AMA Recap: CRYPTO MINERS X DESO

DeSo, short for "decentralized social," the first and only blockchain custom-built from the ground up to power and scale a new category of decentralized social applications to one billion users. DeSo stores all of its data on a public blockchain, which means that anyone in the world can run a node that exposes their own curated feed. Today, there are over 100 other projects running nodes and building apps on DeSo as well.

We hosted an AMA session with DeSo on 12th January.

Mr. Ramsy was the host from Crypto Miners and Mr. Alex was the guest. He shared delightful knowledge and unique features of DeSo.

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Segment 1️⃣: Introduction

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Ramsy:
Hello everyone 👋 and welcome to the Crypto Miners AMA session With DESO

To help us learn more about the featured project of this AMA session, we are lucky to be joined By Mr. Alex Valaitis

Alex Valaitis:
Hi everyone! 👋

Excited to be here

Ramsy:
Hello Alex 👋

Wolcome here
Thanks for bringing Us DESO❤️

Alex Valaitis:
Yes of course. Excited to share some info today!

🕺

Ramsy:
I'm pretty sure that our AMA participants are very much excited to learn more about DESO 😄

So let's get started 🤝

Alex Valaitis:
🤝

Ramsy:
Q1. Could you start by introducing yourself and perhaps regarding the key team behind Deso to us? What kind of backgrounds do you guys have prior to Deso?

Here's our first question from this segment

Alex Valaitis:
Yes sure thing

Hello, my name is Alex Valaitis and I run strategy & operations for the DeSo Foundation. Previously I was a product leader at LinkedIn and Intuit. Before that, I also spent 5+ years building decentralized protocols on Ethereum.

I am part of the core team that are the main contributors to the DeSo blockchain. We are responsible for core blockchain updates as well as overseeing our treasury.

We were founded last year by Nader Al-Naji (Previously founder of Basis, ex-Google, D.E. Shaw) and have raised $200M+ from the likes of A16Z, Coinbase Ventures, Sequoia, Social Capital, etc.

Ramsy:
Thanks Alex for this warm start 👍

Now let's see our second question from this segment...

Q2. Can you give an overview of Deso as a whole? And how do you plan to make a change in the Cryptoverse?

Alex Valaitis:
DeSo is the only layer-1 blockchain custom-built to support decentralized social apps at scale. General purpose blockchains (like Ethereum, Solana, BSC etc.) cannot support social apps at scale because they don’t do not implement any custom indexing or storage optimizations.

Because we are a purpose-built blockchain, we can actually make it affordable for a node to store the entire on-chain state.

Today, we have over 200+ apps that have been built on us. Some of the top ones are: diamondapp.com, polygram.cc, prosperclout.com.

You can see more of the apps here: https://bithunt.com/

Ramsy:
Q3. May I ask at this point, do you already have some partnerships lined up?

Alex Valaitis:
Yeah that's another great question

We actually just announced our official partnership with Major League Hacking yesterday. They are one of the largest student/early career hackathon organizations in the entire world, with over 120,000+ students participating every year:

https://twitter.com/MLHacks/status/1480977822143418376?s=20

Furthermore, we also recently listed on Coinbase and are working on a Coinbase earn campaign, as well as possible synergies in the future.

Furthermore, there are a number of other Web3 apps that have already begun integrating with the DeSo blockchain for their social layer (we are announcing our first Octane Fund cohort next week).

Ramsy:
Moving on....

Q4. How important is the community to your project? and How can we collaborate or help share the developments of the project?

Alex Valaitis:
Yes this is a very important point to touch on...

Community is at the core of DeSo‘s success. We have made the intentional decision to give away the application layer to other teams, and instead focus on being the best layer 1 blockchain solution for social.

If you are a developer that is interested in getting started, you can find our developer docs here:
https://docs.deso.org/code/dev-setup

If you are a team that is looking to receive funding for your company, you can apply to our $50M ‘Octane Fund’ here:
https://www.deso.org/blog/a-50-million-fund-to-fuel-the-decentralized-social-developer-ecosystem

If you are looking to try one of the 200+ DeSo apps, you can find them organized by category here:
https://bithunt.com/

If you are interested in investing in $DESO, you can find our coinbase listing page here:
https://www.coinbase.com/price/decentralized-social

Ramsy:
Q5. Could you please provide some progress on your Roadmap and what results Deso achieved so far?

Alex Valaitis:
Yeah I'm super excited about our roadmap moving forward

Since launching in March 2021, we have already achieved debatably as much as any Layer 1 ever in this short of a period of time.

In the time since launch, we have already seen 200+ apps deployed on DeSo, 393K creator accounts, 60 million+ transactions and are market cap grow to ~$1 Billion.

This quarter we are releasing some exciting new features including:

Smart services: https://www.deso.org/blog/smart-services

DeSo DAOs / DAO coins: https://github.com/deso-protocol/dips/blob/diamondhands/DAOs/dips/dip-6.md

Updates to blockchain including hypersync and Proof of Stake.

