ONTOLOGY - CRYPTOVERSE AMA RECAP

CRYPTOVERSE
19 min readOct 4, 2019

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Q1. I read about your project and i like it that you care about user identity and data so much that you develop a project regarding security and privacy features in this ecosystem. I want to know what type of technology you use for user data security?

ANS. Thank you for your question. We attach great important to data security and individual data privacy. We focus on building a trust amongst people, assets, objects and affairs. When users use our products, such as ONTO wallet, user data is saved and encrypted locally using cryptographic technology and is always in the hands of users. Users have self-sovereign management of their own data, which will not be used by any third party without the permission of the data owners. Also, through verifiable claim, data owners can decide whom they want to authorise the access to their data. In this way, Ontology is able to ensure the security and privacy of user data

Q2. How would Indian community impact Ontology and what Change it would bring in tides of time?

ANS. Global communities are important to Ontology, Indian community is one of them. As you may know, Indian is a large country. We hope that we can expand our Indian community and that in the near future, people can use ONT ID to protect the data privacy, and to solve more real-life problems for Indian community.

Q3. Why does Ontology have to split into two different coins, ONT and ONG, but not one main coin is ONT or ONG to do both tasks to avoid too much capital distribution leading to devaluation ?

ANS. The Ontology dual-token design uses ONT for staking and ONG as gas. In the Ontology infrastructure design, ONT is used as the staking tool, and the time cost of staking and the operating costs of the nodes are considered to be inputs and ONG is distributed as revenues. ONG is the utility token used as a value anchoring tool for on-chain applications. The dual-token design not only ensures the development of the infrastructure system but also provides more services to justify the value of the infrastructure. Staking is both a fundamental governance model and can develop a range of value-based businesses. At present, there aren’t many types of applications on the Ontology blockchain and the entire blockchain industry is still in the stage of trial and error and cross-sector promotion. It is foreseeable that in the early stage, the gas revenue of the nodes is unable to cover their operating costs. Therefore, Ontology offers a node incentive plan (10,000,000 ONG is used as node incentives every year for the first three years) and ensures nodes can receive enough ONG revenue to cover the operating costs by the orderly expansion of the node network in the early stage.

Q4. What are the main markets that Ontology is focusing now?

What is your marketing strategy to access to these markets? Klaytn is an ambitious public blockchain project backed by the giant KAKAO in Korea. What do you expect when working/supporting this project? ANS. Currently, our main markets are the Japanese, Korean, the US, and Europe. Our market strategy is to make our technology and products being adopted by the mainstream in these markets to increase the users of ONT ID. In the meantime, our dual-token model can also help increase the transaction value of tokens. Klaytn project is a strategic step for us to access Korean markets. We will have more technology and product integration and interactions with Klaytn, including data privacy and ONT ID application, so that more Korean users can join the Ontology ecosystem and more Korean projects or enterprises can access the Chinese markets. India is also a very important market for Ontology. It’s our first AMA together, if our Indian community is expanding fast, and we have more cooperation in the future, then of course Indian market will be our main focus.

Q5. How will you describe #ont & #neo relation? They both are competitor or complimenting each other?

ANS. NEO and Ontology are not-for-profit public blockchains. Both being open source projects, NEO and Ontology focus on different sectors but will facilitate positive interaction with each other in the permission less ecosystem. NEO is a more generic smart contract platform that focuses on digital asset. Ontology focuses more on digital identity and data linked to identities. The two projects will release more details about the cross-chain platform end of this month and more interaction is coming. NEO and Ontology are two independent projects under two independent foundations.

Q6. Partnerships are an essential element of the operation of any project, with blockchain being such a young industry. Which kinds of relationships have already been achieved by Ontology and what plans are moving forward on this front?

ANS. Good question. Globally, some of our partners are Microsoft, Hanwha Life Insurance in Korea, KM Player in Korea, Nomura in Japan, gumi Inc. in Japan. To name just a few

Q7. We all understand that a large majority of the main crypto community focus is on the token value. The community rejoices and develops when prices rise. Many individuals in the society begin throwing negativity when prices fall and the community breaks apart. This issue of pricing is common in all businesses involving shareholders, but in the crypto sector it appears to be incredibly heavy that will make or break a project. How will Ontology tackle the community’s negative & risk problem when prices drop (because of any financial reason). Are there any plans / projects / events to enhance and develop the community in order to convince more people to look at the product rather than just the cost?

