Crypto Society AMA Recap with ChainX

12 min readOct 10, 2020

With Kristen Shen, ChainX CMO

On Friday, October 9th we had the honor and the pleasure of being joined by ChainX’s own Kristen Shen, CMO. The conversation that followed was the result. We were lucky enough to learn a lot and look forward to continuing to support the project in the future.

This is not an AMA you want to miss as we learned about an incoming airdrop and some of their future plans.

After the Ama, Alexander Vogels from Exxibox, and ChainX Community Leader stuck around to answer a few more questions. We were proud to host such a fantastic project and learn as much as we did about an app that could potentially drive the future of cross-chain finance on Polkadot.

Join us in Telegram here for more fantastic AMA’s in the future

Part 1 with ChainX CMO Kristen Shen

Bilo 2000- Hello everyone and welcome to Crypto Society’s second AMA with ChainX (PCX).

In Crypto Society, we’re all huge fans of the Polkadot ecosystem and we believe ChainX will be a widely used Cross-Chain Ecosystem in the Future. ChainX can be regarded as a Sub-Ecosystem in Polkadot. In essence, ChainX is a parachain on Polkadot focusing on interchain crypto asset management

ChainX aims to facilitate asset interoperability with other blockchains it measures users’ mining power based on the market value of BTC, DOT, ETH, ERC20, EOS, and other assets that are deposited in an inter-chain bridge. It is an inter-chain crypto-asset financial blockchain that will become a Polkadot parachain when the platform launches.

We are pleased to welcome ChainX’s very own Kristen Shen (CMO). Thank you for joining us today Kristen. Let’s get started.

Bilo 2000- Can you please introduce yourself and the role you work in at ChainX?

Kristen Shen- hello, everyone, I am Kristen from ChainX. I am in charge of marketing
Very happy to meet you guys here today

Bilo 2000- Thanks Kristen the pleasure is all ours.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Kristen Shen- I was the manager of a big token fund in China. We invested in 100+ projects. I knew about Polkadot 2 years ago, and was totally attracted by its technology and the view. So I decided to join the first chain of Polkadot, which is ChainX

Bilo 2000- That’s great! It’s always nice to see how people like you that shape the blockchain industry, came into this domain.

We will start now with a very important question

Why did you choose to build on Polkadot and was that decision made in the ideation stages or the project?

Kristen Shen- there are three reasons that we chose to build on Polkadot, firstly it’s the view of the future, which is very exciting. Before Polkadot, every public chain is like a local area network it cannot be connected together or exchange messages.

Bilo 2000- Yes that’s true. Polkadot really is the future. We are all looking forward to seeing how the integration of ChainX and other projects evolve within the Polkadot ecosystem. Thanks for your answer.

Kristen Shen- I kind of think of the biggest public chain. No matter how big it is, it’s only a local area network, but Polkadot thinks totally different. Polkadot wants to connect all the public chains together, which will create the real internet, which is the idea of web 3. It is interchain.

Bilo 2000- That is so true. Thanks for that.

For the next question; Why did you choose Proof of Stake over proof of work and how does that affect the efficiency of your system?

Kristen Shen- Because POS system is the future. Everything is changing over from POW to POS.

Bilo 2000- Thank you. What kind of Dapps would you expect to see built on your para chain? Which ones would you be most excited about?

Kristen Shen- ChainX is incubating a lot of Bitcoin Defi DAPP’s on our chain. After connecting to Polkadot there are two very exciting things that will start. Firstly we will cross-chain all the coins from bitcoin. That means if you transfer your BTC to ChainX then deposit it you can cross it on all the other tokens on ChainX. This we call mirror cross-chain.

Bilo 2000- Very interesting! Thank you!

For our next question: Can you talk about PCX token and the role it serves in the ecosystem? What gives its utility and value?

Kristen Shen- ChainX will finish all tokens cross-chain just after we connect to the Polkadot ecosystem so if any project in Polkadot ecosystem needs the asset you can just get it from ChainX Main Net.
Firstly PCX is the governance token of the network. If you are holding PCX you can vote for your proposals and engage in the governance.
Secondly PCX on the mainnet is the only token that can get one vote — one mining power which means PCX will get more returns compared to the crossed assets.
Thirdly ChainX already launched the smart contract platform a year ago and after we connect to the polkadot parachain we will be deployed overall on the chain so we will launch a lot of DAPP’s. Specifically, bitcoin DAPPs and PCX will be the base currency on the chain and also could be the payment term for the gas fee.

Bilo 2000- Thanks, Kristen. That’s great information. How are you attracting new developers to ChainX? Do you have any incentives?

