Ark.io AMA: Get the scoop on all of Ark's upcoming plans and releases!

What's up? It's Rachel here and today I'm doing a live AMA with arcio. Today we've got the co founder of Arch IO, Travis Walker with us. And we've also got Justin Rankin, he's the senior brand manager of Arc IO. Hey, guys. Hi, guys. How are you doing? Good. Good to see you. You too, Rachel. Yeah, definitely. I'm excited for this ama. Let's just get started with the first question. What is ARC IO and how is it different from other blockchain ecosystems? Justin, do you want to take that?

I will definitely take that. Yeah. I've been taking this question for years. Yeah. Well, ARK is the simplest way to blockchain. I mean, what we're doing at Ark I.O. is we're building a platform of cohesive products that allows both users and developers to harness blockchain technology in the simplest and easiest way possible and the fastest, really. We're working on products like the deployer, which allows any developer to deploy a blockchain in just one click, where all the background processes happen in the background automatically and you have your own blockchain fully customized to your specs while you're sipping a coffee. And that's just one example. But we also have desktop and mobile wallets, really easy to use for everyday people. We have platform SDK for developers to interact with many different blockchains, popular chains, and get data out in a very efficient way. And as well, we are launching a new platform called Market Square soon, which is a social platform designed to bring users and developers together with blockchain powered project projects and businesses so that they can build community together.

Very cool. I mean, it sounds like the ARK ecosystem is pretty vast. Travis, do you mind kind of explaining maybe the different elements and systems that you guys tend to focus on within the ecosystem?

Yeah, well, we're focused on our core. This is the coding behind the blockchain itself. But we're also focused on growing our community and our projects. Like Justin mentioned, the deployer, Market Square coming up, the platform SDK. But platform SDK, I wanted to jump on that real quick. It's if you're familiar with Coinbase and their Rosetta API, it's something similar to that. A universal way to interact with all kinds of different protocols and make it easier to interact with them. We're also focusing on node management for brand new blockchains that are spinning up in the ARC ecosystem. We're focused on our new desktop wallet is coming out, which is going to be multi asset, not just arc. And there's Much more in the background, more coming in the future.

Awesome. Great. Before I go on to my next question, I just want to remind our audience to subscribe to the YouTube channel and to please start sending your questions because Justin and Travis are ready to answer anything. So feel free to send those in the chat and. Yeah, so. So next question. Justin, I'd like you to take this one. I know that Market Square is kind of a big deal right now within the ecosystem. Can you kind of further explain what that is?

Yes, definitely. And it's true that Market Square is a pretty big deal in the ecosystem right now because it allows ARK to have a springboard to offer value in communicating with other projects and businesses and in order to form strategic relationships with the rest of the industry. So it's all. It's already nice that we have this really powerful toolkit for developers. JavaScript and TypeScript. Developers can use our toolkits to build blockchains, customize chains, integrate with the ARK public network and the ARK crypto asset, do all that stuff. But Market Square is kind of taking care of the dark side of the moon, if that was one side of the moon. And that is the social aspect of bringing the entire industry together. So what we've been doing in the later half of 2020 and now is really reaching out to many different projects and businesses and protocols as well. We've been doing a lot with the hive ecosystem that's running a lot of social media apps such as 3speak and D Buzz and Dappler, but also different businesses like even e tailers like cryptos. They sell these crypto themed socks that you can wear and dogecoin cufflinks. You know, they got it all. But really it's kind of like a cooler version of LinkedIn for the crypto and blockchain industries so that users and developers who want to discover real services that they can use with blockchain can do that and connect with their favorite blockchain powered projects and businesses. And as we roll out more features to this platform after the initial public beta launch, we're going to be integrating ARK technology into the Marketsquare platform directly with crypto fueled transactions and payments for things like promotional posts, advertising and other features like that.

Very cool. Can we talk a little bit about the Ark Token? How can people earn the Ark Token? Do businesses accept that? Travis, maybe do you want to go into detail there?

Yeah. The Ark Token runs on the ARK blockchain. It can be used as a payment system, it can be used for transfers like any cryptocurrency can, but it also is used in a governance aspect on the ARC network itself. Vote in delegates, which is some people call them validators, but Ark call them delegates. Every, every ARK token that a user holds equals one vote for a delegate. Push them into a forging position. So if you feel that you're comfortable with a certain delegate running the ARC network for you, you vote for them and you put their trust into them. At any point in time you can change your votes. You can swap between your ARK wallets into mobile, you can vote from your ledger hardware wallets going into the side of. Where can you use ARC sites like Travela accept Ark. There's things like NowPayments that integrate ARC for E tailors or websites. There's a lot of different uses.

So if a business wanted to actually accept the ARK token, is it easy for them to just set up and do that? What's the process like?

