Translation of Antshares Brand Strategy Announcement (pt. 1)
Look I'm not gonna spend a ton of time editing this. Information loses its value by the second in these markets. I paid someone on Upwork to translate the Antshares ($ANS) conference, so I'm sharing it here for all of you.
Taken from video stream graciously provided here [
[1:02:24]
Woman:
Let us thank Han for the excellent speech.
It, in my opinion, is very sincere and amiable.
Han kept smiling; just as Tagore said,
“the whole world falls in love with you the moment you smile.”(Did not find this quote, so this is a translation)
Please applaud once more to express our gratitude. Thank you!
Woman:
Then, the main topic of our conference today is
“Smart Economy: Antshares Brand Strategy Announcement.”
You must be wondering what “Smart Economy” is,
And how will NEW Antshares be!
The answer to this question will be revealed by
the founder of the Antshares, Mr. Dah!
He is the leader of China ______(too quiet, 1:02:37), and also participated
in early promotion of Bitcoin.
Please applaud to welcome Mr. Dah!
(Music)
[1:02:55]
Mr. Dah:
Thank you all for coming here today.
Han has just criticized our Client End for its complexity to use.
We will be working on to improve this.
It is really not our fault that clients cash realization too early.(joke maybe)
I am here to talk about our new brand, new strategy.
Why do we need a new brand? Allow me to explain it to you clearly.
Mr. Dah:
First, before we talk about new things, let’s take a look at what is old:
How Antshares rose up, and why such a project is in existence.
In 2011, I, “accidentally” saw so-called “Bitcoin”
Like many pioneers of Bitcoin, I did not fall asleep the night after I saw it.
Till 4 or 5 o’clock in the early morning, I have being reading news about it,
or trying to understand the mechanics behind it – how it works.
It was in 2011.
I spent a great deal of time exploring a forum called Bitcoin Talk:
discussions, analytics of whether its code is effective, whether its economic
module is reasonable.
I did not dared to buy Bitcoin myself then, for two main reasons:
1 :There was no transaction available in China at the time. If one is to buy it.
He/she must go to Japan or Bangkok.
2 :I was doubting; I was not sure whether this would become a trend.
Not until I got to understand the mechanics behind it that I finally
bought it for the very first time myself, at a website called Bitcoin China,
which is the first Exchange available in China.
One Bitcoin, in 2012, was worth 60 CNY,
which to be frank, was of a very low price.
Speaking of this, I regretted for not buy more Bitcoins like tens of thousands,
or at least thousands of them(laugh).
Aside from buying Bitcoin, I, along with my classmate in college,
who lives in Japan and is also a programmer, planned to open
our own Bitcoin Exchange called ____(too quiet, 1:05:30).
And he will transfer all the transaction to Japan to be done.
Such method is later seen in Hongkong,
a Bitcoin Exchange called ____(too quiet, 1:05:47)
It was a pity that we did not do the same, as he found a well-paid job
that involved coding for a well-known financial institute.
Everything was ready: the website was registered, business model was
prepared. We did not start developing however.
This is truly a pity; otherwise I might be working for my Bitcoin Exchange
today, instead of standing here!(laugh)
Then, in 2013, I actually had been not following new
information in Bitcoin Talk forum for at least half or a whole year,
until 2013, when I saw a news where the founder of Japan Bitcoin Exchange
`[name]` founded a new thing called Ripple.
It was different from Bitcoin but with similar technique
to accomplish worldwide remittance among banks
from different countries.
This, however, is very interesting to me,
as Ripple does not require mining, nor does it include the mechanic of
workload proving like Bitcoin. Their spirit is similar however.
A similar technique is used to accomplish a completely different thing.
It was at then that I begin interested in the technique
behind Bitcoin called “Blockchain”.
Surely, no one at the time summarized, like “this technique is called Blockchain,” and in 2014, with the rise of Bitcoin in 2013,
activities in China have been more and more active.
Then, I and several friends of mine,
founded an organization called BitAngelsClub.
We took a photo but one of us was not there when we did it. He is a lawyer.
`[One of the member]` is also present today.
We ran for many activities then,
where many “blockchains” are revealed to us.
That was when we haven’t come up with the idea of Antshares.
At the beginning of 2014, we started the thought of launching a blockchain
for crowdfunding when running our activities at BitAngelsClub.
May of 2014, I delivered a speech at the first hosted
conference of Bitcoin in China.
The topic was called “A DAC used for crowdfunding.”
(DAC = Distributed/Decentralized Autonomous Corporation)
We call it DAO toady.
At first, Antshares was not called so; it was completely for crowdfunding.
In June, many communities and investors visited me.
We made a very simple `[DT?BP?]`, called `[ PreAngel?]` or Leili corporation
and made a small,
first investment of 200,000 CNY.
We(founders) also invested 400,000 CNY
ourselves, so its 600,000 CNY in total.
That was our starting fund, and we distributed 10% for the future Antshares.
Let me show you the `[DT?BP?]` then. It was a simple word file with project named “X : A distributed crowdfunding system with bitcoin technique.”
We did not even mention any digital currency.
In other words, we did not found Antshares for digital currency.
