Phala Network Monthly Community Call - Coprocessor Decoded

Recorded: Feb. 7, 2024 Duration: 1:23:25

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we're seeing people are going to the multi-proof direction.
So yeah, just a nice question, a little bit technical.
Amazing. No, great.
Thank you so much, Hung.
And this, we open definitely a very important
and exciting topic here.
Thank you for giving the high level introductions.
We are also at Denver this year.
So, and we are actually talking a lot about TE topics,
expansion, the rise of TE within Deepin
or the crypto space overall.
And Hung will be on several stages, so will Marvin.
So please, if you're in Denver, look out for our events
because we will go much more deeper in this discussion
that Hung just opened.
Very exciting.
And Hung, just onto this note,
you just mentioned that we need to stay flexible.
We also have on our roadmap to add DECAP as a TE provider,
At the moment, Phala is based on SGX.
So just that everyone knows we are also expanding
on that side.
Yeah, I think that's, let me see.
Maybe another question to Marvin regarding the Deepin space.
Marvin, because we are also a forewriter
in Deepin, a new narrative coming up in Web3.
It's really, again, not a new technology,
more something how to group specific protocols together,
but from your opinion,
why is it also, why is Deepin very important to us this year?
And why are we starting to partner
with these different Deepin projects
that you will also see with us on stage in Denver?
Yeah, I mean, the buzzword, right?
Deepin, it's on the high in this year,
but if you take out the top projects for this,
for example, Phala is also a Deepin network.
I mean, most of us already like,
build the ideas since 2017 or 2018.
So it's not a new thing, not worse than short,
but like recently people begin to realize it
because I think it's just a good onboarding timing
for the market.
And it means that Deepin can already be useful
for Web3 users or Web2 users.
And I mean, in the past period,
I think most of the Deepin projects
is like very focused on building infrastructures.
So we are still in the very early stage
of the building curve,
but it's just a silent jump into a good time
for Deepin projects to be useful.
And it's not just Phala,
also like Akash or Arvave,
Balcoin, the graph, Btensin, this and that, Helium, right?
So the Deepin projects are useful now.
That's the major game changer, I would say.
So since we've been building the CPU network for a long time
and we see that the new Deepin projects
were trying to establish the network in this year,
there are some opportunities for us.
For example, they need some modular templates
or modular SDKs to help them establish the network
as soon as possible.
And they need some inscriptions solutions.
Some of them also need
like node as service,
but the node is not traditional blockchain node,
but more like a Deepin node.
For example, open number CDN node,
or write like an end-to-end inscription node.
So this kind of Deepin, I would say extensions
of the Deepin modulars requires lower barrier
than traditional blockchain computation nodes.
But yeah, but not easy to, I mean,
it's the people and it's the barrier
you need to solve as a problem.
And I believe if Phala can develop
with some functionality like Deepin solutions,
I think we can help this project
to establish a quite strong network pretty fast.
So that's what we are thinking about as a opportunity
to be some kind of Deepin cloud service.
So we are key exploring on this,
no guarantees on how it work
or like how successful it could be.
But we are talking with some Deepin project
to see if they need something as we predicted.
Yeah, also definitely a big part of the roadmap,
as you mentioned,
and we will expand on these topics also in Denver.
We are hosting our third edition of Infra Guards also,
where you're all invited
and we are hosting a specific panel
on the rise of Deepin in web3.
So kindly join there
or we will definitely also post the content afterwards.
I have seen that we already posted our POEP
for this community call.
So please check the comments guys,
and you're able to follow and claim your beautiful design,
beautifully designed Chinese New Year POEP from Phala.
And yeah, this is our little present for you here today.
So enjoy this
and let us know how you like the design afterwards.
Marvin, now I have a very special
or a bit alpha question here to you
because we talked a lot about like the infrastructure
and so on.
We also have mentioned a lot of AI
already in the beginning of this call
and in our roadmap,
but we also work or mentioned another new AI project.
That Phala is working on.
Do you want to give some eye found this?
What can people expect?
Yeah, I'll leave this to you.
