Hey, everyone, just going to do a quick tech check, make sure everyone can hear me okay.
We'll kick off in a few minutes just to give everyone time to join.
I can hear you loud and clear, Claire, so hopefully you can hear me as well.
Yeah, I can hear you, Jeff.
Did I drop connection, or just to confirm everyone can hear me again, sorry?
We just have Sam joining us, so just waiting for him to connect.
It's always good to kick off Twitter space a little bit early.
There's always some type of a technical issue I find.
Okay, Sam, can you hear us okay?
GM, everyone, and welcome to our AMA session today.
We're going to dive into a pretty exciting topic, the strategic partnership between Ontology
So, for those of you who aren't aware, I think Ontology is pretty well known for its work
in decentralized identity and a lot more, while StackUp plays a pretty crucial role
in empowering developers and then bridging the technology skills gap.
So, today we're going to explore what sparked this collaboration and what the future holds
for both sides in the space.
So, to kick us off, do you guys want to do a quick intro?
Jeff, do you want to take the lead?
So, Ontology, we've been in the space quite a while.
We're into our seventh year.
A combination of things, really, as Klaeser alluded to, as a layer one blockchain,
as a EVM compatibility in there as well, just to make it easier for developers.
Proof of stake is our mechanism, so there's lots of staking available.
We run a dual token system.
But really underpinning all that is this idea of decentralized identity.
Our core package is called Ontid, and this is a DID solution that allows cross-chain identity
and also for people to build on top of that for solutions, whether that be around
credit scoring and reputation and things like that as well.
So, it's kind of almost a complete package of cross-chain identity solutions.
Yeah, it'd be a great day from Stack Up, Sam, if you want to do a quick intro.
So, I'm Suzaku from Stack Up.
So, on Stack Up, what we really aim to do is to empower developers to advance
their technical skills and their tech stack, right?
Therefore, the name Stack Up, right?
And in pretty much the latest cutting edge technologies, right?
So, on Stack Up, pretty much, we have all kinds of learning pathways,
whether you are into the Web 2 space, the Web 3, or you're looking to learn
We have all of these different kind of learning material catered for users
of all kinds of interests.
And every Friday, we also launch new quests as well, where developers get to
level up while still earning from reward pools.
And they pretty much can build all kinds of different things, such as
widget apps or deploying dApps, right?
So, along the way, we've partnered with many different partners as well,
such as Avalanche, Polkadot, Circle, and, of course, Ontology.
And that has really helped a lot of our developers to level up their skills
and to basically kickstart building projects on them.
And so, generally, what we want to do is to help fill up whatever tech skills
And we want to have all our developers be better positioned for tech careers.
So, moving into, I think, the heart of our discussion.
I'm pretty curious about the primary goals between Ontology and StackUp.
Maybe if we can touch on what you're both looking to achieve through
this partnership and kind of how these goals align.
I was really interested in the StackUp idea, right?
So, it's developers, what developers want, what users want, actually.
They want to be able to develop the best products.
They want to be able to develop really well.
One of our goals at Ontology is to remove barriers for development.
You know, I always feel like I'm going to get in trouble for saying this,
I believe Web3 has got a great role to play.
But, actually, as we just alluded to here,
this idea that what developers need is a well-rounded tech stack
that they can draw upon to provide the right solutions.
Now, that might be using traditional Web2 tech stack products.
But what they need is that access to all of that knowledge
and all of that learning to make it as easy for them as possible to develop.
So, a partnership with somebody like StackUp is really important
because what we want to do is say, okay, you've got all these tools
that you traditionally use in Web2.
You've got some tools for Web3.
But here's some more tools you might be able to use
that we can provide for Ontology to add to your toolkit,
to add to that tech stack that you want to deploy in providing solutions for people.
And so, being able to reach developers with that education,
with that information, achieves one of our main goals,
which is that reduction of barrier, that removal of problems
to try and make it so developers have as easy a time as possible
to develop the products they want to develop.
All right. Thanks, Chef, for that.
So, I think on StackUp's position, right, what we really hope to achieve is that
currently all the stuff that, you know, our developers have learned is,
you know, web development.
We have also learned about different kinds of blockchain protocols.
And we want to take the learning to the next level, right?
And especially with Ontology, it's very much, you know, privacy-focused as well
and having decentralized identity.
