[PRE-ANN] OPAIR | Decentralized Debit Cards | OCaml | New Blockchain Platform

[baggle]

I'm interested in the project but i wonder... What are the difference between OPAIR and others projects close to it, as stratis? why should we invest in OPAIR? 

[wasserman99]

I'm interested in the project but i wonder... What are the difference between OPAIR and others projects close to it, as stratis? why should we invest in OPAIR? 

We have nothing in common except the fact that both are descendants of bitcoin. As far I know, they are offering his solution as BaaS (Blockchain-as-a-Service) and we are covering the entire spectrum and offer a complete ecosystem that will serve both the ordinary user as large entities that want to make use of our benefits. Take a look:

 

• Colored Coins

Our goal is to provide support to the Colored Coins, whose objective is to represent and manage any value/asset/fungible good (like equities, bonds, commodities, fiat currencies, game items, etc.) on top of the Opair blockchain. They can be stored digitally without the interference of a third party and be exchanged for other colored coins or standard XPO in a transaction. The code that is responsible for managing the Colored Coins is in the top of the Opair blockchain, so all implementations will allow its use within our wallet and will not need a specific client. This will provide more simplicity, security, will be more capable.

• Smart Contracts

As regards Smart Contracts (to support DAOs, legal contracts, crowdfundings, prediction markets, IoT, Prediction Markets, Dapps, etc.) we decided to work with functional programming instead of imperative programming languages after doing some research on Solidity. Although neither Haskell nor OCaml, the most recognizable functional programming languages, meet our expectations we decided to work with a personalized version of Ocaml. Soon we will be offering a wiki in Github with documents on the language but if you already handle OCaml you should have no problems with it. Our approach will not be to get an easy to code language, instead it will be reaching a solid solution that it will not be easy to be manipulated but it will make a difference. Some considerations about Haskell and Ocaml:

1) Although OCaml a fewer number collection of libraries, these have higher quality than Haskell.

2) OCaml has more presence in industrial and financial solutions. It has a great support for parallel and concurrent computing.

3) Haskell has typeclasses. OCaml has higher-order modules. Typeclasses are good "in the small" for things like overloading arithmetic operators. Modules are good "in the large" for structural industrial-size code bases. For Example: https://ocaml.org/learn/companies.html

4) Both of them have strong points but we had to make up our minds and we chose OCaml for the reasons listed above. For those who handle both languages will surely agree on the fact that OCaml is easier to handle.  

Furthermore we intend to meet online with Xavier Leroy, the main developer of the OCaml System to show him our modifications and insights behind our project. Some more examples: http://cufp.galois.com/2007/slides/XavierLeroy.pdf

• Market Core with decentralized reputation system

The market will allow you to buy and sell gods or services from the Opair´s platform. It will include a system of reputation in which anyone who has made business can qualify the seller bringing trust and transparency. Also it will be separated by categories and tags.

• Private chains

In those cases there will be an entity that will manage the blockchain which can change the  rules, if so desired, revert transactions and modify balances and so on given that they have the write permissions (they can be either public or not).  

Along by the private chains we will give support to a more descentralised (semi) alternative known as consortium chains which will be run by a pre-elected set of nodes instead of only one. Likewise, they will count with advantages with regard to the mainchain depending on the circumstances such as:

1)   It should be point out that speed of transactions will be greater in comparison to the offered in the mainchain due to the fact that there will be few nodes verified and given they are all mostly reliable it will not be necessary to verify them all. These will count with high end computers and the best internet connection.  

2)   Every block chain will be configurable under certain standards that we will establish which will show the requirements and goals of their creators.

3)   Transactions will be far cheaper than the mainchain given that only a few nodes will have to be verified (there will be no need of charging if there is only one person who processes all of the transactions).

As you can imagine these blockchains offer a more efficient, faster and outstanding solution mostly for companies and financial or governamental organizations who can use it for auditing, developing or optimize their organization. Also it will work as a testing ground mostly to test smart contracts, develop or just to play around. Even though in most cases public chains are outstanding, it is equally true that in particular cases a greater control over the chain is imperative. We want to offer along with our platform a solution for both cases.

• Alias System

We want to create an ALIAS system. It will work with a registration, similar to domains, to leave behind those long and tiring traditional adresses. This will benefit especially but not excusively to businesses who wish to join our network.

