Skip to content
BACK

On May 4th, RIF hosted an AMA with IOVLabs CEO Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar on its community Telegram channel in the first instalment of the RIF Community Benefits Campaign.

You can join the RIF Community Telegram channel here: https://t.me/rif_os_community

Below is the transcript of the AMA.

Maria (host): Hello everyone and thank you so much for joining our AMA with IOVlabs CEO and RSK Co-Founder, Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar!

This is the first of a series of activities that is part of our Community Benefits Campaign. This campaign will run on a monthly basis and is aimed at showing our gratitude to the community for your continued support!

Before we start, we would like to give a HUGE thank you to everyone who submitted their questions for Diego. We were pleasantly surprised by the large volume of responses and we had a hard time just picking 10 questions. Everyone who submitted questions ahead of time will get an equal portion of a US$500 reward pool of RIF and the 10 people’s questions who were selected will receive US$50 of RBTC each.

The AMA today will consist of two parts. The first part I will mute everyone in the chat except Diego and I will ask the 10 selected questions from the community. The second part I will open up the group chat to everyone and you all can ask questions and Diego will pick a few that he’d like to answer! With that, let’s start!

Round 1: Pre-selected questions

Q1: I must admit that RSK has a quite complete and detailed documentation (I think for reading days) but I would like to ask directly about the RSK core, that is Bitcoin. The truth is that although its currency is one of the most attractive to invest, its network is very little used and named in the DeFi protocols, the main reason is that it was not thought for this initially, very different from what happens with Ethereum or Polkadot. So, why choose Bitcoin? What potential have you seen that you haven’t seen in other DeFi protocols or ecosystems?

A1: Building on Bitcoin is tough because by design Bitcoin prioritizes security over flexibility and that’s mainly the reason why Ethereum decided to start a new mining network (security infrastructure) and currency (ETH).

In the case of RSK we choose the hard way, extending Bitcoin because that’s the way to create the safest and most censorship resistant financial system.

One that could serve and protect the sovereignty of every human being and specially of those more vulnerable in our society.

The challenge of creating a second layer to Bitcoin delayed the start of RSK for a couple years but now with over 60% of the Bitcoin miners protecting RSK and some of the more robust DeFi protocols RSK is starting to get traction and has recently surpassed our fellow protocol Lightning in TVL.

Currently RSK has over 1400 BTC locked in the protocol and over 6000 BTC in different assets protected by the network.

The RSK Ecosystem is building protocols for decades to come and preserving the Bitcoin ethos of independent validation and long term sustainability.

Q2: Trust is very important in business, what makes investors, customers and users feel safe when working with your project ?

A2: I think one of the strength of the founding team of RSK is its technical prowess, Sergio Lerner, our Chief Scientist and RSK cofounder, is one of the brightest minds in crypto he was part of the Bitcoin Core team and contributed to find 9 bugs many of the them critical to Bitcoin.

If you look in perspective that’s why RSK has a 100% uptime since its launch.

Sergio also has created the tangle concept used by IOTA and Avalanche, one of the atomic swap protocols mentioned in the Bitcoin wiki, improved the Ghost consensus protocol with his DECOR+ protocol making it the safest consensus protocol after Nakamoto’s and built a path to scalability that will enable RSK to serve a billion people without sacrificing independent validation.

But Sergio is not alone the IOVLabs teams has dozens of experts that together with the teams of the protocols being built on RSK are building the safest smart contract platform in the world.

If you add to that the fact that 60% of the Bitcoin hashing power is continuously protecting RSK with peaks of over 80% then RSK is the safest place to put your bitcoins to work on DeFi protocols.

There are other remarkable people in our teams like Angel “Java” Lopez, an eminence in programming, Juliano Rizzo and many more brilliant experts.The RSK ecosystem has some of the top experts in decentralized Blockchain networks in the world.

Today IOVLabs (the founding organization of RSK) is no longer alone because we are side by side with other brilliant teams like MoneyOnChain, Sovryn, Qubistry, Think & Dev, Extremian and many more.

