We enjoyed our second monthly Community AMA in our Telegram group hosted by our founders Rachid Ajaja and Matthijs de Vries on saturday. There were a lot of fantastic questions and also many detailed answers. In case you missed it- find the AMA summary and also the entire script below:
The launch of the AllianceBlock Data Tunnel is near!
The AllianceBlock founders announced that the DataTunnel — The Oracle of Oracles- is in preparation to launch. The product website is already live at: https://allianceblock.io/datatunnel. It was pointed out that the Data Tunnel release will bring immediate utility for the ALBT token, as data providers need to pay the publishing fees in ALBT, and data consumers will need to pay in ALBT to access the data too.
Traditional institutions are ready to join the ecosystem
Being asked if institutions are ready to join the AllianceBlock ecosystem Rachid said that the short answer is “YES” but they cannot disclose details yet hence the legal work is not done yet. Once this is done “real-world use cases” will be presented
NFT’s will play a major role in the AllianceBlock ecosystem
Rachid announced that NFT’s will play an important role in the DeFi Terminal and that there will be a unique way of using NFTs which is not based on hype or crazy valuation but a real use case that can be leveraged by retail and institutions. This is planned to be live in Q3 but the development is going strong already.
Five new C-level positions to be announced soon!
Rachid mentioned that five C-Level positions with an impressive background including the ex-head of an investment bank department, Oxford researcher, VP from a big investment bank, and a previous founder that worked with multiple governments will soon be announced. Besides, it was mentioned that there are currently 30+ developers working on the project.
Liquidity Mining as a Service (LMaaS) live in Q2
It was mentioned that the Liquidity Mining as a Service product will be available to partners this quarter. Currently, the AllianceBlock community is already leveraging the program with around 50 million USD worth of token value locked. More to be announced very soon.
Announcing our own decentralized bridge
It was mentioned that the development team is working on a decentralized bridge in order to be independent of other bridges such as Burgerswap. As AllianceBlock is a one stop shop, Rachid emphasized that it is very important to be independent to not entirely rely on third parties hence an entire development team is working on the bridge. The first version of the bridge is planned to go live in Q2 2021.
Sneak Peak of our Trustless KYC Solution
After announcing a partnership with GBG for AllianceBlock’s Trustless KYC solution recently, Rachid proudly presented a few screenshots of the amazing UI of the product:
READ ENTIRE SCRIPT
Q. I have a question about DEXs and automated market makers like Uniswap, Bancor, Balancer etc. How can they leverage AllianceBlock? Can you give a concrete example? I guess the regulatory compliance layer is interesting here?
This is a very important question.
In this article: https://blog.allianceblock.io/allianceblock-case-study-know-your-customer-4952b087b180
We summarize: Importantly, this solution also has far-reaching applications in how we can integrate it into DeFi projects. Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) are inaccessible to institutional investors at present. One reason for this is the lack of compliance. To solve this, what if AllianceBlock’s KYC/AML solution was integrated with a DEX, to ensure only whitelisted investors were allowed to trade? How much capital might possibly flow into DeFi if there was a compliance-friendly DEX that for the first time enabled institutions to participate in DeFi?
This shows how important the KYC layer is. With our technology, we will be able to perform trustless KYC and identity verification which will allow traditional finance to provide liquidity in pools where everyone is KYCd.
We are leveraging Polkadot Identity Registry and Nucypher and more to build our end-to-end flow. We have interest from banks but also projects in the DeFi space that know regulation is coming, and they will need to have this layer.
Q. With the launch of the data tunnel approaching, how should we as a community, expect it to impact the ALBT ecosystem and also how is this going to help bridge DeFi and traditional finance?
The Data Tunnel will ultimately be the oracle of oracles, providing smart contracts over several blockchains with enhanced data that can be provided back to the oracle providers as well. The Data Tunnel will bring immediate utility for the ALBT token, as data providers need to pay the publishing fees in ALBT and data consumers will need to pay in ALBT to access the data too.
Q. Hi guys, thanks for being here. How do you feel overall with progress and achievements versus what you expected thus far?
