HOST:
1: Please introduce youself to BCcore. We like to start off with What is SupraOracles — Tell us what SupraOracles is and what it does?
Joshua D. Tobkin:
Hi BCcore! Great to be here! I’m Josh, co-founder and CEO of SupraOracles.com , Lee is a good friend and part of our executive team – he’s also from Vietnam!
I’ve been in the industry for about 4.5 years researching how to scale blockchains, while maintaining decentralization and security.
SupraOracles is a next generation infrastructure that will allow public blockchains to communicate with each other and with the outside world.
We have a really unique network architecture that allows our network to reach global consensus in a very efficient manner by utilizing some powerful cryptographic techniques that we discovered over the last several years of deep research!
This will allow our network to be highly performant while also highly secure.
HOST:
1.1: So What is motivate you to create and grow SupraOracles ?
Joshua D. Tobkin:
Actually… we were deeply involved in scaling Layer 1 originally, but around November of 2020, we saw there was such a huge problem with Oracle manipulation in Decentralized Finance… and we thought… DeFi is AWESOME but… this manipualtion and these hacks due to insecure implementations of Oracles was a big problem to let DeFi grow into the mainstream.
So we decided, this is what we think we can contribute the most to. That this was the most important problem to solve.
That we were well positioned to solve this because we studied Layer 1 consensus algorithms deeply and also have a lot of expience with Oracles, IoT, and on-chain randomness research.
We felt we could solve the Oracle problem utilizing our insights in Layer 1 research.
How about the name ” SupraOracles” ? why you choose this name ? what is meaning ?.
HOST:
1.2: How about the name ” SupraOracles” ? why you choose this name ? what is meaning ?
Joshua D. Tobkin:
The world “Supra” means “Above” – and it also has a connotation to mean “FAST”
The Oracle layer is a layer “Above” a blockchain – which allows outside data to enter a blockchain.
We go through all this trouble to secure the blockchain… but the industry forgot to fortify the Oracle layer with the same safety guarantees as the layer 1 consensus layer.
We are bringing layer 1 security guarantees to the Oracle “Above” layer – while remaining fast and extremely secure.
Also, we felt most existing oracle solutions were inadequate… so we are also kind of suggesting we are a better solution… “above” the old oracle designs.
HOST:
2: Recently, your project have so many collaboration . can you name some of them and what does these cooperation affect your protocol ?
Joshua D. Tobkin:
We recently went through the Berkeley Blockchain program – also, more recently, we are in the Mastercard Crypto Start Path Program.
Beyond these, we are involved in P2P lending projects like Credefi, Eth Layer 2 Solutions like Metis, NFT gaming projects, and of course DeFi projects like StripsFinance.
But… we also have a lot of other announcements that are not public yet! Many more on the way!!!
HOST:
3: What is your team background, will they be able to support the long-term development, of the project ?
Joshua D. Tobkin:
I perosnally first heard and interacted with Bitcoin around 2011. It was small at the time and though I thought it was useful, I didn’t realize it what it would become!
(I wish I had!)
It wasn’t until early 2017 again when I heard about its increase in value and also about this new platform called “Ethereum” that I became interested again… and then eventually I became obsessed with trying to understand why anyone would want to use such an inefficient global database!
Around that time.. that’s when it started to become clear to me… our world has so many problems due to a lack of transparency and trust…
I was working on several startups in San Francisco, mostly in the SaaS industry. I was helping apply blockchain into projects related to online content digital rights management, food supply chains, and also a SaaS startup I co-founded in the health care space.
In late 2017, I got connected with one of my current co-founders, Jon Jones, by a friend that I went to boarding school with, who also so happened to know Jon.
During San Francisco Blockchain Week in early 2018, Jon flew out and we met in person and I pitched him some of the core ideas of our novel consensus algorithm. Jon later went back home and after a few months followed up about wanting to invest in the idea and become a co-founder.
Though an American also, he was living in Taipei, Taiwan.
I had never been there before… but he convinced me it was a better place for us to bootstrap our startup instead of expensive San Francisco.
By mid 2018 I packed up my things, sub-letted my apartment, and moved to Taipei, where we setup our Crypto/Blockchain Research Lab, called Unity Chain.
During the cold crypto winter of 2018-mid 2020, we focused on research and development…
It was not an easy period to be honest… No one gave us any attention…
Blockchain was on the verge of being considered… a fad… even sometimes we were worried the industry was going to have major problems for a long time… Since during 2017 there were so many fake projects without any fundamentals.
We kept going though, pushing forward with our limited resources… because we believe the technology mattered.
Eventually we built the technology for some projects that ICO’d in 2017 and 2018… as consultants… That’s how we survived.
And then… we also got introduced to publicly traded companies like Advantech in Taiwan, which is a IoT and Cloud company – but they didn’t know anything about blockchain.
We built a middleware module for them that was designed to help secure IoT data onchain – it required a very specific design.
And then that led us to sharing our technology with Walmart China – and compete in a Food Safety program where we shared our solution of IoT meets blockchain meets QR codes and digital payments – to guaratee a secuire food supply chain.
