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Welcome to another episode of our AMA series. Today we are glad to tell you about the AMA session with our friends from TACEN, its architecture is blockchain agnostic, instead relying on a decentralized network of oracles running on DFINITY’s Internet Computer in order to track and provide trade data for our unique coordinated settlement process. The AMA took place on May 07 and our guests were Clarence Liu (Chief of Product) and Jae Yang (CEO and Founder).
The total reward pool was 500$ and was divided into three parts. In this AMA Recap we will try to summarize some of the most interesting points for you.
PART 1, INTRODUCTION AND COMMUNITY QUESTIONS
Mary | Satoshi Club: Hello Satoshi Club! We are happy to announce our AMA session with Tacen! Welcome to Satoshi Club.
Andres M. | Satoshi Club: welcome to Satoshi Club. We are glad to have you here today.
Clarence Liu: Our founder Jae Yang is joining too.
Mary | Satoshi Club: Give us his username, please. Everyone is here, so, let’s start our AMA.
Andres M. | Satoshi Club: How are you guys?
Clarence Liu: Great, thanks for having us!
Jae Yang: Excited to be here.
Mary | Satoshi Club: We are also excited! And first thing we will ask you is your intro, could you please introduce yourself and tell us more about Tacen.
Jae Yang: Sure! I’m CEO and founder of Tacen. I have been writing software professionally for a while (roughly 18 years) My background is in aerospace engineering, and I did work in the defense industry?—?mainly in engineering simulations for helicopter design.
Mary | Satoshi Club: Young talent.
Clarence Liu: I’m the Chief of Product for Tacen, I have 3 years of executive experience in blockchain and 7 years of software engineering experience. My past experience includes Advisor for opulous.org and VP of Development for Elastos.
Jae Yang: After roughly 9.5 years in that industry I went on to ecommerce, then IoT, and finally in payments and blockchain.
Andres M. | Satoshi Club: So, what is the essence of Tacen?
Jae Yang: Tacen is a hybrid dex (hDEX) that aims to improve speed and privacy of traders, the architecture is designed with centralized orderbook, and decentralized settlement layer.
Clarence Liu: we have a great blog post recently that explains more, please take a look after the AMA: https://tacen.com/blog/hdex-a-new-generation-of-crypto-exchange/
We’re also one of the few projects BRAVE enough to start in the US, to prove our legal prowess if you may.
Andres M. | Satoshi Club: How did you become one of that projects? How was the process?
Clarence Liu: It’s not really a process, it’s a strategic decision, Jae Yang has extensive experience in compliance and software engineering from his role as Director of Engineering at Metal Pay in the US, so he worked very closely with the legal team, AML, anti-fraud systems and more. Therefore gained a strong understanding of the legal landscape, rare for a software engineer.
He was confident he could do this in the US properly, and even signed up his friend Shah Hafizi who is now our advisor to review his strategy, Shah Hafizi is an ex-SEC Special Counsel, was Chief Compliance Officer at Blackrock and now is CCO at Genesis Group.
Q1 from Telegram user @mm_carlos
I read a little about the architecture of Tacen and it is categorized as a hybrid architecture, some hybrid platforms make certain arrests or hold money from user funds and that is worrying, does Tacen hold user funds for a certain time or does the user have their funds at the moment they need it?
Clarence Liu: In the hDEX architecture Tacen never has custody of funds, funds are collateralized in an individual smart contract based “Smart Wallet” for the entire duration of trading, but that Smart Wallet is fully owned by their private key. In the event there is a failure in the centralized order-book, all traders receive their funds back in 2 days. furthermore it’s still possible to settle during this period because the hDEX oracles (SDOs) are still operational.
Andres M. | Satoshi Club: So the users are the only owners of their keys?
Clarence Liu: yes, only you have the private keys that control the Smart Wallet.
Jae Yang: Yeah, fund has to leave your wallet to your own smart wallet (escrow-like smart contract)
Q2 from Telegram user @Arisabela
It’s very surprising that Tacen doesn’t really have a token of its own. On the contrary, you guarantee full sovereignty of the users’ money. What is the economic model of this platform based on without a token? How do they generate incomes in a sustainable way?