We are very proud of what has been done and especially what is coming this week and the next few weeks. We have been working on five products in parallel with more than 30 developers from around the globe. Our first product, which is the data tunnel, will be live this month, and more products will follow in Q2 and Q3. This will include a Data API with a very new way of supplying analytics that will make it easy for users in both the decentralized and traditional spaces. We will also be announcing a big data provider partnership which will be unique in the industry. We have a heavy roadmap so stay tuned to see all of what we have been working on since 2020.
Q. Oracle of oracles sounds huge 😅
Is this a realistic vision though? Does it work as an aggregator? How can we understand it better?
It is a realistic vision, check also our partnerships with API3, Chainlink, DIA, Covalent and Parsiq. We are not just aggregating, we are also enhancing data for specific use cases.
Q. Comparing ALBTto similar projects such as Algorand, what do you think gives AllianceBlock the edge?
We are absolutely not like Algorand as Algorand is a layer 1 solution. We will be able to support Algorand and many other layer 1 projects as we are meant to be blockchain agnostic.
One thing to take into account, AllianceBlock Protocol is built on three pillars:
- Data
- Regulation & Compliance
- DeFi
All of these blocks are meant to support multiple layer 1 solutions so we can increase adoption and bring a very good value proposition to both worlds.
Q. I’m curious, when does the data tunnel go live and the AllianceBlock mainnet itself?
Right now we are in preparation for the launch of the Data Tunnel and we have launched the Data Tunnel product website!
Please check: https://allianceblock.io/datatunnel
This is one of the products that we are most proud of. It will bring huge benefits to the decentralized data economy and will be an effective bridge between traditional data providers, oracles, and the decentralized data marketplace. This will bring amazing opportunities to developers, projects, and much more.
Q. Are the any traditional institutions ready to join the ecosystem? Or is it only interest?
The short answer is YES, but we can’t disclose details as we are in the process of signing contracts. As soon as the legal work is done we will be able to release details and also the real world use case we are working on.
Q.The compliance aspects are maybe your biggest USP — how are you going to manage all the rules (external opinions?) and where will liability sit in the future for these?
This refers to our Cross Border Regulatory Compliance layer. The rules will be managed inside our ecosystem through the institutional nodes. The liability to be compliant with regulations sits with the one that holds the license, i.e. the financial institutions.
Q. Wait, the Data Tunnel is ready!!?
This is the product website in preparation of the data tunnel itself in order to provide more information, give interested parties the possibility to reach out to us, and to give a few small sneak peaks of what’s to come.
Q. Is this bigger than Chainlink?
This shows the data tunnel ecosystem. Chainlink and others are not competitors but part of the ecosystem.
We will be able to integrate Chainlink and enrich the price feed for example with derivative pricing.
Q. When can we expect partners to start using the staking protocol (e.g. Bridge Mutual, etc)?
It will be in Q2 when partners first start using our LMaaS product. More features will be added.
Q.Can you explain the role of ALBT in the data tunnel please?
A large portion of ALBT paid by data consumers is shared with data publishers to share revenue.
Q. So it will eventually bring utility to ALBT on every transfer of data?
Exactly, although subscriptions to regain access to data for x amount of time are possible.
Q. Hello team and thank you for being here, and for your hard work. Some of your partnerships are UK based, and some fintechs are cutting bridges with Great Britain and moving to the EU. Do you think that Brexit could be a concern for your strategies?
We do not think so, we are focusing on the UK, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, and later will expand to more EU countries, Asia, and the US.
Being in this field we will not be impacted by Brexit which is great.
Q. Which of the remaining three quarters of the year are you most excited for?
To be totally honest, Q2 :)
Q. Where do I apply for a job? (half kidding!)
You can send us an email at hello@allianceblock.io. We are always looking for talent and the team is growing. We will be announcing 5 C-level and at least 20 developers in the coming weeks.
Q. Will you deploy fiat on-/off-ramps to make it easier for clients to access the AllianceBlock platform?
Yes definitely, easy UI is a must for adoption, and we need to have a fiat onramp which will be the case in all our products starting with the data tunnel.
