Transcript of AMA with APEX (CPX) & Chinapex CEO Jimmy Hu in Seoul — TrueBlocks

Please find below a transcript of the AMA with APEX (CPX) & Chinapex CEO Jimmy Hu in Seoul — TrueBlocks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVxzUvG0iD4

Content
- PART 1/4: Introduction
- PART 2/4: More Technical Questions
- PART 3/4: Chinapex
- PART 4/4: Exchanges

PART 1/4: Introduction

JIMMY HU (CEO of APEX):

Hey everybody, this is the video AMA that a lot of you guys have been waiting for. Now it didn’t turn out the way we expected it to, due to a lot of unexpected circumstances out of our control. It started around two weeks ago, when Blockchain Brad, because of some timing issues, wasn’t able to host the video interview over YouTube. Then a couple of days ago, we announced that David of Trinity will be hosting the AMA in Singapore. However, because of some technical issues two days ago, wasn’t able to be solved, so it wasn’t able to happen. Now interestingly today, I flew to Soule to attend an interesting event, organised by CNBC called ‘FOMO Masternode’. And it happens that the APEX Korean team at Trueblocks, they were able to help with the recording of this AMA in this studio.

Unfortunately, Richard is not able to join us, as he has a lot more important things to do such as working on the tech, so it’ll just be me today. The list of the top 20 questions, were chosen based on the popularity of the votes on Reddit and were paraphrased by the community team members.

First question from Tomaaay — Will the DEX only be on the APEX mainchain, and the enterprise sidechains, or will it also be interoperable with other blockchains. Are there plans to have a fiat gateway with the wallet.

This is a good question, asset interoperability across different blockchains is definitely becoming more and more of value, however at the current time, our focus is to complete the development of our platform, and what our platform is supposed to specialise in.

So yes, cross blockchain is in the plan, but we really need to focus on the APEX network DEX first to first take care of the swapping of different assets on the blockchain itself. In terms of interoperability, there are two different aspects to it. One is the technical aspect of transferring different aspects and the other is exchanging different assets for a certain amount of value, that is determined by a certain protocol. In terms of the later, it is much more of an interesting problem at this point in time, and that is what our DEX protocol is meant for. In the future when we do cross blockchain, there is also another way to use sidechains that allows transferring of different aspects cross chain. That is not our focus at this time, that is the focus of certain other projects, such as ICON, so we won’t be focusing on that right now.

Regarding the fiat gateway for the wallet, it is definitely a great feature to have, because it would incentivise the user participate more, or in another sense it is a different type of asset that could be swapped as well. but in reality, that would require partnerships with certain financial institutions or third party fintech companies that do something like this. So this is not really a blockchain problem, this is more of an application level problem. But, we’re more focused on the blockchain infrastructure problem at this point in time

Next question, from Moneyquestions12345. What are some of the dApps you’d like to see built APEX network blockchain to show off its competitive advantage.

Simple answer would be, read the new development plan / whitepaper. It has all the example in there of all of the prime use cases. Anything that is B2C related that has a consumer data related application or something that is engagement related or customer lifecycle related would all be within the scope of the APEX network blockchain. A lot of the problems that B2C brands and enterprises face surrounding their customer lifecycle could all be improved or optimised using APEX Network. Now there is one thing that I have to point out, our approach and philosophy of how this blockchain technology would add value or how it plays into the adoption of these large enterprises, that are in our target user scope. They should not change whatever they are doing right now to our decentralised mode, but rather, certain parts can be optimised using out technology. We would try to use ways to seamlessly replace those parts with our tech so that it really drives adoption. Driving adoption is not about fundamentally changing the way in how they do a large set of things, but to start doing them at the lowest friction point where it makes the most sense and speed is the fastest.

Third question. ‘Gamification’ is mentioned in your updated whitepaper as an incentive for interactions with consumers and enterprises. Why have you chosen this?

Why have I chosen this? Because it makes sense. Gamification is actually a trend, but not always called gamification. What gamification is, is a longer lifecycle engagement process that is outside of what the brand is trying to sell, they add some extra interesting elements to it, to broaden the scope of engagement. Right now, that is the standard definition, but in a way, it has not really fulfilled its prophecy and if you read the gamification use-case description in the whitepaper, it explains how we can optimise it for the gamification use-case.

