An AMA with new partner Dogezer
To celebrate our recently announced partnership, Rivetz hosted an AMA on Monday with Dogezer founder Alex Kozlov on our Telegram channel.
This transcript has been lightly edited for grammar, spelling and punctuation. In addition, some questions and answers that were related were moved together in the transcript for clarity.
Alex K: Let me quickly introduce the project and explain how we are going to use Rivetz to help us.
We are a crowdsourcing and collaboration platform, where people can create the software they have always dreamed of and use project-specific tokens to pay for the labor, which we generate for each project.
You generate your own tokens mapped to future revenue or ownership of the software you want to be created. You hire people all around the world and pay them with these tokens. Once the project starts to bring revenue, that revenue is distributed proportionally to token holders.
Gabe: Can you talk about the process of how the company’s revenue is added into the smart contracts? Is it possible for a project’s owner to lie about revenue and then not buy back the tokens from its participants?
Joseph: Yeah, I’d also like to know more details about how the buy back of tokens is legally binding, as stated in the whitepaper!
Alex K: It all depends on how things are configured. In some cases, revenue goes to a smart contract directly — for example if you sell for crypto or if there is an agreement with an app store when the software is sold. However, in most of the cases this is just a legally binding promise from project owner, which he has to fulfill.
It is in their best interest to fulfill that promise because if they do not, the intellectual property rights (which these tokens actually express) wouldn’t be clear and they could be sued from the people who work for the project.
Another case is if he is going to sell his company to Google or receive investment from any source, this will not happen if IP rights are not fully “cleared”, which doesn’t happen until revenue is paid.
Alex (Rivetz): What is the biggest challenge Dogezer is facing right now?
Alex K: The biggest challenge is to keep all our existing customers, who already have a project started on the platform, happy — while doing an ICO at the same time. This has grown a bit faster than we expected, so we are trying to catch up. But I’m sure this is temporary.
Sam Sells Miners: So, the smart contract is configured to have terms and conditions which are considered valid under contract law, and can constitute a digital agreement? If so, that is a big feature, as not many smart contracts have this capability yet.
Alex K: We make a full identification of a customer. With the help of Rivetz security features, we can always be sure that the person who signed a transaction is really this person — so the only thing which we need to add on top is a contract. We are having our own solution to do this, and we also partnering with a well-known blockchain company to help us with this (can’t tell the name until it is officially signed).
Joseph: What about protection of the idea? Will you make it clear on the platform how users can protect themselves from their idea being stolen instead of being fulfilled?
Alex K: The ideas are generally a ‘dime a dozen’, so idea doesn’t need to be protected. Quite the opposite, the more people who are making the same thing means the more the market is ready to have this done.
What needs to be protected is the source code, documents, and other artifacts that are created when you work on the platform. We generally split the access to data between different team members, so you can always have some parts only accessible to some people, and others to others. In addition to this, each access is done by a person who is fully identified (name, address, etc.), so if someone steals something, he can be found and prosecuted.
Nick Chan: So why will they use your platform? What is the incentive for them?
Alex K: There are a few advantages.
- For project owners — They can start the project for free and don’t need to spend time looking for funding. Generally, they just generate a project’s tokens and then can start the real job by paying in these tokens.
- For contributors — Dogezer is something that will allow them to jump over an income cap. How much can a software developer make in a month, $10K? $15K? Probably, then, there is a limit. Here, they can accept some risk by accepting payments in project tokens, and if the project is successful, jump well over the income cap.
- For a project itself — As payments happen in project tokens, the interests of everyone are aligned around making the project successful, not adding additional hours or doing some unnecessary code refactoring and beautification. Interests become aligned, which will result in faster and better projects.
Sam Sells Miners: I am currently a token owner of one of the competitors listed in your whitepaper. One of the biggest issues they face is getting their financial market regulatory body license. Much of the conflagration is tied to the fact that is difficult to clearly separate the utility and security/currency aspects of their token. Furthermore, not only is the license for their own platform an issue, but also, determining the legality and status of the projects on their platform is a strenuous point.
To turn this into a question, where is Dogezer currently domiciled? What progress or plans does the company have to tackle this issue of duality between utility and currency?
Alex K: So this is really a complex question, and we have a few different methods to resolve this.
