Mar 25, 2020
CR Herald Interview with Anders Alm
community members who intend to participate in the CR election are setting about making preparations for the election. And recently, CR Hearld is about to interview those Community candidates, so that we can get a statement of their opinions and relevant experience and competence on CR forum or through community channels.
Let’s start!
- Could you please introduce your educational background, profession, and interests?
Sure. I completed a certificate of apprenticeship in Information Communication Technology with hydro.com, spent one year in college to become eligible for university. Decided to start working abroad for Dell instead of pursuing a university degree. While I’ve learned a lot from my formal education I’ve always preferred self-learning and learning by doing.
Then co-founded several companies related to travel, software development, investment and e-commerce since 2012, which are all still active today.
What I enjoy the most about my professional life is product development as well as digitalize and automate systems.
My interests are world- and self-discovery, learning something new, coding, snowboarding, food (cooking, but mostly eating) and walking in nature.
2. How did you get involved with Elastos and how do you understand the project?
Discovering Elastos was a long process. I discovered it early but it took many months before I got a good understanding of it. Partly because of the information available at the time, and partly because there is a lot of information to digest.
During this journey, I joined different channels/groups and experienced how smart and engaging the community is. Somehow I ended up talking to KP, told him I wanted to contribute, then became Project Manager for the Elastos React Native Framework project (you can find several meetings on YouTube.
Then I started working with Rebecca with proposals from Europe, which included regular contact with Adem Bilican (Elastos Unity, former Elastos React Native Framework), Peter Strauss (HyperConnect) and Jochem Herber (Elastos Orchard).
I met up with the Hyper team and Sunny Feng in Vienna, and Brian Xin on a secret island that I hope will be an important place for Elastos in the future.
My first concept of Elastos was as a fully secure platform running on mobile. Ever since then I considered Elastos as the best bet in the industry to achieve mass adoption.
The way it’s being driven by its community, with some of the smartest and most experienced people in the industry, together with the ambition and scope, I got a great sense that this is actually achievable and sustainable for the long term.
Before I knew Elastos I knew Bitcoin and crypto in general very well. I knew a lot about sidechains, IPFS, virtual machines, networking, server architecture, ect.
When I realized how Elastos put together the blockchain (based on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Neo), merge mining (based on Namecoin), carrier (based on Tox), hive (based on IPFS), DID, runtime and Cyber Republic, I was ecstatic.
The long term vision from Elastos Foundation and Elastos Founders is very appealing. Including the work being done with the World Bank, W3C, and the IGRS Industry Association.
How we can now protect, transact and interact with data under Elastos will completely change the game and the IT industry.
There are still many challenges and unsolved riddles ahead, but we have the pieces we need to build production-ready software across several huge IT areas (IoT, finance, rights management, digitalization, travel, government, etc). Several great community members have demonstrated this.
3. How do you understand CR and what CR means to Elastos?
Whether it’s a company or a movement, it’s still real people behind; a community. People who share a cause and is working on solutions together.
CR is a decentralized organization with a potential unprecedented responsibility.
It’s a lot of hard to do. It will take a lot of time and patience.
A great feedback system is important as the road ahead will be filled with failures and adapting to an industry under continuous and fast paced change.
CR is the consensus mechanism that cannot, or should not, be run by machines.
It is the government of new digital infrastructure and a new digital arena.
4. What things have you done or contributed to the Elastos community?
I’ve done both paid and unpaid work as Project Manager which included making agreements on behalf of CR, following up projects, testing and reviewing and more. I have introduced several people to Elastos, been somewhat active on Telegram, and have hopefully encouraged and inspired people with ideas and discussions. I published the first (dummy) dApp on ElastOS.
5. What are your CR’s campaign manifesto and main campaign proposition?
With my background in digital business automation, I will prioritize and work towards making Cyber Republic a fast, seamless and effortless experience for CR Members and Council.
With the classical paradox where the tech must be ready before selling and selling must happen before being able to properly develop the tech, our most impactful results will come from early adopting businesses and organizations building tools and services on Elastos.
Their feedback, potential funding and contributions to the ecosystem is crucial for continued success.
At the end of the day, it’s the health of the community and connection with our partners that will determine our success.
To reach mass adoption we need dApps that are easier and more powerful to use than anything else in the industry. Starting with wallet and ID, then tools and services that are useful for both common people and enterprises.