Part 2/4: More Technical Questions

The next set of questions are more technical.

Again from MoneyQuestions12345. Can you explain the reason for using DPOS on mainnet and POS on the side chains?

So DPOS on mainnet is for a variety of different reasons including performance, scaling, enterprise applications and the method of voting is actually more suitable for our use-cases at hand. Of course the entire longer explanation is in the whitepaper, but the part about why POS is definitely a good question. I would like you to imagine, if you are running delegated proof of stake both on the mainnet, as well as every single side chain. Potentially our ecosystem could grow to thousands of sidechains based on the number of different enterprises that are on this chain, as well as the number of their sub category use cases. Of course, it also depends on how they divide it up across their different sidechains. One enterprise may have several sidechains. So eventually the number of side chains is huge. Then the answer is easy, with that many sidechains, does it make sense to have a DPOS driven delegate system on each? The answer is no, because it does not scale well. So for each sidechain, the consensus mechanism will be a simpler proof of stake.

From PapaClarky. Will you support cold storage options such as a ledger device, or 2FA in the app?

We’re working on it. That would be pushed to be launched along with mainnet, using a mainstream cold wallet option like ledger.

Next questions from Tommaaay. If a brand decides to join the APEX ecosystem would they need to atleast establish a sidechain, can you explain to the everyday user what a sidechain is?

First what a sidechain is. You can think of it as a side network pegged to the main chain. There are different ways to connect them. Sometimes it is a one way peg, sometimes it is a two way peg. in simple terms, what the benefit is, is the activity and the transactions on the sidechains as well as the potential risks, do not affect the performance of the main network. So why this is so important is because with enterprise applications, performance, scalability and security are very important aspects. In order to really scale the enterprise ecosystem that we have on Apex, as well as have them scale their application, which is actually an unknown amount of applications and performance requirements for each enterprise, then side chains make more sense. So if a brand decides to join the Apex ecosystem, ideally they would establish a sidechain, but they don’t actually need to, because smart contracts could run on the main network as well. But having a smart contract on the main network, an enterprise won’t be able to have their own assets or tokens to actually ensure a level of performance. Or not in blockchain terms, the service level agreement would not be the same. It would be better if they establish a sidechain. Establishing a sidechain also gives them other perks, such as easier access to the supernode ecosystem etc.

Next question. Will the data connector be able to be used on the initial NEO blockchain?

So I’m not sure what this question is referring to in the context, as no applications will be built on the NEO platform. They will all be built native on the APEX network blockchain. So I guess it is not applicable, but if you really wanted to have a literal answer to this question, it can if NEO could support it, but of course that is not the case.

Can voters and supernodes be explained in details and with examples of each tier. Do CPX holders need to keep their wallet or computer running 24x7 in order for them to be able to stake or vote with their CPX?

This is a good question and we’re actually going to release more information on the supernodes structure as well as the entire incentive system, and ways that our community investors and partners can actually participate in terms of being on the blockchain. Probably by the end of May I would say. Just to clarify a little bit, there are a lot of people that misunderstand the supernode system as being the T1, T2, T3. Those are actually the voter tiers. A supernode would have a group of voters under them with those tiers and 30 to 40% of the supernode profit would go to the different voting tiers with different ratios. So these ratios are a 50, 32 and 18% ratio. They do not need to keep their wallet and computer running 24x7 in order to stake or vote with their CPX.

From BenAlexander. What is a voter and how will the tier system work to reward CPS holders? What is a supernode and can anybody host a supernode?

