AMA with Strong Node
On the 7th of September, 2021 at 14:00 UTC, Decentralized Club had the honor of hosting Daniel Saito (CEO), Colin Charles (CTO) and Gil Bashin (CPO) from StrongNode for an Ask-Me-Anything session on their Telegram page with a community of over 30,000 people. It was hosted by DC Admin, May.
The session was divided into four segments. Introductions were made in Segment 1, questions from the Twitter and website community were answered in Segment 2 and 3 respectively, and live questions from the community members in attendance were answered in Segment 4.
If you missed this event and would like to know what StrongNode is all about, you can find a recap of the interview here. Note that slight edits have been made for clarity.
Segment 1 - Introduction
[May]
Hello, 大家好, नमस्ते, Selamat!
My name is May and I'll be hosting the AMA with StrongNode.
Today, we have with us three guests from the StrongNode Team.
[Daniel Saito]
Hey there everyone, look forward to taking your questions. Today I am here with our Chief Technology Officer, Colin, and our Chief Product Officer, Gil. My name is Daniel and I am the CEO of StrongNode. Thank you for having us here today.
[Colin Charles]
Hi all :-)
[Gil Bashan]
Hi everyone!
[Daniel Saito]
I think it's the first time to have all three of us in an AMA.
[May]
It's also the first time all three of them will be interviewed in an AMA session!
A huge thank you for the honor!
[Gil Bashan]
Thanks for hosting us, May, and the Decentralized Člub community
[May]
You're all welcome and it's an honor to have you all here.
We're excited to have you!
[Daniel Saito]
Yeah been a fan of this group for quite some time, more of a lurker tho.
[May]
That's interesting to hear! 😀
Mr. Saito already gave a brief introduction on behalf of the team, but could you all quickly tell us more about yourselves and your job descriptions at StrongNode?
[Colin Charles]
Hi, I’m Colin, the CTO. I do the overall architecture and design of our entire platform. I have spent the last 20+ years of my life doing infrastructure software
[Daniel Saito]
I am the CEO of the organization, similar to what you would find in a normal Silicon Valley startup. Although we are all remote, I live in Tokyo - I oversee all things StrongNode. But luckily I am not the smartest person in the room and accompanied by two brilliant people Colin and Gil. Which for the most part are doing the heavy lifting of getting products to market.
[Gil Bashan]
Hi everyone, as Chief Product Officer of StrongNode, I drive product design and execution of our platform and its features. Successful products need a lot of planning (and some magic)
[May]
Wow. Impressive! 👏🏼
This threefold cord is bound to achieve great feats!
Let's quickly take some project introductory questions, shall we?
[Daniel Saito]
sure sounds, great.
[May]
Okay!
Q1. Can you tell us the goals that birthed the idea of StrongNode?
[Colin Charles]
Many goals including helping “original gamers” (sic), but what I can tell you is we have a StrongNodeID platform, that handles users and access to edge nodes which can help get paid for the utilization of idle resources (keeping in mind, we have plenty of idle CPU and bandwidth at most situations and a lot more devices now, with the IoT revolution). And of course, other things run on top of the platform, which also helps
[Daniel Saito]
Well, what birthed this idea was something that unraveled over time. When myself and Colin worked at MySQL we were consulting with numerous Web 2.0 companies optimizing the performance of their MySQL queries and tweaking their implementation architecture so it scales with effective transactions per second, we started to notice a need out in large scale enterprises to small-medium business that they had a requirement to scale out their data and processing capabilities, hence the *cloud infrastructure* race (AWS, GCP, MSFT).
[Gil Bashan]
Amazing to think that by 2030, every human, on average, will have 15 connected devices. So many idle resources are not used at all or for their true potential!
[May]
Whoa. I never even realized this.
