Building the Internet of NFTs. A scalable, agile and effortless Layer-1 blockchain with a comprehensive ecosystem to accelerate global NFTs adoption.
Spicey | OIG:
Please welcome Long from Aura Network. He is the CTO And he is going to be talking more about what Aura network is. So welcome Long. Could you tell people a little bit about who you are? And what your involvement in Aura Network is?
Long | Aura Network:
Yes, thanks. I am Long, I’m a pretty normal engineer, I have been working in the blockchain space since 2017. I’ve been building. At that time, we were building enterprise blockchains for a couple of enterprises in Southeast Asia and then also in Japan as well. And until 2021, when we finally decide to move from the enterprise landscape to the cryptocurrency landscape, as you know, the market is great with a lot of talented individuals in this field, and actually brings innovations. So yeah, my whole team decided to switch to this new project called the Aura Network. I have been managing the development team for a very long time, I mostly do engineering work, and I am also an architect, in Aura I am the CTO of the company.
Spicey | OIG:
Really cool, it’s great to hear that not only is it just you, but a whole team that has come over from the enterprise industry, and using their skill set in the cryptocurrency or blockchain industry, which obviously is going to help out in the long run. So, I guess that being said, let’s just jump straight into it. What is Aura Network? How would you explain it to somebody who has never seen it before?
Long | Aura Network:
So, Aura is an NFT-focused blockchain. I think NFT was like around since 2015, or something, but it’s not that big. But in 2021 We see the booming of NFT. And it actually has been bringing a lot of value besides Defi. So Aura is a chain that focuses entirely on bringing NFT use cases to not only crypto users but also bringing NFT to mainstream users as well, by providing hopefully, better utilities and user experience with NFT.
Spicey | OIG:
Amazing. So, obviously, as you said, NFTs have been around for a while. And I’m sure a lot of other projects have attempted to implement features and aspects that will aid mass adoption with regards to NFTs. But what is what are some of the features that aura network aims to provide or bring to the table that really separates itself from all of those that have tried before them?
Long | Aura Network:
Right. I think that’s a great question. Yeah, so at the moment, I think most of the use of the NFT s are collectables. Some are like having a different use case like the move to earn, or like some others. But they are mostly collectables and sold on the marketplace. We have been working with a bunch of traditional finance traditional companies to bring NFT into the ecosystem. And by doing so, we are trying to achieve this kind of new standard and a new way of collaborating between the crypto world and the traditional world to bring these companies and to bring this portfolio of people and integrate NFT into that kind of existing ecosystem. And one of the things that we also want to do is that we want, crypto becomes more transparent to the consumer. After launching the main net, you will see some of our services will not require crypto to use. Instead, people can use directly using Fiat to mint an NFT, for example, and to move NFT around using Fiat. Like, there is still crypto involvement, but everything will be abstracted so that both crypto users and mainstream users can use these kinds of new things. So that will ease the collaborations between the crypto world and the mainstream world.
Spicey | OIG:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more with you. Because at the end of the day, you know, the crypto space is very new. And that’s the reason why we have these very different paths with regards to interacting with the Blockchain industry, like going, you know, the Fiat route or the crypto route or, you know, stablecoins and this and that, eventually, we will get a harmonious structure that allows us to interact between the two worlds seamlessly. And, you know, that, speaking on that, what does Aura network aim to do? With regards to other ecosystems? You know, there’s going to be a time where well, I mean, it’s already happening now we see NFTs popping up in almost every chain, how does that work into Aura Networks' mission?
Long | Aura Network:
Do you mean the NFT in Crypto, in general, or like with other ecosystems?
