Ergo AMA Wrap-Up, January 14

To kick off last week's AMA, Dan updated the community on the work he has been doing with the Ergo Foundation. With regards to exchange listings, he informed viewers that this work can sometimes move really fast or really slow but that they are actively communicating with several different exchanges and working towards listing Ergo on them. Dan said that there is a lot of work happening behind the scenes to create a version of wrapped Ergo on prominent DEXs. A team has been put together to specifically handle that work and the hope is to have wrapped Ergo on exchanges similar to PancakeSwap and Uniswap in the near future. This work is of the highest priority for the team as it builds more avenues towards onboarding more people to Ergo. 

Dan continued to discuss projects that have been mentioned in previous AMAs but with some new updates. He reiterated how important it is for Ergo to have mainstream commercial adoption solutions and that he is actively working on several projects. These solutions will be primarily focused on small and mid-sized businesses but there are also designs with the potential to be implemented on a government level. Dan conveyed that this is a personal goal for him and that he is very excited about Ergo’s ecosystem with the potential to have at least 10-100x more commercial options.

With regards to education initiatives, Dan informed the audience that the team has identified a high quality candidate to join Ergo’s education team and that more information will be shared with the community when details are available. Meanwhile, discussions are continuing with a highly accredited university and Dan revealed that the institution is based in Europe. This institution will ideally work closely with the education team in developing the scope and design of the education projects. Dan again stated how important this education initiative is for the future of Ergo - this type of product gives Ergo something specific to market. In his experience, education is one of the most exciting pathways into any kind of ecosystem: “Not only do you get a captive audience, you’re also teaching them the tools you have developed that you want them to use.” Having a complete education product is something Dan can easily put through his network of contacts. He discussed how millions of people do not yet understand how great Ergo is and the potential it has to be a powerhouse blockchain.

After retaining a marketing and PR firm, Dan discussed how Ergonauts can expect to see more mainstream crypto exposure for Ergo. This initiative will put faces to the platform (Kushti, Armeanio, Mark, and Dan) while promoting Ergo’s message and brand. Dan concluded his introductory comments with a reminder for the audience to keep an eye out for the next Ergo Pulse episode. If there are particular guests the community would like to have for future Ergo Pulse episodes, Dan encouraged them to submit their suggestions. Dan also informed the community that there will be an AMA with someone from Kairon Labs in the near future and to keep an eye out for that announcement via Ergo’s social media channels.

In his opening comments, Armeanio reminded the community about the upcoming ErgoHack III and how it will explore the topics of privacy and security in blockchain technology. The list of submissions so far looks interesting and will address things such as stealth pools and re-writing the mixer to where it is composable across wallets. He stated that the work for this hackathon is important for privacy and security and it is hard for a blockchain to be resilient without certain aspects of privacy. 

On the business side of things, Armeanio was pleased to inform everyone that the Ergo Foundation was able to explore getting a legal opinion on the security classification of Ergo in the USA. Additionally, he discussed how busy he has been with the mining community with regards to the EIP27 soft fork proposal. The voting period will start soon and he has been very active in discussions with mining pools to find out what direction the vote may go.

AMA Questions and Summary

The following is a summary of questions posed by the audience during this AMA. Last week Dan and Armeanio answered questions on community marketing, miner powers, governance in the mining community, EIP-0027, and much more. Dan’s cat, Leo, makes several appearances in the episode and Dan even performs a Dr. Evil (from Austin Powers) impression with Leo. To view the full AMA, please head over to Ergo’s Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpak6PabFhM 

How can we help the project at this stage if we don’t have any tech background?

Answered by Joe Armeanio

• Have put together a group of community members called the Sigmanauts
• • Working on educating themselves about Ergo
  • They are also forming special groups of community marketing
  • If you want to get involved, reach out to Glasgow (community manager)
  • Welcomes everyone who is new to crypto space

Answered by Dan Friedman

• Don’t be intimidated by the tech
• It is vast and new 
• A lot of fundamental concepts from the legacy world that you need to let go of
• Before getting into crypto Dan didn’t expect to be in favor of open source
• Believes open source and transparency is the way to go
• Open source brings in a community if you set up a product properly
• You will learn if you immerse yourself into it
• We will be putting together programs for those who want to learn about the technicals of Ergo
• It will give people a lot more opportunity to expand in the ecosystem

Why is giving miners power over macroeconomics a good thing? I mean it maybe helps decentralization but over the long term it will be out of reach of ordinary people.

Answered by Joe Armeanio

• He doesn’t really agree with this sentiment
• In order for miner governance to work, miners need a seat at the table
• Traditionally, they have been a freelance group that just works at security as a service
• Storage rent gives them a stake in network maintenance
• • Gives incentive over time to create an ecosystem that builds value
• Have a big group of miners that have stuck with Ergo even though there have been more profitable coins to mine at different times
• Miners are the custodians of the network
• Miners have the ability to collect garage and recycle assets
• The more value they create on top of the chain, the more that feeds to them in the future
• Opens a new role for miners where they may be the liquidity providers of the future
• Like a DeFi bank - pools have the ability to gain assets through storage rent
• A new paradigm for PoW
• It is true however that as the chain gets bigger, each miner will have a smaller share but that’s the way growth goes
• Doesn’t see that as different than any other ecosystem
• Blockchain is not designed to make everyone equal - it’s designed to have equal rules
• Giving the miners a seat at the table gives them incentive

Answered by Dan Friedman

• A lot of people mistake decentralization and what blockchain does for communist utopia
• • It’s not
• It’s meant to give an equal playing field
• Depends on the type of person interacting with the blockchain
• Some people create opportunity for themselves

Price prediction?

