BlockTalks x Meter.io AMA Transcript!

Hello! BlockTalkers & Blockchain Enthusiastic!

We recently hosted an AMA with Meter.io, on September 1st at 3 PM UTC. Many of you might have participated or many of not. But we make sure no one missed out from the knowledge shared by Xiaohan Zhu, CEO of Meter & Mike Chan, CMO of Meter. So here we are up with the AMA transcript, for those who missed the live session, this blog post will be a saver & feeder of knowledge for them.

INTRODUCTION

Xiaohan Zhu: I have a mixed engineering and finance background. The first 15 years of my career were in R&D and engineering. Afterwards I got my MBA from Wharton and started doing strategy and venture capital. Back in 2016 I formed a VC fund called ZMT Capital. In 2017 many of our portfolio started launching tokens include Brave (BAT) and Aion. We started investing in cryptos as well. In 2018, I finished the first fund and decided that I enjoyed BUIDL more. That is when I started working on Meter.

Mike Chan: I’m Mike and I’m the Head Cheerleader for Meter. I have a varied background in engineering, consulting, product, and marketing in a number of different industries. I discovered Meter just doing research online, and was enamored with the PoW-mined stablecoin, hybrid consensus mechanism, and much more. So I blindly reached out to Xiaohan, we had a great chat, I suggested some marketing ideas to him, laid on the sales pitch to work together really thick, and here I am.

Introduction Questions Asked By BlockTalks

Q1. Could you please introduce Meter to our community in layman’s term?

Ans — Meter is a DeFi infrastructure with a Built-in PoW based meta stable coin. It employs a unique hybrid consensus protocol that separates currency creation from record keeping.
The system uses Proof of Work to create the $MTR low volatility coin, making it as decentralized as Bitcoin. It uses HotStuff based PoS consensus with $MTRG governance coin to manage the ledger.
We are trying to achieve 3 things with Meter’s DeFi infrastructure: 1. complete Bitcoin’s original vision and create a sound money independent of the fiat system. 2. Address performance issues for ETH with a Hybrid PoW/PoS + HotStuff consensus and an EVM compatible infrastrucutre. 3. Interconnect with other public chains like ETH and run as a side chain for other public chains.

Q2. What are the advantages of Meter to other alternatives in the Blockchain field?

Ans — Current stablecoins have many problems. USD-backed stablecoins have to be centralized solutions and thus subject to all the regulatory restrictions.
Crypto-backed stablecoins like DAI have capacity issues, as they can only use a very small portion of the backing assets as collaterals to avoid causing liquidity problems of the backing assets. They also have to rely on oracles, which are mostly centralized (there are just a handful of good data sources in the world). If oracles provide wrong data, the entire financial system is subject to fail. This may be too much of a systematic risk.
Meter is designed to avoid such systematic risks. It gives up strong pegging to USD, but could maintain an economically stable value. Permissionless mining also eliminates counterparty, regulatory, and oracle risks typically found with crypto- and fiat-backed stablecoins.
And our network has high throughput (1500 TPS) per chain and cross-chain interoperability, so it can be used as a scaling solution for other public blockchains.

Q3. What are the major milestones Meter achieved so far & what are in the future pipeline?

Ans — We launched our mainnet on July 4. On July 15, we held an IEO on Gate.io that was 46x oversubscribed. We then built a bridge to the Ethereum network that allows users to map our governance token MTRG to the ERC-20 version, eMTRG to take part in the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem. This is the basis of our liquidity mining program, where you can earn eMTRG by providing liquidity to our Balancer and Uniswap pools.
We will soon launch open staking and our on-chain auctions, an improved block explorer, enhanced Ethereum capabilities, mobile wallets, and much more.

Questions Asked on Twitter For Meter.io team!

Q1. Currently launching tokens is a rather simple process. However, building the system, ecosystem, and stabilizing prices is the hardest part for any platform. so, how does Meter solve this problem to increase MTR token sales & how will MTR be used in the ecosystem?

Ans — $MTR is the currency in the Meter system. It is mined via PoW, stable in value, and you use it to pay for the fees, gas and storage in the system. We will soon launch on-chain auctions, where you can use $MTR to bid for $MTRG to take part in the governance and security of the network.

Q2. What plans does METER have to partner with large lending protocols such as Maker Dao or dYdX Debt Collateralized Debt Positions (CDPs) to try to extend the user position liquidation protection feature?

Ans — We had very good relationship with these protocol. For example, we have been talking with Maker team to have $MTR as a unique in their asset pool. In addtion, these types of lending protocols can be built on top of the Meter network, using a more stable medium of exchange in MTR as well. We are building and recruiting developers to build these types of financial applications on Meter.

