At 8 pm on December 23, 2020, Akash CFO Cheng Wang was a guest in the Uniswap Chinese community. Hosted by the co-founder and captain of BlockArk, the topic of "How the Unstoppable Cloud Computing Platform Akash Restructures Decentralized Finance" was held. AMA event. This live broadcast event is supported by BlockArk, and supported by ChainNews, Odaily, and BlockBeats media. The live sharing content is organized as follows:
Warren: Hello everyone, welcome to today's AMA held by BlockArk in the Uniswap Chinese community. I am today's host Captain Warren, the co-founder of BlockArk. At the same time, I would like to thank the media such as Lianwen, Block Rhythm, etc. for their support of this event.
Warren: Before the event begins, let me briefly introduce BlockArk. BlockArk is an investment bank and marketing agency in the encrypted asset industry. It manages ArkStream Capital, a primary and secondary fund focused on cryptocurrency. BlockArk integrates investment, branding, market growth, and strategic consulting, and is committed to promoting the growth of Web3.0 unicorns.
Warren: The theme of today's AMA is "How the Unstoppable Cloud Computing Platform Akash Restructures Decentralized Finance". The guest is Akash's CFO, Cheng Wang
Warren: Hello@Cheng Wang (王振阳) | CFO Akash Say hello to everyone!
Cheng: Good morning (or good evening) everyone! Thank you for attending tonight's event. I'm Cheng, Akash's CFO, and I joined our team in March/April this year.
Cheng: I started my career with traditional financial institutions for almost a decade, working in various investment banks, with my last stop being Goldman Sachs. Since then, I have worked as CFO of several different startups and I have been working in the blockchain space since 2018.
Warren: Welcome Cheng! Then our AMA today starts now.
Warren: Today's AMA activity is divided into two stages. The first stage is the theme question and answer. I will ask 8 prepared questions in the form of one question and one answer. After the 8 questions are over, it will enter the second stage, free question and answer. Group friends can freely ask guests questions, and guests are free to choose 3-5 questions to answer.
【Theme question and answer session】
Warren: The first question, we hope to give our users some popular science. Cloud computing is a very broad concept. Akash is developing a decentralized cloud computing market. Can you briefly introduce what decentralization is? cloud computing? In this field, what is the vision that Akash wants to achieve?
Cheng: The concept of centralized cloud computing on Akash DeCloud is mainly reflected in the fact that the servers hosting applications on Akash Decloud do not rely on any centralized entity. Providers on Akash are spread across the globe, from large data centers like Equinix and Packet to home computers like the Akash Supermini.
Centralized cloud service providers (such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft and Alibaba Cloud, etc.) have obvious disadvantages: inefficient pricing, lack of flexibility and monopoly, etc. We want to provide new alternatives to these service providers, and these solutions are expected to occupy 71% (370 billion US dollars) of the market share by 2023.
Akash's mission is to use a decentralized computing cluster (data center) network to break this oligopoly, provide resources in a peer-to-peer market to build an elastic and unstoppable cloud market, and users' purchase of cloud services The cost will be 2-3 times cheaper than the current market price.
Warren: Okay, thank you Cheng for your popular science. It can be seen that cloud computing is a very large market, and the addition of Akash hopes to break the current monopoly of giants. Our second question is compared with centralized cloud service providers, what are the advantages and disadvantages of Akash? Compared with other decentralized cloud computing projects that belong to the same category, such as some decentralized cloud servers, decentralized cloud Stored items, how is Akash different?
Cheng: Great question! The cloud computing industry is monopolized by four centralized cloud service providers: Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Alibaba Cloud. These cloud service providers are inflexible and costly.
Akash provides a set of unique solutions for existing cloud users, making Akash highly competitive in the cloud computing market:
1. Lower cost: Akash sets the price by users, and providers obtain users through competition. This keeps the price low because it is driven by the natural laws of supply and demand.
2. Unstoppable: Apps running on Akash can only be stopped by their owners, which ensures their resilience.
3. Higher productivity: With people-oriented design, developers can get twice the result with half the effort.
4. High privacy: Even people with physical access to the server will not threaten the security of the App - no one can stop users from using Akash.
Some suggest a trade-off between decentralization, scalability, and cost. Akash will not have any hesitation in this multiple choice question. Only decentralization can make Akash truly unstoppable. Decentralization means that no one can delete the user's app or check the content on Akash, because if the provider running the app fails, the user's app will find a new provider.