Clarence Liu: Let’s clarify the ecosystem first, there is another separate project to build the TXA Ecosystem. the TXA Ecosystem consists of the TXA Decentralized Settlement layer, this is a settlement layer run by oracles which we call “Settlement Data Oracles” (SDOs) in this ecosystem there is a token however, and TXA token’s utility is to be staked as one of the pre-requisites to operate an SDO, in return SDOs can charge a fee for providing the settlement data, so there is this economic model.
Tacen is the development company and does not have a token, in fact I believe the TXA Ecosystem will grow much larger, its goal is to be a generic settlement layer that can support all types of exchange platforms, NFT exchanges, regional exchanges, different asset exchanges and more, not just Tacen’s future US-based exchange.
Mary | Satoshi Club: Got it! Who and how can get TXA?
Clarence Liu: so you can imagine there is a governance aspect to it too. If you have questions about TXA specifically, please join https://t.me/txa_community.
Q3 from Telegram user @dudeiebitch
Your main target is to bridge the gap between speed And security because centralized crypto exchanges are too risky to trust and on the other hand, decentralized exchanges are too slow. How do you plan to be fast and make sure our details are extremely secure even though we go through KYC.
Clarence Liu: That question makes the wrong assumption, the hDEX architecture supports trading without KYC, so we never have the details in the first place.
Jae Yang: We’re speeding up the order submission, modification, and matching part by centralizing them, and we’re moving the p2p settlement part into the constituent chains, So the settlements are aggregation of all the trades that results in debit-credit relationship between the traders themselves.
Mary | Satoshi Club: So, you will have KYC verification?
Jae Yang: No for crypto-crypto trades.
Mary | Satoshi Club: What about your smart contracts? Did you audit them?
Clarence Liu: FYI the SDO (oracle) software will also be open-source and audited, the TXA Ecosystem will be fully transparent, open-source and audited, therefore it can be run by the community in confidence.
Andres M. | Satoshi Club: So, that’s the next step in your roadmap? What else is coming in your roadmap?
Clarence Liu: Our launch is towards the end of 2021 or start of 2022, so there’s lot of partnerships and integrations to announce, as well as security audits, invite-only beta tests and more, as the hDEX architecture is cross-chain we’ll be building a list of launch partners and supported blockchains, you can definitely expect ETH, RSK, and a few popular chains, but we’re working on more.
Andres M. | Satoshi Club: Any sneak peek for us about that coming partnerships?
Clarence Liu: well definitely DFINITY, but I wouldn’t call that a partnership, but we’re likely building on their technology to create a scalable oracle network. we’re one of the few projects building on DFINITY’s Internet Computer right now, you’ll see a brief mention of us on today’s DFINITY Mercury Genesis launch event.
Q4 from Telegram user @Jonahapagu
One of the main aim of TACEN is to combine the best of Centralized and Decentralized exchanges in order to create what is called a Hybrid-decentralized exchange (hDEX) in a two-fold architecture comprising of a centralized order management, with decentralized settlement, so can you explain how this two-fold architecture works and how combining them together will improve users trading experiences, what are the key reasons why TACEN decides to combine features of both centralized and decentralized exchanges and what important features are you bringing from both worlds..
Clarence Liu: On an hDEX you start trading like on a DEX where you connect your METAMASK or other private wallet. Then the hDEX will help deploy the “Smart Wallet” on any chain you want to trade with ensuring you are the only owner. The Smart Wallet is a suite of smart contracts that allow you to collateralize funds you wish to trade with. Once connected, trading is similar to the CEX experience, we have a full order-book with advanced order types such as limit orders, trailing stops, and more. When you submit orders they are signed with your Smart Wallet’s private key, which only you know, and then they are sent to a centralized order matching engine. The order matching is done at <1ms speeds because it is an off-chain system similar to a CEX. Of course you can only trade up to the amount you have collateralized, initially TXA Ecosystem will not support leveraging.