Q3. The 326% annualized return seems really big, for this amount we must be invest on big amount too. How many eMRTG tokens would I need to start this liquidity mining and start generating income? What are the requirement do I need?

Ans — The 326% annualized return was based on an initial liquidity pool of 200K eMTRG during the first week. We surpassed those expectations by a lot, so the first week’s APR wound up being around 146%. Still a great return! There is no minimum to add, but you’ll have to pay ETH transaction fees, so make sure the amount you add is worth paying those fees.

Q4. I’m aware that MTR is a stable coin, according to Wikipedia “Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to minimize the volatility of the price of the stablecoin, relative to some stable asset or basket of assets”. For the pass 14 days , I’ve seen MTR price fluctuate around $0.65 to $0.85 range, which I feel it could still be unstable for a user holding huge amounts of the token. Why does it price still fluctuates that much despite being a stablecoin?

Ans — We traded off strong pegging to USD for full decentralization via PoW mining, so there will be a bit more fluctuation compared to a fiat-pegged stablecoin. $MTR is not pegged to $1, but in a range between $0.65 and 1.2. We are currently sitting at the bottom of the range as we haven’t turned on the demand side for $MTR to $MTRG auctions. However over time, as we onboard more miners to the network and open up our on-chain auction, the liquidity would improve.

Q5. “Meter processes thousands of transactions per second so transactions are confirmed almost instantly” in your website. how many transactions ands seconds are we talking about? and can you explain how the meter got to that fast?

Ans — Our network can handle 1500 TPS and transactions are finalized almost instantly. Meter uses the state of art HotStuff consensus (similar to Libra) for record keeping on the chain level. It is a few times faster than Tendermint and doesn’t require strong network synchrony (more resilient to network failures). We also support multiple chains for horizontal scaling.

Questions Asked by our BlockTalks Community Members during live Session for the Meter.io team!

Q1. Meter uses PoW consensus, how can scalability and low fees be achieved with PoW? What features of PoS remain in Meter’s consensus?

Ans — Meter uses PoW for the value consensus to create the low volatility coin MTR, and HotStuff-based PoS with the governance coin MTRG for record keeping. This approach combines the benefits of both worlds. PoW will be less energy-consuming due to the economic game design; PoS allows transactions to be processed really fast with instant finality. Also some of the PoS problems like long-range attack and rich-gets-richer problems can be avoided as well. Details could be found in our blog post. https://www.meter.io/what-is-proof-of-value-consensus/

Q2. MTR also functions as a LAYER 2 SIDE CHAIN, what is the advantage of SIDE CHAINS and how does it solve the problem of interoperability prevalent in crypto and blockchain today?

Ans — Side chain could be designed in a more decentralized fashion and doesn’t have the limitation of the traditional layer 2 state channel approach. It could interconnect with the other chains through bridges and running intependantly as the tokens flow through the stage. Faster, cleaner and more efficient.

Q3. How is Meter different and better than Crypto-backed stablecoins like ‘DAI’?

Ans — Crypto-backed stablecoins like DAI have capacity issues, as they can only use a very small portion of the backing assets as collaterals to avoid causing liquidity problems of the backing assets. They also have to rely on oracles, which are mostly centralized (there are just a handful of good data sources in the world). If oracles provide wrong data, the entire financial system is subject to fail. This may be too much of a systematic risk.
Meter is designed to avoid such systematic risks. It gives up strong pegging to USD, but could maintain an economically stable value. Permissionless mining also eliminates counterparty, regulatory, and oracle risks typically found with crypto- and fiat-backed stablecoins.

Q4. How do you plan to spread awareness about your project in different countries where English is not spoken well?
Do you have local communities for the them to let them better understand about your project?

Ans — We do! We have communities in India, Philippines, Indonesia, China, Turkey, Russia, Africa, Korea, and Vietnam. I won’t send the links to all of those, but if you join our main community here — https://t.me/Meter_IO — you can ask for the link to the one you’re looking for.

Q5. Who are Meter’s strategic investors? And what does Meter’s Roadmap for 2020 look like? What are your final goals for this year?

Ans — We were seed funded by Pantera, DHVC, and GBIC. Many other strategic investors took part in our community and public sales as well.

RE: roadmap, we will soon launch open staking and our on-chain auctions, an improved block explorer, enhanced Ethereum capabilities, mobile wallets, and much more.

Q6. Oracles play a massive role in Defi and that needs to be made better. How does Meter solve these issues?
Is there a mechanism where you use MTRG to counterbalance any black sheep/big dip event like the one that happened in DAI?

