Automata AMA Recap

03 Sep 202016:08

AMA

Automata AMA Recap

Myko (CryptoDiffer)

Hello, everyone!😁

We are glad to meet here:

Deli Gong, Co-Founder of Automata

Deli Gong

Hey folks!
This is Deli

Myko (CryptoDiffer)

Welcome Deli, thank you for taking your time today!

Deli Gong

You’re welcome. can’t wait to share more about Automata.

Myko (CryptoDiffer)

Superb! Our team prepared 5 questions to start with!

Deli Gong

No problem. let’s get started!

Myko (CryptoDiffer)

Let`s start with the introduction !

Q1: Can you introduce yourself to our community?

Deli Gong

Hi All, I’m the co-founder of Automata Network.
Previously I worked at Zilliqa as Core Developer and Infrastructure Lead.
Before that I was doing some research in National University of Singapore
and that’s where I met with a bunch of friends who later created Kyber Network and Zilliqa
I’m super excited about the latest developments in DeFi and also the growing concern about MEV (Miner Extractable Value).
That’s all about me

Myko (CryptoDiffer)

Great!
Let's move on to the project!
Q2: Can you introduce Automata to us?

Deli Gong

Sure
Automata Network is a decentralized service protocol that provides privacy middlewares for dApps on Ethereum and Polkadot to achieve privacy, high assurance and frictionless computation.
Leveraging on the latest crypto and privacy-protection algorithms, along with hardware-based trust, the service protocol enables versatile use-cases not previously possible in the past, such as anonymous voting, MEV minimization, and no-tracking indexing.
Founded in 2019, Automata is a recipient of Web3 Grant (2020), and a participant of the Web 3.0 Bootcamp (2020), Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator (2021), Polkadot Decoded Mainstage speaker (2021).
The team’s investors include KR1, Alameda Research, IOSG Ventures, Divergence Capital, Genesis Block Ventures, Jump Trading.
that’s all i have at the moment
we can dive into some details later.

Myko (CryptoDiffer)

We will!
Let's continue with the question about goals!
Q3: Let`s now talk about the milestones you have achieved so far and about your upcoming plans?

Deli Gong

So we’ve completed 1M seed round and 2.4M strategic round fund-raising this year
And recently as you know we are launching on Binance launchpool and soon will be listed on Binance as well (7 June)
Product wise our focus is on building privacy middlewares
At the moment we have, Witness: anonymous voting service supporting multiple platforms (Etherum, BSC, Clover Finance, Plasm Network, etc.): https://witness.ata.network
and next we will release, Conveyor: a gasless, anti-front-running service for DEX on multiple chains (Uniswap, Pancakeswap, etc)
our compute protocol is built using Substrate to decentralize the entire protocol
so we will launch our mainnet as well in Q3 this year
that would allow us to build a open privacy middleware platform for everyone.
I guess that’s it. thanks for the question!

Myko (CryptoDiffer)

Super! The next question leads to the uniqueness of the project
Q4: What makes Automata stand out in an increasingly crowded blockchain space?

Deli Gong

Thanks. This is a good one.
Our approach is quite different from the existing projects
First of all, we treat privacy as first-class citizens and we are using the state-of-the-art technologies (Intel SGX, Oblivious RAM) to provide the highest-level of privacy in the industry
Secondly, we are taking the middleware approach, where developers will not need to migrate any codebases, assets or users to a new platform in order to have any privacy features.
that means we can directly support dApps on their own platforms
Thirdly, we are supporting multiple chains. Because our integration with any platforms will be lightweight and non-intrusive, this creates great flexibility and compatibility.
A great example is we can easily extend our platform support on Witness to EVM chains, substrate-based chains, and other networks.
that’s my answer for this.

Myko (CryptoDiffer)

That was convincing!
Last question before moving to the community part!
Q5: What is the problem that Automata is solving that other projects are not?

Deli Gong

We are trying to build privacy services for Web3 while bringing it to users and developers in a seamless way. I will use this digram as an example to demonstrate.

So we are just middlewares sitting between user browsers and dApps on blockchains.
and of course we can also do middleware between platforms. that’s on our roadmap to explore.
Most of other projects are just building a new platform, which is difficult on attracting promising applications and users.
We are just helping the dApps on existing platforms, through the middlewares.
Most of the time user won’t feel it because it’s just forwarding messages between browers and blockchains.
That’s our strengthen and it enables us to provide solutoins like anonymous voting (Witness) and MVE minimization (Conveyor)
and even no-tracking indexing - do you know that all the free API services are actually not free. They will collect and study the user data the get from user queries.
Okay. that’s it. thanks for the great question.