Yeah, there is. We had something called ArkPay. It's on our GitHub. People can utilize that. But like I was mentioning, now payments, they have a great system to just integrate with websites like Shopify, type of websites and stuff like that.

Yeah. And cryptocurrency. Checkout.com as well I believe also has that. And just recently ARK was integrated into travala.com as well. Very well known platform for booking travel and and flight hotel accommodations using cryptocurrency that has also been integrated as well. So yeah.

Awesome. That's really, really cool. I'm going to take some questions or a question from the audience real quick. So let's see here. Jermaine Medima is asking, what's the difference with Coin, Market Cap and Market Square.

Oh yes, that's a good question. I like that question. Okay, Travis, I got this one, if you don't mind. So yeah, the key difference between CoinMarketCap and Market Square really lies in the vision of what we want people to do on our platform. So when you go to coinmarketcap.com they do a pretty good job at showing you all this different information about different projects and you can learn about what they do in the descriptions of each project. Right. Each crypto asset and ecosystem that lies under it. However, the difference is CoinMarketCap seems to have a bit more focus on valuations, market capitalizations, financial information, price histories, that kind of thing. I guess more like a speculator resource. Right. Even in the name. Right. Coinmarketcap.com that's what they, that's what they're doing with Market Square. We're focusing on utility first. So we're showing our users that come to Market Square what you can specifically do with different crypto assets with blockchain projects, which dapps are running on which networks and, and organizing that information so that somebody with a specific interest set can access all of the real services that would interest them quickly and easily. So like with Coin Market Cap, it's more like filter by the biggest market cap. But like, if I'm, you know, somebody who wants to find really cool blockchain games, I'm not really going to find games that are really cool like Splinterlands or, or Town Star by sorting by biggest market cap. Right. So Market Square is more like, what do you like to do? Who do you like to hang out with? What are you interested in? Where do you see blockchain technology going? Like, what examples do you want to see of blockchain technology enriching real people's lives? Right now, that type of experience is what we're trying to give people with Market Square.

Got it. Travis, did you want to add anything to that?

I think he nailed it. Cool.

Well, just based on that, I'm curious, are you guys doing anything with NFTs? Because obviously that's huge right now and I think it's a great real world use case. So, Justin, did you want to take that?

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

NFTs are definitely big right now. And it's interesting because ark, like Ark IO, we're kind of like OGs in the space. Ark started mid to late 2016. Now it's after 2020. Right. So we're into 2021. So we've seen like the ICO craze come and we've seen the Defi craze come and now we're seeing the NFT craze come. Each wave brings with it real utility, of course, but there's definitely a lot of buzz and hype going on with NFTs right now. Earlier last year, ARK launched the enterprise blockchain services division called Protocol. Protocol is designed to help enterprises and businesses design business models around blockchain and then integrate it into their existing processes. So as a, as a mechanism for that end goal, they're doing a lot of experimenting and looking into working with NFTs. And in specifics, I'm talking about things like the sports entertainment industry. There's lots of applications for NFTs there. We've seen that with things like NBA Top shots. Right. Esports is something that I think the traditional markets are overlooking a little bit because only, only recently has esports been Starting to get as much notoriety as regular sports. And so the cool thing about esports is it's already E. Right. So the collectibles can also be E by way of NFTs. And so protocol is doing a lot of work with that. The cool thing that Marketsquare has been doing with NFTS is releasing some content, educational content, that makes NFTs understandable and gets people's gears turning about what NFTs can really do. We have a video series on the Marketsquare YouTube channel called the Blockchains of where we take a look at popular movies and TV shows and figure out how blockchain can power that fictional technology. We recently released an episode called the Blockchains of Ready Player One during digicon, a blockchain gaming festival. And it was a widely received video. It became the number one video on our channel within one day. So that's just, you know, one example of the power of NFT buzz. But the video itself is really great. Very well done. Teaches you a lot about NFTs blockchain, real life VR experiences powered by blockchain. So definitely recommend anybody to check that out on the Marketsquare YouTube channel.

Cool. Yeah, it sounds like you guys are definitely doing a lot in terms of educating the public about blockchain and cryptocurrency. I was also reading that there's something called on your platform a blockchain glossary. Is that correct, Travis?

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, go ahead, Justin.

Yeah, Travis can talk about that if he likes.

Actually, I'd like Justin talk about it, because I'm pretty sure he used the main guy for that whole project.

