Ravencoin x GAINS Associates— Telegram AMA

On Tuesday July 16, we had the pleasure to welcome to our Telegram chat Tron Black, lead dev for Ravencoin and Jeroz, the Ravencoin wiki editor. We asked them questions about the development of Ravencoin, currently ranked 41 on Coinmarketcap.

Some sentences have been slightly edited for readability but the meaning has been conserved.

Introduction:

Tron from Ravencoin:
Hello everyone.
I’m the lead dev of Ravencoin. I was hoping to have more of the core dev team here. I’ll answer anything I can. If I can’t answer it right away, I’ll get an answer. There’s a few topics I’ll have to stay away from because I work for a public company so I can’t get ahead of public announcements. Ravencoin topics are wide open.

Jeroz from Ravencoin:
Hi, I am one of the Ravencoin wiki editors and moderator of several community channels. I will give some extra references for some of the questions.

Q — Alexandre R from GAINS: Cool. Can you give a quick rundown of Ravencoin before we start? How would you explain it to someone who has never heard about it?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: If you haven’t heard of Ravencoin, it was originally a code fork of Bitcoin. We changed some parameters like Coinbase issuance to 5000 RVN, the port to 8766, the network ID, and most importantly, the mining algorithm and launched on Bitcoin’s 9th birthday. Jan 3, 2018.

It trades on about 40 venues. It is around 4 cents now, having been as high as 8 cents.
The main purpose of Ravencoin is to be an asset platform. Think ERC-20, but much better. This feature launched on November 5th 2018. You can create your own token for 500 RVN. Those RVN are burned. The name of your token must be unique. You can create between 1 and 21 billion tokens.

I invite everyone to check out the asset explorer. We are just 4 assets away from having 20,000 assets created. You can see some of the projects here.

Q — Telegram user Rajveer Singh: Are you linked with TRON?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: No. TRX or the TRON token is Justin Sun. I considered making a coin in 2014, so I own troncoin.org, but TRON the TRX token is not related. Tron is my name.

Q — Telegram user Wade Wilson: Can your project be explained in less than 60 seconds?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: It is an asset platform that is easy to use.

Q — Alexandre R from GAINS: Where does the name Ravencoin come from?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: The name, brand, and many of the ideas behind Ravencoin came from Bruce Fenton. He was formerly the Executive Director of the Bitcoin Foundation. A long-time crypto guy, and a broker and regulated by the financial system since he was 19. He is also on the Board of tZero.

Q — Alexandre R from GAINS: Any idea behind choosing the word ‘Raven’?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: It’s been a great name. Ravens are one of the smartest birds. They’re one of the few animals in the animal kingdom that will play tricks, and remember being tricked. Ravens have a rich history in mythology, lore, stories. They’re known as messengers of truth.

Q — Telegram user Empathy: I read that the project is based on the continuous efforts of over 400 Bitcoin developers. Can you kindly name like 4 of these developers?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: I don’t think I would say that. The code is based on the efforts of the Bitcoin developers and for that we are very appreciative, and we feel like Bitcoin is great.
There aren’t a bunch of Bitcoin developers directly contributing to the Ravencoin repository. But we will take fixes, patches, and good ideas from Bitcoin on an ongoing basis and back-port them into Ravencoin.

Technology:

Q — Telegram user Frank D’Silva: What purpose does the blockchain have in your project?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: It is a pure blockchain (like Bitcoin), not a blockchain as a marketing term.

Q — Telegram user Ramesh Thackrey: What role does the coin have?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: The purpose is to allow anyone to tokenize anything — EASILY. We have clients for Android, iOS, Linux, Mac, Windows, and web. And there are third-party wallets. So anyone can create/transfer assets on any platform.

Q — Alex from GAINS: What are the advantages of the x16R algorithm?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: There are several advantages. The early advantage was that it couldn’t be dominated by existing hash power. And now it is ASIC resistant. There are 16 algos chained together in a different random order every block. GPUs are profitable. It has been THE most profitable coin to mine for GPUs at many times along the way. It has been the 4th most secure coin as measured by cost to rent hash power to do a 51% attack.

Q — Alexandre R from GAINS: How does it compare to ETH? I’m assuming ETH is still more active?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: ETH is more active, but super-clunky compared to Ravencoin, for creating assets and linking the docs about what the token represents.

