AMA IOTA Talks with Dominik Schiener – 03.05.2021

Notes by @MudKevin.

1. Introduction

   1. Welcome! Hope you had a wonderful weekend–our first weekend with Chrysalis, so I guess you could call it our Honeymoon with the new IOTA network!
   2. Chrysalis is working flawlessly! We had a mini stress test last week, and it ran reliably around 300 tps.
   3. We are very confident for where we stand. It’s beautiful how everything is fitting together. The migration was painless, and it’s amazing to think about what has been achieved.
   4. Let’s take a step back and think about what was achieved, where we stand, and why we did Chrysalis
      1. We did this to build the best possible version of IOTA on the mainnet, running reliably and securely
      2. It proves to the entire ecosystem that IOTA is delivering and knows where it is heading
      3. We now have a very strong foundation to build on.
         1. While the narratives of other players in this space are about NFTs, DeFi, Smart Contracts, we had to make sure we had a strong foundation before building any of these exciting applications on top. With Chrysalis we now have that foundation.
         2. GoShimmer, our Coordicide implementation, is now very similar to our Coordicide implementation. That means that the digital assets framework that is currently being tested in GoShimmer can be ported over to the IOTA mainnet. GoShimmer is a testbed.
            1. We are rapidly innovating on the GoShimmer network. With the release of Nectar in a couple of weeks you will be able to mint your own coins.
               • Someone made a joke that they will make a Dom coin that will be “proof of lateness.” I’m going to be shorting that one!
      4. Solid foundation, with the best possible version of IOTA (minus the Coordinator), and now entering a new era for the project.
         1. We have a very exciting narrative of the machine economy. It is our argument of the future-IoT is everywhere, and we want IOTA to enable the internet of things.
         2. We want to make sure IOTA becomes the standard and is adopted globally.
         3. With the solid foundation in place we can enable and expand and increase the utility-smart contracts, digital assets, NFTs, and other exciting stuff.
   5. We had a large number of comments/questions this week!

2. AMA

   1. What is the current state of the 65 Ti between IF and IOTA AS from the crowd sale?
      1. There is no drama from our point of view. Keep in mind: when it comes to DLTs, it is inevitable that there will be an upgrade at some point in time where users have to migrate tokens-Ethereum did this, Cardano did this, Polkadot will do this.
      2. Some of the tokens do not get claimed. There are many possible reasons-they may have lost their seed, forgot they owned iota, or other reasons.
      3. There are many unclaimed tokens from previous periods. It was always in our best interest to see that the tokens get claimed by their rightful owners, and we have done this for years.
      4. With the Chrysalis upgrade, we want to resolve this situation once and for all. We want the community, not a single entity, deciding the fate of these funds.
         1. We wanted to give the IOTA community an opportunity, with the Chrysalis upgrade, to make a decision with these funds.
         2. We created the Iota AS fork if you want to keep the funds in a custody wallet. Otherwise the unclaimed tokens will be put in a governance wallet, so all community members can vote what happens with these tokens
            1. Should they be burned? Air-dropped? Donated? Become a community ecosystem fund?
            2. As someone who has been part of the journey from the beginning, I personally find nothing more empowering than communities deciding for themselves. Crypto is about decentralization of technology and community and ecosystem. That is why we enabled you to make a decision by choosing which fork to support.
               • We could potentially have a very large ecosystem development fund, controlled entirely by the community. Polkadot has a similar fund, controlled by a treasury.
               • We have potentially more capital to invest in the IOTA ecosystem
         3. We will issue one more update on this-an FAQ. The fork is analogous to Ethereum Classic fork. You will be able to vote with your tokens which fork you want to support.
            1. We will clear it up more with the FAQ.
            2. I feel that because they are unclaimed, and will most likely not be claimed, they have no rightful owner. I feel the community should decide their fate.
   2. How does standardization help IOTA’s future plan for adoption? Will this adoption rival Ethereum ERC-20 token?
      1. Those are two separate things. IOTA will play a big role in traditional economy use cases. The digital world has created completely new economies.
      2. Our focus on standardization is for IOTA to be adopted in the physical world. If you think about IoT ecosystem, you need standardization so machines can communicate with each other, and that there is trust in the solution.
