Decentr AMA Recap

CryptoDiffer team

Hello, everyone!😁

We are glad to meet here

CCO/Co-founder of Decentr (@RichJamesDEC)

and

CCO/Co-founder of Decentr (@NikitaAnikeevDec)

COO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Rich James

Very glad to be here, and thank you for having us!

CTO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Nikita Anikeev

Thank you for having us!

CryptoDiffer team

Q1) Can you introduce yourself to our community ?

COO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Rich James

Certainly, I’ll kick off by introducing myself:

I am Rich James, Co-founder and CCO of Decentr.

MY academic background, combined with my interdisciplinary research experience, helped lead to the conceptualisation and development of the Decentr concept and the forming of the company in 2018, and I continue to refine our development and market approach with the team as we move towards MVP.

In conjunction with myself and Nikita and the team, we together originally came up with the concept for a decentralised “user layer” for blockchain that would allow applications built on blockchain to “talk to each other”, and have been busy developing that in conjunction with our other cool tech and features.

CTO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Nikita Anikeev

Hi, I am Nikita Anikeev, Decentr’s CTO.

I co-founded Decentr to change the world, as I like to describe it, Block by Block! I enjoy employing my skills in Mobile Applications, Enterprise Web development and Project management by agile methodology to make sure our development stays on schedule while maintaining the highest technical standards and development protocols. My telecommunications engineering background, combined with my Project Delivery Manager experience in the IT industry allows me to develop the kind of radical tech innovations that Decentr demands, in areas including blockchain/DLT, cryptocurrencies, AI/ML, etc.

CryptoDiffer team

Q2: Can you briefly tell us what is Decentr in 3-5 sentences?

COO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Rich James

So our elevator pitch! (I assume the last two sentences, and this one, don’t count! Haha).

Decentr is foundational open source 100% decentralised tech (a platform and web browser) that is designed to make blockchain/DLT mainstream by allowing applications built on blockchain to “talk to each other”. As a result of making blockchain mainstream, Decentr also makes mainstream any what we call “dFintech”/DeFi applications built on the Decentr platform. This allows DeFi Dapps to access all Decentr’s dFintech features, including dLoan, dPay, etc (which we can get into a bit more later), leveraging these for the economic benefit of their users.

CTO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Nikita Anikeev

I’d add with my 3-5 sentences:

Decentr’s key innovation is that our DeFi protocols are all based on a user’s ability to leverage the value of their data as exchangeable “currency”. Decentr does this by securing user data in the form of what we call “personal data value” (PDV). PDV is best described as a personalised “exchange rate” between currencies that users apply at point-of-sale to make the cost of goods and services cheaper online. PDV is also exciting as it is applied to the APR users earn on DEC (our native token) that they hold that they loan out as part of our investing pool.

CryptoDiffer team

Q3: Let`s now talk about the milestones you have achieved and about your upcoming plans?

COO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Rich James

Absolutely. Easiest way I think to answer that question—as we have achieved a fair amount and will be achieving quite a bit more in the short term—is if I give you a brief over view of what we’ve achieved, and then Nikita fills in the detail.

We’ve already ticked these off on our roadmap:

– Completed Decentr backend code
– Completed basic architecture for Web Connector
– Completed Decentr blockchain integration and testing
– Completed architecture of Decentr blockchain storage.

I’ll hand it to Nikita to run you through each of these, what they mean and what we’ve built for each one.

CTO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Nikita Anikeev

No problem. What is critical to note about the tech we have completed to date — and is something we are really excited about — is that in combination it realises our core innovation: that is, our tech stack decentralises dataflow 100% to give user data the same “valuation” and “value store” properties as money — this piece of tech is effectively “Windows for Web 3.0” as it allows applications built on blockchain to “talk to each other”.

This tech uses Coinbase API to optimise integrated implementation of the user layer. Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) will also be deployed. BaaS is basically an offering which allows its users to leverage cloud-based solutions to build, host and use their own blockchain apps, smart contracts, and functions on the blockchain while the cloud-based service provider manages all the necessary tasks and activities to keep the infrastructure agile, operational, safe and immutable.