Myko (CryptoDiffer)

What an answer!
Thank you for such detailed and interesting answers!
It is time to move to the community questions part.

Deli Gong

sure, let’s do that

Cryptodiffer Community

Many newly launched projects have tried to apply various privacy-related primitives to the blockchain systems. Like Zcash leveraged the Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (zk-SNARK) to provide anonymity for senders and receivers. And Monero also applied ring signature to achieve the similar anonymity. Oasis used trusted hardware "Intel SGX" to run private smart contracts in a trusted enclave which can achieve better performance compared to zero-knowledge proof systems and secure multiparty computation. What do you think about the solutions provided by each of these projects? Also, how will Automata provide confidentiality and at the same time a high degree of privacy which will prevent malicious nodes from inferring users’ private information?

Deli Gong

Thanks @K2ice . I think you mentioned that Intel SGX has better performance and we feel the same way as we think it’s the most practical to achieve some balance between performance and security. To answer your 2nd one, we are allowing anyone to joining our protocol using Intel SGX nodes and we will also use Oblivoius RAM algorithm to mitigate issues like side-channels attacks, even the malicious nodes are trying to sniff information from those enclaves. I wish I can share more here, but let’s give other people some chance as well.

Cryptodiffer Community

It's no doubt that DeFi applications are the most attractive and successful applications on blockchain platforms. However, their emergence have made the impact of privacy leakage in the blockchain space to become more severere, where bots and miners can behave as apex predators to frontrun the transactions from ordinary users with higher gas fees and other illegal methods. What solution has Automata come up with to help rescue users from incurring further financial damage?

Deli Gong

Thanks for your question @Abisola1 . That’s the exact issue we are trying to solve with the Conveyor. It eliminates the front-running chaos but enforcing order in FIFO manner, so that even miners cannot alter the order ofter the see it. And Conveyor doesn’t need any collaboration from miners. This is purely an app-level integration and protection.

Cryptodiffer Community

❇️ In your litepaper I read that in Automata capable machines can join the protocol as two types of nodes, Automata Validator and Automata Geode. can you explained the function of each? Why are there two? In which scenario should one or the other be used?

Deli Gong

Hi @KevSalom, first type node is just normal node with commdity hardware and it can join the blockchain layer (or control plane) to provide services for other planes. second type of node is the one with TEE (i.e. Intel SGX), it will connect to protocol and get attested before it start running tasks scheduled by the control plane.

Cryptodiffer Community

It's about safety and security, I want to know how the team resolves if there is an unfortunate security problem? Has the team thought of a solution to the Automata problem !!

Deli Gong

Hi @poncudon , We treat privacy and security very seriously. With our background in related research topics, especially the research on system security, trusted hardware and privacy algorithms, we will try to make the system secure at the beginning. And also we will try to have multiple failsafe plans to minimize the impact if there’s security issue with a particular node or technique.

Cryptodiffer Community

Many more incidents have shown the evidence that centralized parties can leak users’ private data to others and this have made users to start seeking alternatives to meet their needs and take control of their data and privacy. Why do you think users should choose the Automata system as an alternative? How different is Automata from centralized parties?

Deli Gong

Hi @Cryptogeria , thanks for your question. Our goal is to fully decentralize our privacy computation layer with blockchain technology. This was a lot more difficult before when something like Substrate is not there. Now with Substrate-based chain as the foundation, we can now really allow other trusted computing nodes using Intel SGX to join and contribute computing power to the protocol. The most important thing is, the nodes operator will not be able to see anything running inside the secure enclaves of Intel SGXs. these safe rooms allow us to process user data without leaking it to any 3rd party, including us and the node operators.

Cryptodiffer Community

🌼 Automata promises "Robust Randomness for Applications" Could you explain how they achieve this, is it really reliable, is it ideal for use in gambling type games?

Deli Gong

Hey @cryptoflower13, I wouldn’t say it’s ideal for things like that. But it’s really reliable as the randomness source is coming from hardwares, and this is a trusted source thanks to Intel SGX. no one else can manipulate it and the true randomness will be able to post on chain for consumption by smart contracts. But this is still an open issue because some miners might be able to see the random number first before anyone else.

Cryptodiffer Community

@gongdeli
I don't know much about AUTOMATA, can you kindly drop all the links where I can make my research about AUTOMATA, like about your SECURITY status, COMPITITIVE advantages, PRE-SALE ETC. ????????????

Deli Gong

Hi @Eminet001 , let me just drop our links here. We have quite a lot good write-ups in our medium. please check it out.
Information
Website: https://ata.network
Docs: https://docs.ata.network
MEV Wiki: https://mev.wiki
Lightpaper: https://ata.network/lightpaper.pdf
Github: https://git.io/Jsbrp

Socials
Twitter: https://twitter.com/automatanetwork
Telegram: https://t.me/ata_network
Discord: https://discord.gg/Us8cxTVRxG
Medium: https://medium.com/atanetwork

Cryptodiffer Community

Can you explain to us more about Frictionless Computation function? How will it improve speed for cross-chains or security for DeFi platforms?

Deli Gong

Hi @loichaloichoi, the frictionless computation is mainly talking about the future of our middleware across different chains. When we have an entire decentralized privacy computation layer, we will be able to conduct cross-chain functions in a much efficient way. Looking at the current cross-chain solutions (like bridges), you either have to trust some entities or repeat the computation on multiple nodes to ensure there’s are no attacks ongoing. But with our decentralized computation layer, only a few nodes are needed and there will be less overhead on relaying message across chains with high security guarantee.

Cryptodiffer Community

Will you burn your token supply? Cause this supply is huge and market cap is low.

Deli Gong

Hi @Wasmrazy721 , burning supply is not our plan at the beginning. But since our core layer is built using Substrate and it allows forkless upgrading (basically, blockchain logic running in WASM environment), it might be come possible if our on-chain governance decide to do that in the future. This also answers some of the governance-related questions. And supply looks huge but not everything is circulated at the beginning, we will have validators and the computing nodes that needs staking and those nodes will earn staking rewards from some of the locked supply.

Cryptodiffer Community

Do you have any mechanism for transferring to ethereum network compatibility so other projects can think of using your solutions?

Deli Gong

Hi @AbdulTremblay thanks for the question. This is the one i’d really like to answer. We already have the “mechanism” to support other networks, especially those in similar tech stack such as EVM, Substrate, and more. When we have these kinds of platform support, the project on these platforms can direclty use the solution without near-zero integration effort. Taking our off-chain governance solution, Witness, as an example, it already supports many platforms, Ethereum, BSC, Plasm Network, Clover Finance. ERC20 token projects and BEP20 token projects can already start creating workspaces and do voting.

Cryptodiffer Community

High ETH commissions and the slowness of this chain are known to be a huge problem that will not be fixed anytime soon due to the ETH 2.0 delays. Why you decided to develop ATA on ETH? Do you have plans to develop a cross-chain to function in BSC?

Deli Gong

Hi @Swinkhlon , thanks for the question. I might need to clarify a bit on this, we are just releasing our token first on Ethereum and shortly after our mainnet launch, we will move the major part of the supply (espeically the locked part) to the mainnet native token ATA. We will still keep some of the supply on multiple chains (Ethereum, BSC) so that we can capture more values when developing and deploying middlewares for projects on those platforms.

Cryptodiffer Community

I read that Automata has officially debuted on Binance Launchpool, can you tell us about the spontaneous impact that Automata felt? and what do you think the community's response to this is today?

Deli Gong

Thanks @Bernardetth, I’m happy for our team as we finally made it. But yet this is just beginning of another journey. I think the community’s response is exceptionally great. we gained many new followers and people are discussing about our project in our telegram. Please join them if you haven’t.

Cryptodiffer Community

- Could you explain why you have decided to name the project "Automata", what is the context or the story behind it, does it have any privacy implications?

Deli Gong

Hi @tahanisg, Automata is actually a term in computer science, its singular form, Automaton, “is an abstract self-propelled computing device which follows a predetermined sequence of operations automatically” (pls forgive me to copy it from wikipedia). It represents our hope that the privacy data should be handled automatically without any human intervention. The more it’s automated, the better the security. Of course it will take the time to build, but we are here to do it.
Thanks for the invitation from CryptoDiffer and thanks for having me today. I’m so happy to meet you all here and have the chance to share our project. Please don’t forget to follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/automatanetwork) to get the latest updates. Thanks again!

Myko (CryptoDiffer)

It was a pleasure for us to host this ama!!
Thanks