AMA on Twitter 27.10.2023
Welcomesđź”—︎
All right, hello everyone. Welcome to another Stratos community AMA on Twitter space. This is Claire, very nice to meet everyone again. So we get it here today after the very exciting Stratos mean at launch. And we couldn't be more thrilled to discuss all the significant milestones and everything related to the overall Stratos ecosystem development in the near future.
So before we dive into the question period now, we would like to begin with some updates given by our founder, Bin, related to the performance overall after the mainnet launch, some questions that you might be interested in regards to what are some of the plans in terms of partners in a pipeline and etc. So if you're ready lets dive in and give the floor to Bin.
Updatesđź”—︎
Hi Claire, thank you. I will just give you guys a bit of basic updates. I rather give most of the time to the community to ask any question in your mind. Maybe I can talk more at the that moment.
So as you know, our Stratos chain and storage network were launched more than a month ago. Everything is going well, actually it's better than we expected. The chain is very stable, we have around 50 validators, there are 28 validators are online. We have done some estimation, most of the validators, especially the professional validator service providers, they should be profitable. This is important for Stratos. I think we're excited to see that result.
The other side is storage. I just mentioned on Twitter yesterday, we already have more than 250 storage nodes are online. Actually, there are several more added to the Stratos network this morning. So the total storage capacity for Stratos is already exceeded to 2 PB, the feeling is wonderful.
The team upgraded SDS version and tuned some configuration in this month. All the changes' modification are based on the performance, no any big issues were founded. We optimized configurations on the storage side, most of the storage providers provide decent hardware and qualified bandwidth to the storage network, but there are still small portion of nodes' bandwidth and hardware not qualified. Those unqualified nodes affect the entire network somehow. So most of the configurations and most changes we made, are trying to get rid of the unqualified nodes out of the network. Next week, the performance will even better when the new rules and new configurations are applied to the network.
That's some updates. Let the community ask questions.
Storage Network Dashboardđź”—︎
I suggest that will prioritize everyone who is online with us. If you have any questions, please feel free to raise your hand or just simply click the mic and we will invite you onto the stage. If we do not have anyone here with questions, then we do have a list of questions from the community that we can just ask one by one. But still, let's see if there's anyone here that has some questions to ask.
While we are giving them some time maybe I can start by proposing one question from the community.
So first of all, when can we expect the release of the dashboard displaying real time statistics and insights into the utilization and performance of the Stratos network?
We had a dashboard ticket and the developers worked on that already. To be honest, this requirement is not a high priority right now. Make sure the network is stable, getting rid of the low performance node are more important for Stratos. So after we make sure the network is in good shape, we will go back to work on the dashboard requirement. It's hard to estimate how long it will take, but hopefully, we can see the first version of the dashboard next month.
So it's mostly based on the overall performance of the network, right? As to when we will launch a presentable dashboard for everyone to view the network’s data performance.
Thank you. The network’s data performance is one dimension on the dashboard, all the SDS node owners will be able to use this dashboard to monitor their nodes as well.
Application to use the Storage Networkđź”—︎
The second question is when can users expect a consumer facing application that enables upload and download of files and streaming of videos?
We haven't launched it yet because we want to make sure the entire storage network is in good shape first. For the videos stream function, later on, users can use Stratos Wallet or 3rd parties dAPPs to do it. Currently, we have two 3rd parties are cooperating with us with Stratos grants. In the future, the end user will have multiple options to upload/download files. Later, you can probably watch videos directly from the dAPPs.
Stratos wallet for iOS/Androidđź”—︎
It's good to know that our internal Stratos team is working on the architecture part, and there are external parties who will be working on the UI or more user friendly apps to support this.
Speaking about the wallet, we do have another question about when we will have the IOS, android, or Web wallet.
Currently, the wallets created by Stratos team are mostly based on the desktop for macOS, Linux and Windows. But the 3rd party team works on the mobile wallet. They have already submitted mobile Wallet to Google Play Store, and the process status is undergoing auditing at the moment. It will be available on the Google Play Store when it's done.
