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Is there an updated roadmap?

Yes. We will be publishing it soon. We are planning to roll-out additional RIF OS protocols focused on data storage, data feeds, and secure communications in the next months. Just as we launched RIF Name Service and RIF Lumino Network and started to provide Identity and Payment services, we are working to release implementations of the other 3 Protocols of RIF OS (data storage, data feeds and secure communications) and we are planning to have the first integrated suite of the RIF Protocols by the end of the year.

Where do you see RSK/RIF and crypto in general in 3-5 years?

Our vision over the next couple of years is that the RIF OS Protocols serve as the industry standard framework for the development of decentralized applications. Using the RIF Token as the commonly accepted token among the multiple service providers that decentralized applications (dApps) will be able to rely on, our technology aims to make dApps development easier, faster, and scalable while offering developers a one-stop-shop for deploying their solution. Simplifying access for developers, innovators & organizations to these complex technologies is key to enable mass adoption and bring the Internet of Value closer to realization.

Blockchain technology in general has the potential to disrupt the global financial system. We expect the ecosystem to continue to grow through the RSK platform and the RIFOS framework creating a more fair and inclusive system.

Hi Gabriel! What are your plans for bringing Lumino to the general public?

The RIF Lumino network is already available to the general public. For more information visit: https://dev.rootstock.io/rif/lumino/

With that being said, making Lumino as user-friendly as possible is one of RIF´s main priorities. For that reason, Lumino has already been integrated with the RIF Naming Service (RNS) which simplifies significantly the usability for non-technical users. We are also currently working on the Lumino light-client and development libraries to facilitate the integrations with wallets and exchanges. The IOV Labs team is also working on developing solutions for banks and organizations willing to use RIF Lumino for their business needs.

Are you looking for new talents? What’s the current size of the team? Any plans to grow there?

Yes, we are actively recruiting new talents. Open positions are detailed at https://www.iovlabs.org/careers

IOV Labs currently has over 50 employees, many of whom provide service to all business units. We also have dedicated RIF staff such as myself, Alejandro Banzas (in charge of RIF Name Services), Alejandro Narancio (in charge of RIF Payments) and Vojtech Simetka (in charge of RIF Storage). Each one of them has a team that they lead and is focused on each of these services. We are also currently recruiting the head of both RIF Communications and RIF Data Feeds.

I think what everybody is here to know is if it´s true that your exchanges strategy is to wait for them to list you? Do you have a plan for major exchanges?

We do have a strategy and are engaged with many exchanges that will be listing the RIF Token. Our idea is not to wait for them to list us but proactively reaching out to them to get listed.

Anything you can say about what was achieved in Consensus this year?

At Consensus 2019, we launched the RIF Lumino Network on stage with Diego Gutierrez Zaldivar our CEO, Sergio Damian Lerner, Head of Research and Innovation, and myself, RIF Strategist. You can check our presentations here:

Building on Bitcoin : RSK and RIF

Scaling Blockchain to a Billion People

We also had many media interviews around Lumino Network Launch (during and after the event) including Coindesk Live, Nasdaq Trade Talks & Crypto Finder just to mention a few. There were also over 70 articles/media that covered the RIF Lumino Network launch. We also participated with a booth where we showcased solutions developed on top of RSK such as dexFreight, BitGive, Circles of Angels, Tokkenit, Signatura, Oak Node, Money on Chain, Se Socio, Neoris, CryptoSpaceShip, etc. We had a Lumino demo and tutorial. We also had many business meetings with key stakeholders, solution partners for AML, exchanges, etc.

Please explain the IOV, RSK, RIF structure. Are RIF and RSK going to become one organization? Why don’t you merge the Social Media channels?

We are one “specific purpose” organization already. The organization behind RSK and RIF is called IOV Labs. Merging RSK and RIF social media channels is something that is under consideration.

Now that Lumino is working, what’s the next step?

We are working on new RIF Payments components to be launched soon as well as RIF Storage Protocol. By the end of the year we plan to count with a full suite of RIF OS services, that will showcase how the full stack will work together.

What are the next conferences you will be attending to? Do you have a calendar for the rest of the year… or for the next few months at least?

Yes. We will be attending Bitcoin 2019 in San Francisco and Unchain Berlin in June, Dialogue Global in Italy in July, Truffle Conference in the USA in August. We will also attend Blockchain Summit Latam that will hold events in Mexico (July), Colombia (August), Peru (September), Chile (October), Brazil (November. Finally, Labitconf will take place on December at Uruguay and we will be there as usual. We are also exploring several events that will take place on Asia during Q3 & Q4 to determine on which ones we will participate.

You launched a fund / incubation lab with funding projects $100k-1m. Please tell us more about the role of this fund, who runs it, total funding and how it supports the RIF ecosystem. Can projects apply for grants / do they move to Silicon Valley?

How fast is it going to work and when are you going to have the first results? What is the minimum amount you are going to invest in companies that enter the incubator and what is the maximum? What is the total amount of usd/btc assigned to the incubator fund?

For detailed information about the ecosystem fund and the innovation studio please visit this link: https://hackernoon.com/why-we-created-a-fund-and-an-innovation-studio-dedicated-to-bitcoin-82f2bed7b04b

The community has been asking this stuff for sometimes now. Will you consider paying for listings in other exchanges?

As mentioned before, we are in conversations with several exchanges and it is something that will be considered.

