ArcBlock CEO Q&A on Forge SDK release

ArcBlock Forge SDK Beijing time on May 8th at 8 am official release At 10 o'clock, ArcBlock Block Foundation (ABT) founder and CEO, Robert Mao, attended the “ABT News Live Room” to answer questions from the ABT community and the media.

Host: Thanks to the enthusiastic supporters of the ABT community and nearly 50 professional mainstream media for participating in the ArcBlock Forge SDK release CEO Q&A. Today's event is the first topical Q&A of the ArcBlock product release. It is also the first community Q&A event jointly organized by ArcBlock and the ABT Consensus Community. We will stream live to more than 30 ABT Chinese communities of nearly 10,000 people.

The Forge SDK released today and the ABT chain node released earlier this month are the development framework for the most simple, powerful and ground-based custom-made chain and development decentralized applications (DApps). . Forge's Open Chain Access Agreement (OCAP) released on June 30 last year, the ABT chain network launched on March 30 this year, and the ABT chain node released on April 13 will form ABT's complete blockchain application development service platform. It can effectively solve the problems of performance, cross-chain and development cost encountered by DApps development, and promote the application of blockchain technology to accelerate.

Now, please ArcBlock founder and CEO, Robert Mao to answer the questions that our community has actively submitted yesterday.

Robert Mao: First of all thank you to the team, thanks to the currency users, and thank you everyone in the consensus community.

Secondly, there will be a series of announcement the AMA today. Our current products, technologies, and partners' products will not be scheduled in 2019 ,if they are released every 2 to 3 weeks.

After today's release, our ABT Wallet will be our next big and very important release expanding ArcBlock’s availability to consumers and users. What has been done in the past including today’s release has been focused on developers. We believe that our next release for consumers will show the blockchain what is possible and ignite the entire industry by showing everyone how easy and accessible blockchain is.

Every release of ArcBlock is a continuation of our vision of what blockchain can do for developers, businesses and users. While we have release some products, we will continue to release more products and updates to give our users the best experience possible and make a positive impact to move the industry forward. It should be noted, that our users are the ones helping to guide us and lead us forward. Let's change the world together. (Together, we change the world.)

Q1: Does the SDK release mean that the ABT chain is officially launched?

Robert: The SDK is a Software Development Kit that is a set of tools to help developers easily develop, debug, and deploy their customized blockchain or decentralized applications using Forge framework. Before the official launch of our SDK, some partners and teams have already developed on our platform. These early adopters provided valuable feedback and since the tools and documents were not complete at the time they worked through many bugs and potential issues. With their feedback, we have improved our framework and documentation and much of that feedback is what you see today in today’s SDK. Once again, on behalf of ArcBlock, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to our current development partners. I also hope that more developers can join us now that the SDK is released.

Q2: What are the advantages of the Forge SDK versus existing blockchain technology?

Robert: I can give you a long list of examples about our technical advantage, but that would also require more time than we have to explain. However, the most obvious advantage at the moment is our user experience. We have created an easy to use platform that not only includes everything you need to build blockchains and DApps easily, it is completely user friendly. In today's market, you can't find another solution that allows a developer to test, install, develop, customize, deploy, and run blockchains so easily. We free developers from the tedious details and let them focus on what they do best - write code.

The design of our chain and chain network is all based on our DID design, and will be the industry's true number one innovation. We will arrange a series of trainings and lectures later for the developers to understand it and how to build services, apps and other capabilities that are immediately user friendly and accessible.

Q3: How does ABT build a blockchain, and linked to 10,000 blockchains?

Robert: For ArcBlock, one-click-release-chain actually has two meanings in us:

• "One-click development blockchain": The Forge framework itself contains a complete blockchain implementation. For developers, using the forge framework to develop a blockchain it is simply a matter of "filling in the blanks", and upon completion the developer has complete and functional blockchain.
• "One-click deployment chain": In considering the overall developer experience, we not only looked at how to develop a blockchain, but also how to deploy that blockchain. Many developers know that deploying an app or service many times takes more effort than the development itself. We've worked hard on automated operations, making it easy for developers to deploy maintenance chains including the ability to automatically upgrade.

ABT Network is a blockchain network similar to the Internet architecture. Any blockchain developed by Forge SDK can communicate with other chains by default, and through DID, we unify the account system of users on any chain and from a user perspective the account does not belong to anyone except the user, and from a privacy perspective the account on each chain does not have any correspondence and mapping relationship at all to reveal the relationship between them. It is a powerful privacy tool that is automatically enabled for every user.

Q4: ABT (ArcBlock), ATOM (Cosmos), DOT (Polkadot) all use an interconnected blockchain design, and what is the difference between them?

