Answers to Waltonchain Community Questions — November 2018
1. Q: In early March it was announced that subsidiary of Waltonchain- IOT Technology has signed a partnership and purchase agreement with Xiamen Ishijah Trading Co. It was pointed out that in July is expected the first Ishijah pilot store . From then we haven’t heard about this pilot store and how Waltonchain blockchain will be used. Can you update us for the development and the timeline?
A: We have already delivered the hardware products and software solution to Ishijah according to the purchasing agreement. Ishijah has accepted the products; the contract is fulfilled. We are currently waiting for Ishijah to implement our system in their pilot store. We will update the community once we have further information from Ishijah’s end.
2. Q: On Sept. 5th Waltonchain signed partnership with Dongdaemun Fashion Town. The Medium article says: “The implementation of Waltonchain’s Blockchain + RFID solution in Dongdaemun Fashion Town is the first application use case of blockchain technology in fashion logistics and retail industry within South Korea”. At the same time, Dongdaemun is working on their own blockchain and Waltonchain will help with the technical support.
- Can you give more details about how exactly Waltonchain ecosystem will be used or DDM will just use the RFID chips and write the data on their blockchain?
- In case DDM use only the RFID chips, how sales will benefit the token holders if it is not using our blockchain?
A: Dongdaemun Fashion Town will not only use Waltonchain’s RFID chips. Waltonchain will provide a complete set of blockchain + IoT hardware devices; and our partner will utilize Waltonchain’s underlying blockchain technology to solve many key problems of the clothing/fashion industry, including logistics, sales, data tracking, anti-counterfeiting, automatic data access, etc. This is just the first step of the cooperation with DDM. Waltonchain will develop blockchain applications for the clothing industry together with DDM in an effort to upgrade the clothing industry with technology, to reduce cost in every process, to better manage data and increase sales.
Clothing/fashion industry is an important part of Waltonchain’s ecosystem and any of its progress will be beneficial for the development of Waltonchain’s brand awareness, its ecosystem, and also for all its token holders in the long term.
3. Q: Regarding whitepaper, please clarify PoL (proof of labor). Which is the entity that performs this (Masternodes, GMN, SMN?) and for which reason?
A: Initially, SMN will perform PoL. All other Waltonchain nodes (GMN/MN) will be considered at a later stage; however, they will still be able to contribute via mining and staking, as was stated previously.
4. Q: What is the “labor” that needs to be performed? Also please clarify this task in relation to PoW that is performed on mainnet by miners. e.g. can one GMN both do mining PoW and PoL? If yes, using same software, computer, IP address? Last, since you also introduced PoS in the mainnet layer, will this done by the wallet miner?
A: The “Labor” in PoL is different from the current concept of “work” or “stake”. It is a mechanism with more realistic meaning. Labor stands for the actual tasks that are performed, such as the data that’s being uploaded or the transactions that are being confirmed. Different from the pure hash power (PoW) or token number (PoS) competition, PoL values more on the node’s actual contribution to others in the cross-chain mechanism. PoL will promote mining on the blockchain and the use of cross-chain data, thus encourage more participants of the Waltonchain ecosystem. The cross-chain nodes not only receive PoW and PoS rewards, but also child chain token rewards.
The consensus mechanism of Waltonchain is PoL + PoS; each miner who currently mines on the mainnet participates in this mechanism. The basic algorithm of the Waltonchain blockchain has been published in our official Twitter: https://twitter.com/Waltonchain/status/1044889406425812992
5. Q: Could you give a target date for the token swap (approximately: months, quarter, next year)?
A: Estimated in the first half of 2019.
6. Another question that oughts to be clarified, especially after recent internal reorganization and in view of token swap is token distribution.
A: Please find detail chart of WTC Token distribution below:
7. Q: There are some community assumptions (guesses) that the token swap may happen after child chains synchronization. Is this correct guess? And if yes, could you give more details and some timeframe?
A: Yes, Token Swap will occur after child chain synchronization. We have announced the 3rd child chain of Waltonchain. We are currently testing child chain integration to the parent chain with data hash from the child chain. The potential upload TPS of child chains will reach 10,000.
8. Q: In the whitepaper is mentioned Global eSolutions Group as partner. But searching Google, it gives two possible companies with the name “Global eSolutions”. Can you please use links to the companies sites when you announce partnerships in order to prevent misunderstandings, speculations and FUD.
A: Global eSolutions Group is one of our clients that received consultancy services from Waltonchain. We are not aware of their official website status. We will include more details of our partner companies in future press releases.
9. Q: When can we see the burn address for the token refund?
A: The address for the token refund is as shown in Question №6. We will announce how the tokens will be used.
10. Q: What is your solution to the unpredictable fee model? Currently, unpredictable (and sometimes very large) fees are associated with every transaction. How will you make income predictable and consistent, and allow apps to budget effectively? I would suggest a subscription model like AWS.
A: Similar to Ethereum, Waltonchain adopted the Gas mechanism to ensure a relatively stable gas fee.
Q: By using a parent/child chain system, horizontal scaling is achieved, but at the cost of reducing the node count per child chain. This is because parent chain nodes don’t participate in a child chain’s consensus. Have you considered blockchain virtualization that would allow for horizontal scaling without compromising security or decentralization, and allow child chains to benefit from the common nodes of the network? Vertical scaling is as important as horizontal scaling. How many TPS for the parent chain or its child chains do you foresee achieving and how? For example, one method for high TPS would be to randomly select a committee of nodes (perhaps 21) from the entire network to participate in consensus. This would maintain the security-level of thousands of nodes, but with the speed of EOS. Could something like this be implemented into the current Parent Chain?
A: The Waltonchain development team is constantly evaluating the various vertical scaling solutions and technical capabilities of current projects in the industry.
Q: Do you plan to have Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for apps?
A: Waltonchain will consider the use of SLAs accordingly as our business develops in the future.
Q: Will the Waltonchain blockchain be open and permissionless?
A: Yes
