AMA Recap — Conflux
The session of AMA ( Ask Me Anything ) with Conflux was conducted on 10 March 2022 at 7:30 PM IST (2 PM UTC) and lasted for 1 hour.
ADMIN ROUND
Peter from Conflux has joined us for this AMA session.
Jonty|Host
Please tell us about yourself and the team working on Conflux?
Peter@Conflux
hey everyone, nice to meet you all! I’m Peter, a Senior R&D Engineer at Conflux. I joined Conflux back in 2019, a year and a half before our mainnet launch. Back then I was very attracted by how Conflux solved blockchain scalability using the simple yet effective Tree-Graph consensus.
Since then, I’ve been focusing on the development of the core Conflux protocol, including blockchain sync, light protocol, RPCs, and recently the implementation of Conflux eSpace (hopefully, I can go into more details about this later). I’ve also done some dapp development (synthetic asset exchange, NFT marketplace), some research projects (we just got a paper accepted for ICSE’22), and also some community building.
Conflux was founded back in 2018 at Turing award-winning Andrew Yao’s class at Tsinghua University, which is the “MIT of China”. So our R&D team has a very strong academic and industry background.
Our CEO Fan Long got his PhD at MIT (the one in Massachusetts) and he’s a professor at the University of Toronto. Our CTO Ming spent many years at Microsoft Research Asia. You can see that we have a very strong tech team and that’s what allowed us to bring all the innovations to Conflux that I’ll tell you about today.
Jonty|Host
What is Conflux? Please provide a detailed introduction.
Peter@Conflux
I believe for many of you it’s the first time you hear about Conflux, so I’m excited to have the chance to give an introduction
In its essence, Conflux is simply a high throughput layer-1 public chain.
When Conflux was founded back in 2018, everyone was talking about the “scalability trilemma”: you have safety, decentralization, and scalability, and you can only pick 2. Fan Long realized that this is not the case: commercial hardware allows for much higher performance, while also maintaining safety and decentralization, simply by employing the novel consensus mechanism called the Tree-Graph.
You might think that there are many scalable blockchains these days, but to be honest, most of them are pretty centralized. Of course, many users might not care, but we feel it’s our responsibility to remain true to Satoshi’s original vision and provide a payment and computation platform on a fully distributed foundation. So as I said, the original idea was born in 2018, the company was established in early 2019, and we launched our mainnet in 2020. Since then, Conflux has been robust and performant, and it’s really been a bridge between the East and the West. The latest news is our Conflux Hydra upgrade that we rolled out last month. This upgrade brought a PoW+PoS hybrid consensus and a fully EVM-compatible execution space to Conflux. So I’m excited for Conflux in 2022!
Jonty|Host
Can you please tell us about it’s features and Utility? Why Conflux?
Peter@Conflux
The core feature of Conflux is high throughput (>3000 TPS) and low latency (< 30s). To users, this means that Conflux is fast and cheap. All this while it’s fully decentralized. Conflux is also EVM-compatible, so if you have dapps running on Ethereum, BSC, or Polygon, you can easily redeploy them on Conflux. We have another unique feature, which is the transaction sponsorship mechanism. It basically means that users can send transactions for free, and someone else is covering the transaction fees for them.
Imagine that you wanna run an NFT marketplace. You users might want to buy and sell NFTs for USDT without holding any CFX (our native token) for the transaction fees. With transaction sponsorship, the users can send transactions for free, and the dapp maintainer or the Conflux Foundation will cover these costs. Interestingly, this also helps a lot with compliance. For instance, Chinese regulators are quite strict on crypto but they’re OK with NFTs. The problem is, if you transfer an NFT and pay in crypto for the transaction fee, you might be violating the law.
Using transaction sponsorship, users can make NFT transactions in a fully compliant way. That’s why companies like McDonald’s do NFT airdrops to their customers on Conflux in China.
This latter example also shows how Conflux manages to remain regulatory compliant in China, and that’s what will help us bring more government and enterprise applications to public blockchains.
