Ergo AMA Wrap-Up, February 11, 2022

On last week’s AMA, Dan Friedman and Joseph Armeanio were joined by Marty from ErgoPad. They started their broadcast with an overview of ErgoPad and the kind of work they are doing with their project. For those who were unfamiliar with ErgoPad, Marty discussed how it is a platform to help new projects come to market while endeavoring to assist in building the Ergo ecosystem. As a launchpad, they offer fundraising services as well as developer services for new projects. Marty revealed that there are about 3-4 different projects currently in the pipeline and that their internal developers are working on completing a DAO toolset, called Paideia. If any ErgoHack teams are looking for additional help after the hackathon, Marty encouraged them to reach out to ErgoPad to see if any assistance can be offered.

Before fielding community questions, Dan and Joseph provided updates on their work behind the scenes. Dan discussed how the ecosystem feels like it has a lot of activity lately and he welcomed the addition of Ada Handle to Ergo. They will issue unique NFT-based IDs that can be used for various purposes, including fixes for authentication issues in blockchain. This is something that he has been working on for several weeks and Ada Handle will be focusing on interoperability with Cardano. 

Bridge development and mechanisms for getting Ergo listed on DEXs is ongoing but in the meantime Dan is working on several potential partnerships. These relationships will focus on technology dealing with prototyping and UTXO solutions. Once agreements are finalized, Dan will share the news with the community but reiterated that these partnerships will “widen our horizons.” Dan also updated the audience that he is actively working on building and developing ecosystem funds and pursuing relationships with entities that specialize in ecosystem development.

Concluding his updates, Dan said the team is about to start executing the new PR strategy with the release of the new brand and website. They are concentrating on getting the website finished and organizing blogs/documents in order to streamline access to information on the website. 

Joseph Armeanio gave a few short updates to the community about the release of node 5.0, EIP27 testing, as well as some interesting developments on NiPoPoW implementation. He also informed the audience that his regular developer update will be rescheduled to later in the week so as to not interfere with ErgoHack III’s activities. 

AMA Questions and Summary

The following is a summary of questions posed by the audience during this AMA. Last week Dan, Armeanio and Marty answered several questions related to ErgoPad, bridges, ecosystem developments, Layer 2 scaling solutions and much more. Dan jokingly surrenders to pronouncing a community member’s name as “ErgoGergo” and laments that his peers are a little lacking in their Spaceballs movie trivia. To view the full AMA, please head over to Ergo’s Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-vcabm2-lY 

What excites you the most about the ecosystem right now? Who seems to be the biggest movers?

Answered by Marty 

• New wallets with dApp connectors
• This was the biggest hurdle
• These have been barriers
• iPhone app is great but still only accessible in testflight
• Great to see Nautilus working
• Yoroi is improving a little bit
• • Full version has the dApp connector
• You see ETH operate with huge has fees
• • Also the accounting model - various exploits regularly
• Ergo doesn’t have gas fees - we have a safer system for true DeFi functionality
• Starting to see it with the software that’s being developed now
• That’s why we have the DAO software
• Recently noticed .Ergo and .Sigma domains for web3
• eNFT coming - digital ocean for ERG
• Starting to see games
• Dark Pool is going to be interesting to see how it implements with Ergo

Answered by Dan Friedman

• Really excited about all the teams but a shoutout to Nautilus and Captain Nemo
• Awesome job
• Would like to see the way Nautilus is developing their software to be the standard of how software and apps are developed in the ecosystem
• They are receptive to community feedback
• They focus on the things they see as the most important items
• They leave it open so other applications and wallets and dApps can come in 
• Dan uses Nautilus himself

Why did you choose the Ergo blockchain for ErgoPad?

Answered by Marty 

• Saw it as such a great opportunity
• So much potential and so few things that are already built
• So much on the backend that Kushti has already made
• NiPoPoWs, which give you the ability to have a wallet on your cell phone that directly integrates with the blockchain that doesn’t require a 3rd party to submit your tx to the node
• The fact that it’s UTXO, it comes back to how BTC does everything but with the added benefit of smart contracts
• Felt that it was a huge up and comer
• A lot of stuff is really far along 
• Lots of advantages at the base level
• Software is early stages, that’s why we came onboard

Answered by Dan Friedman

• These are good points for “why Ergo”
• Still so much opportunity to bring real innovation and utility to the ecosystem
• All these things are still being built up
• One of the main reasons he is building in this ecosystem

What is your biggest launchpad competitor? And how are you going to be better or just as good?