So this is a idea we've been working on for a while.
It originally come from the like a metaverse exploring,
exploration.
And we think this is a low honey fruit of Phala.
So Vitalik have published a blog,
which I would say is quite classic in couple of months ago.
It's called DACC.
And this password is D means,
maybe defensive or decentralization.
So this concept is like we should embrace the future of AI.
Because it means high efficiency,
but in the meanwhile,
we could build some defensive infrastructure
so that we can control the AI services.
Maybe with web3 technology,
maybe web3 with something else.
So it's better from there.
I think we, yes,
since like Phala is already kind of
pretty solid as a like a computation network.
So we could work with some specific central role with AI.
And we can help to create the DACC community together.
So, and we also noticed that there are many like Phala fans
of communities.
Asking if we can do something,
maybe like decentralized rendering,
computation like GPU providers,
or we can be like be tensor, right?
Directly provide decentralized machine learning
infrastructure.
These are not the low honey fruit for Phala
because our infrastructure is based on the fact
that we are components by CPUs.
But I mean, AI with web3 is not just a GPU provider.
It's not just the machine learning infrastructures.
It's not even just the, you know, the KML.
We think there are some more practical solutions
need to be provided.
And there are some things that people definitely
love to see.
So we find out a way that everybody can easily convert
their AI agent from, you know,
our provider into a decentralized way,
into a trust-based way.
And we build from there.
So, but this project is very early stage.
And I'm, there's a tiny team in the hot storage
is working on it.
And yeah, if there's any progress
or there's anything coming up,
we will definitely share it with everybody here.
Thank you so much for sharing this.
So guys, stay tuned.
Again, you're also talking
and never more about AI use cases on Phala join us there.
And feel free to also, yeah, get into a closed beta
whenever we are opening up the space for the users.
I would, yeah, open it up actually to the community now.
We have received some questions from the community.
I hope the last 40 minutes were very,
or 50 minutes almost were interesting
to every one of you about like the roadmap,
what's in store in 2024 for Phala.
And of course, as in every call,
we want to also talk a little bit
about some community questions.
We have collected some of them beforehand,
but if any one of you have specific questions
that just came up throughout this call,
feel free to drop them here in the comment,
we will review them and get to them
also in the next 10 minutes.
Maybe one question, Marvin,
I just talked about it a lot about like,
what is our plan, our strategy in 2024?
But I think a lot of community members
always wonder about hype and momentum.
If you want to comment on if there's any specific strategy
regarding how we create hype or momentum in this year.
Yeah, I mean, a typical critical for Phala team
is that we are good at tech.
People believe in our capabilities
on technology and product delivery.
But the most critical is on our marketing capability, right?
So I think that's where the create hype
or momentum coming from.
I just want to highlight a little bit
that all hype will fade away.
Yeah, this is my personal take,
during the last five years as a crypto digit,
my old hacks fade away, it come fast, it go fast.
At least the hype is valid on true value.
And I believe no matter what the hype is,
Phala's true value is engaging these developers
because no matter your infrastructure,
providing a defense service, AI service,
function as service, it's always been the developers
who can directly using you or pay to your infrastructure.
If you check out a podoc case, right?
We can stake, right?
We can vote, but we can also ask money from trajectory.
But who's supporting podoc as an economic?
It's the paratons.
And paratons is like a client,
which are component by developers as a known.
Each paratons, just imagine each paratons is a company.
It's not, but just imagine it's a company for each paratons.
And it's the companies who are supporting podoc
as a fundamental economic supportive
and is paying to the economic, right?
So pro-long, self-beating, we are paying money to podoc
so that our passion can keep running.
We are clients of podoc.
So the same analogy also work for Phala too.
So no matter what have going on in the website space,
as long as Phala want to stand alone
and keep creating values,
we need to make sure that developers are using us.
We need to make sure we be useful to that.
So this is my first comment.
But secondly, if you don't,
how to get these developers, right?
It's not easy.
They won't just come because you already nested in.
It's too naive to think in that way.
So the product target is that developers
need to always update it,
adapt it with the market demand.
