On March 2, 2020, Dexaran and Yohan, Callisto Network Founders, answered questions from the community about the Callisto Network’s goal, the Idavoll hard fork, and the challenges of building a product in the crypto ecosystem.

 

Jeremy from ChangeNow: Hello @YoGraterol and @Dexaran, thank you for joining us today!

Dexaran: Hello ChangeNow and Callisto community.

Yohan Graterol: Hello, community! A pleasure performing this AMA with you.

Jeremy from ChangeNow: Could you please tell us a bit more about yourself: what are your interests and hobbies, what were you doing before starting Callisto?

Dexaran: I’m a security engineer and smart-contract developer for the last years. Security was always my main focus even prior to coming to the crypto industry. My public activity started here in crypto with TheDAO hardfork and my involvement in Ethereum Classic development.

Honestly, we started Callisto Network to develop and provide a reference implementation for ETC protocol improvements. Still, these were rejected by the ETC community recently, so CLO is now a self-sustaining project with its own goals only.

Yohan Graterol: I’m a back-end developer, and I’ve worked as Head of Engineering in some companies.

I’ve started working in crypto through ETC with Dexaran and after we launched Callisto Network.

Right now, I’m fully involved with the Callisto community, all legal aspects, listing, marketing, and main development of the Callisto client.

Jeremy from ChangeNow: The second part is the answer to my second question: what was the impetus for creating Callisto Network? And what are your main achievements?

Dexaran: Callisto is a complex project that was launched with several different goals. As I’ve said already, one of the goals was to deliver Ethereum Classic protocol enhancements and propose them in ETC. This goal should be considered achieved. You can find a more detailed description of our annual report for 2019.

The other goals of Callisto were:

  • Research and develop a reference implementation of Cold Staking protocol (which is already done).
  • Research and develop a governance system (this is still in progress, and this is actually a complicated task. There is not even a single project whose governance system could be considered perfect).
  • Improve the security of the smart-contract development industry. We believe that such accidents like TheDAO hack should have never happened, and these should never happen again. We have developed and launched a system of smart-contract auditing organization that aims to prevent such impactful hacks in the future.

Yohan Graterol: I will not talk about smart contract security because @Dexaran could explain it better in his answer, however, work with an established community is some times hard because they want to impose only one vision of the project and reject everything different to it, so, with a new community-driven project we can make reality all ideas taking some funds to make it real.

Callisto born from a bit frustration with ETC team (at that moment, right the teams have changed) and the refusal to move forward in some topics.

We started with ETH based code and not from ETC code. However, we continue supporting the ETC community; with Callisto, we did perform the first big airdrop in the crypto world. A tv show talked about CLO at that moment.

https://twitter.com/cnbcfastmoney/status/969348370161643521?s=21

Jeremy from ChangeNow: Idavoll hard-fork. Please tell us about its goals.

Yohan Graterol: There three important goals.

1- Update the blockchain and be up to date with Ethereum Istanbul hardfork.

2– Update our key on chain feature, Cold Staking to version 2.

3– Give the required tools to start the Governance on-chain system.

Jeremy from ChangeNow: Thank you for the introduction! So I guess now it’s time to unmute the chat. ?

Hello Dexaran, Hello YoGrateol, Hello dear community. I am a first-generation miner of many coins and so I am also on Callisto, which I have been mining since the beginning of 2018.

My question and I try to write it so that your answer can be rather short.

I’m working in the field of blockchain analytics and have been watching Callisto for a long time. The advantages over other projects are clear. Staking, real coin, mining, and a use case, namely the testing of smart contracts. 

Now we all know that Eth is going to switch to the PoS. Several million graphics cards will then become useless for the miners. Many will sell their cards, and one or the other can make a good bargain on the used market. The other miners will look for alternatives, and most of them will find the Callisto Blockchain and mine here. This will mean that there will be fewer coins for the miners, and therefore the price of the coins will increase dramatically. Also, the fact that a large part of the coins is staking positively influences the price.