Spicey | OIG:
in general,
Long | Aura Network:
So, if we come down to the root of NFT, it is just a reference to the real object. And yeah, I think bridge supporting NFT is all around like with wormhole, you can already bridge NFT from one chain to another. And in Cosmos with which we are based on an NFT can like some of the standards for NFT are being developed. And yeah, it will come at a time when not only fungible tokens, but non-fungible tokens can be bridged can be IBC , can be moved around, similar to what we are seeing now today in Defi And, it really doesn’t matter what chain you are using for developing NFT applications anymore. Since you can develop NFT, you can mint in one chain and they can sell in can sell that on any marketplace you want and move around and participate in all kinds of utility schemes, people can think of it just a matter of time before every everybody is starting to integrate with each other. And in fact, like layer one are already working on that kind of thing. You can see in Cosmos, Polkadot is going to be bridgeable to Cosmos through a project called the composable Finance, I believe that also Avalanche also has some way to move as well. So it really doesn’t matter where you are NFT will be a Cross-chain. And yeah, it will be connected to each other, it doesn’t really matter the technology behind it anymore. So the game will be going to what chain offers more utility? And what chain Do you offer more users? And that will come to that.
Spicey | OIG:
A very good point. Because, you know, ultimately, we’ve seen a lot of chains start and fall in the past, you know, years that blockchain has been around. And ultimately what decides the strength of a project is its utility. And, you know, utility comes from a lot of aspects. And one of those aspects is their native token. So could you tell us a little bit about Aura Networks' native token and how it will provide utility within the ecosystem?
Long | Aura Network:
So the Aura Network token I think it’s pretty straightforward. We intended to be very straightforward so that it doesn’t have any, you know, weird mechanisms that break things, it is used to pay for transaction fees is it used for staking for governing, and pretty much everything happens inside our ecosystem. But then we also think about how to bring mainstream users to this to this scheme as well. So yeah, we will try to work with other people on the other crypto projects So that we can also have liquidity on not only our chain, but also on BSC, on Etherium and probably more chains will come in the future, but there will be Aura on BSC and the mainnet of course. And yeah, mostly our is for people to enter this world. And as I said, we are not actively working on any, you know, like, very strange, a new way of using the tokens, but focusing on preserving the value for people to hold tokens. And, to do this as a transaction fee payment for validators. Most of our innovations will be on the NFT scheme.
Spicey | OIG:
Really cool stuff. And, you know, I really like the part where you said, you know, you’re not, you’re basically trying to, you’re not trying to change anything, but you’re trying to just ensure that it brings utility that is expected, right. And that’s very key because there’s obviously a lot of innovation in the space right now And sometimes innovation can lead to, you know, over overthinking things, but really, there are tried and tested ways of providing utility to an ecosystem, and it’s good to recognise that you’re sticking to what works. So, I mean, we spent a good time talking about the features and token utility, obviously, this is going to require a lot of hands-on from your team. Maybe we can talk about where your team originates from in terms of their background, you did touch on, you know, a lot of them coming from the enterprise industry, but like, maybe we could talk about the whole core team and where they’re from, and you know, how they’re gonna bring what they’re gonna bring to the table in terms of building Aura Network.
Long | Aura Network:
Right? Yeah, so the story is pretty normal, you know, like we, so most of our team, most our development teams are in Vietnam. So I mean, I’m living in Hanoi at the moment. We have some nice friends who are doing market research and business development in Japan as well, one of our close friends in France. But yeah, like most of the developers are in Vietnam. So Vietnam is a very interesting place. Since there are a lot of developers here, like a huge number of developers here who are doing outsourcing projects for crypto. And our team pretty much doing the same thing since 2017. We do a lot of outsourcing projects to make blockchain for enterprises, banks, and financial services. There are also some retailers as well, I, personally have been working on a dozen of them. But like in the enterprise case, most of the case is you developing some kind of proof of concept systems. And then you try to integrate with as much as services inside the enterprise. Like it’ll integrate the system with the cloud accounting system in red with the payment system and so on. So yeah, like most of the background, most of our engineers are coming from developing applications for consumers developing, you know, like, a system like, where do you use in companies, big companies, even fortune 500 companies, accounting and so on. It’s pretty boring. I must say, but then like, Yeah, but then we, yeah, we all love blockchain. And then we try to have some kind of similar system that provides safety and a great user experience coming with crypto. So yeah, pretty much that. And we have like a moment, we have like 30 engineers working on all kinds of things like WEPs app, mobile application developments, on blockchain infrastructures building, if we build our own infrastructure as well. So pretty much-doing everything.
