BlockTalks x Paralink Network AMA Transcript!

Hello! BlockTalkers & Blockchain Enthusiastic!

We recently hosted an AMA with Paralink Network, on May 20th at 11 AM UTC. Many of you might have participated or many of not. But we make sure no one missed out from the knowledge shared by Jan Knezevic, CEO of Paralink Network. 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 Questions Asked By Team BlockTalks!

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

Ans — Paralink is a multi chain oracle platform and we decided to build it on Polkadot.
First of all, the real-world data ingress is done by Paralink Nodes through our own Paralink Query Langauge-PQL. This allows one to query SQL databases, access web APIs, scrape websites as well as access state from other blockchains. Its a robust solution which is easily extendible to support custom data sources (actually right there is an issue with the existing solutions since the technical barrier to create a custom data source is high and takes forever). Besides the data, we have support for post-processing in a permissionless way via on-chain relayer quorums as well as reliable channeling of the computation results via PQL callbacks.
The next aspect of the project is the Paralink node and its query language. WIth it, you will be able to query APIs. databases but also parse JSON, XML and HTML, support multiple data sources, apply math functions, do type casting, aggregations and much more.
The last point which is extremely important to us is the On-chain security as well as the integrity of this data. This is a huge challenge and we think that so far it hasn’t been solved properly. So in Paralink, we have something called Relayer quorums which are self-organizing data repositories with reward token mechanics (as well as slashing offcourse) which aggregate and validate real world information. Our infrastructure is built with Substrate which means we get high throughput and economically feasible computing costs. Due to this technology stack, we can also relay computation results from Polkadot to other chains as well, but also monitor reliability via public reputation systems.

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

Ans — I’d like to show you a comparison table so you can have a clear picture about the advantages that we have over the current competitors. One of the biggest additions is the advanced queries and ETLs. We believe this will change the way people build dapps and think about data ingress into smart contracts.
Also, having cross-chain capabilities while maintaining on-chain validation and aggregation gives us the flexibility to do the kind of processing never possible before.

To sum up the main 2 competitive advantages are PQL and the on chain consensus model.
Users can use PQL to query SQL databases and scrape websites as additional functionalities compared to other oracle solutions.
On chain consensus offers the possibility of on chain aggregation of data and excluding results that dont match variance thresholds. The solution therefore offers another layer of aggregation and additional security.

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

Ans — We have built our node and integrated it with Ethereum and BSC. We have built Paralink node UI which will be announced soon and presented with a demo. The UI is built so non developers have an ability to query themselves just like in legacy software. We have partnered with several projects. We have built testnet and added a block explorer as well.
https://explorer.paralink.network/

We will have TGE on 24.5 on Polkastarter. After that we will be trading on Uniswap and Pancakeswap.
We will also launch on rococo testnet and Kusama before launching on Polkadot when the parachain auctions come and they are ready.

Questions Asked on Twitter For Paralink Network Team!

Q1. I'm aware that the throughput needed for your solution is currently available only on Polkadot & I presume that is why you decided to built it there. However, i think ETH 2.0 is a viable option in the future, would you consider building the on chain consensus model there as well or you would focus solely on Polkadot for now?

Ans — ETH 2.0 is still to undefined and far away. We are checking it closely and when we see some development there we will consider it. We are a chain agnostic project focusing on the best technology stack at the moment. For now we feel it is Polkadot as it offers incomparably higher throughput and interoperability with the XCMP protocol. Both of those reasons convinced us to build on Polkadot and we will continue to focus on it until we see a better alternative.

Q2. As a multi-chain Oracle platform for DeFi applications. What sets you apart from other oracles like api 3 and chainlink? Can you tell us some features that make Paralink competitive?