And we want to bring forward this idea of decentralized identities
and to basically have developers make use of these concepts
and integrate it within the kind of applications that they can create, right,
so that we have a more privacy-first kind of development for applications
and to allow users of the applications to be able to have control
over how that data is being used.
I don't know if it was everybody else, but I just lost you at the end there.
If you could just repeat.
Does everybody can hear me okay if it's not my connection?
I could hear everything, I think.
I don't think I lost anything.
Maybe my connection is a little bit patchy here.
I'll just kind of continue.
So I know just you guys mentioned kind of barriers for developers.
What would you kind of see as like the main barriers, really,
and kind of how Ontology and Stack Over are kind of working together
to remove those barriers?
So I think, again, touching on what I already said,
there's a lot of new tech out there.
You know, Web3 is still new.
It's still a development technology.
It's still a work in progress for people.
And a lot of the time, it's really useful for people to try
and get hands-on experience, to try and get used to using products.
And I think this is something that we can do together to provide
opportunities and incentives for people to come in
and actually get that hands-on experience and support.
You know, we set up support channels in the Discord
and things like that to make sure that you've got access to people.
And I think that's what these partnerships really do
to remove those barriers.
Yeah, I think on Stack Up's perspective,
we do want to lower the barriers of entry, especially
for those users who are currently in Web2, for example.
And they're maybe perhaps looking at Web3 with a bit of,
you know, they're uncertain, right?
Or to them, it could be a whole new space,
and they're not sure if this is something they would want to look at, right?
So for Stack Up, in our case, we generally have all these kind
of quests that are very guided, such that they can complete
a task that might at first seem daunting.
But after a while, they get to see that with the step-by-step
kind of guides that we have in our quest, right,
it's actually very achievable, and learning blockchain
isn't really that difficult, actually.
All right, so at least for Stack Up's case,
we want to really lower that barrier of entry to,
you know, what seems to be a whole new different dimension
And for, you know, new users, you know, to new developers especially,
you know, for someone who doesn't know what's happening at all,
we just want to say, you know, take your first step today,
just look at this quest, and then, you know, even if you're uncertain,
we have a very strong learning community, right?
So our stackies, the ones we call, you know,
our members of the Stack Up community are extremely helpful.
Every time there's a quest, you know, we've got people
who are helping others out, you know, they're kind of difficult,
these are things that they don't know about.
Yep, so that's pretty much the barrier of entry
That's super interesting, actually,
kind of taking the topic there of moving from Web 2 to Web 3
and kind of just having these guides open to learn,
but also with like a gamified aspect,
and also then being able to introduce them to kind of the idea
of ontology at the same time, I think is super interesting
and kind of leads us nicely into our next focus
is all about the campaigns that we're working on,
that we've just recently, that we will be,
we've recently launched, pardon, with Stack Up.
So if you could share kind of some more details
about the campaign guides, that'd be awesome,
and kind of, you know, what was the driver
behind launching these campaigns?
So for us in Stack Up, we've actually tailored
to learn and earn campaigns with ontology,
and each of these campaigns comprise of a primer quest
And both of these campaigns will generally focus
on diving into decentralized identity,
and they offer developers an opportunity
to stake on the ontology mainnet.
All right, so for example,
yesterday we just launched the primer quest,
where users basically were introduced to,
you know, what is ontology
and how it's such a comprehensive framework
for reshaping how we think about digital identity
and data management, right?
And then for some of our users,
they'll notice that the next quest,
the staking quest, is happening much later,
and that's really because we want to sort of process
your submissions and ensure that we have air dropped,
you know, the ontology token rewards correctly
to the successful users, right?
And so that's pretty much for the first campaign.
And then after that, we do have a second campaign as well,
and that's where users will be taking their learning
to the next level as well,
where they'll be learning about ONT ID,
and they'll also be learning how to create
a simple application to integrate ONT login.
And I think those two campaigns are really cool, right?
I mean, if I think about what's at core,
the actual core of ontology and some of the barriers
I know people run into at times,
you've got a couple of things.
I mentioned earlier we have the dual token system,
so we've got ONT and we've got ONG.
ONT being the sort of staking token
and ONG being the token that pays for gas.
It's important people understand that
and people get their heads around that,
and one of the great things you can do is start staking.