We also just listed our first hardfork since coinbase today:

https://twitter.com/desoprotocol/status/1481291150795358219?s=20

Ramsy:
Q6. Smart Services - a new programming paradigm that they believe will take over #Web3. So as a newbie here, can you make us understand more this called #SmartService in more simple terms? How do they work & how possible?

Alex Valaitis:
Yeah this is one of our features I am most excited about, since it is about to bring millions of new developers to Web3...

First let’s review how a normal Web2 service works:

A centralized database is used to store a user’s content/assets & then the application ingests this data & serves it to the user on the client.

Here the central party, i.e. Twitter, owns the entire experience (servers, database, app)

With smart contracts, the goal is to decentralize as much of this process as possible, including not only the storage but also the computation required to run the application.

While this does add decentralization benefits, it has MAJOR tradeoffs…

Specifically, it requires a unique programming layer that is costly to run and isn’t as performant at scale as centralized computing solutions.

It also requires developers to learn a new programming language/ecosystem that turns off many potential new adopters.

Smart services by DeSo, makes the clear decision to centralize the computation for an application, while keeping the content/assets storage decentralized by living on a blockchain like DeSo or Ethereum.

The benefit is that you get the censorship-resistance and composability benefits of smart contracts, in addition to the efficiency and ease of development benefits of Web2 applications.

Additionally, developers can use the tech stack they are already familiar with.

Ramsy:
Let's move to our last question from this segment....

Q7. One problem for content creators is that private companies effectively control public discourse and make monopolistic profits from content they don't even create, how can creators legally obtain results and benefits from #Deso?

Alex Valaitis:
Since the DeSo blockchain is an open database, all of the content is on-chain and can be leveraged by ANY app that wants to build on it. This effectively takes away the monopolistic controls from a handful of companies (I.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc) and instead let's creators take back control of their content and monetization.

We also have a number of great features baked into the protocol for creators including: Creator coins, NFTs, social tipping, etc.

Ramsy:
Thanks Alex for this well detailed introduction about DESO:)

And that's the wrap up of our the first part of the AMA session ✅

Alex Valaitis:
🕺🕺

Ramsy:
Let’s now proceed to our Twitter Questions section

i hope you're ready for that!!

Alex Valaitis:
let’s do it!

Segment 2️⃣: Twitter Questions

Ramsy:
1) Deso is consisted of huge funds. The Octane Fund: $50 Million to Fuel the Decentralized Social Ecosystem the already-thriving Decentralized Social developer ecosystem. How can we Apply for Funding? What did you mean by "Already -thriving Decentralized?

Alex Valaitis:
Sure thing. So if you're interested in learning more about how to receive funding from the Octane Fund you can go here:

https://www.deso.org/blog/a-50-million-fund-to-fuel-the-decentralized-social-developer-ecosystem

We just finished our first cohort and already allocated $11M

We consider the ecosystem to be already thriving because we have 200+ apps live already today, that have all been built by the community

You can also see our total on-chain activity here:

https://www.openprosper.com/

Ramsy:
2) I read that the native $DESO token can be used to buy a new type of asset called "creator coin", but I don't see any further information on this. What are these "creator coins" and what are they used for? How are they obtained and what use cases do they have on DeSo?

Alex Valaitis:
Yeah sure thing. So we have really been the first Web3 project to bring the creator coin concept to reality. Basically every person who creates an account on the DeSo blockchain gets their own creator coin. Then other users can buy these creator coins, and share the success of these creators if they continue to do well and rise in value

Certain apps (like this view in diamondapp.com show some of the different accounts that people are investing in creator coins on)

What's really cool is that the creators can set what is called a 'founder reward' where they get a % of every buy. This helps artists, creators, etc. help bootstrap capital and begin to rise

Ramsy:
3) The transparency & privacy that can exist in Crypto Project nowadays is a very delicate & much talked about topic among users, so I would like to know, how DeSo handles these specific issues, how important are they in the project?

Alex Valaitis:
All of our code is open source which you can view here:

https://github.com/deso-protocol

Furthermore, all of the content is stored on-chain, so anyone can query it and see:

https://www.openprosper.com/

Ramsy:
4) you say the DeSo nodes mempool was written from scratch to support social data queries, without users having to wait for blocks to be mined. How does this benefit DeSo applications and offer a quick or instant response? How will you compete with centralized social apps?

Alex Valaitis:
Honestly the best way to see the performance of the DeSo blockchain is to just starting using the blockchain yourself to see first hand!

For instance, I have been on platform for months, everything is nearly instant and I have spent next to nothing on fees:

This is a stark contrast from other layer 1 blockchains that do not do any custom indexing or storage optimizations. For instance, here’s the cost breakdown for a node to store the on-chain state for different popular layer 1s:

The end result, is that other apps on other blockchains are very cost prohibitive. Check out this screen shot that this app built on Binance smart chain was actually marketing. 10 cents just for each follow!