My mission is to provide equal opportunity for all, by working toward mass adoption of open, decentralized and uncensorable technology.
As a Council, I will be listening more than speaking and encourage collaboration across the board.
I will be voting mainly on projects that:
Migrates real users and real use cases to Elastos
Improves the CR user experience and security
6. What advantages do you think you have in the election of CR members?
I’m probably the most unknown candidate, so I might have the advantage of being the underdog???
7. If you successfully run for CR members, which community work will you focus on and the development and construction of Elastos?
I will focus on projects that give CR a seamless user experience and projects that bring real daily users.
In addition to that I feel very comfortable in a mediator role and will encourage collaboration across the board. As a healthy community will have many passionate people, conflicts are unavoidable. Resolving these conflicts and showing people that they actually want the same thing, which is usually the case, is very rewarding for me personally and the community as a whole.
8. If you become a CR member, how do you plan to communicate with the community? How to better serve the community?
I will be available to anyone on Telegram.
Alex Shipps implementation of the Council Meeting Minutes is something I support 100% and want to take further.
Transparency is important. To serve the community we need a good way of collecting and processing feedback, so people feel both heard and recognized.
9. If I become a CR member, what expectations do I have for CR?
I expect it to be messy, with a feeling of being in alpha or early beta version, a pioneering experience, and that I will meet more amazing people which I have many things in common with.
I expect it to be as rewarding as it is difficult.
10. In the approaching 12 months, user and developer adoption will be major focal points for Elastos. What are the most important strategic initiatives that CR can employ to increase developer and user adoption of Elastos?
We need to find current apps that have active daily users that will do better with Elastos. Migrate these users and use cases to Elastos.
We need to make tools easily available with great documentation and support, which means continuing the support of Elastos DMA, Elastos Unity, HyperConnect/IM, ElastOS, Elastos Academy and more.
We need to make strategic partnerships with startups, small and medium businesses and, most importantly, enterprises.
We need to support the Manhattan Project and find others like it.
And at least, but not least, we need to support the Elastos Foundation to get the best possible infrastructure and leverage their expertise. When EF is done, we need to make sure we take really good care of all the expertise and resources and ensure they stay and flourish within the Elastos ecosystem.
11. Do you have any other things want to say to the Elastos community?
Thank you for reading this and hope to meet you someday :)
（Questions from English Commnity）
12. In the approaching 12 months, user and developer adoption will be major focal points for Elastos. What are the most important strategic initiatives that CR can employ to increase developer and user adoption of Elastos?
We need to support the right teams and projects that bring real value to users. This includes porting or migrating existing solutions to Elastos, onboarding enterprises through business development, and focusing vigorously on growth KPIs like daily active users.
13. Exchange listings have been a major source of community discontent, and a great deal of conversation has circled around listing ELA on more exchanges. Have any candidates actually looked into what is required for a successful exchange listing, contacted exchanges, and evaluated the costs?
After talking to FTX.com directly and watching other candidates’ efforts, I’ve concluded that spending time and money on exchange listings is probably not worth it unless there is a specific and realistic opportunity.
The main challenges are that exchanges want to list coins and tokens with high liquidity and that will bring in a significant amount of new customers. There are also legal challenges.
We are already on a few noteworthy exchanges. While more exchanges can be good for marketing and liquidity, hooking into Defi and decentralized exchanges appear more fruitful.
14. It seems that the majority of community debate surrounding CR Council Elections has been centered on the 16.5 million ELA allocated to CR. The community would like to know the following:
(1) What is your perspective on the utility of these funds?
My initial reaction when learning the 16.5m ELA was positive. Building the community and ecosystem through incentives seems like a great idea.
Running a decentralized organization is a pioneering adventure, and will be for years to come.
All traditional roles and structure within an organization¨is now, ultimately, something ELA holders would have to vote for to create. If that is what we desire.
Without clear leadership, we need to distribute the responsibilities. Contract between the community, represented by the Council, and individual project owners is a solid way to distribute and reward responsibilities.
Without any ultimate authority (CEO / board) or possible threat of termination (“you’re fired!”) from the organization, we need to find new ways of collaborating.