If you start staking, you stake the ONT
and you receive ONG's rewards,
and ONG is required to process transactions on the chain.
So it's a nice way to introduce people
to that dual token system.
On top of that, ONT ID is really our flagship product here.
I mean, we have SDKs, open source SDKs,
we have a lot of support,
and there's a lot of opportunity for people
Passwordless login is one of the opportunities.
There's all sorts of other opportunities in there.
So this idea that you can learn and earn as you go
with all that support that stackups offer,
plus the support that we offer at Ontology for people as well,
I think it's a really nice way to introduce people
into what Ontology is about
and some of the power of that system.
We also linked up with Onto Wallet as well,
which is a great gateway into that Web3 universe
and a great gateway for using Ontology.
So there's lots of really important infrastructure learning
there for people during these stackup campaigns.
Yeah, and I think that for stackup learners in particular,
I think they'll be partly excited about the staking quest
because all along on stackup,
we've always done things on the testnet, right?
So being able to stake on a mainnet
is something really new on stackup
and we want to get users excited about it
because they're finally using actual currency
and we're air dropping that currency to them
to be able to do the staking
and to actually be part of the network.
I'm not sure if we lost Claire there.
I'm just having issues with connection today.
Sorry, I'm not picking up everything you guys are saying.
Hopefully, it's obviously being recorded,
so I do apologize for that and also apologize
if I'm repeating anything that you've already answered.
But from what I did get really detailed understanding
into where this collaboration is going
and where you're focused on,
I'd love to just understand a little bit more
about the campaign structures and formats.
Like just to, you know, because obviously,
I think that there's a lot of great structures
and innovations going on with stackup
and just how you guys kind of keep people really interested
in how the campaigns can be structured
and kind of how you ensure that there's always
something interesting to develop there.
Yeah, so I think one part of stackup
that we really have is number one,
we always try our best to listen to our users.
So, for example, in our Discord server,
we usually get feedback from users.
For example, you might ask how is the existing campaign
and what kind of content they wish to see.
So for some of them, they are always looking forward
to small partner campaigns, for example,
and that's where, you know,
campaigns like Ontology comes in as well.
Then for learning, we always want to make sure
that it's gamified and yet structured, right?
So learning experience of users is at a core.
Especially for myself, I used to be a teacher
in secondary school, so I know how important it is
to actually, you know, teach and to make sure that,
you know, the people who are looking at the material
actually are able to learn well, right?
So the thing is we always want to make sure
that the developer learning experience
is as seamless as possible.
So what you see on a stackup quest is that,
you know, you've got very clearly plotted out steps,
for example, and at the end of each step,
sometimes you might have expected output images,
which pretty much guide users, you know,
it's a visual reference, really, to see, like,
if am I on the right track at this point in time, right?
Or sometimes we might have certain code references
that they can check against.
And that's pretty much how we want to make sure
that we sort of, like, guide them,
hold your hands for a little at the start,
and then towards the end, as we ramp up the difficulty,
we may provide, you know, we might let go of your hands
and say, hey, now's the challenge, right?
You can take part in, you can do this thing,
or you can do that thing.
All right, so it's just more of sort of building up
developer content at the start first.
Yeah, I just thought that I went through your campaign,
actually, and those steps.
I really like that step-by-step approach
because it never feels overwhelming.
It never feels like there's too much.
It's do this, move on to this, move on to this,
whilst giving people that opportunity to learn something
and then take that step forward themselves as well.
So I must admit, I really liked how you structured that.
Yeah, I definitely have to agree with Jeff on that.
Coming from kind of maybe less technical background
definitely feels, like, supportive
and easier to get involved.
And I think that that's always appreciated
and I think it will help to kind of grow a better community.
And just also, kind of just to step back a little bit,
I know we've touched on decentralized identity today,
but was there like a key focus of decentralized identity
when kind of building these campaigns?
Was it kind of the thought was to maybe educate
the broader ecosystem on what ontology can provide
when it comes to decentralized identity?
I don't know, Jeff, if you want to jump in here first.
Yeah, I think what's really interesting
with decentralized identity, and yes,
you know, this is one of the key things
we want to work with Stack Up to teach people about.
And I think one of the big things from my point of view
is it's a really powerful tool.