Status of grant programđź”—︎
You mentioned previously that there are two teams that are already working on different kinds of applications on top of the Stratos ecosystem. Can you give me more information about what is the current status of the grant program? Maybe more details about the number of applicants, as well as the projects that have successfully progressed to the next stage.
We already approved two teams' grants. One is working on the mobile wallet, Android is first, IOS will be the next. Later, they may also work on some UIs on the mobile app to allow the community to upload and download files.
The other team actually has some experience in the decentralized Storage field. They have already built great dAPPs based on the IPFS and Filecoin. Right now they are interested in Stratos as well, so they want to build a brand-new application upon the Stratos network.
We have been in contact with a 3rd team. They may build some domain services on Stratos. We have received around roughly 20 applications with different proposals, some applications are still under the reviewing process now.
Strategic partnershipsđź”—︎
I can ensure that we will review all of the grant applications carefully. We do want to select the serious builders to build on top of Stratos and to best utilize this grant. We're still promoting the grant program to reach different kinds of developers. We want to attract other builders to apply for it.
Could you share some insights about the strategic partnership Stratos is planning to establish to enhance the adoption of the decentralized storage network?
We have two types of partnerships. One which we already established before we launched the mainnet. We are going back to revisit all the partners we announced. We will go back to those teams and will provide all the technical documents, and let them know what the Stratos is capable to do.
After they receive the information, they will decide when they probably will work on that, or when they will work on the migrations. This is out of our control, and I think they may most likely also need some help from our team. When they are ready to start using Stratos, then they will let us know. That's the partnership we had established before the mainnet.
Meanwhile, we are looking for some new partnerships. We work closely with VC network, the Twitter X network, and social networks. We will discuss with traditional businesses and crypto business projects together. Some showcases and demos show what Stratos network could do and why they should choose Stratos.
Exchangesđź”—︎
Thank you for the transparency and update.
The next question is in regards to exchange listing. Are there any upcoming listings of the STOS token on major exchanges, and if so, can you provide any specific details or timeline regarding these listings?
Listing on exchanges is tricky. This is one of the most frequent questions discussed in the community. To be honest, we had communicated with some exchanges about listing $STOS. But I have to say that those exchanges were not top exchanges, not top ten exchanges. After some communication with exchanges between top 10 to 30, the team found the liquidity of some small coins like Stratos (low market cap) performance are not good as well on those exchanges.
So some small exchanges, especially in the current situation, they won't help to improve the liquidity of $STOS. They will even further divide liquidity from current exchanges, which is even worse. So thus, we have not been prioritizing listing to new exchanges under the top ten right now.
We want to dedicate our efforts to gate.io first. We will work on Gate and try to provide more liquidity on gate. Gate has already supported Stratos mainnet. You can deposit native $STOS already. Later, we really would like to list the token on some decent exchanges. Maybe some exchange in Korea, some top exchange, like OKX, Kucoin or later if possible we also like Binance, Coinbase and Kraken. We like to be partners of the top exchanges which really can help with the liquidity. But for the lower ranking exchanges, we are not that interested in the current situation.
Total used space for storageđź”—︎
Back to the storage network, how much storage space has been allocated and utilized on the Stratos network since its launch? and are there any projections for its expansion in the near future.
It's not hard for us to estimate how much storage is used, but we haven't run the analytics process for checking storage usage in real time yet. We could get the information on how much data is stored via the Metanodes. That will be one feature of the Storage dashboard of the storage network when we launch it. Everyone can check by themselves.
Development Roadmapđź”—︎
So could you please provide some information about the development roadmap for Stratos over the next twelve months, highlighting any major milestones or key objectives the team is aiming to achieve?
I think the plan has never changed. Like I said before, since Stratos blockchain and storage network mainnet were launched, we won't rush to work on the second component, like the computing component or database component. We really want more people to use the storage first, encourage the community to store the data on our Stratos.
So when the storage network is satisfied and usage is higher , we will start to launch the second component. But we don't have a detailed plan to announce. We need to observe how it's going with the storage first, how many nodes participate and how many users, how many businesses have stored the data on the storage network. That will be the trigger for us to move on.
Meanwhile, we cooperate with 3rd parties, like grants applicants or other 3rd parties who want to participate in our storage network. The team will probably separately on some side projects or dAPPs to bring much more traffic to Stratos storage.