Q. Is this purely financial data? What separates it AllianceBlock from the Ocean marketplace?
We have a scalable solution that (automatically) normalizes all data to a single predictable data format that can be easily consumed in automated solutions, no matter what kind of dataset was published. All data points are defined in a fine, granular way by data publishers, which makes it easier to build automated analysis tools. ABQL is used as a query language (based on JSON) to easily query nested data objects and can be easily integrated in any application that needs dynamic querying of all kinds of data.
Q. I would love to hear any comments on the use of ESG metrics in the AllianceBlock ecosystem. This seemed to be a theme prior to late 2020 and more recently there has been a big commitment from top global leaders to report on these metrics.
Yes ESG is a very important part that we will focus on in Q4. We have some discussions with the biggest ESG scoring companies, and we want to include this in our platform, especially with the P2P Borrowing Lending and NFTs.
Q. Can you share some nuggets of the P2P marketplace? Is it coming in Q3 right? Will it support both fiat and crypto investments? Will it allow NFT issuance and P2P trading?
Actually we have an amazing nugget for you guys. I will share a screenshot from our current UX/UI that we have been developing since December and should be live in Q3, be ready guys, let’s go.
Here you go, this will have an amazing impact on the DeFi space and also the traditional space.
Q. Where do you see AllianceBlock in two years?
In 2–4 years we want to be the first provider of Investment banking infrastructure that leverage DeFi technology. and we are aiming to become the first decentralized investment bank.
Q. What makes you different from other projects? I feel AllianceBlock is one of those projects that develops behind the scenes and will at some point just explode.
We are building an ecosystem that bridges TradFiand DeFicompletely. When you look at other projects claiming to bridge TradFi with DeFi, we can see that they only focus on one or two things (liquidity and interoperability), however we focus on so much more. And we don’t focus on doing it for us, but for other projects in DeFi too. That’s why we also don’t really have competition. When we look at a potential competitor, we don’t say “how can we work against them?”, but we say “how can we help each other and integrate them into our ecosystem?”.
Q. When is AllianceBlock thinking of partnering with Vectorspace AI?
I am meeting with them this week, we will let you know the outcome ;).
Q. With Howard Krieger?👀
With Kasian Franks :)
R. Very very interested in this possible cooperation!!
Indeed, we see lot of synergies especially for our data tunnel and AI layer to score, map, and understand data. We will have our own AI layer and it will be complementary with Vectorspace AI.
Q. Is it a sort of dashboard of investments made via AllianceBlock?
Exactly, and you can see the NFT there, and we have a unique way of using NFTs which is not based on hype or crazy valuation but a real use case that can be leveraged by retail and institutions.
Q. Let me ask it better. Looking at the DeFi landscape with DEXs, oracles , NFT marketplaces, which role does AB play in all of this?
We allow them to ultimately connect to TradFi solutions and institutions and vice versa.
Q. Am I understanding correctly that via the P2P, both crypto and TradFi operators will be able to invest in startup projects?
This is huge.
Indeed, and more than this as we will open this to SME, to early stage startups in both crypto and traditional worlds, high net worth individuals will have access to short term financing backed by their real assets, structured loans that leverage our NFT technology. We have also ported the ERC1155 standard on ink! (polkadot), many developments in the polkadot ecosystem are going on and we will release more updates on this very soon. We will be able to support all kinds of real assets which will play a role of collateral. We had a lot of interest from private banks and from wealth managers because this will make them increase their assets under management without having the balance sheet risk.
Q. Are governments showing interest in your venture, or only traditional finance institutions?
We are not speaking yet with governments. In order to do this we need to have mature tech and real use cases, which is our most important focus.
Q. I have a question about DEXs and automated market makers like Uniswap, Bancor, Balancer etc.
How can they leverage AllianceBlock? Can you give a concrete example? I guess the regulatory compliance layer is interesting here?
This is a very important question.
In this article: https://blog.allianceblock.io/allianceblock-case-study-know-your-customer-4952b087b180
We summarize: Importantly, this solution also has far-reaching applications in how we can integrate it into DeFi projects. Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) are inaccessible to institutional investors at present. One reason for this is the lack of compliance. To solve this, what if AllianceBlock’s KYC/AML solution was integrated with a DEX, to ensure only whitelisted investors were allowed to trade? How much capital might possibly flow into DeFi if there was a compliance-friendly DEX that for the first time enabled institutions to participate in DeFi?
