Celer Network 2nd AMA Summary

Dear Community,

Thanks all for participating our 2nd telegram AMA. For those who missed our AMA, please check out this summarized report. Please stay tuned for our next AMA. 😄

Happy Friday all! Thank you for joining us for our AMA with co-founder Dr. Mo Dong.

Mo received his Ph.D. from UIUC. He was founding engineer and product manager at Veriflow, working on network formal verification. He is an expert in applying algorithmic game theory to protocol design, and teaches full-stack smart contract courses with hundreds of students graduated. Definitely check out our website for more details. https://www.celer.network

Q: Do you guys have summer internship opportunities?

A: We do! Feel free to send your resume to hiring@celer.network!

Q: do you have SDK for us to use?

A: Yes, we have iOS, Android and also our newly released javascript SDK! You can access them here:

https://celer-network.github.io/docs/guide

We launched our Web SDK at ETHDenver. If you haven’t checked out our blog at ETHDenver, you can read more here:

https://celer-network.github.io/docs/guide

Q: How can I build a game like cGomoku? It’s been a lot of fun playing this game. I’d like to take advantage of your layer2 solution to build something like this. I guess I should start with the SDK right?

A: Glad you liked the game. Guess who also played the game:

https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1097733714216275968

And we always look for feedback for our layer-2 user experience design. I know that you are interested in building. Right now, you can refer to the SDK, which expose almost all raw functionality of Celer. Later, you would be able to build games using an even simpler framework. We will also have tutorials for you to build games. 😄

Q: I am very interested in your project. How can I get the CELR tokens?

A: I assume you are asking about the crypto econoimcs. So CELR can be acquired by Proof of Liquidity Commitment process. From a high level, you lock your liquidity in Celer Network to provide an abundant and stable liquidity pool. As an incentive mechanism, you will be rewarded with CELR token. I am recording a series of videos talking about our cryptoeconocmis mechanism. We will release them soon.

Q: Do I need to have a lot of money to open channels?

A: You don’t. You can open channel with any small amount of tokens and all kinds of tokens. The best way to learn about Celer is to actually try it out https://celerx.app/

Q: To check conceptual understanding — you could build a side chain from a state channel protocol, but not vice versa. true or false?

A: Well, I would say it’s not “from to”, if you start to push for more interactiveness requirement from side-chain, you get state channel. If you push for broader participates with async communication from state channel, you get side-chain.

Q: What is CelerX’s relationship with Celer Network?

A: Thank you for the great question. I actually answered this question a while ago in a twitter thread.

https://twitter.com/no89thkey/status/1095768188606910467

Q: I’m trying to incorporate Celer to address some user needs. But I’m wondering if you can give some examples of what can be built using Celer?

A: Feel free to check out our builders interview here:

And here are some of the demo videos:

Q: how does data storage work in celer? how much/what data is replicated across nodes?

A: Off-chain state data is stored locally. The key thing about layer-2 is that the state computation is only executed locally and signed by all peers involved. That’s part of the reason it can achieve extremely low latency comparing to other solutions.

Q: and these offchain interactions are inherited from some smart contract logic?

A: More accurately, smart contract logics are being executed through these off-chain transactions. Like when you are playing games, each interaction is progressing the smart contract state by one step.

Q: is it possible to do something like “deploy a new smart contract off chain”?

A: yes, absolutely. That’s the idea of virtual contract.

Q: very very interesting. that means you could create a token + distribute, or even run an ICO off of celer network? and all interactions in this new token are fully offchain? (with the option of reverting to settlement layer whenever)

A: not so fast. state channel is suitable for applications with defined number of participants and high interaction requirement. Things like ERC-20 token contract, as it is purely open access application, it is hard to be executed on state channel. However, it is entirely possible to do it in side chains, which Celer Network is also researching and developing.

Q: could a new participant join by obtaining virtual contract data from a current participant? replicate the data to a new node/entrant?

A: it is possible, but that require some sychronization between current participants. Ultimately, that blurs the line between a state channel implementation and a side-chain. Fundamentally, we believe they are actually the same thing with different tradeoff points on the latency-sychronization plane.

Q: last question to check conceptual understanding — you could build a side chain from a state channel protocol, but not vice versa. true or false?

A: well, I would say it’s not “from to”, if you start to push for more interactiveness requirement from side-chain, you get state channel. If you push for broader participates with async communication from state channel, you get side-chain. so I would say it’s actually both. And in fact, there can be something in the middle. Some research we are doing focuses on “optimistically synchronize state channel”, which kind of looks like a side-chain. We will post some more results when we have a clearer write up

Q: so you’ll be able to get synchronization without losing speed/adding latency?

A: it’s a very flexible trade-off

Q: I was at ETHDenver last weekend. I really enjoyed Mo’s conversation at the Layer-2 panel. I’d like to get an idea on how does Celer solve the watch tower / monitor service problem?

A: This is gonna be a long answer to type out. I will also make an tutorial to talk about this. From a high level, CELR is used in State Guardian Network as a membership staking token to protect state availability, provide connectivity oracle and act as channel dispute computation engine. CELR token stakers receives service fee for the above services that they provide for the network.

You can refer to our CESC talk to know more:

Q: What’s the key difference between Celer and Raiden?

A: There are a bunch of differences. We do not only simple payment but also smart contract. We have optimal routing and also a full-fledged crypto economics construct.