Tierion’s technological infrastructure, the Chainpoint Proof protocol, will come into play whenever a user adds something in Tierion’s data store. Chainpoint and Tierion’s API anchors the data to the blockchain in order to generate a timestamp proof. Chainpoint also has the capability to create millions of proofs per second because of its highly scalable architecture. It also adds accuracy to its proofs by collecting data from Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and linking anchors to both the bitcoin and ethereum blockchain.

The Decentr backend code, with internal infrastructure delivers CI/CD pipelines using the following tech: Docker, Docker-Compose, AWS, Gitlab, Jenkins, R3 Corda, Hyperledger Fabric, Ansible and Bitbucket Pipelines.
We have also completed basic architecture for our Web Connector, and engineered basic connectors to the future web interface, using the following tech: Linux, Node.JS, GoLang, Kotlin and CouchDB.

We’ve also completed Decentr blockchain integration and testing, including the internal blockchain contracts integration and testing using the following tech: Docker, Docker-Compose, AWS, Gitlab, Jenkins, R3 Corda, Hyperledger Fabric, Ansible, Bitbucket, Pipelines, Elasticsearch, OpenZeppelin,Truffle, NativeScript, Redis, MongoDB, DroneCI, RabbitMQ. We’ve also completed architecture of Decentr blockchain storage, and have completed network architecture mockups.

COO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Rich James

As for the future… … We will be releasing Github code regularly over the coming weeks and months along with a lot of product shots and other cool material as we approach MVP. MVP is due for Q1 2021, as mentioned in our whitepaper and website, however we are way ahead of schedule and you can look forward to announcements on this soon as well. This is all while creating cool commercial and technical collabs and partnerships, the details of those as well are soon to be announced. A lot of exciting stuff!

CryptoDiffer team

Okie, let`s go with the question #4

Q4: Heck of a tech stack! You mentioned PDV earlier, and this is something I’ve been hearing a lot about. Can you elaborate on the PDV system for us, as it seems understanding what PDV is, is key to understanding Decentr.

COO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Rich James

That is pretty well observed: PDV is an important protocol that underpins Decentr. PDV, which stands for “personal data value”, is the key to understanding the interrelated features and functions of Decentr.

Best way to explain it is that PDV is, essentially, the expression of the value of all data that a user creates and that Decentr returns to users as economic value.

What I do want to get across about PDV is this (as it’s a hard concept to grasp as all of us only understand how centralised currency works, and can’t imagine how a decentralised alternative might work): PDV is not returned to users as a “unit of currency” per se. It’s not “money” or “rewards” etc.

PDV is actually a personalised “exchange rate” that is applied to the APR users earn on DEC (our native token) they hold that they loan out as part of our investing pool, as well as also applying PDV at point of purchase to pay less online. These are two of the ways a user can benefit economically from their PDV.

This was a critical innovation of ours: we realised early on that in a 100% decentralised economy, the unit of exchange and the exchange rate itself do not have to be as closely correlated as they are with a centralised economy, creating more flexible, user-centric loan and payment features and other financial products.

With PDV users are back in the driver’s seat as regards their financial and economic futures!

CTO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Nikita Anikeev

Very true. Now, exactly how we “repurpose” data as economic value is pretty radical, but is actually very simple in theory: as Decentr is a 100% secure and decentralised Web 3.0 protocol, all data generated, exchanged and reused by users has the same… well, superior… “valuation” and “value store” properties as “money”. This is simply because secure data is a far more predictive and predictable gauge of the “true” value of goods and services etc than the one-dimensional, market valuation “money” attributes to goods and services (and even the value given to people as employees; the whole “trading time for money” aspect).

Users can apply PDV to increase APR on DEC that users loan out as part of of our DeFi “dLoan” features, as well as it being applied at PoS when paying for stuff online.
Here’s a simple example: if through positive engagement and online activity your PDV reaches
PDV: 1.0001 I DEC: 1.0000
then a real-world-value, $10 purchase (we’ll assume an exchange rate of USD $1.0000 to DEC: 1.0000 for ease of calculation) will “cost” you (underwritten by Dec/Decentr) $9.9990, and so forth.
It’s simple math, but on a global scale it changes the game completely.