Once connected, trading is similar to the CEX experience, we have a full order-book with advanced order types such as limit orders, trailing stops, and more. When you submit orders they are signed with your Smart Wallet’s private key, which only you know, and then they are sent to a centralized order matching engine. The order matching is done at <1ms speeds because it is an off-chain system similar to a CEX. Of course you can only trade up to the amount you have collateralized, initially TXA Ecosystem will not support leveraging.
Mary | Satoshi Club: Which blockchains will be available?
Jae Yang: We’re still evaluating this, but we take compliance seriously, that means We’ll focus on bona-fide cryptocurrency networks that support smart contracts, utility tokens that pass the muster under SEC’s Digital Asset Framework and so on exchange itself won’t charge fees or something like that for listing. It’s purely a function of compliance, tech considerations (integration), and whether it makes sense business wise.
Mary | Satoshi Club: Do you know how many tokens already passed it?
Clarence Liu: but remember the TXA Decentralized Settlement Layer will in the future support many other exchange platforms in addition to Tacen’s future flagship US-based exchange. So you can imagine SDOs and governance voting for new chains or tokens. However these will have to be on new exchange platforms set up by other entities.
Q5 from Telegram user @kosku21
Among the team’s plans to become pioneers in the NFTs market, how are you working to achieve this goal? What are they focused on and what technology or blockchain will be used for this area of non-fungible tokens?
Jae Yang: Tacen’s working on NFT marketplace, and I think one of the main issue is the discoverability, as well as intuitive UI. I use OPENSEA quite a bit (great place), but it still feels like early days of ebay. I think one of the things that can be improved in the NFT marketplace is clear indication of provenance (I mean real provenance of the IP). This is where a business entity can help verify the artist’s claim (and if it is not an art work still same) that it is from the creator’s own work.
Listing and resale should always have the certificate of authenticity type of info. Blockchains help with the persistent immutable part, but not the original authenticity checks.
Mary | Satoshi Club: How do you plan to manage this?
Jae Yang: We can provide additional guarantee with old school physical verification (if the asset value is high) and additional manual checks on the authenticity claims.
Q6 from Telegram user @cleotilde1
The speeds that Tacen offers for its users in terms of sales and purchases are 5–6 ms, this is really good, what did they do or what mechanism did they use to reach these high speed limits and what records have they obtained in terms of the speed of purchases or sales?
Jae Yang: Ok, couple deep tech considerations:
1. Orderbook cannot easily be parallelized
2. Order input to processing pipeline needs to be as simple as possible
3. event stream processing for the advanced order types are generally better handled in its own subsystem.
So consequence of this is that we want to make sure software we develop are constantly profiled for performance, this is where getting down and dirty with micro-optimizations matter, even though comp sci folks would say “optimize later”. There are A LOT of tricks of the trade to improve performance of the orderbook processing and in the coming days we’ll release some tech blog articles to outline them.
Andres M. | Satoshi Club: @dchem and @ClarenceL thank you so much for your amazing answers guys, would you like to share useful links with us before the live segment?
Jae Yang: https://tacen.com https://t.me/tacen_app
Clarence Liu: Follow our Twitter at https://twitter.com/tacen_app and me if you’d like https://twitter.com/ClarenceLiu
PART 2, TELEGRAM COMMUNITY LIVE QUESTIONS
The chat was open for 120 seconds; a lot of questions were posted by Satoshi Club community. Our guests chose some of them.
Q1 from Telegram User @Rahulmgr
Is your team running or plan to run global communities to raise awareness about your project? so as many people can learn about what you do and benefit from using your unique HDex.
Clarence Liu: Yes! We have a fast growing Japanese and Korean community and plan to start more, the entire point is to make a global decentralized community owned settlement layer for future exchanges. Also a lot of DFINITY fans globally are looking at us so we’re expecting fast growth.
Q2 from Telegram User @xperia3
Is Tacen team really dedicated on keeping the DECENTRALISATION at the top? How sure can we be Tacen team will make no concession on Decentralization?
Clarence Liu: Yes, the hDEX architecture is built around community operated settlement oracles. It cannot function as a centralized system.
