Waves Platform - Vision, Development, Business, Marketing - Sasha Ivanov Q&A Transcript

Intro

We are finishing consensus algorithm, POS algorithm which  is going to allow us to launch the full nodes. It took us a little bit  longer than we thought, some problems with network layer and Scala, some  technical issues that actually we didn`t know about but all of them all  solved at the moment and we are moving forward. At the same time we are  working on custom tokens. The essence of the Waves platform is the  ability to create, trade, transfer, issue custom tokens. I thought  initially that we will launch the main network without the tokens but we  have them almost done, so we are going to be launching both full nodes  and custom tokens. After that we are going to be working on LPOS that is  some cross between Bitshares delegated POS and Account Leasing from  NXT. This is going to allow us to offer a secure LPOS system, very fast,  where only like 100 hundred nodes process all the transactions. It is  some kind of centralization of course but it has to be there in order to  make system production ready. It can really make transactions faster  and it can make the system business oriented.

We are not trying  to build some network of laptops that can confirm transactions, we are  working on the system where handful of nodes process the transactions  but they can do it efficiently. That will be the next stage of our  development and after that we will have Waves as a pretty production  ready system that can be used for a variety of applications, for token  creations, you will be able to do a lot of things with it and it is  going to take us not so long. The time for it would be beginning of fall  where we have LPOS, centralized trading with blockchain settlement,  where you can trade with high speed on centralized servers but they  don`t control any funds and all transactions are settled on blockchain.  We are going to have it pretty soon. That will be first production  version of Waves platform. So these are our plans for the next several  weeks, few months.

I will be replying all the questions from the  channel now. Next week, I know that i have promised next week like two  weeks ago but this time it should be real. We are going to be launching  it on testnet and we will announce the bounty program for finding bugs  on the testnet. If you want to participate you are very welcome, if you  want to run testnet node you are very welcome too. I think it will pay  off for you in the long run. If you find the bugs you will be rewarded  with a bounty program. We like our community, we can see the interest  and we must make sure that we keep the ball rolling all the time,so  people don`t lose interest in helping us. Crypto is about cooperation  guys, because where there is some kind of separation, for example the  thing that happened to Ethereum recently, it is always bad, it can never  be good whatever people say. If people cooperate we all move forward.

Is there an existing fee plan for tokens, for using the platform, transacting, issuing, staking, crowdfunding?

Yes  there is a plan. Actually it will be determined dynamically, so there  is going to be some balance between the full nodes for how much they are  willing to process the transactions, more or less as it is in Bitcoin,  and the needs from the users, from the clients. There is going to be  some initial proposed fee schedule, our goal would be here to have like  100 full nodes that are processing most of the transactions and make  money with it, so we would reach some target, about 1k or 2k USD per  node. It has to be profitable and obviously node has to have potential  resources, dedicated server, so the costs will be like few hundred  dollars . To compensate for that the node has to make some money, so we  are going to be targeting this and all the fees from transactions,  assets issuance will be tailored to this.

Naturally also there  will be some more complicated structure, for example to issue asset you  will have to pay some more than just to send transaction but it won`t be  the fat fee for all the types of transactions because you use fees to  mitigate spam in your system, similar to Bitcoin. All the major,  essential operations will be quite cheap - transactions, issuance,  trading because you will have to pay fees for centralized matching. The  exchangers, the matchers will announce what the fee is and you will be  able to select the matcher, the exchanger with the lowest fee, so as i  said it is going to be dynamically determined but we will set some  initial values, so people can work from there and ultimate goal is to  have full nodes making like 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 USD a month for their  operations. The fees will be announced as we launch the assets and the  matchers. Fees should be adjusted to make this happen, so people have to  make some money.

Is it necessary to expand the team or the current team is able to do all the work?

