TIBA AMA Recap #1 — Conflux
This post was originally published on blog.thu-tiba.org
On the 7th of August, TIBA kicked off its new AMA series. We are going to host regular ask me anything sessions with fascinating blockchain projects from China and around the world. We’d like to give the international community direct access to these projects and a chance to ask whatever you’re interested in. Scan the QR code below to get invited to the TIBA #AMA WeChat group and find out more!
Our first guest was Zhe Tang, operations manager at Conflux. Conflux is a blockchain startup with strong ties to Tsinghua University’s famous Yao class. Backed by the Turing-award winning professor Andrew Yao, the team at Conflux is working on a new, DAG-based PoW smart contract platform. On the 7th of August, we had the chance to ask Zhe about what Conflux is about, and how they imagine the future.
If you’re experienced in blockchain matters, you might ask: ”Why PoW?” Zhe argued that Proof-of-Work is still the only consensus mechanism that can build trust — through its ability to ensure security and decentralization. As for the 3rd component, performance, Zhe shared some insights into their consensus algorithm called Tree-Graph. The trick is to include all blocks in the ledger, instead of discarding competing forks. Using this approach, Conflux claims to have reached over 3000 TPS (transactions per second).
On the smart contract side, Conflux seeks to be fully EVM-compatible. This means that Ethereum smart contracts can be directly deployed on Conflux. Zhe welcomes dApp (decentralized application) developers to realize their novel business ideas on Conflux’s high-performance platform.
As for building a company during the bear market, Zhe was optimistic. He claims that the relative lack of hype and FOMO is a better environment for steady building and technical breakthroughs. As an example, he mentions the confirmation times on the Conflux network, which was reduced from 5 minutes to ~30 seconds. This means that, after you send a transaction, it is finalized and accepted (or rejected) within less than a minute.
What’s it like to build a blockchain project in the heart of China? Zhe shared that it’s easy to find quality talent, financial resources, and the general drive to #BUIDL. To him, these outweigh the general sense of regulatory uncertainty. Talking about regulation, you might wonder, is there going to be an ICO? Zhe’s answer is: ”hells to the no!” Conflux is doing what he called an IBO — Initial Bounty Offering, encouraging their community to get rewarded as they contribute.
How to get involved? Zhe mentioned their new Chinese bounty program, with the multi-lingual version on its way. By contributing using your developer expertise, your art skills, or your connections, the team will reward your efforts in FansCoin (FC), which is an ERC-20-like smart contract on the Conflux testnet. You can swap your FC for CFX once the mainnet starts in 2020 Q1.
If you want to know more about Conflux, check out their website or read their whitepaper! To learn more about TIBA and join the discussion, scan the QR code below!
This article was written and edited by Péter Garamvölgyi.