Q3 from Telegram User @Jonahapagu
On your website it is stated that Tacen will launch a TBD exchange built on its unique decentralized architecture, and Users will be able to deploy their own non-custodial smart wallets which they have full control over and…. so if a user wants to deploy a non-custodial wallet what requirement must they meet, what do they need to have and how do they actually deploy a non-custodial smart wallet on your platform… what will be the features of this non-custodial wallets and what do users stand to gain from deploying a non-custodial wallet on your platform…
Jae Yang: the smart wallet is a non-upgradable smart contract. The deployment is done through what’s called a factory contract (which assures that contracts traders use are the same) users can just bring their own wallet (metamask, etc) that will interact with the escrow smart contract.
Q4 from Telegram User @centoscu
If you don’t require any KYC do you have any security system for people who wants money laundering?
Clarence Liu: Yes, we still file Suspicious Activity Reports, do data forensics and block many IPS or flagged addresses. Even though we don’t do KYC we have a strict AML policy. Finally remember that we broadcast all matched trades transparently, so it’s very easy to follow the funds in our system. It would be unwise to use the hDEX architecture for money laundering purposes.
Q5 from Telegram User @cryptofollower
You mentioned something named “Settlement Data Oracles” so do you have your own Oracle? Or do you have partnership with a company like Chainlink? How do you get market data?
Jae Yang: We have no plans to use Chainlink. Chainlink is perhaps good for obtaining external exchange’s information when aggregate exchange information is needed for third party, or for derivatives. Since Tacen Exchange Platform is its own exchange, and community-run SDOs witness and curate the executed trades, there’s not a compelling reason to use external oracle providers.
Clarence Liu: Please read our blog post here: https://tacen.com/blog/hdex-a-new-generation-of-crypto-exchange
But no they are our own oracles, they basically act as satellites witnessing and recording all the matched trades in the TXA Ecosystem. Then provide that settlement data for the coordinated settlement process so they’re very specialized oracles.
Q6 from Telegram User @yellowchamp
Why your platform not launching it own native token? Do you plan to launch Tacen Token in the future?
Jae Yang: We comply with US regulations.
Q7 from Telegram User @cindy_crypto
You said all traders receive their funds back in 2 days. How is it work? Can I cancel my successful order?
Clarence Liu: No, this is only in the context of the centralized exchange platform being down, then after 2 days all funds are released back to the original owner.
Q8 from Telegram User @Cleotilde1
I read about your speeds of 5–6ms, I don’t know much about this but, are you planning to increase this level by more?
Clarence Liu: Yes, we can definitely get this down to <1ms, I’ll let Jae speak on this @dchem
Q9 from Telegram User @Ferhat_19033
The security of assets is the first thing that comes to me and other Investors when choosing a project, so what are you writing to ensure that the smart contract is free from errors and vulnerabilities?
Jae Yang: We’re working on rigorous audit process. We’re also incorporating some formal verification methods that will reduce overall errors associated with interacting with multiple blockchains (which are concurrency and state sync issues).
Q10 from Telegram User @csgonub
If I use your system will I have my own private keys or will you manage them for us?
Clarence Liu: You manage your own private keys, we are truly non-custodial. Even some DEXs they have ways to freeze your funds, we do not. This is because the entire settlement layer is operated by the community and not us.
Q11 from Telegram User @smelekin
Tacen is next gen Non-Custodial Exchange so what makes Tacen a next gen and different?
Clarence Liu: Please read our blog and upcoming articles: https://tacen.com/blog/hdex-a-new-generation-of-crypto-exchange/
Q12 from Telegram User @nassiruddin
‘Binance smart Chain blockchain is having high transaction speed and cheap gas fees, Are you planning to launch your mainet or switch to other blockchains in the future…???
Clarence Liu: We do not operate on a blockchain, we are blockchain agnostic, think of us as a hub between many blockchains and we enable cross-chain trading. We will try our best to support BSC as one of our blockchains we allow trading on.
PART 3, QUIZ AND INFO
As usual, for the third part, Satoshi Club Team asked the chat 4 questions about Tacen. A link to a Quiz form was sent into the chat. Participants had 10 minutes to answer. 300$ were distributed between the winners.
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