         1. We want to make sure IOTA becomes the standard for M2M communication and M2M payments.
      3. With Chrysalis and Nectar, we are wanting to play a bigger role in the digital economy and we are putting more emphasis on that.
      4. Standards are some of the most important economic drivers. They boost the adoption of new technologies. Our standardization efforts will prove really important.
   3. For non-tech minds, where can we learn to apply and implement the protocol? I am a real estate merchant developer in the United States and want to present IOTA to my partners, because I know for a fact it will benefit what we are doing. Could there be a forum where your foundation can consult IOTA investors, like myself, so we can easily present the use cases iota can provide to our respected business models?
      1. We would like to set up an ambassador program.
      2. We have about 140-150 people and are focused on hiring engineers and researchers. When it comes to market adoption, we cannot hire 1,000 sales people and 1,000 business developers.
         1. We should not do that-there is a lot of business potential to be realized in the community.
         2. Our focus is on empowering all of you to realize this business potential, whether it is consulting, new startup ideas, etc.
            1. We can empower you by giving you the right narratives, the right materials, and also understanding how to position IOTA
            2. We will set up the ambassador program around the world. We will start by trying it within a few regions.
         3. You will be able to become an official IOTA ambassador, with the right presentations, with contacts with our team, with access to a community to talk to about certain business cases.
         4. We did this with the X-teams to help us with libraries, code bases, tooling, etc. It has been working really well.
      3. We will definitely set up a forum like you suggested. We will also do it on Discord. In the meantime, reach out to us on Discord and we can help with materials, presentations, etc.
      4. We hope to be able to push IOTA even further with this ambassador program.
         1. It will be cool. We will have NFTs, exclusive Ambassador shirts, etc.
   4. Is the IF planning to hire someone to do some real marketing?… Aren’t end users as equally important as companies for true adoption?
      1. You are totally right. We are not just in a market dictated by narratives, but rather a market dictated by influencers. It’s important to be part of that game.
      2. We as the IOTA Foundation will never do paid promotions, advertisements, etc.
      3. We are trying to get on YouTube shows—tomorrow I have an interview with a YouTuber with a couple hundred thousand subscribers.
         1. We want to influence and educate the influencers.
      4. This is at the top of our minds right now. With Chrysalis the tech is ready, the roadmap is exciting, … “IOTA is shillable.” We have a very full pipeline and need to package it right.
         1. I realized our community was very excited with Chrysalis, but it did not get out to the wider crypto community.
         2. Air drops, NFTs, digital assets, will all be part of the next phase of our narrative and will help the news get beyond the bubble.
         3. We will be able to do promotions through startup partners.
            1. NFT marketplace, decentralized exchange, automated market makers, . . . the startups building on top of IOTA can do this sort of marketing.
      5. In summary, yes, we are thinking about how to get out of our bubble by being part of the influencer economy. We have a very full pipeline that makes IOTA shillable and very exciting to talk about. We have a very strong foundation to build on.
   5. Is it possible to see Coordicide in Q3 if Nectar and Honey run without any bigger issues?
      1. I would say we don’t want that. Q3 is right around the corner.
      2. We want a very sound incentive for Nectar so people check it out thoroughly, attack it, and push it forward.
      3. We are thinking about what the incentivized test net should look like. We will announce with Nectar how the incentives will work.
      4. I think the Q4 timeline is still really good for Coordicide. With Coordicide we will achieve the ultimate goal. With Nectar we already will prove that Coordicide can work, that the modules will work. It will disprove the naysayers.
         1. Hopefully we will have no big issues, and we will move smoothly into Coordicide later this year.
         2. We will see where we stand in a couple of weeks when Nectar is live.
   6. According to Evaldas, Smart Contracts will be ported to GoShimmer in Q3 2021. They say smart contracts on Chrysalis will be Q1 2022, but by then we should have Coordicide. Will we see Smart Contracts on Chrysalis at all?
      1. We don’t want to commit to a timeline. With Smart Contracts, we are regrouping and trying to put a lot more firepower behind them.
