#citizencosmos

  • Episode link: https://www.citizencosmos.space/idena

  • Episode name: Idena, proof of person, AI & democracy

Transcript of the Episode:

[00:01:32] Citizen Cosmos: Good space time you all! Welcome to a new episode of Citizen Cosmos, I have with me today two guests LTraveler and TravCrypto, community members of Idena. It's a Cosmos based project, they will tell us all about it, it's a very interesting project. Hey guys! Whoever wants to introduce themselves first, welcome!

[00:01:58] LTraveler: Community knows me as LTraveler, I'm in the project for about two years. At the beginning why Idena catched me was getting into the crypto world without any penny in your pocket. It was pretty cool when someone asks me if I want to solve some puzzles and then get paid. I got joined into the community then I started to discover and when I went deeply I realized it's not just about to solving tests, it's actually something new that I have never seen before. I have developed this script that helped people to run Idena on Linux server and then I have made my YouTube channel, I'm making some video tutorials that are explaining how Idena works and how it could help people to developed the fair democracy. Then I started to help with the translation of Idena chronicles and other materials from English to Russian and more and I felt like we are building something that can make a revolution in the future.

[00:03:47] TravCrypto: Hey guys! My name is TravCrypto, I've been involved in crypto since 2016 and I started a little bit skeptical of crypto and what all it could really offer, and basically over time after reading the Bitcoin white paper and other white papers like the Ethereum white paper I got really interested in blockchain technology and basically came across Idena because I wanted to participate in validation but other blockchains can be very plutocratic and can require you to have large amount of wealth in order to participate in validation so I wanted to find a layer one blockchain that anyone could participate in no matter how much wealth they had. That's how I came across Idena and I've been actively involved probably at least for the past couple of years and like LTraveler said the ethos is really really cool within the community because it's accessible to anyone and everyone, and that kind of brings us where we are today.

[00:04:57] Citizen Cosmos: I have several questions straight away. Which one of you guys wants to give a brief overview of what exactly it is and what is you guys doing? What is the idea behind Idena?

[00:05:44] TravCrypto: Idena basically is a layer one blockchain but any human can participate in the validation. So the consensus mechanism is proof of person and unlike Bitcoin which is proof of work where you need ever growing amount of machines to participate or unlike what is soon to be Ethereum 2.0 hopefully if it ever happens proof of stake where you need an evergrowing amount of the actual cryptocurrency in order to stake and participate in validation, you just need to be a human being and you need to participate in what's called a validation ceremony which currently happens approximately every three weeks and that validation ceremony is basically puzzles or flips proving that you're human. So you solve these puzzles over relatively short period of time and you prove that you're in fact a human, and once you do that you can participate in validation on the blockchain where you can earn mining rewards for validation. So that's the very basic overview and I think now LTraveler can probably dive into a little bit more of the technicality.

[00:07:05] LTraveler: So as TravCrypto said, we're developing the network that is going to be part of web3 and if we look on the process of participation to the network we can see that as a game. First, when you're just joining to the network, you’re just candidate and to protect our blockchain from bots we have created a system to invite new members only through the invitation codes so you cannot just come a candidate and join into the ceremony without invitation. First of all you are taking the invitation code then the person who invited you, he is getting rewards for the invitation so he's motivated to explain you everything clear and to control that you participate on time you know exactly what to do. So it's like your manager who's going to control you, going to check everything, who's gonna explain you the next step after the first validation. Then you're becoming from candidate to newbie and then you can have some new skills that you can do, so you can start mining if you want but the rewards that you are getting are going to the stake so you cannot just take money, you have to keep going. Then you're going for one more validation, you're getting a newbie 2 level but you still new so the money still goes to your stake and only after third validation you are becoming identified member which gives you opportunity to invest your money into the stake, and why we are making that as I said because we are developing human blockchain like a blockchain for human being so we have to make the system that accepts humans but does not accept an AI or bots. I would like to tell you more about the process that is a part of solving - flips. The flip is a filter for intelligent people which means that when you're solving flips you can solve it because you are a human but the machine cannot solve it because the way how they made it which is a story with four images that has beginning and the end. we have four images in one colum and four images in another column and only one colum could be the order of image so the images are the same but the order only in one column can be represented as the story that had beginning at the top and the end of the bottom. So since you becoming a newbie, then you have one more responsibility. You have to create flips also and this is very important. It's like people are creating flips and people are solving flips and if we are talking about the validation ceremony, there are two parts. First part is a short session, it is one minute and forty five seconds why we have short session because the short session could guarantee that only one identity and one uman can be connected. It's like the period of the time is very short so you cannot pass validation from many identities which very important. Then we have the second stage and the second stage it's qualification session. The purpose of the long session is to check flips that have been created by other people, checking that all of the keywords are connected to the images and also that there are no marks or hints that help you to solve the flips. So we are moderators and also we are the people who are examinated by other identities. So we are like whole ecosystem that are using our brain to support that blockchain, and this is more or less a general explanation.