Instead, we was to use blockchain technique to deal with some
real problems. Then we entered `[an institution]`, and we uploaded
the whole Antshares environment at the end of 2014.
With the team founded, we were finally going to work
on the development of Antshares.
At 2015, we brainstormed a lot,
and we designed the infrastructure of Antshares.
What is important is that we used an agreement mechanism called DBFT.
Under this, all participants were able to vote for a group; the group will then
ensure every transaction and reach an agreement.
It comes with several advatages,
It works fast; every ten seconds or so we can build up a block. Plus, once
a block is generated, it is confirmed to be the right without checks.
Unlike Bitcoin(6 checks), or `[other thing with many checks]`.
Thirdly, this mechanism is very favorable for our progress toward
organized management, as the account is elected; it/he/she has an identity.
With the identity, we can get to manage it/him/her afterwards.
At May of 2015, we founded opensource program Antshares on Github;
I will later share the interface on Github with you.
We had a cute logo, an ant looking like an alien.
The most key things about Antshares should be crowdfunding;
we are the pioneer of crowdfunding in China.
In October of 2015 was our first crowdfunding. We received 2100 Bitcoins
from the community, which was worth around 4.6 million CNY.
It was a huge amount for us as sufficient development funds.
We then started a whole year of development/
When we was about to finish, we launched another crowdfunding, as there
are still a lot to be done.
This time, to our amazement, we received 6,000 Bitcoins,
which was roughly worth 24 million CNY.
The amount was huge to us at the time, but
- are you aware of the development of `[IPO?]` ? -
crowdfundings amount these days can be sometimes up to
hundereds of millions;
we even saw a crowdfunding of 0.1X billion US$.
We talked about the history of Antshares. Let us see Antshares TODAY.
[Show picture. 1:13:13]
This is a screenshot of our website at 7 am, where you can see several nodes These are complete nodes that include
all the data. And the number of our blocks has reached 1 million(and a little),
We have a main page and a test page; latter has been online for 573 days, almost two years. It has been very stable without any security problems.
The main page also has been 200 days or more. The system is functioning
very well.
[1:14:03]
This is a screen shot of Antshares on Guthub. There is an orange rectangle where it says we were marked a star 352 times.
It stand for a person’s appreciation or willingness to add the project to his/her favorite.
And 190 people copied our project and turned it into his/her own one. They coded their own blockchain based on our project.
This number proved that Antshares has had a strong community built up in China.
Aside from this, we have had a third-party wallet, Exchange, or explorers.
We also have a developer’s community where people talk about Antshares development related techniques everyday.
Speaking of third party explorer, a recent article is quite interesting, written by one of our developers of the explorer(s).
He was working on an Antshares explorer project that we were completely unaware of until the release.
Our administrative committee then decided that we should encourage more third party development, and thus we gave his 0.1 million
Antshares shares(/ company stocks)
Then he recently wrote an article named “One Input, Million Returns, ”
as the 0.1 million Antshares shares(/ company stocks) was then worth
1 million CNY.
[Joke about the rising value of their company stock, roughly 7 times(7 million CNY) now]
That is an interesting story.
He did this not out of these shares, but his passion and willingness to do this, as we had been completely unaware of it.
More interestingly, we did not make international promotion, but Antshares are more and more influential internationally somehow.
[Show a website]
This a Reddit; an Antshares board was established but we did not know, with 3900 subscribers.
More interestingly, Youtube had 800 or more videos about Antshares.
Even I was not aware of such rapid growth!
[A little not important descriptions of those videos: Analytics and Comics]
If you prefer quantified data, you can visit a website called Coinmarketcap, it is a list of all the digital currency and public blockchain.
As showed, it is now sorted by liquidity.
(1. Bitcoin, 2.Ethereum, 3.Litecoin, 4. Rippo)
There are also little numbers here, which are the rate of total market value. Antshares ranks 14 for the moment.(rank 14 of total market value internationally) And liquidity is ranked 7.
This is not good enough however; we have not reached our goal.
But it is okay compared to similar program to us.
(2nd program in China is ranked 53)
We hope will can be more internationally influential in the future.
[1:18:35]
We’ve talked about the history, and current condition.
Let’s talk about WHY we established Antshares.
At the moment of its release, we had a simple slogan: Digital asset for everyone.
From a crowdfunding program to a program of recording the flow of digital currency, crowdfunding and digital currency and two main cores of Antshares.
We can see now, all kinds of digital currency appear in the form of blockchain token.
We also see crowdfunding become hot in the form of ICO in the blockchain industry.
Should we do something more pioneering?
Let us first focus on digital currency.
This is a sentence by Marc Lowell Andreessen, founder of Netscape Communications, also an investor of many excellent programs,
“Software is eating the world”, which means the same, just like what the Microsoft representative said, “Every business is software business.”
I also wrote, “Every asset will be digitalized.”
Why?
First, assets and properties are different.
Someone used a toothbrush; you can call it a property/belonging, but it is no asset.
What is the difference then?
Assets must be of value for exchanging, be of needs for exchanging, be of possibilities to bring wealth increase(or decrease). Such is an asset.