Q3: Marketing is an essential element of every project, so everyone knows the potential that a project can generate. What is your strategy too attract new users and investors and maintain it in the long term?

A3: Marketing is key but at the end the best marketing you can have is applications that create value for people. Marketing is an amplifier but it can only create value in a sustainable way if you improve people’s lives.

Back in the early days of the Web we were evangelizing for years on the potential of the Web with little impact but the moment Hotmail gave email access to everybody, floods of people started using the web.

Last year the first strong use cases in RSK emerged and the ecosystem is in the process of streamlining the user experience and removing any friction to get in and out of the RSK economy. In the coming months we will see all the points connect and the floodgates will become fully open.

We have been building and oiling the different marketing / communication channels for a couple years waiting for this moment so we are thrilled to have reach this moment, I would say is the moment of truth for the RSK Economy.

Q4: Sovryn is a Bitcoin layer 2 technology developed on RSK. What does the Sovryn launch mean for the crypto space? What infrastructures and protocols can Sovryn integrate into?

A4: The Sovryn team did an amazing job bringing core DeFi protocols to the Bitcoin Ecosystem. Until they launched on RSK bitcoiners didn’t have any option to put their bitcoins to work (lend, borrow, margin trade) without resorting to CeFi (Centralized Finance) services or to DeFi protocols on Ethereum using custodial systems like WBTC.

The Sovryn team has also been working on extending the RSK Ecosystem by building bridges with other crypto economies and implementing offchain scaling solutions like Arbitrum so accommodate the huge demand their protocols are having.

As an RSK cofounder I am very proud of having them into our Ecosystem contributing to make our long term vision of a fully decentralized and censorship resistant financial system a reality.

Q5: Can fractional NFTS be included over RSK and validated with RIF? I ask because being a musician I would like to sell my music on RSK 🙂

A5: Absolutely! NFTs can be issued in the RSK Blockchain and the RSK Services (RIF) provide all the tools you need to handle NFTs in a fully decentralized way and secured by the Bitcoin Network.

When you think of NTFs there are two major aspects to it. One is the issuance and that’s the weakest point in the NFTs world today. How do I know that the issuer is the owner of the rights. That’s where RIF Identity provides the means to create a reputation based identity and RIF Gateways the means to create the chain of trust between the physical and the digital world.

Also RIF Data Storage provides another important component that is the decentralized storage of extended information associated to the NFT (ie: the high resolution version of the art piece or sensitive data about the author).

The other key part of NFTs is the secondary market and that’s where Ethereum is leading the way, soon the RSK-Ethereum bridge will support NFTs transfer so by issuing on RSK and selling on Ethereum marketplaces you will have the best of both worlds in the short term while NFT marketplaces using RIF Marketplace build up.

Q6: What are your top priorities in 2021? Can you share some of your plans for the coming year? Which part of the project are you focusing on most now?

A6: The top priority of IOVLabs is to help integrate the RSK Economy into 7 countries (4 in Latin America and 3 in South East Asia).

That integration is carried out through a B2B2C strategy where we help crypto wallets become neobanks running on decentralized infrastructure.

To achieve that we help them integrate on-ramps and off-ramps to the local economies, the DeFi protocols in the RSK Ecosystem and the RIF Services that help them scale, provide a great and sovereign user experience and fulfill the local compliance requirements.

All this is integrated via the RIF Marketplace so it is implemented as a sharing economy that creates revenue for the wallets and the service providers while user’s benefit from low cost and a great user experience while they can remain in control of their data and value.

Q7: Please explain why you added 2 tokens beside RIF? I have read but it is not fully clear. What are RDOC and RIFP? Are there any more tokens?

A7: Both RDoC (RIF Dollar) and RIFP (RIF Pro) are tokens created by the RIF based implementation of the MoneyOnChain protocol.

RDoC is the first stable asset backed by RIF and it is key to provide short term price stability in the RIF Services provided via the RIF Marketplace. It gives users and service providers with a way to price services in a stable and familiar way. It is also being used in different DeFi protocols in the RSK Ecosystem.

