsequential
- Blockchain space has a wild expectation that everything is going to be ready tomorrow
Once ETH moves to PoS, do you think big companies that are heavily invested into GPU’s (manufacturers or mining farm owners for example) will invest big dollars in PoW coins to aid hashrate migration?
Answered by Mark Glasgow
- Think it will
- That or we might have some pretty cheap GPU’s on the market
At what stage is the soft fork proposal at? Also which emission reschedule timeframe has been favored mostly by now?
Answered by Mark Glasgow
- Proposed to miners
- Voting starts in 2-3 weeks
- Last for 46 days
- To be implemented in March if successful
- Discussed the proposal
What are your guys’ favorite crypto besides ERG and ADA?
Answered by Mark Glasgow
- Anyone who is doing something interesting
- Looks at fairly launched coins
Answered by Joe Armeanio
- Likes coins that focus on interoperability
- Tend to enjoy privacy oriented projects and communities
Answered by Dan Friedman
- Projects that have been interesting to him
- Projects that explore further utility beyond what we’ve established in the last 5 years
- Projects that are utilizing NFT’s for more than art
- Music projects and they need to be bigger
- Ergo has the tech and we can be at the forefront of this
- Thinks music NFT’s are going to be more and more prominent
- NFT’s can create identity and financial products
- Utilities for music
Will there be an Ergo Summit?
Answered by Mark Glasgow
- Yes there will
- Thinks it will be end of January
- Currently planning the hackathon
Would you consider Ergo’s oracles one of the big strengths of Ergo in terms of mainstream adoption?
Answered by Mark Glasgow
- Yes, but Ergo has a lot of big strengths
- In future, oracles can be more significant
Answered by Joe Armeanio
- It’s a tool in the toolkit
- With these tools, you’re trusting a source for data
- Could be a good or bad actor
- As we move into a DeFi ecosystem that is interoperable, a single point of failure can have cascading effects across multiple chains
- Having trustless oracles is very valuable long-term
- We are in the same position with smart contracts
- We have older solutions that are adopted
- Hopes the negative cascade potential never happens
- If it is a single point where you trust the actor, it can be risky
In 5 years, what will be Ergo’s killer feature?
Answered by Mark Glasgow
- Hard to predict that
- Thinks sigma protocols will be involved
- Hoping for local exchange trading systems
Answered by Joe Armeanio
- Hard question
- Lots of interesting research happening right now
- The bullish market has incentivized research
- New potential frameworks for existing tooling
- If built right, can really get trustless operations
- To some degree, going to have to rebuild some older features
- 5 years from now, hopes for more trustless solutions and higher security
Answered by Dan Friedman
- Looks at this from a commercial sense
- Versatility and ability to evolve
- It’s a long term feature
- Loves the versatility and ability to evolve
- Ergo is sticking to PoW
- Ergo can evolve along with blockchain
- There will be new ways to utilize PoW
- This is why he doesn’t see competition between Ergo and Cardano
- Sees them both as awesome projects
- Creating their own niche and be very symbiotic
- Interested in new ways of doing business
Which blockchains will Ergo “eat” as Kushti says?
Answered by Mark Glasgow
- Thinks Ergo doesn’t have many competitors doing the same thing
- Can do things cheaper and better on Ergo
- Utilizing eUTXO
- There will be debates about this stuff in the coming years
- Thinks a lot of things will be developed over next 10 years
