Celer Network 1st AMA Summary

Dear Community,

Thanks all for participating our 1st telegram group AMA. We appreciate all your support. For those who missed our AMA, please check out this summarized report. Please stay tuned for our 2nd AMA soon. 🙂

Welcome all! Our 1st AMA starts now!!! Our Co-founder Mo Dong will be here to answer all the questions you might have! Feel free to ask your questions here!👏

Mo: hello everyone! This is Mo from Celer Network. feel free to ask start the AMA!

Celer Network aims to bring Blockchain technology to mass adoption. It is an Internet-scale, trust-free, and privacy-preserving off-chain scaling platform where everyone can quickly build, operate, and use highly scalable decentralized applications. It provides unprecedented performance and flexibility through innovations in off-chain scaling techniques and a crypto economics model designed based on game theory principles to bring essential value to the off-chain ecosystem. Celer Network is founded by PhDs from MIT, Princeton, UC Berkeley and UIUC and has an all-star engineering team with years of industry experiences from top startups or tech giants like Google, Amazon, Cisco, Oracle, HP and more.

Q: hi Mo, a simple Q: when presale/ico😊

Mo: Good question! We are still internally deciding on the timeline for the token generation event. We will definitely ensure a fair and simple process to participate for our community. More details about participation will be released before the token generation event.

Q: Are u guys hiring?? This project seems pretty promising

Mo: Yes. We are hiring iOS engineers. We will post more details about our job description soon! We are also hiring compiler engineers as well…

Q: Hi Mo, thank you for holding this AMA, I saw your youtube video before, can you talk more about the value of the offchain?

Mo: Thank you. The key value of off-chain transaction is to enable a new kind of scalability in blockchain ecosystem.

It is very different from on-chain scalability approaches like sharding or new consensus algorithms because it aims to move most of the transactions away from the blockchain in to a off-chain system.

Another way to think about this is that Celer Network to blockchains are like “Windows” to all the hardwares (Intel, AMD CPUs).

Celer Network is a platform that is running on top of multiple blockchains and enable scalability for them all.

Q: Which blockchain do you support now?

Mo: We support Ethereum natively and we are working with multiple blockchain partners including DFINITY, Qtum, Aelf and QuarkChain

We are making some very concrete progress on DFINITY and we will release the announcement soon.

Q: Hi Dr. Dong, indeed scaling is very important for blockchain. But there are many potential solutions like sharding, side chain etc. What is the advantage of Celer Network?

Mo: Good question. Celer Network focuses on off-chain scaling including using sidechain and state channel technology. Celer Network support not only off-chain payment but also support off-chain smart contract. It is also super high performance.

Celer Network supports a layered architecture, from the lowest layer of cChannel that support generalized state channel and side-chains. It support off-chain smart contract instead of just simple payment. In cRoute, it supports provably optimal state routing algorithm that can surpass the performance of all competitors’ solutions by 15X — 20X. On top of cRoute, cOS provides the developer with an easy-to-use off-chain development framework and mobile-first user interface.

Q: what about the developer community? any plans

Mo: I have been teaching a smart contract programming course myself. We have about 400 students graduated already.

they will be the first batch of the developer community.

http://blog.51cto.com/13766630/2120324

Q: Is your off-chain technology secure? What’s your security mechanism?

Mo: Yes, off-chain execution always comes with a on-chain bond contract. It’s like using blockchain as a court system. The security of the system can be 100% ensured by the on-chain contract and our state guardian network construct.

Q: I’m a little bit confused about your cEconomy model… can you explain?

Mo: Celer Network supports a layered architecture, from the lowest layer of cChannel that support generalized state channel and side-chains. It support off-chain smart contract instead of just simple payment. In cRoute, it supports provably optimal state routing algorithm that can surpass the performance of all competitors’ solutions by 15X — 20X. On top of cRoute, cOS provides the developer with an easy-to-use off-chain development framework and mobile-first user interface.

to know more about Celer Network’s crypto economics construct

https://medium.com/celer-network/celer-network-off-chain-crypto-economics-13999b11e635

Q: Do you have bounty program?

Mo: We have done a Tweet’n Treats game and all the people participated will be included.

Q: also, what about the strategic partnership side?

Mo: we got a lot of partnership, Quark Chain, Aelf, Qtum are the currently released ones

we will have more released next week

Q: what about interested developers outside of your course? will we also have chance to join the developer community?

Mo: definitely, we will have tutorial released and SDK released.

the SDK will come with tutorial

Q: besides the investor on your website, what about other investors?

Mo: We are releasing the full list of investors soon. To name a few (will include all in our future announcement post), Neo Global Capital, Aelf Foundation, QuarkChain Foundation, Qtum Foundation, IoTex Foundation and Waves Platform, Pantera, DHVC, FBG, Bixin, BlockVC, Arrington XRP Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Signum Capital, Nima Capital, OK Blockchain Capital, Bgogo, MW Partners, Blockchain Global, Pre-Angel Fund, Fission Capital, Async Capital, Alpha Coin, Oneboat Capital, QuesChain, LYVC, LinkVC, CollinStar, ASBV, Torque VC, Elysium VC, MW Partners, Marvelous Peach, Continue Capital, Sailor Capital, DFG Fund, Spark Capital, 共识实验室, Bamboo Capital and H.Capital. Matrix Partners China, FreeS Fund, 500 Startups. 360 Inno Capital, ZMT Capital, Tsinghua Capital and RootsCap.