ANS. The Ontology team has always been focusing on technical development and real business adoption. We update our progress in technical development, product development, ecosystem, community growth, and partnerships regularly to keep the public better informed so as to help the community focus more on the development of the project, instead of token prices. We are constantly improving our services and products to offer a better user experience for users. If users find the services and products easy to use, more people will come on board, driving the mainstream adoption of the technology and products. The crypto market is highly volatile and no project is immune to the price fluctuations. We believe ultimately, the price is determined by the value of the project and only those who actually create value for the users can survive and thrive. For example, the great support from the Indian community is entirely voluntary and can help us be better.

Q8. As we know, ETH network often has problems with scalability. So, as a project which is aiming to solve existing high-performance problems. What scalable technology do you think is the most efficient solution at this moment? Do you think that you can compete with ETH when they release ETH 2.0? Can scalability problem affect the operation of ONT when there is a high-volume traffic on throughput? If yes, what will be your team solutions?

ANS. 1. State channel is a better solution to the scaling problem of Ethereum.

2. ETH 2.0 is mainly focused on solving the issues with Ethereum, whereas Ontology is working on a way to connect all blockchains. Our solutions are aimed to solve different problems, so there’s no point in drawing a comparison between the two.

3. The root problem of Ethereum is the low throughput, which leads to frequent congestion on its blockchain. Ontology is a high-performance public blockchain and will not face the same problem as Ethereum for now.

Q9. What makes Ontology an interesting option for developers over other blockchains?

ANS. To lead in technology and be developer-friendly, we need the feedback and support from the technical community. Since launching the bounty program, we have received hundreds of applications and these teams have completed development tools and SDKs for more than 10 different programming languages. Through hackathons held across the globe, we have acquired excellent application tools, including STO issuance tools, Layer 2, and currency gateways. Our next step is to further open up by decentralizing the bounty center, the review process, and the bounty distribution process, making an open collaboration platform for developing bounty dApp possible, and building a developer-driven community. By the way, we have the largest Global University Workshop and it will start soon in over 20 Universities in four countries: the US, Russia, Korea and Germany. We hope that more young developers will join Ontology ecosystem and we look forward to hosting University Workshops in India and meet more Indian developers to join us.

Take a look at our workshop timeline in the US universities!

Q10. I see that ONTO and OWallet staking just are available on https://node.ont.io so do they have any key points better than staking on Huobi Wallet or Sesameseed to attracted community for transfer staking to ONTO & OWallet ?

ANS. 1. ONTO and OWallet allow users to stake in the top consensus nodes in the Ontology node system, which offer higher returns for users;

2. ONTO and OWallet are the official wallets of Ontology, which offer better and more trusted services;

3. ONTO and OWallet offer excellent user experience and better features than other staking tools. On the other hand, we encourage and support more wallets or other partners or projects to be Ontology’s nodes and our users shall have more options to choose when staking. We would love to see Indian nodes in the near future. If anyone of you is interested to be our node, you are more than welcome!

Q11. 1) What is the status and launch date of Global Cross Chain platform?

2) Can we envision Ontology to ever become internet scale capable. If yes how soon we can except this to happen?

3) Are there any layer 2 scaling solutions under development or ready for Ontology? Does Layer 2 scaling would ever be required for Ontology?

ANS. Thanks for the question

  1. We have this vision and is actively working on it. More details will be released soon.
  2. 2. Layer-2: We have done a lot of technical development in layer-2 scaling solutions and we think this is something Ontology needs. We believe in the future, more transactions will take place off the blockchain and the chain will act as a judge to decide whether the transactions are valid, which will put blockchain to better use. We will announce next year’s plan in Q4. Please stay tuned!

Q12. What Changes can we expect from ONT wallet that’s in beta testing?

ANS. ONTO, Ontology’s official wallet, will not only support asset transfer, but also identity and data interaction in the near future, which makes it the only one of its kind on the market. This amazing new functionality is expected to be available in the coming months.

Q13. How will Ontology create revenue?

ANS. We provide technology to traditional large companies, so a part of revenue comes from there. We have also invested and incubated over 30 projects, for instance MovieBloc, this will also bring revenue for us in the long run.

Q14. Cosmos just appears and is determined as a new competitor of Ontology. So, can you let us know what is Ontology cross-chain solutions and how good it is by comparing them with Cosmos?

ANS. Ontology is a public chain and Cosmos is a cross-chain solution project. So technically speaking, we are not competitors. Cross-chain is an important element/tool within the Ontology ecosystem, but it’s only a part of Ontology.

For further details, you can check on our Medium You can read this article about our multi chain design compared with Cosmos and others.