RIFP is the token given to the RIF holders that provide the collateral for the RIFOnChain protocol to work. As the RIF token appreciates the RIFP gets and extra yield over the base appreciation.

One interesting thing is that for how the RIFOnChain protocols works every time a RDoC is minted more than 7 dollars worth of RIF are locked so this created a strongly leveraged demand for RIF as the RIF Services and DeFi protocols adoption grow.

Q8: Users often care less about technology, but rather the value of the token. How do RSK manage to strike a balance between developing the technology and also improving the value of the token?

A8: As the RSK Ecosystem is fully autonomous and the RIF token price is freely set by the market the only thing we can impact from IOVLabs is help the RIF Economy grow. For that purpose we continually look to improve RIF based protocols and package them in products that are later integrated into the partners in the RSK Ecosystem as I described before.

This also is the long path compared to the ones other token economies took but we are positive this is the way to create long term value for the ecosystem as a whole. This year finally all the components we envisiones for the RIF Economy are being finally connected.

Q9: How do you plan to spread awareness about your project in different countries where English is not spoken well? Do you have local communities for them to let them better understand about your project?

A9: We have translated all our documentation and websites into seven languages already (English, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian and Korean) and we have communities targeted for each one of those communities and plan to keep expanding as more countries are integrated into the RSK Economy.

Each region has different needs so aside from providing the core tools and helping the creation of an integrated suite of decentralized financial services we also try to learn to support use cases with the RSK ecosystem and RIF Services that adapt to the local needs.

Q10: Why should a developer choose to develop on RSK over others?

A10: We did not have enough time to get to the question, but the user who submitted it has also been rewarded!

Round 2: Live Community questions

Maria: And that’s all for our pre-selected questions! Thank you so much Diego for your insightful answers. I am now going to open up the group chat so that everyone has a chance to ask any burning questions! You have 2 minutes 😃 Go!

Maria: Okay, 2 minutes is up!

Maria: Thank you for all your questions! Diego, can you please pick three questions you’d like to answer?

Q1: When are RIF Services going to be used by Taringa!?

Diego: Well Taringa! is a live community so we have been during the last year to understand how is the best way to bring value to the community. We did some experiments with different degree of success and finally we have a clear path for the cryptofication of Social Network. The long term vision is to turn Taringa! into a fully decentralized Social Marketplace where users will be in full control of the community, the economy and the infrastructure all based on the RIF Marketplace and Services

Q2: What can we expect within the year from rif / rsk? Anything you’d like to tease the community with for the time being?

Diego: A year from now all the components of RIF will be fully integrated and we will see the fist Fintechs 2.0 based on RIF Services and secure by RSK/Bitcoin providing services in many countries of Latam and SE Asia

We are witnessing the beginning of mainstream adoption for crypto and Bitcoin, RSK and RIF will be at the core of it

Q3: Where do you think someone new to crypto should start their journey if they’re interested in smart bitcoins (rsk)?

Diego: I think the best way is to download any of the wallets in our Ecosystem (Math, Defiant, Beexo, Edge, etc.) and start interacting with the protocols (MoneyOnChain, Sovryn, RSKSwap, etc.).

If you are a developer the Dev Portal is an amazing place to start: https://dev.rootstock.io/the-stack/

And the Slack channel: https://open-rsk-dev.slack.com/join/shared_invite/zt-m0pbuyia-QW~WEI27Ag3Do7qWEjW41w#/shared-invite/email

Q4: I was wondering which projects are working to solve identity issues for the under and unbanked population?

Diego: There are many projects working on integrating reputational identity to solve the needs of the unbanked like https://didi.org.ar/ where IOVLabs and other members of the RSK Ecosystem have contributed and many more are trying to crack the problem on how reputational identity can empower those excluded from the legacy financial system

Maria: Thank you so much Diego! It was a pleasure having you here to chat with the community. And thank you everyone for joining our first community benefits event! Stay in the chat and be on the lookout for our next event which is coming soon! We will be launching an RNS Registration Event for you all. Details in the works!

Follow our

news!