We are joined today by @TomMarchi & @lewknopp
Q. Maybe we can start with a small intro from you both? Specially your expertise/position in the team?
Tom: I’m the lead dev at Sentivate and all code that gets pushed will pass my eyes and be inspected by me and of course a good chunk of it is written by my own two hands. Been a developer for more than half my life time. This industry has been a part of my life for a long time now.
Lew: I am former soldier, current CEO of a global risk management firm that amalgamates expertise to formulate solutions for the governmental, corporate and private sectors. I have 30+ years in the space. For SENTIVATE I provide business knowledge, acumen, experience and direction with an emphasis on working with governments
Q. Hey Tom, would sentivate become a developer tool like eth is to crypto?
Yes, it’s important to keep in mind here that there are two networks and therefore two different platforms for development although they are tied together. It is most certainly a developer focused project initially much of this strategy is borrowed from how Google and Apple plays things. That’s how we have Chrome and Webkit today used by millions around the world. A brilliant strategy for gearing technology adoption and long term domination for markets.
Q. What’s your core competency at this point?
Q.What is artifacts and how will it be like crypto kitty
There are a few distinct attributes compare to crypto kitties that I would like to point out first. There are a select amount of them instead of having generations and creating more. This has a larger influence on the scarcity principle. This makes artifacts into a much stronger cryptographic asset in regards to value. Another important point is that it holds value in its ability to modulate your mining capabilities. Artifacts are owned by essentially the wallet and can be attached to it but require a certain amount of Viat to run. This is another form of staking we are working on to keep Viat off of exchanges and in action on the network. For example let’s say an Artifact has a perk which boosts your percentage for a transaction being validated by 25% in order to equip it to your wallet (think of Destiny 2 module upgrades on a weapon) you must first fill it with Viat. There is a small transaction fee on enabling it and then the Viat stays in your wallet but assigned to that specific Artifact. A similarity between crypto kitties and artifacts is that thy have a visual appearance to them right now we intend on adding some historic value to them onto of their design. Each module has a somewhat Unique design and shape to it which is actually on the blockchain. We have been experimenting with including artwork or historic moments in history or the blockchain space as part of individual artifacts. An example would be an Artifact that has say the bitcoin white paper stored in it. This is an idea we have found to be both educational but to also hold more informational value within the artifact as well. They each have a story and unique traits. They also have tiers similar to generations in Crypto kitties. Making certain tiers in general more rare than others and higher tiers have superior benefits than lower tiers. Unlike crypto kitties we wanted to introduce a cryptographic asset class that holds real value for users on the network. We will be releasing a page with graphical mockups of Artifacts before 2020. We also have a new design to how mining works with Districts which not a single other project has and the same principles apply. However, they open up a wallet to more complicated mining than the standard validation of transactions. For example a contract district allows someone to validate contracts. This further protects the network from attacks because it raises the cost of attacks on the network and limits it to those who have that specific district. More will be detailed out soon but this is the first time we are releasing info on districts and they are an exclusive to this group.
Q. From the business side, any new partnerships / lisitings in the pipeline? I really like what Eterbase is doing with their treasury service. Have you guys been in talks with them?
In regards to partnerships yes. We have a few tech companies we are working out some details with. In regards to listings we don’t typically give out info ahead of time but as an exclusive to this group one of those exchanges, besides the previous hit we gave for a different exchange, has an L in it and is BTI verified. We have heard a lot about them but we are extremely weary of any exchanges that don’t have a long enough history. We have also setup stricter rules for exchanges that we list on. We will be getting the TD for SNTVT ensuring that the ticker symbol can’t be used on exchanges that we don’t agree with or see as a risk to holders. If there is enough demand by the company we may look into it but again we have been very strict about the exchanges we want. Right now there are exactly 4 we have lined up and will come at specific times.