Akash is built for mainstream cloud technologies, compatible with existing cloud applications and company technology stacks, and has no fixed suppliers, so it has very good scalability.
The current market value of the infrastructure field of cloud technology has reached 202 billion. As one of them, Akash is fundamentally different from other projects such as Dfinity, Ankr, Akash, and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
Dfinity pays more attention to smart contracts, and their PoS improves runtime throughput, but smart contracts have limitations. We found that Dfinity is closer to Akash's model, but we don't have a deep understanding of their source code. Currently, Ankr does not have a permissionless or non-custodial model like Akash.
We are a cloud computing platform, not a cloud storage platform. Distributed computing on Akash is stored ephemerally, so mass storage solutions such as IPFS, Storj, and Filecoin will be our key integrations. We have reached a collaborative solution with Storj and Filecoin.
Warren: Indeed, although many blockchain projects are more or less related to cloud computing, they each focus on different areas. The third question is, why choose Cosmos and Tendermint as the development framework? What advantages does Cosmos have over other cross-chain projects, such as Polkadot? In the Cosmos ecosystem, how will Akash interact with other projects?
Cheng: Cosmos and Polkadot are projects that use different technologies and different solutions. Since 2017, Tendermint, the underlying consensus algorithm of Cosmos, has been supporting public chain transactions. With the launch of Binance Chain in early 2019, it is now stable at a multi-billion dollar value.
Tendermint appealed to us because of its modularity and design flexibility. We chose to build on Tendermint due to its fast iteration speed and strong community momentum. And as a Go library, it fits nicely into our technology stack.
One of the most exciting reasons to be part of the Cosmos ecosystem is the upcoming implementation of the Interchain Communication Protocol (IBC). The implementation of IBC in the Cosmos ecosystem will allow more projects to exchange value between the Cosmos Hub and thus participate in Akash's decentralized marketplace. Through IBC, the threshold for using Akash is lowered, and more currencies will enter the Akash cloud computing market and pay for cloud computing services.
Warren: Well, with the implementation of IBC, data interoperability on Cosmos can promote cooperation among more projects. We see that Akash has successfully opened the mainnet 2, and the testnet is about to open the third phase. Can you tell us about the volume of the data on the chain in the second stage? What updates will come in Phase 3? What progress will Akash make in the near future?
Cheng: Excited to share! By running the three phases of the testnet "The Akashian Challenge", we were able to collect data prior to the launch of DeCloud Mainnet 2., identify key issues and ensure the scalability, security and availability of the network.
During the initial phase of "The Akashian Challenge", we tested governance and voting functions, and improved the network upgrade process. These explorations provided us with important recommendations on how to build a healthy community, and we also successfully launched 64 Mainnet 1 with a full set of validation programs.
In Phase 3, we integrated the performance enhancements of Cosmos SDK v0.40 and tested Akash DeCloud's platform.
The third phase of The Akashian Challenge: A total of 500,000 Akash Tokens (AKT) were awarded to hundreds of developers from all over the world. Challenges include the deployment of complex applications (from simple single-page applications to blockchain network components). Participants can deploy required programs (from DeFi to CI) by expanding examples and demonstrate their Akash OPS skills.
We are very excited about the results of Phase 3:
1. More than 3600 applications deployed
2.460+ developers
3. 149 registered validators
Additionally, Akash has generated over 1 million blocks.
Participants have developed well-known DeFi applications on Akash, including SushiSwap and UniSwap. By deploying the front end on Akash's decentralized cloud, UniSwap can provide users with $1.4 billion in liquidity that cannot be closed by centralized cloud providers.
You can check out the full list of Awesome Akash for more info:https://github.com/ovrclk/awesome-akash
Warren: Well, before the AMA, we checked a lot of Akash’s information and found that Akash has a soft spot for the word Unstoppable. The product is called The Unstoppable Cloud, and the update is called Unstoppable Update. (The Unstoppable Update), even the blog is called The Unstoppable Blog (The Unstoppable Blog), tell us about the meaning of "unstoppable", how does Akash achieve it?
Cheng: An application deployed on Akash DeCloud can only be stopped by its owner, no entity or government agency can shut down the application, even if the provider running the application fails, the application will only find new cloud provider. Akash truly makes the applications running on it unstoppable.