• Decentralized debit cards

Debit cards were in our minds since day one, for it is one of the preferred payment methods of customers nowadays and we aim to mass market adoption, so this goal may not be too surprising. The idea is to eliminate all the intermediaries in the process in order to save time and money, and also the unwanted consequences that brings centralization (frozen accounts, delays, usage of our own private information, etc). Note that it will have disadvantages such as if you wish to create and load your own cards you will need to have a particular hardware. On the other hand, there will be lots of payment terminals/point of sale terminals that will receive a special update with a custom firmware made by us in order to accept our debit cards (this will happen with payment terminals/point of sale non- EMV compatibles). In most terminals compatible with EMV (for more information about EMV visit: http://www.emv-connection.com/emv-faq/ and https://www.level2kernel.com/emv-guide.html) will work without any problems but you can still use our firmware to have advantages like counting with Opair´s branding or offer high performance.    

It is a system that still needs work on optimization in further tests because we are running tests that run on approximately 8 to 9 seconds per transaction. Said function is going to be one of the first to be optimized in our Beta version (you can find out below how to participate on Beta version).  

Our final goal it is that any person can create their own debit card, anywhere, and a few moments later, carry it out and about without difficulties. We would like to be the firsts in launching this feature that we will be seeked and cherished in the near future and as we are an open source project we would like to share it to all the community as we understand this philosophy as a benefit that benefits the community as a whole. This will also allow growth, improvement and usage from other projects. We understand that Emunie is working in a similar solution but it still not publicly available therefore if we manage to keep it up and running steadily in first place, it will be brilliant. We would like to have a meeting, given the territorial closeness with Fuserleer, which can be very beneficial for both projects. We will try to arrange a meeting between Frank and Fuserleer in the future.  

• Crowdfunding platform

We aim to create a platform that can boost any innovating idea that needs resources or budget to take off. You just need to set a goal, rewards and a deadline. Another perk is that you will find the security that brings a decentralized platform, open sourced and without intermediaries taking big percentages from investments.

• Transactions speed and Scalability

When we speak of scalability, we must speak about one of the most important problems found in blockchains nowadays, that’s why we want Opair to be prepared since day one to support more transactions per second than Bitcoin’s network allows and to offer a top speed for each transaction (seconds, not minutes). This has to be a must-have if we want to reach all audiences and that it enables its use all over the world.  

Ideally we would like, for starters, to get a 200 tps and build up from there as usage grows (as a remainder Bitcoin’s network is restricted to a sustained rate of 7 tps due to the Bitcoin protocol restricting block sizes to 1 MB). Even though there are current solutions that offer 1000 tps  (or more) we believe that they are not following the line of work that we would like. We are taking into consideration a lot of elements like blockchain size, internet bandwidth, processing power, private chains etc., when it comes to outline the course that our solution will offer and analyzing the different alternatives on this subject. On the other hand, regarding private chains, as we said before each of them will be completely configurable under some standards in which the needs and goals of the creators will be reflected. Also given the features mentioned above, they do not have scalability issues, at least not in comparison to public chain.

More information will be available on our White Paper.  

• Privacy Solutions

This is a distant future fieldwork because it is something we do not want to overlook but we understand there more pressing fieldworks before focusing on this matter.  

Speaking about current solutions we discourage the implementation of ring signatures because it “only” generates more layer of anonymity in transactions and not full anonymity. At the moment we do not have clear the path that we will establish in this matter and this will be something we will definitely define in the future given its importance.    

After analyzing current technologies, we consider Zcash proposal is outstanding and it is the only one that offers the level of anonymity that we want to give Opair. Zooko Wilcox and their team behind Zcash have a great solution in their hands and they are a sample of the innovation that can be achieved in that area. Any workthrough regarding the matter will be communicated through our media channels.

[BasementRot]

You say 91% is going to PoW?

-   Approximately 9% of the coins will be distributed to early supporters in ICO procedure to participating users based on their contribution in the total amount of the raised funds. The sale procedure will be taking place at https://www.opair.co/invest/. In our site we are offering a SSL encryption and a two-factor authentication security.
-   Approximately 91% of the coins will be distributed on PoW phase until 525600th block.