Q — Alexandre R from GAINS: What makes it much better than ETH as an asset platform?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: The biggest differentiator between ERC-20 token and a Ravencoin Asset token is that you can take your metadata (what the token is about) and put it in IPFS and connect that to your token. The IPFS data is immutable, and the Ravencoin chain is immutable, so you have a linkage to a PDF, or doc, or movie, about what your coin represents.
The other feature that makes it better than ETH (ERC-20) as an asset platform is that the Token names must be unique. That isn’t (and can’t be) enforced by ERC-20, unless you count the contract-id which isn’t very friendly for humans to read.

Q — Telegram user Empathy: Apart from having a unique name for my token, what else is the minimum requirement if I want to create a token using raven?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: The new features that are on testnet allow issuers of Security Tokens to have the tools they need to stay compliant.
On testnet, we have 4 new features.

Tags
Restricted Assets
Messaging
Memos

These capabilities are not on mainnet yet. Read more about it here.

Q — Telegram user Luke Wang: Do you support smart contract?[/i]
A — Tron from Ravencoin: No. ERC-20 is probably 80% of the Smart Contract usage on Ethereum. Ravencoin does assets better, and easier for that particular use case. That doesn’t mean that RSK (RootStock (Smart contracts)) couldn’t be added to RVN, just like it can be added to BTC, as they share the same DNA.

Q — Telegram user Claire: Is there any ICO running or using your platform?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: The asset features were activated after the SEC stopped the ICO mania. There are a number of projects planning to use it for STOs. STOs are ICOs, but legal.

Q — Telegram user Luke Wang: Are you SEC compliant?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: There are some features that allow issuers to be SEC compliant.

Q — Telegram user Luke Wang: Do you guys plan to introduce privacy features?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: There isn’t plans to add privacy features beyond those currently in Bitcoin. Meaning the crypto-address doesn’t contain any personally identifiable information. But it is UTXO based, so the linkage between transactions is public.

Q — Telegram user Empathy: Ravencoin’s use case is a specific blockchain designed to carry statements of truth about who owns what assets. Is this an improvement on the Bitcoin code or just a copy of it?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: There are 7.2 million coins mined into existence every day, and some of those are burned to create assets every day. The halvening schedule is the same as BTC, every 4 years. We’re just over 1.5 years into the first schedule.

Q — Telegram user R: Is the token a security? What does the Howey test say?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: RVN is not a security. We have attorney letters that analyzed it. Ravencoin is a technology platform. RVN the coin that has a value like BTC is not a security. A token you create is a security if it meets all four questions of the Howey test.

Finances:

Q — Alexandre R from GAINS: Do you personally own RVN and if so, what % of your portfolio does it comprise?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: I do own some RVN. I don’t discuss the amount, but it was mined, or bought, and not given to me. I have far, far less than some others.

Q — Alexandre R from GAINS: How do devs get paid?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: Medici Ventures is supporting the core devs. And the core devs help out other Medici portfolio companies.

Q — Telegram user Claire: From my perspective would you invest now or soon in your project?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: I’m not good at timing the market, and it tends to move up/down very quickly. There are things I know that are coming that I can talk about, and things I know are coming that I can’t talk about. I don’t like giving investment advice.

Q — Telegram user R: Why buy Ravencoin?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: Do your research. Learn who is behind the project, and how it was launched and how it is supported/backed. Learn about its unique capabilities, and how those compare from a user experience. Then invest if you like what you see and think that it will be successful as a platform.

Q — Telegram user Cilicia: Are you guys helping Cryptopia holders who held RVN in their account? There were many people with million of RVN.
A — Tron from Ravencoin: There isn’t anything we can do. I lost RVN in Cryptopia too. This was not an ICO. There are no coins in a bucket that were for us.

Q — Telegram user Akhil: What rank do think RVN should be on CMC? Do you have plans to be on top 10?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: I’m a free market guy, so the supply/demand determines the rank. I think we might be low now because we don’t have the ability to let everyone know about Ravencoin capabilities, but hopefully that will adjust automatically over time. RVN should be where its at. It could be higher if we had done an ICO and had a marketing dept. That is both good and bad. Less exposure, but better in that growth is organic. But that’s not how this coin works. As people learn about Ravencoin, it grows.

Business Development:

Q — Telegram user Empathy: The project is still in its experimental stage. What have been your challenges and lessons so far?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: We’ve had some challenges with the different adjustment algo from Bitcoin. It didn’t adapt fast enough and the sloshing of rentable hash power caused the hash power to adjust up/down too slowly. We’ve since changed it to DGW which adjusts the difference every block.