Thank you. Yes. We've compiled a glossary of over 300 blockchain terms to help beginners in both the user space and the developer space get into the blockchain industry quickly and easily. So what we ended up actually doing was collaborating with the community. And I run this little thing called the ARK Community Committee, where I got a bunch of people together in the community who was like, hey, you want to help us do cool stuff? You want to get some Ark, then join the committee. So part of that project was having the committee go out and find all these different blockchain terms, help define them, and kind of work together to create this collaborative glossary. And once that was done, we're starting to now make videos about each term. So on the MarketSquare YouTube channel, which also acts as an educational resource and platform, as well as all the other things I talked about, we're creating videos for each term. So that People who are just getting into blockchain and they're like, well, what does that word even mean? They'll be able to access quick, short, concise videos that gets right to the point for each term. So, yeah, it's a very cool thing. I think a glossary is a cool way to kind of get people involved to learn. Because every time you read one sentence about blockchain, it has like two or three terms in it where you're like, what does that mean? And then you read the next sentence and that spawns nine more terms and you're like, what do those mean? So. So we figured that glossary would be a cool way to kind of tackle that.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, especially as more of the mainstream starts to enter the crypto space, we need things like glossaries and educational resources where people can just easily see what these terms mean. I'm going to take another question from the audience real quick. This is actually a really interesting question Alessandro Perilla is asking. Can Ark solve the problems of Ethereum?

Best Travis all day. That's Travis all day.

You want to answer that?

Yes and no. I guess transaction wise. Yeah. I don't see why it wouldn't be a great alternative. We're not trying to replace anyone by any means. We're on our own path. But the way Ark is designed is multiple chains. So one chain is fast, but when you have parallel blockchains, it can offload multiple transactions in between interoperable blockchains. You start solving scalability. That's kind of how we've been designing it in the background since 2016. And with our new Core V3, we're in the last step making this actually happen.

Very cool. Justin, did you want to add anything to that?

Yeah, sure. The scalability issue of Ethereum, which is a very widely adopted decentralized computer blockchain. Right. That's kind of one of the driving forces that attached me to ARK in terms of its vision. Because as a speculator, it's a great thing to have everything run on one network, and it all relies on one crypto asset by force through gas fees. That's a great thing for speculators, because then it kind of like strong arms the utility of the main crypto asset. But for a user, it might be less than fair from time to time. If, for example, like, I want to use Ethereum to pay somebody to mow my lawn, if the fees are really high because some random application I've never heard of is getting really popular on the same network, then that doesn't seem fair to me or the person I'm paying to mow my lawn. So that's where I was starting to ask questions about scalability. And I found ark's vision to be really elegant in terms of giving each use case or each even decentralized application on its own, its own standalone blockchain, and then allowing interoperability to take care of the glue that makes that ecosystem up. And then with the ARK crypto asset at the middle of that ecosystem, it's running on the ARK public network, which is not bogged down by specialized code that has been put there by other developers who want to run specific applications. So I can pay somebody to mow my lawn using Ark in a very cheap and efficient way, while also enabling an ecosystem, a thriving ecosystem of hundreds of applications running on ARC technology at the same time. So I saw that as kind of a win win there.

Got it, got it. I'm going to take another question from the audience real quick. That's kind of related to what we were just talking about. So this is from Hard Classic Records. He's asking, is it possible that Ethereum developers are moving their projects to the Ark blockchain easily? Travis, do you want to answer that one?

Yeah, it certainly can. I know a lot of solidity developers right now would rather stick with solidity though, so they're going to Ethereum clones at the moment. But there is a very easy way to actually make this happen. We have an ERC20 token, a conversion system. Really use that with the new ARC deployer and you convert your Ethereum tokens into an ARC based blockchain and token.

It's called the ARC Migrator and it'll be coming along with the deployer. So yeah, you could be an Ethereum DApp and then you could convert all your stuff onto an ARC chain easily with the migrator and you can launch the ARC chain really easily with the deployer. Then you can manage nodes really easily using nodem, another product in our platform family.

So, yeah, very cool. Awesome. Just a reminder to the audience, please keep sending your questions. These guys know everything, so please send them our way so we can answer them. I'm going to go back to one of my questions real quick. I want to talk a little bit about open source because I know the ARC platform is open source and I think that this is really important for the blockchain ecosystem in general. So Travis, what are your thoughts on open source and the importance there?

It's extremely important. That's what this whole industry is about. We wouldn't be here without it. Everything we do is all open source except. Except when we're developing it, when we release it to the public, it is all open source. We believe in that. I believe we are part of the copa, correct.

Yeah, the crypto Open patent alliance. So yeah, it's an organization designed to put forward a culture that doesn't try to iron fist, grip all the intellectual property in the blockchain space. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely a cool thing to be a part of that organization. There's a video about that on our YouTube channel as well.

Awesome. Okay, so a comment from the audience from Harshti Tiwari. He's saying, hey Travis, can I get an arc cap? I'm a believer in ARK since day one and I would love to wear it to college. So just throwing that out there. You guys have a lot of fans that want hats.

Shop arc IO.

Nice.

Get yourself an arc hat.

Yeah, I got my tan one over there. I'm not wearing it right now, but yeah, the hats are really cool.