Important Update

The PoW phase was stipulated to occupy 30% of the distribution during the period of 1 year but many people have complained that 30% via PoW may be manipulated by whales so after talking to Frank and Hao we reached a consensus on the new distribution. We have changed the official percentages of 70-30 to 91-9 (90.81 to 9.19 to be exact). And we continue to maintain 0% for us, as in the beginning.

Looks like a typo?

[wasserman99]

You say 91% is going to PoW?

-   Approximately 9% of the coins will be distributed to early supporters in ICO procedure to participating users based on their contribution in the total amount of the raised funds. The sale procedure will be taking place at https://www.opair.co/invest/. In our site we are offering a SSL encryption and a two-factor authentication security.
-   Approximately 91% of the coins will be distributed on PoW phase until 525600th block.

Important Update

The PoW phase was stipulated to occupy 30% of the distribution during the period of 1 year but many people have complained that 30% via PoW may be manipulated by whales so after talking to Frank and Hao we reached a consensus on the new distribution. We have changed the official percentages of 70-30 to 91-9 (90.81 to 9.19 to be exact). And we continue to maintain 0% for us, as in the beginning.

Looks like a typo?

No BasementRot, it is the opposite (9% PoW-91% ICO), in the first text that you quoted we had mistyped. It is already corrected.

[kooke]

I want to know what time the ICO begins tomorrow

[wasserman99]

I want to know what time the ICO begins tomorrow

At 00.00 hours (EDT) on July 26.

[kooke]

Thanks ! If I understand how it works and what they want to create, the impact of decentralized debit card will be massive. Once this is available, we will go straight to the moon without stop.

[YIz]

Are you sure that the 9% is enough for the PoW stage? it sounds really low and would attract less attention to the coin when the ICO ends.

[wasserman99]

Are you sure that the 9% is enough for the PoW stage? it sounds really low and would attract less attention to the coin when the ICO ends.

To be exact, its 9.19, not 9  Leaving aside the joke. We believe that this percentage will serve for a stable and fair distribution.

Another Translation

French

[enhu]

where is the signature campaign thread? would like to join.

[wasserman99]

You can find it in our second post in this thread. Here is the link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1559043.0

[blg42598]

I'm in, just joined the sig campaign.

[wasserman99]

Welcome aboard !

[altcoinrich]

Awesome, 9% to POW which is good to me, and when will you launch? How long after ico ends?  

This is on OP is wrong   •  Block Reward: 55 coin per block – until 525600th block    55*525600 is 29M coins.

I think u should re-edit your OP.

[wavespump]

Awesome, 9% to POW which is good to me, and when will you launch? How long after ico ends?  

This is on OP is wrong   •  Block Reward: 55 coin per block – until 525600th block    55*525600 is 29M coins.

I think u should re-edit your OP.

Good find, 74M*9.19%= 6800600 coins,

6800600/525600= 12.9387 coins per block.

[wasserman99]

Awesome, 9% to POW which is good to me, and when will you launch? How long after ico ends?   

This is on OP is wrong   •  Block Reward: 55 coin per block – until 525600th block    55*525600 is 29M coins.

I think u should re-edit your OP.

Awesome, 9% to POW which is good to me, and when will you launch? How long after ico ends?   

This is on OP is wrong   •  Block Reward: 55 coin per block – until 525600th block    55*525600 is 29M coins.

I think u should re-edit your OP.

Good find, 74M*9.19%= 6800600 coins,

6800600/525600= 12.9387 coins per block.

Yes, the block rewards info its outdated. We have changed the percentages few hours ago as you know.

For now, we just simply delete that data from OP, since we do not know how long will be the new PoW phase with the new change. We're still debating this point. Thanks to both.

[bspus]

When is the spreadsheet with the bounties coming? Please don't say tomorrow 

Can someone explain the idea of colored coins and why it's useful relative to uncolored ones?

I saw the video and read the part but I still don't understand what it's supposed to be

[wavespump]

Awesome, 9% to POW which is good to me, and when will you launch? How long after ico ends?   

This is on OP is wrong   •  Block Reward: 55 coin per block – until 525600th block    55*525600 is 29M coins.

I think u should re-edit your OP.

Awesome, 9% to POW which is good to me, and when will you launch? How long after ico ends?   

This is on OP is wrong   •  Block Reward: 55 coin per block – until 525600th block    55*525600 is 29M coins.

I think u should re-edit your OP.

