Runtime Rambling #3, 2022-10-15
Runtime Rambling #3, 2022-10-15
Well, it's been a minute since we've had a nice Runtime Rambling. Life has been a little busy, but hopefully I'll be able to get back into a normal writing rhythm soon[1].
Dexie - Quick Q&A
If you've traded a CAT or NFT on Chia recently, there's a pretty good chance you
used Dexie either to upload your offer file, or to find an offer file to accept.
For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of utilizing Dexie... here is the team's short and sweet description from their site:
Dexie is a peer-to-peer exchange for Chia offer files. Offer files are completely decentralized and trustless.
Dexie holds no custody of coins, they always stay in the wallet of the maker until the offer is accepted, at which point the assets are transferred securely between the maker and taker within a single transaction on the blockchain without any intermediary.
If you want to see Dexie in action, the best thing I can find right now is this clip from a Digital Spaceport Video.[2]
Anyways, this post is about the Q&A:
Questions were asked to the head of Dexie, "dns", over a Discord conversation the past week or so.
Q: Can you give us a short background of the team and and what their roles are? (Whatever information you feel comfortable sharing.)
We are a very small team and have worked together for over a decade in software development. We have a routine, are on the same page and understand the vision for dexie. This helps us to have efficient meetings and push updates out fast.
Q: How did you get into Chia? / How long have you been following the project?
Originally I read about Chia in or around 2017 on Hackernews and signed up for the mailing list. When the Chia Business Whitepaper came out, I started plotting for the Mainnet launch and I am farming since.
Q: How/Why did you decide to start dexie?
I am involved in DeFi because the freedom for anyone to participate, the full transparency on chain and the possible combination of autonomous protocols, intrigue me.
Offer Files make it very easy to bootstrap an exchange on Chia, you basically only need to host files and run a node. We launched dexie as a very simple version to get feedback and some traction and are transitioning to a full DeFi platform over time.
Q: Where did the name Dexie and the Blue Duck come from?
dexie originates from decentralized exchange. During prototyping the idea of dexie being a duck came up because it’s a great name for a duck! Blue looks good.
Q: Have you applied for or received a Chia Cultivation Grant? (I understand that this may be a sensitive question that might not be able to be answered, and I can respect that)
Nothing we could share right now.
Q: What made you decide to go with a DAO monetization strategy?
In my opinion that is the best way to operate a decentralized exchange, because you need a decentralized organisational structure. Since profits are fully on chain, it makes sense to distribute them on chain too. A platform token is the perfect way for this.
Ultimately it's all about liquidity, and a platform with a native token economy, where liquidity providers own the protocol and can vote on proposals, is naturally much more attractive.
Q: Are you at all concerned about the legal implications of issuing DAO tokens which may be considered an unregistered security? / Have you consulted with any legal or financial experts?[3]
We are following legislation closely, but I wouldn't say we are concerned. We haven't done an ICO and have no investor allocation and we are not from the US.
Right now we just want to build a great product and show everyone whats possible in DeFi.
Q: How soon do you expect the Dexie AMM to launch? Timelines are hard, and there are always a lot of moving pieces, but are we anticipating ~3 months or so? Or more like 6+ months?
I would say more like 6+ months. We will probably see more advanced combined offers and DAO governance tools on dexie first.
Q: When does the dev portion of the DBX start its monthly distribution flow?
The team distribution will start after the community Airdrop is complete in early November. Team members have no intention to sell this allocation, because then they would also give away their stake in dexie (voting rights, revenue share). During the distribution phase it’s all about accumulating DBX.
Q: What level of fees or spread are you anticipating you’ll be able to generate from transactions?
This entirely depends on the market and the competition. Chia needs more usage and a bigger token ecosystem for AMMs to perform well. Having a secure wrapped BTC or ETH, for example, could attract many DeFi users from other chains, which would be a huge plus for liquidity.
Q: Anything else you would like the Chia ecosystem to know about Dexie, the team, or any other projects you might have?
There is an ongoing community Airdrop of dexie bucks until the end of October.
Everyone who has been following dexie on Twitter before the cutoff date, is eligible. It’s claimable at the DBX tab on dexie.space.
Anyway, we can't wait to show everyone whats coming for dexie. Stay tuned!
Chia Name Service Competition Heating Up
Currently, to the best of my knowledge, there are 3 main competitors in the "Name Service" business on Chia:
About a month and a half ago, I had written up an article on Namesdao and their launch of "triple underscore" and "single underscore" .xch names, as well as some potential pitfalls. You can read that article here.
Since then, a few things have happened. First the Namesdao team of BenAtreidesVing and Orc have continued to build and press their first mover advantage.
Namesdao just finished allowing people with "single underscore" names upgrade to "no underscore" names - and have been open registration of "no underscore" .xch names.