Ans — We work with oracle protocols like Chainlink and could integrate with chainlink at the validator level. 2/3 of chainlink validators run on Meter testnet as well. We could provide more reliable and efficient ways for Oracle data to be available onchain. At the base layer money layer, becuase $MTR is created by PoW, it doesn’t require oracle at all, which provide a solid layer 1 money to build the top level financial infrastructure. In addition, since there is no collaterals for $MTR, it doesn’t suffer the flash crash issure of underlying collaterals like DAI.

Q7. Team Meter been on roll lately with all the AMA’s here and there. What three main things are you aiming to achieve in doing these AMA’s?

1. Increasing awareness
2. Grow our community base
3. Spread out the economic design of Meter to the crypto world

Q8. What difference do METER tokens like MRT and MRTG have? I understand that one is the decentralized stablecoin, (MTR), and the other token is government (MTRG), do they really work in sets? or are they totally independent?

Really what is the mission and vision of this project? only provide its users and investors with a totally stable and unalterable capital by third parties?

Ans — MTR and MTRG certainly are related. With our on-chain auction (which will luanch in Oct), you can bid MTR to acquire MTRG to take part in governance. Both provide value to the other.

Our mission is 3-fold:
1. complete Bitcoin’s original vision and create a metastable sound money independent of the fiat system.
2. Address performance issues that current chains are facing with a Hybrid PoW/PoS + HotStuff consensus that is backward compatible with EVM.
3. Interconnect with other public chains like ETH and run as a side chain for other public chains

Q9. Meter process 1000s of transactions per second. How do you plan to address the storage issue when the network is overloaded with thousands of transactions on all chains?

Ans — Currently each chain is designed to maintain its own data to reduce the data overloading issue. We will also add new incentive structure for nodes to maintain the full history.

Q10. How permissionless is Meter network, can anyone join the network and start creating the token?

Ans — Mining MTR is completely permissionless. You can start mining now. Regarding staking and validating, our network will open up later this year for that.

Q11. What mechanism have you put in place to ensure the cost of production for Meter tokens is consistent and unable to be gamed?

Ans — Each MTR is created with 10kwh of SHA256 Proof of Work, the same method used by BTC. Miners’ profit chasing behavior will drive the coin to the cost of global competitive electricity price, which is more stable in purchasing power than any fiat in the world. We expect the market price to settle in the 0.65 to 1.2 USD range and will be more than more stable as it grows.

Q12. Meter is a programmable layer 1 infrastructure that can be used as an exchange medium for DeFi applications. What security guarantee do you give your users regarding the confidentiality of their data?

Ans — Meter txs are pseudononymous, like most other cryptos. But we have partnered with Suterusu to bring private txs to our network, and have other privacy-focused partnerships in the works.

Q13. Why does the Proof-of-Work miners & Proof-of-Stake validators maintain separate chains? I observed that the two chains only interact at end of every epoch, when they cross reference each other, any reason for this?

Ans — The pow chain is only used for mining. the chain is to maintain minging records and adjust mining difficulties. It also functions as a distributed clock in the system that is uncheatble. PoS chain is for maintaining the account and transaction records, as it has to run much faster with instant finality. The two chain sync with each other at the end of epoch to distribute mining rewards and bring finality to the PoW chain.

Q14. By holding MTRG we can participate in the governance and validation of transactions, but what are the advantages of holding MTR? As this is a stablecoin, does it generate any kind of benefits or annual ROI?

Ans — MTR maintains a relatively stable purchasing power over the long run. it is also required to pay for the gas and transaction fees in the system. You will soon need $MTR to bid for newly created $MTRG as well.

Q15. What are the main real-world utilities and uses of $MTR tokens? As an investor, why should you invest in $MTR Coins? What are the benefits of having $MTR in your portfolio?

Ans — Our vision is for $MTR to be the global medium of exchange for both DeFi apps as well as everyday commerce and payments.

You could also use $MTR as a stable asset to avoid crypto volatility in turbulent times.

MTRG is the token you can speculate on and use for governance and validation.

Q16. About partnerships, how will DOS network improve your decentralized networks? What is your expectations on “before / after” ?

Ans — While the Meter network doesn’t need oracles to create MTR, developers will need oracles for their apps build on Meter. So we’ve partnered with DOS and Chainlink (with more to come) to give devs options for oracle services.

Q17. Meter can be used for everyday payments, what is the process for a seller to accept payments with meter, and a buyer to pay with it? The most important as a payment method is speed and scalability, meter achieves that?

