On the 10th of December 2020, we had the opportunity to join AMA room Channel for an AMA. With an overwhelming amount of questions, we just knew we had to create a transcript of it.
Brief Information
SpiderDAO is the world’s first hardware-based DAO. They are a new project that is bundling hardware and software tools, building on top of the Polkadot Network to create a new, better take on the traditional DAO model by making it whale-resistant and more democratic.
Introduction AMA
Eric: Welcome to our AMA with SpiderDAO. We have @SpiderCEO and @flisw0w here with us today.
Flis: Hello! Thanks for having us.
Nathan: Hey. Thanks for having us.
Eric: So, @SpiderCEO and @flisw0w let's start with a little background about you guys and then tell us how you discovered crypto.
Nathan Varty (CEO)
Hi, my name is Nathan, the CEO at SpiderDAO. I have been a serial entrepreneur with a background in IoT Development and Operations for the past 20 years with several successful exits under my belt. I have been leading SpiderVPN since its inception in 2017, growing the business to over 6000 users across 18+ countries.
Žiga Flis (Co-Founder)
Before joining SpiderDAO, I was the Chief Technology Officer at RiveX, where I spearheaded the development of various blockchain solutions. I am experienced in building both on-chain and off-chain technology with a deep passion for developing decentralized solutions. But before discovering crypto I was working as a Systems Engineer for a few companies.
Eric: Interesting backgrounds guys. What was your first crypto?
Žiga Flis (Co-Founder)
I believe I mined BTC on my dual-core CPU back in the day. Fun times. But my first crypto purchase was probably Ethereum
Nathan Varty (CEO)
My first foray into crypto was Bitcoin mining in 2012 and subsequently moved to mine Ethereum in 2016 in parallel to my non-blockchain businesses.
Eric: awesome. So tell us what is SpiderDAO?
Nathan Varty (CEO)
SpiderDAO is about protecting your internet privacy while browsing the internet, getting paid for selling your bandwidth, and giving the community a democratic say in how the ecosystem grows and matures. With our innovative Hardware DAO concept, we introduce a dual-governance model that bundles together hardware and software tools with on-chain elements, providing a “whale-resistant” governance solution.
Eric: What issues does Spiderdao tackle? What are whales and why are they a problem with decentralized governance?
Žiga Flis (Co-Founder)
We solve the democratic voting problem that many DAOs face nowadays by allowing each user to vote only once, regardless of the number of tokens the user holds. The hardware component via the SpiderConnect router ensures that only those who are actually using our product can vote and therefore can become a positive force in the SpiderDAO community.
Nathan Varty (CEO)
The biggest problem we’ve seen in conventional DAOs is large investment bodies (ie. whales) purchase large amounts of tokens then unfairly skew the voting process in the DAO for malicious purposes. This is because when only the token provides voting power/rights, which is very easy to buy and sell on exchanges, it becomes too easy to buy votes. We solve that problem.
Eric: Is there a VPN component to SpiderDAO? tell us about that
Žiga Flis (Co-Founder)
The decentralized VPN increases the user’s security and privacy compared to using a centralized one. Additionally, we don’t take any shortcuts on speed and reliability. We are absolutely competitive in these areas and even beat most of the known VPN providers. However, with SpiderDAO we can add features none of our competitors can. I mean, selling your bandwidth, getting passive income and at the same time taking part in the democratic decision-making process through our DAO is surely nothing I can see with any competitor.
Eric: @SpiderCEO tell us about the token. What’s it called and what does it do?
Nathan Varty (CEO)
Our token is called SPDR. There will be various benefits to holding the $SPDR tokens. Early on, you will be able to participate in our LAU concept (liquidity as a utility with access to free VPN). You will obtain voting rights inside of the DAO which will first be present in the form of a discord channel but will later evolve into the Spider Dashboard. This is where many of the features will enter the market.
