BlockTalks x Razor Network AMA Transcript!
Hello! BlockTalkers & Blockchain Enthusiastic!
We recently hosted an AMA with Razor Network, on January 15th at 02.00 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 Divij, Head of Communications & Himanshu Bisht, Head of Marketing, at Razor 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 Razor Network to our community in layman’s term?
Ans — Razor Network is a decentralized oracle network with a focus on Maximum security, complete decentralization, and being fully permissionless. Razor achieves this while still being fast and practical for Decentralized Finance. Razor network uses a sliding court mechanism where any result of the oracle can be disputed iteratively. This makes the oracle extremely secure and makes it impossible to attack the oracle successfully.
Q2. What are the advantages of Razor Network to other alternatives in the Blockchain field?
Ans — Razor network is designed from the ground up to provide maximum game-theoretical security without compromising speed. This means it’s impossible to profitably attack the oracle. Apart from that, Razor is fully decentralized, permissionless, and fast.
Apart from that, we have the following differentiating factors:
1. Truly decentralized and permissionless
2. Only oracle to offer Fast AND Secure results
3. Flexibility to request results in an automated and manual fashion
4. Game theoretically sound and resistant to collusion, bribing, Sybil and censorship attacks
5. In-house synthetic asset app “Razor Synthetic Assets” to increase adoption
Q3. What are the major milestones Razor Network achieved so far & what are in the future pipeline?
Ans — Razor Network has already been live on the testnet for the past months, we also have released a few products like Razor Synthetic Assets alpha, RazorScan as mentioned above.
This Year we are planning to go live on the Mainnet as well as launching Dispute Rounds, Reality Aware Tokens and DeltaOne V1. We are also planning to have our Public Sale pretty soon.
More details will be published on our website soon — https://razor.network
Questions Asked on Twitter For Razor Network Team!
Q1. Razor Network is blockchain agnostic. Now that you have this feature, what advantages do you offer for different blockchains? How does the Consensual Reality algorithm work and how does it fit into each platform?
Ans — As we know Ethereum blockchain has been very successful in attracting developers and to start the DeFi revolution. However, the scalability challenges of ethereum are becoming clear. This shows a need for Layer 2 and other scalability solutions.
Razor network is blockchain agnostic and can be deployed to any ethereum compatible blockchain. Different blockchains have different properties regarding privacy, scalability, security, etc. This gives us freedom to use any blockchain which has suitable properties and allows us to serve applications on multiple platforms.
Q2. Recently, Razor has joined Conflux to bring its decentralized Oracle service to a new world of DeFi and Web3.0 DApps. Do you plan to become part of Polkadot through this partnership? How will conflux help you improve your Oracle?
Ans — Conflux Network is an open decentralized network built to drive the next generation of global commerce by unlocking the DApps of the future. Conflux enables the secure and interoperable flow of assets and information across protocols & applications, which forms the basis on which Web3.0 will be built.
Conflux integrates Proof of Work consensus into a novel Tree-Graph consensus mechanism that optimizes security, scalability and decentralization, without compromising on any of the parameters. Today, Conflux is the only state endorsed public, permissionless blockchain in China. Future-ready DApps built on Conflux’s platform would be able to leverage a high throughput of 3000–6000 TPS and low transaction fees.
The Web3.0 ready DApps developed on Conflux’s platform would require access to reliable and secure data feeds from the external world, as their execution would be triggered by real world events in most cases. Razor’s decentralized oracle network offers maximum game-theoretical security without compromising on speed. Strict slashing penalties are imposed on bad actors, and honest nodes are incentivized through financial rewards.
The partnership between Razor and Conflux would guarantee that not only Conflux’s blockchain platform but also the external data that is available to the smart contracts remains 100% secure. This will empower DApp developers to create a range of sophisticated smart contracts, which would drive the decentralized applications in tune with the requirements of the next generation of financial applications, digital assets, business applications, and data economies.
you can read more on our recent blog post here:
Q3. I have read about Razor Network and use Oracle Network but I have doubts about their decentralization intentions, does Razor Network have a truly decentralized Oracle Network or do they retain some centralized bases?
Ans — Decentralization is an important goal of the network. This is because centralization puts a high amount of power in a small group of entities, which makes a lot of attacks feasible and jeopardizes the trustworthiness of the protocol.