[00:11:51] Citizen Cosmos: I like that. It's a very decent explanation easy to understand. I have more questions, some of them devil's advocate, of course. So let's play a little bit with some of the things that you said. The first question which comes out to me is obvious: why human-only chain? Why Idena doesn’t recognize bots, machines, AIs as full-on intelligent beings capable of participating in life of the chain in an equal way to human?

[00:12:30] TravCrypto: That's a great question! My understanding is Bitcoin’s consensus mechanism originally was one machine, one one vote or one node, so anyone could basically participate with their computer and they could validate on the proof of work blockchain which is known as Bitcoin and over time that's become more and more inherently difficult. I actually live in Texas, here in the United States and here are Bitcoin mining farms but hey're located all over the world and you can see how difficult that barrier to entry is for validating on this blockchain. To answer your question in terms of Idena being a proof of person chain or one person one vote as far as the consensus mechanism I think the whole idea is to have a more equal and egalitarian system that anyone in the world can participate in, and that's currently in place with Idena which is really cool to see because you can see people participating in the community. They’re participating in validation as well which is somewhat rare in other blockchains. Also to answer your question in regards to why can't AI participate, I think technically speaking they could participate if they were smart enough to complete the validation ceremonies which we haven't seen to be the case so far but I think technically speaking if AIs were as smart as a human being, smart enough to complete these flips as LTraveler was explaining previously, I think they very well in fact could participate butmthere's no AI that's currently at that technical level.

[00:14:27] Citizen Cosmos: So if I could summarize, it's not about disliking robots, you just think that at the current stage of the implementation that's a test for them. If they can solve it they can participate, that means they're smart enough. Is that basically what you're trying to get at? right

[00:14:42] TravCrypto: Right.The goal is to not have AI participate, that’s the ideal. We've been successful so far but obviously we hope that this validation ceremony can prevent AIs from participating in the future which allows humans to have the power in the in the consensus mechanism. There obviously have been a lot of attempts so far but they haven't been successful.

[00:15:09] LTraveler: There is one thing I would like to add is that there is a price for people who're going to develop that kind of system. So the developers going to pay amount of money for someone who's gonna hack the system.The second thing that we're always trying to predict that since the blockchain was released, it was already two or three additional protection have been implemented and we have to mention that first of all we call it antagonistic noise which is kind of noise that every image has and that protects when, for example, Google vision trying to check that kind of images with this antagonistic noise the percentage of correctly recognized images are very low. Also we have a mechanism when we are putting another image or another background with the low level of opacity, it could be noticed but it didn't break the general sense of the image. Also there is one more thing that sometimes the system when you are loading your flips it makes horizontal mirroring of the image just in case so all of that mechanism are making for vision system very hard to ecognize images and to solve plays because actually if that system going to exist then the whole blockchain’s going to be in trouble because it's just destroyed the whole system.

[00:16:55] Citizen Cosmos: I think it's a good cat and mouse game to see the improvement. It's like with bank security when the hackers hack the bank security, the bank security improves and so on and so forth. I think it’s beneficial for the whole industry what you guys are trying to do.

[00:17:10] LTraveler: I'm sorry that I'm interrupting but for us that kind of asystem that's going to solve flips automatically, it's like a person who can ray the money and the money are the same as the real money. That's why we are always aware of what's going on.