So the first part of this question, we answered in the previous question. And we will be releasing more information later this month. But regarding ‘can anybody host a supernode, or what are the requirements’? A supernode in the Apex network is really just a delegate on the network with a set of responsibilities. Of course, they need to have a CPX amount, that’s fixed at a minimum threshold at least. As well as being able to have the various technical requirements as well as in some case commercial requirements to run a supernode. But who we see running the supernodes later on, are people in the community that hold a good amount of CPX as well as demonstrate the ability to be a supernode as well as various different actual users of the blockchain. The most immediate example is APEX core development team would host some of the supernodes themselves, as well as the enterprise ecosystem. For them it is more of a natural thing, as they have more of a stake on the actual application use-cases. As well as a supernode status is required in order to create a sidechain.

PART 3/4: Chinapex

The next set of questions is regarding Chinapex, the parent company of APEX.

Can you tell us the nature of the meet with Luxemburg Government ministers at APEX HQ. How could governments or other non enterprise organisations make use of Apex.

The thing with the Luxemburg Government and the other Governments, they dont use Apex themselves, but they have certain initiatives to bring in new technology from various sectors in to their country, or in some way economic or commercial relationships with the private sector. The Luxemburg Government was actually interested in the Artificial Intelligence aspect of Apex and potentially how Blockchain could actually aid the use of artificial intelligence. The Luxemburg Government recently launched a new technology initiative with supercomputer. So I think the talk there was regarding supernode infrastructure, or high performance node infrastructure as well as working with some of the local businesses as well as potentially us going to Luxemberg to find talent, the later of which is not very practical.

Are there any household names amongst the clients who have expressed interest in the pilot?

Of course. Maserati, Hilton, Banyan Tree, a variety of our existing customers are open and keen on testing, starting with small use-cases of the blockchain. The good thing is it will be applied to existing use-cases, such as consumer data applications, artificial intelligence or marketing.

How often will you update your github repository?

We’re not one of these projects that makes one line of code change and uploads it to github. There is no point to that. So we only update to github when there are major changes, or version updates etc. So towards the end of this month, or next month, you’ll see a few Github repository updates. For those of you who are programmers or like to read code, I welcome you to take a look at some of our code.

Next questions, lets say I earned 100CPX rewards at a time when the single CPX token is worth $1 each. A few months have passed and now the CPX total….

Here’s the case, this question would apply more if we actually built out the project according to the old whitepaper. The old whitepaper was written in more of an application level approach. We’ve actually changed our approach to building the CPX wallet, as it will not be as feature heavy and it will not include all of the rewards in there. Why is that? One very clear reason is feasibility. If we put all these different rewards of these brands or other types of enterprise assets, then supposedly, these brands would think that’s beneficial to them as well, but this is not necessarily the case. We have to honour the way the brands and the enterprise users want to use our blockchain. It’s not about how we want to build the application, but giving them the level of freedom to seamlessly integrate protocols and procedures of the APEX blockchain into their existing applications and customer service.

Next questions seems pretty interesting. Is Jimmy married and does he have children?

First of all, I’m not married and don’t have children.

How am I balancing personal life and being a CEO of a company, that’s a good question. I do run two projects at once, a company and a blockchain project. One thing that is very important is not actually about how you purposely try to balance it. I think for different people, balancing means different things. There is nothing wrong about work and leisure time not having a solid clear-cut line. But for me, it is really about the method that I work. I think there is smart ways to work and there are less smart ways to work, in terms of effectiveness as well as efficiency. One key thing is delegation. Being a leader, you really need to delegate and trust the people to do different things that they are set up to do and sometimes just to let go. Luckily I have close to a 100 person team and all aspects are covered, including technology, research and development, product as well as the commercial aspect of things. I think having the space to do things outside of work is very important, because we often see burn out. But this is different for everybody. In general, I think we have to find smarter ways to work, as well as maybe just do the things that we love. Eventually, parts of that won’t seem like work, as well as find ways to ‘work better’.

What is the marketing plan to raise awareness of the APEX Network blockchain?

This is actually a broad question. There is a difference between community building, as well as general awareness and marketing. The thing is we do not really like the artificial push type, that tries to create and generate hype. We try to approach it in more of an organic way, through quality content. But in terms of community building, previously most of the community building effort has been surrounding the English speaking global community. In the following weeks and months, you’ll see us pushing the Chinese and Korean community a lot more aggressively. Because these are two of our largest strategic markets, as well as in these markets, we’re going to have a lot of very valuable partnerships.