It gives people great opportunity to provide value
to users in the apps that they develop.
It can be great across a broad spectrum of things,
whether it be in gaming products, in social products,
It just keeps users' identities secure and safe
from breaches, from exploits,
from phishing attempts, and all sorts of things.
I think one of the things sometimes people miss
is they get so focused on building a great app,
a killer app, that they sometimes miss this customer focus
You know, we often talk about passwordless logging modern day.
I love passwordless logging because I forget them all the time.
And yet we do that often with a centralized entity,
whether that be Apple or Google or something.
And we know that those resulting breaches and so on.
So I think one of the big things we can do with partnerships
like with StackUp is educate people on the power
of decentralized identity, what it offers to developers
and allows developers to offer to their future customers,
I think is really important.
And at the same time, teaching them that it can be quite easy
The SDKs are available for people.
The pathway to using it easily is there with Onto Wallet.
There's all sorts of options around it.
So, yeah, that's a long-winded answer, as always, Claire.
I'm sorry to say, yeah, I think there is this,
always going to be this focus on trying to introduce people
to the advantages and benefits of incorporating
decentralized identity into any tech that people push forward.
No, I think that's brilliant, Jeff.
And I think it's more of a detailed answer
because I think the issue we run into sometimes
is that people listening or people that join in,
the assumption that everybody knows a lot about
whether it's Onto Wallet, StackUp,
whether it's these campaigns taking or decentralized identity.
So, I think it's always quite inclusive
to include a lot of details
when we're discussing certain topics,
especially when we just touched on barriers to entry, right?
I don't think we can really focus on barriers to entry
for not giving everybody a lot of detail
on kind of what we're executing
and what we're talking about.
Sorry, Suzaku, did you want to jump in on anything there?
Well, I think I'll just add on a bit more
to what Jeff's mentioned, right?
So, I think for me, when I was looking at the kind of content
and looking at what Ontology was all about, right?
And, you know, I think these words resonated with me.
It's about how the project is designed to build trust,
privacy, security to web tree
through decentralized identity and data solutions, right?
So, for me, when I was looking at this, I was like,
oh, that seems to be pretty much the uniqueness
of what Ontology can bring to the blockchain space.
And therefore, that was why I looked at, you know,
I focused so much on decentralized identity
and, you know, for all learners on StackUp,
that's something that, you know,
by the end of the entire campaign.
Awesome. Thanks so much, guys.
So, I think we can definitely agree that, you know,
there's a massive focus here put on, you know,
as I just said, you know, removing barriers to entry.
That really interesting kind of consideration
of migrating from web two to web three,
ensuring it's super easy to understand.
There's a lot of support there,
and, like, education is a primary kind of consideration.
And, you know, I think we can definitely agree
that, you know, there's a huge amount of work done
to commit to the community, to get their feedback,
and to ensure that any of these campaigns
that are being developed from the side of StackUp,
you know, that they're obviously innovative
and have super high quality.
If you guys don't have anything else to add,
I'll leave it open for you,
but I'd just leave a few minutes
if anybody has any kind of questions from...
Yeah, just open the floor to any questions.
I suppose what I would say, Claire,
just before we wrap that up, you know,
I spoke a lot about decentralized identity.
Obviously, we also, as part of this campaign,
there is this staking element going on.
Staking on ontology is quite exciting.
It's what first, I don't know,
five years ago attracted me to ontology
was those staking solutions.
And we have a really strong staking community as well.
So when you do get involved in that staking,
if you decide you want to take it further,
there's some great guides.
We've got some great people who have been around for forever
and taught me how to get involved in staking even
back in all those years ago.
And so do pop in and say hello, say hi.
As I say, we do have a proof of state mechanism
You get rewarded in the ONG token.
That ONT token and staking becomes really important
in terms of governance and, you know,
putting your vote into a node
so that node can represent you in government procedures
I don't always talk about rewards,
but the rewards are always excellent on there.
So, you know, come and join us and have a chat
about staking once you start that journey
in staking with StackUp as well.
Yeah, I mean, definitely.
So I think for, you know, everyone else who is listening,
right, I think, you know, stay tuned, right?
So our first primer quest was up yesterday
and then so stay tuned for the staking quest, right?
And then that's where, you know,
you really get to see how it's like, right?