[00:17:27] Citizen Cosmos: Second question. It's going to be a bit unrelated to that but something I want to make clear. The proof of work and the proof of stake. Can you guys clarify how exactly does it mix everything together? Where do the mining and the validation meet each other? I would love to hear it from you guys and to hear a proper clarification of where I'm wrong and where I'm not wrong.

[00:17:59] LTraveler: First of all, when you are joining to the network, your first validation ceremony is to pass the test. and since you pass the test then you can join to the mining but there is one very important thing of the mining that you don't need a powerful machine. You can use whatever computer or a virtual private server regardless of which operation system it is. We have a node client for Linux system, Windows and Mac OS. So, you can join and since you start to mine very important thing that the mining rewards are the same. There was recently a voting for the new hard fork and after accepting it, the new mechanism is going to connect the rewards for your mining and the amount of coins that you have in the stake. So basically what we are trying to do is not connect the mining process to the power off your machine. The only thing which is important if you're joining to the network, you're helping the network be decentralized as much as possible. But the main part is your brain, that you're a human and that you can solve and create good flips. Maybe TravCrypt wants to add something.

[00:19:32] TravCrypto: That was actually a great summary, I was pretty much going to say all of that same stuff myself. I just wanted to touch on a question that a lot of people typically ask as well and it's all related to this. The question is why wouldn't I just complete the flips on 10 different computers, complete the validation ceremony with 10 different invitations and then I could get 10 times the amount of rewards or mining? Well, the answer to that question is this validation ceremony actually takes place at the same time all around the world so no matter where you live on planet Earth. This validation ceremony takes place all in sync all around the world. So obviously it's impossible to be in two places at once. Each person actually has to complete this validation ceremony on their own personal device. You could do it on a mobile device, you could do it on a laptop but you complete this validation ceremony as LTraveller said in 1 minute and 45 seconds which is a relatively short amount of time, complete 6 different flips which are these puzzles. So it would be difficult to do that at the same time across 10 different machines. So that's how the network prevents people from having multiple identities for the consensus. It really sticks to one person one node.

[00:21:17] Citizen Cosmos: You mentioned plutocracy and at the beginning you said that the in Idena it almost doesn't exist and that's really cool to hear because in a lot of the times you come to a community and unfortunately what we see is centralization of stake and using that power to push opinions but a lot of the time it's not even that. It's really cool to see that it's the community members who are coming on to the recording to onto the podcast to talk about the project and to explain it other people rather than actually finding members. So the first question is why? How come it was community members that reacted? Why is it in your opinion like that?

[00:22:30] TravCrypto: Just from my perspective as a community member over the past couple of years first and foremost I think the developers of Idena are just very focused on the development of the blockchain and so they're the ones technically implementing these new bug fixes in these new editions that some other community members wouldn't be able to contribute and I think it's also this ethos of a community driven project. The community is now representing itself which I think is very unique to other blockchain projects. It's really cool to see because there's this ethos not only at the consensus level of one person one vote and participating in these different Idena improvement proposals like the most recent one IIP-5 where we're going to make a hard fork but also at this level right on podcasts. The community really is organized and representing itself which is pretty rare to see in the space.

[00:23:43] Citizen Cosmos: I have been in this industry for a long long time and I've seen projects fail and rise and one of the biggest reason proof projects fail is the lack of the community involvement, the lack of the community remembering that this is a decentralized space where that's what we're supposed to do.

[00:24:19] LTraveler: I think any project going to get success when you are always in touch with the community. The reason I like Idena because the developer is actually listening what the community thinks, they are also in touch with us, they are checking discussions and so on and most of the improvements that we have made it was because of the community feedback. For example we have had a hard time when we have had many really bad flips, we start to tell to the developers we have to do something with that because it's just the garbage and it couldn't be like that, and then there were lots of improvements. For example now we have a qualification part of the flip. It's like if you really like the flip you could put the star and then if that specific flip is going to get the majority. We have a filtration mechanism so you can approve flip, you can decline flip or if you do not have more reports, you can leave the flip as it is without any mark so that means that someone else from the committee where that flip goes to be examinated from other identities, if the flip is bad it's going to be marked as bad flip from someone else and step by step people learning how to make good flips and how to report bad flips. So we're always in touch of course. We do not know each other in face but we're always talking, we're always getting a feedback, there is always brainstorming. For example about IIP-5 there were a lot of discussions and then finally everything was integrated into the perfect wonderful solution. how to make solo miners, how to make them run independent. We have a huge pool and we want to be a network more decentralized so we have created a system how make people around their independent node to start mining by themselves and this is something unique that is happening in our community and I really love that.