Yeah, that hat is awesome. Okay, back to a question from the audience. Let's talk a little bit about the new wallet. So audience member dis associative is saying will the new wallet allow to hold stablecoins?

Oh, then the new wallet, it's combined with our platform SDK which is supporting Ethereum. It will support Ethereum. So everything built on Ethereum will eventually putting stable coins can be added to the multi asset wallet. Yes.

Justin, did you want to add anything to that?

No. Yeah, Travis, got it locked down. Yeah. Yes.

Can you guys also just talk about the new wallet? Are there any cool features that you want to discuss? Anything like that? Justin? Travis.

Yeah, just looking at the. As we continue to look at the designs and how the development is coming together for the actual functionalities of the wallet and seeing the wallet in action, what I've noticed that's a huge improvement in the wallet is we've really improved the user flow for doing common actions in the wallet. Things like sending funds, receiving, adding a new address. It's much more user friendly in terms of it takes you on a little bit of a journey through the steps and it doesn't expose you to too much information at once. When we're designing things like the wallets, we have people who have never used crypto in mind. And one of the really cool things is that even though there are some really great wallets out there that have a great user experience, wallets like for example Abra, Spend, Exodus, Atomic Wallet, all great wallets, all great user experiences. We take extra pride in being the business entity responsible for helping to maintain the code base of a blockchain project directly, but also being able to release these types of products that have really great user experiences. I mean, when ARK first started it was like 2016 and wallet experiences were far worse than they are now. And so the ARC wallet coming out in 2017 really helped us earn a trusted place in the industry as being user first and really valuing the user experience as a blockchain project natively, which was kind of like a new innovative thing at the time. So definitely some really cool things coming to the new wallet and I think the ARK fans and people just discovering Ark both will really enjoy what we've got going on with the wallet.

I want to add to it. My favorite thing coming is the sheer speed of it just connecting to a ledger. If anyone has a ledger wallet with multiple addresses, it takes some time to pull those addresses and bring them up into the wallet. It is lightning fast now.

Awesome. I have a question about the new wallet also. We're seeing a lot of these wallets integrate with tax platforms to help make crypto taxes easier. Are you guys doing something like that already or are you planning to do that moving forward?

So one of the cool things is Market Square allows us to forge relationships with entities that handle crypto taxes. Things like token tax come to mind joining Market Square. And so that kind of opens doors for ARK to add more functionalities to the wallet and other products. So the wallet is unique for us because of the plugin manager that we're integrating into the wallet. So this plugin manager will allow both ARK IO and third parties to release applications that enhance the wallet experience. Similar to when you use the Google's Play store or the iOS store to use apps to enhance your phone. You can do that same thing, enhance your wallet with the plugin manager. So plugins can include things like tax based applications that help you manage your activities within the wallet. It's definitely within the realm of possibility and capability using ARK technology.

Awesome.

Cool.

I'm going to take another question from the audience. Cam CYJ is asking, will the multi asset wallet have swaps? If so, is it looking to compete with stuff like Atomic and Exodus? Travis, you want to answer that?

I don't think that's going to be a feature right out of the gate. It's not something I wouldn't say no to at the moment. I'm just thinking getting the coins into the mold as well, getting the wallet out first before we start looking at it like a built in Dex or something like that. It's not a no, but it's, it's not our focus to get out right now.

Yeah, the roadmap is showing that we're laying the foundations to include decentralized communications between different blockchains. So we have this technology called HTLC Smart Bridge that is currently functioning on the ARK development network, which is not the ARK main network, the ARK Public Network. That technology would allow ARK Public Network to swap decentrally with new blockchains that are powered by ARK technology. So if you had, for example, let's say like a blockchain developer wanted to launch an ARK based chain to power their decentralized application, somebody launched it with their own crypto asset name called like game or something, then Ark, HTLC Smart Bridge would allow swaps to happen between the ARK Public network and that game's blockchain. And so naturally, like eventually the Wallet would be able to help facilitate those swaps and people could do those swaps within the wallet. But like Travis said, it's not a priority number one right now because we're still fleshing out the total product platform offering kind of overall and then we'll be iterating that over time.

But I wanted to add that right now in the wallet you can already use the plugin system. Change now is already in the plugin system. So you can do swaps using Change now. They'll be in the new Wallet as well and anyone can really build any kind of plugin they'd like to put into the wallet. Cool.

So I have a question that I wanted to ask. It sounds like because the ecosystem is so vast, I'm wondering what's the best use case for ARC IO? I mean, is it payments, Is it enterprise? In your opinion, what would you say is the best and maybe most common use case that you guys are seeing? Justin, did you want to answer that?