Warren: Well, that's a very concise answer. We want to talk about DeFi next. The popularity of DeFi continues throughout 2020. We also saw you say in some of your previous interviews that Akash will play a huge role in the DeFi field. Can you give us some practical examples and talk about the role Akash brings? We know that in the DeFi world, native developers are especially important. How is the developer community on Akash now? How will they promote the application of decentralized cloud computing in the DeFi field?
Cheng: Akash is the best platform for hosting DeFi nodes and DeFi frontends. Many people know that DeFi frontends and nodes are currently hosted on Centralized Cloud. Akash not only provides a decentralized solution, but also makes the front end of DeFi unstoppable and significantly reduces costs.
Akash Network's partnership with ICF and non-negligible contribution to the development of IBC will allow us to adopt and benefit from cross-chain technology faster than other companies.
Akash DeCloud integrated with IBC will enable more composability, innovation and scalability for DeFi.
As the third phase of the Akashian Challenge testnet demonstrates, many applications can be run on Akash DeCloud, including DeFi, games, blogs, and more. Some applications we also saw in Phase 3 include UniSwap, SushiSwap, Augur, Yearn.finance, and ThorChain.
Warren: We see that Akash will have some cooperation with Serum, which is relatively popular recently. Serum and Solana have always been hot spots in the market. What kind of linkage will Akash have with them? You just talked about that there will be applications such as UniSwap and SushiSwap on Akash. Are these applications in cooperation with the official? What is the main form of cooperation? Because most DAPP or DeFi products deployed on the blockchain can be executed only by calling the contract, and it seems that no other blockchain or platform is required.
Cheng: Serum DEX UI is the first hosted DeFi application on Akash DeCloud. We will post more information about Serum soon.
We have partnered with Solana to bring web-scale smart contracts to Akash. By interacting with Solana, Akash users will be able to run secure and scalable smart contracts on Solana's ultra-high-performance platform and pay with Akash Token (AKT). Users of Solana are also able to run distributed applications (such as machine learning or web applications) and use the Solana token (SOL) on Akash for settlement. Additionally, Akash will provide first-class support for Solana’s validators, running nodes in a highly secure and scalable environment.
Akash will be able to host countless other DeFi projects in the future. Akash is compatible with all native applications that run on the cloud, including DeFi, and if it works on the cloud today, it will work on Akash in the future.
Regarding DAPP and DeFi products, they still need to be hosted somewhere online, because the code of these smart contracts must run on a computer. The Akash Unstoppable Cloud platform provides this computing power.
Akash provides custody services for the front end of DeFi applications running through smart contracts. Any application running on the web requires hosting, and today most are hosted by centralized entities such as AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure. Akash provides a decentralized alternative to hosting these applications!
Warren: Thank you for your answer. It seems that the combination of Akash and these DeFi products is mainly on the front end. We come to the last question, which is also the token economy that everyone is more concerned about. What are the functions of Akash's token AKT? Where can we find its circulation, expected release and current staking data? What are the rewards for nodes participating in the pledge of Akash? What is the logic of its token appreciation?
Cheng: Akash Network is a POS chain built on the Cosmos Hub, which utilizes the native token Akash Token (AKT) as the primary means of managing, securing the blockchain, and providing value for storage and exchange. AKT will serve as a reserve currency in Akash's multi-chain ecosystem, while protecting the economic security of the platform's public blockchain through staking.
We are rolling out Akash’s token economic model in stages. In order to properly compensate cloud providers on the network, we will first build economic value into AKT by launching Mainnet 1 to stabilize the staking setup.
After completing the initial phase of network bootstrapping, we will start working on an Akash economic model that will drive cloud providers to lower prices and guarantee long-term stakeholder participation in the network.
Currently, our staking return annual rate is 51-54%, and we have the highest guarantee rate in the Cosmos ecosystem at 88.3%.
【Free question and answer session】
https://akash.network/token/?lang=zh-hans
【Free question and answer session】
Warren: Okay, thank you very much for Cheng's wonderful sharing. Our first phase of Q&A on the theme has come to an end, and then we will enter the free Q&A phase. Group friends can freely ask guests questions, and guests are free to choose 3-5 questions to answer.
@中建资管Mr.Jiang: Akash is a cloud computing platform, and it is unstoppable. So what kind of foundation is Akash based on? It is combined with others to solve ultra-high data computing capabilities and huge data throughput. What is the biggest benefit of being a participant?