Eric: Interesting. Tell us about the hardware component. how does it work? do you have photos of it?
Nathan Varty (CEO)
Our SpiderConnect router is based on an MT7621 chipset router includes an 880MHz MIPS 1004Kc CPU dual-core. The embedded high-performance CPU can process advanced applications effortlessly, such as routing, security, and VoIP. It provides several dedicated hardware engines to accelerate all types of traffic. These accelerators relieve the CPU for other upper-layer applications and we customized it to get the best out of the hardware when it comes to high traffic usage.
SpiderConnect Router
Eric: @SpiderCEO how does it work?
Žiga Flis (Co-Founder)
Our in house solution takes care of connecting the unit through our dVPN network and make sure traffic all the way through between the entry and exit points are encrypted and also we do our dpi filters and DNS unblocking services in real-time on the router to make sure the customer's speeds are not affected much.
Eric: what is the benefit of holding SPDR besides the DAO component? Can you earn passive income in any way?
Žiga Flis (Co-Founder)
There will be various benefits to holding the SPDR tokens, early on you will be able to participate in our LAU concept (liquidity as utility). You will obtain voting rights inside of the DAO which will first be present in the form of a discord channel, but will later evolve into the Spider Dashboard — this where actually many of the features will enter the market. The token will also play a major role in bandwidth monetization which will allow you to make passive income with the help of a router. A good comparison in that sense is the Basic Attention Token (BAT). Much like the well known BraveBrowser pays users to use a safer and more private browser, SpiderDAO does the same except in a hardware mode.
Community AMA
Q: What makes your Dual Governance model Whale Resistant? Of what benefits will the transfer of the voting eligibility rights from solely the token to a dual off-chain and on-chain mechanism?
Nathan Varty (CEO)
We are aware that whales/bots can buy more routers using new wallets to try and affect the governance model, but that will come at a heavy cost for adding more routers and also have to wait for a period of time deemed reasonable to the DAO. Users must have active transactions on the wallet before being able to vote to make sure bots and whales won’t get access with ease. We will be keeping a log of every MAC Address and serial number for every router we add to our inventory, this we’ll be added to an on-chain ledger or on-chain database. This will help us to identify any clone or anyone trying to spoof/manipulate the hardware. We will also be in constant contact with the growing SpiderDAO community and the open-source community for beneficial ideas on how to make the governorate safer and more resilient to whales-resistance. If the essential data is not matched to the end-user and they try to spoof or manipulate access. There will be 3 warnings followed by a ban from taking a part in our governance model for a limited time(still to be decided). The ban time will be increased systematically based on the number of times this is identified until the customer is banned indefinitely if the infringement persistently continues.
Q: What type of Routers would you advise to be used? Wired, Wireless, Core, edge, or Virtual router? What are the consequences if a router develops fault during a transmission?
Žiga Flis (Co-Founder)
We will start off by deploying our solution to our already existing SpiderConnect router and you can use it on both Wired & Wireless as it won’t be too much traffic going through the network and always prioritized. The next phase of our project is to deploy it to more routers so it can be more useable for wider ranges of customers using something like DD-WRT and Tomato solutions. The router will retry transmitting if it fails at any time as we check the packet's headers before accepting it.
Q: How does SpiderDAO turn the voting by DAO participants into a fair system and what is the advantage of the network of hardware routers distributed as “tickets”?
Žiga Flis (Co-Founder)
Our voting mechanism would be classified as a Direct Democracy system. We are going to balance the voting power by only allowing token holders to have one router regardless of how many tokens they hold. We will make sure they got to go through SpiderConnect to gain more routers for their tokens if we agreed to that. Our DPI filters will monitor that keeping their identity anonymous.
Q: How secure is our data with Spider Dao? What are security measures being implemented in your network to protect the privacy of your users?