Yeah, sure. It's interesting because we are building a toolkit that developers can use to do anything, uh, but also do that easier than they could with something like solidity. So we have what's called ARC Smart transactions, which are discrete typescript modules that developers can integrate into their new blockchain that they're creating with ark. These transactions can be designed to do anything. Any developer that knows TypeScript can, can design functions that they can integrate into their version of the ARK core and do whatever they want to do. For example, there's a project right now that's built and powered by ARK called Compendia and Compendia is essentially using ARC technology to implement DEFI applications as well as decentralized Oracle networks. So Compendia is doing some, is doing something kind of similar to something like a chainlink using ARK technology and they're using ARC smart transactions to do that and get that job done. So I guess like the, the, the shortest way to answer it would be as ARC IO. We're trying to build a library of tools that developers can use to do anything. However, as we notice developers doing more and more specific things, we can start to integrate like quick launch use cases into what we're already deploying. So for example, deployer, the product that you can use to make a blockchain, you would be able to customize that blockchain, things like the number of delegates, things like the block time, things like the tokenomics of the blockchain. And so in the future we can deploy modules in deployer that says, oh, are you making a blockchain that you need NFTs on? We have an NFT module already done for you. You can just press this button and it's already on your blockchain too. Or you know, something like, do you want to have like, what's it called, Document storage, like a way to store documents, you know, on the blockchain itself, instead of using something like ipfs, like we have a module for that, you can just put that on. So like, as we assess the use cases and the needs of both our partners and new people coming to ARC technology, we can expand our product suite to include those types of use cases.

Awesome. Great. Just another reminder to the audience, keep sending questions. I'm going to take another one right now actually, which is relatable to what we were just speaking about. It's from Cam cyj. He's asking, when someone deploys a chain via ARC deployer, what is the upper limit of tps? Travis, do you want to take this one?

Upper limits, I mean that would be hardware based, I guess at the moment. It's tough. The best would be to sandbox it and run a test simulation. It's going to be a little different than the real world, but really it's limited, I guess, on your hardware latency, how many delegates you have, what you set your TPS at, what, what you're sending itself, Is it just transactions? Are you sending multi payments? Are you sending NFTs? Is there a lot of data being sent back and forth? It depends. Really?

Yeah, it does, it does depend. I mean, as your number of delegates goes down, your blockchain will get higher throughput because there's less block propagation that's needed. But it kind of depends on like the use case. So the, the, the, the developer who's designing and customizing the blockchain will need to kind of understand these types of parameters, like how they would affect performance and then what performance they need and what specifications they need. Like you could create a blockchain with just five delegates and everybody's voting on five delegate slots. And it's, you know, all the delegates are located in like one country in Europe or something and they're like all right there, like maybe on a university campus. And like you could have transactions per second of like as high as, you know, as high as you can think. But then if you had another blockchain that's running on, you know, that's running on what, like slow Internet in all different continents, then that's going to affect the performance of that blockchain. So I guess to answer that question simply, we haven't executed our own experiments on what the limitations of transactions per second could be in different environments. However, we know that we can always raise the TPS as needed and it's remained stable. Right now the ARC public network is. Travis, correct me if I'm wrong, is it at 500 transactions per block right now and each block is 8 seconds because we increasing it.

The devnet I believe is on 500 right now. The ARC mainnet right now is 150.

Yeah.

With multi payments that you're looking up at 2000 plus TPS.

Yeah. And then that can just be increased as needed because of delegated proof of stake. Makes it really easy to do those types of scalability actions.

You're also fighting centralization versus decentralization too when you're thinking about tps. Higher the tps most likely, the lower the decentralization. Because now he's talking about latency hardware which is great for an enterprise blockchain. They don't need decentralization. They can push a million transactions between their two servers that are running. But when you're looking at a decentralized blockchain and environment, then you start pushing real world testing as opposed to centralized enterprise blockchain simulations.

Right? Yeah. That kind of leads into the next question that I'm going to take from an audience member. NK he's asking why did Ark choose DPOs instead of POS?

That's Travis all day. He was there. I mean he was there. I didn't come in until like 2018.

It was something that we knew, we knew DPOs. We all came from a DPOS background. We knew it could be better than it was. There was voting issues in the past, there was address creation issues in the past. We saw the actual need for a DPOS system and we went with that.

Got it. Makes sense. Okay. Another question from an audience member. Rose Lovely is asking, what is it about ETN and ARK partnership?

What is it about? What is the partnership about?

Yeah, I suppose maybe that's what Rose Lovely meant.

