SMN and Community Q&A Official Release (June 2019)
10 min readJun 30, 2019
Dear global Waltonchain supporters,
Our project seeks to increase transparency and provide more updates on development progress. Below are answers to community’s questions and concerns collected in June.
- What is the mainnet development progress?
A: At the current stage, the Waltonchain parent chain design based on Ethereum completely satisfies the application requirements. We are also planning the high-TPS parent chain design in the long term. We will launch it in due course according to the Waltonchain ecosystem development progress. Due to the different experience levels of our engineers, there indeed is room for improvement in the mainnet source code and our developers have space to improve. We recruit new members to increase the overall competency and welcome community to show us problems. We will strengthen quality control and process management. We welcome our supporters to follow the application and ecology development of the Waltonchain, as well as more commercial applications of WTC. - We were recently told that “our hardware (e.g. Blockchain + RFID chip) can only be applied in the Waltonchain parent-child-chain system”. However, we were also told in the past that Dongdaemun Fashion Town Chain (DDM) will use our hardware and will NOT be a child chain. These 2 statements are conflicting. Can you further explain how our hardware such as RFID chips are tied to the Waltonchain ecosystem (e.g. what prevents other networks to use it) and if that’s so how would it be possible for DDM to leverage our hardware without being a child chain? Is the parent chain actually required for this? The smart contracts are easily deployable on Ethereum for instance. Is there a company policy that forces clients to become a child chain if they want R&D from you or you would still offer continuous support even if they don’t want to become a child chain?
A: Construction of a child chain on Waltonchain requires the use of Waltonchain Blockchain + RFID chip and other hardware. But in the course of business development, we will provide hardware and technical support in advance to check technical feasibility and verify whether a project is suitable to become a child chain. If it is not suitable, we can terminate R&D or only provide blockchain + RFID chip solutions and deployment, and thus achieve profitability separately. First we promote our hardware on a large scale. When customers see they benefit from a solution on blockchain, we develop a child chain for them. Compared to Ethereum, we put some restrictions on smart contract execution and provide higher throughput to fit commercial solutions and transmission of large data volumes between the parent chain and child chains. Ethereum also has too many applications. Our mainnet has lower data service and deployment cost, is suitable for a model with numerous child chains and SMNs. We cannot limit the customer’s choice, but can provide an integrated software + hardware solution. This encourages customers to proceed to become a child chain. The current smart contract implementation is for the time being, later we will upgrade it to be in our mainnet code. - The white paper states that the network will support atomic token swaps between child chains, cross-chain data indexing & querying capabilities, WTC mortgaging system, child chain data application templates, fabric smart contract templates, chain clusters and much more. So far, only the data endorsement feature seems to have been implemented in 1+ years and other cross-chain networks such as Ontology are starting to establish themselves. What’s the current status of all the other network protocol features?
A: A little update on these functions:
1) atomic token swaps will be developed later.
2) cross-chain data indexing & querying: see http://waltonchain.pro:8881 and https://github.com/WaltonChain/WaltonChain_CrossChain.
SDK interface documentation for secondary development will be provided later.
3) WTC mortgaging system is to be developed.
4) child chain data application templates are data endorsement features, see https://github.com/WaltonChain/WaltonChain_CrossChain/blob/master/mechanism/indicatrix.sol.
5) fabric smart contract templates have been merged into a unified template
6) chain clusters will be developed later. At present, there is a cross-chain dispatcher: https://github.com/WaltonChain/WaltonChain_CrossChain/tree/master/dispatcher
Also, do not forget that unlike other cryptocurrency projects, Waltonchain does software + hardware integration and develops hardware in-house. - What is the status on the development of the blockchain enabled RFID chips? How is it possible there are two child chains currently running and generating transactions while on the other hand your status reports mention your chips aren’t ready yet? What is currently generating those transactions if not the RFID chips?