Answered by Dan Friedman

• One Ergo = one Ergo any time in the future

Answered by Joe Armeanio

• The price is going to move to the right in a jagged formation

Widespread adoption would flood into the chain if a wallet, DEX, simple payments all via a single app on mobiles was introduced. Just something easy for retail…

Answered by Dan Friedman

• Yes, agreed

Answered by Joe Armeanio

• We have a few things in development
• NiPoPoWs - can create light-clients that have full node security
• • Better security assumptions than most mobile wallets
• Have a developer that has built wallets on Android and iOS
• • He has a section on his roadmap called Ergo Pay
  • • Will simplify the dApp interactions with the wallet on mobile devices
    • That’s what the majority of people want - something quick and easy on their phone
• Need to deliver mobile tools to make the user experience just as secure as the assumptions of full node desktop wallets
• Believes that’s something we will see in 2022

Can we get a tutorial on setting up a node?

Answered by Joe Armeanio

• That is definitely within the capability of our ecosystem 
• The question is what kind of node do you want to run
• We have a new desktop wallet called Satergo
• • It’s a very nice wallet
• Will talk to different community members about creating tutorials on how to set up that wallet
• Hopefully we’ll get it on microsoft, iOS, and Linux

Ergo has made a lot of good design choices. Do you fear that other platforms will copy what Ergo has done and for PoS to be researched more deeply where other platforms can do everything Ergo can do?

Answered by Dan Friedman

• Design choices in blockchains are like snowflakes
• No two are exactly the same
• It is all nuanced
• There can be barebone structures that are adopted to other blockchains
• If other blockchains adopt the design choice and tech that Ergo has made (in a fair way), it will widen our ecosystem
• Will give us a lot more opportunities for interoperability
• Doesn’t think PoS killed PoW
• Strong supporter of PoS 
• Doesn’t feel it’s the only way to go
• It’s all about the use case
• It’s about the message in the ecosystem that you are targeting
• There is still a plethora of use case where PoW is optimal

Answered by Joe Armeanio

• Ergo was made with relatively conservative design choices
• Because it supports peoples funds
• You can try to make the system sexier but there is always trade-off
• You have new research implementation in zero knowledge proof
• Let’s see if the assumptions hold
• Big part of Ergo’s philosophy is to build on solid foundations
• If we see more eUTXO chains, that’s great
• We also have the potential for side chains on Ergo
• • People may want to create a side chain to play around with the parameters
• Thinks that research and development and testing is a wonderful feature

What are the chances EIP-0027 will be implemented? How to deal with FUD against it?

Answered by Joe Armeanio

• Has no idea what the overall odds are 
• Have miners who are silent actors so we’ll know when they vote
• You also have a subset of actors that are very loud
• • Doesn’t mean the extreme is very big
• In his opinion, he doesn’t care because he doesn’t have a vote
• If the vote fails, it might be a good thing to say: “hey, our governance is actually decentralized.”
• If it passes, great but the reality is the miners have the tools to make adjustments
• Hopefully they come with some consensus
• Just because something fails, doesn’t mean it can’t be improved
• We may have adjustments to block size and storage fees in the future
• Hopefully, this doesn’t create a reactive scenario

Answered by Dan Friedman

• Good to not get too emotional about these kinds of decisions
• You can be passionate but don’t let it override logic

How amendable is Ergo - for example, can miners vote on something like increasing tx fees?

Answered by Joe Armeanio

• Miners can vote to increase tx fees
• They vote to adjust storage rent
• They can adjust block time
• They can propose and vote on macroeconomic emission changes
• Tremendous amount of power
• • Beauty is that if they abuse their power, they destroy their value
• Hopes we get governance bodies that take lead in the mining community
• 90% threshold for voting prevents forking
• Governance is a messy thing
• He will back the majority of voters

What's the relationship with Cardano? Are you launching a DEX on Cardano?

Answered by Dan Friedman

• What you are referring to is ErgoDEX - yes it will launching on Cardano soon
• ErgoDEX is a separate project
• Built in Ergo ecosystem but not part of the Ergo Foundation
• They are their own project
• They have their own product
• The name is just ErgoDEX
• ErgoDEX team is building the DEX, not Ergo
• It will be on Ergo and Cardano
• You can check out the first episode of Ergo Pulse where they covered ErgoDEX

Where will we go to vote? How do we make sure all avenues are open to reach as many voters as possible?

Answered by Joe Armeanio

• This is the most important part of governance
• It is going to be a representative model 
• Means individual mining pools are going to either update their code or not in support of the soft fork
• It becomes the responsibility of miners to point their rigs at pools that support and back their opinion
• What we need to do is get some consensus to find out what different pools are thinking
• Getblok are doing more to get clearer consensus
• Encouraging mining pools to get their miners engaged but unfortunately that is turning into pretty low engagement rate
• Only have a small proportional amount of feedback
• We will gather the info we do get it and will disseminate across our social media channels so that miners can know which pools to point their rigs at based on the pools yes or no vote
• Becomes the individual miners responsibility to choose the pool that supports their position