Rivex Gcrypto AMA Recap
Gcrypto team
We are glad to meet here:
Joel Reymont (@joelreymont) – CEO at Rivex
Joel Reymont
CEO
Good day everyone! I have been a hardcore developer and contractor for over 25 years and spent several years on Wall St. I specialized in distributed systems development for the most part. Stegos is a pivot of my original project and the idea came to me over a year ago, after a week-long meditation retreat in the Carpathian Mountains. Most of the crypto project directions at the time looked pointless to me and I wanted us to pivot into something that would let us leave this world in a better state than we found it. Thus the pivot to privacy and protecting you from mass surveillance.
Gcrypto team
Can you briefly describe what is Stegos in 3-5 sentences? And what is your Mission and Vision?
Joel Reymont
CEO
We want to deliver not just private payments but a secure message and data bus that other applications can build on. This is something unique and not seen in the market so far! So Stegos has taken the best of current approaches to privacy crypto and expanded upon them. We are the first project to implement Value Shuffle, for example. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/valueshuffle-brings-together-the-best-of-both-worlds-for-privacy-1483557170
As for the mission… We think all of you should be able to have the freedom from mass surveilance. And we give you that fredom to enjoy!
Last but not least, we cannot anticipate the kinds of privacy applications that will be built in the future so we provide a platform that all kinds of apps can be built on. Stegos gives you anonymous, secure and utraceable payments and lets you send data around with the same kind of protection. So you are free to build messengers, IoT and all sorts of applications in any language.
Gcrypto team
What are your main competitors and what is your competitive advantage?
Joel Reymont
CEO
Our competitors are other privacy coins like Monero and ZCash, plus the current crop of supposedly secure messaging applications.
Existing privacy coins do not allow you to build applications that exchange data using the same secure transactions. Stegos makes data and payments look the same and gives them the same protection from surveillance. Neither payments nor data messages can be traced back to the sender or receiver and the contents of either cannot be viewed!
All current messaging apps are centralized. They also leak metadata, e.g. your IP address, phone number, etc. I suggest skimming Snowden’s book, “Permanent Record” where he explains how governments can learn everything they need by simply analyzing what phone numbers and IP addresses your communicate with and when!
Stegos does not leak meta data and does not require phone numbers or similar information that uniquely identifies you. You can stay as anonymous as you want with Stegos. Centralized services, that are limited in the number of servers they can deploy to support their network and can be shut down. Stegos is decentralized can never be shut down as long as people run nodes!
Gcrypto Community
1. In order to run a full node there’s a need for a constant power supply, which is not very convenient in terms of mobile devices. How do you plan to solve this issue?
2. How is it planned to punish the validator node for block delay or fork attempt?
Joel Reymont
CEO
Smartphones spend a LOT of time connected to high-speed networks like 4G, LTE or WiFi, e.g. while their owners are sleeping or at work. We want to leverage this time and harness these smartphones to support our network and privacy features. A blockchain network of billions of smartphones can never be shutdown and will guarantee private payments and communications for EVERYONE!
All Stegos validators post a stake as a kind of “security bond”. This stake can be “slashed” or taken (by consensus of all other validators) if the owner of the stake is found to be acting maliciously. They will also forfeit their potential valdiator service award, a key feature of our gamified PoS consensus.
Gcrypto Community
Stego Chat is a very interesting implementation, however, if your chat is used in bulk, would you have saturation problems on the network?
I would like to know basically what privacy coins were inspired by you and if you believe that with your technology, they will take the competition in some way and why?
Joel Reymont
CEO
We are actively working to forecast and solve potential scalability issues, e.g. through sharding. I do not expect long-term saturation problems on our network. Plus, I welcome our saturation overlords as saturation means we are popular and heavily used!
Gcrypto Community
Q: Ivan Bogatyy a researcher at US published that he was able to break Grin’s purported privacy while spending just $60 per week on AWS. So how can you be sure that Stegos’ privacy cannot be broken in the same way or one day?
Joel Reymont
CEO
I saw a rebuttal today https://medium.com/dragonfly-research/breaking-mimblewimble-privacy-model-84bcd67bfe52 so that’s all I will say about MimbleWimble as I have not looked at this issue in depth. Other than that, Stegos is not based on MW technology, although we considered it initially. There are certain drawbacks to MW, e.g. the requirements for parties to be online which can only be incompletely solved by complicated workarounds.
We are constantly looking at our crypto and will also subject it to public review. Being a PoS system, we are not prone to the 51% attack, for example, as one will need to accummulate a very large token stake to attack our network, something that will become difficult as the price of the token will rise with every purchase.
Gcrypto Community
As there are so many project that providing privacy blockchain solution like BEAM , so How STEGOS provide better privacy blockchain solution?
Why You choose gamified proof-of-stake consensus algorithm?
Joel Reymont
CEO
Stegos is PoS (proof-of-stake). A unique feature of Stegos is that our PoS consensus is “gamified”. What does that mean? On other PoS blockchains you get block rewards by validating and helping support the blockchain. I’m not talking here about receiving “dividends” by just holding tokens in your wallet. I’m talking about running a full blockchain node.