We  will be hiring new people of course, but not so many people are in  crypto, not so many good coders are in crypto. I think we have enough  talent to create the core system and new people will be coming to us, so  we are fine at the moment. The core system will be created by the  current team and we will be hiring new people along the way. Currently i  am looking for several coders because we are starting to think about  several directions like smart contracts that are going to be realized in  different way, not like Ethereum. I don`t want to say anything bad  about their own way of doing it but there are different ways, so we want  to pursue different direction for smart contracts where only the full  nodes executes them, not all the nodes in the network, but only selected  nodes. It is simpler, more secure, it is not so decentralized but it  can have some advantages. So we are going to find the coders for the  smart contracts team, also i am looking for a coder who would be working  on secure messaging within Waves client. I have couple of coders who  would be willing to do that, we will see how it goes next week. If they  want to work with us we can negotiate.

Important is also matching  because we are working on exchange platform that will allow exchanges,  normal existing exchanges, i am talking to several exchanges - Bitcoin  and cryptocurrency exchanges, to interact with Waves, so they are going  to be matchers in the system. They are going to be matching bids and  asks but they won`t hold any funds, they will be doing matching only and  want to have this matching engine within our full nodes. It will be  allow us also not to be dependent on centralized exchanges, we will have  like full package where you can be a full node and at the same time you  can run the matching engine. We are going to do matching engine in  Scala. We are looking for some coders who are experienced with trading  engines and who are experienced in java. So this will be our third  coders team that we are going to hire now but the core system will be  developed by current team. I am really glad we hired the people we  hired, the core system is moving forward. I think we are going to hire 3  to 5 new coders within a month hopefully.

How are you connecting  to the markets outside the crypto, how is connection to banks going, i  see a lot of devs have banking experience, how we are going to get  connections outside the crypto?

We are talking to very many  payment providers who are willing to provide gateways for Waves. We  can`t announce it yet because we don`t have ready production system yet.  We are good and we are going to have fiat tokens as soon as we have  assets. We have to decide with who we are working now, because there are  like 3 or 4 companies that are going to do that and probably initially  we will have to have only one EUR and one USD token in our system  because otherwise it can get pretty complicated. We have to choose best  provider and start working with him, so there is no problem at all here,  we are just moving into direction that is actually perfect. We have  people interested in our product, i  want to mention that we are going  to be probably working with normal banks, they are interested in some  custom version of Waves platform for banks. I am talking to some banking  people now and we can work into that direction too. It is going to be  based on Waves codebase but it is going to to be tailored for banks and  use cases are numerous.

Use case we are targeting at the moment  is selling and buying individual credits, so for example when the  mortgage crisis in USA happened the problem was that they made some  packages out of 1000 mortgages and they sold them to other banks. You  couldn`t really evaluate each part of the packages, so you could have  very bad credits, very bad mortgages there. There is interest in banking  to provide some transparent system where you can see whole portfolio of  all the borrows in the system, so you can buy one by one and don`t have  to package them. You can create your own portfolio and there is going  to be something like transparent interbank system of lenders and  borrowers, it is very interesting development and can change a lot of  things. It can bring Waves platform to banking world. Of course the  platform, the open Waves platform will also benefit from this,  technically, financially, organizationally, so it can be very nice  development.

Also we have one of our team members who has the  extensive experience with banking, being a programmer in many banks for  many years. He is in UK now and exploring different possibilities for  creating some payment entity for Waves, that will be more tightly  connected to Waves. Our initial idea was to outsource all the payment  processing to third parties but at the same time we can consider  creating some our own e-currency system, which is properly licensed, to  have better control and maybe to implement certain things that can be  implemented later with third parties .This team member is on our  website, his name is Ivan and he is working on that now. He is talking  to UK banking people, evaluating the costs and if we really need to do  that. If we decide to do this it will be fully licensed payment provider  with UK registration. So we are talking to many banks and i think that  there is some mutual interest here and we are moving forward pretty  fast.

Are there any plans, possibilities for the Waves platform to eventually also become a payment solution for web shops?

Naturally  yes, as you probably know we don`t encourage using Waves tokens as  value transfer because we will be supporting fiat tokens in our network  but of course they will be accepted by web shops, so there is going to  be some merchant interface and everything. This is important, this is on  our to-do list, because there has to be some merchant interface pretty  straight forward and easy to deal with, so we are going to be solution  for web shops, so they can accept not only Waves tokens but also fiat  tokens in our network. This is the major direction naturally.