Currently we hold the Namesdao names:
XCHcentral.xch
XCHcentralJM.xch
XCHcentralKT.xch
If you want to register a name, check it out here:
How do you register a .xch name?
Details at https://t.co/CxTx1hhqdl
A few bits of good news:
🧵#chia #xchname #chiablockchain #Namesdao #chianfts— Namesdao.xch the Name Service for Chia 🌱 🌱 (@theNamesdao) October 15, 2022
Also... Ben & Orc, I know you've heard it before, but please invest in a front end web developer! A little investment is going to go a long way when onboarding new users - especially when you'll be competing against other services! First impressions matter.
Yes, the competition is coming soon! I'm not sure how much longer Namesdao will be the only ".xch" name issuer in town. The Chia Name Service team is internally debating changing their implementation to get a quicker launch.
I have to admit, our team have some disputes on how @ChiaNameService should be implemented:
1. Should we go with working quick-and-dirty solution?
2. Should we go without enough decentralization?
🤔🤔🤔 pic.twitter.com/zzW6DykGnf— Wizard Glacier🌱 (@icerdesign) October 10, 2022
It should go without saying but, @icerdesign I'm happy to check out your product and talk about whichever implementation you ultimately decide on whenever you're ready!
Finally, we have Go4Me, by Josh Painter (aka @endertown). So far, Go4Me's name service solution has been different from Namesdao and Chia Name Service. Go4Me just simply doesn't care about a ".xch" namespace. The service just uses your Twitter username as your Go4Me account. You can view mine here.
You can take one look at this tweet by Josh and already know, he's doing something different. I'm sure I'll be giving Go4Me plenty of coverage as new features are implemented.
Domain names should be 🆓
And never expire ⏰
Maybe not tho 🤔
Need to 💵 bills like everybody 🤑
I want to have my 🍰 and 🍽️ it too
Might be impossible ⛔️
Gonna attempt it anyway 🤡
Or ☠️ trying
Otherwise this could be 😳
Doh 🤦♂️ pic.twitter.com/5rZWNgo9cA— 🌱 Josh Painter (@endertown) October 14, 2022
Evergreen Shipping Product!
Dylan and the Evergreen team have been hard at work shipping out their "Batch 2" of Evergreen "Miners"[4]. It might not be the most exciting product for most OG's with their custom farms, but there's definitely a market for the product as evidenced by the sales! Congrats to the team, we'll be watching!
Dream come true @Evergreenminer pic.twitter.com/z5jdBBGNNl
— dylan🌲🌱🧡 (@dylanmrose) October 15, 2022
Digital Spaceport Builds a Datacenter in His Garage
It looks pretty fantastic. I'm only slightly jealous that I don't have the space for this much equipment in my current home.
Much closer. Just some networking now. pic.twitter.com/0FI5Rjdn16
— Digital Spaceport (@gospaceport) October 12, 2022
Trick-or-ChiChi
Happy Halloween! ChiChi has some treats for the community coming "soon". Follow ChiChi on Twitter so you don't miss out!
Boo pic.twitter.com/XZZynp2zJY
— ChiChi 🌱 (@ChiChiverse_NFT) October 16, 2022
If you think there's anything cool that I missed recently. Tweet at me!
Tweet to @xchcentral_jm
We're having fun and hope you are too.
If you feel like supporting our projects & writing like this, donations of XCH / CATs can be sent to: xch1dwm59nranz0khzfzmv0j9g4tpwe4fx7ven0ptr9hufs2c0kgesxq8r7mws
Not that I ever really had one... writing what I consider to be "acceptable" quality posts is actually somewhat time consuming and it's easy for day to day life to cause a post to slip by a day, which becomes a week, which becomes a month. At that point you start to wonder to yourself, why am I even writing this longform content? Just post Twitter threads and bask in the instant gratification! And yet, here we are ↩︎
Maybe harass Jerod on Twitter to make an actual intro to Dexie video. I honestly don't know how large the viewership would be given that Dexie is pretty intuitive - but hey, I'm sure someone would benefit from it (especially new users to the community). Actually, it would be a good opportunity to educate new users on how Offer Files work as well. Cross promotion opportunity too... If its a nice enough little beginners video, maybe Dexie embeds it on their site as a starting point for new users, which in turn helps new people find Digital Spaceport videos, or they kick him a little compensation for some sponsored spots in some videos. Win Win. Jerod are you writing this down? Just don't forget my 10% 😉 ↩︎
More on this topic coming soon in a seperate post... Not neccessarily specific to Dexie, but just about DAO governance tokens in general. ↩︎
I've debated Dylan about Miner vs Farmer several times. I believe there's a very clear and important distinction between Mining and Farming, but he has his reasons. ↩︎