Kristen Shen- there are three kinds of developers that ChainX wants most. Firstly is the developers for the bridge you know ChainX is going to be the asset gateway of Polkadot which means we will bridge as many kinds of valuable tokens as possible to our Main Net.
We already finished the bitcoin asset-cross chain and now we are working on the file asset bridge. After that we would like to bridge eth, Libra, ADA and other kinds of valuable tokens, but if the community developers want to engage in, we already launched a grant to incentivize the developers which is $100,000 USD.
ChainX is already open-sourced and we have a lot of experience bridging bitcoin and other tokens. The experience of bridging other tokens can be shared so if any developers want to engage in the bridging development you can apply for the grant.

People can apply for a ChainX grant here
https://github.com/chainx-org/chainx-grants

Bilo 2000- What does your future roadmap look like?

Kristen Shen- for the future roadmap, firstly we will connect to the Kusama as the parachain very quickly, and we will deploy everything on ChainX Main Net to the Kusama parachain for the pre-test. Including the DAPP of bitcoin & including the bitcoin mirror cross-chain.

Bilo 2000- Kusama! That is very exciting. It’s a great network to build on.

Kristen Shen- We will also deliver a token to the PCX holders at a ratio of 1:1. That means if you are PCX holder you could get Kusama-ChainX Main Net tokens at a ratio of 1:1. After connecting to Kusama we will connect to the Polkadot Main Net

Bilo 2000- Wow a 1:1 airdrop to PCX holders!!! When do you see that happening and can you provide us with more information on this?

Kristen Shen- After connecting to the Polkadot Mainnet we will act as the sub ecosystem of Polkadot. Polkadot wants to connect all the chains together but only for the chains that are from Polkadot ecosystems. The projects and the public chains outside of Polkadot’s ecosystems also need to be connected to Polkadot. How can they connect to Polkadot? They can connect from ChainX; any chain connecting to ChainX could also connect to Polkadot.

Bilo 2000- That is so exciting. Great news! Thank you!

Can you describe your partnership with Filecoin and the value it brings to the ecosystem?

Kristen Shen- We knew about Filecoin very early, like 4 years ago, and we even translated the Chinese version of the Filecoin whitepaper. We were attracted by the great value proposition of Filecoin. We think that distributed storage is going to be the future and it’s really the infrastructure of the blockchain industry.
This year Polkadot went online and we decided to connect Polkadot and Filecoin together, which will contribute to the infrastructure of the blockchain industry. We talked to the Filecoin team and we still have a very good relationship with them. After bridging to ChainX, ChainX will store all of Filecoin data, which will solve the basic problems of blockchains projects will face.

Bilo 2000- I can’t tell you enough how excited we all are by what you shared with us here today. I hope you don’t mind but I would like to sneak in one more question.

I read about PCX 2.0 in the news two weeks ago — I think with the public test net OR in the Hoo.com AMA, it was announced the rough estimation of when 2.0 would be launched. Can u give us updates about this or whether the dates have been finalized?

Kristen Shen- for the ChainX version 2.0 90% of the coding job has been finished now we are finalizing the wallet and the UI of the wallet. We will launch the test net of the version 2.0 at the end of October.

Bilo 2000- That is very exciting! I hope everyone heard this! The test date for V2 being launched is the end of October

Bilo 2000- Ok so I don’t want to be too imposing on our guest who has agreed to share some of her very precocious time with us here today

Kristen, we thank you for your time today and we’re all incredibly excited about the future of ChainX. We look forward to supporting your journey and staying updated. On behalf of the whole team here at Crypto Society, we truly appreciate your time.

Part two of the AMA with Alexander Vogels from Exxibox

We were lucky enough to have Alexander from Exxibox stick around to help answer a few more impromptu community questions.

Brendon- PCX staking rewards are impressive, could this be lowered?

Alexander Vogels — exxibox- Over time they will be lowered. The rewards are 50 PCX per block, just like BTC. The difference here is the halving is every 2 years, and the block reward is shared with all PCX stakers. Hence, the more total PCX staked, the lower the reward will be.
Therefore, over time, the reward will gradually lower with larger drops every 2 years.

Alexander Vogels — exxibox- In case anyone still has questions regarding ChainX that weren’t answered in the AMA, I’m always available either here or in the ChainX telegram channel

Matt- Can you explain the concepts of Asset Mining and Dynamic Mining?