Now, the size of the block reward you receive on other PoS networks is proportional to the size of your stake. Rich whales can put up a huge stake and receive the lion share of the rewards.
Stegos gPoS is different! Yes, we have the same block rewards proportional to the size of your stake but we also have a CRUCIAL difference! Some 20% of each blow reward goes into a prize pool and a drawing happens every week or so. Any validator (node) who has been online and validating through out this week will be eligible for this drawing, regardless of the size of their stake. We call this the Validator Service Award since it’s a reward for meritorious service!
Practically, it means that you can strike it rich with Stegos by putting up a small stake and then doing good work supporting our blockchain. This is more democratic than existing PoS systems.
Gcrypto Community
Excess token inflation is the most common problems, projects are facing now a days…How Stegos is overcoming from such problem?
Joel Reymont
CEO
Stegos token emission is halved every 4 years, just like Bitcoin. I don’t see us having an inflation problem.
Gcrypto Community
There are hundreds of privacy coins on the market. Why do we need another one and Why stegos?
How Stegos will provide the first fully integrated private crypto experience, entirely on-chain?
Joel Reymont
CEO
Our experience is integrated in the sense that you will have a mobile app where you can make anonymous payments and anonyously chat with others. We will add the same kind of secure and anonymous protection to over-the-counter (OTC) trading within our mobile app, with trading against BTC/ETH. The idea is that once you convert BTC/ETH to STG, you will be completely protected from government and other kinds of surveilance in your payments, trading and communcations.
Gcrypto Community
Q: How does STEGOS provide anonymity ?
Q: How STEGOS rescue us from META DATA LEAKING RISK(like IP address, phone no) which is rampant today?
Joel Reymont
CEO
We do not require your email address or phone number to use Stegos. And we make it impossible to figure out what’s in the transactions you are sending to the network, who you are sending them to and who they are coming from. We enable this by implementing Value Shuffle, for example (see link earlier in the AMA).
Gcrypto Community
Q1. Can you give us some details of the difference between mainnet beta 4 and 5 why we need to upgrade to mainnet beta 5?
Q2. Do you have plan to launch an mobile application for IOS or Andriods and when it will be available in playstore?
Joel Reymont
CEO
We are looking to launch our mobile app in 2-3 months but it will not be available on iOS or in the Google Play Store on Android. Fortunately, you don’t need to use the Google Play Store to install Android apps, you can side-load them from an APK. Also, PoS (proof-of-stake, the consensus we are using) is not as heavy on smartphones and batteries as PoW (proof-of-work).
Gcrypto Community
1. What are the highlights of Stegos?
2. What are some of Stegos major achievements and what milestones are planned ahead in the next 6 months, 1 year and 5 years?
Joel Reymont
CEO
We are launching the Stegos blockchain and platform on Nov 20. We will follow this up with a mobile app with integrated secure chat that’s using Stegos data transactions to send messages. We will then add “red packets” for viral growth, as well as decentralized and trustless trading against BTC/ETH.
Gcrypto Community
What do you mean with horizontal scalability?
The GPoS protocol seems super cool, how to ensure that the distribution is absolutely random?
Joel Reymont
CEO
We are using VRF to ensure the distribution is absolutely random https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verifiable_random_function
Gcrypto Community
How many transactions per second (tps) can Stegos deliver right now in its current iteration? Is it scalable as the number of participants grow, or will node centralization issues emerge as the number of participants scales?
What are the main differences between Stegos and other privacy coins like MITH? What are Stegos’ advantages?
Joel Reymont
CEO
We are delivering 80-100 tps at the moment due to the heavy crypto needed to secure your privacy and protect you from surveillance. We will optimize this number as time goes on. Practically, you should have transaction confirmation times of just 3-5 seconds.
Gcrypto Community
Is there any inflationary or deflationary feature for Stegos, If yes what will be the token circulatory supply in future and will it effect the price of the coin.
Joel Reymont
CEO
Please see our whitepaper at https://stegos.com
Gcrypto Community
What is the Validator service award and why decide to improve the classic proof of stake?
I don’t want to sound cliché but, what is the origin of the Stegos name? what story is behind? I do not understand
Joel Reymont
CEO
Stegos is PoS (proof-of-stake). A unique feature of Stegos is that our PoS consensus is “gamified”. What does that mean? On other PoS blockchains you get block rewards by validating and helping support the blockchain. I’m not talking here about receiving “dividends” by just holding tokens in your wallet. I’m talking about running a full blockchain node.
Now, the size of the block reward you receive on other PoS networks is proportional to the size of your stake. Rich whales can put up a huge stake and receive the lion share of the rewards.
Stegos gPoS is different! Yes, we have the same block rewards proportional to the size of your stake but we also have a CRUCIAL difference! Some 20% of each blow reward goes into a prize pool and a drawing happens every week or so. Any validator (node) who has been online and validating through out this week will be eligible for this drawing, regardless of the size of their stake. We call this the Validator Service Award since it’s a reward for meritorious service!
