Hey @Jacob
sorry for delay, tried to combine all answers together, and combined with the answers which is already on this thread
1) Can you tell me the story of PRV (the token), from Genesis?
A bunch of privacy nerds congregated around an idea, pooled some money together, and wrote the first few lines of code. Here’s the story in greater detail.
I hope that into is enough If you would be interesting to hear personal live stories, we could make a separated AMA call dedicated to such topic
2) Is the supply of PRV auditable?
Anyone can download the chain, and count rewards from the beacon chain beginning at the genesis block. Here are the specs.
There is no dedicated tool for this yet, but anyone can audit the PRV supply using the source code, by running a fullnode.
some of our community members work on analytical tools and chain data visualization.
3) Is there an entity behind the project?
There are 3. The Project, the DAO, and the core team. More information here.
4) The fixed nodes:
Who runs them?
Are they geo-distributed?
What percentage of them can go down, and the network will still function?
What happens to the network and funds on it if they are taken down?
- Blocks will not be created, transactions will not not be confirmed. The network will be frozen.
What do they do precisely?
- The Incognito Chain requires a ⅔ consensus. The fixed slots ensure the network functions smoothly through many key upgrades at this early stage of development.
- The core team will release all fixed slots once the network is stable enough and the key upgrades have been completed. The fixed committee setup will be dissolved by April 2021, approximately.
In terms of risk, please compare the fixed nodes to the Iota coordinator.
Please can you clarify this question?
5) I’ve linked my wallet to this forum account, and my real name, as well. Is it like…
Only the private key holder can view balances?
- A balance can be viewed by a user who has a private key or read-only key (both are located in your private key directory). Unless you share these keys with someone else, they will not be able to view your balances.
What can someone learn if they only have my address?
- They could probably enter it in a search engine and maybe find your profile on incognito.org.
- They would not be able to retrieve your balances, transaction histories, etc. You can of course easily set up a separate address just for the site.
6) The Bitcoin trusted link currently in use:
Who am I trusting by using it? A company? A person? The node network?
- This is a temporary custodial setup, maintained by the Incognito core team.
- The trustless Bitcoin bridge is scheduled to go live closer to the end of May 2020. More information here.
How many machines have access to the relevant private keys?
- Core team: (lead frontend), (lead backend), and 1 Server with decode private key.
Are the machines running this peg geo-distributed?
Could an adversary (privacy has many adversaries) seize or destroy all of the machines where these keys are kept? How difficult would that be?
- Only the aforementioned people have access
- In this transition period the team is responsible for security of the wallets
- As you know we are on the way to switch to the trust-less set up.
How much longer will this trusted setup be used?
Not long. The trust-less Bitcoin bridge is scheduled to go live by the end of May 2020.
7) Sharding
Can you ease me into how your sharding implementation works?
- Each shard has its own committee, which independently produces new blocks. The header of each block is stored on the beacon chain. Other shards could reference if needed. Beacon chain randomly assigns committees for each shard at the end of each epoch.
Do shards have independent economies at all?
- Shards have independent economies. The reward for a shard’s committee depends on the number of blocks they successfully produce in 1 epoch (~ 350 beacon blocks). The fixed reward for each block is 1.386 PRV for the first year. A shard can produce more or less than 350 blocks in each epoch.
Is there a plan to support smart contracts, where a contract on shard A may need to fetch data stored on shard B?
- We don’t think it’s necessary to build our own smart contract, and a better way to do it is to let the contract run on Ethereum, and we build incognito mode for it (wrap around it). Essentially, it’s incognito mode for smart contracts. More details here.
Since there are currently 8 shards, can you explain to me their relative roles, or do they all do the same thing, and each shard just adds additional capacity to the network?
- All shards do the same thing. They enable parallel processing.
Can we do a real-world stress test right on mainnet by setting up a script or some such between some machines to fire PRV at one another at high speeds? This would do wonders to ease my concerns.
- We conduct our stress tests on the testnet, but theoretically we ca do so for both testnet and mainnet. More details here.
8) Inflation is currently running at 50%.
Is the plan to do something kind of like what monero did, with very high initial inflation and then much lower inflation over time?
Is the supply curve documented anywhere?
9) Coinmarketcap/coingecko
I wasn’t able to get a read on prices anywhere other than the pDEX. Is PRV on any kind of “price listing” site or is the only market the pdex?
10) pDEX
Does the pdex live on the same infrastructure that runs the blockchain?
Why do I need to move funds from my wallet into the pDEX?
- So the application layer software cannot link your “Wallet” address with your “pDEX” address.
What’s the relationship between the chain and the pDEX? Is the pdex something that runs on the incognito chain?
- pDEX is built on-chain, into the protocol. It runs trustlessly. Every trade is a transaction made on the Incognito blockchain.
11 what does this mean?
- It was an error, already fixed.
12) What does it mean to become a liquidity provider?
Liquidity providers play an essential role. As the name suggests, they provide liquidity to various pools on pDEX and earn trading fees.
We are also designing an incentive initiative for liquidity providers to earn a percentage of the block reward, paid out of the DAO fund. Follow the discussion here.
Is the plan to do something kind of like what monero did, with very high initial inflation and then much lower inflation over time?
Is the supply curve documented anywhere?
13) Taint
Tainted coins could enter the system. I should say that I don’t personally subscribe to the “tainted coin” theory-- Bitcoin, the protocol has no concept of taint whatsoever. To Bitcoin, they’re all just bitcoins.
Is doing a coinjoin on the way in or on the way out a possible solution to the taint issue? Is that way too complex to implement?
- A user could deposit a token then withdraw them to the other address. Or user could deposit token A, then withdraw token B (same total value). It’s extremely hard to track when number of users/tx is large
Additionally
- You can use CoinJoin on the way in
This question opened a very interesting discussion inside the dev team about how to make deposit/withdrawals more secure and private.
14) How did @Jong’s BTC get lost?
Receiving coins from external wallet anonymously 1
How can we have a system where BTC get lost, ever?
- The BTC is not lost. It may display ‘expired’ (app only), but it is there (on chain). So a user can navigate to his or her deposit details and simply tap Retry. Details here.
The private key to that wallet was actually destroyed or…?
Hopefully I answered on most of the question. Feel free to ping me if you get new questions, or some clarifications are needed.
I am always here