Q. What are the tech features of Sentivate and what plans do you have for the upcoming year?
This is a huge and broad question I would direct you to the network dropdown on the Sentivate site. A better way to put this question is to ask about the features of the Universal Web and Viat as we are building two networks what is typically called the “Sentivate Network”. We release a roadmap every 3 months but the big one coming up for 2020 is our soft launch of the Universal Web in 2020.
Q. All of the regional internet registries (RIRs) have announced they have (near-)exhausted their allocation of IPv4 addresses, excluding transition addresses to IPv6. Is there any part of the Sentivate project that addresses this issue or will it work in tandem with IPv6 adoption? (might be in whitepaper, I will admit I’ve only done light reading on the project)
IPv6 has plenty of room for growth from the inception of IPv4 they new one day they would run out. The solution is IPv6 and anyone looking to modify that system in the blockchain space is not just in over their head but still rely on IP even if they try to say they don’t or are building something to replace it. Without that info the packet would never be received on the network and routed to the appropriate address. The truth is IPv6 for what it is designed to do is perfectly fine. The issue is that folks try to do more with it to combat certain security or privacy concerns. What we have been working on from a hardware standpoint would eliminate most of the security concerns on the Internet but again this is physical hardware and isn’t our main concern as there are more pressing matters that are strictly software related. We fully embrace IPv6 and future versions of it so long as they stick doing exactly what it was designed for and not over complicate designs.
Q. I recall quite a while back that it was mentioned that a company like Amazon loses 10s of millions of dollars due to bandwidth issues. Have you approached any large companies that experience this issue and if so, was there keen interest for your solution?
We have approached one of the largest NSPs and will be continuing talks with them in 2020. This is why we have included although limited from the public our hardware related additions. There are specific issues on the Internet that can’t be fixed with software alone and require proprietary hardware to help combat the problem. They were very interested based on their words and actions as their entire client base could utilize portions or the whole network.
Q. Will we see more partnerships from sentivate? How can the UDSP be integrated into existing networks?
In 2020 yes. The protocol itself if stripped of some aspects can be retrofitted to any cryptocurrency today and anything that requires a superior data transfer protocol that can be easily modified. Examples would be streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, AppleTV+, Crunchyroll, and funimation. Services that provide streaming of games would have much to benefit from it if you wanted to see why look on YouTube for a video that covers a cloud video game service which dropped TCP in favor of a custom in house UDP protocol they built.
Q. Pushing on the core competency question a little bit (and not to request divulgence of partners or anything but) – which areas of the project are, say, “fleshed out” fully by the current team, and which areas (if any) do you anticipate either hiring people or leveraging a partnership to expand/build/grow? (ex. distribution, marketing, infrastructure, etc.)
In terms of software we are solid on that front. When it comes to software we aren’t worried. Hardware we are more focused on partnerships with large NSPs to make them a realistic option. Hence why the first folks we spoke with was a large NSP. We have access to the largest browser in town and intend on proposing the network as an addition that can be supported. We have a lot of guys with expertise in infrastructure so it’s far from a concern. I did infrastructure moves for a while in my early years and have a lot of architects around the table although I can myself handle most of the designs. Marketing is a constant process and we are always on the look out for say influencers that are in other none English speaking markets specifically focused on Asia for 2020. We fully intend of solidifying a few partnerships which are specifically for growth capabilities and in some ways capital both are tied together for those.
Q. On the VPN vs Zero Trust Security developments going on, where do you see Sentivate adapting best?
These networks could enhance their core offerings by adopting Sentivate related tech into their stack. We would be used as a development tool to enhance capabilities for services in that space. No need to enter this space directly as they can make of our tech as they see fit to a degree.
Q. Do SNTVT plan on going or showcasing their product at any expos?
Yes, we have been speaking about this internally for a while now. We don’t have any planned at this time. In the future we will be looking forward to giving talks about the technology bits at say Web related conferences.
Q. Is it true SNTVT are planning a rebranding?
A little late to the party we have already completed that to a degree.