Another plan based on Stratos storage is related to our unique consensus algorithm called Proof of Traffic. Proof of Traffic means for any SDS node, the more traffic you provide, then the more $STOS you will earn. The next big idea which is made possible by Proof of Traffic is the ability to reward content producers.
Let me provide you an example similar to what Twitter X does. The more views and likes an X post receives, meaning you promote more traffic on the platform, the more X rewards you. They share a portion of their revenue with you. With Stratos, you can do the same thing as well.
It means that we can create a mechanism where content providers who have good videos/audios/any contents that attract people, and generate traffic, can be rewarded with a share of the traffic revenue. The content producer can upload their content to Stratos network to receive the traffic revenue share.
For example, if you produce a video and upload it to Stratos network, then plenty of people download and watch it, imagine how much traffic you may generate. This could be petabytes of traffic. How much reward will you get? It would be a huge amount. With this feature, the content providers are encouraged to upload high-quality content with incentive, and SDS node providers will also get benefit from the traffic is generated by the content providers.
When we launch this program, the Stratos will probably attract some YouTubers or other content producers. They will receive much more reward compared to if they uploaded to YouTube or upload to X. So this will most likely be a big thing for Stratos. I think it is a exciting feature we will launch soon. You may upload one piece of content, then may receive 10 $STOS, or hundreds $STOS in the following day or month.
Contents rewards program is a unique feature that will be launched by Stratos compared with any of the other storage service providers such as Arweave, Filecoin or any others. None of them support this feature. Stratos has that because Stratos was born for that. Stratos was born for hot data, and hot data is data with traffic. And where does the traffic come from? From good content. Share to earn will be a fully organic program of Stratos.
How file slices workđź”—︎
Thank you for sharing this very exciting new features that will be added to the Stratos Storage network, which will also enable developers who are interested in building any kind of content creation type apps.
Another question we have in regards to the technical specifications of Stratos is how many slices a file gets split up into by default? What's the size of the slice? And also how many copies of those slices are stored on the network.
Currently, for a general file, each of the slices is 30 MB. We did some tests and 30 MB is an optimal number for each slice. To make sure it's balanced. We don't want too many slices for each file, we also don't want each slice too big or too small.
If it's a video, the slice size will be a little smaller. It is around 10 MB. Because when we play the video on Stratos, they will cost more CPUs, so we want to have more parallel processes at the same time.
If you have a 100mb file to upload, your file will be separated into 4 slices, and each of the slice will have 5 replications, so your file will have five copies distributed on the Stratos storage network.
If any copies of these slices are lost, or any server is offline, and you lose one slice, Stratos Metanodes will aware of it when you access it. Then the Metanode will create another copy to replace the lost one. Funds from the offline SDS node’s wallet will be charged to pay for the traffic needed to create another copy.
Chain explorer updateđź”—︎
Thanks for explaining that. For the folks who still have questions in regards to this topic, feel free to continue discussing this in telegram and that might be easier to explain through text with numbers and examples.
Another question we have is in regards to the new website along with the update of the Blockchain Explorer displaying data regarding APR and market cap. Can you give an update on this?
Actually, we will launch the new Big-Dipper explorer very soon. From the new Big-Dipper explorer, you can see the circulation and market cap. You also can check the different transactions including transfer file and volume report. The new explorer will show you much more detail information than the current version.
Meanwhile, we will contact Coingecko and CoinMarketCap and offer the API to them. Hopefully, they could integrate the new API soon, so we can see the current circulation supply and market cap in the real time.
New websiteđź”—︎
And I can also add a little bit in regards to the new website. The overall development is nearly finalized and we're just reviewing some new content. We are also waiting for the latest version of the Explorer that will be able to sync up with the new website. So hopefully probably in a month or so we will be able to have the new website.
Does anyone have any question that you would like to raise and discuss in real time with us here today on Twitter space?
Hello, Jim.
How to use Stratos storageđź”—︎
And I just wanna, I just wanna ask a question right, you know, i'm not very technical or anything like that. For like newcomers what exactly the Stratos do? What's it gonna do in the future? I know you got a blockchain and storage. What exactly can people do on it? Just so I can get a better understanding.
