Matrix AMA — April 2022

Link to the AMA video: https://youtu.be/npIKueVugo4

Eric: Hello Owen, good morning.

Owen: Hi, good morning Eric.

Eric: Okay and also good morning to our Matrixians across the globe. Greetings from Hong Kong and also greetings from Beijing. Owen I heard some cases about the Covid-19 in Beijing, is it serious there? And does it have any effects on our colleagues?

Owen: In fact it’s not that serious but everyone in Beijing needed to do the Covid test every two days.

Eric: Okay, and does it have any effect on our colleagues, on our office operation there?

Owen: Not yet, yeah.

Eric: Oh yeah okay, and hopefully no, okay. I heard in Shanghai they are facing kind of serious situations there, but they are determined to have the Covid-19 settled there.
So again, today is the 26th of April and we are shooting the AMA video for April, and as usual: Hello Matrixians.

So today we are going to have live questions from the members and I would love to have our CEO Mr Owen Tao to share his insight or answers on some timelines, and also his insight on these questions. And Owen, are you ready for these questions?

Owen: Okay I’m ready.

Eric: Okay that’s good, let’s kick some ass then!
Okay the first question comes from Boz_Kurt, this is about mining the question is like this: “If a corporation set up their own miners, let’s say 50 miners for AI computing can they delegate those 50 miners to serve only their need?” (This meaning to serve this company alone) “Sorts of dedicated AI miners for their business needs. 
Have the tools been developed for all these companies to dedicate their miners for their own tasks?”

Owen: Yeah, our plan… That’s a new function we want to edit our new versions for MANTA and the mining system. In our plan, our cooperators who will use MANTA or our AI mining, they can add their own miners or their computing powers to our MainNet. And also they can delegate their own computing powers to only serve their own tasks. So yes, in our plan we will add this function in our assistance, yeah.

Eric: Okay that’s great! So both good, we think ahead of yours, and thanks for your questions. And Owen, do you mind sharing if there is any rough timeline for this new function?

Owen: Yeah, this function is also with our MANTA system so I think in this quarter we will start to invite some collaborators who will join our testing to use this function. And we would like to open it to the public.

Eric: Okay so within this quarter, meaning Q2, we will start to look into this function, but the exact schedule we have to study or investigate further, and then to advise the community.

Owen: Yes this function, I think this function will take a long time, a longer time than our MANTA and the GPU mining, because this is not a key function for this system, so we’ll spend some time to develop it and spend more time to test it because in this way we’d like to ask to new collaborators who will add their own computing powers to join our system, not as a miner, just as computing power, so I think it will take more time to do the testing work.

Eric: Okay, so the simple answer to this question is yes, we will be looking at this function and we’ll be starting to look at this function within this quarter, but it will take a long time to finish it because we have other more [important] tasks that are more prioritized than this one. But we will keep updating the community about the timeline for this function as well. So this answers the first question, and shall we go on to the second question?

Owen: Okay

Eric: Okay good, so the second question is from TheElk:
“Hi Owen, in a previous AMA you said a new version of the GMAN miner software will be released to miners during Q2, are you still on track with that timeline?”

And then, there are two follow-up questions:
“Will this new version of GMAN support multiple GPUs?” Question one. Question two:
“Will we, in the community, be able to participate in a testing of the new GMAN version to help the team find bugs?”

So actually there are three questions: number one is “Are we still on track for the Q2 to have the GMAN miners software released?”

Owen: Yeah, this is still on track. And of course it will support multiple GPUs, because you can see it already, we’ve already added this function in our test version of MANTA. You can check on our TestNet, you can use the multiple GPUs servers to join this system yes. And of course after our testing we will open a public testing task, and we would like to invite our community to join this test work and the fun bargain. Maybe we will make a bounty for that, yeah.

Eric: Okay that’s good. So Elk, [the answers to] your questions are all positives, so I think you’ll be happy with that. And I know you have further questions:
“Hi Owen, now that Matrix chose to not use FileCoin but instead Matrix own IPFS servers, can the community contribute by joining this IPFS network to be able to decentralize it further and to secure the uploaded data?”
Yeah, Owen?

Owen: The thing is, we haven’t opened this function to the public because we haven’t encouraged systems into our IPFS system, so if you provide the storage to other people you can’t get rewards right now. So that’s why we haven’t opened this to the people, because if you want the contributors who will support a stable and good storage in our IPFS system, you need to give them rewards, so maybe after we finish the design for the Tokenomics for this functions, we will open it to the public and ask the community to make their own storage to our system.

Eric: Okay, I think that makes a business sense. I think that people are driven by the interest of the rewards, particularly for the miners or service providers. So when it is ready then we will invite people to join these IPFS network servers, things like that, to further decentralize and to securely upload the data.

Okay, and then we go on with Kacawote: “When will Matrix be able to make transactions of 1 million TPS or more?”

Owen: We have mentioned that in our plan, we designed the Matrix network which kind of supports 1 million transactions per second. But it’s in theory, because we haven’t good enough hardware right now, such as we haven’t got enough bandwidth for that. We have tested our network in the laboratory, in lab, and the most TPS we can achieve is about 100,000. But we still can’t achieve the 1 million which is our theory TPS, but I think in the future when the hardware will get better and better, and the bandwidth will get bigger and bigger, I think maybe we will achieve this number someday, but not now.

