Stakely community! We bring you another chapter of our AMA series, this time we present an AMA about Raze Network. If you want to know all its details, we recommend you to read this article to its end.
We are very excited to have Justin, who is part of the Raze Network team for this event, and as usual Joel — Stakely, in the moderation!
—Joel: Well, guys let’s start. I’m going to mute the group! Welcome to Crypto Engine @JustinK2.
—Justin: Hey guys! Pleasure to meet you All!
—Joel: A pleasure for us, to have you here. Great! some members of the community are excited for with Raze. The problem of anonymity in crypto, has a lot of people interested.
—Justin: Great to hear that. Happy to answer questions about RAZE, and pitch Raze Network to you guys!
—Joel: Awesome! We start with the questions.
Q: Do you plan to create your own Dex in the future, like Uniswap but private and anonymous?
Justin: Yes, the team will work on Raze Swap, which will be our own Dex focusing on privacy transactions. Liquidity mining programs will be out to bootstrap the liquidity.
Q: Correct me if I’m wrong; I’m under the assumption that if I want to exchange an anonymous token on uniswap, I won’t be able to, right? First I have to make it normal again. Or will I be able to exchange ETH anonymously and privately on Uniswap thanks to Raze?
Justin: You will be able to swap minted private tokens to other minted private tokens easily on uniswap, as long as they do RAZEVM integration and there is enough liquidity. There are sufficient reserves available to bootstrap liquidity.
Q: According to the roadmap the Q2; the RAZE token will launch as well as the DApp code. This approach is quite different from the rest of projects I follow, as most usually launch the dApp, then the token and later they implement the protocol in more blockchains. Why have you chosen this approach? How do you think it will affect the project?
Justin: Actually the usual sequence is :
->Project establishment.
-> In-depth research and analysis.
-> If finalised, allocating funds through fundraising rounds.
-> Building a position/awareness in market through token release.
-> Product launch when it is ready.
This is the sequence our team well be taking.
We are at a very early stage of the project but have open-sourced our code recently, securing funding from great VCs like Master Ventures, Block Dream Fund, Moon Whale and many other prominent ones. Next is our TGE/Token Launch and it is expected in mid-April.
Q: Why are public instead of anonymous? Aren’t you afraid of the implications this could have? Was this the only way to obtain funds from major investors?
Justin: Advisors and some team members are public on our website. Developers are anonymous because of personal reasons, but our code is open-sourced on our Github for anyone to go and check it.
Also, whole team info was given when applying for a Web3 grant application, and also to our advisors as they also need to do their Due Diligence before associating their name with Raze Network publicly as advisors.
Q: Is your solution a fork of any other project?
Justin: No, our product will be first of its kind. Raze Network will be able to connect to any Defi or Web 3.0 product, this it is not limited to one product or service like other privacy projects.
It is also not limited to one ecosystem or chain. Any chain which supports smart contracts is compatible with Raze Network. This includes Polkadot, Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain among others.
Q: I only know one competitor that might launch in DOT, however it is a Tornado fork, while your solution has an architecture similar to Manta, why have you chosen this?
Justin: Our closest competitor is actually Manta network, but they are solely focusing on creating a private dex at the moment.
As mentioned earlier, our product won’t be limited to one service, instead just connect to any dApp out there and use the services provided by them in a private manner. Do give a read here to know the difference: Docs
Q: Aren’t you afraid that by publishing your code in Q2 others could copy and fork your idea? For example launching an unfinished product?
Justin: Even with that nobody will be able to copy our community and the first mover advantage. And we have various things in our roadmap which are yet to be out. We will work on creating our own privacy ecosystem!
Q: Could you give us details about participating in the private sale or public sale?
Justin: Private sale is closed, and we recently announced our prominent investors on Twitter
Public sale is expected in mid-April, you can follow our announcement channel to not miss any update on this.
Q: Could you explain to us the purpose of the 8.5% of tokens of the vault vs the 15% of the operational reserve? There would be a 36.5% (8.5%+15%+10%+3%) of tokens in the hands of the team?
Justin: They all are for different purposes, and all have a release structure. Operational reserve goes to pay for operational expenses. Team reserves are locked for 9 months from TGE, and then released over 9 months. Similarly, our advisors will help Raze Network at an advisory level to make better decisions”
Vault reserves are distributed through community voting. Team has no control over that.
Q: As someone well positioned in the privacy industry, which are the greatest issues that current privacy protocols have?
Justin: Liquidity and adoption are two of the biggest issues. But Raze Network will be able to tap into the liquidity and ecosystem of Polkadot, Ethereum, Binance smart chain, or any chain supporting smart contracts, hence that won’t be an issue for Raze Network.
Q: What would make the difference, or what advantages does Raze Network have over others of similar protocols, such as HOPR or ZKsync?
Justin: Let me share an image here, from our recently released Whitepaper:
Q: “Secret Defi Bridge” is a tool that Raze Network gives to their user base the chance to hide their trading history (we could compare it to Uniswap, Compound…). What are the steps to follow in order to use this feature?
Justin: Users won’t have to do anything. They just have to go to:
-> A dApp having RAZEVM integration.
-> Generate private tokens in 1:1 ratio directly on their platform.
-> Use the service provided by them (lending, derivatives, trading, staking etc) in a private manner.
-> Redeem it back using Redeem module if they like.
A very simple and user-friendly process, but a huge usecase.
Q: Given the similarities between projects in the defi ecosystem, could we label Raze Network as privacy enhanced version of today’s Uniswap?