All kinds of businesses need storage, like human being need the air and water. How can we promote Stratos to make them feel comfortable and trustable to use Stratos? For the end user, easy use is important. The third party and our team are working on the dAPPs so any user can have their wallet, log in based on their credentials, upload their video, audio or photo, or any data.
Then we also want people to be able to watch or listen to the music from that as well. That's for the end user. This will be an alternative to Dropbox or Google Drive.
The other major case of Stratos is enterprise usage. Large companies want to store sensitive information or their users' privacy information. Sometimes, due to regulations, they cannot use the public cloud. They need to build their own private cloud. This is where Stratos could be an option for them.
For crypto projects like NFTs, GameFi, or even some blockchain projects where their blockchain is too big to keep all the blocks online. They may choose to store some previous blocks offline.
Stratos Storage has many use cases. We need to target those above-mentioned different sectors to work with them to help them. We have to promote trust in Stratos and convert them to be our customers. So that will be the long-term goal. We will do everything step by step to grow the Stratos business.
AR / FL comparisonđź”—︎
What comparison are we to Arweave and Filecoin? And what about ICP? Are they all similar? or Can Stratos do more?
I think Stratos is better, Stratos performance is better than Arweave and Filecoin.
In the tokenomic side, Stratos consensus is Proof of Traffic, users pay based on the traffic. Unlike Arweave, where you just pay once, and you get “permanent storage” (~200 years). I don't believe in the pay once model because that kind of service never exists in the real world. I don't think that could ever exist. Maybe that one payment can store that file for a couple of years… but “permanent storage” is just not practical.
For Filecoin, I feel Stratos is more reliable. The reason is if any of your nodes, and a part of your data was lost because some nodes are offline, Stratos can help to recover it automatically.
But on Filecoin, that does not happen. They don't have that functionality in their core storage protocol. All files uploaded are dependent on Filecoin miners. They will decide what kind of file they want to store. You only can encourage them, but if they just don't want to continue storing the file, it will be lost. So on Filecoin and IPFS we cannot 100% guarantee that a file will be available or not.
Filecoin tries to solve that by increasing the reward for some Filecoin miners, but they still have the fundamental issues because IPFS protocol architecture is fundamentally different to Stratos. So I feel that they have fundamental issues regarding reliability. Stratos solves that issue of data resiliency.
ICP, Internet Computer, mostly provides the computing power not storage. They have recently realized without storage their computing power cannot do much. Recently, they are trying to add storage, but they are not a storage network. The ICP nodes provide computing power with very limited storage. ICP also works very differently. Their network only has 21 nodes, it doesn't matter what you save to their ICP. You are using ICP network they only have 21 nodes for you. It's not a hundred. Not a thousand. Only 21. ICP is picky with their miners as well. They don't have many miners in the network. If you want to be the miner providing computing service to ICP, you need to provide a very high-performance computer. Stratos network is purely decentralized, ICP is not. So I would rather not say they're worse, or we are better.
With Stratos all your data will be distributed to hundreds of nodes, not only to about 21. Stratos distributes multiple copies of your files to different geographical locations. Asia, Europe, North America, everywhere. So we, that's why we feel we are more safe and we are more decentralized.
In the future, when we launch the computing component, Stratos will be able to directly process the data you store in Stratos storage network. At that time, we could provide very similar functionality like ICP can do now.
Stratos and AIđź”—︎
What do you think about Arweave having other blockchains’ historical data and AI data stored upon it? Can we have the same? Will other blockchains start using us?
Actually, AI and blockchain are two different things. Before I created Stratos, I was a technical cofounder of an AI company. I know how AI works. To be honest, I feel many AI projects in the market cannot work out because they're just trying to re-use some idle GPUs that come from Ethereum mining machines to make some cash.
What GPU is good at? GPU is good at the floating-point arithmetic, which is needed by AI computation requirements heavily. But only GPUs could work out? I highly doubt that.
Most of the AI projects mention how many GPUs they have. But AI can't work out only with GPU. To train the models, AI requests huge amount of data. You can do the research on ChatGPT or any big AI company, You will see they are not only building their powerful GPU data center. GPU computation power can accelerate AI process, but only huge amounts of data can make AI smarter.