Ans — We are building mobile wallets, as well as working to integrate MTR into existing wallets, to facilitate everyday payments. We will also partner with merchants to help them accept these payments. Our network can execute 1500 TPS, so speed and scalability will be no problem or payments.

Q18. What difference do METER tokens like MRT and MRTG have? I understand that one is the decentralized stablecoin, (MTR), and the other token is government (MTRG), do they really work in sets? or are they totally independent?

once we open onchain auction, $MTR holders to exhcange for $MTRG through a competitive auction. That is where the link happens. The mission of the project are really 3 things.

1. complete Bitcoin’s original vision and create a metastable sound money independent of the fiat system.
2. Address performance issues that current chains are facing with a Hybrid PoW/PoS + HotStuff consensus that is backward compatible with EVM.
3. Interconnect with other public chains like ETH and run as a side chain for other public chains.

Q19. Can you share SOME details about liquidity mining?

Ans — All details are here: https://www.meter.io/meter-liquidity-mining/. But the TL;DR is that we have Balancer and Uniswap pools where you can add liquidity and achieve triple-digit APR in eMTRG. Please check it out.

Q20. With respect to the value test, what is the difference between “PoV” and other consensus mechanisms? Do you plan to extend the value test to other networks, such as USDT with its ERC-20, TRC-20 and OMNI versions?

Ans — PoV is regarding to our hybrid pow and pos consensus, which seperate the value transfer consensus with record keeping consensus to achieve the maximum efficiency.

Q21. How is Meter implementing DeFi in its network? Do you think DeFi would be the future of finance?

Ans — Meter is DeFi infrastructure, so DeFi apps can and will be built on top of the Meter network. We absolutely believe that DeFi will be the future of finance, and we’ve designed our network to be the foundation of this movement.

Q22. What are the ways that Meter generates profits/revenue to maintain your project and what is its revenue model ? How can it make benefit win-win to both investors and your project?

Ans — Once the network starts fully running, there will be daily on-chain bidding for MTRG tokens. 40% of the proceeds goes to the validators as block rewards, and 60% will be retained in the system so MTRG token holders can borrow against them in the future. We will be one of the participants on the network as well and the income from staking will be able to support the team. We will also build more applications on the platform, which will bring in revenue as well.

Q23. About the MTRG lock up and Earn campaign, any specific amount of $MTRG token to hold and is there a particular amount of $MTRG allocated for this event? Why is it launched only on Gate exchange, and not on bilaxy or hoo?

Ans — We offered upto 300k MTRG capacity. It is a product that is available on Gate, but not on Bilaxy and hoo.

Q24. Is the high transaction fee a bottleneck restricting the development of Defi projects running on ETH?. If yes, How does Meter address this anyway?

Ans — We do think that high ETH fees are limiting accessibility of DeFi. We’ve seen this even in our liquidity mining program, where fees are very high. Meter can be a sidechain to ETH to help it scale and faciliate faster and cheaper transactions.

Q25. Mining Bitcoin consumes energy at a rate similar to the countries like Ireland, this high energy consumption of the mining activity results to conflicts among miners, developers, & stakeholders. How does Meter aim to end this conflict with it technology or isn’t there a possibility of these people coexisting again?

Ans — Because our unique economic design, $MTR mining doesn’t require a lot of engergy. Only the new monetary supply requires mining in the system. We estimated the annual mining cost for a US economy sized economy the annual mining cost will be similar to the budget of US mint and US engrave and print.

Q26. Staking is currently the hottest topic on CryptoIndustry & really helps encourage investors to hold long-term tokens.
Does Meter have any plan to support Staking?
If so, then what are the requirements for Node and Node Validator?

Ans — Yes, mainnet staking will go live around October. You can become a testnet validator now, more info here: https://github.com/meterio/warringstakes/. We have also partnered with Ankr to allow one-click node launch, and that should be coming soon.

Q27. Do you have plans to extend the MTR to others Networks? Like USDT with its ERC-20, TRC-20 and OMNI versions?

Ans — We recently build a bridge to ethereum to create ERC-20 versions of our coins, eMTR and eMTRG. We recently partnered with Elrond to do something similar. And we’ll have more partnerships with other public chains to continue our mission of cross-chain interoperability everywhere.

Q28. What problems did you face when trying to implement your product in working businesses ? Is it hard to explain to usual non-crypto people what is Meter and what are the advantages of using it?

Ans — It takes a lot of time to implement the consensus correctly. For non crypto people, meter is a sound money that is independant of USD. It is a global payment and decnetralized finanical infrastructure.