And to see how was the most the request from the market,
you need to keep very close track with the apps.
So this is what happened to us.
And yeah, so I would say we don't create apps,
but I believe if that we are doing the right thing
in our crypto, the high real compass.
So, but we need to keep very close track tracking,
these what's happened in the market.
And whatever the hype in the market,
it could be a big opportunity.
It could be a big market chance for Phala
to step in as a solution provider.
This is my first comment.
Cool. Thanks for summarizing this.
I like how you mentioned the hypes.
It definitely makes sense.
And we are on the right track to show that we can also,
if you want to say so like maybe create a long-term hype,
write something that's more valuable
and will not fade away.
My last question to you, Hang,
more related to our tokenomics,
hear about stake ratio and TBL.
So as a community member asked,
if you have a strategy how to stop
stake ratio and TBL from decreasing?
Han, are you, yeah, there you are.
I was muted, sorry.
Yeah, I think this is like a question
not easy to understand.
Not easy to answer in a short,
with a short answer, I think.
The reason is the Phala tokenomics has its original design.
It is designed to boost the supply of the TE workers
to join the network.
And this is the supply side.
And on the other hand, there is the demand side.
So ideally we should match the supply side
and the demand side together.
So the more demand, then there will be more supply.
And we make sure if there is a shortage in the supply
will give you more incentivize
so that it can attract more supply to the system.
And the system has been running for,
I think two, three years.
If you count the Kusama, the Kala as well.
On Phala network, it has been two years.
Then once we started to establish
the service to the real developers,
then we will notice there are some,
there are still some misalignment in the tokenomic design.
For example, the quality of the service.
So like when we are running,
if we're going to provide the compute service
to the developers, then we need to make sure
the developer can access the server
and the developer can take full use of the server,
take full use of the resources of the server,
like CPU time.
So that means we need also consider the quality
and also to, we also need to ensure
if the developer want high end service,
then we need to attract high end service.
And if they are okay with lower,
like not that high profile servers,
but with cheaper, with more affordable price,
then we should attract more,
this kind of service to the network.
That means in the end of the day,
we need to revisit the tokenomic
to align the supply and the demand.
So I think this is the most basic principle
when thinking about the tokenomic.
So I think this is the background,
but in the reality, now we already have
more than 30k workers up and running.
And we have two networks, one on color network,
which doesn't have the fat contract enabled.
And another is follow network,
we have fat contract enabled.
So there are a few things we're going to consider
and potentially optimize how it works.
First is maybe we don't need to have a separate network,
maybe even fully migrate to file a network
since this is the network
that actually offer the service to the users.
And also the file a network has the,
most advanced version of p-run time.
So that means we will eventually ask everyone
to switch to the latest version.
So this is one thing related
to the potential tokenomic improvement design.
And secondly, there are a lot of unused
idle resource on the network.
And we should think about how to utilize them,
take best use of them.
Because at the end of the day,
what drives the incentivize to the miners
is the payment, the real usage by the supply.
So we need to make sure there are enough demand on the...
We should make sure we have enough demand.
And then we like align the demand
as the incentivize to the supply.
So in this sense,
we need to add the consideration to the service quality,
like network quality or performance,
consider it more and build a stronger network
than what we have right now.
Yeah, but all I'm talking about
is the principle and the direction.
And so far, I still don't have any details
that can share with the community right now.
Because it's not like we're working
on some super secret project, no.
But we're just trying to gather as many information
from the market as possible.
Because we're not only considering the supply
and we're thinking about the demand end.
So maybe, yeah, early this year,
we develop more use cases
and hear more from the developers.
Then once we get enough feedback,
then we can apply the feedback to improve the tokenomic.
And then if there are enough demand in the blockchain,
then there will be more incentivize to the miner.
And the more incentivize to the miner and the stakers,
the more TVL it will be.
So yeah, this will establish a positive feedback loop.
So yeah, this is my roughly thought.
Okay, maybe also I have two cents here.
So I see, before this computer space,
we asked to come introduce some new questions.