Alexander Vogels — exxibox- Asset Mining is the reward for holding X-Assets in your PCX wallet. For example, if you deposit BTC into the system, the system processes the deposit and grants you X-BTC. Your X-BTC is then added to the ‘mining pool’ if you will, giving your rights to some of the PCX minted with every dividend cycle.
X-BTC is kind of like a voucher much like cash money used to be. A piece of paper that represents Y amount of gold if you hand it in at the bank. Here, one X-BTC is one BTC. With X-BTC being a Polkadot made token, you can use it throughout the entire ecosystem (once parachains are live and connected of course).
Dynamic mining is the overarching name for the ‘mining distribution’. Every 150 blocks a dividend cycle passes and 50 PCX is created. Part of this is for PCX stakers, another part is for X-Asset holders, yet another part is for the Council to manage and promote ChainX and finally a part is for the team during the first 2 years only.

Matt-Why do you not charge a matching fee like traditional exchanges and how does this factor into your model?

Alexander Vogels — exxibox- Every transaction, whether it’s staking, claiming, transferring, offering on the DEX, they all induce a tiny Tx fee. The only reason for this is to combat network congestion. Currently and for the foreseeable future, Stakers and Holders will be earning through the block reward. Eventually, when 21 million PCX has been minted, it’ll be these tiny tx fees that reward the people. Much like BTC, it’ll be a different crypto world by then so who knows whether that’s enough or not. The council, through the governance of every PCX holder, could always decide to increase or lower these fees

Matt-Is the PCX wallet a non-custodial wallet?

Creating a PCX wallet through the PCX system, whether that’s on dapps.chainx.org, mathwallet or dappbird is a non custodial wallet. Your keys, your coins. (mathwallet I happen to know does have a custodial option however)

Matt- Yes that’s quite brilliant. Passive income. Something everyone seeks. Sustainable, but likely beats the banks by a long shot which is brilliant for customer acquisition.

If you’re holding the assets, why not have them work for you.

You already have a few agreements for integrations, are you able to speak about which ones those might be?

Alexander Vogels — exxibox- I know that X-BTC will be used as collateral on Acala

Matt- This is a scaling function as well? So BTC transfers are done at the speed of Polkadot for example?

Alexander Vogels — exxibox- that is correct. Because it’s a ‘Polkadot’ token, it can be transferred just like it. You buy those plastic coins at the entrance of a festival and buy your beer with those plastic coins. This is no different from that concept. And not only that, it allows for BTC Defi as well.

Matt- Where do you see the future of DEFI and what gaps can ChainX help to fill?

Alexander Vogels — exxibox- This is purely my personal view to answer this question and not that of the ChainX team or council:
In my eyes, crypto is nothing but a hobby currently. The total market cap is tiny compared to other industries. As such, we might think we’re huge with all these projects doing their own thing, making their own solutions, but in reality, we’re not even scraping the surface of where we’ll be in the future.
Currently, moms and pops at home have no idea what crypto is, how you use it or why we need it. Same with online banking. “Why do I need a bank? I have cash in hand right?” But look where that sector is now. We might not see an increase like that anytime soon, but sometime we will.
In the ramp-up to that point, we’ll likely get a gazillion more crypto projects, each solving its own specific problem. Whenever a project like that wants to integrate with Polkadot, they’d better come up with a huge amount of DOT to win an auction….
Or…
They could knock on ChainX’s door and ask if they can use our interface and connect to Polkadot’s relay chain through us. The BTC Bridge was step one as a proof of concept, proving it can be done. The next step is other assets and eventually becoming a secondary relay chain like Polkadot. Like your ISP connects you and your neighbor to the World Wide Web.

Redreed red- Alexander another question: Kristen had told us about the KSM airdrop for PCX holders. When it happens will it be airdropped to exchange holders as well?

Alexander Vogels — exxibox- As things stand now, a wallet is a wallet, an address is an address. If you were to copy the entire blockchain right now and slap a sticker with ‘KSM-ChainX’ on it you can see where the airdrop will go to.
To give a little more insight on the exchanges though. I know most exchanges currently use only a few wallets and have internal systems to keep track of every user and how much PCX they have within their wallet. It is therefore up to the exchange to either keep it all for themselves or distribute it to their customers. We cannot control that.
My personal opinion however is ‘not your keys not your coins’

Matt- I know as well that you are not doing a single parachain, but many with each serving different functions. With such a diverse range of offerings and capabilities, I would be curious to hear your thoughts on which ones you would hope to see used the most. Without any forward-facing statements, what kind of new possibilities might excited you the most with the full implementation of the technology?

I’m looking forward to the behind the scenes technology to mature and projects to start focusing on UI and UX. Digital finance was horrible to use at first too, but once things became more streamlined and easy to use it exploded as the normal human being without much knowledge of how the little 0 and 1s are working behind the scenes. They just see their money in their phone and pay the store for their new dress.
And that’s it for me right now, I might drop in later though. Thank you for the warm welcome everyone! …