Q29. Explain more about the MTR token bridge, how I can swap from MTRG to EMTRG, is it only forward or backward swaps also?

Ans — You can currently only swap from MTRG to eMTRG. More information here: https://www.meter.io/map-mtr-mtrg-using-meter-wallet/. The eMTRG-> MTRG direction of the wallet will be launched before Jan 2021.

Q30. Describe the tokenomics of Meter?
Is there any plan you have to help raise the value of this TOKEN.
Do you offer any as such token burn or reduction in token distribution?

Ans — $MTRG token holders have income and assets in $MTR which supports its value. We are also looking to add more assets in the pool to improve the value and the stability of the system.

Q31. There seems like 2 min cost constraints for MTR production
1. cost of 10 kwh elec
2. opp cost for other sha256 compatible coins

imo whichever is higher would matter.

How likely is opp cost > mtr price > 10kwh elc cost scenario. Can MTR be produced then? what impact on price?

Ans — There will be very few people mining, which brings down the new $MTR supply. The onchain auction will continously remove $MTR from circulation and bring up the price for $MTR.

Q32. I’m a white-hat hacker in internet, do you think #your system is secure enough from hackers? Does your project have a program that rewards individual vulnerability detection of the system?

Ans — Yes, we welcome hackers to file issues for the network and have bug bounty for that.

Q33. Why is the price of The Governance Token MTRG not stable? Or is it unnecessary?

Ans — The price of MTRG is not stable to incentivize participation. With our on-chain auctions, miners who mine MTR can use this MTR to acquire MTRG, which can be HODLd and staked for profit.

Q34. Can everyone become a developer with Meter? How does your platform open doors for those who wish to claim their stake in the Meter? and contribute to ecosystem growth?

Ans — Yes, we have funding allocated to developers and growing the ecosystem.

Q35. How does Meter ensure a stable price for the MTR token?

Ans — Miners’ profit chasing behavior will drive the coin to the cost of global competitive electricity price, which is more stable in purchasing power than any fiat in the world. We expect the market price to settle in the 0.65 to 1.2 USD range and will be more than more stable as it grows.

Q36. Can you list 1–2 killer features of $Meter that makes it ahead of its competitors? What is the competitive advantage your platform has that you feel most confident about?

Ans — Better faster consensus, link to pow and value in the physical world, cross chain interaction capabilities.

Q37. How will Meter solve the scaling problem? And how does it overcome the threat of centralization?

Ans — We believe we’ve already solved it! Our network can execute 1500 TPS due to our Hotstuff-based PoS consensus mechanism. MTR is mined via PoW, making it fully decentralized. And on the PoS side, the network will eventually have thousands of validators, make it very decentralized.

Q38. DeFi is one of the hottest topics in the blockchain field. Can you share your opinion about DeFi with us? Do you think DeFi will destroy the existing financial system? What’s your project Approach towards DeFi?

Ans — Meter is designed from ground up to optimize for DeFi type of applications. From economic design, performance to instant finality and EVM compatibility.

Q39. The meter Whitepaper says that is an autonomous chain like ETH or BTC, so Considering that, How Meter manage the Chain congestion?

Ans — Because of the seperation of economic consensus and record keeping consensus, Meter could run a few hundred times faster than ETH and BTC. We could also expand horizontally with mulitple chains.

Q40. When it comes to stablecoins, USDT is the King. What are your plans to keep in step with USDT? How can you dethroned USDT from the top?

Ans — USDT has massive flaws. It’s totally centralized and run by, in my opinion, a non-trustworthy organization. They have blacklisted some addresses, and are not honest about their collateral backing USDT. So we think their day will come.

We believe that our unique economic design and full decentralization will eventually make MTR the global medium of exchange. Just wait.

We are not directly competing with USDT as Meter is not pegged to USD. We would like to create an alternative global currency with a different economic design for the crypto world.

Q41. Do you have any plans to bootstrap the miner network to increase adoption. They seem to be a crucial part of MTR.

Ans — Yes, once the on-chain auctions kick in around October, there will be a big push to onboard more miners. This will make the value of MTR more stable.

Q42. How permissionless is Meter network, can anyone join the network and start creating the token?

Ans — You don’t need to have any coins to start mining. Because we are use SHA 256 mining alogrithm and the way we deisgned the PoW consensus, we could make sure there is no economic incentives for cheating on the production cost.

Here are some important links of METER👇

Website: www.meter.io

Telegram: https://t.me/Meter_IO

Telegram ANN: https://t.me/Meter_IO_Announcement

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Meter_IO