      2. The Nectar release will have a beta release of IOTA Smart Contracts Protocol (ISCP)
         1. Then the major focus will be to port over the Ethereum Virtual Machine (ETM)
            1. This is already being done in the background right now.
         2. For us, an ISCP that you can reliably build on, with the ETM ported over, will be live on Nectar. You can think of it as the equivalent of the Binance Smart Chain, but for IOTA.
            1. That is our big objective for this year
      3. When it comes to more complex topics, like committee rotation, or larger committees with hundreds of nodes, it is more of a research topic for next year. But it is of utmost importance for us to have smart contracts ready this year. It is very important for the ecosystem to start to develop on IOTA smart contracts.
         1. When it comes to ISCP on the mainnet, it depends on how fast we implement Coordicide, and how fast we are in developing digital assets
         2. With the GoShimmer implementation, we have digital assets framework, which will be tested by all of you on the Nectar network. You will be able to create your own digital assets, your own cryptocurrency, your own NFT.
            1. We will then assess when to port the digital assets framework to the IOTA mainnet.
            2. For Smart Contracts on the IOTA mainnet, we first need the digital assets framework, but also some special cryptography to form the committees-BLS Threshold Signatures
               • It is a multi-sig crypto implementation
            3. We will see how fast we can implement both of those things.
               • The major driver of these timelines will be hiring more, and moving internal team members to focus on smart contracts (this is happening already).
               • Test digital assets on Nectar
               • Test ISCP on Nectar
            4. Our objective is to implement this year. We are moving full-steam ahead, and there is no time to waste.
               • I’m confident that with the hiring of many more team members we will achieve it.
               • Next to Coordicide, Smart Contracts are the most important thing
   7. What is your stance on the issue of IOTA/DLT for vaccination certificate?
      1. Why have a DLT? For data that is immutable (cannot be tampered with), has a time stamp, the authenticity can be verified, you can know who created it, and you can share in powerful ways-I can share data with you, and you can verify the data authenticity.
      2. There is an obvious reason digital identities have not taken off-the key public infrastructures are incredibly complex to set up, and they involve a centralized entity, which creates a single point of failure.
      3. We argued that IOTA makes a ton of sense for the vaccination passports, digital certificates, and digital identity more broadly, simply because you cannot tamper with the data, you can share the data, and you can verify the data.
         1. No big costs related to maintaining or running the infrastructure.
         2. When it comes to data storage, the solution is there with permanodes (and selective permanodes will be an even better solution).
         3. IOTA is a game-changer for digital identities. The existing problems are solved with IOTA.
            1. Yes, we need to remove the coordinator, but that is what we are doing-in a couple of weeks we will have Nectar, so there will be no arguments against IOTA
            2. We are furthering developing our digital identity framework-that will be a very tangible adoption use case. Hopefully we can start pushing some of these governments to work with us more closely and use IOTA for some of their solutions.
            3. Public key infrastructure is very expensive to maintain and is prone to errors. IOTA solves these problems. With an open, permissionless network you can easily share data through a simple plug-in integration without complex hand-shake protocols. DLT and IOTA are the interoperability solution.
   8. When IOTA 2.0 yellow paper?
      1. Good question! It is being put back a little bit because the GoShimmer team is very focused on releasing Nectar. Shortly after Nectar release (a couple of weeks max) a yellow paper will detail why Coordicide is secure.
      2. It is being worked on right now and will be ready after Nectar.
   9. Is it a possible attack vector to set up 10,000 Raspberry Pi nodes to slow down the network and reduce throughput?
      1. Definitely it could have a short-term impact. No long-term impact.
      2. If someone created 10,000 Raspberry Pi nodes they would have a lot of work to peer with other nodes in the network.
      3. I don’t think it would do anything worse than a temporary traffic delay. It is a peer-to-peer network that will stitch itself back together to make sure transactions are propagated.
         1. Always important to check your neighbors, to make sure they are healthy and replace them if they are not.
   10. When can we send <1 Mi?
       1. You already can. 1 Mi is the minimum balance for a wallet, but if you have that you can then send any amount.
       2. This is a short-term solution to a big problem: dust attacks, where the database in IOTA could grow to unbearable amounts. Polkadot has the same thing ($10 minimum). It is a problem with every DLT.