Do you have any confirmed major consumer brands that we will be able to see in the beta app. Can the community test the app before launch.

Right now, we’re not really focusing on building one single app that will contain everything, such as all the different brands and their digital assets and rewards, etc. We’re more focused on enabling these enterprises to use the APEX Network blockchain in optimising the customer lifecycle. In layman’s terms, enterprises use APEX Network protocol in their existing applications, so they get to control their customer experience. One example is, these different rewards could actually be given out within these enterprises applications. They will be given out in very different ways, across these different enterprises. I think it is a good thing that you give them the freedom to customise, instead of having a rigid CPX wallet solution. But we do plan to have certain brand features within the wallet. Who is confirmed? That is more of a commercial thing that we cannot really talk too much about until the actual application launches. And one thing is that not every brand that works with us is willing to allow the announcement or the exposure of the actual thing unless it goes past POC mode. We are talking about Fortune 1000 companies or at least midsize to large companies here. They have their own PR policies and a lot do things in a conservative manner.

Can you give an example of how a company will use APEX Network blockchain?

To give a couple of examples to recap the development plan. If they have problems regarding unified customer experience management, or consumer data applications, the customers not being as engaged as they should be, within various different digital touchpoints. Or they are having particular digital marketing problems that they cannot solve using existing solutions. Typically, it falls into one of two categories. One is the data problem, the other is the engagement and interactions problem.

When are you coming to Amsterdam?

Our original plan was mid-month in May, but there are a lot of things that are springing up, like conferences in China and other places. I’m thinking the earliest it will be is late May. We are still planning that event, as soon as we know something definitive, we will tell everybody.

If a side chain is compromised through a 51% attack by a malicious party, does it affect the other sidechain or main chain? What steps can be taken to ensure the side chains are sufficiently decentralised and ‘safe’?

First of all, if a side chain is compromised, it does not affect the other sidechains or main chain, in that manner it is siloed off. But that does not mean that it does not create any problems. If a sidechain is compromised, then supposedly the integrity of the side chain is compromised and the assets on the sidechain is compromised. If that’s the case and if assets on one sidechain are compromised were to do cross main network transactions. Say for example through the DEX protocol, in a way that integrity or the balance on the particular accounts may be affects. We really need to try to secure the sidechain first. The sidechain is actually easily securable if it is sufficiently decentralised through a regular POS consensus mechanism. We will release a technical specification of the sidechain that acts as an extension of the current development plan sometime in June.

PART 4/4: Exchanges

Last question, why list CPX on LBank first Did it perform as you expected? Are there more exchanges coming?

At the time, we decided to list on LBank first because their speed of listing as well as their level of cooperation and existing volume all seemed positive. But the listing process did not go as expected. We didn’t foresee that many technical problems with their previous platform. A lot of which have been improved platform with their new interface a week or two ago.

Did it perform as expected? If this means the token price, for the first couple of days no. But I don’t think that is a bad thing. We saw a lot of dumping on the first couple of days. Partially because of certain frantic people, and others because of the way that certain private sale allocations were structured, they had a lot of people behind them that didn’t know much about the project at all, so naturally they dumped at the beginning when they saw a little profit sitting right there. But as we saw later on, this may be a disguised blessing, as it allows very early cleansing of the hands. Of course this process is still going on, but right now I don’t even think it is about cleansing of the hands anymore. There are still people dumping till this day, but they are really realising the value of CPX in the process. So I think the way that we are stimulating steady growth, it allows the different people who are holding the CPX to be as strong believers as possible. You still see some dumping options that is quite opportunistic. So we are paving the path for very sustainable and long term growth.

And yes, more exchanges are coming soon, both in May, as well as June. As of right now, regarding the performance, except for the first couple of days of listing on LBank, what we like to say when we look at our current growth curve, is it is text book. We haven’t started really exploding yet, but nearing testnet launch, or even before that, we will see some interesting stuff

Alright, that’s all the questions for today. We will probably have another one of these again at a later point in time, hopefully with more predictable logistics. Thanks everybody for watching.