Jonty|Host
Could you tell us about the recent Conflux Hydra (Conflux 2.0) upgrade?
Peter@Conflux
Nice question, Hydra is something that I find fascinating, both as a developer and as a user of Conflux. Hydra is a massive upgrade, worthy of the name of Conflux 2.0. There are two major updates I’d highlight: a PoS finality layer, and the fully EVM-compatible eSpace. With the PoS finality layer, we want to solve a problem that all PoW chains face: Finality on PoW chains is probabilistic. If there’s a large influx of hash power, that might reduce the chain’s security and make it susceptible to 51% attacks.
We have seen this with other networks before. As Ethereum is slowly switching to PoS, we expect more miners will migrate to Conflux.
To prevent 51% attacks in such cases, we introduced a new PoS finality chain, that will continuously “stamp” the PoW chain’s consensus decision, making it final and irreversible, even if an attacker controls 50%+ of the network’s hash power. This hybrid PoW+PoS consensus mechanism is unique in the blockchain space. However, it’s important to know that Conflux will still remain a PoW chain at its heart, PoS will serve as an extra security layer on top of PoW. The other main update is Conflux eSpace.
Before Hydra, Conflux (aka Conflux Core) was already EVM-compatible, meaning that all EVM smart contracts could be deployed on Conflux seamlessly. However, our transaction format and APIs are different, so you could not use existing EVM tooling like the Remix IDE, Truffle, Metamask, etc. on Conflux Core directly. Conflux eSpace changes this. On eSpace, you are now able to interact with the network using Metamask and all other existing EVM tools. Conflux Core and Conflux eSpace exist in parallel, they are “two sides of the same coin” (where the coin is Conflux Network), and we also have a unique atomic bridge between these two spaces. I believe this update will unleash a massive influx of applications and capital into the Conflux Network. Conflux Hydra launched successfully in February 2022. So now you can all benefit from enhanced security and EVM compatibility.
Jonty|Host
Please tell us about Shuttle flow cross chain asset bridge? Also share your Roadmap.
Peter@Conflux
ShuttleFlow was a pioneering project in cross-chain technology.
It was, and still is the main asset bridge between Conflux and other chains like Ethereum, BSC, Bitcoin, and OKExChain. This is why, on the very first DEX that launched on Conflux, you could actually directly trade ETH for BTC, which I think is cool. ShuttleFlow uses a custodial alliance for completing cross-chain transfers. You can give it a try here: https://shuttleflow.io
As for our roadmap, I’ll link it here: https://forum.conflux.fun/t/conflux-2022-roadmap. Basically, we just completed our Hydra hard fork about 2 weeks ago, which was a massive update to Conflux.
In Q1-Q2, we’ll launch a new DEX and other DeFi and NFT tooling on our new Conflux eSpace.
In Q3 2022, we’ll launch a DAO stack and a decentralized storage solution built on Conflux.
And we’re planning to also roll out parallel transaction execution later this year.
TWITTER ROUND
I could see that Conflux Network has its new and very own crypto wallet called “Fluent Wallet”. Can you please indicate to us its features and utilities? What is the advantage of your wallet when compared to conventional wallets like MetaMask?
Peter@Conflux
Glad to see so many people asked questions on Twitter too! And also happy that more and more people are discovering Fluent
Peter@Conflux, [10–03–2022 20:00]
Fluent is the go-to wallet for Conflux users. It was just released recently, and it’s growing rapidly, with cool new features added every 2 weeks.
One thing I really like about Fluent is that it gives you more control over managing your accounts. In Metamask, you can only have one seed phrase, so if someone steals it, all your accounts are compromised. In Fluent, you can actually have multiple seed phrase groups with multiple accounts each, so that gives you a much more fine-grained control over your assets.