Razor network is fully decentralized and does not have centralized bottlenecks. Anyone can become a validator in Razor by staking RZR tokens. It does not require permission from us or anyone else.
We encourage decentralization in the protocol through the following ways:
- A fair and wide distribution of tokens
- The protocol is permissionless. We, or anyone else, don’t have the power to decide who is allowed or otherwise, to participate in the network.
- Queries are pseudorandomly assigned to the validators, making collusion and bribing difficult
- Commit reveal scheme for revealing the “votes” and dispute mechanism makes it secure from bribing attacks.
Q4. I read that of someone is not satisfied with the oracle, there is a dispute mechanism available for this issue. Can you explain briefly the step by step process of this dispute and the conditions for it to happen?
Ans — An attacker can bribe the majority of the stake in a trustless way and can compromise the results of the oracle. To prevent this, Razor Network has an in-built dispute resolution mechanism.
Any result of the oracle can be disputed by paying the “Dispute bond”, which can be paid collectively. The disputers win a reward of 50% of the dispute bond if they successfully dispute a round.
If the bond is successfully paid within the dispute period, the query enters a dispute round. In the dispute round, the stakes are higher, the amount of penalty for voting incoherently is higher and the queries are answered manually by the validators. The results of the dispute round can be further disputed. The amount of participating stake, and the dispute bond amount is doubled every round. If the disputer wins the dispute, their dispute bond is refunded, else it is confiscated and rewarded to coherent validators.
Due to this mechanism, even if an attacker compromises the oracle, the result will likely be disputed by an honest actor. The attacker will have to pay double the bribe to compromise the dispute round. Even if they are successful in doing that, that round will again likely be disputed and so on. This can go on till the whole network participates in the dispute round. If that round also fails to resolve the dispute, the network forks in two networks, and the market decides the honest fork.
Q5. Partnership are plays a crucial role behind success of every project. Can you share us with the recent partnership of Razor network?Also what are the benefits that we can expect from this partnership?
Ans — We are really proud to have a lot of really great partners already and are working on collaborating with more projects. You can read more about our current partnerships below:
Matic — Matic Developers will now be able to access verified data seamlessly through Razor’s Decentralized Oracle Services. This integration will add increased utility to the ever-growing developer ecosystem on Matic and allow application developers on Matic to use Razor Oracle. You can read more here —
https://medium.com/razor-network/razor-network-partners-with-matic-network-af6521b6771f
Skale — The Razor-Scale infrastructure will provide developers with the necessary tools to build highly scalable, secure, and high-performance DApps with access to real-world data on the SKALE platform. You can read more here —
https://medium.com/razor-network/razor-network-partners-with-skale-to-provide-access-to-real-world-data-8de0450a0306
Persistence — https://medium.com/razor-network/razor-network-inks-partnership-with-persistence-9b4efaa03428
OpenDeFi — https://bit.ly/3kl2RRr
XinFin’s XDC Blockchain Network — https://bit.ly/2Hxwly8
Conflux — https://bit.ly/3m4Q06y
Sentinel Network — http://bit.ly/3mgMiXz
Questions Asked by our BlockTalks Community Members during live Session to Razor Network Team!!
Q1. The last month of the 2020 was a good year for Razor Network with several partnerships and good progress. Now that it’s a new year, what are you going to be focusing on? Can you tell us your plans for the Q1 2021?
Ans — Razor Network has already been live on the testnet for the past months, we also have released a few products like Razor Synthetic Assets, Razor Scan, Reality Aware Tokens as mentioned above.
Next Year we are planning to go live on the Mainnet as well as launching Dispute Rounds, Reality Aware Tokens and DeltaOne V1.
We have raised $3.7m in private funding in 2020 and now our public sale is near the corner. So yes! a lot is happening ;)
More details will be published on our announcement channel soon.
Q2. Razor Network is blockchain agnostic. Since it has this peculiarity, what advantages do you offer for the different blockchains?
Ans — Great Question. Being Blockchain Agnostic is one of our main distinctive feature which helps us to be deployed to any ethereum compatible blockchain. Different blockchains have different properties regarding privacy, scalability, security, etc. This gives us freedom to use any blockchain which has suitable properties and allows us to serve applications on multiple platforms. We have already partnered with Matic, Skale, Conflux, Persistence ,XinFin’s XDC Blockchain Network and many more coming up.