CryptoDiffer team

Let`s move to 5th:

Q5 I have also been reading about “dLoans”, your native loans feature, and how users can both borrow and lend out DEC, your native token. What is the actual process when one user with X PDV lends money to another user with X PDV say over a year?

COO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Rich James

It’s a great question, the subtext being how does the money move between users, when is interest paid and how does PDV affect the whole equation, etc

I gave a small insight into this feature earlier, so I will expand here on that:

As mentioned, on Decentr users can stake their unused DEC held in their dWallets to the Decentr investing pool.

APR for users participating in the investing pool is paid at a fluctuating APR that is based on decosystem-wide aggregate data value (ADV); however, users with PDV that is above ADV leverage this data value to actually get paid a higher rate of interest than that offered by the overall system APR.

Idea here is, this is fantastic for casual users with no specific crypto or market knowledge, but who otherwise contribute a lot to the community in terms of data generation, reuse and exchange.

dLoans is another great example of a specific Decentr feature that delivers on our core product promise: that is, to open up crypto markets to casual users in order that they benefit and in return benefit the broader decosystem, both in social and economic terms.

So we see a lot of potential, once again, to deliver the control over people’s financial futures into their own hands.

CryptoDiffer team

We have one more for you and will start community round:

Q6 One of the hot topics in the crypto DeFi space right now is uncollateralized loans. For reference, a couple of examples from “Social Reputation” sounds a lot like PDV, from your description above. What’s your take on this?

COO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Rich James

You’re actually quite right about that!

Our take on this is that “social reputation” does actually contain “economic value” already!

Think about it: a good social reputation can improve your chances of getting a better job, and hence a higher income, right?

Well, what Decentr does is give this social reputation an economic value at source that can leveraged to provide users with economic benefits. And to extend that into answering you question about uncollateralized loans, what is really cool is this:

Considering PDV is essentially a highly accurate and granular form of “social reputation” expressed as an economic value, users are able to use their PDV either to reduce the amount of collateral required in deposits, or… … In cases where PDV is sufficiently high, remove the need for collateralisation altogether, in a similar way as Aave (LEND) has shown is viable. Pretty cool, huh?

Bottom line is when you 100% decentralise finance, by definition it becomes 100% user-centric. 👍

CryptoDiffer team

Awesome, a lot of updates to come out!

Thank you for great answers!

I think it is time to start community questions round!

Cryptodiffer Community

For all DEC is offering, it is built on ETH blockchain which is annoyingly slow and cannot scale, why have you chosen the ETH blockchain over other Comparatively faster and Scalable chains

What’s the utility and real life use case and application of DEC

CTO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Nikita Anikeev

We are not building on ETH blockchain we are developing our own proprietary blockchain. We only base our token on ERC-20 standard.

Cryptodiffer Community

Is Decentr already a profitable startup or not? If not, when do you anticipate it to become such one? Briefly, what is your financial model – where will the profit come from and how are you planning to grow it?

COO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Rich James

Very good question: we have not launched yet however are in talks with commercial partners who we see as early adopters:

Decentr’s core revenue model is actually pretty straightforward: we charge a fee for every transaction using dPay whereby an exchange takes place between money (fiat and digital) and data, and vice versa, either as part of our DeFi features or via a dApp built on Decentr.

We have identified 3 industry verticals that we are targeting as early adopters of our decentralised solution, and are in discussions with key companies in each vertical to pilot programme our tech in Q2 2021:

1. The Banking/PSP Industry

A core vertical we are focused on targeting as early adopters is the bank/PSP industry as it is an easily quantifiable “vertical” where we have solid connections. On Product launch, due to Decentr’s powerful PSP connections (including the worlds #2 PSP by volume), a medium-scale pilot program will be launched, which will seed the network with 150,000 PSP customers in primarily the Spanish/LAC markets, generating revenue from day one.

2. The “Bricks and Mortar” Supermarket/Grocery Industry

Decentr aims to ensure the long-term competitiveness of “bricks and mortar” supermarkets against online-only grocery retailers, such as Amazon, by a) building secure tech that allows supermarkets to digitise every aspect of their supply chains and operational functions, while b) allowing supermarkets to leverage this incredibly valuable data as a liquid asset class.

