Fireside Chat Summary from Friday, September 22, 2023

Discreet Labs had the pleasure of hosting a Fireside Chat on Friday to address recent questions about Findora. The team discussed past roadmap items, present progress, and future initiatives in the pipeline. For those who missed it, here is a summary of the conversation.

What Happened with Sushi? 

The first question from the community discussed by Discreet Labs was what happened with the SushiSwap integration, which was announced in February.

The short answer is that Discreet Labs is still in talks with Sushi, but the business environment when the integration was announced was completely different than it is now.

A few events after the announcement slowed progress. In March, Sushi was hit with a subpoena, and Findora was mistakenly labeled a “privacy coin.” Findora is, of course, NOT a privacy coin, but that label, combined with Sushi’s subpoena, threw a wrench into the negotiations. SushiSwap was forced to move very cautiously with projects that might eventually cause them more legal trouble. 

Being labeled a privacy coin also slowed our work with fiat on-ramps and centralized exchange listings. All of this happened as the Web3 industry labored under an uncertain regulatory environment, a challenge it still faces. 

The weight of all these issues slowed progress to a crawl with SushiSwap. Thus, Discreet Labs is still in talks with Sushi about an integration, but we are also looking into other decentralized exchanges. Smaller DEXs may actually offer us a bang for our buck while still bringing new liquidity to the community and increasing access to the FRA token.  

To be clear, Findora is NOT in any legal trouble, and there is no legal definition of “privacy coin.” But we want to try to avoid any association with that term to make it easier to build partnerships.

Ok, Findora isn’t a privacy project. So What is Findora?

Findora’s unique selling point, our key value add, has always been our zk technology. Zero-knowledge proofs can be used for privacy and on-chain encryption, but they can also enable scalability, gaming, new voting methods, and more. Findora is focused on unlocking zk’s potential for Web3. 

Findora has always been a zk technology company ever since its days as a mere research project at Stanford University. Privacy is part of what zk can do, but we exploring all the ways that zk can advance Web3.

Any updates on a Roadmap and on BD?

Yes! We are working on EVM staking now, which will enable us to reduce block times. Our focus on zkGaming at the moment will allow us to pivot into a DeFi focus in the near future, and we are still working on bridge partners. In the Fireside chat, we looked at each of these items in more detail, and the notes for the answers are below.  

However, it is important to understand that we are a small project in a deep bear market weathering regulatory uncertainty while preparing strategically for future growth. It is all coming together slowly, and we are excited to share progress with the community when possible. Sales cycles in partnerships are long, especially now, given market conditions.

Get Ready for EVM Staking

We estimate that the code for EVM Staking will be live on September 25th. Once the code is live, the new EVM portal won’t quite be public because we want to test the portal thoroughly, so we are testing it on testnet, mocknet, and then on mainnet before releasing it. 

Part of EVM staking is a new quarantine mechanism that will make the network more efficient and open the door to lower block times. Currently, if a validator falls below the acceptable performance threshold, the network does not automatically quarantine them. This leads to longer than expected block times, as the network tries to allocate blocks for an offline node to sign: the whole network waits for the signature of an unresponsive node.

The new quarantine mechanism will provide an automated solution to that problem. If a node falls below certain performance metrics, it will be quarantined automatically, and the network won’t allocate any blocks to that node. Once the validator realizes it is offline or unresponsive, they can fix the issue and sign a special transaction that brings them back online, creating a self-healing network. This quarantine system paves the way for reduced block times.

Findora’s Aims to Reduce Block Times by 40-50%

Validators on Findora are already technically capable of running a chain with much lower block times – the only missing piece was a quarantine mechanism. Given the current capabilities of Findora validators, Discreet Labs believes that block times can be reduced to as little as seven or eight seconds. Discreet Labs had announced lowering block times as an important milestone in the roadmap for this year, but it was dependent on building a quarantine system first.

