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Aleph Zero co-founder Antoni Zolciak was recently interviewed by MamStartup, delivering an insightful look into both Aleph Zero’s development and the changes happening in the broader blockchain space.
The founders of Aleph Zero as well as most of the team, originate from Poland, but as far as I know, the company is registered in Switzerland. Where did the idea come from to register the company in Switzerland?
The founding team consists of an American (Matthew) and three Poles (Adam, Antoni, Michal). The company is not registered in Switzerland, as misleading as this may be, but solely the Aleph Zero Foundation – a model similar to the one introduced by Ethereum, Interchain (Cosmos), Web3 (Polkadot), and recently Solana, which also based its foundation there. Switzerland is a pioneer in blockchain regulation, a case in point being Ethereum which was founded in Switzerland. To this day, it is positioned as the world leader from a regulatory perspective for blockchain startups. When one considers the supportive community and significant pool of talent engaged in building decentralized technology, it makes it evident that basing oneself in Crypto Valley provides unparalleled access to the latest scientific discoveries, networking opportunities, and development.
For example, thanks to being based in Switzerland, we received a “no-action” letter from FINMA. Pursuing a foundation model is closest to our decentralized aspirations – all of our work is open-source, we possess no patents, and the project itself is owned by the 12 thousand individuals who own our AZERO token. On the broader information technology scene, the Linux Foundation uses the foundation model, with the caveat that their model is not tokenized.
So what is Aleph Zero, and what makes it different from other blockchains?
For the sake of discussion, let us define Ethereum as a classic blockchain – a protocol for whom we have incredible respect. Aleph Zero is a more scalable, quicker, and theoretically safer alternative to Ethereum. The beating heart of every blockchain is its consensus protocol. It took us two years to develop the Aleph Zero code. We managed to create a solution that garnered the attention of the journal of the Association of Computing Machinery and was presented at a conference in Zurich. The innovation we introduced involved taking advantage of DAG technology (used by IOTA, among others) as a temporary data structure, resulting in the blockchain being able to finalize transactions in real-time.
What are the potential use-cases for Aleph Zero?
It can be used for anything that may require a decentralized database. Aleph Zero is a highly flexible platform. It’s an environment in which programmers can build their own applications. We are exploring various use-cases ourselves. Recently, we cooperated with the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum on a report regarding potential use-cases in healthcare. We’ve also been collaborating with Gatenox, a use-case revolving around decentralized digital identities.
In short, we can employ Aleph Zero as we would other blockchains. The unique benefits are speed, low transaction costs, and security. As the year rolls to the end, we plan to introduce native private transactions. We see a demand for this solution, especially among institutions.
Your consensus protocol is Byzantine Fault Tolerant – can you explain what this exactly entails?
We based our system on a revolving committee of independent nodes. Byzantine Fault Tolerance means that the system can function normally despite an active attack committed by malicious nodes. These types of attacks seek to deactivate the entire system or wish to introduce discrepancies.
Recently you managed to acquire $15 million in funding. Who invested in Aleph Zero, and what do you want to achieve with these funds?
We received this money from several industry trusts, DAO organizations, as well as several individuals during our public sale. Additionally, we have on our advisory board such figures as Michael Guzik (he introduced blockchain practices in the Swiss PwC and co-founded KORE Technologies), Gordon Cheung (our partner from the Canadian start-up Epic Capital, which operates in the realm of healthcare), Max Torres (the financial director at 0X), Joeri van Geelen (the former director of the Prysm Group for the APAC region, and currently the founder of NxGen), as well as, Michal Branski (chief strategist at Wirtualna Polska).
The theme of security keeps on recurring when discussing Aleph Zero, so why do you continue to use Facebook or Instagram? These portals are not synonymous with security, and many companies from the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain refuse to take advantage of them for ethical reasons.
That’s a good observation. On Facebook, we see the largest engagement from our Asian community, although we will most likely cease using it in the near future. On the other hand, our Instagram is doing quite well and allows us to reach individuals who prefer to consume visual content.
As you stated, this ethical dilemma involves both Facebook and Instagram. We will migrate away from both platforms as soon as sensible decentralized alternatives become available. I think these will arrive on the scene quite soon. Our most important avenue of communication is Twitter; we are most active there both as an organization and individually.
You’ve recently initiated a brand ambassadors program. What is the motivation behind this step, and what do you want to offer your brand ambassadors?
The idea to start a brand ambassadors program stems from our love for inbound marketing. We do not invest heavily in paid promotion and prefer to create quality educational content and invest in the broadly understood brand. These activities encompass everything from creating our visual identity in-house to publishing research papers.
We want to decentralize Aleph Zero as quickly as possible so that the network is independent of its founders. Engaging an additional 30-40 individuals with whom we can cooperate in this field seems to be the most sensible option. The brand ambassador program is receiving candidates from all walks of life, including programmers, lawyers, graphic designers, from various geographic locations. Onboarding these people will allow us to build local communities and promote Aleph Zero as an alternative to existing blockchains.
I am aware that you are also involved in the discussion regarding Web 3.0 and the metaverse, but do you believe there is any point in seriously pondering solutions for these technologies when they are still in their conceptual stage at this point?
When we began building Aleph Zero in 2018, everyone said that we were making the next generation of the Internet and that the fruit of our labor would be visible after several years. Four years later, we are still at the point where we believe that blockchain is only getting started. Currently, when we say the word “blockchain,” we are suggesting novelty (for example, Carrefour tracing potato shipments through IBM’s blockchain) with the term becoming something of a marketing gimmick. The phenomenon brings to mind internet commercials from twenty years back when the “WWW” phrase found a place in society’s psyche, yet no one could predict to what lengths it would grow.
Blockchain will most likely follow a similar trajectory. Today, no one cares whether their favorite application runs on AWS or Microsoft Azure. Similarly, soon we will stop noticing the particular decentralized technology stacks available on the market; we will just care about how they serve our needs. Most importantly, we will redefine how we handle digital assets.
Currently, we are at a very early stage of innovation and experimentation. Take the startup Mirror as an example; it’s an alternative for Medium. Thanks to it, creatives can publish their articles without losing their rights to their texts and remain independent of any particular publisher. In the metaverse, we can see an outpouring of play-to-earn video games, which build upon NFTs by allowing users to trade game-based digital assets of which they are the owners. In our current model, we sell digital assets which we do not own. NFTs rewrote the rule book.
For me, Web 3.0 is a catch-all phrase that defines the synergy between various new technologies – blockchain is just one of these.
* This interview has been translated and adapted for the Aleph Zero blog from the original MamStartup interview.
The post We Want to Decentralize Aleph Zero as Quickly as Possible: An Interview appeared first on Aleph Zero Foundation Blog.
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