Spicey | OIG:
Really cool. I know what you mean when you say kind of boring, but really, it’s not. It’s really interesting and really cool to see how the worlds are colliding. And all of us coming together, I mean, just to have this AMA, on Twitter spaces. Obviously, you can tell from the way I speak of crypto, I’m all in I’m a huge fan, right? So it’s really remarkable to see what Aura Network as well as everybody in the blockchain industry is doing for the world with what they’re bringing to the table. And you talked about infrastructure, which I wanted to dive into a little bit more specifically with some features that we may have touched on, one of them being the serenity test net. So this is obviously something that’s currently live. Could you tell us a little more about the serenity to test that and how it’s going to interact with the ecosystem?
Long | Aura Network:
We are having a very traditional background or tech. So most of the things we do are pretty traditional, as well, in a software development lifecycle, like the minimum you need at four environments, one, the environment for development, one environment for testing, real QA testing, one environment for what we call the staging environment, where you actually have end users like a selected number of end-users or partners to join to work on. And of course, like the last one is a production. Now the production is a quarterly net, we have not released our staging network yet. So that leadss us up to Serenity. Serenity is a stable version of the Aura ecosystem where people can deploy applications on top of it. So it is a test net, but it is more stable than the test net that normally people do all kinds of weird stuff on there, like penetration testing, or whatever on that. So serenity is for everybody who wants to build something for Aura, to deploy applications on that. And to test the system. We do the same, everything we build, we test on serenity, our QA, our QA, and testers are working on that. In I think in a few, I think, you know, next week or so we will release the staging network with the collaborations with a bunch of independent validators. But that will be revealed later on. But yeah, Serenity is for sure. It’s a testing environment. And yeah, it’s extremely important. Of course.
Spicey | OIG:
Of course and, you know, like you said, it’s not like a typical test. Net, it’s more like a, almost like a main test net, right. It’s very close to what the main net looks like. But that’s very, very interesting. Another key infrastructure is pixie, and I hope I’m saying it right, is it pixie or Pyxis?
Long | Aura Network:
Well, I have no idea actually. So so it’s okay, so the origin noting it was called our ACEF. Yeah, I have no idea what it means. And I have no idea how to read it, but it is a solution for multi signatures. Yeah, I’m happy to talk more about it
Spicey | OIG:
Yeah. Okay. So let’s just talk about I guess we’ll call it Aura safe what? What, how does it work?
Long | Aura Network:
Right? Um, okay, so So this is a little bit technical, but if I’m not really sure, but I do believe that a lot of people have been using the multi-signature idea, that allows multiple, that allow like a group of people to define a policy on how to use the funds, and manage in that safe. In this case you have a lot of money, which of course like a lot of people here do have or like if you have a lot of tokens. One key is, you know, not really safe, for sure. Like your key can be compromised by hackers. You can lose the key And also like some very practical use case, like in the company, right? You have the CEO, you have the accountants, you have the people who actually go around and do the groundwork and who make money. You need like a group of people who approve the use of funds. And stuff like that, like is something we have to use to make sure that our funding is safe. So we did the same thing. And the good thing about Aura safe is it is not only for Aura Network, but it is available for all Cosmos-based blockchains. What I mean is Atom, Juno, whatever chain is built on Cosmos, whatever chain is built on top, you can use that. And the cool thing is that it doesn’t require a smart contract. So it doesn’t operate using smart contract, it operates using the chain itself. So actually, we did a little bit of programming on the chain to allow the use of the allowed that use case. So it actually is, in my opinion, kind of more trustworthy than giving your money to a smart contract.
Spicey | OIG:
And, you know, obviously, this is seen in day-to-day life today, where we have multiple keys to access, you know, the back end of let’s say, a website or a server, it’s never really one password fits all, or one key fits all. And also there are different weights to every password like every key has a different role and stuff like that. So it’s like you said it’s more of a traditional approach, but with more blockchain integration and just added safety added security, which obviously everybody needs in this day and age, like you said, Everybody’s getting hacked. Everybody, but you know what I mean, right? Like, there are just a lot of compromises to even blockchains. And so it’s good to see that you’re taking security and safety, you know, with with with very with high importance. And that’s going to show in the final product as a great solution. So, if users were to go to your website, they also see the halo test net, is that how does that differ from serenity? And what is that? Exactly?