Good find, 74M*9.19%= 6800600 coins,

6800600/525600= 12.9387 coins per block.

Yes, the block rewards info its outdated. We have changed the percentages few hours ago as you know.

For now, we just simply delete that data from OP, since we do not know how long will be the new PoW phase with the new change. We're still debating this point. Thanks to both.

OK, now i get it: total supply 74M, 90.81% goes to ICO investors, 9.19% goes to POW, after POW, will be POS phase.

[darkjack]

I'm interested in the project but i wonder... What are the difference between OPAIR and others projects close to it, as stratis? why should we invest in OPAIR? 

We have nothing in common except the fact that both are descendants of bitcoin. As far I know, they are offering his solution as BaaS (Blockchain-as-a-Service) and we are covering the entire spectrum and offer a complete ecosystem that will serve both the ordinary user as large entities that want to make use of our benefits. Take a look:

https://i.imgur.com/tcnk6Iz.png

 

• Colored Coins

Our goal is to provide support to the Colored Coins, whose objective is to represent and manage any value/asset/fungible good (like equities, bonds, commodities, fiat currencies, game items, etc.) on top of the Opair blockchain. They can be stored digitally without the interference of a third party and be exchanged for other colored coins or standard XPO in a transaction. The code that is responsible for managing the Colored Coins is in the top of the Opair blockchain, so all implementations will allow its use within our wallet and will not need a specific client. This will provide more simplicity, security, will be more capable.

• Smart Contracts

As regards Smart Contracts (to support DAOs, legal contracts, crowdfundings, prediction markets, IoT, Prediction Markets, Dapps, etc.) we decided to work with functional programming instead of imperative programming languages after doing some research on Solidity. Although neither Haskell nor OCaml, the most recognizable functional programming languages, meet our expectations we decided to work with a personalized version of Ocaml. Soon we will be offering a wiki in Github with documents on the language but if you already handle OCaml you should have no problems with it. Our approach will not be to get an easy to code language, instead it will be reaching a solid solution that it will not be easy to be manipulated but it will make a difference. Some considerations about Haskell and Ocaml:

1) Although OCaml a fewer number collection of libraries, these have higher quality than Haskell.

2) OCaml has more presence in industrial and financial solutions. It has a great support for parallel and concurrent computing.

3) Haskell has typeclasses. OCaml has higher-order modules. Typeclasses are good "in the small" for things like overloading arithmetic operators. Modules are good "in the large" for structural industrial-size code bases. For Example: https://ocaml.org/learn/companies.html

4) Both of them have strong points but we had to make up our minds and we chose OCaml for the reasons listed above. For those who handle both languages will surely agree on the fact that OCaml is easier to handle.  

Furthermore we intend to meet online with Xavier Leroy, the main developer of the OCaml System to show him our modifications and insights behind our project. Some more examples: http://cufp.galois.com/2007/slides/XavierLeroy.pdf

• Market Core with decentralized reputation system

The market will allow you to buy and sell gods or services from the Opair´s platform. It will include a system of reputation in which anyone who has made business can qualify the seller bringing trust and transparency. Also it will be separated by categories and tags.

• Private chains

In those cases there will be an entity that will manage the blockchain which can change the  rules, if so desired, revert transactions and modify balances and so on given that they have the write permissions (they can be either public or not).  

Along by the private chains we will give support to a more descentralised (semi) alternative known as consortium chains which will be run by a pre-elected set of nodes instead of only one. Likewise, they will count with advantages with regard to the mainchain depending on the circumstances such as:

1)   It should be point out that speed of transactions will be greater in comparison to the offered in the mainchain due to the fact that there will be few nodes verified and given they are all mostly reliable it will not be necessary to verify them all. These will count with high end computers and the best internet connection.  

2)   Every block chain will be configurable under certain standards that we will establish which will show the requirements and goals of their creators.

3)   Transactions will be far cheaper than the mainchain given that only a few nodes will have to be verified (there will be no need of charging if there is only one person who processes all of the transactions).

As you can imagine these blockchains offer a more efficient, faster and outstanding solution mostly for companies and financial or governamental organizations who can use it for auditing, developing or optimize their organization. Also it will work as a testing ground mostly to test smart contracts, develop or just to play around. Even though in most cases public chains are outstanding, it is equally true that in particular cases a greater control over the chain is imperative. We want to offer along with our platform a solution for both cases.