Q: How many people do you have? Only 4?

Mo: we have more than 4 people. Let me bring up their profile: https://medium.com/celer-network/celer-network-1st-weekly-project-progress-report-7-20-18-259bbf2a6d1d

If you scroll down to the end of this page, you would see a full list of people. We want to highlight that EVERY ONE WE LISTED is working full-time.

Q: Will we have public sale or airdrop ?

Mo: We are still internally deciding on the timeline for the token generation event. We will definitely ensure a fair and simple process to participate for our community. More details about participation will be released before the token generation event. We are planning on a special airdrop program with incentive structure towards actual users and developers.

Q: When will the token metrics and crowdsale structure and dates be released ?

Mo: We will release the full token metrics and token generation structure and timeline soon. We are still designing the exact process to ensure a simple (no more proof-of-care) and fair process.

Q: When did u guys start this project? What’s the expansion rate of your team?

Mo: We started the research since last year. We came out of stealth in Q1 2018. We have grown significantly over the last few months in vision, technology, team and community. We have grown from 4 to 12 and have 2 more joining.

Yes. We are designing something special here. We don’t want to make blanket airdrop, but we want to benefit our users for real.

Q: will you be in the Devcon 4 conference this year?

Mo: You are hard-core! We are working towards that.

Q: What are the requirements for a blockchain to integrate Celer network ? E.g. can Celer also be integrated with new blockchains working with non-interactive zero knowledge proofs?

Mo: As long as the underlying blockchain support some level of smart contract functionality, we can support that. ZKP based state channel is our active research topic and we are confident to support it in the future.

Q: What’s the Vision and mission ???

Mo: the vision is to bring mass adoption to blockchain starting from using off-chain scaling platforms. It is a entirely different scaling angle that can push blockchain scalability to really low latency and super interactive user experiences.

Make users use blockchain via Celer Network like they are using Internet today.

Q: How much do you plan to raise total for your project?

Mo: More details about participation and the hard cap will be released before the token generation event. We will ensure a fair participation for the community.

Q: Do you have a demo or something like that?

Mo: Here’s the

Q: Can you explain the token use cases in simple terms? Can’t seem to understand even after reading your medium article what it really used for on your platform.

Mo: Celer Network’s native token CELR is first used as a “work authorization” token to solve the state availability problem. If you want to become a State Guardian, you stake some CELR tokens in State Guardian Network. When users are going offline, they submit their states to the SGN along with a fee paid in stable token (working with DAI in Ethereum). The more CELR token one stakes, the more income flow one gets statistically.

We substitute a rigid security model (get X percent back at once when failing to dispute) with a flexible one (get an income flow back with a certain velocity of fund recovery). “A velocity of fund recovery” model is achieved because CLN will be compensated to the users when all responsible guardians fail to dispute and a CLN represents a piece of income flow for the SGN. The velocity is very flexible because it is determined by a ratio between a freely chosen payment flow (e.g. paid X DAI for 3 hours of guarding) to the SGN’s total income flow. And the price of state guarding is also very efficiently discovered due to the visibility of the entire SGN’s income flow.

Regarding security, SGN introduces an anti-colluding mechanism: if one guardian fails to submit states at his designated slot, the next honest and cooperative guardian following him will get his CLN tokens and fees.

In addition, the usage of CLN in SGN provides a unified interface for heterogeneous states. The states can be a generalized payment channel’s state proof, it can be some game’s intermediary states, or anything really. The state guardian does not need to understand what is the underlying number of tokens at risk or even the kinds of tokens at risk. This can be very useful as SGN just automatically assigns responsible state guardians randomly and proportionally based on the income flow generated by a user relative to the total income flow coming into SGN (which is uniformly denominated by DAI, instead of each and every different cryptocurrency).

CELR tokens are also used to incentive liquidity in the system.

it is generated throw PoLC mining process: you stake your idle liquidity to Celer Network and get CELR tokens

Q: Can you explain what the state availability problem is?

Mo: Take the simplest example of bi-directional payment channel again, if one party goes offline, the counterparty may get hacked or act maliciously, and tries to settle an old but more favorable state for himself. In generalized state channel applications, the states can be much more complex than just balance state and therefore simple optimizations just won’t cut it. In the sidechain channels, block proposers need to be independently monitored and validated, while the participants are offline. This is a matter of security and should be scrutinized carefully.

That’s the state availability problem

This video is a bit long

but it does explain a full picture verbally

Q: So staking Celer network tokens to secure the network in short?

Mo: In the SGN, yes, it is acting as a special kind of “oracle” for the off-chain system.

PoLC process generates CELR token and therefore incentivizes a abundant and stable liquidity pool

which is also needed in the system.

CELR token also serves as a priority token in the Liquidity Backing Auction process, to give priority for people who locked in their liquidity in Celer Network.

All in all, it is a token that provides actual utility instead of just a simple payment token or “gift cards”.

Q: How is celer network superior to its competitors raiden network???What different are u bringing to the table

Mo: Celer Network is a platform for highly scalable decentralized applications, with a payment network being one component of the ecosystem. Off-chain transactions in Celer can be arbitrary fraud-proof state transitions such as generic conditional payment, multi-party game move, second price auction bid, high-frequency token exchange, etc.

Existing off-chain payment proposals have significant defects in generality, routing, and cryptoeconomics. While Celer has a much bigger scope than payment solutions, it also makes groundbreaking improvements to off-chain payment networks on both technical and cryptoeconomic fronts.