We don’t target ‘investment’ in form of money for project as a basic use case — this is where those guys are probably struggling. Generally, tokens are being paid for the job, rather than being exchanged for the money. It doesn’t necessarily mean money investment wouldn’t be possible. Sometimes, and in some jurisdiction, that may be possible. However, in ‘basic’ use cases tokens are being paid for the job done. This helps a lot.
In some jurisdictions, we are going to express IP rights through tokens, for example, when you and your friend are writing a book together you don’t need to register with the SEC and your IP rights are not a security. It is just shared IP rights between you and the one who was helping you with the book. This doesn’t work in all jurisdictions, but in many it helps.
In some cases it may be possible to be a security and use tokens similar to standard employee options which are ‘exempt’ from registering with the SEC and similar commissions.
We are very much aware of the problem and are working on methods to resolve it. It definitely can be solved, and using IP rights and tokens expressing a share in them is our main approach.
Sam Sells Miners: Great, nice. Good to hear this has been planned for. Regular project platforms that enable community fundraising are quite a thing now. Will Dogezer allow for funding raising through the DGZ token?
If I am not a part of any project, what does the DGZ token mean to me?
Alex K: The DGZ token is a license to use the platform, so you will need to pay a few DGZ tokens for starting the project and/or receiving revenue from the project if you have worked on it. We don’t plan to use DGZ token for fundraising. Fundraising will be supported, but it will happen in ETH/BTC/fiat and in exchange for the project-specific token.
The DGZ token is just a ‘license’ that users will need to be able to initiate this process. A DGZ token is your ability to use the platform. You can use it yourself or pass it on to someone who will need it.
Sam Sells Miners: Very disciplined. Interesting. So, projects that fundraise in ETH can issue their own tokens?
Alex K: Thank you! Yes, this is right. Projects will issue their own tokens — right now we are targeting ERC20 tokens. The fundraising will be supported in ETH/BTC and, in the future, in fiat (but there are some questions to be solved from legal perspective for fiat first in some jurisdictions).
The key use case is that fundraising may be not needed for many innovative projects. We have published a proposal at ethresear.ch on our future vision of fundraising for innovative projects. It is called Iterative Investment. Mr. [Vitalik] Buterin [founder of Ethereum] supported us in this vision, generally saying that developers may just work for tokens and enjoy future ownership of the company except doing the fundraising.
Joseph: You’ve probably been asked this multiple times but I think it’s a good question for an AMA, and I’m not certain of the answer: I see that unsold tokens are burned, and tokens are also burned after use. Could you elaborate on this system and the motivations behind it? Surely unsold tokens being burned would mean that soon a large number are about to be burned?
Alex K: Thanks for the question, and let me explain.
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First, any unsold tokens are burned. This really means that soon (in April) a lot (around 96 million) of tokens will be forever burned. The remaining tokens will belong to the people who have bought them in the ICO. After burning, 98% of all tokens will belong to ICO purchasers, 1.5% to bounty, 0.5% to core team (vested for 3 years). This is a burning that will be done after the end of the ICO, but there is an additional burning that happens each time token is used. This is being captured in our formulas in smart contracts.
Let’s say we sold 3 million tokens in the ICO: this will mean that our ‘burn rate’ would be set to 23%. Now, if you are the first user of the platform, the platform requires you to pay a $4 fee. You would present one DGZ token, and 23% of it is automatically gone (burned). The remaining 77% is sold on the open market to finance daily operational needs. Because of this burning, now there are fewer tokens in existence. Fees that can be paid with one token grow. The next user who will present 1 DGZ token will be able to pay $4.00000000001 of fees with it, and so on.
When 50% of the tokens are burned — 1 DGZ token will be able to be used to pay $8 in fees. When 90% of tokens are burned — 1 DGZ token can be used to pay $40 in fees.
Joseph: So regardless of how many you sell in the ICO, the initial fee will be 1 DGZ = $4 fee?
Alex K: Yes, initial fee is $4.
Gabe: “Dogezer integrates all of the necessary tools for people to work together on innovative projects.” Your whitepaper includes these tools: DoFinance, DoIssues, DoIterations, DoMarketplace, DoMessaging, DoGit, DoWiki, DoFiles, DoDocs, DoPlanning.
Can you talk about where you stand today in terms of building them and what the time frame looks like for the future development? It seems like a lot to build. Will you be integrating the ‘like’ applications or starting from scratch with these?