Are  you considering making international money transfers possible as  banking transfers are slow and fees are expensive now with banks or  platforms like PayPal?

Yes, sure we are working on international  money transfer and remittance, we are working on that with Mycelium.  They are implementing their new platform and Waves tokens are going to  become a part of it. So they will be implementing our fiat tokens within  their wallet and within their more general platform. Mycelium has great  vision, they are not only Bitcoin wallet, there is some bigger picture  there, they want to create some platform which can also include brick  and mortar businesses that can accept their payment card. They have very  nice hardware card that can work without existing Visa or Mastercard  networks, so they have the major payment platform and we will be working  with them on implementing our fiat tokens, and they will be implemented  in order to enable international money remittance. So you can send for  example USD to UK, they will be converted to GBP along the way  automatically.

Money remittance is very big scene and very many  groups are working on that, startups. It is not sold yet, probably we  could sell that or someone else but hopefully that`s going to be us.  Money remittance should be made cheaper, you have some directions of  money transfers where you have to pay like 5% in order to send money and  money is nothing else than information. You shouldn`t spend that much  on transferring just for several bytes of information, it clearly has to  be disrupted and money remittance is the thing we are focused on along  with crowdfunding. Major focus is on crowdfunding and value transfer, we  are working with Mycelium on making this real.

It seems to me  that business side of the project is very important, perhaps more  important than the tech, what is the strategy for developing business  relationships and is it working?

I want to partner up with as  many business as possible, they are open to cooperation. We are  approaching many banks and we were not rejected by anyone yet, i think  we are working pretty fine, our philosophy is based on cooperation. I  want to cooperate with as many businesses as possible and to make  product that is usable, that is needed, not like something i can extort  on people, businesses but i want to really meet the demand from the  existing businesses. Let`s see how it goes, for now we are moving pretty  fine.

What are the minimum required specifications to run full node ? Can RPi3 be enough?

I  don`t think RPI3 will be enough, we have some different philosophy  here, only good hardware can run the full node, so you don`t have to  have several thousand RPIs. Good hardware, server can do everything what  network needs. I think in the current stage of cryptocurrency  development this is a better option that can allow us to create  production ready system, that can`t be broken, that can be used by real  businesses without being afraid that whole network just goes down or  just forks into two networks. So we will be probably offering people to  install a good server with good hard drive, good amount of memory, some  good processor and to install it at the data center and to pay for it  like couple of hundred dollars but make at the same time much more.

What will be the amount of Waves necessary to run a node?

As  you know we will have LPOS system where network nodes can lease their  “balance” to miner and it can use this balance it borrows from the  network to mine/forge. Forging is used in NXT, like mining with your  stake. You will be able to announce that you have good server and that  you will be fully committed to provide additional security to the  network. In this case people will be leasing the balance to you, so you  can use their balance for mining. Actually you could have very small  amount of Waves to be mining, like 100, but if you can promote your  servers, announce some competitive fee, for example like you give 60% of  the Waves you mined back to people who lease you their Waves, in this  case you will become successful miner/forger in the network. So it  depends also on your commitment, determination to run a node to support  the network, not only on your balance.

You developed Coinomat,  yet ShapeShift being top, dominant player. With a Waves project are you  purposely holding any cards close to your chest or doing things bit  differently, so competitor can`t copy your idea and beat you to it like  it happened in the past?

Subconsciously i have this in mind and i  always remember that, so yes, because Coinomat was first instant  cryptocurrency exchange, basicly we invented this business but then  ShapeShift came and became a dominant player. I am quite experienced in  things that can happen. Actually Coinomat is going to to become one of  the gateways for Waves, we have been discussing it with the developer of  Coinomat because i am not the only person here, now we have some common  ground and he will be developing gateway for Waves. It is not going to  be one of the major gateways but it will be one of them. All other  functionality will stay there, so you will have card transfers, instant  exchange, everything Coinomat had before but at the same time it is  going to be gateway for Waves.