It's very interesting.
Yeah, and I see two conflict questions bonded together.
One question is asking like,
yeah, our staking ratio is more, right?
How can we increase our staking ratio?
The second question is, our inflection is too high.
How can we decrease the inflection?
So these two questions from multi committee members
have a nature confliction with each other.
So guys, if we want to increase the staking ratio,
we just need to increase the inflection rate, right?
Let's say 50% APR, like we did two years ago,
you could have pretty decent staking ratio,
like 50% of the, you know, all of the circulation tokens,
but you can't have both.
The very, like, it just against with nature, right?
You can't have both.
High inflections and high and low, sorry,
low inflection with high staking ratio.
This is not a Ponzi game.
It's not a crypto game.
It's driven by the real world demand.
For example, like people are bidding to staking fellow token
to get competition resources to,
yeah, just to use it.
And if the demand market is increasing,
that's the only path I would say to solve the confliction
between inflection rate and staking rate.
So this is where I would say almost like what our team
is 100% delegating to solve the adoption issue.
And if there are more usage or following the work,
we can pretty guarantee that
the staking ratio or the utility of token
can be, you know, have a pretty good improvement.
So yeah, so I would say rather than thinking about
how we can adjust the token normie
so that we can decrease inflection here,
increase staking ratio there, which is impossible job,
we should put our focus to sell volatility into the world
to make sure more companies and teams
are using our functionality.
And that is the only pass way out.
And maybe it's not easy.
It is not, it is pretty hard, it's that hard.
But I would say this is the, yeah, this is the right pill,
you know, to solve our current problem.
Great summary, Marvin.
And the red pill is, yeah, something more than this.
As we've seen, it's definitely a complex topic.
Thank you for raising this from the community.
And we will make sure to put out more content
around these questions and these topics as well
throughout the year.
You want to add something, Han?
Yeah, I just want to, I just want to talk here,
talk a little bit here.
I think the equivalent question of a combination
of more TV error and higher APR is just like asking
us when moon, right?
When Lambo.
Yeah, but there is a standard answer.
Although the question is getting spicy and you mean,
you know, there is a conflict and there's,
you cannot just get everything sorted out
without any compromise or without any cost.
But yeah, the standard answer is already there.
So if we want to get more like higher token price,
it's just a two sided market, right?
We have the supply, we have the demand
and where does the demand come from?
I mean, the demand to the token,
the demand come from the usage.
And the only way to increase the usage is to figure out
what is the best usage of file network.
So just, you can imagine if all the frame developers
develop deploy their frame on file network.
Yeah, just imagine, I mean, it's not something real,
but if this happened, they need a lot of computation power.
And that means they will beat with each other.
And that's what that means they are going to,
they're going to get some file token for staking
to get the computation power.
So without the demand, I think everything is meaningless.
So only focus on demand,
then everything will sort out in the end.
And on the other hand, I think,
oh damn, I just forgot another point.
It was in my mind, but I cannot remember that right now.
But yeah, let's keep talking.
And if I remember, I will just hijack.
Yeah, it's 2PM, it's 2AM, not how it's done.
So I guess that's the reason, yeah.
It's really meaningless.
I guess we're too hung.
And that's definitely topic that will come up
in other community calls again, as you just said,
there's no specific conclusion, but the question is there
and we are working on solution for the community.
So go ahead.
I actually recall that.
Yeah, I think another point that can drive the demand a lot
is currently, yeah, actually this is no secret at all.
In the roadmap and a few communication we had
in the recent months, we always mentioned
that we're working on the account abstraction.
That means in the future, for Ethereum developer,
and we have to admit Ethereum developers
are the largest developer user group in the web stream world
and it's very hard for them to use our product
because they need to buy the token from Binance
and bridge to one of the network
and they need to download pocket.gs
and then to figure out everything in this process
and every single step, every single unnecessary step
actually decrease the demand a lot
because people are just, nobody are very patient on that.
So one thing we're working really hard
is to shorten this path.
So just imagine if you can just pay using file network
with whatever token you have on whatever network it is,
then you can imagine, yeah,
that's how easy you can use it.