Q3. What are the distinguishing features of Razor Network that cannot be beat by other platforms? Who would you consider as potential competitor in the market?
Ans — Razor network is designed from the ground up to provide maximum game-theoretical security without compromising speed. This means it’s impossible to profitably attack the oracle. Apart from that, Razor is fully decentralized, permissionless, and fast.
Razor Network also has the following differentiating factors to existing solutions:
Truly decentralized and permissionless
Only oracle to offer Fast AND Secure results
Flexibility to request results in an automated and manual fashion
Game theoretically sound and resistant to collusion, bribing, Sybil, and censorship attacks
In-house synthetic asset app “Razor Synthetic Assets” to increase adoption.
Q4. You guys are anonymous or public how can investors trust you?
Ans — Team details are already on website. Further, we have some of the leading investors in our private round.
Here you can read more about it: https://www.coindesk.com/razor-network-oracles-funding-round
visit website for more details: https://razor.network
Q5.I was very curious to hear you mention that you have a system of strict sanctions for misconduct. So, can you tell us what you mean by misconduct, and what you mean by strict sanctions??
Ans — The validators who fail to maintain the following conditions may be penalized.
1. Make sure the node is online
2. Report data coherently (honestly)
3. Keep data secret during the COMMIT phase of the epoch.
If it is proven that the validator is acting in a malicious way, some of their stake will be reduced and rewarded to other honest stakers. In this manner, they are penalized.
Q6. Every successful project has some behind the scenes story, So what is the story behind Razor success? What is Razor mean?
Ans — In early 2019, Hrishikesh was exploring real-world applications of blockchain. At that time DeFi was in very early stages but was slowly proving to be a promising use-case. But as he did more research I quickly realized space was limited due to the centralized nature of the oracles used. This will always be a limiting factor of DeFi unless the oracle problem is solved.
The Oracle problem is a very well known and notoriously difficult problem. Hrishikesh loved the challenging nature of the problem and started designing and analyzing different mechanisms for a fully decentralized and secure oracle.
Over the period of a year, he continued to research and development of Razor to make it the most robust, secure, and fast oracle network.
Q7. How is RAZOR Network oracles technically better from traditional oracles like Chainlink?
Ans — We don’t like to compare ourselves with any other similar project. We are looking for a long term vision for entire industry.
Decentralization is an important goal of the network. This is because centralization puts a high amount of power in a small group of entities, which makes a lot of attacks feasible and jeopardizes the trustworthiness of the protocol.
Razor network is fully decentralized and does not have centralized bottlenecks. Anyone can become a validator in Razor by staking RAZOR tokens. It does not require permission from us or anyone else.
Here are the key points to note:
- Razor is Truly decentralized and permissionless
- It is Only oracle to offer Fast AND Secure results
- It has Flexibility to request results in an automated and manual fashion
- Razor is Game theoretically sound and resistant to collusion, bribing, Sybil and censorship attacks
- In-house synthetic asset app “Razor Synthetic Assets” to increase adoption
Q8. What is the reason behind choosing Proof of Stake ( PoS) consensus algorithm over Proof of Work ( PoW) ?
Ans — Great question.
Razor Network uses a Proof of Stake Algorithm. Proof of Stake is a simple and proven consensus algorithm. That’s why it is used by many reputable projects including Ethereum 2.0
Proof of stake is the core consensus mechanism of Razor Network. It allows Razor to achieve the following goals:
1. Proof of stake provides Sybil attack resistance. This is because becoming a validator requires staking tokens and doing that without owning tokens is not possible.
2. The algorithm rewards honest validators with new tokens. This incentivizes the validators to behave honestly and report valid data.
3. Dishonest/incoherent validators are penalized and their stake is reduced. This disincentivizes bad behavior. A part of the tokens collected as a penalty is distributed to honest stakers, further incentivizing honest behavior.
Here are some important links of Razor Network👇
🌎 Website: https://razor.network/
📱Twitter: https://twitter.com/razor_network
📢 Telegram: https://t.me/razornetwork