Ans — I have already linked the comparison chart above. Besides what i said i would like to add that Paralinks node is built in Python and PQL is JSON+SQL. We decided to build this way as we wanted to make the solution as functional and as flexible as possible so we can add additional functionalities to it easily. For example when our community requested support for graphql we have added it with ease.
On chain consensus which is our main product on polkadot is built to prevent API outages such as Coinbase a few months ago. The consequence of their API falling down was a unfair liquidation of smartcontracts. As blockchains are immutable we cannot amend the mistakes we make afterwards. This is why security is even more important than in traditional tech and finance. Our solution will help increase it.

Q3. Partnership is like a supplement where the combined effect is beyond the individual level. Can you name some of your recent partnerships that can help your project ? Is there any partnership that will take place in the near future? Can you tell us with whom?

Ans — We have partnered with : Darwinia Network
Plasm Network
Bondly
Edgeware
Reef Finance
Konomi Network
Knit Finance
PolkaFoundry
Litentry
Raze Network
Deficliq
OpenDeFi
Genesis Shards
Polkalokr
Xend Finance

We will announce the partnership with Sienna network today and others in the following days and weeks. We have a big one coming up soon and will share it in our group.

Q4. It is obvious that PARALİNK NETWORK makes a difference in the issues it solves. But this is not the only issue that big investors care about. What about the security of the project? What can you say about your security measures?

Ans — To satisfy all kinds of applications, Paralink offers 3 security models with different cost, convenience and security characteristics.

Simple Oracle
Paralink Nodes can be used as a multi-chain oracle from any 3rd party data source by any developer.

Pros:

Very easy to implement (just PQL definition)
Cheap and fast
Ability to source and validate multiple information sources
Callback support for all blockchains, without need for bridges
Cons:

Requires trust in node operators
Only suitable for applications that don't have financial impact

Trusted Oracle
Simple Oracle can be upgraded by the virtue of cryptographically signed PQL results with ECDSA private keys from reputable data providers.

Pros:

Suitable for Prediction Markets, Insurance, Governance and Gambling applications
Easy to implement (PQL + Signing Proxy Contract)
Cheap and fast
Ability for established data vendors to sell their services on Paralink Network
Callback support for all blockchains, without need for bridges

Cons:

Single point of failure

On-Chain Consensus
For applications that require the highest level of security, without having to rely on a single source of truth.

Pros:

Suitable for Money Markets, Derivatives and other high-stakes financial applications
Relatively easy to implement (PQL + Relayer Quorum + Bridge)
On chain aggregation and validation guarantees
Highest robustness and data quality

Cons:

Requires the use of bridges, ie. Polkadot <> Ethereum, so not all chains are supported (yet)
More expensive due to the costs of on-chain coordination.

For more information on On chain consensus and relayer quourums check here:
https://docs.paralink.network/whitepaper/consensus.html
https://docs.paralink.network/developer-guide/oracle-quorums.html

Q5. I could see that there are two tokens within your ecosystem, the PARA token and an ERC-20 token in Ethereum, but what benefits do these two tokens have within the Paralink network ecosystem? What are the practical uses of these two tokens for users and the ecosystem in general?

Ans — There will be two types of tokens released at TGE. ERC20 and BEP20. These tokens can be used for the callbacks to cover the transaction cost fees for the performed data ingress. As we have integrated with ETH and BSC any project runing on those two chains can start using Paralink oracles now. We have integrated with BSC as we identified them as a working ecosystem atracting many new defi aplications with their low fees. As fees are very important with data ingress we have built the integration. CEXs will act as intermediaries between the ERC20 , BEP 20 and Polkadot native parachain tokens after Polkadot is ready to launch. We will also add bridges, and for the data ingress from Polkadot on chain consensus to ethereum we have already partnered with Darwinia.

Questions Asked by our BlockTalks Community Members during live Session to Paralink Network Team!!

Q1. Right now issuing a token is a fairly simple process. However, building systems and ecosystems is the hardest part. My question is, how will the demand for tokens increase and how will this token be used in the ecosystem?

Ans — First of all, its used to pay the transaction costs of the callbacks as well as for services provided by the relayer quorums.
Besides this, its also serves an important role for incentives -so it can be staked into the relayer quorums - and those get rewarded for providing useful work - also the other way around - slashed for misbehaviour.
Its also a governance token, so you can vote for collators on the parachain as well as calibrating other parameters through the ecosystem.
And lastly, you can use it to provide liquidity in PARA AMMs and earn more of them.