And then more recently, around November 2020, we decided to begin SupraOracles – and then within a few weeks we realized there was a lot of investor and contributor interests…. and now we’re here today…
we’re just about to come out of our stealth mode, now.
Our team has been together through the worst crypto winter possible. We’ll be together for the next 5-10 years.
HOST:
4: What are your upcoming plans to expand globally and attract more users?
Joshua D. Tobkin:
Community is the only thign that matters. Yes, we believe we have incredible technology and scaling techniques, however, without partners and supporters, we’re nothing.
Our plan is to network with as many projects as possible.
Since we are a high-throughput and secure Oracle solution that is applying Layer 1 technology and security guarantees to any data we let enter any blockchain we service… this means we can play well with ALL L1 communities and defi projects that was secure data.
This positions us uniquely to be able to work with all projects. We are “Blockchain agnostic” — any smart contract platform that wants secure data as fast as possible, while we are always aiming to be the most secure solution on the market — can work with us. We’re happy to serve them – they are our clients and customers.
HOST:
5: And lastly, can you tell us a bit more about late 2021? Could you please share with us your long-term goals for the sector in which you create your project and your vision that will carry you to these goals? Can you tell us a bit more about those plans and how you aim to achieve them?
Joshua D. Tobkin:
We’re aiming to start opening up our alpha test net end of the year, if all goes well.
We originally wrote our testnet in GoLang, but decided to convert it to Rust 2 months ago.
Also, we are working with Republic.co’s crypto branch organization – they are some of our early backers.
There is a chance we will be doing our pubic sale on their platform in December.
HOST:
6: What features do you deliver that wipe out all opponents ?
Joshua D. Tobkin:
We are more than just an Oracle. We are a middle network that connects blockchains to each other.
We help bring outside data into blockchains securely but we also can let blockchains communicate with each other. We are an Oracle, a Trustless Bridge, AND actually… we have high-throughput Layer 1 capabilities!
We are not your normal Oracle…. We are going to enable new Decentralized Finance and cross-chain capabilities that were not otherwise possible before.
HOST:
7: Do you have Native token , if yes can you tell more about it ,what is the tokenomics of your token, and how do you stimulate the users to hold your token in the long run?
Joshua D. Tobkin:
Yes.. we will.
It is not issued yet.
Please no one accept any token that sounds like us – our token generation event (TGE) will likely be early next year.
Our token economic model has some interesting qualities.
It will actually be Fixed Supply.
Furthermore, we will burn maybe 20% of transaction fees, so our token will actually be Deflationary.
We are a Proof of Stake network but we are also aiming to have multiple native stable coin designs.
That’s about all I should/can mention for now though.
HOST:
8: How can I sure that SupraOracles are safe to use or not ?
Joshua D. Tobkin:
In crypto, everything must be designed with Safety and Liveness first, always. It always needs to be driven by deep Research and Development, because blockchains maintain and hold value.
Some chains have been designed by engineers first – and may have neglected research driven approach. And … maybe it can fail and needs to be restarted…
We have been working with multiple professors and PhDs in cryptographic security, Distributed Key Generation, and consensus researcher for years.
We’re only bringing our solution to market now after we feel confident that our ideas and methodolgies are sound based on the original research in distributed computing dating back to the early 1980s!
We will verify everything and work with multiple audit agencies before we go live. Secrurity is always #1. Speed is a close second though.
HOST:
9: “Decentralized Finance” Is Such A Big Deal in the crypto world, what your opinion about future of DeFi ?
Joshua D. Tobkin:
Well… a part of me totally believes the deep future is fully peer to peer. Banks will be around but they will have a much different purpose than today.
I think DeFi will start to have both KYC and regulated options as well as non-regulated options that are purely code and smart contract based.
I believe, however, soon enough banks will not be able to be as wasteful as they have been to society.
It will probably take 10-12 years, but I think DeFi will continue to take market share away from organizations that are just inefficient… and wasteful.
HOST:
10: What are keys to SupraOracles Innovation ?
Joshua D. Tobkin:
We have a unique model to allow the nodes in our network to reach global consensus with less total communication overheard.
This insight allows our network to achieve a global agreement quickly.
Our insights took us years to figure out. It required a lot of study and dilligent effort to uncover.
We will be releasing this research in October!
The key to our innovation though… was not giving up!
Anything we release next month… was a result of over 3 years of research… We finially discovered some “secrets” that are unlocking incredible performance gains for our network.
We all know about the “Trilemma” of:
Decentralization, Security, and Scalability.
But there is actually another point that is often overlooked… That is Time To Finality, which is also known as latency or “time to settlement.”
Our approach solves for this “Quadrilemma” – 4 points of:
Decentralization
Security
Scalability
and Finality (ability to achieve total global consensus)
We have discovered a sweet spot that allows us to be high performing, secure, decentralized, and also with fast finality.
End of AMA Summary, Thanks SupraOracles for trusting and organizing AMA with us !!
?More Social details:
Telegram: https://t.me/SupraOracles
Website: https://www.supraoracles.com/
Channels Announcements: https://t.me/SupraOraclesAnnouncements
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SupraOracles
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/supra-oracles/about/
