BlockTalks x Presearch AMA Transcript!
Hello! BlockTalkers & Blockchain Enthusiastic!
We recently hosted one AMA with Presearch, on 6th March 6.30 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 Colin Pape, CEO Presearch. So here we are up with AMA transcript, for those who missed the live session, this blog post will be saver & feeder of knowledge for them.
Introduction Question Asked By BlockTalks
1– We published an overview of Presearch, but still we would like to hear What is Presearch & who is Colin? Please introduce yourself to the community.
Colin Pape -
Ans — I’m the founder and CEO of Presearch.
We’re building a decentralized search engine, powered by the community at https://presearch.org.
Presearch pays you in PRE tokens when you search, and advertisers buy PRE to stake the keywords they’d like to be found under.
We launched the project in 2017 with a successful token sale and have since had more than 1.35 million people join, and they currently do more than 10 million searches per month.
Our vision to to create a search engine that the world can rely on as an access point for the internet without bias, agendas or censorship.
Currently one company controls more than 90% of the search space. It’s extremely centralized. And there is very little transparency or community engagement, despite the impact they have on our access to information. We think it’s time to change that!
Thank you! Yes! Search is incredibly important, both from a social standpoint and economically. It is at the top end of most of our information quests and purchase journeys. What search engines return has a tremendous influence on the world.
I’m very much a libertarian, and I’m excited about the opportunity that blockchain provides us to take back control of our data, and to assemble voluntarily to create the services we want, in a way that respects our individuality, rewards our participation and provides us with an opportunity to contribute to the process, and not just sit back as passive consumers that are fed things by people who have agendas we may not agree with.
2 — Explain about Presearch technology, what’s the motivation behind creating a search engine which pays for searching?
Ans — In 2011, we woke up one morning in July and all of our ShopCity sites had been penalized and pushed onto page 8 of Google’s results.
We had no idea why, and there was no way to get a resolution to the issue besides putting PR pressure on them by participating in an FTC anti-trust investigation and senate testimony. We realized just how much power they had over the internet, and how the world really needed an alternative search engine that was powered by the community, with a greater degree of transparency and participation from outside individuals.
So we ended up building a prototype for Presearch in late 2013, early 2014 at https://presear.ch. We used the tagline ‘the Switzerland of search’. We didn’t just want to create a search engine, but a layer above search engines that would enable you to easily direct your query into the search engine of your choice, effectively levelling the playing field and enabling may search providers to have access to users.
3 — What are the major milestones Presearch achieved so far & what’s are in the future pipeline?
Ans — Presearch had a successful crowdsale in 2017, bringing in more than $7 million, and attacting some really high-quality advisors to the team.
We then launched a product as planned on November 9th, 2017 which has since become one of the top 5 blockchain projects on the web by traffic.
We’ve developed an anti-abuse system to limit the impact of people trying to game the system. Created multiple browser extensions and mobile apps that now receive more than 10 million queries per month.
And recently closed the loop on our token economy with https://keywords.presearch.org, our Keyword Staking platform.
Lots of other great stuff in between, but those are some of the highlights.
Moving forward, we are driving for mass adoption and see the project as one of the top on-ramps into crypto for everyday people, and we’re targeting 5m registered users by the end of the year.
We have a new mobile app for iOS around the corner, and a number of interesting product developments all geared at enabling us to reach more users.
Ultimately, the vision is to build a framework for a truly decentralized, open source and transparent search engine that is powered by web crawlers that will operate on nodes run by users who will crawl the web as they surf and be rewarded in PRE. This information will then be processed by another layer of nodes that will build the data index, and it will be served on a decentralized platform like IPFS.
Subject matter experts will be able to participate in the creation, submission and curation of information, while designers will be able to create differnt UIs to visualize data that users will be able to choose from.
We envision a platform that leverages active personalization, where you specify your preferences and control that information, rather than us collecting it passively and making inferences about you based on your behaviour.
Question Asked in Twitter For Colin Pape!
Q1. When its comes to competition, DuckDuckGo seems like your closest one. How Preserach is better than it? liked the implementation of CMC.
Ans — Yes, DuckDuckGo is likely our closest competitor, though there are many privacy-focused search engines that are successful, including Qwant, StartPage, Searx. Search is a massive and lucrative space, and there’s room for many players. DDG is apparently on track to do 1 billion dollars in revenue this year already.
We differentiate ourselves in a couple of key ways:
We reward people with PRE tokens when they search
As you mentioned, we have a crypto integration that provides people with information on blockchain projects when they search them by name.