Practically, it means that you can strike it rich with Stegos by putting up a small stake and then doing good work supporting our blockchain. This is more democratic than existing PoS systems.
Gcrypto Community
What applications for the Stegos Network are you working on at the moment and, in your opinion, what is going to be the first killer use case?
Joel Reymont
CEO
Secure chat is going to be a killer use. There are many places in the world where people need to protect their communications now.
Gcrypto Community
What has the security, speed, and security with Stegosso far accomplished? This will prevent the ability to expand the application of Blockchain in all areas of life. This is a big problem of Blockchain, so Stegos has done so far to improve this problem?
Joel Reymont
CEO
Blockchain is a feature, not an application. Most of the projects out there are “VC chains”, started for the sole purpose of letting VCs cash out by letting you hold their bags! These projects put blockchain front and center but this is like trying hard to sell a great car engine. People don’t buy car engines, they buy cars! I’m sure none of you wants a Ferrari engine but all of you would enjoy a Ferrari.
Stegos is trying to make blockchain invisible and deliver actual applications that you can use and benefit from. Initially, these are secure and untraceable chat and trading. Stegos is the Ferrari of crypto proejcts!
Gcrypto Community
What critical problems do you see occurring in the blockchain industry nowadays? How does STG aim to solve these problems?
What is the progress of business development and what are some of your commercial partnerships?
Joel Reymont
CEO
Lack of real purpose is a REAL problem in the industry today. I have no idea who is gonna use all these blockchains that are being launched. Again, blockchain is a feature and people buy products so most of the current blockchain projects are doomed to fail when they run out of investor money.
It’s hard to come up with a business model in crypto so it boils down to creating demand for the project’s tokens and then selling these tokens over time. This is the path that we are taking, at least until we are able to charge for applications.
In the meantime, we are going to drive token growth through our viral features.
Red packets is a feature that we borrowed from WeChat. You can create a QR code using our app and post it anywhere, e.g. plaster it on walls or sidewalks. Scanning the QR code with your smartphone will get you a link to download our app. By scanning the QR code with the app you will try to open the red packet and get free tokens. It’s very important to note that this does not require you to have any tokens in your wallet, it’s free to try to open a red packet!
You may or may not get free tokens every time you scan the QR code since this is random. You can keep trying, though, until the packet is empty. There’s a technical delay of 2-3 seconds every time the packet is opened so we’ll be showing an add (animated GIF?) during this time. The ad can be set by the creator of the red packet.
So red packets should drive growth and spead our app far and find, in addition to creating demand for our tokens. And ads in the read packets should drive demand for the red packets themselves.
Gcrypto Community
Joel hi! Where did you spend 15 mln?
Joel Reymont
CEO
Drugs, whores and lambos, where else?! Isn’t this where all crypto projects spend investor money? The whole team partakes so I don’t need to pay them and they all work for free!
Gcrypto Community
Stegos has built private solution which will be a good idea since it can increase security and privacy. However, when u are on Enterprise level, having impact on national economy, i think government wont like the private part, privacy coin delisting on Korea top exchange is an example. So, to resolve the problem on regulation and law-related, how will Stegos team solutions be?
Joel Reymont
CEO
None of the governments want you to have privacy because all governments want as much control over you as possible. No privacy means great control since the government can always find something to fault you for or charge you with. Citizens that governments can control are docile and abidient citizens. They are sheep and governments like sheep that don’t steer any trouble!
We aim to provide the software to free you from government control and mass surveillance. We also aim to launch a global Stegos network running on billions of smartphones in everyone’s pockets. No government can shutdown this kind of network. We want to succeed so that you can enjoy your privacy and freedom from mass government surveillance.
Gcrypto Community
What is the primary role of $Stegos token in the $Stegos ecosystem?
How you see the upcoming crypto market to remain in the market so declining?
Why should I vote for $Stegos?What is the primary role of $Stegos token in the $Stegos ecosystem?
How you see the upcoming crypto market to remain in the market so declining?
Why should I vote for $Stegos?
Joel Reymont
CEO
STG, the Stegos token, is used to pay for transactions on the Stegos network. There’s a small cost to sending payments and messages and this pays validators who support our network for their service.
Gcrypto Community
Do Stegos have plans set in place to create a video tutorial series that can help junior blockchain developers easily delve into the sdks understand them and begin building apps
Joel Reymont
CEO
We will try to provide SDKs for a few languages. It’s something that we plan. to deliver next year.
Gcrypto Community
With Stegosbeing open source for anyone to contribute to the code, is there any security in place if someone codes a hack into the code to steal or create more Stegoslike with what happened with bitcoin private?
Joel Reymont
CEO
Being open source is actually great in that anyone can review the code for possible security holes. We will have a bounty to encourage people to poke holes in our system. Our code is available on Github at https://github.com/stegos/stegos
Joel Reymont
CEO
@Alex_GCrypto Thank you for inviting me!
And many thanks to this community for the enthusiastic support of Stegos!
Gcrypto TEAM
Thank you =) It was a great ama!
Community thanks for questions! It was really interesting
Thank you for taking your time!