Q2. Paralink Most of the smart contracts of recent projects are prone to errors and even the previous major DeFi projects have had the same problem, making you face a lot of difficulties and a great impact. to the user, How do you guys improve that?

Ans — Paralink does not offer smartcontracts not is its mechanism written in the smartcontract exept the token which is made using the ERC20 and BEP20 tokens standard and audited by Halborn.
The product on Polkadot will be a parachain and will be audited before it is launhced. If we decide to add smartcontracts to our ecosystem we will audit them as well with a trusted auditor.

https://blog.paralink.network/paralink-tge-audit/

Q3. Is there any reward mechanism for holding PARA? What are the benefits of holding PARA?

Ans — Holding PARA does not offer any benefits to the users. PARA needs to be staked into the relayer quorum and afterwards one can receive rewards for succsesful validation of results and other useful work in the ecosystem.

For more information please check here:
https://docs.paralink.network/whitepaper/consensus.html

Q4. Can you please share your Tokenomics?

Ans — Here are our tokenomics explained in detail: https://blog.paralink.network/para-tokenomics/

Q5. Oracles' current problems are not only limited to speed or security. There is another variable that is also determinant when choosing this service. That variable is the Price, what it costs a project to use an oracle. The leading oracle on the market right now is extremely expensive. You claim throughout that you are much cheaper, can you explain how you achieve this, how cheap you are as opposed to your competitors, do you have comparative tables on this?

Ans — Using Paralink oracles on Ethereum is very expensive so it shares the same problems with other solutions here. For this reason we are building the integration with one of the biggest layer 2 solutions in the ecosystem and will announce a partnership with them soon.
Besides this we have integrated with BSC where the fees are much lower and where the operators of the system are incentivized to have low fees compared to ethereum. We are also building integrations with other major blockchains and we are focusing on the ones with low fees here as well.
Our on chain consensus product will be available on Polkadot only as no other current blockchain could handle the amount of data needed for on chain consensus as it would completely clog up the block space on all existing solutions.
We are a chain agnostic project so if we see better solutions appear we will explore building on them.
Our main priority when identifying blockchains we want to integrate with are: Security
Low transaction fees
Active DeFi ecosystem.
We are a B2B project essentially so we are focused on capturing as big of a market share as possible to service the demands for data ingress from multiple ecosystems.

Q6. When will Paralink launch its original token on Polkadot?

Ans — When Polkadot launches and we obtain a parachain slot.

Q7. One of the most important oracle’s different is the Paralink Query Language, can you explain us why you have decided to create a new language for the processing of this kind of data? What gaps or solutions does this new data processing method provide?

Ans — Paralink data requests can be made via PQL definitions, which are JSON based descriptions of ETL (Extract, Transform & Load) jobs. PQL queries are done via SQL like interface which generalizes over common data structures (JSON, XML, SQL), and includes basic post processing utilities such as math functions and type casting.

The data collected from multiple sources and aggregated with a function like median or mean, validated using validation conditions and then returned to the caller's smart contract of choice via the callback.
IPFS is used to immutably store the job definition and provide an addressable content hash. The hash is only 32 bytes long, which is significantly shorter than the job definition itself, making it suitable for request signalling on resource constrained chains such as Ethereum.
While it is possible to connect to private databases and API's that require credentials - both supported by Paralink Node & PQL - we do not want to expose those credentials on the public blockchain(s). Furthermore, the owner of the proprietary dataset may want to charge for access. Paralink addresses both use cases with Trusted Ingress solution, where reputable data providers sell their cryptographically signed data feeds.

Here are some important links of Paralink Network👇

🌎 Website: paralink.network
📱 Twitter: twitter.com/ParalinkNetwork
📢 Telegram: t.me/paralink_network
📚 Medium: blog.paralink.network