Now to my question: Why change to EOS? If it comes to this and we all assume that it will happen, it will be a new chapter for Callisto Coin pricing and mining, which is not possible in the EOS sector, because not everybody can mine there.

Thanks to the ChangeNOW community for allowing us to ask questions in your group. Have an excellent start into the new week and happy mining, staking, and trading with Callisto.

Greetings from Germany.

Dexaran: First of all, I’d like to say that it’s still under consideration. We have announced the goal to establish the Governance System, which is relatively hard with Ethereum smart-contracts. We aim to establish a self-sustaining Security Department operated by DAO smart-contract. This is also hard with Ethereum contracts.

The short answer is that it is barely possible to implement our core features with Ethereum contracts.

However, we do understand the downsides of a complete switch. That’s why the EOS-based token and CLO mainnet chain will co-exist for some time until we find the best solution.

Yohan Graterol: Well, in EOS, the consensus system is different, there the “mining” consensus does not exist; there a lot of “block producers” with votes from the holders, and they are eligible to produce a new block in the short time as possible.

Mining will exist for more time. However, it will eventually be replaced by POS because mining is hard to scale.

Check this content out: https://cointelegraph.com/news/analyst-claims-98-of-mining-rigs-fail-to-verify-transactions

What is your business model? Who are your potential customers, and which markets are you targeting? On moving forward through your roadmap, what are your most critical next priorities? Does your team have enough fundamental (Funds, Community, ect) to achieve those milestones?

Dexaran: We rely on the assumption that an asset’s price is determined by someone’s willingness to buy/sell, which is a derivative of brand recognition and mass adoption. It’s not a secret in crypto that well-renowned projects can be more “successful” even without a working product. The key is recognition. We aim to establish a security auditing system that will provide security audits of a wide variety of contracts. Some interested parties would collaborate with us and spread the word about our work results, thus bringing the recognition.

So, our customers are (1) smart-contract developers, (2) investors which are willing to investigate the security level of assets they invest in, and (3) interested parties that do not want any hacks on their platform.

The most important points for us are automatization of our workflow (i.e., the implementation of DAO) and on-chain governance system. I would say that our security department works already, and we have completed 300+ security audits.

We have a working proposal system, but it is operated through Github. It would be way better to make these more “decentralized” and on-chain-governed.

Yohan Graterol: Potential customers: all smart contracts devs. In reality, it’s different, no all devs are care of the security of the smart contracts, you could check the recent DeFi issues, projects with millions of dollars vulnerable with some attacks. So, Callisto started offering free security audit to help the ecosystem however, the growth of requests has made it untenable. Right now, Callisto offers a mixed model, free and paid smart-contract audits.

Do we need to move our CLO from the exchange when there is a CLO<> EOS token swap? Is it related to cold staking v2? :)

Dexaran: I would say no. There is no need to move your coins if you don’t want to engage in EOS-side contracts (that are not yet developed).

Anyways the CLO mainnet and EOS-based token will co-exist for some time. We will announce the details later. Even if we decide to switch to a newer protocol (in this example to EOS), then we will do it so that you will be able to restore your CLO coins from mainnet at any moment in the future.

The most attractive and trending topic is DeFi, so do you have any plans for DeFi system?

Dexaran: We have a working proposal system. There is a DeFi-related proposal, and we are going to allocate the portion of Treasury funding for this proposal.

You can find more details here: https://github.com/EthereumCommonwealth/Proposals/issues/85

Hello Yohan, Dexaran, and ChangeNow team! Thank you for this AMA! I have a question regarding the article made by @dexaran: https://medium.com/@dexaran820/callisto-network-development-insight-11-25-2019-79f5c822627c

Here it is stated:”If there is no trusted independent security-related media sources that would provide info about DApps then its the reason for Callisto to become one.”

As I understood, this would mean a website focused on Dapp security where users can confirm if Callisto Network professionals have audited the smart contract and deemed them secure. Similar to CoinMarketCap, but with security in focus instead of price. Firstly, have i understood the general idea correct? And have these thoughts evolved anything since the creation of the article?

Thank you!