          1. With Coordicide we may have a different approach.
       3. For micro-payment use cases they will use Flash channels, with bi-directional transactions (like between a car and a charging station), with the IOTA network being used to settle the transaction.
          1. Micro-use cases will do it off-Tangle and only settle when they are done. If you Google IOTA Flash you can see some old examples.
   11. When will the big companies who acquired IOTA be announced? You said after Chrysalis launches these companies will be announced and start a ripple effect.
       1. Who in their right mind thought that one day after Chrysalis went live everything would just happen? This is not how things work.
       2. What is important is to reiterate what has been happening, so you don’t lose the narrative, so people don’t get sucked up into just looking for the next big thing.
          1. It’s important to keep in mind that we have a full pipeline of everything that is going to happen
          2. Yes, we will announce companies that have acquired IOTA, but it would not make sense to announce the day after.
             1. No press would write about it, because they would be overwhelmed with Chrysalis
             2. We want the market to understand Chrysalis, by doing more education. We want them to know what has been achieved and where we are heading with Nectar a couple weeks away.
       3. Those things will happen—it just takes time
   12. Does IOTA fill all government requirement for digital currency, like digital Euro?
       1. With ISCP we will be able to meet those requirements
       2. We are thinking about how to create stable coins in the IOTA economy; how would they work with digital assets on IOTA? With smart contracts we get the programmability.
       3. We are actively discussing internally how to do digital currency
   13. Any plan to promote IOTA for Central Bank Digital Currency?
       1. Not sure that is attractive to us right now. They require a very large up-front investment.
       2. We could partner with someone who focuses on CBDC
       3. Our focus should be on stable coins and other digital assets that could function as a stability mechanism.
       4. We will do an internal review on CBDC and evaluate whether or not to take on that market. The timing might be right to do it right now-we will see.
   14. If IOTA were to become the platform for Digital Euro, would IOTA be able to handle the required MPS?
       1. Yes, I think we could. I think Digital Euro is at least 4 or 5 years away, and by then we should have sharding.
       2. Is IOTA more suitable for digital currency than other crypto projects?
          1. The only thing that may be more suitable is permissioned blockchains, like hyperledger, but with IOTA we have a native digital asset framework where you can create the assets on layer 1 and on layer 2 you could have permissioned smart contracts to program the digital assets and provide them with functionality.
             1. That is an amazing concept! We will talk more about that, and with Nectar you will be able to experience it.
       3. I could definitely see a Digital Euro sitting on Layer 1, with IOTA being used to generate mana and to secure the entire protocol, and to enable machine to machine payments.
          1. IOTA makes a lot of sense and is very suitable for digital currencies.
   15. Roadmap update?
       1. Definitely needed, and that’s on us.
       2. Hopefully this week we can update it
   16. Roughly how much will it costs companies to run nodes for their use cases? What factors affect node costs? Is IOTA a cheaper solution for IoT use cases than fee-based projects?
       1. I agree-we need to quantify the benefits of IOTA. When speaking with a big company, nothing is more valuable than saying “you can save X-percentage of your annual running costs compared to public key infrastructure,” or “you will make X-amount of money with machine to machine payments.”
       2. With Chrysalis we can start to quantify these numbers. It runs really lightweight. You only need 8 GB of RAM.
          1. Data storage policies are important
          2. With Mana you will be able to calculate how much IOTA you need to enable your use case. That will come.
       3. We want to be as lightweight as possible. I don’t think any other blockchains can be considered competitors in the IoT sector-they run heavy, they have fees, and they ultimately do not do much in IoT.
       4. We will quantify this more. Hardware specs are already documented, but we need to quantify other metrics so companies can see how much they will save.
   17. Can you give some REAL use cases that could be created on the IOTA network right now?
       1. Right now, IOTA can secure data and enable M2M payments with feeless transactions. All the use cases built on top of that extend the core protocol.
          1. Streams allow audit trails, supply-chain tracking, even NFTs
          2. Smart Contracts allow building of nearly anything. The protocol is ready, and frameworks are getting ready.
          3. Digital Identities will be important for many for-profit startups. It will allow you to manage identity for corporates, for data centers, for machines, and so forth.