Q — Telegram user Sneha: What is your competitive advantage?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: Our competitive advantage is that it is easy to use, and allows anyone to include their meta-data with the token.

Q — Telegram user Luke Wang: Are there any enterprise companies using RVN?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: Nobody needs our permission to use Ravencoin so we don’t know all the companies using it, but we keep that Wiki list for ones we know about.

Q — Telegram user Cilicia: Do you plan to partner with other potential blockchain project? If so what are the things you’d look for?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: We’re happy to partner with anyone. We aren’t a big team, and we focus on the core development. I help connect folks together that benefit the Ravencoin ecosystem. I’d look for DEX capabilities. I’d like to see options to exchange Ravencoin based assets that aren’t dependent on middlemen.

Q — Telegram user Akhil: Is there any upcoming partnership that we should be looking forward to?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: There’s always lots of partnerships. We’re always getting new exchanges. In May, 5 new wallets added RVN.
I like Spend.com and Crypto.com. Both support RVN and let you spend your crypto with a debit card. It auto-sells crypto when you use the card. Trust Wallet (Binance’s official wallet), Zelcore, Exodus, and Cobo all added RVN support in May. Vertbase.com lets you buy with dollars.

Q — Telegram user M A N D Y: Are you planning to launch RVN DEX that has RVN pairs?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: We are not, but I’d be open to working with DEXs for RVN and Ravencoin asset support.

Q — Telegram user Armaan: Is your service already offered by a centralized entity? If so, why does decentralizing it make it better?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: We are not a service. We are the core developers of a technology platform that is open-source and operates like Bitcoin. You can’t shut it down. It just works. If our team disappeared tomorrow, the system lives on. Ravencoin is a coin that was launched with no pre-mine, no dev set-aside, no ICO. The core development is supported by Medici Ventures which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Overstock.com

Q — Telegram user Luke Wang: 21 billion is a huge supply. Do you plan to burn some?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: Yes, it is. RVN is burned every day by people creating assets.

Q — Telegram user M A N D Y: I want to run a RVN node, where should I start with?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: Visit out GitHub for more information
A — Jeroz from Ravencoin: You can also find out more from our wiki.

Q — Telegram user Akhil: Since buying/selling with crypto requires fixed monetary value while the value of most crypto fluctuates, do you have plans to put up a stablecoin in the future for transactional purposes?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: We have a couple of options for a stable coin on Ravencoin. We’ve been approached by an ATM manufacturer that supports RVN (buy and sell) and they’d like a stable coin on Ravencoin. We’ve also been approached by a sovereign nation (recognized by US and UN) that wants their own stablecoin money on Ravencoin.

Q — Telegram user Mack White: Where do you see RVN in next 5 years?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: I think RVN will be one of the major asset issuance platforms.

Governance:

Q — Alexandre R from GAINS: What is the governance structure for RVN?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: The governance is that anyone can make pull requests. If the code is safe and benefits the coin, we’ll allow it in. The miners decide whether to run the code. It works like BTC.

Q — Telegram user Cilicia: Do holders have voting rights to influence decisions?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: There is no voting, except the miners decide what software to run. So similar governance to Bitcoin, but a much less contentious community.
All of our channels (Telegram, Discord, etc) are all run by the community. We monitor them, but don’t manage them. It is an open-source community driven project.

Q — Alexandre R from GAINS: What are ways investors and the community can best support Ravencoin?
A — Tron from Ravencoin: For investors, do your research. The Ravencoin platform isn’t afraid of scrutiny. Learn as much as you can and make informed decisions based on what you find. For community, check out our website, run a node, go to Ravenland.org and run RavencoinOS (our own operating system for Pi). Learn about IPFS and Ravencoin and the power of those two working together. Read the articles on our Medium which will give you lots more insight into Ravencoin and its development, its reason for existing, and the new features (on testnet) that go beyond anything that is out there. Learn about tZero and its plans. Learn more about Patrick Byrne, and Bruce Fenton. Educate yourself, and then join with us.

Alexandre R from GAINS: Wow, there’s a lot more to unpack and learn!

Thank you to everyone that participated in this AMA.
— Tron from Ravencoin
Thanks for answering all the questions diligently and patiently. It was very nice having you. — Alexandre R. from GAINS:
Happy to do it. KAAAWWWW!!!! — Tron from Ravencoin

Follow @Ravencoin and @tronblack for real-time info on Ravencoin.

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