3. The Online Advertising Industry

Decentr’s 100% decentralised platform credits users secure data with payable value, in the form of PDV, for engaging with ads. This changes the advertising game completely due to the fact the more engagement a user has with the ads clicked on the more data value the user is credited with as PDV. This will encourage users to share, like, comment, etc on ads — all while allowing advertisers to track, profile and target users at every point in the sales funnel (with a user’s opt-in permission to do so raising their PDV).

Check out this article for a deeper dive on this:

https://medium.com/@DecentrNet/3-vertical-revenue-streams-decentr-is-targeting-4fa1f3dd62de

Cryptodiffer Community

Can you give us that How is gonna be the Consensus mechanism of Decentr ? How this can contribute to reach a 100% decentralization?

I am a Spanish speaker, so i have so many interest about the relationship of Decentr with Hispanic Contries, so can you tell what is the relationship with Spain? Considering that All ley developement partners are Spanish?

CTO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Nikita Anikeev

We use PoS protocols with multiple independent consensus mechanisms. More details will be in the coming weeks on that – We are putting exact details of the inner work in an article

Cryptodiffer Community

In recent time, I saw thatm Decentr mentioned to “ORACLES”, so what are the roles of ORACLES playing in Decentr and how could you apply Oracles?

CTO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Nikita Anikeev

Oracles, yes – but decentralised Oracles are key to Decentr’s fully decentralised system.

Decentralised Oracles are very important for Decentr as regards fulfilling our overall aims and goals: this is because a fully decentralised network of oracle nodes that can be used for various verification purposes increases both the veracity of data being verified and hence improves a user’s PDV.

This is achieved with decentralised Oracles in a way that traditional centralised Oracles cannot do, as they only offer single-source truths, hence limiting innovation and growth of DeFi applications and products across a network. We will be expanding on the details of this in the coming weeks/months as the integration process begins.

As we are developing 100% decentralised data solutions, decentralised data veracity and integrity is of great benefit and importance to us, hence why decentralised oracles are vital.

We can’t say too much, but we’re already in discussions surrounding integration with an Oracle provider, we will release more details on this soon.

Cryptodiffer Community

What is your long-term vision about the industry which Decentr is working at? Are you afraid some day there will be another project with more innovative technology can replace $DEC?

COO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Rich James

Great question. As we are open foundational technology that delivers a 100% decentralised solution, we see ourselves as providing the foundation for Web 3.0 and 4.0, on which developers will build out solutions as and when required and demanded. So we don’t see ourselves in competition but in collaboration with anyone who might see a different direction forward, building on our tech and porting across our dFintech features to benefit them and their users as they implement their innovative solutions.

Cryptodiffer Community

Q1. What are the purposes for cooperate between Decentr and Tomochain for getting benefit for both?

Q2. What are the real use-cases of Decentr to make it different in DeFi space while there are too many DeFi projects are on theory or become useless?

CTO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Nikita Anikeev

The Tomo blockchain is a highly efficient and scalable solution for dApps. TomoChain functions as a means for applications to grow unhindered by the rest of the network. In contrast, the Ethereum network is currently processed on one chain, which can lead to network clogging if one application is eating up too much space. This means that transactions process nearly instantaneously and that there are no fees when doing so. This is where we see a great deal of synergy with Decentr’s tech and goals: this speed/efficiency allows for the seamless porting across of our PDV at the protocol level, which actually gives TomoChain a competitive edge as regards the value that Tomo’s features deliver.

Cryptodiffer Community

Looking at the data economy are people ready to sell their data?

COO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Rich James

Ah, this is a misconception! On Decentr, users “release” their data as and when and how they choose to increase their PDV. No date is ever “bought” or “sold” in the traditional sense. Considering all user data is stored securely and immutably on Decentr users are far more likely to participate with big companies, researchers etc who require this data a) as it will increase their PDV and b) because the organisation requesting the data is compelled to return the results to users as part of our 100% decentralised dataflow “user layer”.

Deep dive this a little more here:

https://medium.com/@DecentrNet/how-the-decentr-user-layer-works-26793ec99af6

Cryptodiffer Community

Protecting users/member data and privacy has become a problem that many projects must face in their development. So can you explain a bit about Decentr Security?

