Host
Can you all tell us a little bit about yourself?
Kyle
I’m the Communications Director at PhoenixDAO. My primary focus for PhoenixDAO is ensuring all outward messaging is on brand, supporting all teams so they are working as effectively as possible and also constantly looking for new and innovative ways to expand our teams. I bring to the project a breadth of business knowledge, having run several successful businesses over the last 14 years from an early e-commerce business to my current business, a creative software agency, fortunately not only do I see future synergies for my businesses.
I’m a great believer in striving for success whilst keeping a healthy work/life balance ??.
Clement
My name is Clement Hugbo, and I am a product designer and developer. Usually when I am not doing these things, I am either trading or teaching people how to trade cryptocurrency and know more about the Blockchain technology.
I am also PhienixDAO Director of Design and Marketing and it’s been fun having to help build this with amazing people as my fellow team members.
By the way, I love playing the acoustics. ??
Mark A
Sure! For those of you who don’t know me, hello! My name is Mark Anstead. I run all of the bizdev over at Numio. I help a bit with product management with Marco & Tim (our CTO), and lead the sales that we are working on with our products.
I’ve been quite deeply involved in the blockchain industry for the last few years working with different projects- initially through CI Network, and now work as an advisor for a couple. It’s incredible to see how some of these technologies we have all talked about starting to really come into fruition- more importantly, seeing the companies I’ve worked with starting to grow and flourish! Outside of work, you might be able to find me playing lacrosse, jamming to music on the guitar or ukulele, or playing video games :)
Marco
Hello Bittrex Community! I’m the CEO at Numio and have been working primarily on product management and research on our products for the past 18 months. We have always sought to incorporate the best technologies on the market, along with our proprietary tech into both Numio Pay and Numio Vault. This is why we have partnered with the PhoenixDAO team using their Identity and Authentication protocols in both Pay and Vault.
Numio Pay is a mobile app featuring identity management, blockchain based 2FA, and digital payments both peer to peer as well as paying for items at merchant locations. Numio Vault is an advanced crypto storage solution featuring private keyless security and blockchain based 2FA not present in other decentralized solutions.
With both of our products being released in June we are very excited about what this summer and the future holds!
Host
Can you also provide us a brief description of the PhoenixDAO project?
Kyle
For sure the core of PhoenixDAO is a decentralised identity-driven financial ecosystem, we enable SME and institutions alike the ability to build on the PhoenixDAO protocols meaning they can deliver solutions quick-to-market.
What we bring in addition to this is the PHNX token. PHNX enables a self fulfilling ecosystem led by the community, this will be via a unique DAO platform along with a suite of dApps and a dApp store all built with the PHNX token and Phoenix Identity protocol as the lifeblood.
Our ethos is to start with the community and continue with the communities best interests at the forefront.
Host
What was the motivation behind starting PhoenixDAO and Numio?
Kyle
Collectively the PhoenixDAO Directors have a huge passion for blockchain and crypto outside of the PhoenixDAO project. After spending several years gradually getting to know one another from various blockchain projects and communities it became clear we all wanted the same thing — deliver what the space was craving and that is decentralised, blockchain solutions that were usable and had the chance to help real world problems.
We saw a huge gap in the market to leverage open source technologies and then build out not only the DAO but also partner with some of the most leading edge companies in the space.
More details on our motivations can be found in our launch announcement here:
https://medium.com/phoenixdao/community-relaunch-hydro-ecosystem-as-phoenixdao-to-bring-true-decentralization-7b5e284ab1a5
Mark A
I’d be happy to talk about Numio. Numio is a company created off of the products that were being developed previously by Hydro Labs.
Our team first got together about 18 months ago while doing open source work together, and we realized our collective passion and love for self-sovereignty and finance- primarily how we can bring these financial products and tools to people anywhere around the globe. We then set off to begin product development, and launched our first beta last year.
The core of what we are building is all around DID (digital identity) management, and how that can be applied into your real world day to day life for payments or asset management.
Host
What’s a major milestone for PhoenixDAO this year that your team is most excited about? What about any short + long term goals?
Kyle
Unlike most crypto project PhoenixDAO have hit the ground running, we forked the protocols from the open-source hydro protocols which means we have effectively already leapt two years ahead with our core technology, we have recently signed a partnership agreement with Numio a U.S based fintech company who have agreed that they will be launching two products in June which are built on the PhoenixDAO protocols and will bring additional utility to the PHNX token.