Long | Aura Network:
Right. So Halo is mostly for us to play with. So when we want to develop something we’re well or when we want to try something where we will do on Halo. For example, like just the other day, we want to experiment with a little bit of changing the formula in token economics. And yeah, we cannot do that on serenity. People will freak out. So Halo is the one that we go to. But it’s an interesting point as well, we are gonna we are going to shut down Halo after we have the stitching environment. So, so yeah, like Halo is the place to reply with and then also the plate for others to play with. But then like when we have the end, when we have the staging networks, which is euphoria, which will be released in a couple of weeks, we will have a new environment for not only us but third-party validators to join to do work on that.
Spicey | OIG:
Really cool, really cool. And I see that we have a lot of people in our chat, or live AMA and it’s, you know, obviously a great thing to see. Love that everybody’s here and participating. So why don’t we switch gears here and switch over to the live q&a session? We’re just going to select people here at random. And if your questions are selected, you win a prize and obviously just reach out to your admin, if you are selected for the question, we will organise payment through the DM.
Twitter Spaces Questions:
Spicey | OIG:
Hey, Tommy, how’s it going? So, Tommy, why don’t you ask your question first,
Tommy:
Okay. So my question is about the NFT’s you know that Aura Network is building the internet for NFT’s as what I read on the website. And they are building on a component called Tendermints consensus BFT consensus. So I would like him to explain what a tender mint BFT consensus is all about, and why it is preferable to other consensus mechanisms right now. Then also, the second part of that question is about NFT’s. We understand that NFT is very complex to understand even for people who are in the system. So I want to know how user-friendly and beginner-friendly the Aura Network is going to be so that everyone can easily understand how to use a platform as well. Questions.
Spicey | OIG: Excellent question. Tommy, thank you so much for your question. And just reach out to the admin of our Twitter channel and we will get you paid. But Excellent question long. What do you have to say to that?
Long | Aura Network:
Yeah, but if I’m going too technical, so please stop me. So as you are asking about consensus, actually, tendermint has been around for a very, very long time, it is one of the very first proof of stake consensus that was invented. It was like a really long time before and so it is the same why we chose tendermint because it is it had been around for so long, I think. I think it’s 2014/15 something maybe a little bit later than that. And it has been around until now. So tendermint is, to be honest, it’s very, very simple. It's just the majority of the network. if you have two-thirds of the network, agree on the block, it will produce a block and they just leave it at that There’s nothing fancy, it works. And it’s it is fast. So that’s why we choose tendermint, and the cosmos SDK that we build things on. In comparison to the others, you have to have proof of work, have other kinds of proof of stake algorithms. A lot of other chains use some kind of other proof of stake. But if you count, like, who is the oldest one, and who has been adopted by so many chain, tendermintis the one. It just works. So that is for them the main for NFT to be friendly, I think what I really think is not only NFT, but the whole crypto ecosystem is not really too easy to use for mainstream users. Or even the key management, the key management, the private key Safety is is still a thing that security and cryptographic crypto people have been trying to make it work for so long, since the beginning of the cryptography scheme. Since groups in crypto are so hard to use, so does NFT. But what we are really trying to use in Aura is we try to abstract all of this, like you don’t really need to use crypto but a third-party service is using crypto to pay for the transaction fee for you. And what consumers end users are using is a digital way for people to use something which is digitally unique and digitally, immutable on the blockchain. So transparent, Immutables and decentralisation are the other features that want to implement, not crypto. Yeah, the that’s the How To Make NFT. Friendly.
Spicey | OIG:
That’s a great, great answer there. And, and, you know, very, very, very easy to understand answer for the first question. Let’s get our second person up. Mona.