Žiga Flis (Co-Founder)
Data with the SpiderDAO is much more secure than your ordinary VPN, not only do we run VPN on Wireguard protocol which is more advanced than our competition and has lesser speed drop out as well. But we will even further upgrade this protocol in the future that will allow you to do multiple levels of security by allowing you to jump between multiple servers.
Q: Most investors focus only on the price of the token in the short term instead of the real value of the project. Can SpiderDAO tell me the benefits for long term investors?
Nathan Varty (CEO)
We tried to find as many long-term supporters as possible during the private sale section. But holding SPDR will give you multiple benefits such as participating in the DAO and using all the available features on the upcoming SpiderDashboard.
Q: Please describe more about the SpiderDAO Governance Mechanism how does your platform work? Do the token holders have the right to participate in the governance of the project? What kind of decisions can they vote on about the project.
Nathan Varty (CEO)
When it comes to the governance of the project the token holders will also have to be in possession of a SpiderConnect router if they wish to participate in the fair democratic governance because 1 router = 1 Vote and by doing this we make the system a lot fairer. People will be able to vote on future features.
Q: The privacy you provide can create legal problems. Some exchanges are removing privacy projects from the list due to government pressure.
What can you say about that?
Nathan Varty (CEO)
Our customer's privacy is paramount and we cannot sacrifice that for taking part in any exchanges and that was our rule of thumb since the beginning when we did the dVPN network however we won’t allow illegal traffic and malware throughout our network which will be using both our ad blocking and dpi filters techniques.
Q: Security and Trust are very fundamental in crypto space today, how secure and robust is #SpiderDAO do you have safe funds and insurance?
Žiga Flis (Co-Founder)
All our smarts contracts are being audited by one of the biggest auditors around and we will make sure the majority of our source code is Open Source and being regularly audited so we can make sure all reported issues are sorted and updated in a timely manner.
Q: 💥What are the benefits of Voting on SpiderDao users? And What are the main difference between SpiderDao Traditional Voting and other Traditional Voting projects?
Žiga Flis (Co-Founder)
Traditional DAO has a 1 token = 1 vote policy. The challenge with this means that large investment parties come to buy up tokens to skew the voting process and subsequently sell the token after the vote takes place. In the SpiderDAO model, we aim to create a true democracy for users of the services were to acquire a voting right, the user needs to have token + hardware router + validation through the network. This essentially means 1 user = 1 vote and ensure a more democratic, transparent, and fair voting process.
Q: What advantages does decentralized VPN’s have over traditional VPNs, and what additional benefits does the extra layer dVPN offers, besides having no logs?
Žiga Flis (Co-Founder)
dVPN networks offer an extra layer of security which takes the benefits of blockchain technology on board to do a combined solution which takes the advantage of Tor networks plus the VPN encrypted protocols so it’s a highly secured solution done by the community with benefits which makes sure the network is always connected around the globe.
Q: I always have little time to use a computer, so I only use a smartphone. Are there any plans to release a mobile version of the exchange in the future?
Žiga Flis (Co-Founder)
Yes our plan is to sync up with our mobile apps once the router development is ready which will allow you to use your wallet securely for all our operations and you will have to be synced up with your router as an extra layer of security when doing any operations.
Q: What’s the token economy of SpiderDAO’s SPDR token? How does the utility token work what about SPDR Token and the benefits??
Nathan Varty (CEO)
There will be various benefits to holding the $SPDR tokens. Early on, you will be able to participate in our LAU concept (liquidity as a utility with access to free VPN). You will obtain voting rights inside of the DAO which will first be present in the form of a discord channel but will later evolve into the Spider Dashboard. This is where many of the features will enter the market.
Q: How does #SpiderDAO encourage users to drive their ecosystem and use apps?
Žiga Flis (Co-Founder)
We encourage users to drive the ecosystem by producing cool features, like free VPN or monetization of your Bandwidth & many many things.
Q: What advantages do dVPN’s have over traditional VPNs, and what additional do the extra layer dVPN bring there besides having no logs?