You are always saying that it is long term investment and that it will pay off, why are you so super certain about it?

I  have to be certain, because i am in the process, i am in the core of  Waves odyssey. I can see how it develops and i am confident that we are  going to do it and i am completely sure that everything what we promised  will be realized. What can i tell you...just have a little patience.

Where will be the announcement about full nodes made?

I will do it on twitter.

In regards to exchange features could you go into detail on how margin trading will be implemented on the Waves platform?

It  can be implemented the same way it is implemented currently on the  centralized exchanges because we don`t change that infrastructure, what  we change is the way exchanges hold users funds. All the matching, all  the margin trading is going to remain exactly the same. It is like best  of the two worlds, centralized matching with high frequency trading and  funds are held not at the exchange but in other places that exchange has  no connection to. We are not changing the way how centralized exchanges  are doing their trading, so we can have the same margin trading and it  will depend on the functionality of the matcher/exchange not on the  Waves functionality itself. What we provide is blockchain settlement,  but we will be providing also order matching. Hopefully some bigger  exchanges will come and will use our servers as blockchain settlement  platform at the same time having all their functionality in place like  margin trading, lending within the platform and everything.

Will we be able to trade whatever cryptocurrency we wish on exchange?

You  have to connect your cryptocurrency to Waves token, so you will have to  have some multisignature functionality within this cryptocurrency. If  you have it you can do that, you can store it securely, you send it to  some multisignature address, it is accepted, at the same time  corresponding token is issued and you can trade it next on Waves  platform. It is more or less the same when you make deposit to exchange.  You send money and they credit your balance, here you send it to some  multisignature account and it sends you back the Waves token. It is much  more secure but conceptually it is pretty close.

Can you name  other companies planning to list on Waves decentralized exchange.  Perhaps that banking platform you mentioned before?

Yes it can be  integrated in the banking platform and also all the tokens that are  issued on Waves can be traded on the decentralized exchange, so it has  to be automatic because for example there also can be an exchange,  centralized exchange that can trade or offer services for some tokens  but not offer them for some other tokens. Exactly for this we are  creating this module for matching, that you can install and provide the  matcher servers for your token. You can issue your token and provide the  matching service for it. It has to be completely fair, so if you issue  your token it can be traded with very high speeds at the centralized  exchange, all has to be automatic.

I am looking forward to Chinese Yuan, do you have any input on this?

Yes,  we will be working on Chinese Yuan naturally, first we are going to  have EUR and USD. EUR probably is going to be the first. If some Chinese  payment providers are watching me now please contact me. Yuan is very important of course too.

What sort of efforts are being made to  add additional exchanges and how this effort is progressing? Has  Poloniex ever gave solid reason as to why they haven`t listed Waves yet  or is it an assumption that they are waiting for full nodes?

As  ia have told you we are trying to create some alternative to existing  exchanges, so i am very open to work with all the exchanges who want to  work with us. I can understand the frustration why we aren`t on Poloniex  yet but we will be there in due time. I personally think they are  waiting for full nodes and i am not pushing them because i think it is  not that important. In the long term other things are important because  we are creating some alternative mechanism for exchanges. We are going  to have our own exchange in a way and i am totally sure that we will be  on all major exchanges when we have full nodes and i really hope that  all major exchanges are going to use our tech, our blockchain settlement  tech to make their operations more secure. As for Poloniex i have been  talking to them, i don`t want to push them, don`t see any reason to do  that, so they will have us when they see fit i think and that should be  as soon as we have full nodes imo. I think everything is going to be all  right.

What is the status of tech paper? Is it going to come out at the same time as the full nodes?

We  are going to have several tech papers including one academic paper. We  have major cryptographer working on some algorithm, on some proof which  is going to be used for confirming transactions on Waves network and  that article is almost ready. It is going to be not a whitepaper but  proper academic article which will be submitted to peer review for  journals. He will present it at the conference and will be talking about  this approach. At the same time i have started to write LPOS whitepaper  and there is going to be another whitepaper about our blockchain  settlement approach. So we are going to have 2 whitepapers and 1  academic paper within a month i think and there are going to be also  others.