Okay, yeah, sure. Well, that is largely due courtesy of Marketsquare reaching out to a lot of different projects, businesses, protocols. Electroneum and Anytask was a really great grab that Market Square had. We have a strategic partnerships manager, Ray Alvarez, pounding the pavement constantly bringing in new projects that are joining marketsquare. Then, as I mentioned earlier, doing it like this and having a product like Marketsquare allows us to open doors, to start conversations with other entities in the industry to really create a lot of synergy and build something even cooler than we could have done separately. So if we go to the blog article, which is at Blog Arc IO, we have a cool article about this partnership with Electroneum and Anytask. And Anytask is a really great platform that Electroneum is doing. And it's basically like this Fiverr type solution for freelancers, but also integrated with blockchain technology. And it's using the Electroneum platform to facilitate all the payments for all the freelancers, which allows them to make money from all over the world without needing a bank account. So as we kind of move forward with projects such as AnyTask.com and Electroneum, we can figure out more things that we can do with these types of entities. Like, for example, having ARC as part of the payment mechanism is possible. So having this type of relationship allows that door to be opened. But I guess without taking too much of the time here in the ama, there's already a blog article about this. You can just check it out on Blog ARC IO.

Great. I'd like to also talk a little bit about the roadmap and what we can expect moving forward. Are you guys able to kind of discuss that and maybe some features that we can expect to see? Travis, do you want to take that one?

Yeah. Most of what we've discussed so far is roadmap items like the new wallets, new core code base, Market Square. All this is all roadmap based.

Okay, well, based on. I mean, so an audience member is asking, invisible. The audience member is asking, when will the new explorer be released?

The new explorer is going to come with Core V3. It's pretty much ready. I think it's the newest. The last version, the updated version will be. Is on the Testnet right now or devnet.

Yeah.

But I think they're going to be polishing some new designs when we release the Core V3 with it.

Yeah, very true. There's like a first look at the functioning new version of the Explorer at decsplore ARC IO. So dxplorer ARC IO is where you can go and see this first look at the new design. But as Travis said, there's probably going to be some additional tweaks and improvements before Core v3 goes to the ARC public network. But yeah, the new Explorer is really clean. I'm looking at it right now. That's why I'm not looking at the camera. Rachel. Sorry. I'm enamored. The design is really clean, it looks beautiful and it really is cohesive. Along with the other products that we'll be releasing, the new Wallet Marketsquare, it's all just like this really clean look. So definitely a lot of credit goes to the design team for that.

Yeah, that's awesome. I wish you could share your screen, Justin, and show us that. But I mean, obviously I'll check it out after this. It just, you made it sound so amazing. So I'm excited to see it.

Yeah. And I bring that up, Rachel, because as I remember my journey with crypto in the in the beginning times, the block explorers were always something that was a little extra confusing to me because I was like, well, okay, like I'm here at this location, but like, what does this mean and what does that data point mean? And like how much crypto is here and like where did this crypto go to? And it was difficult for me to like get my hand around other explorers. I think it's probably largely due to the UTXO model, which can get kind of like convoluted. But with ARK technology, you can go to the Explorer and you can clearly see, okay, here's the address, here's what it is. Copy to clipboard. See what happened with all these different funds, See all these different transactions, where they came from, where they're going to, the dates and all that. It's really just nice and clean. So that's one of the things that I really liked. I remember that from my early days. So I want to bring that up.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, we need more user friendly applications, that's for sure. Because if we're going to get mainstream adoption, that's like one of the major elements here. So I think what you guys are doing, it's great. On top of that, with the blockchain glossary, Market Square, I mean, this is all. I think these are all the elements needed in order to drive adoption to blockchain networks.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Rachel. Yeah, yeah, we're hiring. No, I'm just kidding.

Well, actually, someone was interested. An audience member. Jarunik is asking, how many developers do you have right now?

Oh, yeah.

Travis, do you know the easiest answer for that right now is to go to ARC IO about and click the expand button to look at our entire team. We keep that updated as much as often as possible.

Arc IO team. Yeah. Arc IO team, yeah. We've got, I mean, nearly 16 on the development team right now. And the design team's got four people on it, including Eugenie, who works on the motion design, works closely with me because I do like the Arc YouTube channel at YouTube Arc IO and he makes all the cool visual video graphics for that, which I really like. And then the protocol team, which is, as I mentioned earlier, the subsidiary of Ark IO working on Enterprise blockchain solutions, also has a completely separate roster of team members, including developers. So there's a lot of developers on the team. And of course, we're always hiring and looking for the newest talent to join our team. So if you're proficient in typescript, you can check out ARC IO careers and take a look at what we've got going on over there.

Awesome. And I'm trying to encourage more women to enter the space. So, ladies, if you're watching this, ama, ARC is hiring. They're a great company, They're a great team. Be sure to check out that site with the openings.

Cool.

So I'm gonna take another question from the audience and I also just wanna remind the audience to keep sending questions. We've still got some time here, so Justin Travis can answer those questions. Jermaine medima is asking, when will notam be released?

Notam's basically done, but like, like I said with the Explorer, though, we're. We're kind of. It's kind of like a bundle deal with a new deployer and core V3 coming out. It's. It's all coming at once.