Žiga Flis (Co-Founder)
The decentralized VPN increases the user's security and privacy compared to using a centralized one. Additionally, we don’t take any shortcuts on speed and reliability. We are absolutely competitive in these areas and even beat most of the know VPN providers. However, with SpiderDAO we are able to add features none of our competitors can. I mean, selling your bandwidth, getting passive income and at the same time taking part in the democratic decision-making process through our DAO is surely nothing I can see with any competitor.
Q: Collaboration and partnerships are one of the cornerstones to making DeFi more widespread, Can you share some of the partnerships you have formed with existing blockchain foundations recently?
Nathan Varty (CEO)
We have strategic partnerships with Sentinel, Gl.inet. Atka, Kyro, and SpiderVPN. We value all of our partners equally but we must mention the partnership with SpiderVPN which will become a turnkey product for the SpiderDAO. This will secure the Ecosystem which will be interwebbed (pun intended) and encrypted by SpiderVPNs military-grade protocols.
Q: Only getting users, holders, etc is not everything. In my opinion, a project needs to deal with solving a real-world issue or problem What is the problem that your project primarily focuses on? What can we expect to see from this project in the short-term (at some point in 2020) and 2021 and beyond (long-term goals)?
Nathan Varty (CEO)
The longer-term goal is to bring privacy to the end-user. The SpiderVPN is the first product within the SpiderDAO ecosystem giving users dVPN access. SpiderDAO will then look to develop other privacy-focused products within its ecosystem, both itself and through 3rd parties to provide an end-to-end suite of solutions.
Q: How does #SpiderDAO Staking works, what is the minimum amount needed for staking, and what is the APR?
Nathan Varty (CEO)
You would have to sake $500.00 to receive a Free VPN via the LAU concept the APY is going to be very rewarding but we are not quite ready to share the exact figures.
Closing Remarks
Eric: @SpiderCEO you got a giveaway for the routers, right? Can u tell us about that?
Nathan Varty (CEO)
Yes, we have a great giveaway competition for the best-asked questions! the winners will be announced on our Telegram Group @spiderDAO & also in the @amaroom
Eric: Ok thank you for taking the time.
Please invite our peeps to your official Twitter too
Nathan Varty (CEO)
Please follow us at https://twitter.com/SpiderDAO
Žiga Flis (Co-Founder)
Thanks for hosting us!
Nathan Varty (CEO)
Thanks for taking part today, you certainly kept us busy with your amazing questions
Eric: Thank you, everyone. The questions were great. @spiderdao will be a great new project in the crypto space.
Thank you @SpiderCEO and @flisw0w
Nathan Varty (CEO)
Feel free to join us and ask the questions at our Telegram Group @spiderDAO
THE GIVEAWAY WINNERS ARE :
@luckydraw66 — Router
@Ninaz125 — Router
@Idee02 — Router
@zaferce — VPN
@joy5635 — VPN
Please contact @SpiderCEO to claim your prize.
About SpiderDAO
SpiderDAO proposes a set of tools bringing privacy and security to today’s and tomorrow’s internet users.
To do so efficiently and sustainably, SpiderDAO’s team set a robust new standard for DAOs that will withstand the adversity that such a mission implies.
To mitigate the shortcomings of current DAO frameworks, SpiderDAO leverages a multi-layered governance setup based on hardware and software tools on top of a Fair & Resilient Hardware-based DAO built on Polkadot.
Learn more about SpiderDAO:
Visit our website: www.spiderdao.io
Join our telegram: https://t.me/SpiderDAO
Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/freymYYspb
Documentation:
Our one-pager: https://assets.spiderdao.io/SpiderDaoOnePager.pdf
Our Pitch Deck: https://assets.spiderdao.io/SpiderDaoPitchDeck.pdf
Our Whitepaper: https://assets.spiderdao.io/SpiderDaoWhitepaper.pdf