[Daniel Saito]
So as we got together after consuming inhuman levels of chicken and beers, we started to work on solving the scalability issue. We wanted to address the last mile, which is the EDGE. It's the consumer's latent resources from your PC/MAC/LINUX environment (CPU, bandwidth, storage) and uses it for a batch processing cluster using the map/reduce method of sorting jobs and processing it with a token economic incentive to participate both as a broadcaster and a receiver.
[Colin Charles]
No kidding about the chicken and beer
[May]
😂😂😂😂😂
A toast to the chickens that were sacrificed for this idea to be born.
[Daniel Saito]
It's our thing.. and tacos and nachos too!
[May]
🌮🌮🌮
But, what you're building is spectacular! 👏🏼
Before I start craving tacos and chicken, let's take the next question? 😅
[Gil Bashan]
Using latent resources for heavy compute tasks is one big use case for the technology which is amazing in itself. So many other use cases are planned as we scale out our node network with launching our innovation lab and all the fun platforms we have planned out to use the StrongNode technology — great benefits come with moving with us to the EDGE!
[May]
Can't wait!
[Daniel Saito]
In fact, before we started this project we went to talk to our future customers and with today's changes, there is a huge demand for cheap fast compute resources for processing NGS files (these are files that are outputted from a genome sequencer) as they are looking for genome-specific tags to COVID. So glad to have the majority of SEED and PRIVATE investors as our customers (staker/broadcasters).
[Gil Bashan]
We can’t wait either! The future is definitely not here yet, it’s on the EDGE
[May]
Nice!
[Gil Bashan]
We are not a blockchain nodes-as-a-service company, we are an edge computing company, supercharged by blockchain. We are building technology to be harnessed by multiple industries
[Daniel Saito]
That is just processing CPU, wait till we start touching the TCP stack.
[Colin Charles]
And the GPU
[May]
Q2. How does StrongNode plan to leverage the world's computing power?
[Colin Charles]
We will put your idle resources to good use, and you get rewarded for it
[Gil Bashan]
Who will use the technology and how are important distinctions. We are building technology for all, not just people in tune with crypto stuff
[Daniel Saito]
Ideally, I want to be running on background processes on your Sony Bravia SmartTV while you binge-watch Netflix.
I think with 5G just rolling out, this could be the next potential killer app that democratizes computing for the masses regardless of the digital divide between different societies.
[Gil Bashan]
By onboarding people and their multiple devices (like a computer, mobile phone SmartTV, etc.) and limiting barriers of entry with easy, painless, fun, and rewarding user experiences, we can build and scale-out using the world’s computing power
[Colin Charles]
We start with Windows/macOS/Linux, we move on to android smart tv’s, and in time, the phones which are ever powerful, idle when you sleep and it is plugged into a charger, get utilized
[Gil Bashan]
Change the world and get rewarded while you sleep, sounds like a good time 😎
Would love to answer other questions you all have!
[May]
Awesome!
Q3. What are the roles of node partners and node clients on StrongNode?
[Colin Charles]
Clients run a tray table background app. They receive jobs to complete in chunks. Send the jobs back when done. The app helps them earn too. We have a dispatcher that sends chunks and repackages them for operations. Think big data map/reduce down to edge nodes
[Gil Bashan]
There is a symbiotic relationship between providers of idle resources, the innovation lab platforms hosting users who provide idle resources, and consumers of the resources
[May]
Good to know!
Q4. Could you briefly talk about StrongNode Edge Network and the five-fold advantage?
[Gil Bashan]
There are many advantages for every type of user leveraging the StrongNode Edge technology. The advantages are different depending on how you are plugged into the EDGE. For instance, companies that utilize the idle resources we provide on the edge can offset expensive cloud computing costs in a faster, safer, and more decentralized fashion
A huge advantage of average users with idle devices plugging into the EDGE is being able to get rewarded for providing their resources. StrongNode can be considered a zero-waste network in a sense, as idle resources don’t go to waste
The third type of user, in a sense, is the innovation lab platforms that integrate with the technology. StrongNode helps power different aspects of their platforms while making their platforms stickier for their users via rewards for helping power the EDGE
[May]
Awesome!
