Electroneum (ETN) CEO Richard Ells answers questions posed by the ETN reddit community moderator DSJC and its members. Richard wrote back during what he called a crazy busy period leading up to the Fork and with instant payments currently being coded. Meanwhile Electroneum has seen its Mobile Miner numbers steadily increase over the past couple of weeks indicating that there is indeed a viral effect taking place without yet any advertising. Well done to all community members / holders.
Q) How are things looking for the IOS app release? People are wondering if there has been any updates on whether Apple has accepted ETN as one of its own. Are there any updates on the subject matter?
Re-applied on Wednesday 2nd with the ability to SEND ETN removed (the send button takes you to my.electroneum.com). This should allow miners to start mining and view balance etc.
Android new version was launched Thursday 3rd that has notifications in it, making it more obvious what’s happening with mobile mining payouts as well as transfers etc. It is also the first step in the notification system for instant payments. We are working on Push Notifications too.
Q) During his trip around the world, in one of his interviews, Richard quoted “We’ve amassed these numbers and we haven’t even started marketing”. With that said, when can we expect marketing to “start” and can you share any plans which are down the pipeline?
There is nothing to be gained by driving users to Electroneum until we have delivered our end to end ecosystem. IE. We need our MVP (minimum via proposition) of instant payments live and an API to allow anyone (vendors or mobile operators / ecommerce / EPOS) to accept ETN. We are VERY close to launching our instant payment notification system, which allows shops that currently top up/pre-paid mobile phones to start accepting ETN giving us and end to end ecosystem. We don’t want to market a product that can only be amassed, not SPENT. We have an API under development that allows integration on ecommerce and by the mobile networks to accept ETN for data etc. Once the MVP is out we will tentatively increase our exposure and once we have the MVP API and an integration with a mobile provider ready – we will start in earnest. It’s important to note that we’ve onboarded over 1.25m users just by word of mouth so far, so we are very confident of being the cryptocurrency with the most users within 2018. I will go into more detail later but we are resourcing our new marketing department.
Q) Several members are very worried in regards to the longevity of the coin with ASIC’s on the rise. The current difficulty has skyrocketed from 16 bil to upwards of 55-60 bil. This is making it extremely difficult for GPU miners to actually accumulate any coins.
Anti asic goes live on block 307500 – around May 30th.
Q) When are we going to fork? Monero, along with several other cryptonight currencies have forked to v7 already with no issues. Why isn’t Electroneum following suit? Do we have a set block height at which we will fork if we do?
See above – we did not perform a “knee jerk” fork, as we wanted to ensure it is tested well before release. We also wanted to include our other items we’ve been working on that help us in regards to becoming a regulated cryptocurrency and to ensure the blockchain is more suited to purpose. We are moving away from privacy and towards larger volume of transactions and being accepted by a regulatory environment. We are going to see more of this type of thing (https://www.forbes.com/sites/adelsteinjake/2018/04/30/japans-financial-regulator-is-pushing-crypto-exchanges-to-drop-altcoins-favored-by-criminals/) as crypto becomes more widely accepted. See our blog for more details.
Q) What is your plan with regards to having 3 Asic miners in your office? Are you planning on changing from the original code?
See above. Needed to test the anti-asic. Essentially we have been using ASICS to test our new anti-ASIC code which will form part of the fork.
Q) When are you releasing new code for the blockchain update?
We have tested our fork repeatedly and are releasing the full blockchain update for public scrutiny on the 4th May. Then during the week commencing 7th May we will provide binaries and start ensuring all the exchanges and pools (and all other node operators) update their node software before May 30th (block number 307500). If people start using the new versions of the CLI and RPC wallets from that point then any transactions that are in the mempool at the time of the fork will still be processed. If they are using older wallets (current version) there is a possibility that the transactions will fail due to the removal of some of the privacy aspects of the coin. Our new wallet software removes this NOW, so any transactions are ready for the changeover on block 307500.
Q) Will you be monitoring the mempool more closely?
We have made adjustments to mitigate flooding attacks and many more things. We always monitor the mempool but of course we will be monitoring much closer during the leadup to fork and just after fork, where we will all be glued to the screen!