Robert: "Interconnected" itself is not a very precise definition. ABT, ATOM, and DOT should be classified into the “chain network” camp. However, the technology of “interconnecting” multiple chains has existed for a long time, but it has not received the attention of the industry.In the past, everyone was competing to become a "public chain.” With today’s new interconnected blockchains, we are now able to support both public and private blockchains and they are all interoperable giving developers more freedom to develop and build around their specific uses. .

Q5: ABT can release a blockchain with one click, and launch trx, neo, qtum and other chains, so how to ensure security? Is it all dependent on ABT?

Robert: The security and decentralization of the chain depends on twi things

• 1. firsts the design of our software and
• 2. the miners (operators) on this chain. We believe that a meaningful chain will naturally have enough miners to participate, and anything not useful or adding value to the chain will be removed.

Q6: What is your max TPS or is there guaranteed performance for the ABT Network?

Robert: Each chain runs according to its own design requirements.Its performance depends not only on our software design performance, but also on the application's own requirements, design, networking and node which can all impact the overall performance. The application chain is guaranteed by the operator of the application chain for speed, reliability, etc., and some of the ABT Network's public service chains are secured together by miners (including our own nodes) to ensure security and decentralization.

Q7: Is the interaction speed between the main chains the same or different? Is it related to the node distance?

Robert: The performance of the interaction between the various chains depends on the deployment design of the nodes of the chain and the design of the application itself. Of course, latency could be an issue if you have a connected global network. However, we have many cloud partners and service providers to help minimize latency and allow you to use edge computing.

Q8: Will the ABT chain be forked like BTC before? If it needs to be forked, what are the pros and cons?

Robert: We adopt PBFT consensus, can confirm after one block, there will be no fork in the operation. In addition, we support a very strong and innovative chain governance mechanism, so that node protocol upgrade, software version upgrade and so on can be fully automated through the chain governance.

Q9: Can ABT nodes be shared on the chain launched by ABT? Or is it necessary to be run a node independently, and what is the cost of each node?

Robert: Our design principle is "Do one thing and do it well", each node can only join one chain at a time. But because of the combination of node deployment and cloud computing, it is very easy and very cheap. For example, our unique support for AWS Spot Instances can save 80% or more of the cost of cloud computing, which is an industry first. So, based on this calculation, we think that the monthly cost of a typical node is about 200 RMB, or around $30.00 US$.

Q10: What is the relationship between the release of ArcBlock Forge SDK and ABT token?

Robert: SDK itself is not directly related to the ABT Token, but there is no doubt that users can use Forge SDK to create their own Token and digital assets.

The use of Forge SDK is completely free and does not require the consumption of ABT, nor does it require the possession of ABT.

Q11: When does the ABT wallet launch? What's the difference with other wallet apps like imtoken?

Robert: First, ABT wallet is a decentralized wallet, and any assets that supports Open Wallet Protocol can also be supported.

Second, ABT Wallet is a DID wallet that manages user identities that conform to the W3C DID specification. This is a significant innovation compared to any other encrypted wallet available today.

Q12: When does ABT intend to switch autonomous token off the ETH token network? Does the exchange support switching?

Robert: We will start supporting the conversion between ABT ERC 20 Token and native ABT after several iterations following the release of the ABT wallet. This conversion will be done through our wallet to ensure that it is very simple, intuitive and safe. I believe that the wallet-based Token swap we designed is unprecedented simple, which we will release in the near future.

Q13: blockchain Decentralization , if ABT's DID technology is able to achieve complete data autonomy, how will it work for regulated environments or requirements?

Robert: The supervision of DID is closer to real society. Personal property and privacy are guaranteed inviolable by law, but regulators can still supervise them.

Q14: In the future, blockchain will be used in everyday life. Is it insignificant in terms of the current functions of BTC?

Robert: BTC, ETH and ArcBlock are actually solving problems in different fields and need to coexist, and although there are some intersections between them, they are in fact solving very different problems.

BTC is equivalent to digital gold. ETH has obvious foundation and advantages in the field of DeFi (de-centralized finance). ABT mainly solves the field of application business. Imagine that in real society, there is a need for gold, as well as cash, credit card and other financial services, but in order to work most of them need to run in various application scenarios. So the reality is that they are actually working together to help users and businesses solve real world problems for customers and users.

Q15: As for Forge SDK's business side, how does ArcBlock develop the market? Is there any direct competition from companies running Blockchain as a Service (BaaS)?

Robert: In the short term, there is no direct competition between ArcBlock and BaaS services like Managed AWS Blockchain or Azure, but rather we are very complementary partners. BaaS needs to provide diversified blockchain technology deployment to highlight its significance. In the long run, traditional giants may compete after they understand the future of blockchain. Therefore, the most important thing for ArcBlock is to keep innovating and making progress, and to grow rapidly, so that it can face the real scale of competition in the future.