In the remaining months of 2020 we will be working to achieve the following:
- Already launched the Phoenix country ambassador program with the focus of expanding community and putting the infrastructure in place to ensure PhoenixDAO quickly become an exciting and well established project/community
- Launch the PHNX DAO platform, as of now the development is progressing well and can be monitored on github (https://github.com/PhoenixDAO/dao-dashboard)
- We will be working towards getting listed on at least three top exchanges (this will be a huge task and we will be needing the support of the whole community as exchange listing is a huge task).
- Working with our licensing partner (Numio) to launch a PHNX supported Numio Vault, Pay and Drive with a dApp store housing a minimum of 20 high quality dApps.
- Carry out major marketing hacks to increase the reach of the project and increase followers and community to minimum of 10,000 (telegram, twitter and other social media platforms).
- We will also be working with teams in the Ethereum community to consciously grow the popularity of the PhoenixDAO ecosystem. We believe that after the developer awareness campaign, it will be a lot easier to get a good number of dApps built in the next few months. A few of our methods which will be announced is organizing online bootcamps and hackathons which will focus on having POCs/MVPs that will be developed using the Phoenix protocols.
Host
To accomplish what you’ve outlined above it requires a runway. What is the financial model of PhoenixDAO? How is the ecosystem sustainable?
Kyle
At the core we have the open source protocols.
- Authentication
- Identity
- Payments
- Storage
- Tokenization
In addition to the core technologies PhoenixDAO are going a number of steps further to build out the DAO framework, along with this will be the dApp store, events marketplace and initially four additional flagship dApps. The DAO, with how it is structured, is self-sustainable.
I would recommend checking out the link below for how it will be able to grow over the course of time and be able to accrue assets in the DAO reward contract and DAO fund.
For example: https://medium.com/phoenixdao/community-relaunch-hydro-ecosystem-as-phoenixdao-to-bring-true-decentralization-7b5e284ab1a5
Phoenix dApp Store Token usage:
- 2% of all dApp store sales will be sent to the DAO smart contracts for use in expanding the ecosystem through dApp development and future initiatives.
- dApp sales will be priced in PHNX. Option to trade any ERC20 for PHNX instantly.
- Owners of dApps can charge users additional fees in PHNX, and 2% of the sales of these transactions go to the DAO smart contracts.
- All DAO funded flagship dApp sales will be used for ecosystem expansion.
We are also looking to bring staking, lending, among some really exciting initiatives such as the Phoenix Loans program would give out micro-loans to jumpstart credit in unbanked areas. Loans will be paid back in PHNX tokens with low interest for approved borrowers through their DeFi-ID score. Current PHNX wallet holders may also stake tokens into this program.
These initiatives will also be used to keep the foundation funded past full token distribution. See a first look at the designs and development currently underway of our DAO software here: https://medium.com/phoenixdao/first-look-building-the-dao-2b15aac73ef1
Host
What industry development trends of the industry do you think we’ll see in 2020? What kind of competition do you anticipate will emerge between similar projects in your space?
Kyle
We see more decentralised projects and their communities breaking away from centralized creators who launched projects under the guise of decentralisation.
As seen with the HIVE fork of STEEM due to centralisation issues with the Justin Sun/TRON takeover, we have also forked protocols as former members of the Hydro community. Reasons for this included the founding centralised US based corporation controlling over 60% of the supply and core developers dumping huge amounts of tokens on investors once they stopped building on the project.
The full list of differences and the reason for our fork from Hydro can be seen in the image below.
Host
Can you talk about the future of digital assets and blockchain technology? Will it result in a global revolution, or just be an esoteric trading game? When will significant points of change occur?
Mark A
There is no doubt that digital assets, blockchain, and this trend of decentralization is here to stay. Anyone who says otherwise, is just fooling themselves. A blockchain gives power to people and communities!
A few years ago, we had the launch of Ethereum, and now it is beginning to get tested and used by different enterprises- not just startups messing around with it.. that’s huge!! In the grand scheme of things when comparatively speaking with the internet, we are at such an early stage of adoption. Virtually every online product, mobile app, or system will have their own form of an e-wallet (likely a crypto wallet) in the next 2–3 years.
For the most part in areas like the US, the use of crypto is not necessarily as necessary since first world countries are quite lucky to be gifted with so many luxuries. In developing countries, we are seeing these technologies really starting to heat up- especially underbanked, or unbanked industries
Kyle
My views on this subject are quite simple. Take a step back and reflect on where technology is heading. The current pandemic is an example of how easily physical cash could become obsolete, you lose the physical and the obvious move is digital.