Without the data, it doesn't matter how many GPUs you have, that AI is still not smart. So without the data, only GPU power, there are not many cases the AI project could do. That's why I don't feel the most AI projects make sense to me. Some AI projects mine tokens via GPU computation power. But how could companies use the GPUs? I don't know how they can ingest the data to the GPU. Where the data is stored, where the GPU reads the data from.
The second thing, people only care about the GPUs. But most people don't know the GPU is limited because the GPU can only do floating-point arithmetic. In the AI process, they need to do lots of logic process, which can only be done by CPU. If you do your research on AWS or Google Cloud AI infrastructure, you will realize there are powerful CPUs are mandatory for AI servers. That's why I feel most of the GPU mining AI tokens doesn't make sense for me.
A general Ethereum mining machine is combined 6 GPUs with a lower performance CPU/motherboard/HDD hard disk because the simple hash rate algorithm for mining Ethereum doesn't need much CPU and disk to cooperate. But this kind of mining machine could contribute computing power value to complicated AI algorithms? I don't think so.
Any way, that's all my opinion, please you guys can just do your research.
Thank you. I trust your project. I love it. I think it's such a transparency, and I'm so excited to be on this journey with you. Thank you.
Content creatos and Stratosđź”—︎
I saw another question in regards to the feature that you just mentioned for content creators. So how is Stratos going to make it clear that YouTubers and so on, they can actually get more rewards if they do it on Stratos network. Do we have a number?
I don't have a number, I'll just give you an example. If there is a YouTubers, he has 100,000 followers and each of the followers watch the video. So when this YouTuber uploads 100 MB video, this video will be watched for 100,000 times, so this video generates 10 TB traffic. This is giant traffic. Even only the X% traffic of 10 TB that YouTube received is still huge.
That's what YouTuber will get, this is a pure organic reward. In Web2 industry, Youtube or X only give the content producer a very small portion of their reward based on how many ads impressions. That's how big company make money. But Stratos network works different, all the reward for the content producer comes from the followers directly. That is huge, no any middle man who cut big part of the reward. It's a different business model. Stratos reward program model is similar to OnlyFans. You guys know OnlyFans, right? So similarly, you can create content to show people how to cook, how to do exercise. The followers pay the subscription fee.
With Stratos reward program, both of content producers or followers are anonymous, no KYC, no email, and no credit card, it is a purely Web3 content sharing network. More important, all the traffics and rewards are fully transparency that I think this is most of the powerful part of Stratos.
New round of fundraisingđź”—︎
Thanks, Bin. I'm sure once we are near to announce this new feature, there will be more clear guidelines and rules laid out for everyone to better understand this new feature. I think this will be the last question for today's AMA. Are we looking for another round of fundraising?
Now it's not that good time for new round fundraising. The market is still not very stable, we are still in a bear market.
Thank you so much for all the honest answers and updates in regards the projects and overall development so I don't think we have any other questions for today. This AMA is also being recorded as well if you wanna look back, um, to gain some insights about some of the question that you're missing.
Once again, we're deeply grateful for everyone who has been with us for this long journey, and now we are at the post mainnet stage where there will be more work continuously, polishing our network to making sure it will be at its finest for the performance, and meanwhile expanding the ecosystems through partnerships and different kind of demos with traditional partners.
So we do appreciate everyone to continue supporting us and helping us spreading the word..
Final thoughts on token priceđź”—︎
There is a question I thought someone will ask during the AMA, but it didn't. Some people were disappointment because they thought when Stratos main net was launched, the Stratos price should get higher, better, I fully understand, but why is the price going lower instead.
One of the reasons is when we launched the Stratos mainnet, there are a million $STOS as Tropos incentive rewards unlocked. So there are some sells pressure caused the price to get lower. Up to now, there are still around 300K $STOS are intended to sell. That's my opinion, the main reason why $STOS price get lower after mainnet.
Oh, thank you been for your transparency and bringing this critical kind of topic up, I'm sure everyone from community will feel how genuine you are with this answer.
I think we'll be able to end this AMA, and we'll hear each other next time.