Q5. What major news should we still look forward to from StrongNode this year?
[Gil Bashan]
The platforms we are launching are social impact, gaming, entertainment, lifestyle B2C companies that will be symbiotically powering and being powered by our global Edge network. There will be a lot to get excited about this year!
[Daniel Saito]
Well, there will be a lot of things, when we open up staking we expect a significant amount of folks participating by hosting their computing resources on the network. Additionally, we will be onboarding partners who have jobs to process and will buy tokens in a non-crypto way to access the network. There will be AMM farming as well as other partnerships through our incubation lab.
[May]
That's great.
Let's take some questions from our Twitter community.
Segment 2 - Twitter Questions
[May]
Q1. You comment that while other companies have node-as-a-service technology and business models, no one does it like StrongNode. What exactly do you do to differentiate yourselves from other companies offering similar services in the market?
Twitter Username: @iracundito
[Gil Bashan]
Great question!
We’ve touched on a lot of things that we are doing that really has not been done before. Where most nodes-as-a-service companies focus on hosting blockchain nodes for things like staking and validation, we are building a global edge network using idle resources. 🍎 and 🍊
Not only a global edge network but one that can be harnessed by the largest industries in the world. Blockchain technology for the real world
[Colin Charles]
Besides us having StrongNodeID as a platform for SSO across others, the other thing we do differently is leverage open source technologies and add a payments layer underneath it. Yes, the payments are crypto-related, but we abstract that too, for the end-user, so we can onboard non-crypto folk. So UX is very important to us. We want to make it as easy as possible for all to use. And background processes ftw
[Daniel Saito]
Think *login with Facebook* or *login with google*. This is now possible with our solution, with people that process KYC - a unique NFT specific to their wallets is sent allowing for it to become the passport to enter the network. We will only know you by your wallet address. As KYC information is stored offsite with our 3rd party identity management authority.
[Gil Bashan]
Maybe we’ve said too much 👀
[Colin Charles]
And we have other innovations… like recovery because you really do build a stronger ID with us (no pun intended)
But as our CPO says, maybe we have said too much. Think beyond the edge nodes, we’ll also be focusing on ID, and on the innovation platform, other apps run on this too
[May]
😎
[Gil Bashan]
Or is it never too much for Decentralized Člub? 😁
[May]
Never! 😉
[Gil Bashan]
Our type of people
[May]
Second Twitter question!
Q2. My question concerns your long-term marketing strategies. How, or through which large collaborations do you intend to distribute your product to the general public, particularly non-crypto people? What is your project's most ambitious goal? What is the overall goal of your project?
Twitter Username: @Greyhair_08
[Gil Bashan]
We have a very 💪 marketing team ready to get our vision across to the general public and companies who will use the EDGE. Each user group that will tap into the EDGE does so for different reasons, which will have us using different messaging to onboard them. The main business which is for companies leveraging the resources, crypto is not even a focus but will be a good mechanism to get companies to take baby steps into crypto, getting all the benefits of StrongNode Edge network to the max
[May]
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Q3. On their website, I read that StrongNode is working to become blockchain independent. How will they manage to be a company that uses blockchain technology but not depend on it? Why do you think that by becoming independent of this model they will manage to advance their project?
