GEEQ AMA

Held on 26th August 2022 at t.me/oddgemsfamilia Telegram channel.

Oddgems: Let’s welcome Stephanie So, The Chief Development Officer & Founder and Hans Sundby, Head of Crypto at Geeq to our family.

It’s a pleasure and an honour for us to have you here in our TG family and for me hosting this AMA. I have to say the team at Geeq are doing some amazing work.

Stephanie: Happy morning, afternoon, and evening, oddgems!
Hans: Hey guys! Super happy to be here with you.

Oddgems: For anyone that’s new to Geeq, feel free to visit https://geeq.io/ and learn more about it.
Stephanie: And everyone is always welcome and encouraged to join our Telegram channel where we Geeq all the time! https://t.me/GeeqOfficial

Oddgems: Also, we had an AMA here previous year, feel free to go through that as well, here’s the link to that — https://t.me/oddgemsfamilia/350442
(Thanks to our admin “Aintha” for reminding and sharing this link).

I’m very much interested to learn more about Geeq’s recent developments and token’s future utility. Hopefully you guys learn a lot as well. As usual the transcript will be shared soon after the AMA session is over.

QFirstly, congrats on your new funding! So you got pretty serious support from GEM Digital, which is a major fund focused on investing in utility tokens around the world. What attracted them to Geeq?

Hans: First, it is our understanding and observation that GEM had and has a keen interest in this space as evidenced by their actions and commitments. When it comes to Geeq in particular, we’re also pretty confident it is what most other audiences seem to be picking up on and that is the team strength, the technology itself, and the steady headway geeq is making toward adoption. And how that headway looks like it can repeat again and again. So, we are extremely pleased that they chose Geeq.

Stephanie: I have more to share on this, if I may.

One of Geeq’s strengths that have emerged very clearly, is the way we are able to offer incredible services in a minimalist and efficient way. We really see ourselves as tackling the market outside of fintech (first), and becoming an integral part of a new tech stack.

I’d like to share the approach that Gem saw, which is a deck here: https://software.geeq.io/ ((forwarded from my casual notes)

We have a very clear vision of where Geeq blockchain fits in the new technology stack and we have the team, experience, product demonstration, and go-to-market strategy to back it up — to lead *Both* private and public markets.

In fact, if you are on a large screen (not mobile), I am proud to share the deck GEM and others saw at https://software.geeq.io/

If you are on your phone and reading, here are the first three slides:

Oddgems: I would guess they loved Geeq’s micropayments concept. 😉

Stephanie: For sure! That was demonstrated last year and is a part of the validation layer, which is so resource-efficient and broad-reaching. It’s also part of what we can bring to any payment solution.

Here’s the idea: the market in blockchain has currently focused here:

And this, as everyone knows, has involved a lot of risk for — everyone.

In contrast, Geeq really sees blockchain in a tech stack that introduces a new way of computing, and we know how to build tech stacks to support software — we hail from before the original dot com area.

When you have that mental structure, the three areas above are what users need, and Geeq addresses all of these as part of our strategy.

There’s the entire slide deck that follows through on how we can do this, and much of what GEM liked was the experience, expertise, and go-to-market that Geeq’s team brings to this entirely new world of combining private software models with private and public blockchain deployments. :)

So, again, I wanted to share the slide deck at software.geeq.io, which hasn’t been shared publicly before, but which GEM saw. :)

Oddgems: Thanks for the detailed answer, I’ll definitely go through the deck right after this AMA :)

QIn your latest technical update, you talk about strong interest from enterprise clients. Can you tell us more about that? What problems are they asking you to solve?

Stephanie: We’re finding out some of the pain points that hold enterprises back from the potential that they have known they had all along. They know and want to do better with the data that they have, but sharing between departments is still difficult. There are legacy systems, widespread workforces, firewall concerns, and so on…

We’ve heard over and over that there are clear data owners at the top of some of these departments — they are responsible for huge sources of data that our tech partners call “data lakes”.

So there are these rich, untapped sources — but the problem lies in the fact that these data owners are responsible — if something goes wrong in the transfer, or if regulatory violations (especially to do with the handling of sensitive data) are compromised, not only is the organization responsible but that’s the data owner’s entire job.