We are working with guy from Germany who wants to write  2FA system, he is cryptographer and he wants to implement his 2FA idea  he has on the Waves blockchain, so that could be another article. Some  other directions are also there, so we will have a lot of papers, don`t  worry about it. You will be able to see all the progress because i will  be uploading all the drafts, so you can see that we are working, how we  are thinking about things that we are going to realize. I will share  LPOS whitepaper next week, so you can see we are thinking about best way  to implement a secure POS system which is not easy, because POS is more  tricky than POW. It has its advantages but it has to be made secure,  the are some attack vectors that should be taken care of and we have to  proceed really carefully here.

What is your opinion on rival technologies such as Bitshares and Heat Ledger?

I  don`t know Heat Ledger, i am sorry, i have to read up on that.  Bitshares is cool, i don`t have anything against it, they are probably  not moving fast now, i don`t know what happend to them exactly, i can  see they are not making any significant progress but it is good  platform. What i really didn`t like about Bitshares is their pegged  assets because imo that idea will never work, because you can`t really  provide the dynamic peg. It can just break down and you can`t do  anything about it, it is an idea for the test, not production ready  idea. All the rest is pretty good with Bitshares and i don`t really  think we compete. We have different niche, i wish them all the best, i  think they have some business ideas.

Any word on new video you have spoken serveral weeks ago?

We  just made our new website with old video but it is time to replace it  yes. In the building where we rent our office space there are like 10  video production companies, i will be approaching them one by one and  will negotiate the best price. We will have new video within a couple of  weeks. We have to have good script for it, we have nice video but i  don`t really like the script there, so we will have to come up with  better script, so it is more accessible to people. We have to invent  very nice script, so people can really understand what Waves platform is  about.

Will the community get expenses report, any work on that?

Ok,  let`s do it at the end of the month, so what we are doing with our  Bitcoin, let me explain i am sure you are all curious. We exchanged some  into fiat, it was something about 4000 Bitcoin because it was good  moment for this, it was before the halving and now we are just moving to  cold wallets from Coinbase. Coinbase is nice platform but you know it  is like you can never be sure, i think they are absolutely legit but  they had some issues with Ethereum recently, so we are moving Bitcoin to  our cold wallets now and you can`t move more than 2500 BItcoins at one  time from Coinbase, so we have to do it in batches. We won`t spend it,  it will last us for years, the budget we have and will allow us to  realize everything we want. We are good financially and i will be  providing all expenses reports. If you want to know our burn rate is  like i think 50,000 USD to 60,000 USD per month atm. It is not that big  because Ethereum spent like 300,000 USD and we spend much less. So let  me make the report at the end of the month.

Are there any freelance contract marketing positions available?

If  you want to work with us, just write to me on Slack or to some other  team member. Sometimes i get too many messages. You can contact me in  some other way or just write in general. I will talk to you and we will  work our something for sure.

Will one be able to create token within Mycelium wallet utilizing the Waves platform?

Yes,  first we will have fiat tokens then we will have general assets, so you  will be able to create Waves token within the Mycelium wallet.

Will Mycelium handle transactions through Waves platform?

Absolutely they will.

Do you think that there was price suppression and why you think it is happening?

Yes,  someone has tried to bring Waves down. I don`t really think we need to  prevent somehow people from doing this. If they want to dump, let them  dump. People who have faith and who can see that we are working,  developing and moving forward they will just buy their tokens, so i  think it is ok. At the beginning after ICO yes, someone tried to play us  but you know we can`t be played and i just don`t care that much about  that. What i care about is long term, this is the most important. If you  want to just flip Waves token i can`t really help you because i care  only about long term investors that support our network. They are like  the partners. If someone wants to dump let them do it, some smarter  people are going to pick it up.

What is the impact of NXT 2.0, Stratis releases on a Waves success?