Additionally, we make it easy for users to switch between many search engines and deep search specific resources like CoinMarketCap and Etherscan
Additionally, because we’re set up as a multi-search UI, we can actually work with any of these different engines, and there’s even a token-denominated revenue opportunity for engines to get listed in Presearch.
Our provider offerings can be found here:
Q2. 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 Presearch and what are the advantages of using it ?
Ans — The easiest way to explain Presearch is to say that it’s a search engine that pays you when you use it that also respects your data and privacy.
Most people can wrap their heads around that, and then you can get into deeper conversations and answer their other questions from there.
The beauty of this project, and why we have so much usage, is that everyone searches. It’s one of the top activities on the web, and it’s something that everyone does understand.
Unlike many blockchain projects that are very difficult to understand, are targeted strictly at developers and technologists, Presearch is pretty basic, has a working product that creates value for people, is already profitable and is an on-ramp to crypto for new users.
We’ve faced many problems, but one of the biggest was certainly people trying to abuse the platform and farm tokens by just clicking on the search button over and over again. We spent more than half a year developing an anti-abuse system that now works really well. We also had to withstand thousands of complaints from people trying to abuse the system, and then upset that we wouldn’t let them. Fortunately, we have a really strong community and great trust with many of our users and so we were able to stand firm and weather the storm.
Q3. Can the team ensure that Presearch will remains top place in the search engine field and keep place ahead of your competitors in the future?
Ans — I believe we can. We already have a significant first-mover advantage and one of the only working token ecosystems, with an actual closed loop supply and demand token economy.
We have all of the elements we need to grow rapidly now in place and now we’re shifting gears to promotion mode. Lots of people still aren’t using Presearch, or they’ve tried it and need a reminder to check it out again. We’re aiming for 5m+ users by the end of the year which will require an aggressive growth strategy.
One of the last missing links for the project should be in place before the end of March. Then it’s really go-time! :)
The nice thing is that with our multi-search model, if another search platform pops up, we can integrate them into Presearch and enable people to earn PRE when they search them.
Q4. With blockchain being such a young industry, partnerships are an integral component of any project’s journey. Which types of partnerships have Presearch already attained and what are the plans on this front moving forward ?
Ans — Partnerships are definitely important, so long as they are truly functional partnerships and not just hype-oriented, though those have a place as well.
Obviously, an ideal partnership would be with Brave, and we are pursuing one actively.
We were recently contacted by Unstoppable Domains because they saw a great fit with Presearch, and there are some strong synergies there.
We plan to partner with Everipedia to replace our Wikipedia integration with theirs.
We’ve invested in a project called RightMesh that is building a mesh networking platform that could really help decentralize internet access.
We are being approached on a more regular basis due to our significant user base by both crypto projects and traditional companies. AdMarketplace.com contacted us this week and we did a call with them. There are some great synergies there.
We’re just getting started and are excited to work with many different organizations to help spread the word about decentralized search.
One of the biggest opportunities is for us to provide branded and customized search experiences to different communities (interest-based and geographical) so that they can have their own unique version of Presearch tailored to their members. Community leaders and influencers can promote their specific implementation of Presearch to their network and earn PRE while creating value for everyone.
Q5. It’s 2020 & why still $PRE behaves like centralized, 24–72 hours for transactions confirmation? Why don’t you use autonomous technology or decentralized manner for above transactions?
Ans — Thanks for the question — it’s certainly a good, tough one and one that we hear a lot from people upset that withdrawals don’t happen instantly.
There are a couple of main reasons, one being that the project is still quite young, and liquidity is still building. Until it’s at a point where it’s tougher to manipulate the price of the token, we’re going to need to be able to prevent people from doing instant withdrawals, otherwise, they can come in and try to crash the price, then buy PRE from our marketplace (which is geared toward serving advertisers — we can’t expect everyone to purchase on exchanges with crypto) at a huge discount. Currently, if someone tries to do that, we can stop them and issue a refund. Therefore, the incentive to do it is low and it isn’t really a problem. As we are uncovering all the ways people will try to manipulate things, we can build out automated systems and when we’re confident that we’re very well-protected, then we can enable things to operate more autonomously.
The same thing for those trying to game token rewards.
It’s the ultimate final layer of security for the project. Most people don’t mind and recognize that it’s just where we’re at. We are striving to do better though, and look forward to improving to the point where everything ‘just runs’. I apologize for the inconvenience in the meantime.