Dexaran: I would say that you have understood the idea correctly.

The idea has not yet evolved. At least nothing special that I could share right now. Please, wait for the next article that will shed some light on this.

Can the security of the CLO blockchain be 100% guaranteed? If so, don’t you think that the anarchists will not find fault with the evolution of digital technology in the long run?

Dexaran: The general paradigm of system security engineering claims that nothing can be absolutely secure.

Honestly, we can’t guarantee that we will assure 100% security. However, we can dramatically reduce the risks and eliminate such harmful accidents like TheDAO. Statistics say: we conducted an audit of more than 300 projects, and none of the “approved” were hacked.

What are your strategies to ensure that investors will hold CLO tokens in the long term, and not just profit in the short term and damage the project?

Yohan Graterol: Ensure that investors will hold is a hard task because of the entire altcoins ecosystem orbits around Bitcoin (Sadly). Any Bitcoin movement affects the whole ecosystem, including CLO.

We’ve survived the bear market so, we’re here because we want to comply the goals and it has helped to keep the trust from many holders, we’ve listened to holders and took hard decisions, and I believe that it has been part of our survival in a bear market.

In retrospective, would you build your blockchain again or build your DApp on an existing blockchain?

Dexaran: Build a token on an existing blockchain.

Does Callisto Network have any community campaigns to raise more awareness about your project? I would like to join as a Callisto Network supporter, beside investor.

Dexaran: If you have any ideas that could benefit Callisto then you are free to submit a proposal here: https://github.com/EthereumCommonwealth/Proposals

Everyone is welcome. If we find your proposal worth it then you can get reasonable funding.

Southeast Asia is a very vibrant market, and most exchanges are competing campaigns here to entice users and grow. With Callisto, you see how Southeast Asia is, and do you plan to develop & to expand here? 

Yohan Graterol: We are continually working on it, our base of holders and followers are in Europe or Euroasia. Exchanges working in Asia are not many; we have QBTC, Bitfinex (they have many users from India and Japan), and Bitforex. It’s a working progress.

@Dexaran I want to ask if there are any measures taken to secure CLO ecosystem and if so, how secure is it and in case of any breach what are the measures to be taken?

Dexaran: The “CLO ecosystem” is just an Ethereum protocol (which works securely enough already) and a number of core smart-contracts. The smart-contracts are secure because: (1) we test them carefully, (2) we perform a security audit of each update prior to committing a hardfork, (3) we run a bug bounty. After all, the contracts are working properly already.

Callisto Network has withstood 51%-attacks and several other issues. The Callisto Team is here to ensure the sustainability of the network.

What is the Dynamic Gas Price key feature, and how miners will benefit from this new development? 

Yohan Graterol: Miners could receive a bit more of fees because the gas price could increase. The more beneficial is to avoid flooding of transactions in the network.

@Dexaran, what is the ultimate goal of CLO as a coin? What partnerships have been adopted? How does CLO respond to bitcoin halving?

Dexaran: Improve the crypto industry by (1) establishing a security auditing organization, (2) establishing an “incubator of ideas” i.e. proposal system & governance system, (3) introduction of new security standards.

What partnerships have been adopted?

You can find a list of partnerships on our website. I don’t think that it is worth it to copy&paste it here.

How does clo respond to bitcoin halving?

The time will tell. Keep patience.

Staking seems to be popular right now on many blockchain projects to encourage investors to hold tokens and make it healthful for the project ecosystem. Does your Project support this as well? If yes, what will be the requirement of a Node and a Validator node be? And how does reward base on?

Dexaran: We have a modified version of staking called “Cold Staking”. This does not require a masternode. You need to lock your coins for 27 days (by just clicking a button “start staking” in the wallet), and that’s it. 27 days later you can click the “claim reward” button.

What are Callisto Network’s competitors in this market? What are your competitive advantages over projects with the same idea?

Yohan Graterol: Consensys could be the big competitor right now in our market. They have built good connections with big companies in all years working with Ethereum, so they have a strong position. However, the service is not fully affordable for everyone.