This shows how important the KYC layer is. With our technology, we will be able to perform trustless KYC and identity verification which will allow traditional finance to provide liquidity in pools where everyone is KYCd.
We are leveraging Polkadot Identity Registry and Nucypher and more to build our end-to-end flow. We have interest from banks but also projects in the DeFi space that know regulation is coming, and they will need to have this layer.
Q. Is there any collaboration with the World Economic Forum — as you are working on one of their pillars: inclusive capitalism as Amber explained?
There is not yet any collaboration with the World Economic Forum. If things evolve, we will inform our community.
Q. What is Amber’s role? I love how she has also started engaging with the community and I know she’s a founder, but what’s her exact role?
Amber is working on business development, mainly utilizing her network in traditional finance.
Q. Is there a marketing plan in place and at what stage will it be executed?
We have a big pipeline with announcements and product deliveries. Q2 and Q3 are very important to us, as we will see live tech and our first partners using itour tech with ALBT utility.
Marketing strategy is being seriously worked on right now. Product development has been our first focus so far, now that first products are being pushed out, we have started on a solid marketing strategy.
Q. What is the most exciting thing we can expect in Q2?
Q3 is definitely going to be the P2P for me.
Trustless KYC, data tunnel supporting multiple chains (at least 4), Data API with cutting edge analytics and aggregation of many blockchains, and a few more.
Q. When do you expect to start generating revenue? Do you have enough funds to achieve all your goals?
Yes, we have enough funds. This is why now we have 30+ developers, and we will announce 5 C-Levels with an impressive background including the ex-head of an investment bank department, Oxford researcher, VP from a big investment bank, and a previous founder that worked with multiple governments. We are expecting to generate revenue from Q3 on top of real utility of our ALBT token.
Q. How deeply will Ocean be involved in the Data Tunnel? Will they be actively seeking and facilitating customer onboarding? How is this product perceived by Ocean and their community?
We leverage their technology and decentralized access control. Because of their partnership with Moonbeam, we can also start on that angle.
Q. Hi Rachid and Matthijs! There have been a lot of issues with the Burgerswap bridge for bALBT and ALBT tokens. I think I have seen mentioned somewhere you are looking at making an own bridge that doesn’t rely on Burgerswap. Is there any timeframe for this?
We are aiming to have a first version of the decentralized bridge in Q2. We have one team dedicated to this. We are aiming to be a one stop shopm and having the bridge is very important to not rely on any third party.
Q. Dear Rachid and Matthijs, always a pleasure to see you so active together with the community. I would ask a different question here, instead of asking what you are doing for us, what can we, as a community, do to help ALBT? I bet many here would love to contribute in any way. Thanks :)
It’s funny because we wanted to do 15min of AYA, ask you anything, but you were fast :)
We will also soon launch the AllianceBlock For Developers portal that will contain resources to help developers get started in the AllianceBlock Ecosystem (in the beginning, the Data Tunnel API, Data Tunnel SDKs, and learning ABQL to get started making smart analysis on different datasets). I would love to see what developers in the community would be able to do with those resources, and of course if you have data laying around that you feel might be interesting to others, feel free to reach out or try out the Data Tunnel, same in case you might be looking for data.
Q. Is it a bridge specific for ALBT or for any token between ETH and BSC?
Yes, but much more than just ETH and BSC but any source chain and target chain. We will have a DAO that will vote for each chain we add.
Q. A universal bridge? 😱😱😱
Step by step, we can’t give all nuggets at once :).
Q. Are you or your partners involved in the USDC Visa news? Or better yet, how will that impact your development?
Not now, but we are following this very closely.
Q. Will the DAO use ALBT?
Yes.
Q. Finally and not seriously I saw a Twitter movement for the founders to show their feet. Is there movement on this?
Our main focus is showing our products 😎
R. Guys, you need to give us more regular updates. What is being built is beyond amazing. Anyone who understands it MUST be really bullish. No other option.
It becomes really clear during this AMA. I would hope to see this kind of education all the time. Once people understand how big this is, AllianceBlock will be a top 50 project with the releases on the horizon.