The fund might become worthless unless we have organic and sustained growth within the Elastos ecosystem. We should not spend more funds than the market can handle, so having good data on how much and how we can spend without negatively affecting the price of ELA is important.
(2) Are these funds excessive, and is a token burn warranted?
After listening to fellow candidates and considering today’s market condition, these funds do seem excessive. There are several valid reasons to consider burning ELA or even change the inflation rate.
As a supporter of organic and sustained growth, I encourage carefully considered and long term solutions.
There are several ways to achieve the same results as we desire from burning ELA.
I have no agenda towards any specific solution and will vote for proposals based on previously mentioned principles.
(3) Do you have other tokenomic modifications you would like to see implemented, particularly in regard to inflation?
I believe in having skin in the game. And getting rewarded for making constructive contributions to the ecosystem (mining, voting, council, bounties, infrastructure, apps ect).
Finding better parameters to run Elastos and empower Cyber Republic is a never-ending process, with a continuous stream of trials and errors.
We need to develop solid feedback mechanisms and be able to adapt to changing conditions without breaking current working models.
The easiest and most beneficial solution I think about right now is rewarding profitable projects or behavior with time- or price-locked ELA.
15. To what extent should CR prioritize marketing, and what marketing tactics would you like to see CR employ to attract new users to Elastos?
The best marketing comes from excited and loyal users. The best tactics will come from excited and loyal CR members.
Any project that has demonstrated excitement and loyalty by end-users and/or community members has my vote. Marketing is not my strong side, so I will focus on the solutions that bring real and growing activities.
16. The whole concept behind CR is that our existing community cannot build the Elastos ecosystem alone; business development is essential for both technical development and community growth. Do you have any particular strategies in mind as to how to approach business development, and how you plan to allocate available funds?
With the voting power of CR comes the responsibility of protecting and empowering the interests of ELA owners. One thing I assume all ELA holders have in common is the belief that ELA will increase in value over time.
With this in mind, I would ideally allocate funds to projects that can answer yes to all these questions.
- Do you have support from the community?
- Is this a long term project?
- Do you have a lot at stake if this project fails?
- Will this migrate existing users or attract new users to Elastos?
- Do you have a working prototype or better?
- Will this give utility to ELA, directly or indirectly?
The process of allocating funds would be like making investments rather than charity and startup funding.
17. As a CR Council, what mediums will you use to address and interact with the community, and how often will you communicate?
Hopefully, the CR website will become an important platform regarding this.
Other than that, Telegram and WeChat.
I tend to listen more than I speak, so I will aim to communicate slightly above the demand.
18. Beyond yourself, is there another CR Candidate whose values and perspective you support? Why do you believe he or she should be elected to serve on the CR Council?
Absolutely. From my experiences so far I can say all. To keep this answer short, I will list my top 5 in alphabetical order.
Adem, because of his developer and mobile point of view. A long time member and contributor that I’ve had the pleasure of working next to (virtually).
Alex Shipp, because he is articulate, responsive and responsible. He has already proven himself with the interim council. I especially appreciate his contribution towards transparency (council meeting minutes) and content (reports, medium posts, analysis of the CR funds)
Brian, because of his ability to deliver results. His expertise, experience, ambitions, and connections are of great value and admiration. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him in person and learned a great deal from him.
Bitwork Council Committee, because they are spot on with their agenda, especially regarding business development. A very strong team with direct influence.
Orchard Trinity, because of their dedication, passion, perseverance and reach. Also because I want to see more representation from Europe.
19. Yipeng Su has been clear in stating that the complete, 12-person CR Council will, in theory, be composed of independent individuals that do not need to communicate with one another at all. While this is possible and very much valid within the structure of the CR Council laid out in the CR Whitepaper, do you anticipate communicating with other Council members in the future or organizing meetings in any structured fashion? This may be an especially important issue given the divide that presently exists between the Eastern and Western communities.
Yipeng Su’s ability to identify and connect the right pieces is a great inspiration. That council members can be isolated — yet functional, follows Elastos vision of security and decentralization. With that as a foundation, I encourage a forum where all council members can learn, listen, and be heard.
Transparency and communication are essential for a healthy ecosystem and community.
I have two specific places where I want to invite CR council and members, sooner or later. And yes, I will be communicating with other council members on a regular basis.
*Thanks to Anders Alm for receiving our interview!