Q15. One of biggest problem with dApps is inactive and useless status. People just create dApps but it has no use case in real life nor contribution to blockchain ecosystem. I think some of these still exist on Ontology. So, to resolve this problem, what will your team do? We will select more effective and useful dApps that can actually solve problems in real-life scenarios, instead of gambling dApps.

You can read this article I wrote about today’s dApp ecosystem and what makes Ontology different.

Q16. There is my relative who is owner of international courier or logistic company. they want to use blockchain for their business. How ONT blockchain can help in their business, can you please explain?

First of all, Ontology technology or the general blockchain technology does not provide a whole solution, it can improve efficiency only partially. If you know the problem of the industry or the business, then we will provide customized solution. We have provided solutions for 8 industries so far.

Q17. Ontology looks good but it confuses me that there are so many other Blockchain projects. What should I pay attention in Ontology to give it the importance it deserves?

ANS. Ontology is different from most projects as we focus on providing solutions in real life scenarios such as work, study and businesses, when some other projects may solely focus on the revenue or profits. For more use case demo, you can check out website ont.io

Q1. How Ontology is dealing with DeFi?

How do you see the future of it? DeFi is one of our focus areas in 2019. Actually, we have already provided the loan, regulated stable coin, payment, debit card and wealth management product to our end users. For the next step, Ontology is going to lower the barrier of DeFi and build a real Inclusive finance ecosystem. Thus, we can engage more traditional users to try our crypto services on ONTO wallet and eco wallets. For example, the minimum staking requirement is around 500 USD now. We want to decrease it to 1 USD through smart contract. So everybody can participate in our staking in the near future.

Q2. What do you think are the main challenges for crypto adoption and how Ontology is involved in this process?

Indeed, crypto has made a lot of progress in the past few years, now being adopted by big businesses across the world. However, the user experience with crypto still pales in comparison with traditional forms of payments. Each public chain project must bring more real adoptions to the whole industry while we are focusing on the gaming, attention economy and DeFi applications. Ontology is aiming to increase user experience, performance and lower the barrier. We believe that cryptocurrencies will boost the new digital economy.

Q3. Decentralized Identity is a hard issue, primarily because if you want regular people to be able to use it, you have to solve key management issues (People must keep keys safe and secret). If a business can come out and fix that, they can earn big profit and Decentralized Identity will be much easier to release to the public and be popular. As a dApp focus on Decentralized Identity, how does ONTO solve this problem?

ONT ID is a URI that is generated by each entity itself. The generation algorithm needs to ensure that the collision probability is extremely low. Besides, when someone creates an ONT ID on Ontology, the consensus node can check whether the ID has already been registered. To prevent the user from entering the ONT ID by mistake, a valid ONT ID must contain 4 bytes of verification data. Ontology applies digital signature technology to guarantee that entities have the right to manage their own identities. ONT ID is bound to the entity’s public key when it is registered, thereby indicating its ownership. To use ONT ID and modify its attributes, you must have the owner’s digital signature. The entity can independently determine the scope of use of its ONT ID and set the public key bound by ONT ID and manage the attributes of ONT ID.

Q4. Will ontology become open platform like neo blockchain

Ontology is open platform.

Q5. I know that you just released Sharding TestNet. Why do you choose sharding instead of other scalable solutions such as DAG or Plasma? How it can better than the other 2?

How is your sharding different from the others out there like QKC, HARMONY or ZIL? We select Layer 1 scaling solution to ensure the security and performance scalability. DAG is the approach to improve PoW consensus algorithm. The Ontology platform is based on PoS and BFT consensus algorithm, so DAG is not that helpful for Ontology. Ontology’s sharding is a multi-layer sharding. It can achieve network sharding, state sharding and at the same time, provide a better security of PoS. Plasma is Layer 2 scaling solution and can be integrated with sharding.

Q6. I’m using Metamask and Trust Wallet, which are there for a long-term and I also have faith in them. Why should I switch to ONTO wallet?

Different form other wallet, ONTO is a decentralized client product and an access to the Ontology trust search engine and blockchain system. ONTO offers functions to users such as digital identity management, digital assets management, distributed data exchange, and so on. ONTO maps your digital identity and real-life identity. Users can use this product to build their own digital identity and multi-factor personal portrait and use cryptographic algorithms to protect their privacy. ONTO can manage digital assets in a safe and reliable way and apply it to your life. At the same time, it will build a reliable and controllable data transaction system for users through an authorization system and encryption algorithm.

Q7. Do I need to pay any transaction fees on both internal and external transaction in ONTO wallet?