Well, from our tech stack point of view, this is an area of — perhaps not intentional — a distrust that blockchain is intended to solve.

So, what Geeq can do is create a linkage that allows sharing with clear attestations about how the data are transferred, and used, who has custody, and who gave approval — all of these state changes that help to ease the concerns of being able to make more use of the data internally.

That’s only one example, but the good news is, it’s a general problem that can now be addressed, and paired with incredible data analytics — and because it’s a general problem, we see it all the time, in a way that Geeq Data can be used over and over again.

Scaling the business works best when you have a solution that can be re-deployed easily — especially if it is secure, low cost, non-intrusive, green, and all the rest. :)

That’s only the tip of the iceberg, oddgems!

Oddgems: This would be the Geeq Data component and I reckon this also has something to do with the partnership that you had with 0chain before, so this could be one way of tackling the above issue I suppose.

Stephanie: Exactly. All the work we do is at our place in this new tech stack. For those who have been following the development of Geeq Data, we are really putting the blockchain portion to work. But the data can reside where our users want them. If they want decentralized storage or complicated data broken up into sophisticated and even more secured data blobs, like 0Chain is doing, that’s absolutely possible at some other layer of the tech stack.

QAren’t there already a lot of blockchain solutions for enterprises, from bigger brands? How are you convincing these companies that you’re a better option?

Stephanie: Well, there are and we’re lucky to be late because Geeq’s solutions have been specifically designed to be easy to adopt and use, and we have the software experience and practical user needs that consultant-types and large legacy company cultures — may be at a disadvantage in implementing.

We get how fast the world is moving and the kinds of tools businesses will need in the future. They will need to be fast. They will need flexibility. They will need low cost and to be able to spin up as needed. They will have cybersecurity concerns that Geeq actually helps rather than adds more concerns to the enterprise.

We’re quite aware of the kinds of services we ourselves will use. I think building systems with that in mind is one of Geeq’s team's strong advantages.

Plus, heading toward a no-code environment that makes sense all the way down the stack is something that integrates easily.

And we’re low cost. Who can resist all of that? I don’t see much of our competition lasting long.

QThere’s a lot of debate around proof of stake vs proof of work. Geeq has a completely different mechanism, doesn’t it? How does that compare in terms of carbon footprint and security?

Geeq has a completely different mechanism, yes. :)

Very briefly, the security model for PoW and PoS depends on one major incentive to prevent malicious behavior (which they view as the same thing as guaranteeing security that the blockchain won’t be attacked and the data inside will be reliable) …

…and that’s to increase the cost of attack, by requiring people to put skin in the game. They both boil down to having a security model that depends on increasing costs, and so the more value they have onchain, the more it makes sense they’d want the entire blockchain attack to get more expensive.

I think that’s fair to say as a generality, although there certainly are subtleties.

My personal view is that those models (a) won’t be sustainable and (b) ignore a lot of other vulnerabilities, possibly out of a sense of false security and © start building “moats” which is counter to what I think the entire blockchain-decentralization ethos is — at least for me.

Also, these mechanisms to constantly worry about inducing more skin in the game from others is kind of a game of whack a mole — it requires effort to keep trying to sustain the momentum, and sometimes ends up in obfuscation.

Not to run down the researchers who are working really hard on this — honestly, it gets so complicated that I don’t understand some of the details.

Geeq’s approach is different. Simplicity is the key to security.

And the protocol has both incentives aligned which means that anyone, with or without resources, has incentives aligned to participate in the system in a way that benefits everyone in the system — and in addition, we have backup protocols in case they don’t, like an automatic self-audit at every block that is able to kick dishonest participants out, AND the ability for the end user to, even should they stumble on a dishonest node, they can tell by themselves (instead of waiting for a community announcement and then hoping for a rollback) to shun the dishonest information on their own and go find the right information somewhere else.

Again, my idea of Geeq is that it should be easy enough for me to use, without having to go into the details. :)

As for green footprint, that really boils down to not having a monolithic chain. The modularity and the messaging means each use case sits on its own boat: they have their own network, devoted to that, and the node requirement is much lower, which means much lower resources and it sort of works out so a transaction takes about as many resources as it needs — rather than cross-subsidizing an entire system that you might not use.

QSo you have a solution that is really scalable and adaptable to different use cases. You’re starting with Geeq Data, but what’s next?