A: Huodull is a software solution; they do cross-border trade. Yanghu Distillery uses and DMTC will use Waltonchain Box collecting sensor data. Tapeout of RFID chip version 1 was successful; we will get samples of version 2 next week (editor’s note: July 1–7, 2019). If OK, we start mass production. - First the rewards were based on a 4 section reward system containing A B C and D with 3 different pools for GMN, MN and PoS. This got completely reworked and ended up in a new system with coinage/balance. Then when KIRINMINERs shipped out they got a notice of a paid pool without any mentioning before! Why create this mining pool when it works against the GMN & MN concepts instead of improving consensus strategy to work against pools so that 2x hash power = 2x profit only with 2x original WTC balance/nodes.
A: We announced no fees for node holders in KirinPool. The mainnet upgrade on block No. 175,366 has enabled more rewards with higher address balance. - We have a mainnet up and running and still it’s unclear for all nodes what their exact function is, could you explain us what will be the exact roles for the GMN’s and more importantly MN’s in the future and what they get in return for holding these statuses?
A: More details on the node roles are to be provided in the blue paper. - Do you agree to the fact that the GMN’s that have been mining WTCT are being held hostage by Walton as they won’t get their promised +1 within reasonable time frame from what was made us believe. These people are forced to stay with WTC or lose their mined +1. With your failing in planning the swap with exchanges and the last minute code audit don’t you feel you owe the early miner their +1 and just pay them out before the swap?
A: We will pay the +1 rewards to GMNs, please see the official announcement. - The mainnet has been delayed time after time with one of the earlier excuses that you needed more time to launch the mainnet with 6 working live child chains. What happened to these 6 child chains? And if that wasn’t the reason for the delay then what was it? What about the Distillery? Does it also use Waltonchain Box?
A: The Waltonchain ecosystem is in process of continuous development and improvement. Child chains are implemented last compared to other ecology parts. However, child chains themselves are independently operated projects; their development status is not controlled by Waltonchain. Due to the business and operation mode of Moneynet and FashionET projects, Waltonchain stopped their R&D and deployment. These projects are no longer child chains. Freyrchain still is a child chain; it operates independently. Due to the industry factors, currently it doesn’t have a constant data stream to be endorsed to the parent chain. Building of the parent-child chain cross-chain ecosystem is a process that requires increasing time and cost; cooperation may re-adjust continuously or even stop, but Waltonchain will adhere to its goal. With the launch and deployment of the Waltonchain box, we will introduce more child chain data. Right now, Huodull endorses its data in the SMN Cross-Chain System. DMTC is the next one coming. It’s low season for the Distillery now; it will start data endorsement later. Yes, it uses Waltonchain Box. - Currently miners are mining blocks with transaction rewards in them, where do these transaction rewards go towards as the miners do not see these added up in their own rewards?
A: The tx rewards go to the pool. SMN, GMN and MN will enjoy 0 fees on KirinPool and will share the fees of the pool 1:1 with Waltonchain according to their address balance. See this announcement. - Perhaps we could have more details on what “Waltonchain’s box” is later on?
A: Waltonchain prepares a video showcasing DMTC Blockchain + Smart Agriculture Retail Platform which uses Waltonchain Box. - Do you recognize the potential hazard in FPGA’s or other mining farms to destroy the KIRINMINERs as we have seen so many problems already the first week? This will also impact the sale of the following batches of KIRINMINER, what will you do to prevent this all from happening?
A: Our technical team has fixed the mainnet exploits through upgrades. We have an understanding that there are many technical experts in the community. In the future, we welcome the community experts to participate in troubleshooting and get rewards for it. As for KIRINMINER, we will delay the second batch to ensure the profits of the first-batch buyers. - Which child chains are ongoing and which have been scratched off completely?
A: Ongoing child chain projects: Huodull, DMTC, Yanghu Distillery
Stopped child chain projects: Freyrchain
No longer child chains: FashionET, Moneynet - In a previous AMA (Q13.) Mo Bing was asked what he was the most excited about regarding Waltonchain and he answered “I would say I would be more excited about Waltonchain’s IoT + Blockchain traceability solution being applied to different industries around the world. Especially the application in smart cities, like the development of 5G technology.” Since then, Monitor Chan left the project to start his own competing project Hyper Speed Network with cross-chain technology. Should we feel threatened by that? Is Waltonchain still involved in the application of 5G in smart cities? How do you feel about Monitor’s departure?
