Hello ICONists,
Today, ICON Foundation council member Min Kim participated in a community AMA session on the Official ICON Telegram. Below is a transcript from this session. The content is divided into 4 sections (Development, Business & Marketing, P-Reps and Others). If you have any questions, be sure to tune in to the next AMA session on the Official ICON Reddit every month.
Development
Q: How are DID (end of month) and staking (august) doing? Any news to share if the team is working on time?
A: As far as I know, both are on schedule.
Q: Is there news about support from TREZOR (hardware wallet) ?
A: Someone should build one. Maybe one of our P-Reps.
Q: What is the timespan for ICON to connect to other blockchains ? 2–3 years? 3–5 years?
A: We should be able to complete everything in the whitepaper by end of this year (maybe sip into early next year). But, we learn as we go and developed other things not mentioned in the whitepaper.
Q: What’s ICON’s view on privacy and protection of its users?
A: We believe in privacy and user protection like how all public blockchain should be by default.
Q: So would that mean ICON started Using ZKSnarks or something in their basecode?
A: Privacy is something we might include in the future. It’s not mentioned in the whitepaper.
Q: Is there any interest in using oracles with ICON, like ChainLink?
A: All public blockchain will need oracles eventually. Oracles are still maturing and early.
Q: Does ICON plan to stick to normal Hackathons after this TX event which clearly has caused quantity over quality?
A (Min): I’ll have to ask the project managers. I don’t have the answer.
A (Daeki): I am not the project manager, but I am involved with the process, and I have to admit that we were trying to accomplish too many things with TX Challenge: stress test the network, get people to build cool services, onboard new developers, etc. We hope to host more regular hackathon like events going forward to incentivize our developers to build meaningful and interesting services.
Q: Where do you see ICON in 5 years? Mission complete?
A: Thousands of DAPPS, DAOs, digital native companies operating together to create an amazing digital economy
Q: One of the big concerns I have on the ICON ecosystem is there’s a ton of development on the private chain with partnerships and development but, how that affect the public chain ? Is LINE and other big companies going to use the private or the public one ?
A: They will all converge at one point. That’s our belief and what we see. Very few enterprises are willing to jump on public chain from day 1. That’s the reality.
Q: Maybe this has been answered already and I missed, but the issues with the ICON tracker lagging with the increased transactions. Has the problem been found, and a rough timeframe on a plan to have updated?
A: Yes, this is known. I believe it’s updated or being updated.
Business & Marketing
Q: How do you expect ICX to retain growth purely through utility value? Other tokens go up through excitement but the ICON DEX source code release for instance had no interest from the outside.
A: 1) ICONLOOP team will be creating apps to push more usage. DID and Broof are just first few trial initatives.
2) We focus on high quality DAPPs that initially focus on user adoption than ICX usage. Somesing is a good example of how they are nicely growing users first before plugging in ICX.
3) IISS — In hindsight, I believe ICX trading + IISS should’ve come together to incentivize staking. Can’t do anything about that now… but staking should be good for us.
Q: Can we expect new exchanges for US citizens?
A: I can’t answer that. You’ll know when it’s announced.
Q: When new partnerships which actually use our ICX ? There are plenty of MOUs there, but many makes no sense in terms of ICX utility.
A: MOUs are committment to explore opportunities. Not all MOUs translate into a working partnerships. But more increases the probability.
Q: Do we have any updates regarding the Smilegate MOU ? Wondering if ICON are still working together, I can see fantastic potential.
A: Can’t give updates with enterprises unless the partner confirms. We always want to give updates. Many times the decisions are not up to us.
Q: Are any open finance like #defi applications on ICON from ICONLOOP planned?
A: VELIC is not “defi’ but it’s progressing well to provide comparable products and services
Q: Min, what do you think is ICONs biggest competitive advantage over competing platforms?
A: We don’t see others as competing platforms. There are 200 countries on this earth. There can be a few dozen blockchains co-existing with difference goverance structures. We are just different. Those that like to build on ICON will build on ICON. We don’t need to be the biggest digital nation although that would be great.
Q: Have you made any further progress toward selecting a P.R. firm?
A: PR is not in our whitepaper. We didn’t fundraise for PR. Perhaps a PR firm should apply to EEP and P-Reps can work together with them.
Q: Will you please like to update us on incoming usage for Samsung Pass ID or LINE, it’s been 1.5 year and nothing happens with these two mega ventures.
A: I can’t. Working with enterprises have our limitation.
Q: Just to clarify, much of the information that you wish to share cannot be shared mainly due to many of your partners being in the private sector correct? How do you plan communicating those relations with the public?
A: There is no good answer to this. We update what we can. That’s about it.
Q: Will ICON specifically sell merch to community members to fund a global marketing budget anytime soon?