• Alias System

We want to create an ALIAS system. It will work with a registration, similar to domains, to leave behind those long and tiring traditional adresses. This will benefit especially but not excusively to businesses who wish to join our network.

• Decentralized debit cards

Debit cards were in our minds since day one, for it is one of the preferred payment methods of customers nowadays and we aim to mass market adoption, so this goal may not be too surprising. The idea is to eliminate all the intermediaries in the process in order to save time and money, and also the unwanted consequences that brings centralization (frozen accounts, delays, usage of our own private information, etc). Note that it will have disadvantages such as if you wish to create and load your own cards you will need to have a particular hardware. On the other hand, there will be lots of payment terminals/point of sale terminals that will receive a special update with a custom firmware made by us in order to accept our debit cards (this will happen with payment terminals/point of sale non- EMV compatibles). In most terminals compatible with EMV (for more information about EMV visit: http://www.emv-connection.com/emv-faq/ and https://www.level2kernel.com/emv-guide.html) will work without any problems but you can still use our firmware to have advantages like counting with Opair´s branding or offer high performance.    

It is a system that still needs work on optimization in further tests because we are running tests that run on approximately 8 to 9 seconds per transaction. Said function is going to be one of the first to be optimized in our Beta version (you can find out below how to participate on Beta version).  

Our final goal it is that any person can create their own debit card, anywhere, and a few moments later, carry it out and about without difficulties. We would like to be the firsts in launching this feature that we will be seeked and cherished in the near future and as we are an open source project we would like to share it to all the community as we understand this philosophy as a benefit that benefits the community as a whole. This will also allow growth, improvement and usage from other projects. We understand that Emunie is working in a similar solution but it still not publicly available therefore if we manage to keep it up and running steadily in first place, it will be brilliant. We would like to have a meeting, given the territorial closeness with Fuserleer, which can be very beneficial for both projects. We will try to arrange a meeting between Frank and Fuserleer in the future.  

• Crowdfunding platform

We aim to create a platform that can boost any innovating idea that needs resources or budget to take off. You just need to set a goal, rewards and a deadline. Another perk is that you will find the security that brings a decentralized platform, open sourced and without intermediaries taking big percentages from investments.

• Transactions speed and Scalability

When we speak of scalability, we must speak about one of the most important problems found in blockchains nowadays, that’s why we want Opair to be prepared since day one to support more transactions per second than Bitcoin’s network allows and to offer a top speed for each transaction (seconds, not minutes). This has to be a must-have if we want to reach all audiences and that it enables its use all over the world.  

Ideally we would like, for starters, to get a 200 tps and build up from there as usage grows (as a remainder Bitcoin’s network is restricted to a sustained rate of 7 tps due to the Bitcoin protocol restricting block sizes to 1 MB). Even though there are current solutions that offer 1000 tps  (or more) we believe that they are not following the line of work that we would like. We are taking into consideration a lot of elements like blockchain size, internet bandwidth, processing power, private chains etc., when it comes to outline the course that our solution will offer and analyzing the different alternatives on this subject. On the other hand, regarding private chains, as we said before each of them will be completely configurable under some standards in which the needs and goals of the creators will be reflected. Also given the features mentioned above, they do not have scalability issues, at least not in comparison to public chain.

More information will be available on our White Paper.  

• Privacy Solutions

This is a distant future fieldwork because it is something we do not want to overlook but we understand there more pressing fieldworks before focusing on this matter.  

Speaking about current solutions we discourage the implementation of ring signatures because it “only” generates more layer of anonymity in transactions and not full anonymity. At the moment we do not have clear the path that we will establish in this matter and this will be something we will definitely define in the future given its importance.    

After analyzing current technologies, we consider Zcash proposal is outstanding and it is the only one that offers the level of anonymity that we want to give Opair. Zooko Wilcox and their team behind Zcash have a great solution in their hands and they are a sample of the innovation that can be achieved in that area. Any workthrough regarding the matter will be communicated through our media channels.

Very ambitious. What is your experience (beyond bios)? I don't see deep blockchain experience in the bios. The above requires deep experience and a large dedicated team. This appears to be a part time project for a very small team. What is your plan to execute?

[quasimodo]

Interested. I'm following this thread. I may invest a small sum, but I'll be watching the first days of the ICO.