[00:27:25] TravCrypto: Just to touch on that real quick, I think in other blockchains the like if you take the total community, the percentage of those community members actually participating in the validation is relatively small whereas Idena it's actually a very large proportion of the community so they have more incentive to participate in these proposals, in these changes and and it's actually affect the rewards that they get so I think that incentivizes a lot of involvement within the community and it creates this environment where these proposals. There's really a lot of activity and it's cool to see all of the community proposals that people make.

[00:28:07] Citizen Cosmos: By the way proposals and IIP-5, it's about quadratic voting right? Does any of you want to explain what exactly it is and why you guys think it will help?

[00:28:39] LTraveler: Let's go back to the IIP-4 where we introducing the quadratic staking. So in the proof of stake systems we always have a problem: if you have a huge stake you're actually getting way more benefits comparing to people who have a small stake. The solution which we integrated in Idena blockchain is to make quadratic coefficient which is going to make the process of getting rewards for the staking in the way that if your stake is small you are getting more rewards the percentage of rewards out of your stake then more your stake than less the percentage out of stake you are getting. So that's how we making new members with a small stake for example earn rewards and also how we are making people with a huge stake also earn but with not a huge gap between people with a small stake. With IIP-5 we are getting a new idea about how to connect the stake and the mining rewards so the more coins you are putting into the stake the more rewards that you are getting from the mining process. Before we have had a huge cake of all rewards for mining and then we just spread all of that pie proportionally to each of the mining member so it was like each of the mining member get the same part of the reward. We have had a connection to the age of the identity so if your identity have had more ages when you are in the blockchain then you're getting more. So the newbies were getting less but it wasn't fair because someone came to the community two years ago and someone just now. So the people with more epochs in the block chain they're going to earn always more than the newbie members. The older the blockchain the more this gap is going to be so we completely changed the rule and now nevermind how old you are, the most important thing how much coins you have in the stake. So you have more coins your rewards are going to be bigger and also it is very good for the economy of the Idena because people are not going to exchange the coin after each validation. So the coin is going to be inside the blockchain.

[00:32:36] Citizen Cosmos: It's quite interesting that you use the same quadratic voting model because I've seen it implemented in airdrops a lot especially where you don't want the wells too big of an airdrop so the idea is the less you have the more you get. I don't think I've seen a blockchain before implement it on staking, I think the first time that I've seen this being implemented was only when I was preparing for the podcasts I saw on one of your Twitter accounts a print screen or a pole about what do you guys think and then I started to research and it was quite interesting, I've never seen this implement in before. Another cool thing I've seen across Idena was DeFi demo. I have noticedsome posts and some explanations on how it can play a big role and make an advertisement decentralized. Do you guys want to talk a little bit about that as well?

[00:33:49] TravCrypto: This is actually if you're referring to the concept of decentralized on-chain ads, this is something I actually was most excited about for Idena a while back. I think the concept of advertising on-chain in a decentralized way is really applying blockchain technology in a way that can can really revolutionize an entire space like the centralized marketing. So how it works is essentially there's this concept of oracles on-chain and you can create an oracle, like an add and when you create this add it goes to the oracles or people to decide whether they're going to approve it. So it needs to be approved by the community first and once it is approved, then it is actually displayed on-chain so after the implementation it will be once year doing the validation ceremony you’ll actually see these adds displayed and the money spent on these adds is burned in the form of Idena’s native crypto currency. That's actually burned on-chain in order to display these adds to people around the world. So i think that concept of decentralized marketing is really really cool and I think it adds a lot of value to the blockchain because obviously there's a lower supply and we all know the concepts of supply and demand over time.