Q) There was speculation on Antminers being shipped out in June. That date, is in fact, May. Baikal miners have already shipped and are active. How do you feel about this?
There appears to be quite a large distribution of ASICS. . We have no evidence of a 51% attack. We will see a whopping drop in hashing power once we fork, and we are not worried about that either.
Q) Is there a plan to get on to a large scale exchange in the near future? The HitBTC link on your page has said “Coming soon” for months now. Members are wondering if there is any possibility of getting listed on a reputable exchange.
HitBTC have been asked (by us) to wait until after we fork. We were under huge FUD attack and there was no point pushing forwards with exchanges until we had solved the problems. We have plans for large exchanges, at this moment I am not releasing details.
Q) People have noticed a sever amount of “soon” comments and are getting worrisome. Do you feel that giving estimated dates, rather then “soon” would help the community build trust behind the project?
The project has only been live since December. What we have achieved is incredible. It’s hard to give precise dates on things when so many things are out of our control. What I can say is that I am more confident today of us delivering a working, instant payment cryptocurrency system this year, and gaining the millions of users I promised than I have ever previously been. The level of corporate interest has been incredible, but we are needing to do things that I didn’t predict. I’m not going to go in to details, but I assure you it’s all very good!!
Q) Your patent has been approved for “pending status”. Can you now go into detail in regards to what this patent holds? People are very excited to hear about this.
Instant payments between users of cryptocurrencies. Once the lawyers tell me I can, I’ll publish the entire document. It also covers crypto subscription payments.
Q) Are you hiring US based developers? Via contract or other methods? If so, how would one apply?
Currently we only have 1 developer outside of our office (Andre). We are not seeking remote workers except on blockchain & open source items, due to the security implications of remote workers and remote jurisdictions.
Q) The details you released about the patent, and the plans for implementation that were released on Youtube are intriguing and ambitious. If you manage to pull it off, you’ll certainly be one of the biggest cryptocurrencies in the world.
Such a task won’t be easy. Start-ups like PayPal, Google, and Amazon all went from having a handful of developers to now having hundreds of developers and support staff. The transition from the original few that we saw in the office, to the numbers of staff you have today took some time and organizing (people working out their notice periods etc).
How do you plan on scaling the team to ensure the right amount of talented developers and support staff are available at the right time in order to fulfill your goals in the coming years? A bigger HQ? More overseas developers?
We have 1 overseas branch in planning right now, mostly due to gaining regulated cryptocurrency status. We have taken on Jurgita Rhodes (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurgita-rhodes-94795814/) ex Bloomberg, ex BBC, as COO and Nick Cook as CCO (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-cook-7986034/) we have a new starter as CTO that I’ll make public once they settle in. We have a new meet the team page coming soon (I know how much you love the word soon!!) which shows a bit of the scaling that has taken place. We’ve also taken on a CMO who has huge corporate experience. Each of these people is creating the correct environment to grow the team and business. The model is designed to WORK above all else. We are investing fully to ensure we scale fluidly to meet our self imposed deadlines – which are quite harsh. Nobody joining the team from a corporate background can BEVIEVE the speed with which we are delivering things and making things happen. We will end up with hundreds of people, but we trebled in size in four months. You have to get the best people on to build a team, not just throw in a hundred people and hope they deliver!
We are waiting for a number of coders to start and are recruiting the team members that are demanded from each department.
Q) Monero is releasing ledger support in the near future. Does Electroneum plan on following suit?
That is not something that we control, Ledger control who they add. We would help them in any way we could to be on that device. I suspect the market FUD has kept us out of some larger exchanges and some partnerships that we would otherwise have secured already.
Q) What ever happened to the Electroneum mobile game? Is there going to be a release date set for it?
The mobile mining game is off the table at the moment but we are working with an Augmented reality game maker to create something awesome that will accept ETN for in game purchases. I’m loathed to mention it, as people will want to know WHEN. You know the answer…. SOON Jk
I didn’t answer the question about funds and publishing figures – we have no intention of doing that I’m afraid. I can promise the community that I have the best interests of ETN at my heart and I am running the company to the very best of my ability to ensure the brightest possible future for ETN and our community.