We are already seeing a serge of projects begin to leverage the tokenized digital assets and personally I do see this growing. This is one of the reasons why we are looking to build out our protocols for immediate use-case in unbanked areas of the world starting primarily in Africa and Asia.
Our protocols offer the full blockchain ecosystem ground layer needed for product developers such as Numio to bring blockchain technology to the masses with ease of use.
SPOILER ALERT??: Beginning this summer, we are joining another partnership with the Numio team in bringing a Nigerian Naira backed stable coin to Nigeria — the first one on Ethereum. Using Phoenix Protocols and Numio products, digital-payments and a credit scoring system will be coming sooner rather than later to the region to open up credit and lending to millions.
@levanluyenw
As I know, DeFi is the important topic in the blockchain space right now and near future, so can PhoenixDAO share your opinions on DeFi? Do you think that DeFi will disrupt the existing financial system?
Kyle
We have built protocols for any product developers to tap into bringing digital identity to unbanked regions. Our digital identity-based protocols allow for previously unbanked individuals to begin to build credit and qualify for loans based on their digital spending habits. It’s our belief that our partnership with Numio will start to see this come to fruition beginning in Nigeria.
DeFi is arguably going to become one of the most disruptive technologies because of how you are able to interact with a global, borderless economy. Whether that’s through payments, lending, asset management, staking, investing, and other things you can do with your assets in the digital world. We believe our DAO is going to help govern this incredibly fast moving ecosystem, and want to help flourish alongside it.
@Sam_1997
How Phoenix platform works as a self-reliant financial algorithm that allows the accumulation of funds?
Clement
We are building out a DAO which will oversee all proposals, development, spending, and dApp revenue. The foundation will be building out 5 flagship DAOs of which 100% of proceeds will go to sustaining the ecosystem moving forward. The Events dApp will be out first this summer which allows anyone to list an event and accept payments in crypto with each ticket tied to a user’s digital identity.
All of these dApps will have a smart contract built into them that will take ~2% of each transaction to go into the DAO rewards pool and DAO fund. This will enable for the ecosystem to become self-sustainable! With the staking program delegated towards the DAO, we will be able to see healthy growth to allow for this ecosystem to grow on it’s own over time. We’re excited to see the community get more involved in everything that is being built.
@rinnguyen
Can You explain about Various Dapps on the Dapp store? What will be the main advantages to Developers who will build on the platform?
Clement
Developers will be part of a truly decentralised voting process to get their dApps funded. We are encouraging developers to build centralised replacement dApps which can help to break up power from the few corporations which are controlling much of the mobile and web app marketplace, such as Amazon, Facebook, Uber, etc.
You can think of the dApp Store as a fully decentralized, open source version of the Android app store, or the Apple App Store. This allows for developers to break away from the costly fees associated with these platforms, and enable for users anywhere around the globe to be able to access these technologies just through an internet connection.
@havanhuuloc
Are you concerned about the innovations that ethereum is making towards Eth 2.0? that PhoenixDAO has to remain the most reliable option for DeFis?
Mark A
I was able to go to devcon last fall, and it was awesome to see all of the developments towards serenity. There were so many different meetings talking about what the future of the internet and blockchain will become with Ethereum scaling. Prysmatic Labs among others (https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-roadmap/ethereum-2.0/eth2.0-teams/teams-building-eth2.0/) have done an awesome job building out the infrastructure for it. Sharding is a pretty incredible technology, and will definitely bring some needed scalability to the ecosystem. There are some issues that we will potentially face as a part of this- along with the proposed 1559 EIP. It seems like we might face another “Ethereum Fork” similar to what happened with Ethereum Classic, but only time will tell what will occur.
The big question with any scaling solution is how the smart contracts operating on it will be able to communicate with other shards, which could create a bit of an issue for DeFi, so this will be something that the team will be keeping a keen eye on.
We’re quite excited about the developments moving forward for scaling solutions. Heck, just this month, we are seeing a TON of new developments towards scaling on Ethereum’s L-2- whether that’s with Stark Ware, Loopring, OMG Network, Matic Network, Tiramisu, Optimistic Rollups, and other awesome technologies. Numio has been working very closely with the OMG Network team over the last year or so, and are looking to deploy our Numio Pay product onto their network. When it comes to payments, Ethereum will likely become just the settlement layer while we have all of these different networks building out their scaling solutions on top of it. It’s going to be a pretty sweet ecosystem in general :)
Also, I would highly recommend digging into this document that got shared earlier today. I’ve been reading it leading up to the AMA. Lots of awesome nuggets of information in there: https://blog.ethereum.org/2020/06/02/the-state-of-eth2-june-2020/
@Algojali
What is the current status on personal identity management? What are the problems you are aiming to solve here?