Fluent also supports the Ledger hardware wallet and many other hardware wallets are in the pipeline as well. Currently, Fluent only supports Conflux, but very soon (early next month) the team will be rolling out EVM chain support so you’ll be able to use it with chains like Ethereum and BSC as well. It’s a full-fledged multichain wallet. At this point, Fluent is not as feature-rich as Metamask but it provides a much more robust and streamlined experience. By the way, if you prefer, you can also use Metamask on Conflux eSpace, you just need to add a new network and you’re good to go.
If you’re interested in Fluent, you can give it a try here: https://fluentwallet.com, or follow them on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/FluentWallet.
Conflux has a native token called #CFX. So aside from using it for paying transaction fees, tell us what are the other uses of the $CFX token within the platform? Where & how to obtain it? Also, can you give us other exciting updates coming soon for $CFX?
Peter@Conflux
Tokens are crucial to any blockchain project, so let’s talk about CFX
CFX plays a similar role in Conflux as ETH does in Ethereum. It’s our native token, so you can hold it, transfer it, and you can use it to pay for transactions. That said, there are also some other uses for it.
The most exciting use case is PoS staking. Basically, by staking your CFX tokens in a PoS pool, you can earn a stable reward of newly issued tokens by the protocol. The actual reward depends on the number of stakers, but currently, it’s around 20% APY.
If you wanna give it a try, you can check out this article to learn how to buy CFX on Binance and stake it in Conflux PoS: https://medium.com/@cfx_miguel/from-bcfx-to-pos-staking-on-conflux-dca0df638233.
Or, if you’re feeling adventurous, you can also operate your own pool and potentially earn even more
Another use for CFX is to participate in governance.
Major updates to our protocol are preceded by governance votes in a Conflux DAO. To participate in these votes, you need to stake and lock your CFX tokens so that you can earn voting rights. In this way, Conflux is a truly community-led project. As to where to buy CFX, you can use most major exchanges like Binance, OKX, Gate.io, and we’re also listed on many DEXes. Or you can use ShuttleFlow to move your ETH or USDT or BNB onto Conflux and buy it there. It’s pretty straightforward. I believe CFX is an undervalued asset so I’m excited about the future.
Is about CNHC (digital RMB) and the China pilot projects that are already involved or planned to involve the Conflux team and use the Conflux Network?
Peter@Conflux
Yeah, digital RMB is an exciting topic
One of the things that’s unique about Conflux is that we have a good connection with regulators in China. While Conflux is a fully independent and decentralized cryptocurrency blockchain, we nevertheless manage to work together with the Chinese government, especially with the Shanghai government, to bring more applications to Conflux.
An official digital RMB is not likely to happen short term, especially now that China is working on its own Central Bank Digital Currency, but we have other government collaborations, like housing projects, air traffic tracking on the blockchain, and we might also provide some infrastructure for One Belt One Road projects. As for CNHC, it is an offshore RMB stablecoin project. It’s independent of Conflux but it’s running on Conflux.
I think this is a very exciting use case, but understandably the CNHC team has been proceeding with caution because it’s a very sensitive topic in China.
Nevertheless, I foresee more and more use cases (like settlement & remittance, international trade) coming to use CNHC on Conflux in the future. You can read the CHNC project’s website for more details.
COMMUNITY ROUND
Anderson Rafael
Regarding the current market, situation is too unstable, holding back investors. So can you give me some good reasons why I should buy your tokens in this market situation? And also why should your token holder keep holding?
Peter@Conflux
Conflux was built during the bear market of 2019 so we’re not afraid of unstable markets. Generally, I think bear markets are a great time for building great things. This also means that CFX is a very undervalued asset currently, given the inherent technical innovation and market potential of Conflux there’s a lot of room to grow. I’m holding CFX long term because I see the potential and also the new features on the roadmap, like Conflux Hydra and distributed storage which is a game-changer.
Emily Kieu
What is your global expansion plan? At present, which market do you focus on, or on building and developing to win customers, users and partners?
Peter@Conflux
Glad you ask about our global expansion plan!