In fact, I actually wanted to say that
there is a node on Ontology mainnet that's named StackUp.
So for those of you who are under,
who have the Onto Wallet app downloaded onto your phones,
you know, you can actually check it out
if you click on the stake function for ONT,
you can actually look up,
you can search for the StackUp node.
And it's a great way to support StackUp as well, right?
You know, if you're in that StackUp community,
you know, get on that node, get staking with StackUp,
you know, give them your support on there as well.
It's a great way to be involved across two communities.
You know, you sort of straddle both sections of it.
So I'd always encourage that.
And I think something that's always kind of echoed
on a lot of these AMAs is to just get involved,
just start, just, you know, kind of create something
and then reach out for help as well.
So from both sides, I think, you know,
we're both fairly active when it comes to social.
So whether it's Discord or Twitter or Telegram,
to reach out for any support.
But if anybody has any questions
that you'd like to ask the guys today.
Okay, we have one person here.
Okay, so my question is regarding this.
You were saying something about staking, right?
I think Claire's having some audio problems.
Do you want to carry on your questions?
So basically my question is regarding the staking thing.
In general, when we do a stake,
we have to pay some gas fees.
So is it paid on, on, and on only,
or we have to do something else regarding that?
So on Ontology, you would be staking the ONT token,
the ONT token, and you're absolutely right.
The gas fee would be in the ONT token.
So the ONT token being for gas.
I'm sure that's going to be covered in the second quest
that comes up, but yeah, absolutely correct.
ONT is the staking token.
ONT is the token you use to pay for gas
Okay, and second question is regarding this DID
So I just want to know one thing.
How is staking amplifies that DID?
So staking is what secures the network.
And so the Ontology network is kind of,
think about it as your storage space for that identity.
So you've got it stored across all the different nodes.
Now, the more secure the network,
the more people stake, the more nodes that are run,
the better for that decentralization of that ownership.
So rather than amplifying the DID,
what it all does is it all links into that security
and all links into that decentralized representation
So rather than just being owned by Google,
it's spread across these decentralized,
interconnected nodes on the blockchain.
And so that staking then secures that
and makes it more robust for the users,
I think it's a really interesting question on that, Claire.
And I really appreciate that question because this idea of,
okay, we've got decentralized identity,
that concept of how they come together
is kind of difficult or sometimes people to grasp.
And it's a really important question.
But without the blockchain,
you can't have the decentralized identity.
What you have is just identity.
So that could be secured across different ways,
but we use proof of stake,
which is becoming more and more popular, of course.
Great. Thanks so much for that.
I'll leave it open just for a couple more minutes
to see if there's any other questions.
And again, just to apologize for my side,
if there's a lot of delays,
I'm not sure if you're picking me up, okay?
Yeah, we can hear you fine, Claire.
I think you just keep losing us sometimes.
Sorry about that. Okay, cool.
We'll just give it two more minutes.
Yeah, that was actually a brilliant question.
And thanks for the insights, Jeff.
You know, it helps me understand further.
So that's always awesome.
You know, just leave it a few more minutes.
You know, some of these questions might pop up.
If there's even anything for stock up
or any further questions,
for ontology, please feel free.
Okay, I think that's everything from today.
Just to do a quick summary of everything that we covered today.
So we learned so much more, I think,
about the structure of stock up,
the level of commitment they have to kind of helping developers
kind of further develop their skills,
like bridge that gap as well,
kind of removal of barrier to entry as well,
which I think why it makes this partnership
with ontology so interesting.
That's definitely something that ontology is focused on as well.
Don't forget, we had a campaign kick off yesterday
and follow Twitter on both sides, ontology
and stock up to be kept up to date
on everything that's developing.
I want to thank Jeff and Sazakou for joining us today.
And yeah, we'll be obviously sharing the event link
and then, you know, kind of writing a summary
so everybody can stay up to date on what's happening.
All right, thank you so much.
Yeah, thanks for joining us.
And thanks for hosting, Clay.
And thanks for everybody for tuning in.
Again, any questions, please do just head over
to either our telegram or our Discord.
There's always somebody happy to chat
and discuss anything with you as well.
And just one final apology from my side.
I'm so sorry, I think I missed a little bit there
but I might blame the spaces for that.
Looking forward to connecting with everybody again.