Q16: Developers can use Forge to develop applications now. What role does ABT pass play in it and what is its economic value?

Robert: If you just use Forge SDK to develop a chain, you don't need to consume ABT, but when you want to operate the chain , you need nodes, then these nodes are operated by the miner, whether he is the component miner, resource miner, or operation miner. Operating these nodes requires ABT consumption. The application developed with Forge framework, running nodes joining the network, need to consume ABT, or get ABT awards.

Q17: How to attract more developers to develop on ABT platform? What are the next plans?

Robert: There are many ways to encourage developers. But the most effective way is to make the first batch of developers who use our platform to develop successful products make a lot of money. This is a similar example in the Internet era and mobile App era. We will fully support the earliest developers and help them succeed.

Q18: If you are comparing with companies in the stock market, which industry sector does ArcBlock want to target in the area of blockchain?CITIC Securities in the Securities Market,Straight flushing in Securities Service? Or would you like to be Tencent in the social field and Alibaba in the commodity circulation field?

Robert: Blockchains will disrupt traditional business forms, and we expect that businesses will adapt to this new economic model. So ArcBlock doesn't want to be positioned as any organization similar to the past.

Host: There are several questions that the media would like to ask on the spot.

Deepchain Finance: Robert, we have some questions as following:

Q19: Is ForgeSDK mainly facing developers? Is it possible for users participate?

Robert: Forge SDK is primarily aimed at developers. As an ordinary user, if you don't understand software development, it may be difficult to participate. The main function of Forge SDK is to help you develop applications more easily, but no matter what, because our ForgeSDK and our chain nodes are simple enough,You can follow this process to run a chain, even you are not a software developer. But it should be difficult if you are not a software developer but you still want to extend the chain, release a chain, and deploy it.

Q20. What's the difference between Forge SDK and Cosmos SDK?

Robert: So Forge SDK and Cosmos SDK are very equal in status. They are both frameworks used to develop blockchain. But if you look carefully at what Forge SDK and Cosmos SDK are doing, they have different ideas. Forge SDK is like Ruby on Rails, a full stack development framework for Web application development. It helps you from very beginning to the end, from top to bottom. Cosmos SDK is relatively focused on the backend. I don't want to judge if it's good or bad. It's just a design concept. Our goal is to help developers handle it easily and no need to worry about other things.

Q21. What are the pledge rules of ABT at present?

Robert: There are no specific rules on pledge at present, and we will come to this conclusion at a suitable time in the future. Our gestation process is to adopt the method of chain governance, that is to say, we will not directly or officially make a regulation, but we will advance some rules, then we will let the community vote, and this conclusion will come out through the way of community governance finally.

Q22. At present, how about the deployment of ABT chain nodes?**

Robert: Our chain nodes can now be deployed very easily on Amazon's platform with one click, or with a few commands, they can be deployed quickly and in large quantities.We have a direct choice to deploy the nodes on Microsoft AZure, If the developer has his own devices and machines, he can also deploy them manually.So far, in addition to our own deployment nodes, we have some partners, especially those who are currently developing and testing, who are already deploying. There are some exchanges and some other ones that want to deploy nodes. They are testing, and there are some testable deployments.

**Q23. Does this mean that cross-chain transfer can be achieved between BTC and ETH?With the release of Forge SDK, interoperability between BTC and ETH can be achieved. **

Robert: Cross-chain interoperability does not mean that the two chains can transfer money to each other. The reason is very simple. BTC does not have a corresponding transaction structure on ETH.So far, what some people have done, such as TBTC, is to have a BTC that can anchor an ERC20 token on this ETH. There are more such schemes from exchanges now,the main purpose is to use a trading system to achieve different token transactions. Our OCAP makes it easier to access to each by cross-link function, but that doesn't mean I can fix this cross-link transfer. Nobody can fix it today.

Lianneican: Which factors do you think are related to?Based on ABT's recent impressive performance in the secondary market, I would like to know more about the use of ABT token in ABT chain.

Robert: Recently, the market performance is not bad. On the one hand, I think it is related to the gradual formation of consensus and the mechanism of decentralized community governance. Our Chinese consensus community is very helpful. On the other hand, our team will implement our products step by step. This is also gradually giving everyone confidence in us. No matter what other projects are like, we are achieving our own milestones step by step, and we do what we say.

Last year, I said that everything we bragged would come true. So far, part of our bragging has become a realityL, and something else we are continuing to do. I'm sure you'll see more and more of our plans come true in the future. Brag is just joking , we are trying our best to do it, and we can do it in most cases.