Since most companies connected with RSK/IOV/RIF are LATAM based, is there a chance to have more geographical diversity of companies working with your team?

We are not just engaged with LATAM companies. Actually, we are engaged with projects around the world based in USA, Asia and Europe as well.

Latam, Asia and Africa have always been the geographical areas where the legacy financial system fails mostly. For that reason, we expect an exponential growth of Blockchain use-cases which will give RSK and RIF a unique angle given the strength of Bitcoin and RSK in those areas.

Regarding community at the moment there is a community focused in Asia and Latam… is this going to change? If yes ,when? The USA/Europe community is almost non-existing although these two geographical regions have 50+% of worlds GDP.

We have people already based in Europe. As a matter of fact, the person that is in charge of RNS is based on Spain and the one that is in charge of RIF Storage, is in the Czech Republic. We are also looking to expand our overall presence in Europe soon. Beyond Latam and Asia, we recently announced the opening of an Innovation Studio and Ecosystem Fund based in San Francisco, USA as well as offices in Shanghai and Singapore.

Are you going to hire people that are not connected or not staged in Latam for c-level positions? At the very moment every person I have spotted in Linkedin is Argentinian or living in Argentina making it hard to understand the world´s reality.

We hired people recently on Asia (China to be more precise) and as I´ve already mentioned my team members are based in Europe.

Regarding the strategy of creating a market for tokens… Will you go in an organic way by helping adoption and will that be in a fast way or it will take a life-in-crypto meaning a 3+ years time-frame at least?

The RIF services target the most interesting and fastest growing areas of the Blockchain ecosystem. The RNS multi-blockchain resolver is the key for easy interaction with public addresses. Lumino allows thousands of off-chain payment channels for every token on the RSK network. These features combined with the stable-coin tokens that will be launched of RSK soon, create lots of opportunities for RIF services. Furthermore, in the second part of the year we will be working to launch RIF Storage which could be the first decentralized storage solution with a decentralized economic incentive mechanism included via RIF Lumino. We build technology to lead the blockchain revolution on the long term while delivering real use-cases in the short term.

Are you going to make public the amount of wages the c-level team members are getting? I will tell you that in every company that is well structured for clarity and trust reasons the levels of wages of c-level stuff are public.

We are not a public company and as such we don´t disclose that kind of information.

Which are the different KPIs of the Lumino Network? Blocks per second, time to finality, TPS and cost per transaction? Can people build on Lumino already? Which projects are building on top of it?

The number of transactions per second that Lumino can achieve, depends mainly on the actual network topology and the amount of coins that participants lock in their channels. Also, from a tech perspective, the bandwidth and latency of the computers participating in the network is also key for providing a responsive system. Additionally, the capabilities of the network will depend on the network usage patterns of its users. It seems that there are still too many unknowns. However, we can simulate certain expected patterns from small networks to larger and larger networks and get useful metrics about the network growth and number of successful payments, the payments settlement times and the average costs. Considering the merging of the scalability improvement proposals already developed by RSK Labs for RSK, the obtained metrics show us that Lumino can scale to 60M active users without problems with costs and response times that are competitive with other payment networks. To scale more, we see resource bottlenecks that would need to be addressed. We expect other third layer solutions being developed by the academia, such as commit-chains, to interoperate with Lumino and complement it.

If you want to be part of the network, the Lumino repository is open and in the repository you can find instructions about node configuration and management. There are several projects integrating there wallets and solutions with Lumino which will be announced once implemented in the following months.

Circle of Angels, Bitgive, Blockchain for Humanity, dexFreight, Watafan, Tokkenit, Insuretech, Chronologic, Investoland, Money On Chain, etc. Can you explain how these projects create demand for RIF tokens and not (just) RBTC?

All of RSK partners are listed on our website and most of them will create demand for RIF, not just RBTC. We have shared in social media several articles with information about those partners solutions and why they decided to build them on top of RSK.

Is there going to be another road-show this year? If yes, where and when?

We are participating in many industry events across the globe as mentioned before and we will have a roadshow on Asia later in the year. We are also analyzing other regions for road-shows.

Are there any new partnerships you can talk about? I might have a company that can be a good partnership, with whom should I speak to introduce them?

The partnerships that we can talk about are the ones that are already live and included on the website. There are many in the works that we can´t disclose until they are launched to the public. About contact information for potential partnerships, you can reach us at info@iovlabs.org or partners@rsk.co

We need to know the marketing strategy. When is it going to be implemented?

There is already a marketing strategy. We´ve had over 400 press articles since RIF´s launch 6 months ago around the globe. We´ve also done Asia road-shows. One at RIF Launch on November 2018 and the last one on April this year, where we shared the status and plans for the rest of 2019. We´ve participated at several events including Labitconf in Chile, Bitcoin Summit in Israel, La Conexion in Colombia, Bitcoin Day in Argentina and Uruguay, Edcon in Australia, Consensus 2019 in New York where we launched the RIF Lumino Network globally, etc. We will be attending more events as already mentioned. Finally, we have dedicated social media channels in English and over 10 social media accounts on Asia (combining Japan, Korea and China). Finally, we are also about to begin programmatic advertising soon and we will kick off a growth strategy for our English social media channels. I´d say this all gives us great presence in all markets at this point while we continue to test/develop new strategies for community growth and brand awareness.

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