Which benefit you earn on ONTO wallet? Each transaction will cost 0.01 ONG. And you can use ONTO for Staking, also there are a variety of Candy Box campaigns and all kinds of dApp cover entertainment, investment, and so on for you to experience. Above all, you can also register your ONT ID, which will act as the bridge to link the real and digital world and give you the right to manage your own data, no need of worrying about the data leakage anymore.

Q8. Please explain why I have to invest in ONG while I already had ONT?

What are the roles of ONG in Ontology ecosystem? Do you think that ONG existence will conflict with ONT and it can harm the scarcity of ONG? The Ontology dual-token design uses ONT for staking and ONG as gas. In the Ontology infrastructure design, ONT is used as the staking tool, and the time cost of staking and the operating costs of the nodes are considered to be inputs and ONG is distributed as revenues. ONG is the utility token used as a value anchoring tool for on-chain applications. The dual-token design not only ensures the development of the infrastructure system but also provides more services to justify the value of the infrastructure. Staking is both a fundamental governance model and can develop a range of value-based businesses. There won’t be any conflict with ONT and ONG.

Q9. What is the best, your most favorite feature of Ontology that you will boast of in front of other companies and maybe inspiring you to build this ontology?

The core vision of Ontology is to create a “distributed trust collaboration platform” for all scenarios. In the past year, the Ontology team has established partnerships with teams and companies at home and abroad in various industries, especially in the fields of finance, payment, and gaming. We not only help blockchain start-ups to build a trust ecosystem but also have deep cooperation with industry giants to help traditional industries break into the blockchain world. In the meantime, our strategies for digital identity, content copyright, and data exchange have also been recognized by our ecosystem partners.

Q10. There is my relative who is owner of international courier or logistic company. they want to use blockchain for their business. How Ontology blockchain can help in their business, can you please explain?

Actually, we have the technical and business solution for the logistic industry and already have some practice and case study in this field. With Ontology technology, every part of the whole working process can be recorded on the blockchain platform, with its only hash. In this way, the cooperation and transaction would be transparent and fair all the time. More significantly, it can be traced and even no one can change it, to make sure the whole process is credible and of high efficiency. If anyone would like to experience Ontology solution, please feel free to contact us through telegram or email (email: contact@ont.io), we always feel glad to provide technical and business support.

Q11. In Node Staking feature, I see it describes that “Stake ONT to earn ONG rewards” Can we do viceversa like staking ONG to earn ONT or staking ONT to earn ONT? If not, why not?

No. According to our dual-token mode, ONT and ONG are separate token. If you hold ONT, you can earn ONG which is generated from ONT. Now, we only have ONT as the token for staking. Users will gain bonus from three parts if they stake: Ontology Foundation, transaction on the blockchain platform and the ONG which is naturally generated from ONT. You can refer to the Ontology dual token article to know about more detailed information: https://medium.com/ontologynetwork/a-breakdown-of-the-ontology-dualtoken-model-16b322795c01

Q12. What is Ontology vision and what’s your biggest challenges?

The core vision of Ontology is to create a “distributed trust collaboration platform” for all scenarios. During the two-year research and development, one-year steady MainNet operation and continuous technology development, we have already established a basic trust collaboration platform and achieved the first step of our vision: Ready for all businesses. We will continue to adhere to the real business strategy, taking every step in a solid manner, break the game with technology. We look forward to seeing more changes happen. Lacking real users and use cases. Ontology aims to bring the real adoption to the blockchain industry. So, we have launched a full stack incubation program. And we try to build mature tools and open platform for engaging traditional users and developers.

Q13. How will Ontology create revenue?

We will keep focusing on the development and research of our technology and devote ourselves to provide advance and complete business and technical solutions for our partners and customers.

Q14. Cosmos just appears and is determined as a new competitor of Ontology. So, can you let us know what is Ontology cross-chain solutions and how good it is by comparing them with Cosmos?

We have launched our design for a lightweight and safe multichain system and cross-chain solution. We are also the first public blockchain project in the world to have launched the Multichain TestNet. Our cross-chain solution uses the Ontology public blockchain as the main chain and supports both homogeneous and heterogeneous side-chains. The solution allows cross-chain interaction between the main chain and sidechains, and also between side-chains. You can refer to below image to find the advantage of Ontology cross-chain solution comparing with other chains: https://medium.com/ontologynetwork/ontology-releases-multichain-design-to-rival-that-of-cosmos-polkadot-and-plasma-17ddaa027b05

Q15. One of biggest problem with DApps is inactive and useless status. People just create DApps but it has no use case in real life nor contribution to blockchain ecosystem. I think some of these still exist on Ontology. So, to resolve this problem, what will your team do?