As  you know NXT platform is developing, so i am really happy for them, i  wish them all the best. They are pursuing very interesting direction  with the sidechains. Actually there is no production ready sidechain  platform yet, Lisk maybe but it is also not so production ready, so if  NXT guys are able to do that i will be happy for them. I don`t really  think sidechains is the way to go but i can be wrong. I don`t know so  much about Stratis, i have talked to project manager, as far i  understand it is some kind of blockchain on-demand platform, i might be  wrong.

What is going on with current assets on the NXT?

As  you know i have launched several assets on NXT platform, Coinomat,  NEXT, Cryptofund, some other assets, so as soon as we have tokens  running we will be transferring these assets to Waves platform. It is  going to be interesting because we can test how it works with our own  assets, wipe out all the bugs and stuff like that, so all going to be  moved from NXT chain to the Waves chain as promised.

What is the team dynamics? Do you take breaks and have fun? ping pong, pool table, football, going to movies?

Actually,  we didn`t have some kind of party yet, we will have this i think next  week because it is time, you may not believe me but it is true we didn`t  have a party yet. The spirit is good, it is all good here actually.

Basically, how is a working day like at Waves physical location?

People  come here around 10 AM and we go home around 9 PM, i am here every day  too and many people make just a mix from home. It is not strict, i hate  this thing when you have to have some very strict schedule when you have  to be there at 9 AM, when you come late you have to pay fine and stuff  like that. It is just a meeting point for all the coders and they can  code from home, it is not a problem because we have also many  freelancers, our designer Carlos is working like from very far from  here, also frontend developer Tobias is living in Germany, so it is like  you don`t have to be in the office to be coding, you can still interact  with people remotely.

You said that matching system will be on full node, in the asset specification it says it is centralized, what is it?

As  i have told you yes it is centralized exchange that is connected to  Waves network and just matches bids and asks, just matching orders and  it can settle all the trades on the blockchain. It doesn`t hold the  assets, it is different with Bitcoin because you have to accept Bitcoin  and issue an asset corresponding to the Bitcoin you accept. So you have  to store it somewhere but it can also be made much more securely in this  case, so it is centralized matching with decentralized settlement.

You said that there will be 100 full nodes, will Waves team be running any of these nodes?

Naturally, we have to see how it works for ourselves.

Will any of the delegates be voted by Waves team?

You  vote will your balance, so if you have money you vote with your money,  you can`t cast a vote just like that, you have to have some balance but  you don`t to mine/forge, you just want to lease your balance to  professional servers, so it can stay up 24/7 and share profits with you.  You just send your "balance" to that node, at the same time you have  full control over your real balance. You can send payments, you can do  whatever you want. It is just forging/mining power that is transferred  to a mining/forging node.

Is voting for delegates 1:1 or i can vote for the delegates with the same weight?

You can lease your balance to as many nodes as you wish.

Do you have plans to work with SuperNET?

With  James yes, i think we can have something working together. James is a  great guy, i like his vision and i think we will have something further  down the road that we can do together.

Do you have already some ventures in the pipeline to crowdfund on Waves?

Yes  we have like 10-20 projects who approached us, i can`t mention them,  very different products. We have two projects for example from  Australia, several projects from Russia, pretty serious ones. You will  see for yourselves soon.

What are the future plans for Waves marketing promotion?

As  soon as we have the tech ready we are going to be promoting the hell  out of it. I think the most of the funds we will be spending will be  spent on marketing. You can really develop the code for not so much  money but to market a thing you need to spend a lot. We will have a  major media campaign as soon as we have tokens and we will be targeting  startups, all the businesses that could raise funds through  crowdfunding, all the crowdfunding communities, so it is going to be big  because our marketing team is actually waiting for this moment when they can start promoting.

All projects can have delays but i  think Waves delayed much more that you have said, what do you think  about delays, is there any plan to cut delays?

We might be  delayed by a week or two, but we are on track, it is all going to be  there, you can`t really predict 100% correct how the development will be  unfolding, so if you look deep into detail you can see some problems  and issues but in the bigger picture we have absolutely no issues, we  are on track, we don`t delay anything. Please don`t create any drama,  there shouldn`t be any. We are moving quite fast and we are implementing  new ideas, for example we wanted to realize the exchange thing  differently in the beginning, i had an idea to do it like NXT when you  have all trading directly on blockchain but then we realized it is not  the way to go, we just made a pivot and we are creating something very  interesting, something that we really didn`t plan to do but that can  become a game changer. We come up with new ideas every day, so i like  the way we are developing and we are moving forward, so please don`t  create so much drama.