Q6. I hate Google as its manipulate search result & records my behavior, sometimes irritates me. How Presearch protects my privacy & search behavior?
Ans — Presearch does not store your search queries and does not use trackers for retargeting ads.
If you use Presearch Engine (https://engine.presearch.org) or another privacy-focused search engine like DuckDuckGo, you earn crypto when you search and none of your information is used against you.
We can’t do much to protect you when you go out to sites like Google or onto the general internet, but we have done dozens of videos pulling apart the privacy and data retention policies of most of the Presearch providers.
Q7. Are you currently planning on implementing any new use cases for Presearch, in order to even further increase the utility of the token?
The primary demand driver for PRE is our new Keyword Staking platform.
This system enables you to stake your PRE against a word or phrase and whoever stakes the most has their ad displayed when a user searches for that term on Presearch.
We have a current promotion where all traffic received between now and January 2021 is free! So no cost per click or cost per impression. It’s a pretty compelling offer for anyone marketing or trying to spread the word about a business, affiliate offer or even a cause they support.
Right now, we’re going to really focus on capturing value for the token economy there, and generating demand for ads by growing the user base.
The other main use case on the demand side is our online store, which has merchandise and services denominated in PRE:
There you can find all of the different services that we sell to providers and sponsors, as well as buy Presearch gear.
We may expand the other offers available in the store to include domain names (I own several thousand personally and through my other business, ShopCity), as well as licenses offered by ShopCity in our franchise-like program.
For more information on the project, you can check out
Question Asked by our BlockTalks Community Members during live Session Colin Pape!
Q . When the price is seriously DUMP, projects can lose their user community.
What is your plan to make product-oriented community that support #PreSearch longterm?
Ans — Yes, we’ve already been through this and actually come out stronger.
There was a bit of a transfer of PRE wealth in 2019 as some whales dumped and our best community members were able to scoop up PRE for very cheap. It actually worked out really well.
As times got tough, we doubled down on community and were even more active in Telegram and our other channels than before.
We were fortunate to attract mainly people interested in the project vs. just speculators because we didn’t ever really appeal to speculators and have been more mission driven. We’ll keep going on that path.
Q. I learned your project from previous AMA and I made my default page Presearch. As a Presearch user, I see that there is a delay in query results compared to Google. What is the reason for this delay? Any plan to overcome this delay
Ans — We have heard of some delays depending on the user setup. Please connect with us in @presearch and we’ll try to help you troubleshoot.
Q. With Presearch, every user is getting PRE tokens when he searches. More users and more tokens go for rewards but when the max supply will be 1B PRE, is this possible that there will be not enough tokens for rewards?What is your plan to tackle this issue?
Ans — Ultimately, sponsors will purchase PRE from existing users to reward users and will pay for those rewards directly, rather than coming from the project pool, as those will ultimately be depleted at some point. When it happens, the value of the token should really be recognized. We don’t see any issues with actually running out, however.
Q. Do you agree that centralized and decentralized platforms should coexist or is it better to migrate now and forever to decentralized platforms?
Ans — When we first launched our crowdsale, we opened the portal to buyers and then were shocked that no orders were coming through.
Turned out so many people tried to register that it overwhelmed the email service and none of the verification email links could come out, so people couldn’t register and complete orders.
Q. I am also a libertarian, but I worry about what the contents of the searches may be morally wrong (violence for example), what solutions are there in that area?
Ans — Ultimately, there will need to be tools for community members to moderate questionable information, and a tribunal process where this is done in a way that people object to. We are working on some currently with the ad reporting feature that will be applicable to the results as we switch away from APIs to our own index.
We have a pretty solid model where user rewards are countered by purchases of PRE from sponsors. The project will benefit by being able to sell tokens from its pool to fund operations, until ultimately there are none left in the pool and then we will switch to a small transaction fee to fund ops.
Q. Investors, Developers, and Communities are important for the success of a project. How does your strategy involve them?
Ans — People who wish to benefit from PRE tokens can do so via the traffic they receive to their PRE tokens.
They can stake keywords and get free traffic, so that’s a massive benefit.
Developers can contribute community packages via our Github account:
We will be engaging with them further with the next iteration of the platform.
https://t.me/presearch is our main community channel, and we’re very active there. Community members help us prioritize projects, give us feedback on ideas and help shape the overall direction of the project, as well as hold us accountable.
We are working on a governance layer that will enable community members to participate even more actively in the future.
Q. Since starting the project, did you achieve everything you planned or did you have to make drastic changes to your main idea at the start and what makes your project better than your competitors?