[00:28:39] LTraveler: One more thing that I would like to add is that you can advertise whatever you want. We don't have rules. The only rule that we have is that the community must approve your ad. So you're sending an advertisement to be examined by comity of people that's going to be randomly selected from the whole network and then if you are getting the approval of majority you can run your advertisement company and this is very important because nobody can tell you nothing.So people will take a decision what is good and what is bad. This is the main point of the future because we always know about discrimination, about censorship, and all of that thing but for example why someone is going to choose what is good and what is bad because you have to ask like at least randomly of some members and if it is good why not? And this is the main principle of our advertisement platform and also you can run whatever oracle you want. For example you can ask whatever thing, you can make a poll. Then you can get a feedback from the community. Of course you have to pay for that but the feedback that you're getting from the real people it is very hard to manipulate that vote system and that's how we are implementing our Idena improvement proposals. First, the person who wants to propose that idea has to describe that idea pretty clear and then we have delegates and that delegates we are choosing every three epochs and then if the delegates approve the program then the program goes to the oracle vote part where everyone from the community is supposed to vote. Everyone can propose something even now we have a community wallet community foundation so if you're a developer you want to develop something new you have to prepare the paper, you have to get the majority from the majority of votes from five delegates that we are selecting every three epochs and then you're going to get that majority then that paper going to be put it into the oracle voting and then if people say yes then you're going to get the foundation for your project or for your implementation. Recently we implemented community foundation to translate Idena chronicles into three languages and it was implemented in that new mechanism.

[00:39:18] Citizen Cosmos: what has been the most controversial decision that the community made?

[00:39:31] TravCrypto: I'll touch on two things real quick. One, oracles can be as controversial as you want them to be. In terms of oracles you could ask any question that you possibly want e whether it's politically whether it's opinion. One oracle off the top of my and this doesn't affect the blockchain in any way or the community is should abortion be a legal or illegal? Here you have this democratic system with community members literally all over the world in all different political environments from all backgrounds and they can just vote legal or illegal and there you get a true perspective into what people's true thoughts are on any given matter. So I thought that was really cool, I think that like a concept of true democracy but then another example are these improvement proposals like IIP-5 that was controversial within the community because there are certain people that think these mechanisms should be a certain way and then there's certain people that think they should be a different way but it's the coolest part about this is you always have differing opinions. That’s the basis of human nature to see when these proposals are brought up. It's not always just bi-partisan, it could be three or four different thought paths and everyone breaks down their own explanation of why they think it should be this way or the other way. Once you get those explanations then the community can put in their thoughts and when it's all said and done and you have this very broad overview of this IIP-5, that's when community members can take action and actually participate in voting and depending on the results of the vote that will create a hard fork of the blockchain which you could arguable say doesn't happen in most other blockchain communities.

[00:42:14] LTraveler: I want to add one more thing that because everything is private. You can ask whatever questions you want, nobody going to judge you.

[00:42:29] Citizen Cosmos: I have a wrap up traditional question for you. What keeps you motivated to do what you guys : are doing today? Whether it's for Idena or whether it's for the whole of blockchain industry.

[00:43:07] LTraveler: I would like to start because it reminds me the story of how that community proposals came out about the translation. I was so attracted by the idea and I just wrote to the developers and said I want to translate your chronicle and they even agreed to pay me. Then, I started creating videos and the result was also good. What I feel is that apart from your job where you're just earning money there should be something that you're really happy to do. You do something that people really can use because they really need that. The key point of changing our society is to transform it from what we must do to something what we choose to do. For me me this is the key point and Idena really represented the ideas of fair democracies, it is the representation of that kind of style of society. We are small but at least you can feel that and this is wonderful.

[00:45:11] TravCrypto: For me it’s very similar to LTraveler. In the time that I've been in web3 professionally over the past three years and as a community member over the past six years I've seen a lot of different blockchains, a lot of different projects all promising different things. The thing that makes me most passionate about Idena is this concept of a truly decentralized democracy and what I mean by that is a global democracy where every humans can participate in this system and their vote can be heard which is really spectacular to me. I think it's a novel concept that hasn't been done at scale and I think Idena is the technology that can allow truly decentralized democracy to happen at scale.

[00:46:12] Citizen Cosmos: Guys, this has been a huge pleasure! Thank you very much for your time!

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