If we lower down the barrier to close to zero,
then naturally there will be more people
willing to try out our product.
And I think the first, the biggest barrier
is to get some token to try out our stuff
and if they didn't give it a try,
maybe they just give up when they are trying to figure out
how to get the token, then yeah, we lose this user.
And maybe for all the users, 90% or 80% of the user
will lose in this long pass.
So one thing we're trying to do is to make sure
we are compatible with Ethereum wallet.
So that means at least you don't need
to install pocket.gs, you can just use MetaMask
or whatever Ethereum wallet you're familiar with.
On the other hand, we can even push this forward,
push this even one step further, that is,
yeah, although we don't have that yet,
but just imagine if you can pay for Phala,
token nominee, Phala computing resource
with the USDC on base, or you can pay it
even with USDC in whatever layer two.
Then at a sudden, most of the developers
on those layer twos or the other blockchains
will get the access to our computing resource.
So this will actually increase the demand a lot,
at least give them a reason to try our product.
Then probably some of them will keep inside the,
yeah, after trying it out, they're pretty heavy with that,
then they become a real user.
And this is how we can drive the real demand from,
yeah, drive it to some, I wouldn't say mass adoption,
but at least we need to get the first batch hardcore user
from the web-free ecosystem.
Yeah, so this is the second step.
Thank you, Han.
There's definitely a lot to clarify.
And again, we are talking about this
definitely more going forward.
Thank you again, everyone for staying on so long.
I know that some of you want to drop off already.
Some people that joined later,
we gave out a poll here for this community call.
So please check the comments
through Mint, your beautiful Chinese New Year Pope.
And for people that are interested to stay on,
for one more question, because it's a topic that is,
yeah, definitely a important topic to be discussed,
also very critical.
But I think Marvin wanted to comment on this
regarding price action.
So a community member also asked if there's anything
that a team can do to prevent phallus pump and dump patterns
so that Pha can climb up the ranks and not vice versa.
It's a critical topic, but Marvin,
if you would like to comment on this
here in our community call.
Yeah, I'm a brave man,
so I'm willing to answer all of the questions
no matter how critical it is.
If you are not doing good,
you just meet and we improve ourselves.
So this is Pha's team principle.
So yeah, to the price action.
And the question is about like a pump and dump.
So my first comment is that
price is not something the team can control.
So this is something true.
It's not just for a legit problem
or financial advice, but it's true.
Like price action is out of Pha's team control.
The reason, if you check out the distribution
of allocations of the Pha token,
yes, indeed, Pha team is the biggest holder.
But how much we got?
We got like 50 million Pha token,
which distributed originally four years ago
as a team incentivized by 5% of total supply.
And after five years development,
although we cost millions, millions of dollars per year
as technology coming,
but we still got 50 million Pha token.
So that's amazing, right?
We are the biggest allocation holder.
But it only take, let's say,
this 10% of the total circulation market cap for now.
But now Pha token have almost,
I would say 60, sorry,
680 million Pha token as a circulation market,
circulation tokens for now, in the market now.
And although we already top one holder,
far more bigger than any other allocation holder,
we only take less than 10%.
Because Pha tokenomic is fair distribution.
We do our job four years ago, the state job.
We do crawl on three years ago.
And then it's the computation workers, right?
The 80% of Pha tokens are distributed to the miners,
the computation providers.
So as a fair launch, fair distributed tokenomic,
this is the trail.
It compare with some other crypto projects,
which the foundation hold maybe 80% of the total token.
Or like some big bills hold over 50% of the circulation.
Our allocation distributed is very linearly dedicated.
So it means that we have our token holder
holding pretty similar allocation with each other.
And there's no like secret big bill
that can control over 10% of the total circulation market.
So this is our token, you know,
how to say holding a structure
that you can track on blockchain.
You can track it.
So based on that, you know,
it's not easy to manipulate Phala's token price.
Because to do that, you just need a big, big, big bag
to do so.
And it's not easy for anyone,
no matter on good bill or evil bill, right?