Justin: Raze won’t be limited to one service or product as said before. You will be able to connect Raze to any dApp like Uniswap, Compound, StaFi, Pancakeswap, Aave etc. And use the services provided by them in a completely anonymised manner.
Q: Your project has awesome features. There must be a great team behind.Can you tell us about them and their story and how you came together?
Justin: Yes we have great advisors like Kyle Chasse from Paid Network, Dylan from Kylin, Garlam Won, and others backing up on the advisory front. Though the tech team is anonymous for personal reasons, our code is open-sourced now for anyone to cross-check and build trust in our product: Raze Network · GitHub
Q: I’ve read the white paper about the percentaje that will be allocated** **to grow the community. Crypto have been growing exponentially, and the government and regulatory institutions are keeping a close eye, based on that we want the privacy that you will provide us, is there anything project about the data server’s location talking about country’s jurisdictions and data allowable to be verify by them?
Justin: Our legal entity is registered in the Cayman Islands, and we will comply with the regulations accordingly.
Privacy tokens are sometimes taken with a negative mindset, but we will surely comply with all regulatory changes as they come. We are open for it and welcome it!
Q: Is Raze Network somehow similar to Secret Network for polkadot?
Justin: Though we also focus on privacy at smart contract level, we are a layer-2 solution and can connect to various chains. We also can directly connect to dApps with few lines of code, so our approach will be much more comfortable for users. But there is huge liquidity available in the market and much room for other privacy projects.
Q: Privacy and centralisation are a bad combination, once the development of RAZER is over how is the team going to manage the contradiction of promoting the project and the token without listing it in a centralised exchange? With the KYC processes that most of the exchanges need to run to be legally compliant with different countries, it’s going to be a step back in the privacy of the raze network and the potential tracing of users that want to buy it using their favourite exchanges?
Justin: We are bullish on DeFi, and many Cex founders have also realised that the future is decentralised. All the liquidity will move to DeFi as more products and services go live and interoperability is established.
We will create our own AMM too, to provide liquidity to privacy tokens, and will bootstrap liquidity with our reserves.
Also note that Raze will become a 100% community managed product in time, and the community will decide the future of it through governance and voting.
Q: The white paper is looking amazing, congratulations! in the past it has been demostrated that different Merkle tree algorithm implementations in Ethereum smart contracts had a big problem with a high storage overhead for Merkle tree updates. If the Raze algorithm is going to use the Shrubs Merkle tree variant, how it is solving this problem?
Justin: Raze uses Shrubs Merkle tree algorithm to optimize the proof size. All nodes aren’t required to update their storage spaces in this variant. Let me add an image which explains it clearly:
Q: In the whitepaper you are being really optimistic when saying “we will also deploy general privacy solutions on Ethereum, BSC, HECO, Polkadot, Cosmos and other public chains”. That is a lot of work and needs a lot of people involved in the development, test and management of those teams. How are you planning to get the budget to achieve such a goal?
Justin: We have acquired sufficient budget from our strategic investors. Around $2.2 million has been raised from our prominent strategic investors, who are well known in this industry and are confident in RAZE’s progress and potential.
Plus RAZEVM integration is very easy, add a few lines of code and we are integrated. This will also give the project’s community another use case of using the services by that dApp in a completely anonymized manner. Good use case without much effort.
Q: Because the RAZE network is based on Zether’s Σ-Bullets encryption proof mechanism and knowing that it can be deployed on any chain that supports smart contracts (like for example Ethereum), how can you say that it can reduce the gas costs when everybody knows that during the last Ethereum rally the gas costs had been growing up to the moon? Can you explain that?
Justin: The privacy token will be minted on our own layer-2 network, and RAZE token will be used for all transactions there.
Thus all transactions will be fast and cheap, and liquidity will be available from big ecosystems.
Q: In 2018 the ZCash developers released a code vulnerability discovered that could potentially be exploited to create counterfeit currency undetected. This vulnerability was remedied within ZCash via the Sapling upgrade implemented in October of the same year. It was a zk-SNARKs vulnerability. In the case something like that happens again and somebody is able to exploit the RAZE Network and create unlimited tokens and dumping them in the market, how would the team respond to such an event? What measures have you put in place to restore the credibility of the investors? It’s an hypotetical case and I really hope it never happens.
Justin: The trusted setup step of a zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) scheme usually involves secret trapdoor information. Once the secret information is stolen, the adversary can print infinite amounts of cryptocurrency without the possibility of being detected. In contrast, the ZKP scheme used in the RAZE network has a completely transparent setup step, which means it does not involve any kind of secret information. All the public parameters are generated through the public sampling of group elements, which can be performed in an entirely open manner.
—Joel: Good work Justin!
—Justin: Thanks Joel. For the great support and an AMA invitation in your community!
—Joel: closed, thanks! We need to you choose two winner questions @JustinK2
—Justin: Ok let me do that, Q11 and Q18, both are good questions!
—Joel: @CharlyCnS3, @pedroi**
—Justin: Awesome! Thanks for the great AMA guys!
It was a pleasure to be here. For any further questions about Raze Network, please feel free to join our community chat:
Here is our Announcement channel: @Raze_Announcements
—Joel: Thanks Justin for your time!
—Justin: Thanks guys! Amazing, appreciate it a lot! Looking forward to meeting you guys soon!
Where can you find us?
Stakely.io | Twitter | Youtube | Telegram News | Telegram Chat | LinkedIn