Stephanie: Geeq Data is on its way to being productized for enterprise, and as we do, they’ve asked for more features — all of which will go into the Geeq Data services for the public chains at a highly refined level, after they’ve been tested with our private partners. (which is great to have them test with us)

And the next step on the roadmap is to do the same process with NFTs, which builds on the Geeq Data code, and … we’re amazed at how much the private sector is so hungry for private NFTs. Again, the full feature set translates beautifully to the public instances once it will be through the process.

I’m very very excited about exploring the cases for private NFTs, which I didn’t expect to happen for many years until financial institutions were willing to tokenize stocks (which is still a long way away, but that’s one reason to build a secure infrastructure with secure atomic transfers ahead of time, right?)

The cases that are being discussed aren’t that far-reaching yet, but everyone knows this path is going to be pretty exciting.

Although I should caution that… it's a development process similar to Geeq Data which we are approaching in a really disciplined way from start to product deployment. And here, I have to bow down to our amazing Chief Architect, Lun Yuen, who has taken software systems from inception to international mass adoption (Quickbooks) before.

QSo, NFTs are going to be so big in the metaverse! And that will also rely on efficient micropayments — you have a solution for that, don’t you? 😉

Yes to that again. :) I appreciate you know so much about Geeq. Yes, when NFTs are easy and inexpensive to mint and transfer securely (for those who are new, Geeq doesn’t use smart contracts, these functions are being developed as standard transaction operations that are settled immediately onchain) — there will be mass marketplaces by the time we’re ready, and Geeq’s micropayments functionality was already demonstrated last year.

It’s very gratifying to see each piece fall into place. We knew concentrating on building reliable generic pieces would do that — and are enthusiastic about others seeing the possibilities too.

QIt sounds like you have a lot of potentially very cool technology, but there’s a big challenge in achieving actual adoption. How are you going to really get your solutions into the hands of corporates?

Well, I’d like to make an announcement that we have added a new strategic partnership this year that takes us a giant step forward toward real adoption at major clients. :)

We’ve partnered with a cream of the crop tech partner, based in Canada but whose tech has been used globally for years, as a leading data analytics firm, trusted by huge clients.

They have moved to a model of providing self-service, easy-to-use, no-code data management capabilities to the non-technical users in businesses, which is exactly what their large clients need: for smaller teams to get bigger results.

They’ll be able to leverage all their experience in dealing with sensitive data and in incredible quantities — we’re talking about big data, for ML/AI data-driven data products.

They’re already commercialized in multiple global financial institutions, and Geeq will provide the validation layer, not only for the enterprise databases that will use their data products across departments, which fits into the first use case I mentioned but also will move Geeq Data to be able to demonstrate our scalability at the levels these customers will demand.

Oddgems: Are you implying real-world revenue-generating partners or crypto-related projects? 👀

Stephanie: We’re talking about real-world revenue-generating partners.

I think the crypto-related projects will lag in this regard. They are primarily caught up in the security = cost model. Enterprises want some way to have security without escalating costs, and Geeq meets that criteria.

Oddgems: Oh wow! That’s crazy. 👀💥

I just opened this deck you shared https://software.geeq.io/ to see if I could find anything, did I just spot the two clients here on page 11? Are those the ones or these are completely different ones you’re talking about?? 👀

Stephanie: Exactly. :) You found the Easter egg. And I wanted your community to know it first.

Partnering with Rowbot is one way that we’re showing this new tech stack — and one thing we like to say internally to each other is that not only are we bringing the best kind of tech from each of our fields, but doing so will keep each of us innovating in synergy. There’s no stopping this kind of natural pairing, as they find out how to do better with validated data by Geeq, and we find out the kinds of services that will use the kinds of data their clients entrust to them!

I could drop some hints about the kinds of clients they’ve had in the past, too, if you like. :)

Oddgems: That would be icing on the cake, go ahead. we’re all ears!

Stephanie: For you!

I have two examples, without naming the names of the clients, but you’ll recognize the caliber of clients where the Geeq-Rowbot tech stack will be deployed.

The Rowbot founders have worked with a top US/Global Insurance company — creating a no-code “digital twin’ of legacy systems, enabling legacy data validation and facilitating a large-scale data migration.