Cheng: AKash is a sovereign chain built using the Cosmos SDK. Akash is a proof-of-stake network with an economic model similar to Cosmos Hub. The reward comes from staking AKT. In the first year of our mainnet, the inflation rate started at 54% of the annualized APR, and now it gradually decreases, falling by half every 3.75 years. As the network matures and generates meaningful fees from the Akash computing market, staked AKT will earn a percentage of profits on top of existing transaction and inflation fees.
Akash enables data centers to offset existing costs by running server infrastructure. Underutilized data centers don't have much to lose by providing computation on the network.
To ensure healthy early growth and adoption of the network, we plan to adopt a subsidy model using "exponential cost savings" as the initial subsidy trigger. Exponential cost reductions (10x to 15x the market) are an attractive incentive for cloud computing users, as cost has been an industry priority for three years in a row—particularly in price-sensitive areas, such as machine learning and big data.
See this proposal for details:
https://dcs.akash.network/spec/dcs-9
@nighL: How to attract Bitcoin and Ethereum miners to join KAT's mining industry?
Cheng: Staking AKT and income returns are very attractive right now, since the APR is ~51%. This reward is far greater than what miners on the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks can earn today. Additionally, the Akash network is a proof-of-stake network that does not require expensive hardware and high electricity requirements.
More information on Akash staking can be found here:
https://akash.network/whitepapers/?lang=zh-hans
@币海无志: What is the main improvement of Akash in the next step? What important events or milestones will Akash have to complete next year?
Cheng: First up in 2021 will be Mainnet 2, currently scheduled for sometime in the first quarter.
Mainnet 2 will enable users to set up their own providers, deploy their applications on Akash DeCloud, and participate in the cloud computing market as providers or as users deploying their applications.
The team will also be working on improving the developer experience, which includes building better provider tools, better deployment tools, and allowing for more customizable property matching during deployment.
@慈慈生活: How can investors of AKT tokens participate in the verification and governance of the Akash network? Do I need to have an Akash Supermini device to be a validator?
Cheng: Investors can stake their AKT to get inflationary rewards (currently 51% APR) and participate in the governance of Akash Network.
No Supermini device is required.
To become a validator, you need a computer capable of hosting a node and delegate enough AKT to your validator to be in the top 64 active validator set.
@慈慈生活: Compared with the huge momentum of the Polkadot network, Cosmos development and ecological construction seem to be lagging behind. How should we look at it? What role will Akash play in the entire Cosmos ecosystem?
Cheng: Cosmos and Polkadot are different projects using different technologies and solving problems in different ways.
Both have been in development for years, and Cosmos' mainnet has actually been live before Polkadot's, so it's a bit of a misnomer to say that Cosmos is behind in development.
Since 2017, Cosmos and the underlying consensus algorithm Tendermint have been supporting public chain transactions with real value.
With Hub and Binance Chain launching in early 2019, it has been securing billions of dollars in value over the years.
For the Cosmos community, we provide a production-ready, open-source software stack for developing, delivering, and debugging the decentralized web.
@虎shan: Does Akash have plans to issue its own stable currency to enter the traditional market? Many traditional companies do not like the sharp rise and fall of the currency circle.
Cheng: Akash has no plans to launch its own stablecoin. However, we have partnered with Kava to bring their USDX to our platform.
By integrating Kava’s USDX, Akash becomes the first decentralized cloud platform with a stablecoin, allowing cloud providers to avoid the market volatility of cryptocurrencies, and developers can use USDX to pay for cloud computing.
This integration enhances AKT’s liquidity and provides a stable medium of exchange for Akash users, while enabling greater adoption of Kava’s stablecoin and a higher debt ceiling with AKT collateral.
thank you all! These are all the questions I can answer today. I hope you continue to support Akash through the end of 2020 and look forward to a bright future in 2021.
In the future, BlockArk will bring you more high-quality projects and content sharing. As long as you keep an eye on the Uniswap Chinese community, or follow @BlockArk Block Ark, you can get relevant information as soon as possible. The content review of this AMA will also be posted on Weibo, so stay tuned!
In the future, BlockArk will bring you more high-quality projects and content sharing. As long as you keep an eye on the Uniswap Chinese community, or follow @BlockArk Block Ark, you can get relevant information as soon as possible. The content review of this AMA will also be posted on Weibo, so stay tuned!