Then, what thing are more valuable with value for exchanging?
We think highly of liquidity.
Things with liquidity are more valuable in the international market.
When there is trading demand for every asset, nothing can bring more convenience and liquidity for them than quantification(presenting information with numbers).
So, an asset that can be quantified WILL be quantified.
[Short interruptions, 1:21:37]
How do we quantify every asset? There are two ways,
first, in terms of digital assets of blockchains, we can sort them into two main kinds:
- Primitive assets: they are generated by blockchains and stay in the blockchains, like Bitcoin.
- Reflected assets: Out-of-chain assets that requires some mechanism to be reflected to blockchains. There are two ways of reflection, physically, and legally.
Physically, for example, we can use data in the blockchains to control a real bicycle.
Legally, if assets are immaterial/invisible like knowledge, we have to reflect them with laws.
Two ways may be mixed; but legal-reflection requires a legal, digital identity to reflect assets to blockchains.
Therefore, digital identity is vital when it comes to quantification on blockchains.
We are currently cooperating with CA(certificate authority) in China to build up a system of On-chain digital identity.
It will meet the international standards of PKI X.509, and will support peer-to-peer Internet technology. It will be a new, mixed mechanism.
So, we work on both digital assets and digital identity.
With these two, we also need a program to control these assets to automate the functioning of economy.
Before talking about this, I must ask a question:
What is the core of blockchains?
Many may answer: to decentralize, as this was talked about over and over again.
However, in my opinion, it is at most a means.
The core of it should be open-to-public, transparent data and rules, and fair practice of these rules. Decentralization is only a means to achieve this.
And what technique should we use in order to achieve this goal?
That is repeated storage, calculation, carry-out by everyone. Everyone is able to record the data on the blockchain and execute/enforce/practice the attached smart contract(rules), and reach an agreement on the results.
The carrier of the rules is smart contracts on blockchains.
[explanation of smart contract, just like traditional contracts, but is understood, executed by computers, so that results are consistent.]
When digital assets, digital identity and smart contracts come together,
I think that alone makes our topic today accomplished.
What is it? It is “Smart Economy.”
This will be our true goal of Antshares 2.0 (NEW Antshares?).
For supporting us to head for this goal, we need some new techniques.
There are several new techniques in Antshares 2.0, such as new smart contract system, cross-chain license/protocol, new crypotography, new distributed storage license/protocol, and new security communication license/protocol.
There are lots of new thing appearing in Antshares.
We need a new platform so that all the techniques and goals can be focused on a platform. Luckily, we found such a platform. It was named with regard to a phrase/vocabulary in ancient Greek that means new, modern, and youth.
[Show Logo]
Yes. It is called NEO.
It is a simple logo composed of 3 cubes that present the form of ‘N’.
You can also regard it as a door; a door that leads us to the future world of smart economy.
OK. This is a new brand of our Antshares 2.0. We will gradually transform from Antshares into NEO in the third quarter of this year.
Let us take a look at the new techniques that Antshares 2.0 will use.
A new smart contract system: {NEO?NEW?} Contract
Developers under this contract can work with C#, Java, Go, C, Python to directly code a smart contract without learning any new language for this.
A new cross-chain license/protocol : [NEO? NEW?]
[Ace?Act?]
It supports cross-chain asset transactions and even supports multiple chains transactions to be done simultaneously.
We also registered such patent right, so that we can extend cross-chain asset exchange into ANY event to be done cross-chain. This thus opened a gate to cross-chain smart contract. Every smart contract on different chains can be done with different priorities. This allows for many more imaginations to come true. We also hope developers to exert their skills and explore what can be done.
New [Anti-]
Quantum Cryptology: [NEO Q? NEW Q?]
More likely to defend the attack from quantum computers than cryptology nowadays.
NEO/NEW [Access]
: file system
A new distributed storage license/protocol, based on DHT technique.
NEW/NEO Message: new communication license/protocol.
A undecryptable communication license/protocol/act that encrypts the messages.
Besides, existing techniques of Antshares will smoothly be transferred to NEO, like node program(“Wallet, ” as mentioned by Han).
There will be new blockchain data tools, new eSDK development tools, new smart contract compiler, and IDE plugins. And new environments based on NEO that we have found several to cooperate with to work on.
For example, we have Smart funding in cooperation with [COMPANY]
, artificial-smart-aid smart contract with legal effect, in cooperation with [COMPANY2]
, and network social interaction in cooperation with [COMPANY3]
, automatic liquidity provider in cooperation with [COMPANY4]
, and decentralized exchange in cooperation with [COMPANY5]
. These are programs in existence. Plus, we hope the community can provide us with things like Big-data Exchange, copyright Exchange, market prediction, AD market, etc, all kinds of business model based on blockchain.
And all of these will eventually be focused on a spot.
NEO’s biggest advantage over others, is its ecological environment, and developers.
At the second half of the conference, the core developer and founder of NEO, Mr. Chang, will explain how NEO Contract works.
At the end, I’ll show you the quote I often say, “the future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed. ”
We hope that distributed technique of blockchains, of NEO, will make smart economy come to every corner of this planet.
Thanks for the translation man!