We will definitely do this kind of AMA more regularly! This is amazing 😄.
Q. What are your thoughts on the traditional crypto cycles and does this impact any of your thinking?
The way we are executing our roadmap we don’t think that the cycle will affect us, as you saw since 2018 we are focusing on delivering, and most of the products that we are building are meant to last through the cycle. In addition, when you have a real value proposition you will have clients that will use your product, and this is what we are aiming for. For example, the P2P borrowing lending and NFTs will be very useful in bear markets as people are looking for short term financing, and this is only one example. The second one is data, which is needed all the time.
Q. I’m wondering how user data can remain private/encrypted/safe from bad actors while still maintaining regulatory compliance with KYC and allowing the data tunnel to work. Many people get into crypto for the privacy features of it.
Good question. We are leveraging Nucypher and layer on top of IPFS where data is fully encrypted, fragmented, and you must have your key pair to give and revoke access.
By construction, it is GDP compliant and provides enhanced security of data which stays with the user.
Q. Which sort of features will enrich Data Tunnel v1 compared to the MVP?
- Support for other blockchains to drastically lower transaction fees
- Oracle layer (to become the “Oracle of Oracles”)
- Support for streaming data
- Cross-dataset access
- MetaMask as an option; user-friendly blockchain interactions
- Pay per Query as an additional option vs Pay per Subscription
- Aggregation of price feeds from multiple oracles, derivative pricing, analytics that will be done with our framework and much more
Q. I can recommend the new Telegram group audio call feature, worked well in another community call 😊
Thanks for the tip!
We will definitely try it, we will do a live Q&A in the coming days.
Q. Will Orion Protocol or INJective or any similar exchange aggregator be a potential user of the Data Tunnel?
Yes they can plug the data to the data tunnel. They can also take the output from the data tunnel when we have the ability to query on streamed data. This can be leveraged not only by blockchain projects but also traditional companies. The ALBT token is very important because all transactions are done using ALBT.
R. Good to hear. As there is so much to educate, a more consistent stream will surely be appreciated by the community. Thanks guys!
Definitely.
Q. How will CBDC’s fit into the overall strategy, should they become more commonplace in the future?
They will become more common in the future, in our opinion, and having stable coins vetted by regulators will increase adoption. Our compliance layer and stable coin integrations with DEXs will unleash amazing opportunities.
Q. Because access via API is completely blockchain agnostic,
any company can use it, so long as they have developers that know json and sql?
Exactly, just ABQL (which is JSON based) — that is easy to learn. Furthermore, easy to use SDKs will be released in popular programming languages so that developers without any decentralized technologies background can still use the Data Tunnel easily, perfect for increasing adoption.
Q. Any partnerships upcoming with Amex, Mastercard, Visa etc?
Not for now. This kind of news can be shared only when contracts are signed and nothing before, but this is not our focus now.
Q. When is the AllianceBlock sponsored techno event?
We will soon announce our sponsorship of a code academy to form a developer community, and we will be involved in hackathons. Later on we will sponsor more big events.
Q. How did you manage to keep all of these amazing developments under the radar? Was it by design or was it simply that it hasn’t been picked up yet by influencers in the space?
If you work genuinely hard on coding, you don’t have time left for hype😄.
Q. How many NDA’s are you under?
There are few NDA’s and a LOI.
Q. Will AI pay a part in your future developments?
Yes, as you can see in our Green Paper. AI will play an important role to design the next generation of smart DAO which we call Augmented Collective Intelligence. This is to have smart governance in our protocol.
About AllianceBlock
AllianceBlock is building the first globally compliant decentralized capital market. The AllianceBlock Protocol is a decentralized, blockchain-agnostic layer 2 that automates the process of converting any digital or crypto asset into a bankable product.
Incubated by three of Europe’s most prestigious incubators: Station F, L39, and Kickstart Innovation in Zurich, and led by a heavily experienced team of ex-JP Morgan, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs investment bankers, and quants, AllianceBlock is on the path to disrupt the $100 trillion securities market with its state-of-the-art and globally compliant decentralized capital market.
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