A: Mo Bing: Not threatened (editor’s note: by HSN) in any way, we have different scopes. Feel sorry he (editor’s note: Chen Zhangrong a.k.a. Monitor Chan) left, but respect his choice.
Alex Chen: HSN is not a competitor; but we could cooperate with each other to get win-win. IoT and 5G have a huge potential market. - So we can still expect Waltonchain development to do with smart cities and 5G in the future? Do we have something concrete yet in that field?
A: We follow the current 5G development, no specific projects now (editor’s note: refers to 5G, you can read about Smart City implementation in Wuzhi, China here). - Could you provide us with more information about the working product or make a video of the product in action? That would be good to raise confidence.
A: We prepare a video showing DMTC Blockchain + Smart Agriculture Retail Platform and Waltonchain Box in operation. - We have seen a rather big sell-off of 5.6 million WTC the last 212 days. Can we expect a lot more to be sold off? Also we have seen a sell-off in the marketing section which wasn’t supposed to start until next year. Could you go into more details about this and what we can expect?
A: We will publish 2019 Q2 financial statements in July to show our financial status and project progress. It will be more specific than previously. Sell will continue according to the budget, less than in this quarter. It is affected by market conditions. - At the current rate of sell-off, how long can you stay operational?
A: Currently, we have financial support of the Foundation and external investment institutions. We will gradually uncover the details of the latter part. (Editor’s note: also see the answer to Q17.2 in December Community Live AMA Official Release: “We are financially stable. We have hardware for sale.”) - Is it possible we get some stronger western marketing/presence to help this situation? Remember the current sentiment is on an all-time low.
A: We are aware of the sentiment. The ecosystem we revealed to the public is still incomplete and we hope to fill this gap with the blue paper and put more marketing efforts in it. - 1 more question about the US regulations, how would this affect the US supporters? Is there any resolution for this?
A: We work actively on a solution and contact with Binance, but this is a pending issue; Binance has no details. We also contact other US exchanges and welcome advice from community. - Do we have any ETA on when the new node system will be in place?
A: July, this is both for the system and the blue paper. - Please update us on the token swap progress.
A: We have recently upgraded the mainnet twice: on block No. 149,500 to fix the X11 algorithm reorder exploit and on block No. 175,366 to fix the CoinAge exploit — these upgrades eliminate variables that were arbitrarily set by exploiters to get preference during mining. When we confirm these upgrades are final, we submit the mainnet code to exchanges. There is an overhead to swap, as exchanges will need to audit the code first. When we have dates, we will announce it to the community. Before that, we have set payouts each Tuesday and Friday for KirinPool miners and weekly payouts for individual miners in ERC-20 tokens to avoid the IOU mining situation. - Any plans for an Apple iOS app for KirinPool?
A: The KirinPool iOS app is ready and currently under review by App Store. - Do you plan to add more relay nodes for KirinPool globally?
A: According to our testing results, users who have good local network connection, ping under 300 ms and ‘Works’ increasing steadily should have no problems successfully mining blocks. As global miners had poor connection to the main China node, we have already added relay nodes in the USA, Europe and Australia. Still, if you have frequent orphan blocks, feel free to share your statistics with us at service@kirinpool.com. We consider adding more nodes to ensure fair mining. - What to look forward to next?
A: We are preparing financial statements for Q2 2019, project periodic report and Waltonchain Autonomous Ecosystem Blue Book that will inform the community about our project, finance and future development plans. Child chain management system is about to launch. Ecosystem participants will be able to query, supervise and participate in management of child chain data endorsement to the parent chain on it. Also, follow the nearest DMTC events: Blockchain + Smart Agriculture Retail Platform video showcasing Waltonchain Box in operation and listing of DMTC on exchanges.
Waltonchain Team
June 30, 2019
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