Eric: Okay, so I think our current TPS is about 14,000. And also in the lab test, we can reach up to over 100,000 TPS. And the MainNet is scalable, but we have to take a progressive approach. Meaning to say, even if we had the 1 million TPS right now, we don’t have that many transactions, so it’ll be a waste of those bandwidths, hardware, mining things, etc, etc. So we take kind of a progressive approach, so when there is a need for more TPS, or higher TPS, it is there, because we are scalable.

Okay that’s good, and that is the part one about the technical or technology side, and may I move on to a product side, this is from Sbblc, Owen: “Do you have plans to bring out a wallet app in the App Store?”

Owen: Yes, last time, I have mentioned that right now we are working on that to offer a new version of a world app (application), but of course we will offer an Android version first, and then the iOS version. I think in the near future you will find a wallet app which supports Matrix and MAN in the App Store, which will be developed by one of our ecosystem team.

Eric: Okay, that’s good, that’s good, that’s good. So hopefully we can see the upgraded Android wallet app soon, and then after some tests we can then apply to be uploaded to the PlayStore of Android.
That’s good, and the second question about the product side, again from TheElk: “Hi Owen, will MANAS and MANTA be fully released on MainNet during Q2?”

Owen: Yeah, in this Q2, in this quarter, I think the madness will be fully released on the MainNet. Right now we have already put all the AI services on our MainNet right now. But for MANTA, in this quarter I think we will start it. Of course we will release it on our MainNet, and we will invite some collaborators to do the tests first. After the testing we would like to open it to the public.

Eric: Okay that’s good. So MANAS will be released to the MainNet, and MANTA we finish 2 Quarter, we will invite some partners to test first and then release to the public. I think that makes sense. So kind of very good signs for this and I hope TheElk you are satisfied with this one.

And then we move on to 2 questions about… Actually three, so this one is from Omer55yuksel about Twitter:
“Even CZ tweets 10 tweets a day.. Wouldn’t it be better if you were a little more active on Twitter and announced the developments?”

So I think he’s asking if you can, I mean if your personal twitter can be more active. I know you are busy, and because of language issues, but can you please try to answer this one please?

Owen: Okay, I think it’s a good suggestion, and right now we have the most things [going on] about our project, we will announce them in our official Twitter account. And I think your suggestion is very good, and I’d like to be more active in the future and share more information on my own twitter account. I will try my best.

Eric: Okay, good. So, for tweets, it may be relatively difficult because you have to write, but I think a quick way will be to have more interaction with the tweets from the official Twitter account. So you can say for example like a retweet, things like that, that will be easier for you.

Owen: Okay.

Eric: Okay, yeah. And then from EbMagic: “Do we have a developer space on Discord, Slack, or anywhere where we can learn to use all of the Matrix AI tools with some practical cases?”

Owen: Yeah, that’s a good suggestion too, and we will have our Discord channel and I think in the future after we finish most of our development work in our roadmap, maybe we would like to ask one or two technologies staff who will be in charge of building this channel, we can discuss more things about our technological things in Discord, yeah. It will happen, but not now. We will finish our development work first and then we will do better and more things for the developers in our community.

Eric: Okay, so it will take a while EbMagic, but before that you can visit the website. I think there is a place at our website with all the technical details you can refer to.

And last question, this is from Snoeks78. A bit long. The question is like there’s a lot of statements, it’s like this:
“Although I’m still testing, I find that the APY is more like 2–3% on an annualized basis than the suggested 10–11%.”
Okay. Before I go on to other questions, Owen, do you have any comments on this one? He’s getting 2 or 3% instead of just 10 to 11%, do you have any comment on this part?

Owen: In fact the subject of the APY is calculated as an average reward for all the miners, and the delegates know. So ,because you know, there are some very big delegates, that’s why they can gain more percent rewards then. And also the little delegate nodes will gain less. So the number you have seen is an average number. That’s why maybe it’s something not exactly equal to the suggested numbers. And also if you are a miner and the APY for you… First every miner has the same chance to be selected, but how many rewards they will gain depends on your computing power and your bandwidth and lots of things. So you can’t say “I have joined as a miner in the Matrix network, I will gain the most rewards”, you need to improve maybe your hardware and your bandwidth, or something else to… I’ll say to add more rewards.

Eric: Okay, thanks. Snoeks78, because you have a very long statement, so I will cut the… you have some suggestions on the UI etc. So I think we have done some improvements on those and see if that fits your needs. And allow me to go to the last bit of your statement, which is about “can we have a simple staking guide so that the process is clearer to understand, especially in regards to the APY, 10 to 11% is okay, 2 or 3% is not that interesting especially for crypto. So, cut it short, can we provide some simple staking guide?” 
I think we do have this staking guide in place, but I’m not sure what exactly do you want us to improve on that. Yeah perhaps you can Snoeks78, could you please DM me directly so that we can understand your list better, and then after we are clear and then I’ll pass the message to Owen for his comments and to see how we can help the miners all together.

And Owen I think you have addressed the nine questions that we selected from the pool. Thank you very much for your time, and you take care of yourself and also of your family in Beijing.

And I think that concludes our AMA today. And thanks Owen, and again and thanks Matrixians for supporting and sharing your concerns, asking your questions, submitting your suggestions, thanks for that. And I think this is a good one because we will have MANAS to be released in Q2 and we do think ahead of some functional features but we still cannot give a very exact timeline to fully realize those functions. But we’ve already taken those into consideration and we will keep updating the community.

Okay and I think that concludes the AMA today, thanks everyone, bye.

Owen: Bye.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatrixAINetwork/status/1520671412964536321?s=20

Medium: https://matrixainetwork.medium.com/matrix-ama-april-2022-5de0c043fc2