Answered by Marty 

• There’s a lot of competitors
• We look at what they’re doing and try to emulate it
• At the same time, we’re the only ones on Ergo
• We look at what they’re doing and ask can we do it on Ergo? Will it be better?
• Paideia market research - tried out ETH and SOL DAO designs
• There’s always opportunities
• Always research what others have done and how we can improve

Hey Dan, can we get Charles Hoskinson on as a guest host?

Answered by Dan Friedman

• Can’t promise anything, will try his best
• Charles and he already have discussed this
• Or even an episode of Ergo Pulse

Which projects are missing on Ergo to get a fully functioning DeFi ecosystem going?

Answered by Marty

• Thinks it’s great to have ErgoDEX
• Can do so much more with that DEX
• Openings for the following: Loaning, margin trading, bots, arbitrage bots
• Want to get some ML and AI scanning tools to figure out where you have opportunities where somebody wouldn’t necessarily notice that machine learning product can learn for you
• We have a whole list of projects that we have on the backburner
• Focused on Paideia
• Once people can build DAO’s and release IDO’s - an NFT minting project where an artist can make NFT’s without needing to learn the backend code
• Don’t want to say too much
• A lot in the pipeline

Curious what Waves Enterprise is up to?

Answered by Joe Armeanio

• Just heard from Waves this week
• They are ready to go to the next phase of their oracle implementation where they are trying to create commercial partners that basically run smart contracts that are empowered by our oracle solution
• Part of the delay is research and development
• Need to authenticate data on Ergo and when bridging to other blockchain that it’s secure

Dan, is it true that SigmaValley will host an AMA?

Answered by Dan Friedman

• Haven’t spoken with them but would love to have them on one
• Would really like to potentially host a virtual Ergo summit in SigmaValley at some point
• Would bring a lot utility to the Ergo metaverse
• Using our homegrown metaverse would really good
• Give that team the ability to expand the metaverse product
• Would love to see that

Will ErgoPad be helping projects in terms of checking their code and helping with ErgoScript?

Answered by Marty

• Yes, definitely do that
• All our devs are getting familiar with ErgoScript
• Got some specialists as well
• Building python tools on the backend to allow someone who is more familiar with Python to do all those types of interaction with the blockchain
• Sort of the biggest strength is that we have great ErgoScript developers
• Luivatra is building new stuff on Ergo’s code
• • He will be able to look at someones code and say whether something is possible
• We will be able to reproduce our code for people who can also use it

Marty, what was your dev challenge building ErgoPad?

Answered by Marty

• Leif and he were the only ones developing
• Had to figure out quickly how to do these things if we wanted to launch as quickly as possible
• We didn’t want to miss the end of the bull run
• Had to get up to speed quick
• Leif had to learn ErgoScript to put together the code for what they envisioned
• If you read the whitepapers, they are very high level
• The math behind it and some of the descriptions are pretty complicated
• Without a masters in computer science, definitely wouldn’t have been able to read the details
• Did their best and luckily had other devs join the team
• Feel confident in the skills they have now
• They got here and everything is working 

What projects will be launching on ErgoPad and which one(s) will be first?

Answered by Marty

• Paideia and Dark pool
• Dark pool
• • You're a lone Ergonaut on a new planet and have to figure out your way to get off that planet
  • Visuals are really cool
  • Wrote their own engine for the game
  • 2.5D engine - it’s looking really good
  • We’ll work out how to get the NFT’s out there
  • All items and characters will be NFT’s
  • Team is releasing visuals
• Paideia 
• • It’s a DAO tool set
  • If you want to start a DAO or raise funds, or investing group
  • Say you want to invest in something with a minimum investment
  • • A tool to pool your funds and everything is voted on
  • Will be able to do an IDO or ICO with Paideia

Answered by Dan Friedman

• Would love to have a more streamlined way to invest in projects in the Ergo ecosystem
• Likes seeing a more formatted way for investments
• It will help to bring investors into a structured environment

Any plans to integrate with other wallets such as ccvault?

Answered by Dan Friedman

• Has actually spoken to the ccvault team
• They are interested in Ergo
• We are talking but need to keep talking
• Believes it would be a great addition

What project would Marty like to see that hasn’t been created/approached them yet?

Answered by Marty

• We have an apply form for people to send ideas

Answered by Joe Armeanio

• Synthetics
• Take a real world asset and create a synthetic collateralized version on chain
• That can take on segment of the market

Is there any plan to create a bridge to the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystem and its parachains?

Answered by Joe Armeanio

• Not a direct plan at this point
• But something we’re open to
• It’s a question of what’s the cost of it for us and what’s the benefit?
• It’s a future question at this point

For Joe. Are there any details available for what kind of L2 scaling solutions Ergo is looking at?