Twitter Username: @TheShadowJK_1
[Colin Charles]
Blockchain alone might only get crypto people. Being independent gets more; also, I think it is important that we don’t only work with one chain (so we start with polygon/Matic, but quickly look into Solana and binance smart chain, based on market and business needs). We have also, to be clear, discussed potentially doing a blockchain of our own, and may do that when the time is right if need be; however, we are happy to ride on the other sensible networks till then
An example: does Amazon EMR which allows you to run big data frameworks require you to use crypto to pay? No. They just bill your AWS account via a credit card and in markets like Japan, you can get a bulk billed to a partner who your company can pay via bank transfer at the end of the month. So that’s cash/credit card at work. Now, what if we took that model, and also said you could pay for it with tokens while running the payments network on various chains (think of it like visa/MasterCard/Amex/etc). And then instead of the rewards going to a central company, we also paid for the resources via tokens? And you paid in tokens to use the resources? The possibilities are quite endless, and we are also looking at it from an onboarding standpoint that won’t scare “normies”
[May]
Awesome!
Glad to see that it's going to be normie-friendly
Let's quickly take some questions from our website community.
Segment 3 - Website Questions
[May]
Q1. I read that StrongNodeID will introduce users to the network and handle KYC which in return gives access to all their platforms through a single sign-on. This is awesome, but how will this allow users to earn #StrongNode tokens? By repurposing and hosting a #Node, what is the level of performance that can be generated?
Telegram Username: @Thomas23P
[Colin Charles]
ID signs on and also for your tray table app to sign on to the network. You earn tokens by your idle resources being used. E.g. your windows machine, while you surf the web and read mail on Gmail, in chrome, is probably at 20% CPU utilization? We’d like to take that up to 80%, so we’d use the 60% of resources by us sending over some work for your CPU to complete. As for the question re: repurposing and hosting a node, I don’t really understand what you’re getting at, but we are using idle CPU resources up to about 80% (from a capacity planning standpoint; you could configure for higher if required). Also, we would use your TCP layer, i.e. network to ensure that we could also use you as an endpoint. These are 2 use cases that will get going from the start (there will be more later, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves; this is something you can see in the next year even)
[May]
Q2. They say that StrongNode will be the future of the Node-as-a-Service model. So what Technologies does StrongNode use to bring data processing closer to the end-users to leverage the power of frictionless and refined computing while also helping to expand the user base?
Telegram Username: @binhdoco
[Colin Charles]
We’ll start with a big data map/reduce aka Hadoop style to move chunks of data down to the edge nodes. We will also likely do something similar to seti@home. And we’ll also open up WebSockets. And we can also tail scale exit nodes for web traffic. We have plans to utilize open source yet build a payments layer
[Daniel Saito]
There are a lot of great open-source projects that are waiting to be re-released with token economics enabled. Open Source is fundamentally hard to make money unless you have a large community or money. In this case, we hope to have both.
I could see VPN solutions down the pipeline, additionally proxy-based solutions on the edge.. additionally we can see the rollout of game servers at the edge, for low latency gaming.
[May]
https://t.me/decentralized_club/598475
[Gil Bashan]
Gaming on the edge
[May]
Absolutely love the upcoming gaming bit!
Sounds great! 😉
[Daniel Saito]
We have recently made some great hires to reinvent UI/UX and how the workflows work. We strive that it doesn't look too cryptic (pun intended).
[May]
Shout out the new additions to the dev team!
Saw what you did with the pun 😉
Q3. What are the practical applications of StrongNode? What area of technology is focusing your products on right now? Is it blockchain, AI, gaming, or the medical field? Can you give us a list of technologies you want to innovate and upgrade?
Telegram Username: @Jmagsss
[Daniel Saito]
From a customer perspective, our SEED / PRIVATE round has been filled by future customers whether it be genome sequencing to machine learning clients, these will be our first broadcasters of data chunks that need to be processed.
[Colin Charles]
Think this is answered before, at least when we start looking at processing data for covid, AI, and the like, it is big data, possibilities are endless, with a map/reduce job. However, we also plan to have games running on top of it, and maybe our CPO and CEO will share a little more. But if you’re focused on “upgrading” existing tech, think of us like building a payments/crypto layer to open source, so there is no such thing as picking a tech. And I’ve mentioned a few technologies above, as well
[Daniel Saito]
We are startup entrepreneurs (establish a monthly recurring revenue stream), it's imperative that we have to build value to our customers, in this case, compute-intensive clients, are priority one. As they paid into getting this service into their operational workflow in their enterprise. We believe in making money from day 1.
