Blank AMA Recap

01 Sep 202011:08

AMA

Blank AMA Recap

Cryptodiffer Team

Hello, everyone!😁

We are glad to meet here:

Aleksandras Gaska, CEO at Blank @aleksandrasg
Iman Hossini, CTO at Blank @ImanHWA

Aleksandras Gaska

Hi everyone!
Happy to be here!

I have to admit, the amount of interest we have received lately has been overwhelming. Excited to see so many faces focused on Blank. Just shows that we are on the right track of bringing privacy to everyday DeFi investors.

Iman Hossini

Hello everyone! Such a pleasure to be here for an AMA

Cryptodiffer Team

Our team has prepared 3 questions for you to start with!
Let`s start with the introduction!
Q1: Can you introduce yourself to our community?

Aleksandras Gaska

I'm Alex, founder of Blank.

I've bought my first Bitcoins in 2013, as I'm sure many, not realizing the true value and potential of it at the time = )

2020 was a true building year for me - I've joined a team that aimed to create a separate Bitcoin sidechain (Mintlayer), and after dabbling my feet in the DeFi space in the summer of 2020, I came up with an idea for Blank.

Iman Hossini

Of course! So I have been involved with the Crypto space since around 2016. I started out working as a freelance dev in 2017.

Since a little over 1 year I have started consulting and advising many different Crypto projects on technical aspects and now, since around 4 months I am the CTO of Blank wallet and couldn't be more excited about our product!

Cryptodiffer Team

Perfect! Thank you for answers!
Q2: Can you introduce Blank Wallet to us?

Aleksandras Gaska

We set out to build Blank after we spent a good time in the DeFi space. To us, it became apparent that with DeFi gaining traction, users started to bring what was a centralised activity before (such as trading) on-chain, which resulted in many leaving a lot of personal data behind.

The current privacy space on Ethereum lacks convenient solutions - users have to experience a lot of friction, for what we feel is a simple human desire - privacy.
Blank is the most private, non-custodial Ethereum browser extension wallet.

Blank allows the user to easily interact with privacy smart contracts on Ethereum to hide the amounts and the origins of cryptocurrency held, in a decentralized, non-custodial, and frictionless manner.

Blank solves the problem of privacy in crypto transactions. Each time you want to make a withdrawal, Blank will create a new wallet address for you with the amount of crypto that you requested. This address originates from the smart contract where everyone's funds are pooled. All of this is achieved using cryptographic proofs to ensure that the user cannot be linked with the original depositing address.

Cryptodiffer Team

Great, thank you for the answers! 🙏
It is time to move to the community questions part.

Cryptodiffer Community

Tell us a little bit about security? Have you done an audit of the platform? Are the smart contracts error-free? What are the test results?

Aleksandras Gaska

It is widely known that the DeFi ecosystem has encountered its fair share of hacks. The various hacks stemmed from the Turing-complete code, which has so far made the system rather vulnerable. Blank’s team, dealing with such a delicate matter, sees hacking as a big issue in the Ethereum space.

To limit these concerns, we will use industry-proven strategies that have been efficient in helping with transactional or payment-based platforms. For example, we will examine tested and industry-vetted open source projects, the code of which has been successfully used in preventing hacking risks.

Besides, we will audit the code before releasing it to the public with at least 2 different independent auditors - and publish their reports before releasing the update for our users.

Lastly, we will implement the bug bounty program, where users will be able to detect bugs for a reward. The bug bounties will be classified by severity in 4 types: from lowest (1) to highest (4).

Thus, our hacking prevention will consist of 3 rather contrasting, but complementary mechanisms: tested technical solutions, the third party audits from the experts, and the participation of Blank’s user community.

Cryptodiffer Community

How did "Blank" manage to discover that discovering that people are not anonymous when making a transfer in ETH and on the blockchain? Can someone really track and hack us by seeing the transfer and application?

Iman Hossini

We have been able to fairly easily connect individuals to their wallet addresses in the past. This lead us to the conclusion that privacy should be taken a lot more serious in the blockchain space.