Alex K: Thanks, yes, let me explain this a bit.
We are definitely not targeting to write all of these tools from scratch. We use Gitlab for GIT, we use Collabora as “Google Docs”, we use Mattermost as “Slack” and of course all these tools are modified to fit our needs.
Generally, alpha is already running at https://dogezer.io, and while it is not perfect, it contains most of the key blocks. It can be used to implement what we propose (but you will need to ping me and the team a lot to help with this and that, or to execute steps that are manual right now).
Still, the product is huge, and you are right with regards to ‘a lot to build’, and our solution for this is Dogezer@Dogezer. This is our platform as a project on our platform itself.
Our future users would be able to improve Dogezer and build missing parts for a share of our future revenue. So it would eventually become a company where everyone can participate and grow it with us. For example, if you notice that something is not working, you can jump in, submit an issue in the issue tracker, ask that it is assigned to you and say how much money you would charge to get it done. We will review and approve. You will fix it, and when the company brings in more revenue, that revenue will go to you, because your help with that issue really helped to company to become more profitable.
This is the same approach as projects on our platform.
Joseph: Hopefully in the future that’s how most platforms will work: Something not working? Tell us and fix it yourself for a revenue cut. Love that idea. Everything would get fixed a whole lot quicker.
Alex K: Thank you! That way we are sure we would be able to outcompete the others.
Sam Sells Miners: So….how are tokens generated again?
And, I have a very crucial question which I’ve been keeping for the right moment. Might be the most pivotal one of this AMA session.
Alex K: You mean how tokens for your project are generated?
Sam Sells Miners: No, I see the DGZ burn, but how are they generated?
Alex K: They are only generated at ICO, they are not generated later.
Sam Sells Miners: Or will I pay 0.000001 DGZ for license in the future.
Alex K: Thats right, note our share — the founders team — is just 0.5%. This is because it is vested for 3 years, and we expect it to be much larger due to burning in 3 years.
Sam Sells Miners: So back to my important question: how do we pronounce “Dogezer”?
Alex K: Thank you! This is actually our probably biggest problem. ‘Dogezer’ is pronounced like ‘together’.
Joseph: Together -> Dogether -> Dogezer, pronounce all the same just replace the letters. This is my understanding.
Alex K: Yes, you are fully right!
Max Osole: How much do I need to own DGZ to participate/start a project?
Alex K: It is all depends on the size of the project. Generally, tokens for the first $10,000 equivalent are free, and then you need to have DGZ tokens to pay 1% of your budget.
If your budget is $1,000,000 USD, then you need to have DGZ tokens to pay 1% of $990,000 — that’s $9,900, which is 2475 DGZ or less (due to burning).
Gabe: Can you talk a little bit more about your partnership with Rivetz? What caught your attention with Rivetz? What are you most excited about with this partnership?
Alex K: This is very good question and I am really happy to talk more on this. One of the things which we need to be sure of is that users who are working on the platform are really the ones who they say they are. We need a secure and reliable way to confirm that when project’s owner really promises something to someone, this is him, and no one else. When someone is accepting a task or accepting the payment, this is again the same person.
I really feel with Rivetz this is exactly what we will get — secure and reliable and easy to use approach for people to sort of sign the documents, code, and payments when they work on the platform. So I am super-excited to have that running and I’m sure it will be very useful.
Joseph: I’d also like to know, as a supporter of the project, but mainly someone that is excited to use it in the future, what can I do for now to help out the project?
Alex K: Joseph, either help us to spread out the word, or start using it right now. It may be not very easy, but by starting to use it and helping us (including Dogezer@Dogezer approach). We can make it better faster!
Crypto Weeria: What’s plan for the short-term future?
Alex K: We are finalizing our ICO and continue to work on the platform. The alpha version has been presented before the start of ICO, and we continue to release new versions during ICO, and this will continue. We have a lot of things to add/improve.
Our next important milestone is June/July, when we release the beta. In the beta we would have all of the processes polished, so you can guys do whatever we planned with as less friction as possible.
Crypto Weeria: Is it me or do you have a unique project with 0 competition for now? And new exchanges coming?
Alex K: There are some guys with the same idea, but I think we are way ahead of them.
Alex K has welcomed any more questions to be directed at Dogezer’s telegram channel, which you can find here:
