KuCoin AMA With ATOR Protocol (ATOR) — Decentralizing Internet Relay Operators Through Open and Anonymous Protocols

Dear KuCoin Users,

Time: November 20, 2023, 12:00 PM - 1:06 PM (UTC)

KuCoin hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with ATOR Protocol’s COO Neuratic, and the Community Member of ATOR Protocol, DNB in the KuCoin Exchange Group.

Official Website: https://t.me/atorofficialportal

Whitepaper: https://ator.io/tokenomics.pdf

Follow ATOR Protocol Network on Twitter, Telegram and Discord.

Q: What is ATOR?

Neuratic: I want to take a step back and provide the crucial context – Why does ATOR exist? Fundamentally, ATOR is a response to the growing infringement of our internet anonymity and privacy that I think we all, wherever we are in the world, are seeing before us.

DNB: I am DNB Wizard, a long-term privacy activist, ATOR community member, and crypto enthusiast.

Before entering web3 full-time, I was a network & systems engineer specializing in cyber security (pen testing). I love $ATOR as it is community-focused, has a fair launch, and the team strives to enhance privacy for the many and not just the few. Critically, $ATOR follows all open source standards and has some of the best devs in the game.

All regions in the World have some intrusive spying on our privacy. It needs to stop and should not be the norm. We must use existing encryption standards to protect ourselves and not at the expense of end-user internet browsing experience. This does not need to be complicated, and it should be accessible for all regardless of where you live or which government you are under. We all know of the Great China firewall, and we all know of intrusive NSA spying techniques, and this is not normal. It's only worsening, and ATOR is a counter-movement to ensure it stops.

Neuratic: Exactly, DNB. So, in the background of this context, ATOR exists to empower decentralization in this fight for true internet anonymity. ATOR builds the infrastructure to allow anyone - wherever they are in the world - to contribute to internet anonymity by providing their bandwidth, computing power, and effort.

Q: Who are you, and what are your backgrounds of yourself and the team?

Neuratic: The team - love it! We have a highly experienced core team of specialists with collective experience across web3, cyber-security, software architecture, hardware design, manufacture, and distribution.

Many of our core team have been in the cryptocurrency space for a long time, including our engineers who were mining ETH back in 2017 and core members who have been within the Bitcoin space for a decade.

So, as a team, we are well aware of the original ethos and proliferation of Bitcoin as a medium, ultimately, for financial privacy and a complement to internet anonymity. What unites us as a team is a desire to bring this focus back to privacy and leverage web3 as it is today to impact anonymity, freedom, and censorship resistance.

DNB: I am a community member, and the ATOR team empowers me to speak at certain events. The ATOR team takes a community-first approach, proven by their fair launch and no VC backing. Community is King, and we urge everyone to get involved.

Q: So ATOR stands for internet anonymity. What does it mean, and why is this needed? Who is this for?

DNB: Firstly, this is for everyone. It doesn't matter where you live; we believe it is a basic human right to access the internet and that privacy is not a luxury. As someone who has worked in the networking and ISP industry, I have seen firsthand the level of visibility that your internet provider has. This is only growing; the data collected is shared with many agencies, including corporations, governments, and potentially malicious actors. This is not acceptable.

Also, we believe that people, regardless of location, age, race, or gender, should have equal opportunities online. For example, everyone should be able to access educational material. It is unacceptable that we are not fully in control of our data. ATOR aims to change this for the masses in an easy way that nontechnical users can utilize via our hardware.

Q: What sets you apart from other privacy and crypto projects?

DNB: I can start as an investor and community member. Firstly, it was a fair launch, and no VCs get an x100 price advantage over retail. Secondly, the team is self-funding, has a large runway beyond the investor perspective, and focuses on the fundamentals. The hardware side makes this project relevant for web2 and web3 end users; this will be clarified when we discuss the hardware shortly. Also, what is critical is that the team fully adheres to existing open-source standards, such as encryption models, that are peer-reviewed and utilized by industry leaders.

Neuratic: Great question – what I would like to highlight is the flexibility and potential scale of impact of the infrastructure we are building –

The ATOR Protocol is a scalable web/blockchain infrastructure leveraging Arweave to distribute the ATOR token gas-lessly to active relays. Ultimately, we are both chain and network agnostic, allowing us to scale to many privacy use cases easily.

And in terms of real-world impact - we aren't just building DeFi for crypto folk - our relays will be able to support anonymity for anyone. And the hardware is a huge differentiator just in itself.

DNB: The hardware itself is attracting a large attention from the DePIN community, which is starting to bounce back. Privacy has never been more relevant & the mixture of hardware, fair launch, open source technologies, and a community-first attitude are just some of the things that set $ATOR apart. This also appeals to OG BTC miners. The team was recently at the BTC Amsterdam event, and they were blown away by the interest of BTC Maxis, including some who ran farms. Also, the ATOR tokenomics paper is peer-reviewed and was received massively well by the community and markets.

Q: Could you tell us more about the hardware aspects involved?

Neuratic:

Neuratic: Here's a picture and a more illustrative render!

DNB: For our more technical folks in the room. Let's share the one with the actual specs; it is more powerful than my phone.

Neuratic: So this beautiful hardware is the ATOR Relay - our signature, low-powered computing device that you run and operate from home.

It is a plug-and-play routing device for non-technical users, allowing you to easily onboard to the network, contribute your bandwidth (connection through WiFi or Ethernet), and earn ATOR passively!

In 2024, we will also introduce home routing functionality, allowing the device to create a more secure WiFi signal.