Cryptodiffer Community

It is a known fact that once users connect their wallets, their wallet address is exposed. And so if anyone wants to trace such users, they can see the decentralized apps they used including the transfers they made and the amount of crypto held in such users account. What can BLANK do to avert these situations and what technologies will be used to achieve averting such situations?

Iman Hossini

BLANK uses several mechanism to ensure a user's privacy. We both use on-chain privacy smart contracts to mix the user's funds with a pool of over 800m$ worth of other funds and use the Tor network to prevent ISPs and node providers from tracking a user off-chain.

Cryptodiffer Community

Can you please tell us about your native token and it's tokenomics? What plans do you have for it's usecases and where can we buy tokens?

@aleksandrasg
@ImanHWA

Aleksandras Gaska

An in-depth answer can be found here:
https://blank-wallet.github.io/extension-whitepaper/book/BLANK-token/BLANK-token.html

In short, BLANK Token has five applications:
Fee reductions for token holders
Token burn from 1/3rd of the fees
Liquidity providers earn 1/3rd of the fees
Referral and Reward Systems use only BLANK Tokens
Exclusive Features and "access-first" Functionality to Token Holders

Cryptodiffer Community

You stated in your medium that Blank allows the user to easily interact with privacy smart contracts on Ethereum to hide the amounts and the origins of cryptocurrency held, in a decentralized, non-custodial, and frictionless manner.

Maintaining privacy is good but these days, people tend to hide under privacy to commit crime.

Have you considered the ethical aspect of this privacy solution?

Iman Hossini

We believe that privacy is a basic human right, which unfortunately is very hard to attain in the current space.

From a moral perspective we believe that offering a easy way for users to regain their privacy is the right thing to do.

Cryptodiffer Community

how do you compare to tornado cash, and what features do you think make BLANK stand out?
what do you think are the key fundamentals that contribute to a high quality crypto project? and help long term sustainability and trust

Aleksandras Gaska

A comparison chart can be found here:

Cryptodiffer Community

➡️ Right now the ERC-20 tokens so Ethereum Network are suffering the huge transactions fees issues, for that reason other blockchains like Tron and BSC are gaining more adoption now, so Blank will be compatible with other blockchains too?

Aleksandras Gaska

In the short term, we think that high gas isn't an issue to our initial users (high net worth individuals), who are just willing to pay higher price for convenient privacy. Look at tornado - it's still being used.

In the mid term, we're looking at Layer 2 solutions (like optimism) or separate blockchains (Polkadot..? Binance chain? hah), but the biggest problem here is the lack of ecosystem - even if we were to develop for it, we may not have any usage because none of the other DeFi applications are there yet, and users would have no interest to receive privacy there.

In the long term, we think that Ethereum 2.0 has the most realistic chances of continuing the legacy as the go-to ecosystem for crypto, purely because all of the products are built on it, and it's difficult to move everything elsewhere.

In summary, although there are some uncertainties, our go-to strategy will highly depend on where the whole ecosystem and market usage would shift.

Cryptodiffer Community

About hacker attacks, the smart contract is audited? Do you have programs like hackaton?

Iman Hossini

Our own token contract is audited by Hacken. Regarding the privacy contracts: we are going to use proven smart contracts that have been audited by several parties and already have a year-long track record in order to maintain the highest level of security.

Cryptodiffer Community

Too many projects promise magic but never release any working product or prove any revenue, Within a short/long time of release. Is a Blank like this? If not can u tell us, What makes Blank different from other projects?

Iman Hossini

As you can see on our roadmap, we try to deliver the product in stages - the first one being by the end of this month. This way, everyone can be reassured by our progress and our product.

Furthermore, we are going to make our source code public with the first public release, so everyone will be able to check the progress in real-time.

Another point for Blank is that we started to develop the product for months in stealth-mode before going out to public, in order to make sure that it is feasible.

Cryptodiffer Team

Thank you for your time @aleksandrasg @ImanHWA

Aleksandras Gaska

Thanks for everyone's input

Cryptodiffer Team

Thank you everyone who took part! appreciate it!