As for competing with central services

we believe that while content and assets should live on chain

we offload are computation through trusted 'smart services'

you can learn more here:

https://www.deso.org/blog/smart-services

Ramsy:
5) I noticed DeSo's social NFT would be tied to the artist's profile and all of their backgrounds, but is this information really not getting the same on other blockchains that don't have a social focus? So, what innovations does your NFT have?

Here's our last question from twitter

Alex Valaitis:
Great question

So for starters, other blockchains do not actually tie social components to their NFTs on chain

Take for instance Ethereum

People mint an NFT on Ethereum

But then they set their profile pic to it on twitter (centralized) and then talk about it with people on Discord (centralized)

So the social aspect of their NFTs are never on-chain

Deso does every part of the social experience for NFTs on chain. A great example of this is the following app:

https://supernovas.app/

Furthermore, our NFTs are only a fraction of a cent to mint (compared to hundreds of $ on other blockchains)

and we can also do cool things with our NFTs, like attach royalties to them

so that if you own the original nft creator's creator coin, a proceed of all sales of their NFTs automatically flow back to the creator coin holders

there's nothing else like it in the industry 😎

Ramsy:
Thanks man for Your Valuable Answers❣
And that's the end of our twitter question segment

Now Moving on to our last segment - Live Q&A

Alex Valaitis:
🙏

Ramsy:
Shall We Go?

Alex Valaitis:
let's do it

Ramsy:
Let’s go,

Segment 3️⃣: Live QnA
(In this segment group was opened for 60 seconds and Miners sent hundreds of questions. Guest choose some best to answer)

1)Jade:
Can you explain us why DESO Blockchain can be more scalable that other 1 layers like Solana or Ethereum? Why are you better that them?

Alex Valaitis:
these general purpose blockchains don’t do any sort of custom-indexing or storage optimizations. Therefore, they’re good for finite state applications but can’t scale infinite state applications (like social media apps). Easiest way to see that these other blockchains don’t work is to just go try to use a social app on it and see how expensive/slow it is. 🙂

2) Demvrick:
I saw that you emphasized Deso's advantage for utilizing Smart Services rather than the Normal Web2 Services. Can you explain more on what do the Smart Services do? What is the importance of Smart Services in your decentralized social media platform?

Alex Valaitis:
I'd recommend reading this article for more info:

https://www.deso.org/blog/smart-services

3) 𝙘𝙧𝙮𝙥𝙩𝙤 𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 | HUNTER ®:
Where i can buy this? Is it available on any exchange?

Alex Valaitis:
Coinbase: https://www.coinbase.com/price/decentralized-social

Blockchain.com: https://exchange.blockchain.com/trade/CLOUT-USD?utm_campaign=prices_list_trade

4) Poker:
In Deso Blockchain is possible mint NFTs? If that case how much cost?

Alex Valaitis:
Yes you can. It’s extremely cheap, less than a cent in most cases. Check out polygram.cc or https://nftz.zone/, 2 of our more popular nft marketplaces

5) Crypto Hash:
In a recent article, you explained the lack of interoperability and composition across the chain has further hampered what developers can build. So, what alternatives does DeSo offer to address the lack of interoperability and help developers?

Alex Valaitis:
Smart services. This article is still the best resource for explaining more, hard to give all details on telegram: https://www.deso.org/blog/smart-services

6) Blakerjake:
What are the specific functions of DESO PROTOCOL? What makes user identity portable across all applications in the DeSo ecosystem?

Alex Valaitis:
When you join any app on DeSo you get a deso identity, which also acts as your wallet for the blockchain. You can then use this to login to any app on deso blockchain (similar to MM).

All of your content, followers, profile data, etc. is then tied back to your identity and stays with you on any app

7) Mallu Boy:
One of DeSo's reward system is Social Tipping aka "Diamonds". Could share with us on how to get Tipping aka " Diamonds? Can it be directly integrated?

Alex Valaitis:
Yes. We already have some different apps that have already done this.

https://cordify.app/ is a diamond tipping integration for Discord for example

*This segment ends here*

Alex Valaitis:
But I just wanted to say thank you for having me on for this AMA

if you have any other questions, I recommend people check out our community discord.

thanks again!

Ramsy:
Thankyou so much For your valuable answers and information about DESO,
It Was Pleasure Hosting An Ama With You

Alex Valaitis:
See you all on the DeSo Blockchain 😎✌️

thanks Ramsy . Take care!

Ramsy:
Time To Conclude Our AMA Section
Thank you and best of luck for the future 💕

Community, if you would like to learn more about DESO, here are some useful links for you:

Website: http://deso.org/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/desoprotocol

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/desofoundation