2020 is an important year for crypto and blockchain, I think. So, What’s your outlook on the future of cryptocurrencies in this year and next few years? What can we do to keep increasing adoption?

Dexaran: The most important thing in the crypto industry is inter-blockchain communication for now. We need to establish an interchain communication protocol.

As for adoption – its not my area of responsibility. I’m not that good at marketing or whatever is related to general adoption. The best thing that we can do to increase the adoption of crypto is to make it secure. Nothing pisses people more than lost money. Let’s prevent this.

Yohan Graterol: I can’t claim 2020 is an excellent year for crypto and blockchain, maybe in the market, because the bull market could lead it, however in technology way I dare to say that this decade could be the decade where everyone uses directly or indirectly blockchain for many things.

How many wallets that can support $CLO until now? And do you have any plans to build your wallet?

Maximus_EL (Callisto Admin):

  • Wallet.callisto.network
  • Trust wallet
  • Magnum wallet
  • Guarda wallet
  • Coinomi wallet

Can you put some lights on your partnership right now? How are they helping you out in your project?

Yohan Graterol: Exchanges: they are supporting well Callisto. They don’t have active participation in the project; however, they help.

Since September 2019, the community has played a fundamental role in the project. Right now, a lot of the marketing is made only by the community, and the reach has been incredible.

What are the biggest challenges of building a product and functional user experience for crypto users? What are the biggest obstacles for the mainstream adoption of crypto?

Dexaran: The biggest challenge is to convince others that your project is real. Imagine that there are 5 projects and 4 of them are not even trying to build something real. These 4 projects are spending 100% of their marketing funding while the “real one” is only allocating 40% of the budget for marketing and 60% for the development.

Whenever a user is coming to the industry, he is blinded by a high number of perfectly-marketed projects that have invested a lot in marketing solely. It’s hard to compete with them if you are not doing the same.

The biggest obstacle for mainstream adoption is fault tolerance. Cryptocurrencies lack this.

Banks handle thousands of mistakes every day. Imagine all the funds being lost permanently. A system that is designed for humans must be fault-tolerant because humans always make mistakes. We need to prevent such possibilities to lose all your life savings because of a single mistake. Otherwise, crypto will never get adopted enough.

Yohan Graterol: Good question, I love to talk about it.

1- Think that the non-crypto users don’t matter the technology; they want solutions to common issues, by example, 4G internet, people don’t know well how the 4G works, but they use it because it solves a problem. The companies sell it with features and not with extensive explanations or papers about how 4G technology works. So, projects should sell more solutions and less technology.

2- Non-crypto users want to use something as soon as possible of the more natural way, people use credit cards because it’s seamless, you only put the credit card in the reader and done, you paid. The wallet must move forward to a world where pay with crypto doesn’t have frictions. Remember many pin codes, private key, 12 words mnemonic phrases; those things move away from the everyday users because they see crypto as nuclear physics.

To avoid extending more to my answer, I could resume my answer to develop more for the grandma and less for the expert user.

Account security is fundamental to every digital asset holders, and we all know that hackers are everywhere. Even Banks experienced hackers attack. How can you protect the user’s account and how confident you are to your security system’s effectiveness?

Dexaran: The protocol determines account security. Currently, CLO is based on the Ethereum code. There was no need to develop a new chain from scratch to make our ideas work, so we modified the Ethereum protocol to implement a set of new features. The value of Callisto is not its technology (protocol) but its core-features (Cold Staking/ Proposal system/ Governance system [in-progress]/ Security auditing).

As for account security – we are as secure as Ethereum since we are similar in this case.

How will you Face regulation problems from Governments of countries, if you try to launch your project in different countries?

Yohan Graterol: We have a legal entity in Estonia; we use it to negotiate those cases.

What do you need for happiness?

Yohan Graterol: To live. While I am alive everything that I could do could give me happiness. :)

@Dexaran When compared with other Blockchain technology solutions, what advantage does your project offer?