We’re “local” to China and North America as our teams are mostly based in these two areas. That said, Conflux has a strong community in Latam (Mexico), Africa (Nigeria), and Southeast Asia. I believe these markets have huge potential and they’re not yet dominated by other major projects
We’re very excited for crypto in India as well, and that’s why I’m grateful to have this chance today to talk to you :)
Ich Lam
Do you have Whitepaper if yes, please share it with as secondly do you have plans for pre-sale? Now, where can we Join it?
Peter@Conflux
Yep, I recommend all of you to look into our whitepaper, I’ll link it here
this is our technical whitepaper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.03870
and this is our economic whitepaper: https://confluxnetwork.org/en/files/Conflux_Economic_Paper_20201230.pdf
Conflux has launched in 2020 so there’s no presale
PONGU PAL
The instability between Russia and Ukraine, if it goes to a bad level for some reason, will have a bad effect on the crypto market, do you have any backup plan to protect your project value and your token holders?
Peter@Conflux
We’re all concerned about the news and feel sorry for people suffering on both sides. To me, blockchain and crypto are about empowerment. We can see this in the influx of crypto donations to Ukraine but it also offers an alternative to people suffering from sanctions in Russia. This “3rd-way” aspect of crypto is what makes me very optimistic about its future.
For protecting our token value, I think its inherent value is based on our technical innovations.
Nguyen Thi Trinh
How do you plan to spread awareness about your project in different countries, where English is not spoken well? Do you have local communities for them to let them better understand this project?
Peter@Conflux
I briefly mentioned our local communities but let me go into a bit more detail. one of the main things we’re focusing on now is bringing more applications and developers to Conflux
If you’re a developer, there are still many low-hanging fruits in terms of the projects you can implement and roll out on Conflux.
I know that India has many highly skilled developers, and we hope to see many of you come and develop on Conflux.
If you do, it’s very easy to get funding from VCs or retail investors on Conflux. But the best way to get started is to apply for a grant, you can read about this here: https://confluxnetwork.org/en/developers/grants
I’m actually part of the grants committee, so if you’re interested, reach out on Discord, we’re always happy to chat :) https://discord.com/invite/aCZkf2C
Vo Thu Kim
The crypto industry is a fast-paced industry, how flexible is your Project to change quickly and keep pace with technology trends? What is your long-term vision for the forecasting industry in which the your Project project operates?
Peter@Conflux
You’re exactly right, crypto changes from day to day, it can be confusing but also fascinating
In terms of keeping up technologically, I think Conflux has already proven its adaptability. Just check out the latest Hydra hardfork I mentioned tonight. It’s a massive upgrade that really adapts Conflux for some of the new challenges of this crypto landscape. Long-term, I think projects who don’t innovate will be left behind. That’s why we’re not only focusing on fancy dapps like DeFi (which are also essential to crypto), but continuously do in-depth research and development. This will help keep us at the forefront, For instance, we just published this paper at a top CS conference: https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.03749
Cherly Carter
Regulation is very important. Many projects are closed in many countries due to improper use of regulations and permits. To go global, how does your team address these issues?
Peter@Conflux
I’m glad that people still see the importance of thinking about compliance
I think many crypto users don’t care about this, but if we wanna bring in web2 users, or even traditional enterprises, some level of compliance is crucial.
Unfortunately, I’m not knowledgeable about the regulatory situation of crypto in India. But I believe China is one of the strictest countries on crypto, and we’ve managed to deal with it. We not only have a large user base in China but most of our developers and founders are based in China. And they use their real identity too, so that shows that we have nothing to fear here.
I think the same approach will work in other regions as well, and I’m optimistic about our ability to bring in a whole new group of users to crypto.
I think we’ve covered 7 questions already. Thank you all for the great and insightful questions!
The AMA recorded many great questions from the Crypto Players India community, as well as meticulous answers from our guest Peter from Conflux. AMA Concluded at 8:30 pm IST.
About us!
CryptoPlayers is one of the oldest & largest crypto communities in India since early 2017. We are a group of 25000+ telegram members and growing.