Answered by Joe Armeanio

• We have a couple of things in research and development at the moment
• One of the things is plasma channels
• • A king of scalable smart contract
• Potential to plug in Hydra
• • Believes Ergo was in the Hydra paper IOG came out with
• Ilya is looking into layer 2 solutions to create a unified Layer 2 that is interoperable with both Ergo and Cardano
• • ErgoDEX - looking to release on Cardano
  • Then bridge the two together
  • Create a unified layer 2 solution where you have interoperability with both

Is ErgoPad participating in the hackathon?

Answered by Marty

• Not directly
• Wanted to but were pretty busy with the IDO 
• Trying to get staking contracts launched
• Luivatra is releasing a video on how staking contracts work
• Maybe next hackathon we will host a team
• We’re open source and you can follow our code

Do you think Ergo should invest in more advertising?

Answered by Dan Friedman

• We are looking to invest in advertising
• The question is what are we advertising?
• What would make sense to advertise?
• We spend a bunch of money and get a commercial or sponsor a team?
• A big campaign maybe?
• What then?
• How do you explain why Ergo?
• Ergo is an ecosystem
• It has many different parts and tech
• How do you explain that?
• You don’t advertise the blockchain
• You advertise products and services and different nuances of the blockchain
• We need more commercial products that can say they are built on Ergo
• It is a traceability solution built on Ergo
• Identity solution on Ergo
• Powered by Ergo
• Need to attach the brand with more tangible items
• We want our advertising to be more targeted

What is your favorite thing about Ergo?

Answered by Marty

• Favorite thing is that it is the spiritual successor to Bitcoin (as Charles Hoskinson states)
• It does everything Bitcoin does while adding functionality
• A lot of other projects may just be Web 2 or centralized
• Ergo is really the next step in Bitcoin’s evolution
• Smart contracts on eUTXO

When Cardano bridge?

Answered by Joe Armeanio

• 1st bridge will be UTXO specific
• Dedicated Ergo/Cardano bridge
• Ilya and MHS_Sam will probably be the developers for this
• Depends on their time
• Soon

Can you elaborate on on/off-chain bank implementation?

Answered by Joe Armeanio

• Looking at AVL trees, they are mathematically balanced
• Creates the option to open up authenticated databases that can be proven on-chain (or verified on-chain
• Huge potential use cases
• Takes a lot of high level development
• It needs to be built out

When will there be something similar to Catalyst on Ergo?

Answered by Dan Friedman

• Working on an ecosystem fund
• A combination of treasury and accelerator
• Catalyst was envisioned in the original tokenomics of Cardano
• Now it is being run by Input Output
• • Transferring more of the control to the community
  • Making it fully decentralized
• Ergo is different
• A fair distribution launch
• Working on other avenues to bring more capital to the ecosystem to create an ecosystem fund
• Have decentralized control of the funds

Answered by Joe Armeanio

• Ergo Foundation does have grants
• ErgoHack is a way to have a proof of work catalyst based fund
• Can prove you can work and develop the work
• You can apply for grants
• Ergo Foundation is happy to support tooling that supports the ecosystem
• We have a catalyst style competition for development funds

Maybe we can implement a soft fork where the tx fee will be raised by 20% and the 20% will go into the development fund. What do you think about that, Dan?

Answered by Dan Friedman

• Personally don’t know about that idea
• One of the most attractive parts of Ergo is the low tx fee
• What would 20% do to that? Would need to see on a case by case situation
• It would need to be agreed upon by the community

Answered by Joe Armeanio

• It’s up to the miners
• You can always put together proposals and talk to different mining pools
• Delegation of powers in the miners court
• If the miners support something, it’s doable. If they don’t, it ends there

Answered by Marty

• Is 20% enough?
• Would it even produce much revenue
• Ergo’s tx fee is so low
• You can go on github and make your own proposal

Continued by Dan Friedman

• Might not want to have fees that high
• It’s up to the miners
• Business-wise: one of the most attractive points is the low tx/minting fees on Ergo
• The low cost is a game-changer

Where do you see yourself in five years? Where do you see this going? What does ErgoPad 2027 look like?

Answered by Marty

• It’s a long way away in crypto but hope we have evolved the tools to help any dev build whatever they want
• Hope to remove barriers to entry
• We are just starting out
• In 2027, we should be building full businesses on top of blockchain
• Layer 2 on Ergo could run VISA level transactions
• Once we’ve built the foundation, we can focus on the business implementation fully
• We have to get to the consumer who doesn’t care about blockchain

Continued by Dan Friedman

• Said something similar on another podcast recently
• Need to get to consumers who just want to use something that makes their life easier
• We don’t have to explain how, we need to explain why they should care