Kyle
The current issues with ID management can be split into two primary areas. On one hand in the developed world, identity theft is a huge problem as up to 10% of US citizens are victims of identity fraud every year and across the globe there are 1.7 billion people without access to financial services.
The identity management protocols looks to protect user’s identities across the globe, as well as beginning to onboard the unbanked giving them a pathway to growth and financial freedom. Our focus has been to start with the right foundations to then build solutions which will likely see huge adoption.
@Sayuri1
How is PhoenixDAO a better option compared to other data verification projects like Syscoin, Civic or PAI? what is plan to surpass them all?
Clement
Civic is a centralised project that has spent millions of dollars controlled by a small group of their wealthiest investors. PhoenixDAO allows the community to decide what is best for themselves.
We truly believe the way we are approaching digital identity via a DAO will have the most impact globally as the whole ethos of the blockchain space is inclusion.
In addition, When looking at other identity focused projects, most of them, if not all, are using previous iterations of identity. This could be ERC-725, or identity layers like uPort’s ERC-1056- some are using ERC-721, which is a powerful NFT layer. 1484 is quite a powerful identity standard in the aspect that you can enable for meta-transactions, you can create an identity registry, and more importantly, you can actually aggregate all of your previous identities you have generated. This is because at its core, ERC-1484 is a digital identity aggregator!
Live questions
@Nickkiii
Phoenix claims to make blockchain solutions available to everyone. but the majority of users don’t know about the blockchain, they probably just heard of bitcoin. So what are your plans to increase awareness of Phoenix in non-crypto space?
Clement
The reason we are building a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) is so that everyone irrespective of their location, knowledge, culture and colour will have a say in the development process, and decisions will be made to ensure that products are built to meet global demands.
The problem with many projects is that they are built on developer’s assumptions that the projects are needed, when blockchain may not be the best use case. However, as a community we will be ensuring that each project is using blockchain to its full potential without trying to build hype where it is not warranted. We saw much of this in 2017 as ICOs were raising money over-promising and under-delivering.
Mass adoption will be achieved through partnerships with developers building products on top of our protocols which simplify blockchain for inexperienced users. This is why we are proud to have partnered with Numio who creates exactly these types of products allowing swift onboarding for anyone and their grandmas to use sending payments peer to peer or at merchant locations.
@Olonade02
The trending #Anonymous globally whereby the USA’s Minneapolis PD website was hacked and information was leaked, has made us understand cyber security is vital and more importantly, ANYTHING CAN BE HACKED. This is really worrisome! Why should users be confident in the security of PhoenixDAO? Are you 100% sure you can’t be hacked and that users data and funds are safe and secured?
Mark A
Well the security is based on DKP (distributed key pairs) and zero knowledge proofs at its’ core. In order to access certain information, you need to have access to a private key. When it comes to identity related information, none of that is actually stored on-chain. It’s stored through attestations, and verifiably on-chain. The tx-id’s are all able to be seen on Ethereum as it’s a public network, but those hold no GDPR-infringement information (no personal info).
The actual documents, files, or other private information is stored using ZKproofs through our NumioCloud technology. This is actually what we were building our Numio Drive around, but is extremely useful when it comes to information that can be shared to third parties. We are enabling people to store this information that no one, not even us, is able to access. It’s pretty sweet
If you want to read up a bit more about Numio and what we’re building at the product layer, I’d suggest you check out these articles on our Medium: https://medium.com/numio. There’s lots of handy information there. We’ll be sharing some more content about what we’re building- make sure to keep an eye out for it!
@endtimeprophet
What’s NUMIO, what problems does it solve that existing solutions are not solving
Marco
Hi Oyibo — Numio builds mobile (Numio Pay) and web based apps (Numio Vault) to simplify blockchain for the modern consumer. We have incorporated PhoenixDAO protocols so that all of our products mint user’s a digital identity.
Our mobile app Numio Pay can be used as a 2FA device to sign into Numio Vault instead of searching through Google Authenticator codes, or accidentally typing one into a phishing website. This mobile app can also be used to send friends payments P2P or pay for items at registers in crypto and local stablecoins.
Numio Vault makes software wallets more secure with our NumioCloud decentralized storage of private keys. Non blockchain friendly users do not need to worry about storing private keys or purchasing a hardware wallet. They are able to unlock their private keys from encrypted storage with biometrics through Numio Pay. Numio never has access to user private keys.