Dexaran: As I’ve just said, Callisto’s main advantage is its core features but not the underlying technology. The features of Callisto are abstractable and transferable across the smart-contract chains. We currently run our chain since there were no solutions suitable for our ideas at the moment of the CLO mainnet launch. However, we can simply migrate to a newer protocol if we decide that it fits our needs better. Callisto Network is intended to be an inter-chain project that is abstracted from the underlying chains. The good comparison is USDT. USDT token is based on Ethereum, Omni, and EOS chains. However, its main advantage is not its technology (literally it’s just a token), but its use case – 1 USDT is equal to 1 USD but transferrable across crypto exchanges, unlike USD.

CLO is the same. Our main advantages are our goals (achieved and yet-to-be-achieved) and our security improvement system.

What is the background of the Callisto Network team? Do you think it is competent enough to run Callisto Network for the long-term?

Dexaran: I would say yes.

2020. Do you plan to increase listed exchanges?

Yohan Graterol: We’re not looking for a significant amount of exchanges; we’re in the top 5 exchanges.

You could check the best exchanges here: https://cryptowat.ch/exchanges

We’re in Bitfinex and HitBTC. If Binance comes, good, we will receive it.

However, contrary to many thinks, to have 20, 30, and 100 exchanges doesn’t help a coin, it creates more fragmentation and less liquidity per exchange.

When 1 CLO will be 1 $?)

Yohan Graterol: The battery of my crystal ball is discharged, l lost the charger.

Could you tell us an outline about statistics, such as, for example, which currency is the most exchanged, the least popular, etc.? I would like to know a little more about your way of operating: for you to offer this service, do you need to rely on large exchanges, such as Binance, Coinbase, etc?

Yohan Graterol: For Callisto, the BTC pair is the main pair for all exchanges where CLO is listed.

About large exchanges, we’re in large exchanges; our issue is that we’re suffering from liquidity.

Adoption is one of the important factors that all sustainable blockchain projects should focus to be more attractive in the investors’ eyes. Can you tell me what Callisto Network has done and plan to do to achieve ADOPTION in reality, real use cases, our real society…?

Dexaran: Consider adoption is a derivative from recognition. Callisto features a security auditing system that is intended to be the driver of our recognition. We seek projects to collaborate with and perform security audits of their DAPPs. As an example of such a project, I can highlight EOS.

There are DAPP developers on EOS. There are “interested parties” on EOS (block producers, Block.One, EOSGO, and other organizations that don’t want any hacks on EOS). We aim to collaborate with these interested parties to help spread the word about the results of our DAPPs audits and our project. Sometimes, it is essential to spread the word about the status of a DAPP, disregarding the DAPP developer’s opinion. That’s why we don’t aim DAPP developers but large-scale interested parties instead.

What brought Callisto to ChangeNow, and what are the advantages of this listing?

Yohan Graterol:

  • You don’t require trading experience.
  • You don’t need open an exchange account.
  • You don’t need fully KYC.
  • You put your money and receive CLO, keep it simple.

Having your every question answered can make your trading experience delightful. It has become a standard for sizable exchange platforms to provide 24/7 customer support with knowledge people solving technical problems in real-time. Can you tell us about ChainNow Customer Support?

Yohan Graterol: Until now, ChangeNow is always available for the customers. They are human, sometimes they could not be available some minutes or hours, but they always respond all inquiring. It’s part of the business, and they are doing it great.

Maximus_EL (Callisto Admin): Thank you @Dexaran and @yograterol for your time.

Thank you, ChangeNOW team, for organizing this AMA.

And the biggest thank goes to the community for making this AMA this good!

Jeremy From ChangeNow: Thank you, Maximus, for helping us!

Thanks, Yohan and Dexaran, for great answers!

Appendix

Previous Ask Me Anything sessions with Callisto team:

Dexaran’s Ask Me Anything on 02/02/2020.

Yohan Graterol’s AMA with Korean Community on 19/09/2019.

Miscellaneous

https://callisto.network/passive-income-with-crypto-masternodes-vs-staking/.

Trust the Blockchain, Audit the Smart Contracts.

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