We ever published the Ontology dApp Incentive Schemes, including the Early Bird Scheme: Transaction fee rebate, Worker Ant Scheme: Active dApp incentives, Angel Investment Scheme: dApp development loan program and Developer Support Scheme: Technical, marketing, and operation support four parts, and we have been updating and optimizing it. Also, our BD and tech team keep in touch with the dApp team to know their update and problems so as to provide some help if necessary. We pay special attention the data of dApps, to make sure each dApp based on Ontology Blockchain platform can perform well and to some extent benefit our community members. If you have dApp and would like to transfer to Ontology platform, please feel free to contact us: contact@ont.io.

Q16. Trust is key component in building Ontology Trust Network. But there are some barriers for adoption, 2 of them are ease to access and transparent communication. I think ONT team already realized and was resolving these. So, can your team let us know what did and what will your team do to resolve these barriers and give quality experiments to the users?

We have long worked with investors and the community to explore new areas, such as gaming, DeFi, and the attention economy (content, short videos, and advertising trade). We will continue to do so and launch products and protocol frameworks that can be widely adopted. With the adoption of the community and the growing demand of enterprises, we are aiming to work with the community to iterate products in a more agile manner, to make Ontology the most widely adopted blockchain network in the market. More specifically, in the next stage, Ontology will strive to lead in technology, be developer- and user-friendly, and widely recognized.

Q17. Ontology looks good but it confuses me that there are so many other Blockchain projects. What should I pay attention in Ontology to give it the importance it deserves?

Good question. Firstly, Ontology takes technology development at the priority all the time, such as sharding, multichain and WASM. We would like to provide the outstanding technology for global developers and make it used in all kinds of industries to conquer the problems of trust. Secondly, we concentrate on ID and dedicate to provide the ONT ID solution so that the hidden trouble and pain spot to users won’t exist anymore. Last but not the least, we keep our promises and made all the goals on our roadmap announced 3 years ago come true. As Founder of Ontology LI JUN said: “When you look at the whitepaper published three years ago, you will find we have already set the sharding, multichain network as our goal, and it is never changed since then. During the three years, we strive ourselves to realize each of our objective. In the future, we will persist in the roadmap and empower more industries.”

Q18. What is Ontology use case?

How does it add value to the Ontology ecosystem? We have many use cases for DeFi, entertainment, payment and so on. You can refer to our official website (ont.io) or download our official application ONTO (onto.app) to find more information in the dApp part for reference.

Q19. What do you think is the biggest problem Ontology will solve that no other project is solving now, and why is the problem important to solve?

“Trust” has been the biggest challenge of collaboration since human history. After generations of technology and system development, from tribe to country, from the industrial revolution to information interconnection, the human “trust” collaboration mechanism has been continuously improved, but also constantly challenged. Today, privacy protection, personal information ownership, data collaboration, and data authenticity are still plaguing us in collaboration. So far, in the current technology system, blockchain is the most promising technology to overcome these challenges and bring “trust collaboration” to a new level. Ontology is willing to work with all partners with the same goal to redefine trust.

Q20. What Changes can we expect from ont wallet that’s in beta testing?

ONTO is not only a wallet, it can make you manage People, Assets, Things, and Affairs All in One, more than just a wallet. The updated version provides the below features:

  • A Fresh New Look: you can check your assets and market trends at a glance;
  • Node Staking in One Click: Let users stake ONT easily and efficiently to earn ONG;
  • Now, it supports Kakao’s Klay asset, and will launch the airdrop campaign soon;
  • You can discover useful dApps, covering finance, investment, entertainment, games and so on;
  • Above all, you can register your own ONT ID, which is decentralized identity authentication and take it as the passport to the extensive blockchain world.

Download link: https://onto.app/

Q21. How ontology is going to deal with adoption and sustainability?

Ontology is dedicated to providing end users with highly secure and intuitive products. We will improve Punica toolkit and simplify dApp templates to help any new developers get familiar with the on-chain features. ONT-login feature integrated into dApps and you will easily login and generate your wallet with Facebook, Google, Twitter, and WeChat account. dApps are allowed to run Layer-2 state channels to reduce transaction costs, and even pay the transaction fees for users. Decentralized storage allows dApps to keep in custody any required documents. ONTO has been upgraded to a comprehensive blockchain client, which supports more platforms, assets, and applications, thus providing one-stop services for users.

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