What steps in the team have been taken for  marketing advertising and do you have plans to attempt Bitcoin meetups  and conventions to gather more interest from the Bitcoin community?

Absolutely  i went to very nice conference in Odessa in July, we met with Charles  Hoskinson there and with other nice people, probably i will go to China  in September. I am waiting for the tech to be ready to be able to  promote it better. Now I am focused on the technology, because there is  time to focus on promotion and there is time to focus on tech.

Will Waves and IOHK be funding the Scorex foundation 50/50?

The  idea is that we fund it together. It is separate entity because Scorex  team is researchers team who don`t want to do production systems. They  want to do research and we have to respect that. So it is going to be  separate entity and it will be funded by IOHK, Waves and maybe some  other groups who are interested in using the code.

When wallet can be protected by 2FA?

It  will be, you can`t create 2FA system easily on the blockchain, it is  tricky because you have to have some randomness on blockchain and  actually there is none, so you have to find a source for randomness on  blockchain. There are some ways, @Hawky suggested one but there are some  backdoors because it is quite complicated, you would have to create new  2FA token after each transaction, so it is quite tricky.

Is there any chance that full nodes won`t be released next week, because of the network issues on Scala?

There  is some small delay but testnet will be live next week, you will be  able to test, at the same time we will finish the custom tokens and we  will launch full nodes together with tokens, i think it is going to be  even better. We will have tokens functionality and people will be able  to issue, run their crowdfunding campaigns soon after we have full  nodes.

You have said that you are talking with a bank for a new platform based on Waves platform?

It  is not European, not Russian, it is central Asian bank, some country in  Asia that is interested. The banking people i am talking to are talking  directly to central banks there, so they have top tier connections.  Country is probably not so big but it is good beginning in any case. In  Russia, it is trickier because everything in Russia is quite tricky.  They are not going to ban Bitcoin, probably we will be working with some  Russian banks too. It is easier to implement certain things outside the  Russia.

Is there any plan to expand the market to Latin America, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico. Do you have any contact?

Yes  i have been approached by many people from Latin America for example,  so it is just matter of time, matter of focus, so as soon we have major  currencies like EUR, USD we will be working with smaller currencies,  they are also very important. You can have very great use case of your  technology in some smaller country, like some demo, next you can show it  to everybody. The same this banking group that is going to implement  Waves platform in Asian country, so you can show it to people that it is  working there, can scale and can work anywhere.

Why did you put up a 200 Bitcoin buy wall and why did you remove it?

When  did it happen actually? Please elaborate on that, because i put a wall  after the ICO and i bought more than 2 million Waves back and i am happy  about it, i would buy more.

Do you like vodka?

I don`t  drink much guys, i can drink socially but that`s all, i don`t really  drink much. Trying to having healthy lifestyle more or less.

Has Waves foundation been registered in Germany yet ? I remember that was a thing.

Yes  we are in process and actually i decided to diversify a bit, so we will  have also other local foundations and i will be registering UK one next  week. Process will be faster than in Germany, Germany is taking us a  little bit too long. In the end, we will have German one and UK one, and  probably Asian one in Hong Kong or Singapore.

Assets and gateways issuance is coming by the end of September?

We  will have assets next week i think, all the necessary tech stuff, like  preliminary tech stuff that has to be done, has already been done, so we  will have to create frontend for this. So we will have asset creation  on testnet next week i think, so it is faster than the September.

So  guys i am very deep into this, i can sometimes be little bit more  optimistic than what actually happens but please bear with me. I am  doing my best to make it work, i hope you will understand. Thank you  guys. Probably next week we will have radio show with CORE team, with  Lootz and week after that we can have another Q&A session if you  like. It has been my pleasure, i hope you liked it. See you guys later.