Both of our products when used together provide unbanked regions with decentralized bank accounts (Numio Vault) and mobile devices to replace bank cards (Numio Pay).
@Nickkiii
Asides the partnership with Numio, what other partnerships have you formed to ensure more adoption for PHNX? #AskPhoenixDAO
Clement
As for this, hoping this also answers the question raised by @endtimeprophet we have partnered with some companies in Africa and also in discussion with more other companies to integrate PHNX token in their products as well as making available, communities that understand the use cases of Blockchain products from our partners to enable a wide spread of the PHNX token. More information on these partnerships and why we have partnered with them will be announced on our channels as we progress.
@Rosanela8
Which personal data from the user is needed for Phoenix Identity digital identities to be created? what are the uses of this digital identity?
Mark A
The most used authenticator is in fact Google authenticator, what improvements are made from Phoenix Authentication Blockchain based two-factor authentication in comparison and what is the strategy to reach adoption from the community?
How is the security of the file storage? What do I have to do to be able to store information in Phoenix storage?
When you look at any type of solution, you need to understand some of the security vectors, and where/what those vulnerabilities are. By this, I mean- how can you, if you’re a hacker, essentially break into an authentication solution?
For GA/Authy, it’s quite simple, and their vulnerabilities are/have been known and exploited for years. Unfortunately, it still remains the most widely used 2FA solution on the market.
For the auth solution that we built, there is a way for people to hack into it- though it is not easy.
Step 1: Double spend the Ethereum network to find the on-chain identity that is going through the authentication process.
Step 2: Hack into the Authentication API
Step 3: Hack into every mobile device on the entire network, figure out which specific device is going through the auth process, and gain local control of it.
Only then, are you able to break into that process. In essence, it’s quite difficult, if not, impossible.
We’re pretty excited about what this technology means for bringing more security to end users and businesses alike
@levanheun
Most investors just focus on the price of a token in the short term instead of the real value of the project. Can you (as #phoenixDAO team) tell us the motivation and benefits for investors to long term?
Clement
The first thing we are focused on is building out the DAO dashboard. This will be the core of the PhoenixDAO community interacting and contributing to the evolution and sustainability of the project. The DAO will allow any community member to make proposals for usage of DAO funds, vote on proposals including dApp builds and marketing campaigns, as well as earn PHNX for participating!
The Phoenix dApp Store is another long term investment the team will make to house all of the Phoenix Identity based dApps to replace centralized counterparts.
Long term we are also looking at partnerships with other firms such as Numio to bring use case of these protocols and the PHNX token to the masses.
@havanhuuloc
How do you plan to spread cryptocurrency in Community? Do you plan to develop a project in this direction ?
Clement
Our country ambassador program is designed to ensure we have a growing community spreading throughout all regions of the globe. Country ambassadors are the marketers for our developer community and can earn PHNX by helping spread our protocols and getting additional members on-boarded to our DAO.
If you would like to help our cause and become a Community Ambassador please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/dFCEVZ9xcKixT2rf9
All community members are also eligible to receive rewards and staking bonuses for voting in the DAO
@alice_wonderland12
What are the use cases of Phoenix token and where could I buy some?
What makes PhoenixDAO better than other DAOs?
When do you expect your DAO development to be complete?
Mark A
This’ll be the last question I answer before I hop off and get some other work done.
To get a full understanding of the token ecosystem that PhoenixDAO is creating, I would recommend going to the whitepaper:
https://github.com/PhoenixDAO/PhoenixDAO-docs/blob/master/PhoenixDAO_White_Paper_V1.1%20.pdf.pdf
The token is currently listed on Bittrex, which you can trade the token here: https://bittrex.com/Market/Index?MarketName=BTC-PHNX
It will be listed on Uniswap in the near future as well.
The PhoenixDAO is pretty innovative and the core team there did a great job putting all of the pieces together to have a successful ecosystem- especially with how people are able to be rewarded for staking and participation. I’m excited to see the ecosystem grow, and see how people will be able to earn other rewards for participation too.
Having us (Numio) at the product layer bringing in users and customers essentially right away will enable for the ecosystem to flourish quite efficiently.
The DAO development is going along quite nicely. If you haven’t definitely go and check out the github repo: https://github.com/PhoenixDAO/dao-dashboard. They’re working hard on the front-end right now, and should begin back-end development once that’s finished up. It’s moving along very well.
You can join our active community to by following our socials below;
- Telegram
- Linked-in
