Stakenet AMA - Part II
By: Jo Park
Tags: Blockchain, Bitcoin, Lightning Network, Decentralization, Xsn Articles

If you missed Part I of our AMA make sure to check it out here.

Q: Every minute there are 20 new XSN brought into existence. 9 MN and 9 stakers, 2 for the treasury, which makes about 20x60x24x365/12=876,000 per month all in all and 87,600 in treasury. Since the team stated before that there were months that they did not get into treasury [first XSN month for example], I want to ask what happens to those coins?

A: The 2 XSN for the treasury is not actually created until the Masternodes cast their vote each month. If the vote passes, this XSN is then minted at the superblock. If the vote does not pass, then the XSN does not get minted.

Q: We have been working on the MCLW for a while and it has been in beta for everyone for 3+ months. How do they see the continuation of beta -> official release?

A: Once we have ETH Layer two (L2) live and swapping in our internal closed beta group, we will begin preparing to set a public launch date to go with the release of our launch site.

Q: What are the plans for DEX security eg. password / pin? Will we get these before public release?

A: Yes, that’s definitely on the DEV list as priority before public release.

Q: Stakenet DEX Stage 2 “Prometheus” how do you want to select the masternodes that provide the DEX HUB and collect the DEX fees? Is there a minimum of 5–10x MNs or how do you choose?

A: At Stage 2 “Prometheus”, there won’t be Masternodes added yet, only different hubs and liquidity providers. If you have technical knowledge and you want to provide liquidity by setting up your own hub you can contact Draper. Masternodes and the whole XSN Blockchain will be added at Stage 3 “Hydra”.

Q: Building off of the question above me, as a masternode owner how can or will we sign up for things such as Prometheus and hydra once they are implemented?

A: There will not be anything to sign-up to when we reach this stage as we do not want to implement any form of KYC. There will be further requirements such as increased hardware requirements to ensure the DEX runs on powerful and reliable masternodes. These details will be released closer to stage 3 once we have the specific data to work with — as of now, there is nothing further for masternode owners to do at this minute.

Q: What have been the deliverables of these teams in the last two years since inception?

A: As everything is working together at Stakenet, they are also worked for:

Invention of TPoS

Segwit and Lightning upgrade

Masternode implementation

Staking as a service and Masternodes as a service

Release of stakenet.io, xsnexplorer.io, DEX-stats website etc

Integration into Ledger and Trezor

TPoS from Trezor (live now) and Ledger (working on UI)

One-click Lightning Network swaps

TOR Network, Auto updater integration into MCLW

Open beta release of MCLW and Lightning-DEX

Q: Some newspapers have been saying that Lightning Network is very insecure and can be hacked easily?

A: Up until now there are no known bigger hacks of the LN, despite all claims and theories. Also one of the worldwide biggest exchanges, Bitfinex, has even implemented wumbo channels that have 5 BTC capacity each. This shows they wouldn’t have them up and running (with no issues) if it would be so insecure. Furthermore, more security features like Watchtowers (we have them already implemented) are coming too, as the LN is still a very young network.

Q: What happened in the treasury as seen in the treasury graph on stakenet.info/governance/treasury ? There was a hard drop of 4m XSN in April, sharp increase of 3m in May and then a 3m drop in June when the rest of the year has been steady.

A: Stakenet.info is a community run page as such, we do not have any direct oversight of this site. There are actually more XSN treasury addresses that are not included within the site which can lead to calculation errors. The drop displayed in May is most likely due to the burn address XmPe9BHRsmZeThtYF34YYjdnrjmcAUn8bC being added and then removed again.

We will contact the community member soon so he can update the page properly.

Q: Are the team looking to expand and hire more team members? If so, what positions will you be looking for? and Are you guys hiring? Would you guys consider looking to the community to hire from?

A: Yes, have a look at https://stakenet.io/jobs/. We will also start advertising positions on coinmarketcap soon. We would also look to hire some community members as they most likely know us very well and are tend to be very motivated.

Q: Will another superblock be required in 2021?

A: A superblock is created every month as this is the deadline to release the funds for the developers and is voted on by the XSN masternodes.

If your question is in relation to the one-off funding we did in 2019 to ensure the developers could continue with the project and have enough funding in the treasury for a prolonged bear market, then no, we do not plan to do that again.

Q: Are there plans for merchandise?

A: The team do not have any plans to sell merchandise however; this was previously done by the community itself. We welcome to pick this up again.

Q: Could you discuss the frequency of updates (commits/pulls) on the private repos? What % of development over the last three months would you estimate has happened in private repos?

A: Over the course of the last 3 months, around 80%+ of the work has been done in private repositories as this is where the work for the DEX orderbook and Light Wallet are being done.

Q: Do Devs own enough masternodes to influence the Treasury and print millions of XSN at whim? and Devs own the masterkey and can shut down the blockchain or print more XSN whenever they want?

A: No one entity is able to print XSN, or shutdown the blockchain. The team owns less than 2% of the overall total supply.

It is important to note that changes of this magnitude require a hardfork with full consensus of the network in order to increase the supply of XSN outside of standard block rewards.

The developers do have a spork key however; this key can only stop a feature such as TPoS and is used when a bug has been identified and requires fixing. This key cannot stop or change the blockchain. Once we are completely in Hydra there will also be no DEX key or something, so no one / no entity would be able to shut it down.

Q: Will the Masternodes be able to host non-blockchain assets such as domains, cloud storage and VPNs etc in the coming years?

A: Yes, domain, storage and VPN services are all great use cases for masternodes and this can be looked into.

Q: What are the requirements for setting up the hub in Prometheus stage and how does one do that?

A: As of now HUBs in Prometheus need to work directly with the team to enable them to quickly identify and fix any bugs or technical issues. , technical requirements & specs are not yet determined/ public.

As mentioned previously, these details will be released closer to stage 3 once we have the specific data to work with.

Q: Official ETH to BTC Swap before Q3 2021 on the DEX?

A: Yes, we actually hope to have Lightning <> Connext swaps live much earlier than this date.

Q: When the price of XSN increases, what are the plans around masternode proposals? Will you open it up to the public to vote on proposals such as how much to dedicate towards the devs and marketing? We understand now that the price is not that high so it all goes to the devs but I am asking for when it reaches $2 or more.

A: Yes, the team have plans to create interfaces where proposals can be easily submitted and reviewed from a web UI. Ideally a forum would accompany this as well for relevant discussion/debate (+allowing a mechanism to “sign” messages showing you are indeed an MN owner)