Also, they have worked with a Top 3 Canadian bank, to automate data alignment between multiple operational systems.

What Geeq now adds to the table is the validation of the data and validation of access to the data — which will give Rowbot data products an edge in assuring their clients that the data integrity of their products is unparalleled.

Oddgems: I’m simply stunned, there are like top projects in the top 100 that don’t even have real-world revenue-generating clients or partners, most of them are simply ghost chains. And here we have a tiny microcap with such epic clients and partnerships. UNREAL!!

Stephanie: We’re working!

And I so appreciate our Geeq Community, who has trusted us through the quiet times when the NDAs and legal arrangements and strategies and details have had to be worked out.

QAgain just wow, great news! But for retail investors like myself, it’s all about the token. How does the enterprise route benefit the token value and utility?

Stephanie: From our entire team, we are very aware of this question for retail investors.

We made a conscious decision last year to prioritize the development of private instances before the public mainnet for all the good reasons and long-term, sustainable future of Geeq, and I know the factors behind that decision are extremely complicated and not the kinds of things we discuss — as they are going on — in public. We do try to give updates as much as we can.

I would like to address this as head-on as possible.

In fact, I’m looking for a message from our CEO to your community:

It’s our observation that with all that is and has happened in the world, trust deficits are increasing. Whether within organizations or entities or governments or between. And this is where the increasing need, demand, acknowledgment for some external validation, some way of reducing that trust deficit, emerges. Which triggers going “outside” for validation, which is where the private to public or private/public hybrid model comes into play. And hence the demand for the public version of geeq and therefore token utility to reward validators.

It is also not lost on us, that a very good portion of all that we are developing for enterprise does nothing but strengthen and is in line with our path to the public version of the geeq protocols. When geeq emerges publicly it will have not only “main net” utility but applications that can function within the protocol that we believe will drive adoption fairly aggressively. Never any guarantees as always but that is what we believe and we are now getting that belief affirmed and reinforced with the current path to market discussions. So not only is it of great interest to our community, we are seeing it as being “pulled” by expected users as well. Vision meeting reality. Push meeting pull.

From my perspective, which is closer to the dev level, I want to assure whoever is paying attention that all development devoted to the private features and instances, and testing, go hand in hand toward being hardened for the public and main net development.

Since we began with the idea of secure payments, at scale, which is what most projects do when they think about a blockchain, …
and we knew there would be a way to scale applications on that in an economical and decentralized way, given our multi-chain architecture. (which wasn’t being discussed then)

We knew we had something special. The kinds of applications and features we’re discovering now, that have true demand in the private sector, which we think means the public at large will love (secure private NFTs that have already been scaled for a large enterprise issuance, to take the closest example) — permissioning for applications, which can take place when a public dev wants a chain, without relying on a smart contract for multi-sig?

These are features we will bring to the public. And value drives volume, which drives utility.

This is the way. Or, at least, the Geeq way.

Oddgems: So in the future do we expect some of the protocol/chain fees to be paid in GEEQ tokens or Fiat as well?

Stephanie: Yes, although the degree and arrangements will vary according to business contracts, and some are yet to be negotiated, as I’m sure you’ll understand. But we are extremely aware of the importance that it always comes back to the utility of the token in the public environment, which we are bootstrapping as we go.

There’s also a lot of headway in clearing the way for graduating the private chain business to a hybrid private-public chain solution, which was one of the methods I’ve been championing from the start for all sorts of reasons, including the fact it really embeds public chains as part of the enterprise world.

Oddgems: Ok, so the previous question was the last from my end, are you free to take few questions from the community? (if there’s any)

If so, I’ll open the chat for the public just for few minutes as it’s already past 90 mins mark.

Stephanie: Absolutely!

COMMUNITY QUESTIONS

Question from CH: Will the $Geeq token be essential on Private chains?
Stephanie: So, not on all private chains, and certainly not as we are testing with private clients. The process with private clients is: onboarding — testing and feedback — and then meeting their needs. If their needs are completely private, then it is up to the company to work out what happens to Geeq tokens in a separate way.