Once EVM Staking is successfully deployed, the team will begin looking at block time dependencies to prepare the network for the switch. 

Validators, please note that during the first week or so that EVM Staking is live, we will greatly lower the performance threshold, making standards more forgiving. This means it will temporarily be easier for validators to stay online as we test this new tech, and it allows us to work with you in figuring out reasonable performance thresholds. 

Validators will also benefit from a new feature on Findora’s EVM Staking portal. Delegators will have the option to randomize which validator they delegate stake with so that validators at the top of the list don’t have an unfair advantage.

ZkGaming Focus

Findora is currently focused on zkGaming partnerships and projects. Zk is necessary to bring gaming on-chain, and on-chain gaming is a perfect way to showcase what zk can do for Web3. We have a number of exciting announcements that will be coming out from Lumias and Enders Gate, but we didn’t give details on the call because we didn’t want to steal their thunder. However, you can check out Findora’s Twitter to see what those two projects have been working on!

Gaming is a great vertical and is detached from bull and bear market cycles because, regardless of market conditions, people want to have fun. Focusing on gaming now is a strategic move to grow our community, showcase our technology, and pave the way for DeFi by increasing on-chain TVL.

DeFi and CEXs

Our latest DEX partner, SonicSwap, is absolutely fantastic. They proactively offer ideas and, during a recent issue with an ecosystem partner, dropped everything to help us resolve it even though the issue was unrelated to them. Getting a large DEX, like SushiSwap, Uniswap, or Pancake Swap would be great, but we do want to make sure small but passionate teams like Sonic are not pushed out. They do a wonderful job serving the community. 

One key issue Discreet Labs addressed on the Fireside Chat was improving access to the FRA token through CEXs. We are aware of all US exchanges, and they are expensive, in incredibly high demand, and have extremely long sales cycles. One CEX even told us, “The earliest we can look at your application is in 9 months.” Some want as much as $5 million to list FRA. Nevertheless, we are still looking at working with CEXs, both in and out of the US, and Discreet Labs is working to increase access to FRA.

Bridges

Discreet Labs has been working to find a bridging partner ever since the Multichain hack.

However, we want to be extremely careful with which bridge partner we select next. Bridging is one of the most technical and dangerous operations in Web3, and when you pay to integrate with a bridge, a large part of the transaction is paying for liability. We are in conversations with other industry-leading bridges, but we do not want to rush into any agreements.

Discreet Labs is doing everything in its power to ensure the the next bridging solution will be secure, provide value to the community, and strategically connect us to other ecosystems. 

More About the Findora Foundation

Although we didn’t have time to get to it in the Fireside chat, we did want to bring up the Findora Foundation. 

Paul Sherer is the chair of the Findora Foundation. However, it is common for Foundations not to reveal their entire roster, like the Optimism Foundation. We want to reassure the community that the Findora Foundation is being conservative with its funds. In fact, funding agreements are most often structured with milestones to ensure that the community and the project benefit from real value before funds are distributed.

The Foundation is being careful with its funds because we are in a bear market, and every dime we can save today can be a dollar down the road. To be clear, the Foundation is separate from Discreet Labs, and the Findora Foundation owns the intellectual property of Findora, not Discreet Labs. However, Discreet Labs does believe that the Findora Foundation is doing its best to be good stewards of its resources.

A fireside chat was frankly long overdue. We were glad to be able to sit down with the community, and we are planning to hold more chats soon on Findora and other Discreet Labs projects.

Findora is a Layer-1 protocol delivering zero-knowledge solutions to Web3.

Findora integrates two ledgers into a single chain: an EVM ledger for interoperability and a UXTO ledger optimized for zk operations. This dual-layer architecture lets Findora encrypt blockchain data for programmable transparency and public use. By providing new use cases, Findora’s zk tech prepares Web3 for real-world adoption.

We appreciate our developers and would love to onboard you to the Findora ecosystem. Please reach out, and join our social channels for more.

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