Mona:
Okay, my question is, How can I buy tokens for your project? It is available in any exchange. How can I buy the token in an easy way?
Spicey | OIG:
Thank you, Mona. Really, the question is about the token and its accessibility to it. What are your plans for it? With regards to having it available and you know, centralised exchanges or decentralised exchanges and stuff like that? Right.
Long | Aura Network:
Yeah, that’s a very practical question. Sure. Yeah, for sure. So we didn’t have a lot of plans well in the beginning, so, I have to, I have to say that we did change our plan in the middle a little bit due to the very bad market at the moment. But yeah, like tokens has to be released. So at the moment, we decided to do a small IDO on the impossible finance first. Now the reason for the IDO is that it will be a very friendly way and also a cheap way for us to reach out to the audience. So yeah, like if so all the news about the ideal or impossible finance is already out. It is a very easy and friendly user experience decentralised exchange, unfortunately, it doesn’t allow US citizens or Mainland China or any other UN sanctions country to participate. Since like we are we respect the law and regulations of this country, of course. So yeah, that’s the first way for you to obtain to buy Aura tokens. Impossible finances the first one. We are also dealing and working with some Other centralised exchanges as well to list on and to So, for people to have easier access to buy our tokens that will be the second one but that will be announced after the IDO process and of course like when we have the Aura main net we will try to have Aura on as many places as possible and bridging with other projects as well. I think one of the things that we focus on is not only our main net but also the liquidity on BSC Side, BNB chain side. Binance is like having a very positive feedback and like a lot of people like binance So like entrance for people, the binance users are very important to us. The US side is a little bit difficult due to the regulation in the US is like the like I think it’s gonna take like a year before it’s gonna be easier. But who knows? Like, we will try to have it there as well. But yeah, in the short term, impossible finance and start doing IDO on that.
Spicey | OIG:
Amazing, amazing, impressive stuff. So let’s finish off here with our live q&a from with a question from Kiko. Kiko if you want to unmute yourself and ask your question, feel free.
Kiko:
Thank you for giving me a Chance. Yeah, so my question is, I’d like to know more about your investors and what kind of value will they add to your project in the long run?
Spicey | OIG:
Thank you. So I guess it’s a question about the investors and how they provide value to your project. In terms of, you know, partners,
Long | Aura Network:
Yeah, of course, also, a very long story. We have a lot of partners, OIG is our very main partner as well. And you will already see we are doing an AMA and OIG, and doing a lot of marketing and are great people. So there are some of the key partners of Aura network. We also have not only crypto in other crypto projects, like impossible finance, coin 98, SNC GNC, like these are very big projects, big VCs who really bullish on cryptos. And we are building our ecosystem together with them. So you can see like the collaboration with coin 98, it brings us a strategic vision on multi-chain wallet, and also marketplace which they are building and bridge which they are building. Also the collaborations with impossible finances for providing liquidity and providing decentralised exchange solutions KYC solution as well. And like we also have partnered with a bunch of other mainstream companies as well. So you can see a list of our partners. There’s also FPT, which is one of the biggest IT service providers in Vietnam, which the company that I work for. And there’s also a move, which is like an Uber-like company in Vietnam, and also some of the Kol network. Like all of these people, all of these companies are having very polished reasons on cryptocurrency scheme. And they want to not only renovate it but also bring more innovations to the existing portfolio. So together, so not only money from our partners, of course, that’s of course layering, at least as we need that from them. But also we collaborate with them to bring the ecosystem to the aura network Together.
Spicey | OIG:
Yeah, for sure. And obviously, OIG is a huge supporter of Aura network. And we we continue to support them by holding AMA’s like this as well as a lot of other other things in the background. So I mean, just like the other partner's Money is obviously important as it is the fuel of our life in this day and age, but it’s also what else we bring in terms of support and guidance and advisory roles, which, which really make the project prosper. So great answer. So that ends the live q&a segment. And just before we wrap up here, I want to go over a little bit about your roadmap. Until this date, what what are you most proud of, in terms of accomplishing on your roadmap to this date?
