KuCoin AMA With Shiden Network — Multi-Chain dApp Hub on Kusama

2021/09/13 07:14:44

Dear KuCoin Users,

Time: September 10, 2021, 11:00-11:42 (UTC)

KuCoin hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with the third parachain on Kusama — Shiden Network in the KuCoin Exchange Group.

Project Introduction

The Astar/Shiden network is designed to fill in the gap of the Polkadot and Kusama network by adding a smart contract layer to provide a framework in which developers can launch their NFT, DeFi, or any dApp projects with multichain functionalities from day 1. Shiden Network is the Kusama dApp hub parachain supporting EVM, WASM, and layer2 solutions.

Official Website: https://shiden.astar.network

White Paper: https://github.com/PlasmNetwork/plasmdocs/blob/master/wp/en.pdf

Follow Shiden Network on Twitter and Telegram.

Guests:

Sota Watanabe — Founder of Shiden Network

Sota is the youngest director at the Japan Blockchain Association. Previously, he was a blockchain researcher at the University of Tokyo.

Maarten Henskens — VP of Growth for Astar Ecosystem

Q&A from KuCoin

Q: Shiden Network was one of the first parachains on Kusama. Why did you launch Shiden in the Polkadot ecosystem?

Sota: We have launched Shiden Network because we wanted to test some of the key functions before Polkadot Parachain. And, we wanted to keep the momentum! Our PLM token holders also have SDN tokens!

Maarten: Polkadot is a new generation blockchain protocol that greatly simplifies cross-chain communication and interoperability by bringing multiple blockchains into one network. Polkadot is one of the biggest players which is going to bring blockchain to the 3.0 era. Astar and Parity are building this together: building Web3.0.

Q: What sets Shiden apart from other parachains?

Maarten: Shiden Network is a multi-chain decentralized application layer on Kusama Network. We offer developers a smart contract platform where they can deploy smart contracts build with EVM or WASM. Also, layer2 solutions are available on Shiden Network, also multiple L1 ecosystems to bridge to.

Currently, we are at the end of our Ethereum bridge.

Sota: Shiden is the dApp hub on Kusama supporting Ethereum virtual machine and WebAssembly. Also, we have some bridges.

The feature only Shiden has in the Kusama ecosystem is dApp staking. This is the basic income for all developers in our ecosystem.

https://docs.astar.network/learn/core-features/dapps-reward

Q: Can you share more information about dApp staking and how this gives incentives to developers and users?

Maarten: dApp staking is a unique staking mechanism that we built in our ecosystem to incentivize early developers. Through this staking mechanism, users can nominate smart contracts, and by doing so, they will receive staking rewards through block rewards. The beauty of this system is that developers will also be rewarded. By nominating their smart contracts, they receive up to 40% of the block rewards, which will give them a basic income to keep focusing on developing.

Sota: Here is an example.

To make the long story short, people can earn tokens while making smart contracts.

Maarten: And end-users can earn staking rewards while supporting their favorite project in the ecosystem.

Q: What is the next big feature on the roadmap to be implemented on Shiden Network?

Maarten: Next week, we will launch the EVM module on Shiden; from that day, developers can deploy their dApp on the Shiden Network, and at the end of this month, we will launch dApp staking to the world! Later this year, WASM-based smart contracts will also be ready to be deployed on Shiden. You can find our complete roadmap for launching Shiden here: https://www.notion.so/dc65264053e84b9d97967b0ca364f8dd?v=f57049408c4047ce83509445eb7050cd

Sota: And this is the long-term roadmap.

Q: How do you see the future for Shiden Network?

Maarten: We have a lot of future plans laying in front of us. Astar ecosystem is a community-driven blockchain, and building a DAO will be very challenging but our goal in the long term. We are also looking forward to the upcoming Polkadot auctions, where we will aim to be one of the first parachains. In case you want to stay up-to-date, you can always follow one of our socials. You can find the complete list of our resources here: https://linktr.ee/astarnetwork

Q: Any last thing you want to send out to our community?

Maarten: First of all, we would like to thank KuCoin and the community for supporting us on the exchange. Astar is a community-driven project focusing on creating the dApp hub in the Polkadot ecosystem. Building the product and tech has been our focus from the beginning. But we do need help from the community to grow our ecosystem. We have created an open community program where every community member, crypto enthusiast, can join and support the Astar ecosystem. By doing so, you can earn our native token. Read more about this program here: https://forum.astar.network/t/start-of-our-community-program/1367

We also made some very important announcements this week that I want to share with the community:

https://medium.com/astar-network/announcing-the-30m-astar-shiden-ecosystem-growth-fund-8485ffcd3493

https://medium.com/astar-network/microsoft-japan-announces-support-in-building-astar-shiden-ecosystem-5e7ef5e7998e

Sota: And I would like to introduce the $30M Astar fund and will distribute funds to promising projects!

https://astar.network/builders-program

Come check the builders program, and please apply!

Free-Ask from KuCoin Community

Q: What makes you feel confident about the survival and sustainable success of your project in the near future? While you build your project, do you take into account community feedback and demands?

Maarten: We are building a community-driven blockchain. We appreciate all feedback from our community, and they can propose any proposal on our forum and later through governance.

We do believe and feel confident about the survival of Shiden Network, basically because the Kusama Relay Chain doesn’t support smart contracts by design, a smart contract parachain is needed in the Kusama ecosystem.

Q: Ambassadors play a very important role in every project. Do you have an ambassador program? If yes, how can I be one?

Sota: Yes, we have an ambassador program, and Maarten is leading this program! Excited to have various ambassadors from various countries.

Maarten, can you share the link of ambassadors?

Marteen: Sure! You can find more information here:

https://forum.astar.network/t/start-of-our-community-program/1367

Q: What is the total supply of your project? Where can we buy it? Are your plans to focus on the market or to grow the community?

Maarten: We have an initial supply of 70M SDN with a yearly inflation of 10%. Of course, you can buy the token on KuCoin!

We have a community program available where you can help grow the market and community and earn native tokens as a reward.

https://forum.astar.network/t/start-of-our-community-program/1367

Q: Currently, NFT is very hot. Do you think you will apply NFT technology to your products in the future?

Maarten: We are working with NFT projects which are ready to build in our ecosystem. We have some new projects coming to the market that impress everyone with what they are building. You can find a global overview of our ecosystem in our documentation https://docs.astar.network