CTO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Nikita Anikeev

We have developed our own secured blockchain based storage with SHA256 encryption but we plan on having some parts migrate to Scrypt to make sure we stay fast as well as secured.

Cryptodiffer Community

Can you give us that How is gonna be the Consensus mechanism of Decentr ? How this can contribute to reach a 100% decentralization?

COO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Rich James

Hola Jade! And great questions!

100% decentralisation can be achieved by adding our user layer tech, which is based on 100% decentralised dataflow to a blockchain client, which is based on decentralised data storage: our R&D demsntrated these are the tow pieces of the puzzle to create a 100% decentralised Web 3.0, with the consensus mechanism “valuing” this date in the decosystem.

As for our Spanish connection, a core market we are targeting is the Spain/LAC remittance market ($130BN annually) and hence we will be rolling out a pilot programme with a Spanish PSP partner in this market.

Spain is also a nation of early tech adopters so I know you’re going to love our product!

Cryptodiffer Community

Tell us about your plans for 2020, what are you currently working on, and are you going to expand the list of big exchanges?

COO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Rich James

We’re always working on new exchanges and looking to build additional liquidity for our DEC token as we know this is paramount to the health of not only our token but Decentr in general as our token has such vast utility within the Deconomy. As is standard practice we can’t discuss them until we announce them so all we can say currently is stay tuned as there are plans in place which will be released soon.

You can also view the other exchanges DEC is currently trading on here

https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/decentr#markets

We’re also continuing to move rapidly to MVP, and are way ahead of our Q1 2021 launch, so that is exciting. This is all while we continue to form commercial and technical partnerships and collabs, and we look forward to announcing more on that soon.

Cryptodiffer Community

Other projects could use PDV from Decentr in their ecosystem’s right?

PDV could be exported right out at a protocol leve and any other project could use your PDV to do whatever they need it for in their ecoystem?

What releases are planned for the public before the start of you MVP pilot or will that be the start of everything at once?

COO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Rich James

Yes, quite right. PDV is indeed a protocol-level feature, the benefits of PDV can be ported across to many of the solutions we are building on, including Holochain, TomoChain and other DeFi solutions such as Aave and Compound, with Aave and Compound having achieved Total Value Locked (USD) at $600M and $900M in August respectively.

This means not only blockchains clients we build with can benefit from porting across PDV but also any application that builds with us can benefit from the same. Cool, huh?

Cryptodiffer Community

DeFi is a very popular topic right now and it is fast gaining popularity. Is #DEC planning to work with Defi in the future or is #DEC thinking about this?

COO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Rich James

We are essentially foundational DeFi technology that aims to provide a more solid and robust platform on which to build more robust DeFi applications.

We view the DeFi or Open Finance movement as effectively providing the framework and tools to create a global alternative to every financial service we use today — savings, loans, trading, insurance and more — accessible to anyone in the world with a smartphone and internet connection.

BUT… the problem with realising this goal is that to create this comprehensive, all-encompassing alternative will require two things that do not exist (or, at least, did not until Decentr came along). These two critical conditions are:

1) A 100% decentralised token that supports and is supported by;

2) A 100% secure and decentralised, user-centric alt economy.

In our view, until every user is in control of every economy they interact with, and are able to personally leverage the power and potential of these economies… including the financial products built to service them… to their personal economic advantage, then the idea of a “100% alternative” to all financial services we use today is simply a rhetorical dream.

Decentr is specifically designed to deliver the above two conditions in order that the next generation of DeFi Dapps will be able to deliver this suite of 100% user-centric features to every user.

Have a deeper dive of how and why we are doing this here:

https://medium.com/@DecentrNet/how-decentrs-dfintech-features-overcome-current-defi-limitations-d58a7a9de110

CTO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Nikita Anikeev

Thank you for having us! Great AMA!

COO/Co-Founder at Decentr, Rich James

We had a fantastic time, and thank you for having us. Great questions and I hope we clarified things for your community! Make sure you check out our future development https://t.me/DecentrNet

Cryptodiffer TEAM

Thanks for your time @RichJamesDEC @NikitaAnikeevDec 👍🏻

It was great session!

Thank you everyone who took part today, great questions!

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