Long | Aura Network:
I think, yeah, that’s a good question. I think releasing serenity test net is a good thing we released on time. Luckily, you know, like working in this software industry, for so long. Every project's delay is just a matter of how much they delay. And yeah, for the first time we we made our deadline. And yeah, I think there will be more things to come the basic safe, our safe, we are we actually sending it out to a bunch of other partners, and have very, very good feedback. Some of the others bigger players in the cosmos ecosystem, requesting us to add more features to that. Yeah, that’s the development side. Right. And and the fact that we have successfully raised money in such market, and like a lot of tier one partners who are bullish on us is another achievement that like, I think that that is the biggest achievement against the fundraising part with a lot of tier one partners, especially in this very, very bad market.
Spicey | OIG:
Yeah, This Market has been terrible. And I’m sure all of us are hurting. But it’s great to have a AMA’s like this to make us forget a little bit about what’s going on in the bloody markets. And, but not very good points. So I guess looking forward now, what are you most excited about on your roadmap to the future?
Long | Aura Network:
So when we design the roadmap we try to make is as relaxed as possible. That’s intentional. So you can see like, a lot of other projects, they have quarter one, they do this for the two they do that, which is impossible, we have been building this since October last year. And we just released our test net on April. The next thing, the big thing, will be euphoria, which is the staging network. This is an incentivized network where we actually invite very reputable validators around 50 of them to join our staging network, that will be a huge milestone for our to become really decentralised. And of course, like I the ideal will be like huge things where the tokens can be can be bought and can be circulated in the market. On like, probably in September or October, our main net will be live, like after will will run a few months with the euphoria network we will move to main net, right. And yeah, like I think in like in 2022, there will not be many things we will try to make things stable. We will try to have one like one or two use cases, probably a SocialFi GameFi projects on our network. But we don’t want to have too many things that we cannot deliver on time. We want to really focus on buildings, the foundations to be stable first.
Spicey | OIG:
Exactly. Now that’s the best way to look at it because obviously without a strong foundation, you don’t really have a good foot, I guess place to stand on right and really everything structurally will suffer by that. So it’s good that you’re focusing on the product, you’re good. You’re focusing on building and you know, you’re focusing on doing it right, which is going to show in the final product. Long it was it was a great AMA today. Where can our viewers or our listeners in this case find more about aura networks in terms of social media or websites? Where can they find more about you guys?
Long | Aura Network:
Oh, yeah, I think pretty usual stuff, right? So go to our homepage, subscribe to a bunch of social media and discord, I am available on Discord and Twitter as well. So yeah, follow me follow OIG, follow Aura Network, and we will make sure to keep you posted.
Spicey | OIG:
Awesome, awesome. Yeah, and there’s surely going to be a lot of stuff coming out of Aura Network. I think there’s also, you know, potential for some big announcements in the next couple of weeks if I’m not mistaken. And I don’t want to spoil anything. But in order to, you know, make sure you don’t miss anything you got to follow Aura Network and their website is Aura.Network . The links will be posted somewhere on our Twitter. And obviously, just follow to make sure you keep up with everything that’s coming out of our network. Long. It was a pleasure speaking with you today, I had a lot of fun. And I’m sure our listeners did as well. If you have any other closing remarks, feel free to say whatever you need to. And yeah, and we’ll we’ll close off from there.
Long | Aura Network:
Right. So thank you, everybody who participated today. Thank you, OIG for hosting the AMA. I hope to see you next time.
Spicey | OIG:
Yeah, for sure. Awesome. Thanks a lot. Take care everyone. Yeah, okay. Well, everyone that ends of our AMA for today, again, thank you so much for showing up. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Follow us on Twitter. And we got a lot of other stuff coming within the next couple of weeks. . I know the market has been pretty bloody, but things are going to be looking up soon. And you know, OIG is always pumping out new content, so make sure you follow subscribe, and don’t miss a thing. Until next time, everyone. Take care and we’ll see you soon.
Aura Network:
Website: https://aura.network/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AuraNetworkHQ
Telegram: https://t.me/AuraNetworkOfficial