Q. That sounds impressive, what about other crypto projects? Anything you see fit for a potential collab?
We are open to allowing use of the technology for certain projects although they would need to retro fit it to their networks and their design goals. Any project we feel that may abuse the tech or are operating under unethical standards we would most likely be combative to that. We don’t want this tech to be used for nefarious or malicious purposes.
Q. From everything Im reading, sounds like the sentivate team is firing on all cylinders
That would be an appropriate observation. We expect 2020 to be a much bigger year for us in every way.
Q . Do you have a better view on when all the tech is done and ready to be implemented? Naming a quarter would be specific enough for me
Tech that we have are considered living documents and a living spec. Much like HTTP today as an example is constantly evolving and making constant changes. If any company is working on software and decides it is complete I would be very worried. It will never be “completed” that would be a very ego centric and unrealistic view on our part to every say that. It may be complete to a version of a spec. However, much like ECMA script always expect new yearly additions at the very least. We avoid giving out long roadmaps what we will do is give out a 3 month roadmap after the completion of the current 3 month roadmap. This may extend to 4 months or eventually by version number. The version is a much more complicated roadmap as it’s not date specific rather feature specific.
Q. Btw for privacy considerations ever thought about collaberations between privacy coins? I heard the tech from daps coin is true privacy but something like mimblewimble could that also be used? Or are these plans for way into the future?
I have some serious concerns about “privacy focused coins” specifically the ones that use cryptonote or variations of it. With very serious concerns of the anonymous folks behind many of them. I suspect for good reason many are actually the same guy or group. I don’t trust them at all and if you pay attention to their code base over time I’m sure you would to.
For regulatory purposes and being realistic a privacy focused coin we are avoiding as we would like to fit well into the US landscape. When you consider our long terms plans this makes a whole lot of sense.
Any none US based project we have far greater concerns with.
Q. Okay I understand and could you explain how we can still have privacy with the certificates?
You should ask instead privacy with cryptography. Certificates don’t expose anyones identity it’s just cryptography. For all anyone else knows that certificate is associated with anyone.
In regards to domains we require like the Web today whois info. That is mandatory but like today you can use an entity or a law firm as a front to protect your identity from the public.
Q. I was thinking once you know someones certificate you can see what he/she is doing and thought how can that be private?
There is no way to check unless you are a man in the middle, watching a specific network, or are the connecting service to even connect an identity to an IP.
Certificates are cryptographic identities which if so desired can be linked to real-world identities but that’s entirely up to the holder. If they want to link their identity they would need to go through us. If they wanted to announce it to the public that is entirely up to them.
Even on the blockchain for Viat as the Universal Web is not blockchain based one could of course see the transaction made from an address but would require explicit knowledge to know who the person or entity is behind a wallet. With some exceptions related to domain ownership of course.
There is no service which could even store the activity of a certificate on the network. We will provide a service for folks to check if a certificate has been reported by a service as to keep a large list of potentially bad faith actors. This is similar to how the same is used for IP lists today of say bot networks or attackers. This list is shared between large services so that they can effectively keep “bad guys” out of the network by straight up denying requests from specific IPs.
Q. Yes i liked the idea of linking to the real world but i wondered if that could be traced easly like when you know someones bitcoin address because you had one early Exchange with them. But its only possible when you are doing a man in the middle attack like a mallicious Wi-Fi, right?
If ISPs or NSPs wanted they could store the activity from a network using a specific ephemeral certificate but even then like IPs in the states there’s a lot of plausible deniability there. There are also some laws in the US regarding privacy.
Amazing answers tom!
I’m more excited than ever about Sentivate!
Great work @TomMarchi and Sentivate team. Projects looks promising and the future is bright. Keep up the great work!
Appreciate the kind words. Always a pleasure would be great to have some of these questions on the Podcast. We are back out in Pittsburgh to record some more before release.