          4. Access (access control for IoT devices)
       2. The current big focus is data and payments, but Smart Contracts will open a lot more applications.
   18. No existing libraries for most common languages (python, javascript, C#, php, etc.). I recommend developing them.
       1. We do have some but need to develop more. Feel free to reach out on Discord with any questions, especially if you are a developer.
   19. Could IF create some real projects (e.g. plugin for eshops) that could work on IOTA network?
       1. We actually have a very exciting thing coming up with a browser plugin that should also work with shops
       2. Ultimately it is not up to us (the IF) to develop all this tooling. We will happily support you. Apply to the Ecosystem Development Fund, and we will give you funding to do this developing.
       3. We will provide funding; we can do audits, but we encourage the community to develop these libraries.
   20. Is IOTA proof of work for verifying transactions more energy efficient than proof of stake?
       1. Proof of work is not being used to verify transactions in IOTA-just simple cryptography to verify. Our proof of work is negligible.
       2. Energy consumption of both systems is negligible. I have not seen a comparison yet. Tezos did an energy report.
   21. If someone wanted to write smart contracts on top of IOTA, what language should they learn?
       1. You can use Rust, but we are porting the Ethereum Virtual Machine, so you can build your dApp or write your smart contracts in Solidity. If you build anything in Ethereum, it will work on IOTA as well.
   22. There are several new generation crypto projects that are scalable and have low fees, and are partially decentralized (a few hundred nodes). Is feelessness and full decentralization such a big advantage?
       1. Yes-even small fees add up
       2. More importantly, any fee-based networks need to be vetted in the real-world. They may not be able to sustain low-fee levels. They use low fees for congestion control and rate limitation to figure out who should be prioritized. If they become successful, they can become their own worst enemy, where their transaction fees are evolving into a natural fee market.
       3. Our big focus, and the reason for all the research into IOTA 2.0, is how to make IOTA secure without requiring fees. It is a big advantage—it makes us much more scalable, and it helps with business use-cases, because it makes it possible for them to depend on IOTA.
          1. Even though someone has low fees does not mean they can compete-they have to prove themselves at scale.
   23. How far open are the flood gates? 10% 50%?
       1. Think of flood gates as things that have not been announced and are not on a road map, but will be released to the community when the timing is ready.
       2. How do we accelerate these different projects, so they can be released in a couple of weeks?
       3. There is no percentage. No way to quantify right now. Just wait and see.
   24. Could the Tangle be used as a library and be used in electronic patient records? As a doctor, how can I get involved?
       1. Yes, with Digital Identity IOTA can play a really crucial role in Healthcare.
       2. Reach out to Jelle or Navin
       3. Get in contact with our team. We can include you in test trials with digital identity, and would love to get your feedback on how IOTA can be utilized.
       4. Also check out skaly.io
   25. Can we use colored coins to create the DogeFather coin and troll Elon?
       1. Yes, you can do it with Nectar. You could even make an NFT about it.
   26. Hornet node or Bee node?
       1. Bee is in a beta stage, and still has some things missing (like local snapshots), but is already a very exciting node.
       2. I recommend to continue running Hornet as the default node-it has been vetted-but to start connecting with the Bee team.
          1. Our focus is on accelerating Coordicide, with both the Bee team and Hornet team.
          2. Bee will probably work well for Chrysalis, but the team will be shifting their focus to Coordicide.
   27. How do you handle potential Conflict of Interest cases?
       1. We have a CoI form. If there is a potential conflict, it has to be approved by the supervisory board, so the board knows what companies the team might be involved in.
       2. So far no cases have posed a problem.
       3. Important to have a good etiquette. If a person has a conflict of interest on a decision, that team member should not vote on that matter.
       4. The IOTA Foundation is set up well for the governance, and that we make the best decisions for the future of the project, not about enriching ourselves.
       5. We make decisions with the success of IOTA in the forefront. Our success as a technology, as an ecosystem, and as a Foundation, are driving our decisions.

3. Conclusion

   1. Hope you are all enjoying the new IOTA protocol, and Firefly
   2. We will see you on Thursday, where we will do a recap, maybe do some transactions, maybe have some more fun with the wings.
   3. Lots of stuff happening behind the scenes. Join us on Discord!