DNB: Miner, router, and wireless access point all built-in one.

Q: How can we get our hands on this hardware?

Neuratic: So the first pre-order of this hardware will be at the end of the year, with distribution into Q1 of next year. The best way to guarantee your slot in the first order is to secure a whitelist spot.

There are 500 whitelists in total, with over half remaining! There are several ways to qualify for a whitelist, including education, involvement, and on-chain activity. Check our Twitter page for more information.

DNB: Additionally, active community members have also been granted whitelists.

Q: How does this mining work technically? How is ATOR built?

Neuratic: We have prepared a unique protocol called Proof-of-Uptime - an on-chain reward mechanism that pays ATOR tokens to anyone providing bandwidth to a network. ATOR is an ERC20 token on the Ethereum chain - but we want the ATOR distributed frequently and cheaply. Hence, we have developed a unique L2 for the ATOR token on Arweave, powered by Smartweave and our custom oracle, to distribute these rewards gas-lessly every hour.
Currently, ATOR is on Goerli Testnet and we continue to build in public - our entire protocol is open-source.

DNB: Open source is critical for privacy projects.

Q: What kind of impact do you see ATOR having? What spaces are you hoping to disrupt?

DNB: Thank you; it is certainly a game-changer! I and many other community members envision a world where privacy is the standard. This will not be enforced by policies, i.e., corporation terms and conditions, but will be enforced by encryption and open source standards.

Privacy is not a luxury. It is a fundamental human right. We will see thousands of Dapps running on ATOR protocol nodes, such as GitHub forks, websites, DEX forks, and one-day KuCoin. Also, fundamentally, via ATOR nodes, you can browse through normal internet and privacy-first networks. Seamlessly, privacy for many is inconvenient; we all know how setting up 2FA and other security methods can be annoying. However, the adoption shall fly if ALL your network traffic at home is tunneled through ATOR at no expense to the end-user or network experience. Neuratic’s vision is always insightful; the above is mine and many other ATOR privacy activists.

Neuratic: What ATOR is doing that is so powerful is lowering the barrier to entry to two things: participating in privacy networks and mining crypto. Our hardware and protocol are set up to allow anyone to contribute to these nodes with minimal computer/energy requirements. We are at the foothills of a global revolution here.

DNB: We urge everyone to support decentralization, privacy, and open-source standards. The ATOR community shall not stop until this is the norm.

Q: Is your project a community only for English-speaking countries or for users not of other languages? And what are your plans for partnerships and collaborations of $ATOR?

DNB: The problem of censorship and intrusive data collection impacts everyone, regardless of end location or what language you speak. ATOR encourages non-English speakers to get involved, be aware of unofficial communities, and never share seeds with anyone.

It does not matter where you live or what language you speak - this issue regarding your privacy impacts everyone. We encourage you all to join the movement.

Q: In the "October Development Progress" article, you mention significant improvements to the protocol development, particularly implementing a new dev. Staging mode. How does this integration with the CI/CD pipeline enhance the overall efficiency of your development process, and what are the tangible benefits of having a staging environment that mirrors the testnet environment?

Neuratic: That's a great technical question, Tolga. So, the CI/CD pipeline our core engineers built follows the latest code deployment standards. When a commit is tagged with either the staging / live tags on GitHub, the entire deployment process (from private cloud updates, any key rotations, Arweave deployment, and parameter updates in smart contracts) happens automatically.

It makes it much easier for us to iterate while allowing our community to use our protocol in beta.

Q: What specific problems or challenges within the current internet infrastructure does the ATOR Protocol aim to resolve?

DNB: I can answer this. Most internet service providers can see sensitive information, such as metadata. This includes source IP address, destination IP addresses, and traffic type and can build a profile up on the end user (and governments do this). Also, as per Snowden's leaks, every major ISP is being monitored by spy agencies. Also, underwater fiber cables (submarine cables are also being tapped). This data is all being stored. VPNs are centralized, and this data is often stored as well.

Q: Many projects in crypto have problems with UI / UX and this one turns off many new users. How do you plan to improve the interaction with new users and with users outside the crypto space?

Neuratic: Nice question - so to start with the fun one - UI. Our dashboard is due for a big revamp and on Twitter (here’s the 1st, 2nd and 3rd link for your reference) you can see the new staging of the UI of the dashboard.

On the UX - this is a multipronged approach and front-and-central if we want to onboard large swathes of non-crypto users into our protocol. Our hardware is built to be as easy to set up as possible, and efficiently communicate its status for the non-technical user. And claiming your rewards will be seamless.

Q: What are the next steps after this project is completed for the ATOR TOKEN project? Which other exchange can trade this ATOR TOKEN besides KuCoin?

DNB: ATOR just got listed on KuCoin, one of my favorite exchanges. It is also trading on Uniswap and MEXC. Further listings drive adoption and are inevitable. $ATOR is unstoppable.

🎁 Participate in the ATOR Protocol AMA quiz now for a chance to win $12 in ATOR!

The form will remain open for five days from publishing this AMA recap.

KuCoin and ATOR Protocol have prepared a total of $4,000 in ATOR to give away to AMA participants.

1. Pre-AMA activity: $2,150 in ATOR

2. Free-ask section: $50 in ATOR

3. Flash mini-game: $600 in ATOR

4. Post-AMA quiz: $1,200 in ATOR

Sign up for a KuCoin account if you haven’t done so yet, and ensure you complete your KYC verification to be eligible for the rewards.

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