Yeah.

Got it. I'm going to take. Justin, did you want to add to that before I go on to another question?

Oh, not much. I was just going to say that to fully appreciate the value that each of our products brings to the blockchain space. They all kind of need to work together in tandem. So to see the value of Migrator, it really helps to have the deployer already ready for you right now. To see the value of nodem, it helps to have something else ready right now to see the, you know, all these things. So it's all kind of like interconnected, like, not unlike Adobe Creative Suite, you know, like Adobe Creative Suite, they have all these different products, like Photoshop and Premiere and After Effects. But, like, when they all work together, you can really understand the true power of creation, you know, and so, like the ARK blockchain platform is kind of like that, to have all these different complementary products working together. And so, yeah, as we're building them, we have to rely on each one and all the features of each one as we're building them. And then we'll be releasing them kind of like bang, bang, bang, basically. At least that's the plan. At least.

Cool. I'm going to take another question from the audience. It's actually an interesting question from Dissociative. He's asking, is Polkadot copying Ark tech? Travis, what do you think?

I don't think anyone's copying anyone, really. We all have the same thoughts of interoperability and our own ways of going about it. Each project is focused on interoperability, but I don't see anyone copying anyone. Everyone's going their own directions, all here to work together. That's what interoperability is. Right?

Right. And you guys were also just talking about the importance of open source for the blockchain community. So I think that kind of relates to that as well.

I totally agree with that.

Moving on to another audience question. I like this question because, Justin, I was commenting on the poster behind you, so this is a fun question. How did you come up with the design for the poster behind you, Justin? Or. I don't know, but it's a pretty awesome poster.

Thank you. Thank you. Everybody be asking me about this poster. I went on the Coin Republic to do an interview earlier this week. They were asking me about the poster. I saw you, Rachel, today. The first thing you said was, whoa, what's up with that poster? So this poster, okay, is a commission that I commissioned for a delegate on the ARK Public Network. The delegates called Delegate the Golden Horde. And they're responsible for different creative acts and they do like a lot of artwork type stuff. So I came to them and I said, hey, can you make me a poster from nothing? And I want it to be like the LA skyline. And then me and some people being Cool with ark and then have the logo and have some palm trees and they were like, yeah, sure, no problem. So they came up with this, which looked 10 times cooler than I ever thought it would be. I thought it was going to be way more basic than this. So I created two editions of it. I minted two editions of it. One of them's in LA as a winning prize for a crypto trivia show that I did in 2019. The other one's right behind me. So who knows, maybe I'll NFT this someday. But for now it's just a cool poster in my room. Yeah, I want to see. Thank you, delegate Golden Horde. It's really great. I love it.

And I want to see that as an nft. Justin, that's awesome. Love that poster. Okay, back to a serious question now. So I'm curious to know. Obviously, there's still a lot of challenges and work that need to be done in the blockchain space. So I want to know from both of you, in your opinion, what are the biggest challenges that still need to be overcome within the ARK ecosystem? So, Travis, do you want to go first on that.

Biggest challenges? I guess interoperability itself, that's a huge issue. But also the user side of it. Not just the back end, but the easy to use getting somebody, like having your grandma be able to cross chain transaction by clicking a button instead of researching what that even means. That's a huge hurdle in the industry that I see right now.

Justin.

I love you, Justin.

Yeah, I mean, ease of use and user experience is always going to be a massive hurdle in this space. I mean, even, like regardless. And the hurdle's the same for every single entity that's involved in this space. I mean, we're constantly battling, like Travis said, we're constantly battling that. That user experience problem of how do we make blockchain as easy as possible for the most people possible. And so there's that. But also, you know, in. In Recent years, like 2020, as we start to re strategize and release products as their own brands, like, for example, Market Square is its own brand. It's not like Ark Marketplace and like Nodem is its own brand. It's not arknode Manager. Right. Deployer is its own brand. Now it's not Ark Deployer. We're releasing products that appeal to the entire industry, but that comes with it. That brings with it the challenge of breaking into that industry, cutting through the noise with a new brand. Right. It's almost like that startup mentality. I mean, Ark is a well funded entity that's already been around for four years and it's probably going to be around for at least 10 more years based on funding we have now. But at the same time, we're launching new brands that appeal to the entire industry, not just the Ark ecosystem that are, I guess, I mean, in one way competing with existing brands, but in another way are brands that nobody knows about yet. So we have to do a lot of work to get the word out there and build the brand awareness with those brands as we have with Ark as well. So yeah, those are challenges as well. Very, very true.

Got it.

Okay.

Just want to remind the audience we've still got a little bit of time. Please send your questions and if you haven't done so already, subscribe to the YouTube channel for more. Very awesome AMAs like this. I'm going to take another question from an audience member. Bradley Henry is asking, will the Explorer have an API? Travis, do you want to answer that one?