So this is my first like statement.
This is trying to place some facts on the table.
You can always verify what I say, right?
The allocation of Phala token is very distributed
and it's not easy to manipulate it no matter who,
no matter team or any big bill or any market maker.
It's just impossible.
And secondly, I'm personally holding like a lot of bags
of Phala token, but not so big, not as big as the team.
So my personal feeling is that Phala's volatility
as a token is not as high as how we run
or as high our market cap is.
So let's say Phala's current crypto ranking
is around 430 and I will say Phala's token volatility level
is far more behind that rank, maybe it's 500 or 600.
Well, what does volatility means?
It means that your token price pump and dump.
It create a price range, right?
Maybe it's five cents a day and $1 tomorrow,
your volatility is so big.
But if your price is pretty stable,
your volatility is lower.
And Phala's volatility token metrics is much more lower
than how our trading volume is,
is much lower than our market cap is.
So compare with that, I will say like Phala token
is not big under pump and dump enough.
I'm not even happy with it because it means that
the price action is in a very small range
and it's pretty stable.
Like 80 cents a day, 12 cents in next month, right?
That's how we performance if you check out last year.
So yeah, ready to say like we are under big pump and dump,
I would say we are too stable compared
to all of the other crypto coins.
And I don't think that is a problem.
It means that what we performance is where the market back
in based on how we present our value.
The price doesn't present what's our value.
In my mind, Phala is a 10 billion business.
It's not even a 1 billion business.
So we are much, much, much more under value,
but we are not presenting it good enough
so that market would rather back in, right?
We're why the rails pump other tokens, right?
Why the investors invest some other projects,
but not Phala, there are some like things on the table,
I believe, right?
For example, our token number is too fair.
For example, we don't have foundation
can secretly sell a bigger location.
Maybe these are the case about what we,
this is not the factors we can solve,
but the factor we can solve is as Haun just mentioned,
the utility part create demand,
just keep creating the demand.
And yeah, so I obviously I'm not,
actually, I don't place any of my personal opinion on table,
but more like just to clean out some fact
that everybody here can check,
no matter through market cap
or through our crypto analytics toolings,
you can always check what I say.
Our token is much more distributed than others.
So there's no big rails or locations bigger than Phala team,
but even though for Phala team,
we own least 8% of the total circulation supply.
So it means that no one can regulate our token price.
Secondly, our volatility range is much more lower
than our trading volume ranking.
So it means that Phala is not under pump and dump at all.
And we are not even match the average performance
of the market on volatility,
but likely we got good trading volume.
So I don't see that as a problem,
how to increase the price performance
from our team perspective.
I would say the only thing we can manipulate
is the demand that we can create demand.
So this is what we are focusing on.
This is what we talk about today.
Thank you very much, Marvin,
for taking on this question
and being very transparent with the community here.
As you said, you mentioned a lot of topics, reasons,
I mean, and data that is public,
but it's always great to hear the comment
and the speech from the CEO and co-founder on this very...
Yeah, I must say it's a critical question, right?
Because it's a concern of the community.
But you guys have heard today a lot of input
on where we are going in 2024,
that we are really heads down
on shipping a lot of these improvements to the network,
which in the end, hopefully also will have impacts
that Marvin just explained regarding price action.
I would like to close it here.
Thank you everyone for staying on for so long today.
But I think it was very important
to clarify a lot of these community questions.
And we hope that we really inspired you guys
to stick around and really stay engaged
with our community for this year,
because we are not only shipping a lot
and having a lot of responsibility on the teams within the team,
but also you as ambassadors, community members, partners,
and so on are very important to us,
that we can really build a strong way
and a strong road for 2024.
So thank you so much everyone again.
Don't forget to mint your Chinese New Year poll.
Everyone that is based in Asia,
I wish you a Happy New Year and a beautiful spring festival.
And everyone that's coming to Denver and that's around,
please let us know and ping us.
And we are very excited to see everyone again in real life.
Thank you so much everyone
and see you in our next community call very soon.
Thank you everyone.
See you, bye.