[May]
Do you have any tokens in the works?
[Colin Charles]
Yes
[Daniel Saito]
Yup, that's why we are here talking to everyone.
IDO at the end of this month, find out more by going to starter.xyz
[May]
Thank you for sharing!
It's now time to take questions from our live audience.
In this 4th segment, I will open the group for some seconds for the live community to shoot you some pressing questions.
Please pick four original questions to answer.
Try to ignore generic, vague, and copy-paste questions 😊
Ready?
[Daniel Saito]
Hold on, let me tie my shoes.
OK. ready.
[Gil Bashan]
Ready, set, go
[Colin Charles]
/me trips @StrongNode_CEO
[May]
😂
3️⃣
2️⃣
1️⃣
🏌🏽
---Chat was then opened for the live community to send in their questions---
Segment 4 - Live Questions
[Femi Oyinloye]
Does StrongNode believe in building ethical innovations?
Can you tell us why you do what you do?
[Colin Charles]
Isn’t putting full reasonable use of your idle resources an ethical innovation? It is better than firing up more idle resources in data centers… it has a very circular economy ring to it, plus you’re getting rewarded and this isn’t a volunteer sort of thing
[Lestmaris Vera]
Currently, StrongNode is working on his big StrongNodeID project (SSO, open ID, KYC, etc.). What is StronNodeID? When will it be available? What benefits will it offer to the StrongNode community?
[Colin Charles]
Available end of the month, in a rudimentary fashion; benefit is that it is single sign-on (SSO) for other resources. We want to make it like “sign in with google” but for projects, we innovate on (and open it up for others)
[Orina Emine]
Do you have all your codes on Strong Node ready yet??
[Colin Charles]
We are working on this, so the answer is no it is not ready yet. Our Github is active, but still private
[Queen]
Would you want to partner with academic institutions like universities??
[Colin Charles]
Yes, definitely. University workloads are ideal to execute on the platform
[Abu]
Are you planning to promote your project in countries/regions where English is not good? Do you have a local community for them to better understand your project?
[Colin Charles]
Yes, we will build internationalization into our platform. And local communities will come, we have ambassador program stuff, please check the StrongNode telegram channel which I’m sure @StrongNode_CEO will invite you to
[May]
Aaaaaaand it's a wrap! 🎉🎉🎉
[Daniel Saito]
https://t.me/strongnodechat
[Gil Bashan]
Be sure to join all our social media channels to stay up to speed with everything. Technology is moving so fast, especially to the $EDGE
[Daniel Saito]
Join us here to find out more details on our IDO, and our product offering.
[May]
Huge appreciation to the amazing StrongNode team for connecting with us today!
[Daniel Saito]
visit us at strongnode.io
[May]
I'm interested in this! I'm sure the community is as well!
Thank you all for your time and patience!
Community, please direct all further questions here
https://t.me/strongnodechat
[Gil Bashan]
Follow our medium and be sure to 👏
https://medium.com/@strongnode
[May]
Sure!
Thank you, team! Strong Node is moon-bound!
Until next time, have a great day!
The AMA with StrongNode is now over.
[Daniel Saito]
Thanks, everyone
[Gil Bashan]
https://t.me/strongnodechat — come chat with us and the community
https://t.me/strongnode — announcements
https://twitter.com/strongnodeedge — stay on top of developments
https://medium.com/@strongnode — be sure to 👏
[Daniel Saito]
Invest responsibility, for your consideration and stay safe!
[Colin Charles]
Thanks, everyone!
[May]
😉
[Gil Bashan]
Thank you all, great to be part of this 💪 community
[May]
Glad to have you as well!
Thank you!
[Gil Bashan]
You will see us all around, thanks again