Ans — Crypto winter was definitely a challenge, and has caused us to focus more on getting sustainable token economics in place as our first priority.
We will then switch to the governance side of things as well as the open source search engine.
Q. What technology/architecture and consensus algorithm are you using?
Ans — We are using ethereum currently, doing most microtransactions in a traditional database and then batching out to the blockchain. We will likely end up switching to a different blockchain as we establish more clearly our needs and the technology matures.
Q. Presearch has great potential in the project,why don’t you plan for listing in big exchanges like Binance, Huobi. TBH Hitbtc and Probit sucks😭
Ans — We are working on this now. Expect news later this month.
Up until the launch of the keyword staking platform, we really were not focused on exchanges. They are now a critical distribution channel for us to enable stakers to buy tokens they can use on the platform.
Q: What are the advantage if we holding PRE for the long term?
Ans — Demand for PRE will only increase as the user base grows and we establish more utility via innovations like keyword staking.
Q. Can you tell us whats the main Advantages of Blockchain Technology in Search engine & Ads platform? How Blockchain can be beneficial for search engine & ads platform / Presearch?
Ans — Ultimately, we’re looking at how blockchain could be used to actually rank information, enable users to build up a reputation and contribute to the process of curating information.
Q. The PRE Keyword staking is, no doubt, an amazing marketing opportunity. But im not a whale, so I have a question regarding a staking strategy.
Are there any restrictions on the timing and size of the bid for the keyword? I will explain what I mean. Suppose a whale has already put millions of PREs on a specific keyword (and/or combination). The chance to stake this keyword, respectively, for a user with less token is equal to zero. A whale just won’t let it go if he gets good traffic. I understand that this is his right, he is rich, but this does not correspond to the philosophy of the project in my opinion. Do you intend to introduce some kind of democratization and equality in the system? Perhaps in the form of restrictions on the uninterrupted period of staking and something in the form of a maximum percentage of display in a certain period or a little randomization?
How does a platform get benefit from staking user? What commission will he be required to pay? Thanks!
Ans — Thanks for the question and kind words.
The best way for those with minimal tokens to participate is to target more qualified ‘long tail’ keywords…
For instance, ‘bitcoin’ is very expensive and generic, but you could target ‘buy bitcoin’ or ‘buy bitcoin with credit card’ and when someone searches for that phrase, if you have staked it exactly, you will have your ad shown over the much more expensive ‘bitcoin’ keyword. We felt like this was the easiest, most fair way to do it.
You can also place a lower bid and if they cancel, your ad will show. It happens all the time as people are constantly trying out words to see what kind of traffic exists, how it converts, etc.
It’s kind of a free-for-all right now, like when Google launched Adwords and Facebook Ads first came out.
Ultimately, there may be additional restrictions based on observations on what’s happening and potential problems that arise.
To start, we’e kept it simple and minimized restrictions.
We are currently benefitting just by driving demand for tokens to stake. There is no consumptive fee right now, though there may be ultimately.
Q: Venezuela is going through its worst economic and political crisis and lack of education in crypto. Would Presearch be part of the educational rescue, the impetus to a broad and contributing search engine in our recovery?
Ans — We love Venezuela and feel terrible about what’s happening there now. We’d love to be part of the solution. Please join @presearch and participate in the process with us.
Q: You organized a lot of Ama and received lots of questions about the technology and benefits that Presearch brings. So now I want to ask what you want to receive from the community? What will Presearch do to build a thriving community that truly cares and supports the project for the long term, not just for a temporary profit?
Ans — We are hoping to connect with people who share the vision for an alternative search engine, run by libertarians, that rewards those who use and help expand the project. This can be done by using it, telling others about it, purchasing tokens and staking keywords.
Q: Every day some words trending then tomorrow it will change so is it possible to change the keywords at anytime in keyword staking?
Ans — It’s all real-time. You can stake and unstake instantly, and as the winning staker, you’ll receive traffic information to see how many people search for that term, click on your ad, etc.
Q: Why Presearch needs Blockachain ?
Ans — Our rewards token system uses blockchain, as does our keyword staking platform. Many people have commented that it’s one of the strongest, most practical uses of blockchain in the space currently.
That’s all for the blog. We are excited to see more growth of Presearch.
BlockTalks — Telegram Channel , Telegram Discussion
Presearch — Telegram Discussion
FAQ: https://forum.presearch.community/category/3/faq
Twitter: https://twitter.com/@TeamPresearch