What I will say, though, is that we are developing relationships with private clients who are extremely interested in growing with Geeq as we develop more features that will build out the ecosystem in this systematic way. They know private NFTs will lead to public NFTs, and so on for all the features we have planned before the public platform. (And we’ve put a hard stop on the specific applications and capabilities we will build, although not on the customized features that will make them easier to use.

The upshot from my view is, these clients accelerate our ability to bootstrap demand for the $Geeq token in ways no other ecosystem has been able to take advantage of, because they can’t offer the private + public chains within the same ecosystem, not to mention the hybrid capabilities.

That’s a long answer to say: we’re looking out for the short run and absolutely positive this is good for the long run.

If partnerships are enterprise/private focused, and the $Geeq token is not needed on private chains, it has little relevance to the community at this stage.

CH: Can we please get head-on clarity if the Geeq token is essential to private chains. A Yes or no answer is okay.
Stephanie: The business models we are discussing foresees receiving payment for our services in fiat/token.

Question from Wasif: As far as I know, investment was a commitment not the actual investment amount yet. When do you guys expect to receive the investment?
Stephanie: These will come with milestones and the agreement was made before the latest technical release. We expect soon and often. :)

Question from Ke: What is the one thing that keeps you up at night that may cause the vision to stall? What is the one thing you think people don’t understand well enough that gives geeq absolute advantage?
Stephanie: Nothing keeps me up at night anymore, not that funding is secured, it is clear we have a direct pipeline for demand for now and future products that are recognized as head and shoulders above the competition. Literally nothing.

The one thing people don’t understand enough is that security matters and simplicity matters. Security through complexity is dangerous; smart contracts are vulnerable; bridge hacks are vulnerable, inherited security models are vulnerable, security that depends on costs are a treadmill that is expensive to maintain … and Geeq has thought through all of it AND found ways to avoid those problems.

Question from Dr. J: For me it feels still all uncertain for retail investors.. is it possible to update the tokenomics with clearity? Because “depends on contracts, etc” is not giving that much certainty.
Stephanie: The tokenomics have always been the same, we’ve commited to that.

The ‘it depends on contracts’ is simply a reality of the business world, and i know that is uncommon to see if you are used to token projects. But we’re not a token project that says: here’s the way it’s always going to be (and then maybe we’ll change it later). The reality for us is, the mission is the same (blockchain useful and accessible for everyone), but the ways in which we convince people that Geeq is for mass adoption will differ as we go along.

Question from Ali: Wen mainnet?? We are hearing since 2020?
Stephanie: When we get the features we are working on (which, as I’ve said, we’ve defined the list) hardened.

Once the features are released, that’s it. There will be no changes to the protocol, no major bounties for bugs … because that testing will be done in a professional way, the way software companies do it, ahead of time. And once we release the platform to the public, they will know that what they see and get to use easily is what they get, they can fire and forget, they can count on Geeq.

All of which may take more time than you’re used to … but will result in more stability at the end.

Question from LCS: Your protocol papers say that 1 third of the node fees go for Geeq Corp, why not give 100% to the ones running the nodes if the idea is to create an open protocol? Also, what’s the status of the patents you issued for approval?
Stephanie: Because we wouldn’t have the incentive to work this hard, this long, to make the quality product we want. Also, we have Geeq for Good that we want to support. Also, there will be plenty to go around. Also …

This is more of a philosophical discussion that we could maybe take to Geeq chat. :)

Re: patent status — I guess you’ll have to stay tuned.

Oddgems: Thanks a lot Hans and Stephanie for answering our questions related to Geeq. As usual, I’ve learned a lot through this AMA and hopefully many would have as well. Amazing well-detailed answers. LOVED IT!!

I wish the entire Geeq team the very best and hope they succeed in the long run, short term is just noise anyways :)

Stephanie: We really appreciate the opportunity — not only the opportunity to answer questions I know are really important for those both new and old to Geeq, in this neutral forum, oddgems.

And also the encouragement and commitment of time to really get into the detailed answers. 🙏

Geeq Links:
Website — https://geeq.io/
Twitter — https://twitter.com/GeeqOfficial
YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/c/GeeqOfficial
Telegram — https://t.me/GeeqOfficial
LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/company/geeq/

Oddgems Links:
Twitter — https://twitter.com/oddgems
Medium — https://medium.com/@oddgemsofficial
Telegram Group — https://t.me/oddgemsfamilia