The announcement this week has been all about the stepwise plan for launch, which we know took some of you by surprise.
The ERC20 step is something we’ve been working on in the background for some time now. It would have been nice if we could have let you in on it, but I’m sure you’ll understand why that was not possible.
The background to the decision is as follows:
Over the past two or three years, cryptocurrency exchanges have become massively risk-averse. In our conversations with them, it became apparent that it would be extremely difficult to find reputable exchanges that would support a new coin attached to an unproven project, with unknown transactional methods, new wallets, etc, and that uses many novel technologies.
Autonomi is not, and never has been, a crypto project. Nevertheless, to succeed we require some way of rewarding nodes for their work, and the token is that. Unfortunately, to exchange Fiat currency for a token, exchanges are—for the time being at least—an unavoidable point of friction, as users and node providers need on and off ramps. We need to minimise that friction and also the associated risks. We will get there, but first we need to show that the Network is stable and functions properly, that funds don’t disappear down unforeseen holes, etc. We need to prove to exchanges and to stakeholders that we are a viable proposition.
In engineering, it often makes most sense to use the tools at hand, rather than waiting for the perfect option to come along. This is particularly the case for a small team working in open source. We see the ERC20 L2 token as just that: a tool. It’s not perfect, but it’s a tool that will help us get to where we want to be. It comes with an ecosystem including wallets and interfaces that are well understood by the industry. It will reduce the immediate friction for users, and it will take the pressure off the devs as they work on the infrastructure fundamentals and API. This will buy us time to get the ecosystem around the Native Token working properly.
The vision for the network remains as it always has: Secure Access For Everyone. This is a stepping stone that will help us on our journey through a world that has changed.
Q&A
Here is a summary of some of the questions that came up over the last couple of days, with some brief answers.
What are the alternatives to the ERC20 token?
A big bang approach where we go live with the Native Token, or a more centralised approach where the Foundation is responsible for distributing and managing the currency. One carries a very high risk of failure, the other is antithetical to the aims of the project. We could also look at decentralised exchanges such as Bisq, but the current thought is that it won’t scale to what we want, and would still require a significant development lift.
Is Autonomi now a blockchain project?
No, no more than it was when we used the Mastercoin and Omni blockchains for Maid. The network will not be generating the ERC20 Network Token and the networking and storage fundamentals have nothing to do with blockchains.
Won’t refactoring the code to accommodate ERC20 then back to accommodate the Native Token be a lot of extra work?
No, the first is already done, the latter will can be much accellerated after the launch.
What about gas fees?
Unfortunately these are unavoidable while we are using the ERC20 Network Token. We have gone the L2 route, to keep these as low as possible, but yes uploads will cost a fraction more.
Is it still pay per chunk?
Yes, though it’s now pay per batch of up to 256 chunks now. This may well change down the line, along with many other variables, but that will require more experimentation.
Will uploads be slower?
For now, probably yes for smaller files, but larger uploads should be faster.
What about KYC?
KYC is hard to avoid these days, but holders of Omni Maid have the opportunity to wait until the launch of the Native Token and exchange then.
What will the new Network Token be called?
We can’t say yet, as there is nothing to stop a name being squatted by another project. The name and ticker of the token will be reveal on the day it is launched.
Won’t this put people off who are anti-crypto?
Quite possibly, but hopefully only in the short term.
Were you forced into this move by partners or investors?
No, it’s a purely internal decision driven by the current mindset of exchanges and the rules that apply to them, the gap between where we are technically to support our Native Token and where we need to be, and how we can keep moving forward while we work on narrowing that gap.
Was it due to the slow DAG auditing operations?
No, primarily about exchanges, accessibility of the Network, and the time required to develop and support the Native Currency.
What fundamentals have been put to one side for now?
Allow the transfer of the Network currency to any user free of transaction costs, and Let users utilise any of their identities to send and receive payments will need to wait for the Native Token.
What is the current roadmap?
The strategy around the launch is three steps: Test, Network, Native Currency for payments. After the launch of the network on 29th October, the team will spend November and December testing payments with the help of the community to build confidence with exchanges. In January, there will be a token generation event (TGE) of an ERC20 Network Token when we pay shareholders and coin holders. We will be able to move away from full-time management of the network and focus on developing the Native Token, which is our final destination.
So the current iteration of the network is not a Beta then?
It’s certainly a Beta in proving the networking fundamentals work. It has also demonstrated that there is more work to do on transactions than we had hoped.
Is the eventual aim to eliminate the ERC20 token?
The aim is to provide the most accessible and usable network. We anticipate that the Native Token will be the more usable and likely more popular option in the future, but having them coexist would give the most flexibility, until the Native Token usage subsumes that of the ERC20.
Network news
For node operators who have not yet upgraded, your software is incompatible with the current network. The latest 2024.09.1.3 has fixes for outrageous earnings (“lottery nodes”), improvements to transaction code and a new Launchpad.
Please upgrade ASAP.
Beta news
Wave 1 comes to an end this Friday (tomorrow). Network Tokens will be distributed to participants in January, after the TGE. Waves 2 and 3 continue for now.
General progress
@dirvine and @bux have been spending more time on the forum answering your questions on strategy. We hope we’ve gone at least some way to explain our thinking.
@Anselme @mick.vandjike and others have been focused on integrating the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) code into our payments system. This work is now pretty much complete and we’ve recorded our first successful transaction.
@qi_ma has been focused on speeding up the auditor, register verification, and improving the rate at which home nodes get paid.
@bzee has been getting the client API ready and polished up. He’s also been poking at a bug that occurs when large files are uploaded. feat: client API first iteration by b-zee · Pull Request #2093 · maidsafe/safe_network · GitHub
Aside from finalising and launching the latest network version, @chriso has been on workflows for starting and stopping the uploaders and assisting Ermine with nightly end-to-end tests. We’re also starting to rename crates, binaries and libraries from safe/sn to autonomi and Chris is involved in that too.
Meanwhile @mazzi continues to work on improvements to the Launchpad.
@joshuef is refining the range based searching (Sybil protection) we covered last week. He’s also been running storecost simulations to ensure that prices offered by nodes converge rather than diverging (solving the lottery nodes situation)
@shu continues to provide means to automate alerts and improvements. For example, the health of the nodes uploading data to the beta network has now been added to the dashboard.
And @rusty.spork is on hand to answer your operational questions quickly over on Discord. You can put them here too of course, or if they are specific suggestions or bug reports post them on GitHub.
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