Yeah, it will. Very simple. Yes.

Justin, you want to elaborate on that or is it just.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, but also like the ARC API itself that interfaces with the ARC Core is really elegant API and it's been getting some tweaks over the years. Like we've redesigned the API now. I think it's on API v2. But if you're not a developer and there's probably people watching the AMA that aren't developers, it's a lot harder than you think to get data out of like a standard issue popular blockchain in the top 10 right now. And there's like a lot of like random hoops and hurdles that developers have to go through to use the APIs of certain blockchains. So this is why there's a huge need for things like Coinbase's solution and our solution platform SDK. But the cool thing is that the ARK API is just natively easy. I mean, everything we're doing is trying to live up to our vision of the easiest. The simplest way to blockchain like that is what you see in big text when you come to ARK IO. You see the simplest way to blockchain. So everything we do is trying to live up to that. And the API is definitely no exception. So developers have specifically said how easy it is to work with the API. Like for example, Delegate Fun is a delegate that operates Arkfund IO, which is a suite of blockchain powered games that you can play online and win Ark every day. It's a pretty cool use case of ARC Technology and Delegate Fund said that, you know, ARC is so simple to use, I barely even needed to read the documentation. So it's definitely a testament to how simple it is. But yeah, that's a longer version of. Yes, there's an API for the Explorer. I didn't forget the question, but I wanted to add a couple of those things because I know we're running out of time.

Yeah, definitely. So I think I'm going to take one more question from the audience. Cam CYJ is asking, can you explain ARC Logic? James Justin, I think you kind of touched on this just now with saying, you know, blockchain simplicity, but is there something else that you guys want to add to that in terms of the logic behind ark?

Yeah, yeah, sure. So Ark Logic is our name for the technology that developers use to implement decentralized logic into a blockchain. Okay. So on Ethereum side, they call that like Solidity and Smart Contracts. Right. On our side, we call that Arc Logic and ARC Smart Transactions. Or that might be. That might be, you know, swap that Solidity equals ARC Smart Transactions and Smart Contracts equals ARC Logic. Okay. Right now, Arc Logic allows developers to work with TypeScript, which is a very common programming language that 11.6 developers know in the world. So very common. Unlike Solidity, which is a little more difficult to work with, but. But it lets developers design their own transaction types and integrate them into the their version of the ARK core. So really easy to do that. And you don't need to worry about like, making mistakes with coding using a new language, which can lead to very, very serious security vulnerabilities because you're dealing with blockchains value on the Internet, other people's money in some cases too. So, yeah, ArcLogic is designed to make decentralized applications easier for developers. Travis, what were you going to say? I saw you making a face a little bit.

I think you forgot to say million.

11.6 million. 11.6.

Yeah, exactly. 11.6 developers.

There's 11.6 developers. That's a lot, Rachel. That's a lot. I mean, we're going places with JavaScript and TypeScript right here.

Yeah, it sounds like it. Awesome. Well, that's good to know. I'm sure everyone's excited to hear that. I know we're running low on time. So, Travis, any final thoughts that you want to add before we end the ama?

Yeah, if you have any other questions, you can find me on Twitter. You can find me in the public ARC discord too. Jump in, learn, read our blog, follow if you have, like I said, any questions at all. I'm always in discord.

It's true. He lives there.

Well, since we can't go anywhere, basically it's like, what else are we going to do, right? But, Justin, what are your final thoughts that you wanted to add?

Yes, final thoughts. I just want to thank everybody out there who supports the Ark ecosystem. It definitely does not go unnoticed. Sometimes your support gets me through the day. It's really hard to work in this industry sometimes. There's a lot of stress, there's a lot of pressure. So thank you very much for your support. Also, I'd like you to help us out and join the MarketSquare IE Public Beta mailing list. You can do that at Marketsquare IO marketsquare is not available yet. However, the Marketsquare video channels are cranking out real content that can help you today. So you can go to any of the Marketsquare video channels on YouTube on 3 speak, decentralized on lbry, decentralized on bitchute, Decentralized. And you can learn all about cool blockchain stuff and watch more episodes of the Blockchains of which is, in my opinion, the coolest video series to reach the blockchain industry that I've ever seen. It's so fun and cool. So check it out. Make sure you watch a couple episodes.

Awesome. I'm going to check that out also. That sounds really cool.

That is correct.

Great. Well, Justin and Travis, it's been a pleasure. It's good to see you again. I know that we ran into each other a few years back at World Crypto Conference on. So it's always a pleasure catching up and seeing the ecosystem grow. So thank you so much for joining. Yeah. Yeah. And I just want to say thank you to the audience for joining us. Please be sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel. And yeah, it's been a pleasure.