A: Not now. ICON is not a merchant. Anyone can sell ICON branded merchandise like anyone can sell USA shirts and mugs.
Q: How much money is left in ICON treasury?
A: I need to check with team. It’s enough not to worry.
Q: If ICON is pretty much the same as EOS and several other projects structurally, what do you think we are not succeeding on the token side like these projects? What aren’t we doing that they are?
A: EOS raised $4 billion > Market cap is $6 billion. ICON raised $45 million > Market cap is $160M. We raised what we need to build. If we raised $4 billion, of course we’d be higher in market cap. Everyone just needs to stop looking at market caps and ranking. That’s not the best way to measure project’s success/failure.
Q: 1st- Any insight on the stacked wallet dumping lately? 2nd- Cosmochain announces mainnet launch on Klaytn for 6/27. Are they still ICON partner or what?
A: 1. I have no idea 2. It’s up the Cosmochain. Anyone can join or leave ICON.
Q: How much of the tokens allocated for the team have been sold? Someone is dumping tokens each time ICON starts to move up.
A: I don’t know but majority hasn’t been issued and once they are issued, it will be under vesting schedule.
P-Reps
Q: What skills/treats do you personally think makes a great P-rep?
A: Great P-reps candidates understand the importance of growing the ecosystem. Ultimately, the future of ICON is P-Rep, not me or ICON Foundation. True decentralization means less and less of me and ICON Foundation. That’s what we are shooting for.
Q: I think the community all agrees we would love a high level confirmation from ICON publicly that they’re doing well and a high level overview of ICON’s vision, mission, and progress. Would that be possible?
A: We plan to revamp many things after the P-Rep. Lot of things to do so little time.
Q: Do you fear P-Reps will not share the vision of ICONLOOP ?
A: P-Reps need to share the vision of ICON, not ICONLOOP. ICON is the new digital nation we are building. ICONLOOP is just one part of it.
Q: Will ICON vote / stake with reserves or is circulating supply only tokens to stake with ?
A: I’m told that this is in discussion by the P-Rep campaign team.
Q: Do you consider everyone using AWS for launching their P-Rep instances is sustainable long term with centralization?
A: Oooo…that’s a good question. I think we can start with AWS. We’ll see how it evolves. I hope all our P-reps are not soely dependant on AWS.
Q: Who’s doing all that marketing in South Korea? Is it all just…free? Goodwill of the common people? Interns?
A: We do “marketing”. P-Rep campaign would fall under marketing. Most people associate marketing with TV commercials and PR stunts.
Q: Towards which P-Rep are you going stake your personel tokens?
A: Need to see all the candidates first. It’s going to be exciting!
Others
Q: How close is ICON to being a recognised daily use crypto in South Korea?
A: Every project in crypto including BTC is still far away. We need to continue to fight for more adoption as a whole. I look at all crypto as one big team.
Q: What are other things outside the roadmap are you most excited about?
A: We’re testing some cool things interally that we are excited about. More proven ideas make it out and become products like broof.
Q: Do you have any plans to appear on the famous YouTube channels?
A: Sure when I can. Again, my time is limited. I’d like to focus my time speaking at quality events like Money 20/20.
Q: How do you think we can prevent negativity and FUD within the ICON community?
A: There’s negatively everywhere, not just in the room. The silent majority needs to raise their voice.
Q: What can the ICON community do to make ICON even bigger?
A: Build DApps, DAOs, etc. Build build build or find someone to build.
Q: Who was the smartest person that surprise you in blockchain industry?
A: Ricky Dodds. This man is brilliant.
Last Words
Min: Okay. I have to go. Bye for now~ Thanks everyone for keeping the project alive. Some last words:
1. Everything is moving forward. That’s what’s most important. We improve as we go. We fix as we go. It’s all part of the journey.
2. ICON’s blockchain was built from ground up. We’ren ot a copy, not a fork of Ethereum or other chains like others. This means others can be launched and operated faster in the beginning. However, in the long run, we believe there are big advantages as a native chain vs. forked chain.
3. Be ready for P-Rep Election. This is a historical moment you’d want to be a part of. Years from now, you’d want to say that you were involved in the first ICON election.
4. We are building a Digital Nation together. This is bigger than me or ICON Foundation. We are building a new economy run by new types of companies (DAPPs, DAOs, digital native companies).
5. People continue to think of ICON as a company. ICON is not a company, but a public project. I’m not the CEO. I don’t make all the decisions. ICON team started with 30 > now over 140 > Now I consider all P-rep candidates + community members (e.g. The Iconist News) that are vouching for ICON as “the ICON team”
6. Be nice. I don’t respond to derogatory remarks. Don’t spread hate. If you want to criticize what I or our team is doing, please make a proposal instead. It’s a lot more helpful.
Thanks,
Min
